From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com
It's strange, most writers have a fair idea in their heads what their characters sound like and how they pronounce their lines, but they (we) don't seem to feel the necessity to point them quite so strongly when putting them in the mouths of original characters, despite the fact that nearly all readers will know what Blake or Avon sound like and their nat ural manner of delivering lines, while our own original characters don't start with that advantage.
Neglect of original characters is something I've moaned about more than once in the past, since in many (though not all) cases they are severely underwritten, underdescribed, badly named, and little more than one-dimensional cyphers to give 'our heroes' something to play off against. Some of them make Gamete look like a deeply developed well-rounded character.
I don't think it's all that strange. Fan writers want to write about their favourite characters, and some fan writers want to write about *no one else*. Anyone else whose presence is necessitated by the plot is an irksome irritation on whom to waste as few words as possible. Likewise settings, which can be nothing more than an abstract locale in which the action takes place, and consequently left all but undescribed.
Neil