Avoiding most traps

Say I ahve a cahracter who turns out to be hated by my fandom yet I need him/her to appear in my stories and I don't want to be accused of turning said character into the Wesley.

Also, what if I had a character who tunrs out to be really popular but his/her story is over yet fans and the executives want said character back and it will completely change my plans.

How do avoid said traps?

Well, there's really no way to prevent those two things from happening as you're writing because those have to do with audience reaction, which are usually unexpected. Unless you can see into the future or something.

Wesleys are basically an Author's Darling. Limyaael may be able to help you with those.

The second situation refers to the Ensemble Dark Horse, which isn't really that bad in and of itself. I wouldn't really consider it a trap.

edited 2nd Mar '11 1:59:19 PM by CrystalGlacia

To avoid traps, stay away from androgynous bo...oh...I mean, allow your characters to actually interact. I usually try to target emotional connections that some people may not know they have in them. Like if some people are connecting with a character because they assume he angsts about how bad his life is, I be sure to give him moments of compassion towards those who are actually nice to him, which helps the audience make some sort of emotional connection with that character as well. In other words, don't make the majority of your scenes about individual characters, but how they interact with other characters as well. This is why I'm so fond of putting a biophysicist character in the same room as a free-runner: They're two character types who very rarely ever interact.