30 Days - day 8

[graculus]

8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.

Unless you're not writing anything with plot, I would have thought it would be difficult to completely avoid writing OCs of some description.

And to my mind, the main way to avoid them being Mary Sues (or Gary Stus, for that matter) is to make sure they're not perfect. After all, if your new SGC member knows more languages than Daniel, can fight better than Teal'c and wire up alien technology with Windows 95 better than Sam, chances are you've failed in your mission... ;)

Comments

[leethet.livejournal.com]

As I say in my response to this one, any OC who has any romantic relationship with a canon character is going to be labeled a Sue/Stu by someone, even if s/he isn't one (and they very often are!).The canon character/OC romance seems to step on some people's fannish toes.