Warning ⚠️ : Long chapter with opinions.

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What according to you brings life to any story?

A fair answer would be characters, because you may have good grammar, you may have a great writing style, but if you can't write good characters, then the story can end up being shallow.

Why I believe this is because a person can learn grammar, and of course improve with time. But the ability to create characters and a world (I'll talk about worldbuilding in another chapter), can't really be taught or learnt. It's like an instinct, if somebody knows it, they can improve.

Let's be back to the main point, characters in BTS fanfictions. I'll discuss about the following things in this chapter :

1) Character backstories and stories

2) Personality

3) Character Development

4) Character relations

5) Character Redundancy

It's basically a talk about how one of the most important aspects of a story is not given as much attention as needed, just because it's a fanfiction.

1) Character backstories and stories

The fanfiction world is clouded with overused tropes of cliché romance. And this also reflects in the characters. In fact, it majorly reflects in the characters.

Because the same old storyline is written differently by many many writers, we get the same characters. Which means that the backstories and life stories of a main character would be the same or atleast similar to some twenty other fanfictions.

Let's say it's a Jungkook fanfiction (these are most common), and it's the cold CEO or arranged husband thing. It'll be the same backstory or explanation for his rude in the name of 'cold' behaviour.

The male lead's (insert BTS member) mother died when he was like five, his father had an affair and married that woman. The he has a step sister who's obsessed with him. His step mother would want the step sister to marry him for the money. So he thinks all girls are gold diggers and when he comes across Y/n, he thinks the same and behaves rudely with her. Oh, and Y/n's always the secretary, there's no other job in the company. He'll fall for her (she's not like other girls) and then the evil step mother and sister would try to kill her.

That's all, no redemption arcs, no proper explanations, that's all we get. The writers  are almost following a blueprint for the characters and not even modifying it. This isn't meant for all.
In fact, this isn't meant for anyone, it's a general point.

The extremely common tropes would be talked about in later chapters, so I'll focus on characters here.

With this point, I just want to say that the same old storylines for the characters doesn't work well, it brings your story in the common and redundant genre. When you can pick up a very common and overused plot and make it stand out by providing unique character life stories. I have read some books like that, and honestly they are really cool.

In conclusion, character life stories can make a fanfiction stand out even if it's based on a common plot or trope. Try to make atleast one thing unique about your story.

But it's a choice, if you love reading these stories or writing them, it's your preference and no one can stop you from that.

2) Personality

This is perhaps going to be the longest point in the chapter. Personalities, every person has a personality right?

No matter how good or bad it is, everyone has got a personality. And the characters are people , even if they are not real, they are still humans, or supernatural creatures. Whatever it is, a character has a behaviour, a character has certain habits and perspectives, you must have noticed that if you read novels.

We are discussing fanfictions here, so obviously, they're written on a celebrity, here, on BTS members. We armys know their personalities, we know how they behave and how they would react to some common situations.

The main problem arises here.

Since writers are aware that their readers know the members' personalities, they resort to lazy writing. And what I mean by lazy writing is not defining their characters.

I agree that you're writing a BTS fanfiction, and we know how they are, but still, it's your story, they're your characters for that particular book you're writing. So you have to do just as much work, if not more, to define their characters according to the story.

I have a pretty hot take here : I think it's harder to write a celebrity's character than to write an original character.
It's not actually about writing the character, but about how you have to keep thinking about not offending people and doing a whole 180° to their personality in some stories. You're much more prone to hate for a celebrity's character's actions than for an original character's actions.

And goodness gracious, it's the hardest to write Y/n. Everyone has different expectations from a Y/n, and no matter how she behaves, someone's gonna be disappointed because some people actually think that Y/n is them in a fanfiction.

Back to the point, just because we know their actual personality doesn't mean you wouldn't describe their habits and actions and perspectives while writing them. It doesn't matter if it's not an original character, as long as it's a character of your book, it's your responsibility to make it a complete character, not shallow.

Talking of shallow personalities, the lack of effort in defining the characters makes them boring. Even if you know the real life person, not knowing the character in the story draws a distant line between the reader and characters.

Also, there's this type of writing where the characters are so constantly out of character that being out of character becomes their character.

This isn't a problem with writing style, but with the lack of effort in character designing.

I'll tell you one thing, characters bring life to a story and you should actually decide what type of role any particular character plays in your story. Even if it's fiction, you have to write things atleast a bit realistically. It doesn't matter if it's a side character. This lone effort will elevate your book's reading experience by around 10 times.

3) Character Development

Related to the previous point. If we don't know how a character is, how can we tell if there's development?
The non-defined character arcs make it so hard to notice development.

