how are ocs created?

I have a LOT of different methods, but four major ones are
a) A lot of times, I just go man, this character from a book/show/anything is really cool, but the narrative completely shits the bed with them/ I want to explore different aspects/ but what if they were X, and then I basically tell stories with them in my head until eventually they basically become a full fledged oc with some similarities to the original character.
b) A lot of my ocs are also products of me doing "what if x, but X"- like "what if vampire, but a sweet, bubbly dork with dependency issues" or "what if typical kinda bland protagonist, but actually they're super manipulative and calculating while still being arguably on the side of good" or "what if a comic relief character, but reacts more realistically to everyone else not taking them seriously and making fun of them." Over time, the characters evolve beyond this simple what if, but it's a good starting point.
c) If I already have one character as a starting point, I go "ok, what are the tropes/ dynamics I want to go with in this story?" and work from there. Like I have a lady knight whose homeland was destroyed by an invading army and she wants to become strong enough to save others- what are interesting characters to go along with a serious, hard working, over compensating badass knight lady? Well, what about a partner who is also in a position of being an atypical knight, but reacts to it by deflecting, making jokes, ect? And a spoiled, entitled Lady who is thrust into a position of responsibility and has to deal? And a childhood friend who was lost, and is being manipulated to work against the knight?" ect. Things escalate from there.
d) To be honest, a lot of time I'm just listening to music and just go "ok, what kinda characters could this song be about?" and then, while still thinking about these ocs, listen to other songs and try to connect them as well.

 

I think your starting point doesn't necessarily matter as long as you continue to build and work with them until they become their own self, too? Like yeah, it can come easily, but there's still a lot of work involved in figuring out who your character is.

 

When I start building my characters, I first figure out what kind of annoying they are when they post things on the Internet.

Yes, really.

I have my "pedantic walls of text" character, and my "posts shitty old memes" character, and my "seriously believes in the Illuminati" character, and my "mom has a keyboard for the first time" character, and my "writes good stuff but gives it obnoxious titles" character, and...

 

@Arxon @Soul @Vacuum Energy thanks!

there are quite of a lot of interesting methods, it sounds like.

and the internet thing is amusing. :D

 

For me, they seem to happen against my damn will half the time, hah.
It's usually much easier and much more fun if you have someone else to discuss it with and bounce stuff off. The guy in my avatar picture, for example. He started off as me drawing a random guy because I was fed up and that translated to a grumpy-looking dude with pointy ears. I showed it to a friend, who interpreted the picture as a Jagermonster from the webcomic Girl Genius, because that's kind of what my little friend group is all obsessed with atm. I was like 'sure why not' and added some more jagery features and then I started telling my friend about the basic personality thoughts I had for him, and through the process of telling someone else about it, I added more, deeper stuff because my brain was forced to make sense of things to explain them properly. Then, later, a faceclaim for an entirely different character was shown, and looked similar to my guy, so they became related, which put my dude in the position of being in a very important family in the universe, which had very thorough knock-on effects for his character and deepened everything far more.
He developed into a huge dick, but that's how things go sometimes, also I adore him.
I'm currently in the process of thinking about developing a new OC, who actually came from a dream I had. Sadly my brain elected to remember his appearance and forget his personality, and I haven't hit the point where the personality I'm trying to reconstruct for him actually works yet, so he's just a shallow pretty-boy which is great but not very interesting. /dope-slaps the moron DEVELOP DAMN YOU

EDIT: as for getting attached to your own OCs, mostly it happens for me after I put them through the wringer. o3o Because it's hard not to make them suffer and not also want to squishhug them. Even the dude in my avatar.

Son of an EDIT: my avatar was not drawn my me btw that's @Ruevian's beautiful handiwork

 

I write original fiction and all those characters are OCs for obvious reasons, although some of them are Expys, which means that they are based on characters that I like from canons that shit all over them and I wanted to put them into something else.

When I write fan fiction and write OCs, the OCs usually come into the story because something is missing in canon that I need to tell my story.

When I wrote House of Ill Faith (my unfinished and badly jossed HP epic) in 2002-2004, I wanted to tell a story about the rise of the Death Eaters, because originally Tom Riddle seemed like a pretty smart guy and I always wondered how he turned into that freakazoid Voldemort, and why the HELL people who already had power and money would risk it all to follow a guy like that, so I had this story line about how it was originally an occult organisation seeking longer life and more knowledge and then as Tom Riddle went downhill and freaked out over muggles getting nukes et cetera it got more and more cultish and Stockholmy.

