Hey!
So this week I made a solid start on my own fanfiction. When I was reading some of other people's work, I found that they had often taken their writing to one extreme of the other. Either they made it SO different from the original that you could hardly tell what it was based on, or they made it so similar that it could be confused with the original. This showed me that it is difficult to find middle ground in this aspect. It's hard to make the writing far enough from the original to be its own, and yet close enough that the topic is clear.
I wanted to find this middle ground in my own writing. For that reason, I kept all of the stock characters that can be found in the original screenplay of The Office, but changed attributes to match that of characteristics in other comedies, such as the movie 'Stepbrothers' and the TV show 'IT Crowd'. My fanfic consists of the characters Michael Scott (the boss), Dwight Schrute (the self-proclaimed assistant manager), Jim Halpert (the hilarious and sweet middle management persona), and Pamela (the secretary). Other characters involved in the original screenplay have comical benefits to the series, but I felt that using too many of the stock characters might detract from my story-line.
