From Fanfiction to Fandom: How to Turn Fanfic Characters into Characters You Can Use

About seven months ago (exactly August 14, 2023) I put pen to paper (or, more accurately, fingers to keys) and wrote the world’s first Extension Squad fanfiction (okay, it’s a small fandom, but still). Three months later (November 23, 2023), I finished the fanfiction with 31002 words of something that could never be published, writing that wasn’t my best work, and two amazing OCs that I couldn’t use for anything else.

Have you ever been there? Do you love writing fanfiction, and creating awesome original characters, but feel guilty when you write it because you think, “I can’t use this.”?

Well, I’m here to say you can use them, if you’re smart about it. My current WIP has an entire CAST of OC fanfic characters from different fandoms– and all without plagiarizing the original work. Today, I’ll be giving tips on how to change up fanfiction OCs so you can use them in your own WIPs, using examples from those two awesome Extension Squad fanfic characters.

Note: I’ll be using the acronym’s OC and WIP quite a bit, so here’s a quick definition of what they mean–

OC: Original Character. A fan-created character in a fanfiction

WIP: Stands for Work (AKA, a manuscript) in Progress.

We’ll start with the main character of the fanfiction, and the one who has undergone the most transformation: Reilynn.

***

Reilynn

On the left: the original fanfic Reilynn. Her inspiration was the picture of the girl with stained glass wings. Age is 16.

On the right: The Reilynn of my WIP and the short story “Queen of the Pirates”. Age is roughly 27.

Out of the fanfiction characters in my WIP, Reilynn has undergone the most transformation. While not a very important character (yet), I think her metamorphosis is an excellent example of how a character can be flexible and shoved outside of their fandom.

Originally, Reilynn was the young daughter of a side character in Extension Squad, Jax Arlott. She had the ability to create light (even healing light) with her hands, sported a pair of stained-glass wings, and could create lightning whenever she played the violin. She took her brother’s place in the Extension program when he was condemned for killing a man while protecting her. The OC Reilynn was a “cinnamon roll” sort of character, very strong ENFP personality, always believing that there was good in people. After I was done, I knew that I wanted to put her in another WIP, but she was so strongly rooted to the story, I’d have to do some major rewriting, along with losing her core personality.

Whenever I rewrite a character into another world, I usually ask myself three questions:

• What would this character be like if her early life had been different?
• What can I eliminate without completely destroying the character?
• What settings could I put her in that would make her shine?

From these three questions, an idea formed. If Reilynn’s early life, a protected, happy childhood, was changed into memories of abuse and neglect, she’d probably turn into a reserved, distrustful individual. In her heart of hearts, she wants to believe that there is good in people, but she’s been burned too many times to keep trusting.

The next question was what I could remove. I knew that Reilynn’s light powers would have to go, since that was a fandom-rooted ability, but I kept her love for violin. Now, instead of generating electricity with a violin, she can control waves and the sea. I also wanted to keep her loyalty, and some of the softer parts of her personality. Reilynn Morris is cold and ruthless on the outside, but in her heart she has a soft spot towards the innocent children that she strives to rescue from the slave trade, since she used to be one of those children. Both Reilynns are also very stubborn and driven, especially by love for those around them.

The final question (which also mixed with the second question) was the setting. Pirates had been lingering in my head ever since I started this book, so I decided to have Reilynn be the adopted daughter of a pirate captain, given love by a group of thieves and robbers when the civil world proved to be too cruel. Fill in some dark backstory (sold by her abusive father into the slave trade as a little girl to help pay off his debts) and an interesting family dynamic (her adoptive father, the pirate captain, lost his own little girl to the slave trade, and found Reilynn while tearing apart slave ships looking for her. Reilynn reminded him of his lost little girl, so he adopted her and raised her as his own daughter), and I found myself staring at a new character. To fit with timelines, I also changed up the age: Reilynn Morris is about 27 when we first meet her, while Reilynn Arlott is sixteen.

I’d say I think I like Reilynn Morris more than her fanfic counterpart.

But what if you have a character that you love as it is, and you don’t want to change anything? How do you still keep it from being an obvious fanfic OC?

