Fan characters. Anyone who’s liked a TV show, video game, movie, or book a lot has probably made a character of their own at one time or another as a representative of themselves in their own vision of that world. They are also something that should be taken into careful consideration when writing a fan fiction. Here are my thoughts on the matter:
- Keep the focus of your fan fiction on the canon characters. It is extremely tempting to write a fan fiction with your own characters as the main characters, while the canon ones are either shoved off to the side or simply not present. I can say this from experience, because I wrote one myself once, and boy, was it a mess. If you want to write such a fic, you might as well make the story an “original” fiction. It may not get you much attention from the fandom, but if you put a lot of effort into it, make it interesting, etc., you might actually get a chance to have it published.
- If you want to make a fiction using a fan character as a main protagonist, make sure at least one of the canon characters is a main protagonist as well. One of my few finished works, “Ancient Ways, Ancient Evils”, has a fan character as one of the main protagonists, but she also has to share the spotlight with three canon characters.
- Fan characters that outperform the canon ones = Mary-Sue. In no way should your fan character, if they are a protagonist, be able to outdo a canon character in one of the latter’s vital aspects. For example, if you have a Sonic fan character, they should not be able to outrun Sonic himself, nor should they be smarter than Doctor Eggman. This is a trap that is far too easy to fall into, and one that can ruin a fan fiction easily. A good place where you can judge whether your fan character is a Mary-Sue or not is this web site.
- Antagonist villains in action/adventure fics, however, can probably get away with overpowering the canon characters, to a point. That’s because in most cases, villains are supposed to lose in the end. Even so, it would be a good idea to give your otherwise unstoppable evil force a weak point that the good guys can reasonably exploit. And even with the weak point, the villain should probably still appear to have a fair chance of winning anyway. My suggestion, especially for a final conflict, is to make the weak point be discovered by accident or by careful observation on the part of the good guys. And please, don’t make it something stupid like “the power of love/friendship”. That’s been done to death.
- Even if none of the fan characters you use are main protagonists, try to limit the number of them you use. By this, I mean characters who may serve as traveling companions or the like. If you use too many, you may inadvertantly neglect some of them, or it will be too much trouble to give them all the amount of the spotlight they deserve. I can’t exactly recommend an exact number, it depends on the story itself. You don’t have to develop everyone in your story that is mentioned by name, but try to give the important minor characters a fair amount of development.