Anything major involving other people's major characters, you might want to discuss in advance - well before you start writing. Also if the date that something did/will happen is important and not already nailed down. And world-building stuff, such as my creating the Alexander family foundation.
For canon characters, the basic thing is try to stick to the canon as it exists when you write the scene, and avoid changing them in ways that would be obvious or will be problematic if the canon goes a different direction. On the other hand, we have gotten several canon characters non-canonically married and handed some of them equally non-canonical children, among other changes.
What I did in "A Stable Relationship" is pick up a couple of someone else's minor characters and make them major characters in my story. In this case I then had to figure out how to drag them into reach of everyone else, because they were SO minor; on the other hand, I didn't disrupt anything like I might if, say, Edward and Arania were to get married and start a courier service catering to churches.
My far-from-complete (and possibly inaccurate) list of who the original and major writers for assorted fanon-only characters and organizations are - the original writer is first:
Code: Select all
Allan Richer - Just Old Al
Arania Wardoff - Sgt. Howard
Billens (quasi-canonical*) - Sgt. Howard
Calvin Alexander - jwhouk
Ebenezer Alexander (long dead) - Sgt. Howard, jwhouk
Edward (the butler) - Sgt. Howard
Franklin Alexander (Rowdy) - Sgt. Howard, Warrl
Greg Hazelton - Warrl
Hazelton Forest (company) - Warrl
Mrs. Hazelton - Just Old Al, Warrl
Patricia Hazelton (Dusky, deceased) - Sgt. Howard, Just Old Al
Pauline Hazelton (Dawn) - Just Old Al, Warrl
Randall Hazelton (Durango) - Just Old Al, Warrl
Rosalynd Alexander-Richer (Daisy) - Sgt. Howard, Just Old Al
Theodore Alexander (Buck) - Sgt. Howard, Just Old Al
Theodore Alexander Foundation - Warrl
Language peculiarities are special proficiencies, just like technical knowledge. Al is the expert on British English, Dinky on all things Elvish including translations. (There are at least three varieties of Elvish: High, Wood, and Drow. If you want any non-elven character to speak or understand any variety, ASK EARLY - and Drow is probably not a good idea, as strangers speaking it tend to draw sharp questions and objects.)
I have more or less taken over the Hazeltons. We got a brief glimpse of them in "Doing it Right", and I have both added a lot of history and written some more recent events. If you're going to write Dawn, ask me about the oddity in her speech patterns. And I know what Durango is studying, and why, and part of it's going to show up in the story soon. The werewolves who are Dawn's neighbors are minor characters with local connections that could be useful threads to pull on if someone wants to write more about them. If you want me to establish some other character at/near the university, it's quite likely I can create an opportunity to do so.
My usual recipient list on Private Messages is
Code: Select all
Just Old Al
DinkyInky
Sgt. Howard
jwhouk
GlytchMeister
That is actually the max for a single PM. If I'm writing Yana in a scene, the first four of those go in one copy of the message while
go in another. (I'd rather put all six in one PM but the forum software says nope, too many.)
And at some point I need to go through and see if there are any writers I'm forgetting that should be in the above lists.
* About Billens: there is a canon recurring but unnamed FBI-or-MIB agent. In the fanon he got named and acquired a rather long history.