That’s what I ran into with Bay… and here’s how I fixed it.

***

Bay

On the left: Bay Ayomara, the original Extension Squad fanfic version.

On the Right: Bay Cadet, the version from my WIP.

As you can probably tell from the two collages, both Bays are pretty similar. Both of them are witty, industrious, loyal leaders, who prefer knives to guns, and walking on top of buildings to traveling on the ground. There is even some backstory that barely differs.

But the settings are different, and there are some other personality quirks that put Bay Cadet and Bay Ayomara apart.

When I first created Bay, she was the noncanon twin sister of canon character Taylee Ayomara, a sort of villain in the book series. While Taylee is a calm, by-the-book hero, Bay was a chaotic leader of an underground rebellion, fighting to free the very sort of people that Taylee tries to capture. Out of all the fanfic characters I’ve written, Bay’s character voice was the most fun to write, and I knew I had to put her in a book of her own so she could go out into the world beyond fanfiction.

The problem was, I didn’t want to change anything about her! I loved her personality, her conflict, her past, and her strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, I couldn’t put her as she was into my WIP, because her main conflict centered around her twin sister and the rebellion (not to mention her canon-character love interest, whom I will ship together until the cows come home).

So I brainstormed. And then I did some brainstorming with friends. And then I brainstormed some more, and asked myself the three questions.

I didn’t want to tweak her past too much, but I learned what I could substitute. Two backstory events remain unchanged: the death of her mother, and the death of her younger brother Jace, who has cystic fibrosis in both versions. I also kept the twin sister aspect, but instead of Taylee, her twin sister is Reilynn (using two fanfic OCs together can also be an excellent way to tweak characters).

The main event I had to change was the circumstances after Jace’s death, because that was a big turning point in both character’s backstories. While Jace’s death in the Extension Squad fanfiction was the result of him trying to protect his older sister when she was mugged (and subsequently being thrown into a wall), Jace’s death in my WIP was the result of being shaken to death by their abusive father. Instead of being put into an Extension program like in the fanfic, Bay Cadet runs away from home, cementing the mentality that separates these two characters the most: Bay Ayomara never runs from the face of conflict, but Bay Cadet starts running when things get too hard. The urge to run from conflict puts Bay C. in some interesting spots when it comes to trusting others.

And that was the final element I needed to change: I wanted Bay to be a mentor, but in the fanfic she was mentoring a canon character. In discovering a plot hole with a protagonist’s backstory, I found the perfect place for Bay to fit in, and Bay Cadet became the mentor for my male protagonist, who also has abandonment issues because of her need to run from conflict. I also gave Bay C. a more steampunk attire– cargo pants, and trench coats. She already fit perfectly into the dystopian city world.

For characters like Bay, sometimes it’s just enough to tweak their backstory and the characters they normally interact with.

***

Characters are surprisingly flexible. For seven years of my life I firmly believed that an OC character of mine could never be separated from her fandom– only to write her as a protagonist of my WIP and discover that she could indeed stand on her own.

“But wait– what if I write contemporary stories and my fanfic character is from a fantasy fandom?”

If it doesn’t ruin them too much, you could always take away the fantasy aspect. I had a character named Dixie who was a Ninjago OC and an “Elemental Master of the Pen” (anything she wrote turned into reality). For fun I experimented with putting her into my contemporary YA novel Rebel Girl as a nerdy, bibliophile writer who befriends the MC. It worked, surprisingly. Dixie fit just as well into a contemporary world as she did in her fantasy fandom.

If you have a dragon-rider character from a HTTYD fanfic, you could always make him or her the dragon-obsessed best friend of your protagonist. A contemporary character pulled from a fantasy fandom can reflect their fantasy roots without being fantastical themselves. Make the Marvel OC a contemporary comic nerd, the Batman fanfic character a secret do-gooder. A good brainstorming session can open up worlds of possibilities, especially when you ask the three questions I mentioned earlier.

I hope this article was helpful! What are some of your favorite fandoms that inspire fanfiction? What tips would you have to turn OCs into WIP characters you can use?