I thought this was a very good article, and wanted to throw in a few points
of my own.

The approach I've taken in my own writing is to work original elements and
characters into fanfic stories. To me, using other people's characters and
situations is kind of like training wheels. Rather than go cold turkey, I'm
adding more and more original elements to each story. I think it's actually
quite hard to come up with compelling original characters and situations, so
this takes practice.

One thing I've found that helps is secondary or peripheral characters. If
you have a shopkeeper, or a policeman, or what have you who appears in one
scene, try to make them come to life. Try to make them feel like a real,
flesh-and-blood human being. Every character you can bring to life in this
way is more practice in creating originals.

One example is my character Prince Wilhelm von Dittersdorf from "Equal
Halves." He started out as a plot device. As the story progressed, I found I
had a better and better idea of who he was, and so he graduated from plot
device to secondary character. He wound up having his own little story
inside the story. Secondary characters give you a chance to practice
characterization without having to put the burden that the lead must carry
on their shoulders.

The story I'm working on now, while it still has my female version of Ranma
as the lead, is not even set in Japan, much less Tokyo, and includes several
original characters who play a very central role. I hope not too long after
I finish that work to try some totally original fiction.

Anyway, this is another way of getting to the same place. Having a known
character as the lead, and using original characters for secondary parts, is
a great way to work up to a totally original story (at least, for me).

On the issue of names, I don't usually try to match the linguistic puns some
manga writers use (especially Takahashi). They're all native Japanese
speakers; I'm not. Since I like a more realistic feeling in my stories, I
like to use real names. I'll often recycle names of people I know or have
read about in the newspaper, not just for Japanese people but for anyone. My
latest story has a French character named Jean-Pierre Laurent. His given
name comes from one Frenchman I know, his personality is inspired by another
Frenchman I know, and his last name was the name of someone who was
protesting against the World Trade Organization in Europe. I read a news
article about the protest, and saw the last name "Laurent," and thought:
"That's perfect for Jean-Pierre's family name!"

One place I did try to match Takahashi was in picking a name for Mrs.
Tendou. I knew from discussions here that the Tendous were all named after
clouds; Souun literally ("fast cloud"), and the three sisters after various
kinds of clouds. Just on a lark, I searched to see if there was a name
written with the kanji for "mother" and "cloud," and I found there was:
Kirara, so that's what I named her.

(By the way, the kanji for "Saotome" are "fast/early" ("sa", one character)
and "maiden" ("otome", two). The traditional reading is "early (rising)
maiden," meaning rice picking girl. However, you could also read it as
"instant maiden," which I think was intentional on Takahashi's part.)

For Japanese family names, I'll take pieces of family names I've seen and
rearrange them. Yamamura, Yamamoto, Tanemura, Taneoka, you get the idea.

For Japanese given names, and sometimes for family names, I try to use names
out of a Japanese name list. I use the freeware dictionaries supplied by
Professor Jim Breen at the University of Australia in Monash; the relevant
URLs are:

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/wwwjdic/
(online dictionary server; the name dictionary is one of the options)

http://www.rdt.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html
(Prof. Breen's page)

Lastly, one of my pet peeves. It's possible that in some alternate world
Nerima is chaotic and Shinjuku is apocalyptic. However, the versions in our
world aren't. As a native New Yorker, I'd make the following observations on
the "feel" of each place:

Nerima: Queens. Quiet, boring, middle class.
Shinjuku: Times Square. Entertainment, shopping, dining, sleaze. Lots of
camera stores. :-)
Shibuya: Trendy shopping for young people plus department stores for middle
class people, as opposed to upscale shopping (which would be Ginza). The
statue of Hachiko the dog. :-)

I think if you look at the way Nerima is portrayed in Ranma 1/2, both the
manga and the anime, you'll see that it's quiet and middle class, not a
hotbed of craziness. It's Ranma and his friends who supply the craziness.
The rest of Nerima isn't like that, both in the real world and in
Takahashi's stories.

Anyway, I'd like to thank Rob again for his essay, which I really enjoyed.

Debbie

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