the vampire diaries fanfic writing tips

✧ friendships

someone left this comment and i thought it would be helpful to break it down. it was left by rose_riyana and i will just elaborate on it piece by piece because i think it's really helpful.

another point to add to that is that not everyone is going to like your OC. Your OC will have enemies or just people they aren't close with in general.

this is very important in my opinion, to making your OC seem realistic.

it is especially true in the case of the mikaelson family. chances are, your oc is not going to be buddy buddy with the villains and then accepted by the heroes. with a few of them? sure. maybe if the oc is bonnie's sister for example bonnie may accept it because she loves her sister. but will elena, damon, caroline, stefan, and matt all feel the same way? probably not.

depending on who your oc is, they might not have enemies (although it is more difficult to write a book without one) but it isn't realistic for them to get along with everyone in the sense that there may be people they just don't click with. maybe they just don't talk to certain characters because they don't work well together. it doesn't even have to be because they dislike them. i'm sure you all of people in your life that you just don't talk to and it's not because you dislike them. you just aren't close!

realistically you are only close with a few people and not everyone. So i don't get fics where the OC is best friends with EVERYONE.

i think this is also important in tvd because the characters are so different. remember that who your oc's friends are also speaks to who they are. is it realistic that the same person who is best friends with bonnie is best friends with kai too?

people aren't friends with every personality type. sometimes personalities clash so in my opinion, it's a bit odd if your oc is friends with everyone with such different personalities.

for example, my character gets along very well with the Mikaelsons because they are who she looks for in a friend. someone like damon or kai? not so much. she also does tend to get along with villains more often than not like the mikaelsons, kind of with silas, and kind of with katherine (more of a mutual benefit situation) but *spoiler alert for the next act* she won't get along with kai. and though they are all villains, there is a difference between them and so she doesn't get along with either of them and even among the mikaelsons she does prefer kol and klaus.

like the OC listens to everyone's sorrows and everyone is willing to die from them.

this is also very accurate, especially the part about the willing to die.

i think there's a whole ton of relationships before you get to that point.

what i mean by that is sometimes your OC can be friends with them and they're just friends. not super close besties, just friends. i understand if they're a part of a friend group that is very tight and friends since childhood. for example, elena, caroline, and bonnie. we've seen before that elena and bonnie would sacrifice their lives to save the people they love but we've also seen that they would also rather get hurt than have someone else get hurt so maybe that's just their personality.

someone like damon for example would probably sacrifice himself for stefan or elena, but not just for anyone.

there are different levels to friendships. there's also a difference between being friendly and being friends.

especially katherine. Realistically katherine would do everything even sacrifice OC if it meant saving herself. Also the whole idea that Kat has a bestie she would die for is also very unrealistic.

This is again something that makes me want to reinforce this idea:

Most ideas you have for your fanfic will be possible under the RIGHT circumstance.

writing the relationship between an OC and someone like Katherine.

katherine has been shown to be very selfish. she had several opportunities to make better choices and she took none of them. she never got a redemption arc in the way that other characters did.

she prioritized being with stefan over saving her own daughter.

unless you are going to do massive work with her, it's going to be very hard to make it realistic. not impossible, but hard.

but that's not to say she can't love people. she clearly did love stefan, but that didn't stop her from compelling him and getting him turned into a vampire. it didn't stop her from going after elena who is someone stefan loved.

so the chances of her willing to die for someone are quite rare unless you do a massive rewrite of her character. but i don't think it's impossible.

i think that depending on who it is, she might have a greater attachment to them.

for example, if it's someone who she's known since she was human, maybe a younger sister or childhood best friend, i could see an argument for that. i know about nadia, but katherine didn't meet nadia until she was a vampire and 500 years later. would things be different if katherine raised nadia? probably.

again, that depends on you and how you choose to write it.

but when writing villains specifically, you need to remember that they are villains and most of them are selfish. if you are going to make them different with your oc, you do need to explain and give a reason for it. and for a character like katherine, you would have to really develop her because we've seen that she does leave the people she loves to safe herself. we never saw her willing to give up her life for anyone. we've seen damon for stefan and probably elena, maybe bonnie, klaus with his family and if i remember correctly he did risk his life to save cami during his fight with mikael, and the other mikaelsons would probably risk their lives for each other and kol for davina, elijah for hayley etc. katherine isn't shown to do that despite loving stefan and her daughter. so you really would need to work on her.

this really goes into how you should think about your oc. what is it about them that can make another character change their ways? why do they like them? why are they friends?

i know that it's tempting to make your oc friends with the characters you like but it's not necessarily realistic. you do need to think about who your oc will actually get along with and not just put them with someone because you like them.