Anyway, to get back into the swing of things and to start finally fulfilling a promise to my Patreons I'm going to run a free story raffle. Usually this
Much to my surprise and delight 
Dealing with Canons · 11:25am Sep 28th, 2014
This post is in relation to Passing Pawn of The Humans in Equestria Club
Using canon characters I find the hardest part of any fanfiction. I actually don't like it much, which I guess is more than a little ironic. It's very easy to make mistakes when you're playing with other people's creations as you never really hit the 'true self' that the author had in mind when they were writing, and you certainly never hit the 'true self' your reader had in mind.
For this story I've tried to works things a little differently; just treat canon characters as my own, and cut them out just as harshly. Twilight, Pinkie and to a lesser extend Rainbow Dash are the only characters that fit within the mold as people who have an impact on Alex as a story; Twilight as a source of strength and knowledge, Pinkie as a source of understanding and succor and Dash as a hero and idol. You could drop them into the categories of 'exposition', 'confidante' and 'inspiration' just as easily though. Other characters aren't necessary, and so exist only in the background. The canon cast that have made the cut have specific, well defined roles within the story, and Alex's interactions with them are delimited to things specifically designed to drive the story forwards.
I hope this will help. Keeping things in character is always an obsession of mine and the truly terrible out of character moment tend to be when a story requires one thing to be said for and the 'in character' response is quite different. By making sure I've got the right canon character in the right role and use OCs for any other discussions (there's a really strong reason I did not use Dash for the whole racing scene), we should get through things without any howlers.
Anyway, the question for the week. What story do you think got a mane six personality most on pin, and what story do you think most missed the mark?
Don't forget, FiM has had multiple writers who all seem to have slightly (*cough*) different 'true self' for all of the major characters. In a way, the FiM episodes are all fanfiction of Lauren Faust's original story bible. Really, just being able to do this:
Pretty much sets you up as as much an expert as any of the official writers for the episodes or comics. That does make it a little harder to not accidentally hit the OOC button for someone though.
My Little Stashie is an exemplar of Rainbow Dash character building. (No it isn't.)
heh I know what you mean, I used to have be worried about writing canon chaacters in fanfics due to the potential of mispresenting them or doing them wrong (its probably why I prefer doing alternate universe stories or focusing on the background ponies and the like) and this is also why I don't RP canon cahracters in anything. So I understand where you're coming from.
However, learning to overcome this hurdle is the only way one will imporve as a fanfiction writer.