And sometimes, there's no development. The character would be the same rude, stubborn being from the beginning, except the fact that Y/n loves him now. There's no other difference. In fact, most Y/n's start as dumb and end as dumb. (in the name of innocent) Or sometimes, they start rude and end rude (and mannerless).

And there's this other aspect which I would like to call 'over development'.
You must have heard, "Too much of anything is bad."

The same applies to character development, if a character does a whole 180° and just loses their whole essence, then that's bad development.

If you start a BTS member's character as a mafia in the beginning, don't change him into a total softie-lofty towards the end. Keep that ruthlessness and fierceness, but inculcate the ability to control himself and embed a few good values like understanding, don't let the essence be lost.

Coming over to redemption arcs. This is a very controversial topic in BTS fanfictions.

There's a limit upto which a character can be redeemed.

If you think writing or reading a BTS member's character as an absolutely criminal, bad one and find that it's hot to have the female lead date him. There's something wrong.

It doesn't matter if the criminal character is a celebrity, if it's wrong, it's wrong.

There's one such thing as morals, and you can't throw the 'it's fiction' card to defend something immoral.

By criminal character, I'm not talking about murderers who happen to fall in love with the female lead. It's dark romance and that's not really half as bad as what I'm talking about.

Trigger warning : mention of r#pe.

The male character would r#pe the female and then she'd forgive him and date him. Why? Because he's got daddy or mommy issues and has a traumatic past.

If that's how it worked, half of the criminals would be bailed because of 'traumatic past'.

Ass#ult and ab#se is not something that should be portrayed even in a slightly positive light, let alone as something 'hot'.

Redemption arcs are meant to bring back some lost, anti-hero type characters and make them a bit better. Even villains can have redemption arcs unless they are plain bad (as in the above case).

Overall, I'd say that defining character arcs, showing slow and steady development is a sign of good writing. Don't redeem characters who have crossed the limit. Even in fiction, show consequences to things that have them.

4) Character Relations

You must have come across stories that claim that the male and female lead have been friends since childhood but they have no friendship dynamic? Especially the 'my cold bestfriend' ones.

Character relations are a very smart tactic to interest and connect readers to your story. Forced dynamic is awfully visible and thus, it's always good to provide some scenes of characters together and show their dynamic instead of just writing about it.

The male and female lead could be dating according to the text, they could be the most romantic couple. But if it's not shown through their scenes, then it's not really true.

As we can tell if the actors have chemistry in our favourite k-dramas, readers can absolutely tell if the characters have chemistry or not.

The showing scenes don't have to always be just them kissing and sleeping together, it should show their conversations and gestures towards each other. Show the love language, if they talk, if they touch, if they tease, if they just sit and do personal work in each other's company. Show the dynamic, find fun and loveable descriptions to convey the dynamics.

And no, this doesn't apply to only the main characters, make sure that the given relationship between characters shows. It shouldn't appear forced or the flow of the story is hindered.

Long story short, character relations or dynamics need to expressed through description and not just told.

5) Character Redundancy

The last and most common thing. What do I mean by character redundancy?
Extra characters that don't contribute to the story.

This is extremely common in BTS fanfictions. Since BTS has seven members, writers try to include every single one of them in the story.
This results in too much chaos and lesser focus on writing characters that contribute to the story.

It's completely okay to write a story containing only a few of the members, because writing too many characters can be pressurising as well as chaotic. Especially if it's a shorter story.
If it's like a 10 chapter love story of one of the BTS members with the female lead, forcing all the 7 members into the story would result in redundancy and not contribute anything to the progress of the story.

If it's a longer story, then it's nice to include all 7 of them. But it's not necessary that they have to be friends. You can write some members as villains or even as other characters. It's not an obligation to write them as friends.
Forcing all 7 on the same side of the story (the main characters who are heroes), will result in a chaotic narrative.

If you're including all 7, make sure that each character counts. It doesn't matter then if they're all friends, I'm writing a long book and they are going to be friends in it. But they have a reason for being like that.

Lastly, if you want to write a story with all 7 of them and somehow still want to include Jackson Wang and Y/n, let's not forget the 6 other member's girlfriends, then make sure that every single character contributes to the narrative.

To conclude this chapter, just make sure that the characters do their work for your story, which is bringing life to it. And make sure to add realistic aspects of life to them without making it seem too non-fictional.

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That was my absolutely long share of opinions on characters in BTS fanfictions.

These are all my opinions, you're entitled to your own and it's absolutely okay to have different opinions. Just make sure to stay respectful.

I have a whole different chapter for
Y/n. I'll talk about overused plots and tropes as well.

What other topics should I discuss in the later chapters?