Writing against type

[maeve_of_winter]

I'm writing a fic right now that's somewhat challenging in its characterization, and it got me thinking: how do you tackle characters dealing with emotions or reacting to situations they've never come close to encountering in canon? Or them consciously choosing to change who they are as a person?

For me, my fic is a Riverdale/Archie Comics fic for the FP Jones/Kevin Keller pairing called "Second Time Around." It has FP Jones, a rough and tough gang leader in canon, now trying to step up in his role as a newly single parent, as well as trying act more like a gentleman in order to convince Kevin Keller to stay with him. It can get difficult, because the situation in itself requires FP to change from how he is in canon into someone who's more gentle and caring, so it can very easily stretch the willing suspension of disbelief.

And now I'm curious! How do you, as a writer, believably keep a character as themselves while writing about them acting differently than how they are in canon, or willingly choosing to act unlike themselves?

Comments

[the_rck]

I will sometimes consider the aspects of a character's life that I don't see or the things about the character don't quite fit. I look for frayed edges that I can worry at to see what I find. Throwing a character into a situation that canon never did also works.

Ensemble canons tend to give snapshots of a character's life so that one can work in the lacunae. In this case, are there any bits of canon that preclude the character interacting with a pet or having to watch his four year old cousin? Has the show defined his entire family? Could there be someone in his past (a grandparent? a neighbor?) who showed him how to weed a flowerbed or took him on a weekend camping trip? Lives are made of a lot of small moments, and nobody is all one thing, all of the time. Maybe he recorded every episode of My Little Pony, and that's his most shameful secret?

[tielan]

I try and give them a reason for doing it - character based, history based, and then try to lead the audience through that journey to that point. Also, as the_rck pointed out above, nobody is all one thing all the time, and canon tends to leave gaps for extrapolation and possibility which can be effectively used.

And then, to some degree, exactly how un/characteristic a behaviour or action is depends on your audience and how willing they are to be led where you're taking them.

[dirty_diana]

I'm working on something like this right now. It's with a character who has as a major trait in canon of being a fish out of water, and I'm working on a fork-in-the-road au where he'd be comfortably in his regular waters. It's weirdly the opposite of your scenario - he's matured a good bit in canon. Basically the main thing I'm trying to do is lean on the recognisable parts of his character that I can still use, and hope that that keeps the link obvious. Sense of humour, etc.

Not sure I have a complete handle on it, though. Good luck to you.

[sholio]

I think for me, it's mostly a matter of figuring out who I think they are as a person, based on their canon characterization, and then trying to write that person reacting to whatever the new situation is. If it's really far off from where they are in canon, you might need to connect the dots for the reader a little bit, either by outright explaining it (e.g. "Sorry, I used to be a lot more social, but I've been living alone in this cave for the last 30 years ...") or by trying to connect it to familiar aspects of their canon characterization in subtle ways - they might be acting different, but you, as the writer, can provide them with opportunities to bring out the "canon" aspects of their personality occasionally (e.g. if the character is usually a jokester goofball in canon, but you're writing them in a tragic scenario, you can still occasionally give them an opportunity to laugh or make others laugh, so the reader can see those canon aspects of their personality shining through).

In my last couple of fandoms, I've been writing characters who are jerks or actually downright villains in canon and putting them in situations that bring out a softer, friendlier side we rarely saw, but I still try to give them plenty of openings to actually be a jerk, or be violent, so they don't come across too soft and "reformed" to be in character -- there is a whole lot of backsliding even though they're trying to be better. So that might be useful in the scenario you're writing -- either by showing that he is still like that in some ways, or by putting him in a situation that previously would've led to violence and showing that he's changed by having him back down and turn away from it.

(Think, say, that scene in the Back to the Future movies when Marty-at-the-start-of-the-movie would've accepted a challenge to drag race that might have resulted in getting hurt or killed, because he didn't want people to think he was a coward, but at the end of the movie he's put in that situation and turns it down. It's a useful trick in fanfic, too. You can put your character in a situation very similar to something they encountered in canon, and have them make a different choice, while at the same time recognizing that the "old" them would've done the other thing.)