To tell this story I could obviously not use only characters written by JKR. The primary canon characters that appeared in it were Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, Severus Snape, Tom Riddle and Alastor Moody. There was also Dylan Mulciber (who was mentioned only by his last name in canon and was basically an OC except for that) and a character who was not really that much of an OC called Carmilla (she was Narcissa's nasty sister, who actually turned out to exist in canon except she was called Bellatrix lol). But there were a lot of other characters. I had to come up with personalities for a lot of characters who were mentioned in passing. This was actually pretty fun. The most important OC was Lucius Malfoy's sister Juliana, who was married to Severus Snape and was framed and went to Azkaban (she actually tried to help Severus stop her brother and he didn't appreciate that) but eventually got out--but there were a lot of others.

When I write Gravity Falls fic it always frustrates me that the only adult women we see on the show are Soos' Abuelita and Lazy Susan, neither of which I find interesting although they are nice people. Wendy is still 15, though I love her. I cannot see Ford dating either of those two women so if I want to write my sinful tales about that topic the lady has to be someone I made up all out of whole cloth. So I run with the whole "I miss Dimension 52" thing and I steal Valiska t'Shae out of my original fiction where she wasn't fitting in so great. (She was originally a character I played in a tabletop game and she was an unholy mix of Klingon, Romulan and Betazoid for reasons--which were mostly genetic experimentation on a weird space station by a murdercult. Now she is just Talassani which is an alien species that I made up) Hilariously, everyone else in her family in the fics I am currently writing, with two exceptions, appeared FIRST in our RP and then later in my fic. (Devatka and Getheny showed up first in the fic. Devatka wanted to know why the hell Valiska was dating someone she met on the job as a cursebreaker and on top of that someone who was 'stupid enough to make a deal with a trash demiurge without getting rich' and Getheny wanted her to get out and have more fun.)

A lot of my OCs are people I've played in tabletop, journal or forum RP just because playing a character is an easy way to develop them. My first RPG that I was serious about was Classic Traveller where you have this long character generation session and find out what military service you've done, and some of your experiences so you have a pretty good idea by the time your character's done what kind of person they are. There are also quizzes on tumblr and other places where you can get to know your OCs by asking them weird questions. Having them take live journal/tumblr surveys was popular in my old LJ RPG, Lightning War. You had to adapt the surveys because there was stuff in them that wizards in 1942 would not know about but a lot of those surveys have good questions about how someone feels about their family etc.

Here is an example of the type of survey I am talking about. One of my old characters has filled it out so you can see her answers.

01. Full Birth Name: Arianwen Marie Laetitia Rosier

02. Hair Colour: Red

03. Eye Colour: Amber

04. Height Currently: Five feet, five inches

05. Glasses/contacts: Neither

06. Birthdate: June 24, 1927

07. Star Sign: Cancer

08. Current Age: 15

09. Siblings: One brother. Evan.

10. Siblings Age: 13, till the 26th of this month.

11. Location: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

12. College Plans: I'm actually thinking about it. Since talking to Andrew I've wondered, after I finish the mediwitch training program, if I couldn't learn anything useful from going to Muggle medical school.

13. Any Piercing: Ears.

SOCIAL LIFE

01. Best Friends: Olivia Hornby, Edouard Lestrange, Isabella Zabini, Vicky Wurfel, Tom Riddle, Andrew Gresham, Siobhan Montgomery, Ianthe Pritchard, Dylan Mulciber (get along much better with Dylan now that he's not seeing my brother).

02. Boyfriend: None

03. Current Crush: Initials are AG.

04. Hobbies: Embroidery, by hand without magick. Soothes the mind.

05. What Type of Automobile Do You Drive: Motorcars <i>scare</i> me! They look like they might eat me!

06. Are You Timely Or Always Late: Usually on time.

07. Do You Have A Job: Not yet but I help Madam Pomfrey a lot.

08. Do You Like Being Around People: Yes.

01. Have you ever loved someone you had no chance with: I seem to make a habit of it. First my fiancé's brother and then, after both of them died, a friend's boyfriend.

02. Have You Ever Cried Over Something Someone of The "Opposite" Sex Did: Yes. Lots. And I don't want to talk about it, except to say that my late fiancé rather liked to make me cry.

