how to write het

[salixbabylon]

So I have these two bunnies and they're both het. And every time I try to write some of them, it's so very obviously just me wanting to fuck whatever character or actor the female in question is paired with.

Even when I write it from the male POV, it's still a Mary Sue.

(Of course, then I started freaking out that everything I write, I'm the protagonist for, and maybe Orli and Ewan and Harry and Remus are Marty Stus and I'm just a horrible hack writer and so I'm just going to dam that stream of thought because it's totally not helping.)

So I ask you, who have written het - how the bloody hell do you write het that's not Mary Sueish? Thoughts? Advice?

Help!

Comments

[jassyskie.livejournal.com]

Is self-insertion a sloppy shortcut? I don't think so, because even if a writer puts herself into a story, it's not really *her* but a character who's more than what the writer is, especially with a writer of your caliber. Once you start making changes to that character, even if she is based on yourself, the character is no longer you.

There are lots of profic writers (among them some bestsellers) whose series characters are idealized versions of themselves. There's nothing wrong with that. Writing fiction is all about telling lies but wrapping them in enough truths to make them believeable. Starting with the person you know best (yourself) and building a character from there is going to make for a believeable character.

I think we fanfic writers (*especially* slash writers) do ourselves a disservice by labeling any strong OFC as a Mary Sue. It puts us at a disadvantage when we venture into original fic because we're so scared of a female character going over the top or trying to base a female character on ourselves to any extent that we bend over backwards the other way and create characters who are artificial and flat.

Yeah, I guess I'm still ranting. Just thump me if you're getting tired of hearing it. ;)

*hugs*

[salixbabylon.livejournal.com]

Hehe! I'm never tired of it. I guess I haven't thought about this sort of thing much, about writing and how it's done and why and when it goes bad and when it's fine. For all the meta that goes around fandom, there's not all that much discussion of the "craft" of writing.

And frankly, I stopped reading almost all printed fiction about 5 years ago. I've totally forgotten what a normal female protagonist is like. I should refresh my memory.

This would have been a good discussion for roomtoimprove. *sigh* next time I'll start it there.