Writing Exercise: Removing Serial Numbers: ysabetwordsmith

Writing Exercise: Removing Serial Numbers

Fanfiction is popular partly because people love playing with familiar characters, and partly because it's often easier to write stories with established characters and settings than to start from scratch. A fun exercise is to start with a famous character and then make changes, evolving that into an original character. (This process is often referred to as "filing off the serial numbers.") It works because all characters are a combination of details overlain on an archetype; changing some of the details gives you a new character within the same archetypal role. This exercise will work in any genre.

1) Pick a favorite character from fiction, mythology, television, etc.

2) Change the name. Use a baby-name book or similar resource to select a name whose meaning symbolizes what you love most about this character. BabyHold and Behind the Name are good online sources.

3) Change the physical characteristics. Remove anything unusual that typifies the famous character (such as Long John Silver's peg leg), and if you wish, add something new (such as a memorable tattoo) to distinguish your character. Change some combination of the eye color, hair color, skin tone, weight, height, and other physical details. You might turn a fair, tall, slender character into a tanned, tall, muscular character with sun-bleached hair and brown eyes.

4) Consider the basic skills and traits typical of the archetype or profession then try to figure out what, on top of that, is specific to the famous character. Remove one ability the famous character is most known for presenting. Replace it with something else that your new character will be known for. Opposites can be fun to play with, but don't be afraid to throw in something totally unrelated. Think about how the absence of one key ability, and the presence of another, will shape your character's behavior. For example, imagine a brilliant detective inspired by Sherlock Holmes ... who uses intuition rather than logic to figure out what's going on, and has a terrible time convincing anyone because he can't explain how he knows, he's just right almost all the time.

5) Think of a favorite scene that showed the fictional character's nature really well. Strip that scene down to its core conflict, such as "a villain grabs a hostage and demands the hero's surrender." (Explore some sample plots to see what a bare-bones version looks like.) Briefly sketch out a setting and supporting characters as needed, taking care to vary them from the fictional example. If possible, include aspects that will challenge what your character can and can't do well -- the available solutions will depend on the hero's abilities, and those are unique to each character.

6) How will your new character respond differently to this scenario than the famous character did in the inspiration scene? Write the results. You can do this just as a short scene sketch, or flesh it out into a complete story if you wish.

fayanora

August 15 2010, 05:16:19 UTC 10 years ago

New comment

One can make big money on stories where the serial numbers are filed off. "Avatar" is basically "Dances With Wolves" with human-sized smurfs instead of Native Americans. (I've heard Avatar described as "Dances With Smurfs.")

I actually find fan-fiction more difficult. I know my own characters, even the brand-new ones, far better than I know anyone else's characters. With possible exceptions; I *might* be able to do Star Trek or Stargate SG1 fanfic. Never tried it, though. Tried Harry Potter fanfic, and couldn't do it.

Then, too, there is "filing the serial numbers off" one's own works; several episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series were stories authors had filed the serial numbers off their own stories before submitting it as an episode. One episode in particular is chunks of the Kzinti storyverse, complete with Kzinti, made into a Star Trek episode.

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

August 15 2010, 05:27:35 UTC 10 years ago

(I've heard Avatar described as "Dances With Smurfs.")

*giggle*

>>I actually find fan-fiction more difficult. <<

I used to write fanfic in high school, but I borrowed settings rather than characters. Like you, I find my own characters easier to work with. They can get into trouble on their own. Using someone else's characters, I usually have to do all the work. *ponder* Though in Torn World, there are some characters by other people that I know well enough to handle as if they were mine.

>>One episode in particular is chunks of the Kzinti storyverse, complete with Kzinti, made into a Star Trek episode.<<

"The Slaver Weapon" ... yes, that was fun. Gotta love the ratcats.

Re: Thoughts

mauser

March 12 2011, 11:01:54 UTC 10 years ago

I just rented Avatar for the first time this week. I thought it was remarkably similar to Ferngully, right down to the hero taking on the monster bulldozers.

March 12 2011, 20:18:09 UTC 10 years ago

Similar to Ferngully, yes ... also similar to American history, with the exception that tribal people lost. It's ironic that people will watch movies and expect a "happy ending" but make political decisions chiefly based on might-makes-right.

valarltd

August 15 2010, 12:46:10 UTC 10 years ago

I used to write fanfiction before original fiction ate me.

I've done some serious serial number filing in my day. Doing some more as we speak.

I described one of my current stories as "A furry version of UC: Undercover and Queer as Folk, crossed with Star Wars and The Persian Boy. I blame Merle Haggard." It may have started that way, but the characters have taken on their own lives.

archangelbeth

March 10 2011, 16:39:10 UTC 10 years ago

Heh. My big Unpublished Novel is, essentially, derived from a couple of gaming characters. They're not telepaths anymore, and they're not in a modern setting, or a fantasy setting with fairly high magic, and one of them developed a totally different family... But I know exactly where they came from, and how they got there, and why: I didn't want to be quite so self-indulgent as to write some drabbles that were so directly linked to some one-on-one roleplay stuff with my spouse. (And then people liked those drabbles!) One can sea-change quite a number of things!

(I'm plotting to do the same for something else sometime, too. Though I think they'll stay in the science fiction universe, but I'm going to remove the aliens and go with gengineered forms of humanity instead.)

Cool!

March 11 2011, 01:51:05 UTC 10 years ago

That sounds nifty.

*ponder* I think my writing -> gaming traffic is heavier than my gaming -> writing traffic. But they are both worldbuilt, character-built, and plotted in similar ways so it's not like there's much difference.

Deleted comment

March 10 2011, 20:03:45 UTC 10 years ago

>> I've written (and do write) both fan fiction and original fiction and I've used this method more than once to create original settings and characters (my Pern-inspired worlds that solve the issues I have with that series is up to five right now <<

That's cool.

>>Sometimes this is a good, fun thing to do, and sometimes you loose the entire reason you were writing the fanfic to begin with in the process and, thus, any desire to work on the piece you had. I've had numerous instances in which I had been transferring fanfic to original fic only to discover that the story just didn't work in any other way but how it was originally set. <<

That is still a terrific way to learn what is crucial to a character, setting, or plot vs. what is not -- and that's a distinction every writer needs to know. You have to know what things to protect when an editor requests changes, and what things can be safely modified to improve or sell a story.

In my personal lexicon, the key details that grant access to a setting or character, and the core concepts of a story, are "linchpins" -- because if you pull one of those out, the entire story comes apart in your hands. "Cornerstones" are the prominent, definitive details that identify where you are or who you are with; changing those can ruin a piece by making it indistinguishable from all the other writing out there. Frex, Rai is legally blind and that's a linchpin for him, because those experiences really shape his character and relationships. Changing it would make him a totally different person; in fact, there's a vivid contrast between him and his near-sighted brother Bai. Torn World's cornerstones include the snow-unicorns and the time crystals with related temporal technology. Nobody else has mammoth unicorns or solidified timeforce.

>>I'm of the Naomi Novik school of thought: original works are good, but so are fan works.<<

I agree. Fanfic is part of the normal and necessary process of cultural folklore and mythology that creates a society's identity and holds it together. Things like Star Trek play the same role for us that Robin Hood or Hercules did for historic cultures. *chuckle* And Coyote didn't even bother to change clothes when a new culture arrived, and still routinely gets "squashed flatter than a grass-mat."

miintikwa

March 10 2011, 21:27:21 UTC 10 years ago

I occasionally dabble in fanfic, but nearly all my dabbles end up with "hmm, this character should go here in this world, and this is their problem, and..."

>.> It's gotten so bad I can think of 18 books off the top of my head that I could write in my world! And I'm only on book one of the first trilogy! -.-

Yes...

March 11 2011, 01:31:30 UTC 10 years ago

I know what you mean. Trying to write one Torn World story is like trying to pull one feather out of a pillow. Any well-built world can have that effect, but some are more prone than others.

March 12 2011, 11:06:17 UTC 10 years ago

My Dr. Mauser series started out full of references to the whole mad scientist Genre, but as I've written more, I've been grinding harder and harder on those serial numbers, so I no longer reference "The Evil League of Evil" or "The Guild of Calamitous Intent", but "The League" or "The Guild" and I've introduced new groups that aren't refs.

(On the other hand, the stuff I pulled out of the game "Evil Genius" is in there so thoroughly I can't really take it out.)

March 12 2011, 20:16:22 UTC 10 years ago

That sounds entertaining.

Re: Cool!

March 13 2011, 23:18:17 UTC 10 years ago

It is fun, if you don't mind some of the kinky stuff woven though it. (Because the real catalyst for starting it was a bit of role play with a friend who had a kinky cyborg villainess.)

But when you end up writing scenes with a mad scientist in a stolen Goodyear blimp he's equipped with a heat ray blasting a Mesa, while the rival Mad inside the mountain takes potshots back out THROUGH it with his disintegrator, you know you're on to something good. :-)