03. Do You Have A "Type" Of Person You Always Go After: I like nice boys.

04. Want Someone You Don't Have Right Now: Yes, but not if he wants someone else more.

05. Ever Liked a Close Friend: Those are the best people to like!

06. Are You Lonely Right Now: I'm too busy to be lonely.

07. Ever Afraid You'll Never Get Married: I'm more afraid of being married to the wrong person.

08. Do You Want To Get Married: I don't know. Not unless I can marry someone I love, who won't hurt me.

09. Do You Want Kids: I think so. But not any time soon.

FAVORITE

01. Room in house: The solarium.

02. Type of music: Chamber music.

04. Memory: Kissing Severus...

05. Day Of The Week: Friday.

06. Color: Pink

07. Perfume Or Cologne: I rather like Chanel #5.

08. Flower: Roses

09. Month: June

10. Season: Summer

11. Place to be kissed: All over!

12. Location for dates: I don't know that I've ever really been on a 'date' though I think I might like to.

IN THE LAST 48 HOURS, HAVE YOU:

01. Cried: Yes.

02. Bought Something: No.

03. Gotten Sick: No.

04. Sang: No.

05. Said I Love You: Yes, to several people.

06. Wanted To Tell Someone You Loved them, But Didn't: No.

07. Met Someone New: No.

08. Moved On: No.

09. Talked To Someone: Yes

10. Had A Serious Talk: Yes

11. Missed Someone: Severus

12. Hugged Someone: Yes

13. Kissed Someone: Yes

14. Fought With Your Parents: No, they're at home and I'm here.

15. Dreamed About Someone You Can't Be With: Yes.

16. Had a lot of sleep: Not a lot but enough.

17. Wanted This Survey To Be Over: No, it's all right.

A lot of characters I play in other people's games end up in my original fiction or my fanfic. Valiska was originally a character in someone else's game. Her original job was to steal the Genesis project which she did not want to do because after she got to the Federation she discovered she preferred to stay there. She got involved with David Marcus in that one, hahaha, girl has a type.

As for whether or not people get attached to original characters I have two words for you: Julissa Vigenere. She wasn't even an important character, she was definitely not a nice character, she was basically Bill Cipher's spy, plaything and Mabel's babysitter, but I seem to recall that you got pretty attached to her. :p

There are a lot of people who will not read fanfiction with OCs in it particularly if they are romantically involved with canon characters. And to be honest, frequently that type of fanfic does suck. Either they go the whole hog superpowered Mary Sue that everyone loves and fixes everyone's problems route, or they are basically super normal boring people that you cannot see the canon character ever being interested in with the exciting life that they already have; it's really tough to get the balance right. OCs should not completely change canon dynamics without being around for a VERY long time. But the people that do read my stuff that has OCs in it usually like it and tell me that I do a good job of not making the characters unbelievable Sues or the girl-next-door-obvious-self-inserts.

Other people have mentioned dollmakers. I like those but in my old games we always had PBs so my current usage of dollmakers is for avatars in Weirdmageddon Tango and also to see how many crazy dresses I can design for Valiska but I can definitely see how using them for character development is helpful. I have trouble using dollmakers for some of my characters though, for instance the main character of my major original fiction stuff, Liuterin, is not conventionally beautiful and she's super muscular and in the later stories she has become partially disabled.

 

Any starting point or method is fine. The secret isn't where you start so much as building layers and finding the core of who they are.



Characters who start out intended for one thing, then get used for another thing, then get translated for a third thing... you get to build up a sense of what their priorities are, what kinds of goals and methods they tend to have. You explore things and leave behind the ones that don't work. You expose them to various sorts of pressure and explore how they change.

 

I honestly don't really know how it fully works with me, but often it starts from me thinking of a backbone of the character, a starting concept of what I want to explore or need them to be, and then things go from there.

Anhelia Aescar started off with the idea "I'm tired of glamorous undead like vampires, and I'm tired of rotting stupid zombies; I want an unglamorous but sympathetic undead". And then she evolved over time, adding layers of complexity. I like the dieselpunk aesthetic so she kind of has a 1930s/1940s feel to her, with a bit of earlier in the 20th Century. Her undeadness is scientific (but the laws of science are a little different there). It's decidedly unglamorous, and she wears wigs and lots of makeup to "pass" as normal-looking on the street. It's dangerous, both for her (she's cold-blooded and thus has to constantly think of heat sources) and others (she sucks in energy from nearby sapient life, so the less of it around the harder she drains ... and she can't turn it off).

 

@TwoBrokenMirrors thanks!

putting them through the wringer is definitely good advice.

@Dist thanks!

@cryptoThelematrix thanks!
i really appreciate the long response. :D lots of good things for me to think over in there.

@swirlingflight thanks!
that makes sense. and well, i honestly don't care where i start, as long as i'm actually able to make ocs. 'cause, well, i was worried that making them required some kind of intuition or magic (metaphorically, of course) that i don't have, that something in my brain was broken or something. so yeah... where i start doesn't matter to me, as long as i start somewhere.

