An original character can be a great way to express yourself and your creativity. You get to create a being of your own, customizable down to every last detail. Who wouldn’t enjoy that? An original character, also known as an OC, can be a great way to lose yourself in your own little world, especially if you have multiple OCs. If you have trouble coming up with the creativity to make your own OC on your own, or just don’t know where to start, this is a good place for you to begin your research.

First Things First:

The first step in creating your own personal character is deciding the species and gender or your creation. Remember, this OC can be for a book, a short story, just a personal project or anything else you would like. This is your creation, and you have complete and utter control and power over its life and experiences. While that’s a trip, don’t let the power rush to your head. Creating a believable OC can be difficult. Follow these steps, and you’re guaranteed to create a wonderful original character of your own.

Personality:

The Personality is perhaps the broadest category when it comes to creating an OC. There are so many conceivable deficiencies, proficients, talents, skills, disabilities, habits and traits that your OC can have. The possibilities can be suffocating and overwhelming, but just take a step back and try and relax. Trying to create anything artistic while stressed rarely has a positive outcome. Now, I suggest your first OC be created in your image, as that will make things easier and give you an idea of how to create your next OC better.

• Obvious Details:

When starting with your personality, you need to begin with the the obvious things. Is your character kind? Did they have a good childhood? Are they funny? Is your OC good hearted, or evil? Continue asking large, quite vague questions at first to really form a solid outline of your OC in your mind before you try and fill in the blanks. If you don’t do this, creating an OC from scratch can seem a bit inordinate.

• Obscure Details:

Now that you have a silhouette of your OC, it should be easy to fill in some of the blanks and start forming your very own creation. Ask yourself  specific questions, like “what is your OCs favorite memory?” and “what is your OC’s opinion on plane rides? Do they terrify them?” This may seem a bit silly, but it’s the details that really make an OC pop off the page and grab your reader’s attention. Real people have everyday lives with memories and opinions and likes/dislikes. If you’re striving for realism, Specificity and Obscurity is the way to go when it comes to details. This may seem like a lot of work, but no one never said creating an entire persona from scratch was easy.

• Past:

Once you’re done creating your persona, realize that their past is very important. Your OC’s past is just like yours, long and intricate. It is what made them who they are. Try creating memories for your OC that explain parts of their personality. For example, if your OC is terrified of dogs, maybe they had a bad experience with one when they were young. Try following this example format when creating your own OCs past. This may also affect who they associate themselves with.

Appearance:

Now comes the fun part. You get to design the way your OC looks! Before you get too giddy about creating the hottest OC on the block, keep in mind that realistic people do have faults and ugly things about them. Feel free to make a physical goddess of your OC for your own enjoyment, but I suggest keeping it realistic if this character is for a book. You want your characters to be somewhat relatable. Don’t forget to design their clothing style, and makeup if they wear it. This should all correlate with their past, including scars if they’ve had any bad physical experiences before. Ultimately, this is your own OC to do with as you please, but following these steps can make your OC seem just that much more realistic.

Conclusion

Now that your OC has a past, an appearance, obscure and obvious details it’s time to go through everything again and make sure you didn’t leave anything out. Once everything seems realistic enough,  be sure you used interesting memories and specific details to help create nice imagery for yourself, your OC, or your reader. Once everything is looked over and seems completed, sit back and admire your new, very own Original Character!