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.

[cheezdanish.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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 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.

[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 =)

[laurenthemself]

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

[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.