I'd say I'm in the category of the uninformed editor/agent/slush, because I'm not generally familiar enough with any particular fandom to start bells ringing for me.
That said, what I am seeing is archetypes, not distinct characters. You're describing personalities -- which can be remarkably similar, outside of distinct quirks: plenty of people can be geniuses, but if we're talking about a genius with X appearance who also collects small glass animals and always has lemon in her water and gets highly miffed if people don't look both ways before crossing the street... you're moving out of archetype and into distinct quirks.
I mean, personality-wise, I am as much a curmudgeon as several others I know, and I'm a right bastard and tend to overthink things, but my brother and sister are also right bastards who overthink nearly as much as I do. Yet my sister drives like a little old lady, I drive like a bat out of hell, and my brother drives casually but fusses if someone slow is in front of him. My sister is a packrat of the first degree for everything from found-on-the-street to haute-design, I'm a minimalist, and my brother only wants stuff that has a big price tag and will go without if he can't afford the best. Personality-wise, we three are very similar; quirk-wise, we differ so radically you'd never mistake one for the other, if told of a specific reaction or behavior. Do you see what I mean?
The general premise of a story can be any of a variety of stories -- especially when you consider that the story you're fanficcing and oficcing beyond the fanfic may have, in its own right, been derived/inspired by yet another story preceding it. Like the idea of taking the premise behind, say, I dunno, Jordan's Wheel of Time series and playing with it, but Jordan's stories in turn were influenced considerably by the genre-conventions created by Tolkien. For a reader well-versed in Jordan, you might ring bells as derived from Jordan, but as one better versed in Tolkien, I'd be sitting here saying: ahah, this author is flipping Tolkien around in some pretty unconventional ways, bell ringing and all.
Hell, the basic dynamic you described is nothing but a template, really. It's just a dynamic, unfleshed by quirks. It could be an ofic riff off The Odd Couple -- or even Burns and Allen, with the flip that Allen isn't actually the twit she appears to be, but in fact is utterly brilliant despite being kookier than three hens in a volkswagen bus. And if Genius is a terrible klutz, and Laconic is an amazing singer who can dance circles around everyone, you might ring bells for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez!
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Date: 9 Feb 2010 06:45 am (UTC)That said, what I am seeing is archetypes, not distinct characters. You're describing personalities -- which can be remarkably similar, outside of distinct quirks: plenty of people can be geniuses, but if we're talking about a genius with X appearance who also collects small glass animals and always has lemon in her water and gets highly miffed if people don't look both ways before crossing the street... you're moving out of archetype and into distinct quirks.
I mean, personality-wise, I am as much a curmudgeon as several others I know, and I'm a right bastard and tend to overthink things, but my brother and sister are also right bastards who overthink nearly as much as I do. Yet my sister drives like a little old lady, I drive like a bat out of hell, and my brother drives casually but fusses if someone slow is in front of him. My sister is a packrat of the first degree for everything from found-on-the-street to haute-design, I'm a minimalist, and my brother only wants stuff that has a big price tag and will go without if he can't afford the best. Personality-wise, we three are very similar; quirk-wise, we differ so radically you'd never mistake one for the other, if told of a specific reaction or behavior. Do you see what I mean?
The general premise of a story can be any of a variety of stories -- especially when you consider that the story you're fanficcing and oficcing beyond the fanfic may have, in its own right, been derived/inspired by yet another story preceding it. Like the idea of taking the premise behind, say, I dunno, Jordan's Wheel of Time series and playing with it, but Jordan's stories in turn were influenced considerably by the genre-conventions created by Tolkien. For a reader well-versed in Jordan, you might ring bells as derived from Jordan, but as one better versed in Tolkien, I'd be sitting here saying: ahah, this author is flipping Tolkien around in some pretty unconventional ways, bell ringing and all.
Hell, the basic dynamic you described is nothing but a template, really. It's just a dynamic, unfleshed by quirks. It could be an ofic riff off The Odd Couple -- or even Burns and Allen, with the flip that Allen isn't actually the twit she appears to be, but in fact is utterly brilliant despite being kookier than three hens in a volkswagen bus. And if Genius is a terrible klutz, and Laconic is an amazing singer who can dance circles around everyone, you might ring bells for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez!