The Minor Character Adoption Society

[veronica_rich]

As a writer, have you ever adopted a minor character from someone else's canon for the express purpose of giving them a story? Or six?

I've done it three times, or should say, feel like I'm in the process of doing it a third time whether I want to or not: Reg Barclay from Star Trek: TNG, Prissy from POTC (she didn't even have a name - the fat woman from the first movie, who rubs up against Will in the tavern), and now it seems my brain wants to take home Hillary from the Tomb Raider movies and feed him little doughnuts (whoops - no, that's me who wants those, sorry) and transcribe his history and minor adventures. Just last night I came up with ideas for two more stories.

(I have other stories I need to finish! I have other characters in the brain already. *weeps*)

What is it about minor characters? Is it because they present such a blank canvas? Is it the mystery of trying to piece together a past or expand upon something glimpsed in canon but not much addressed? I know for a fact some of you have taken someone who had two lines in a movie and given them a better history than screenwriters gave the major characters.

I didn't invent these characters. I don't make money off of them, and I don't feel like I should. But I get excited about their histories in a way I don't always about my own original characters (or, I should say, I can come up with the history and ideas, but I find it easier to WRITE the history of someone else's minor character). It can't be laziness, or I wouldn't do any of it. What IS it?

Comments

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

I do that all the time.

Amit Hadar from NCIS (1 episode) was my most recent.

I think, yeah, it's kind of like writing an OC, but not because there is at least a little work with.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

How hard do you have to concentrate on coming up with their history, or does it just come to you on its own, whether all at once or in trickles?

[sirriamnis.livejournal.com]

Usually it just comes, frequently as I wrote it.

Taking Amit Hadar as an example. In NCIS all you know is that he's Mossad, and has known Ziva for a very long time, may be very close to her father.

About half an hour after I started writing him, I gave him a dominance/sadism kink, a fetish for redheads, and in about another hour, a father who had left the family to become super, super religious and a really independent, witty intelligent mother, and a grandmother who had been a sniper (a la Dr. Ruth Westheimer).

It just comes, really, to fit the story.

[cheezdanish.livejournal.com]

If you write Hillary fic, I will read the heck out of it.

[metalkatt.livejournal.com]

She already has written it, and it sounds like the bunnies are eating her brain.

[cheezdanish.livejournal.com]

I KNOW I spotted it the second after I left this comment.

Moar plz.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Well, check back later today or tomorrow, then ...

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I think it's because minor characters give the cloud of inspiration something to nucleate around, without actually constraining the end product too much.

Either that or minor characters are just more interesting.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I think it's because a minor character hasn't been screwed up by canon - you can take the skeleton and pad it however you like, with few or no worries about canon coming along and sideballing you. (Gee, I talk like I know ...)

[crevette.livejournal.com]

I recall the Figwit phemon during LotR-Fellowship. That one unnamed elf in the background in Rivendell that everyone gasped in the middle of saying "Frodo is..GAH Who is that?" Hence the name.

[beckyblack]

I never quite understood that. I mean that guy was fairly cute, but not that cute. Of course just near to that point in the movie I had my own version which was "Yay, here's Sean Bean, I love Sean... wait, who's this?!" And it wasn't when Gimli appeared... :D

I swear the moment Orlando Bloom first appeared on the screen I heard knicker elastic snapping all through the auditorium.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I thought Orlando looked OK in LOTR, but he never excited me very much. It wasn't until Will Turner that I thought it was an acceptable pastime to stare at him for three hours at a time.

[beckyblack]

Legolas has the edge on Will for me becase of the hair. I have a weakness for blonde guys. :D

[beckyblack]

I once included a character in a fic who was only ever mentioned in one episode and never even appeared. Now there's a blank canvas for ya. :D

All that was known of him in canon was he was a pilot, he was black and he used to work with someone who was now working for a drug smuggler, but we didn't even get told if he was involved knowingly in any drug smuggling himself. So he was a real open book.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

And which episode was that? Maybe I'll remember it. *G*

[beckyblack]

In Plane Sight, in season 2. Murdock pretended to be a pilot named Dick Nash, who the bad guy was expecting to show up to fly some crates with drugs concealed in them. But then someone who knew Dick Nash showed up and blew his cover.

I used the real Dick Nash in a fic. Face and Murdock happened to run into him in Brazil. Murdock was pretty chuffed to meet him. :D

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

You know - I sort of remember that one, I think ...

[beldar.livejournal.com]

Several years ago as part of a writing project with the local Star Wars club I wrote a brief fiction about the Rancor Keeper, who I've liked ever since his brief appearance in Return of the Jedi in which you sense a backstory of how he actually cared for his beasts. I really liked that story, so of course have no idea how to lay my hand on it again. Snack did get me a Rancor Keeper action figure, so I have that =)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

If it's not online, you'll never see it again. (And if it is online, and it's BAD, you'll never get rid of it. How I know!)

[laurenthemself]

Pretty sure mine're RD's canon gay couple, Rick Thesen and Sam Murray. I keep mentioning them in random stuff.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Have you read the official DVD liner notes for season 5? It mentions Sam and Rick - but it doesn't merely mention them as RD's gay couple. The exact phrasing is "Red Dwarf's first gay couple."

Now, you make of that what you will.

[gryphons-lair.livejournal.com]

I wrote Lucas Brown's story because I thought he was getting a raw deal--every mention I saw of him dismissed him as a useless drunk who was taking advantage of poor Will and his obviously-superior blacksmithing skills (when he wasn't horrifically abusing Will-the-boy, that is) without any of them stopping to think that Will had to learn those superior skills from *somebody*, and Brown was the most likely suspect.

As for Mr Stevens--whose total canon reference is literally a line shouted by Norrington in the heat of the Battle of Port Royal--I originally used his name for a bit character in a Sparrington story (Dreams & Desire) on a whim, and then when it looked like he'd get a bigger part in the sequel Stevens suddenly started demanding a backstory all his own, and it sort of took off from there.

AFAIK those are the only two minor canon characters I ever gave center stage to--and Stevens is never really center stage, as his backstory is told from Gillette's POV. I don't count Gillette & Groves as they were pretty fully developed fandom-canon characters before I came onto the scene.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Stevens suddenly started demanding a backstory all his own, and it sort of took off from there.

That's basically what's happened with Hillary. I watched "Tomb Raider" just wanting to see the actor's part, and the character moved into the squishy part of my brain with some thoughts about his own development.

I don't count Gillette & Groves as they were pretty fully developed fandom-canon characters before I came onto the scene.

In fandom, sure. But in canon, nothing much was done with them at all. So I still count them as minor characters you can play with like they're your own. :-)