@Morven thanks!
that's been pretty common thread in these responses, actually. which is probably 'cause, yeah, that method does make a lot of sense. :D

 

Meanwhile, I'm still incredibly bad with names. (Also, it's pretty hard to give my characters different personalities.)

 

babynames.com is my favorite for name problems
especially bc you can search by meaning which can be fun for themed characters

 

I'd say, go to babynames.com or similar and just spend a lot of time browsing them. For personalities, try to have a mix of different character traits, like introvert/extravert, nerdy,sporty, outgoing, shy, etc.

 

@IvyLB @Soul @palindromordnilap yep. when i've attempted to make ocs before (and when i've had to give canon characters first or last names for a fic/rp/whatever), i've used those a lot. and sometimes got way too wrapped up in them, haha. like, i wanna give them the perfect name and end up forgetting about everything else i'm supposed to be doing with them.

 

For fantasy characters I also like translating relevant words into various slightly obscure languages with google translate

 

As far as names are concerned: for aliens, I freely admit that I make shit up (Getheny, Devatka) or steal random words, especially foreign words (though I try to make sure they're not swears or otherwise unfortunate). I try to go for similar syllabication and endings in aliens from the same species.

I try to notice name trends when writing fanfic. JKR likes very Dickensy names, especially for wizards; people in Gravity Falls have no name sense (Grenda? Pacifica? But I like them anyways). But weird names are fine, I mean I have a weird name IRL.

 

Yeah, I'm especially bad at alien/nonconventional names. I think the only one I actually used involved three fantasy name generators, a Caesar cipher, and anagrams.

 

shit sunshine is atbash and this is the wrong thread (his name's not in the atbash cipher, I'm talking about something else)

 

I recommend behindthename.com over babynames.com as Behind the Name has rather better scholarship on name meanings and origins.

Speaking of, sometimes when I create an OC, I start with the name. Were they given it by parents/guardians, is it a nickname, or did they choose it themself? Does it fit them, is it just kind of there, or is it hilariously ill-suited? What kind of troubles have they have because of their name, and how did they overcome them?

Sometimes I don't particularly have answers to any of those, so I just start putting a blank slate with that name through various situations, and the combination starts them growing into something.

 

I have had a lot of characters that basically were inspired by their names. Endymion Dashwood comes to mind. He was from a noble but absolutely brokeass family, he studied alchemy, he made absinthe so he could have pocket money at the school-that-was-not-really-Hogwarts, and sometimes he turned tricks during the summers because he was beautiful and he knew it and people kept offering. He was in love with the War Minister's son Hadrian and eventually got him. Hadrian often didn't quite know what to do with him, though, because Hadrian had had a rather sheltered life.

 

I think I start with concepts, then smash the half-formed concept people together until they start looking like more actual people, try to build a proper foundation under the concept, sometimes borrow concepts (but never the whole characters) from other stories and after that they sort of start spawning new characters according to their needs. Name-wise, I usually start turning an actual Earth name around in my head until it becomes something that fits the character. I write secondary-world fanasy, calling the characters in it Kate or Thomas (or Kati or Toomas, for that matter) feels strange to me. The names in our world have such long and complicated histories behind them, sticking them to people who have never heard of the language or culture or faith behind the name feels weird.

So, for example, I had an idea of a character whom I called "fox". I knew she was not an actual fox, thirty-ish, had facial scars and was the bitter, cynical mentor type. Then I had an idea about writing a story where the main character is the not-so-special sibling of the Special One. So "fox" was going to be bitter and cynical at the sibling character, but I had to figure out why (changed my reasons like three times during book-writing, ended up with "oh hello plot points nice to meet you here"). Then I found an old chart where I had created a sort of 5x5 dnd alignment grid (the non-neutral axes were further divided into "high" and "low", so it went like high good - low good - neutral - low evil - high evil). Low chaotic low evil actually was marked as "the fox". Ok, so apparently the gods in this corner of the world decided that marking everyone with their alignment in the face would be a good idea. Even if this concept doesn't work on actual people. Screwed-up culture tidbit, yay.

[this part has been redacted because it made me too identifiable on the internet. Sorry.]

I think the main thing that keeps me interested in my OCs is shamelessly putting in the tropes I like. I have a weakness for tragic pasts, so half the cast has one, even though it is probably far from realistic (I'm not trying to be edgy. I just have a weakness, where else will I indulge it). I have a thing for depressed characters trying to pull through - well, here's what A and his love interest are doing, both together and each on his own. Pairs where a male and a female character work together and the female one is the more powerful one? B and her partner. Societal structures that are not the 'realistic' patriarchy, but are also not utopian? Let me tell you about how half of these people get screwed over by their country's idea of how a family must work (actually, don't, I'd never shut up).