Fanfiction Characters

Gossip Websites. They have pictures, and I try to fill in what they're thinking at that moment. Also, it gives me a feel for where they might like to shop and stuff.

Youtube video and interviews also help.

For my Joker story, I'd watch the movie loads.

For my Supernatural story - I watch the show or something with Jensen Ackles in.
For my Busted story - I listen to the music.
Same goes for NCIS one-shots and Jonas Brothers one-shots.

That's what I love about writing HP characters. Research is so easy, I just need to lean over and grab a copy.

I normally write Gerard Way stories and I know a fair bit about him, so it's quite easy to write his character.
I've watched interviews which makes it easy to write the nice side of him, which I rarely use anyway.
And I've seen some performances online and that helps me write a meaner side to him, which I have used quite a bit.

I’m currently writing about Tom Sykes. I lurked his Flickr photographs for certain descriptions I needed. :tehe:

The trouble with Tom Sykes though is that he’s only Oliver Syke’s younger brother, and so the information on him is hard to find, so I mostly created his character on what I imagined myself. I know he likes photography and drawing, so I gave him a more gentle, artistic side. But at the same time, I heard that he likes to drink and go to parties, and so I needed to put a balance between the two and make sure he didn’t sound like a saint or something. Though Tom is known as the innocent one by most people, so I think it’s ironic of what I’ve got him doing in my story. He does sound perfectly kind and sweet in it, but what I have planned for the ending is far from innocent.

I use the fact that he’s Oliver’s little brother for a little humor sometimes as well, creating silly squabbles between them or bringing up background history Tom might have as childhood memories. It also makes a good excuse for private thoughts to be exposed, since they’re brothers and can tell each other things now and then.

I mostly stalked his pictures though to make my own judgment on what his life must be like. I’ve only found one video of him and he’s not even in it, but me and my mate think it’s him talking in the background. If it was, he was extremely drunk. :tehe:

But I just make up half of his thoughts and personality from my own imagination. I know that I don’t know anything about it too well, but I really don’t need to. I’m only basing a character from him.

I think the more stories I read and wrote using the guys of Avenged Sevenfold, namely Brian, it got easier for me to create different personalities and things I think he would do or say. Reading a crap load of other fan fictions on top of reading bios and watching videos helped me a lot too.
I've never met Brian, but I've always seen him as this sort of cocky yet lovable asshole. :XD Sort of an oxymoron, but he, like all people has good and bad qualities. I try to write him as I do all of my characters; as normal, down-to-Earth, and relateable as possible. :D

I think, for me anyway, characterisation of RPF characters is largely influenced by their characterisation in other fics. If I want to try writing a new character/pairing I haven't attempted before, I'll generally go on a fic binge for that character/pairing to get a feel for how other people write them. I do the whole watching interviews thing too (when I started writing Mike Carden/Kevin Jonas, I watched like three episodes of JONAS in one go ) but they're mostly for pieces of information about the character than for characterisation. Mostly I try and write them similar to the way other people write them, but they're never exactly the same because my characters grow into themselves as I write them, and sometimes they change and develop without me actively trying to make them.

Also, though, I think the characterisation of a character varies greatly depending on the plot of the story they're in. I write Brendon Urie differently when he's in love with Ryan Ross than when he's in love with Spencer Smith, for example (though I haven't got much experience with the former) and Mike varies from being kind of an asshole to a really sweet guy depending on the story. Kevin is generally his adorkable self, though, no matter what the story is. I think that's something that should never ever change.

For showverse Big Time Rush fics, I don't really do any research aside from watching the show, and considering they only air a new episode like, once a month, it's not a difficult show to keep up with. There's not a lot of background information or character histories given in the show, so I tend to have to make it up a lot on my own, which I definitely don't mind. It's sort of like fitting the pieces of a puzzle because I have the personalities, so I have to figure out what happened over the course of their lives to mold them into the character that they are, and that's what's the most fun about writing FF for me.

Big Time Rush RPF is a little more difficult to research because my internet is insanely slow, so I can't binge out on youtube interviews or anything like that. I watched a ton of Ustream interviews over the course of the school year because I always ended up having an hour break between classes, so I just killed time by fooling around on the internet, so that was helpful. I never felt like I needed more than that because, and I don't mean for this to sound snobby, but I consider myself pretty good at getting a grasp on people.

One thing I have to say that annoys me the most in my fandom is when people write a story with the guys that's RPF, but they use those same characterizations established in the show, which isn't how the guys act (or how I perceive them to act) in their real lives at all. I think the characterization of Logan Henderson is what bugs me the most, not only because he's my personal favorite, but because his real personality is like, the polar opposite of his character's on the show, so it always irks me to see him fumbling and being adorably awkward in an RPF story.

In my Ben Bruce fiction, Danny Worsnop is such a sweetheart towards my OC character. Which, Idk, different than how he portrays himself to the world when I watch interviews and such. I think I've maintained his basic info but I try to give a twist in his personality. He still loves drinking and witty remarks here and there. But a bit of change in his character won't hurt :)

I'm actually very bad about writing characters the way I think they behave and not basing it on anything tangible. I'll look up birthdays and hometowns, but that's about it.

I usually look up their individual wikipedia pages or find information pages about them. I literally open up gifs of them doing the stuff that happens in my stories to describe it better in the story. It's basically a lot of researching, watching videos, staring at gifs...

I think, for the most part, I have my own personal idea of how I think a particular person behaves. It's impossible to know if it's true or not since we don't really know anything about them or spend any time with them, so I'd say it's a guess, at best, but I typically stick to that same idea when I write multiple stories about them.

I rarely write real-person fic of any sort anymore, but when I write that I might watch some interviews or read a bunch of stuff, but I usually don't have to research a whole lot because I write about people I already know quite a bit about anyway. Also, I usually write weird stuff where really crazy stuff happens, so the story can shape who that person becomes anyway, and that helps me a ton in terms of characterization. (Like in one of my WIPs, for example, Patrick Stump goes through some really traumatic stuff and kinda loses his head, so I have to write him according to that, not so much how he would normally act.)

Mostly now, though, I write fanfiction based on fictional characters, so what I tend to do is watch or read the original canon material, if need be (like if I forget canon events that I want to reference or if I forget certain details of characterization like voice.) I also read other fanfictions, especially for characters like Adam Crawford from Glee who were not present in canon material for very long. Usually I write about characters I am obsessed with and/or relate to a lot, so I tend to just write them in whatever way feels right, rather than put in a ton of research.

In both fan fiction genres (Rpf and other), the characters will stay basically the same from story to story because that is who they basically are, but the events of the story will usually shape them and change them, so they become different. (Like how, for example Kurt Hummel in The Impossible Children is already very different to the Kurt Hummel in one of my WIPs.)

Hah, well it usually takes me a while to write about someone, and before then I've read every article on google that I can find. Also, YouTube videos.

As for fictional characters I choose what universe I like more (for instance, Marvel Cinematic Universe or Marvel comics?) and find everything canon I can get my hands on and work from there.