A couple of months ago, I was reading The Lord of the Rings, and one of the things that’s always struck me about J.R.R. Tolkien is how few books he ever had published. His bibliography basically comprises The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and several short stories. His most famous work is barely over a thousand pages in aggregate, shorter than many single volumes of contemporary fantasy series, and he labored virtually his entire adult lifetime on The Silmarillion without completing it.
That’s not to say that he wasn’t an active writer, though. Tolkien wrote prodigiously; the thing is, he constantly trashed his stories and started anew, coming up with new ideas, defining and redefining characters. One of his most famous characters, Frodo Baggins, was originally Bingo Baggins, Bilbo Baggins’s son. The character is refined over decades through numerous iterations and revisions until he becomes the Frodo that everyone knows from the movies. Despite the paucity of Tolkien’s published work, it’s safe to say that his characters are some of the most beloved in all of fiction and have, thanks to the films and the books’ enduring appeal, become pop-culture icons.
There is, however, another way to develop characters and ensconce them in the hearts and minds of the masses, one that doesn’t require a lifetime of toil. Start with a female anime character with big eyes, give her some attributes that hit on a variety of fetishes held by anime fans, get an associated video or a song up on the web, and chuck some merchandise out into the market. Then, when the inevitable anime and manga and video game tie-ins come out, you’ll be able to move more merchandise and sit back and watch panting fans drop thousands of yen on your goods. Character background? Don’t need it. Personality? Make it up as you go. Just be sure that it falls within one of the common, proven-to-sell archetypes. If it does, you’re good.
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