Symbolism! Yeah! 

(Idk where to ask this so if you cant do you know anyone that can?) Im new to creating ocs and im overwhelmed w all the resources...I have basic appearance down but i feel i dont know my characters at all. I feel picking personality traits/background will be like throwing darts at random and wont come together like theyre an authentic, real person. Any advice? Thx.

This is a common thing for writers, artists, and character designers, so no worries! You’re completely on the right track! It can take months or even years to flesh out a character! I’ve found the best method of working through this is the use of OC interviews!

What are those you ask? They’re questionnaires made specifically for your OC’s to answer! It’s one of the quickest and easiest ways to start getting to know your characters. It’s like you’re asking them the question, and they’re answering. It gives you a sense of how they may talk, form their sentences, or even respond to such a question.  

Ask yourself one simple question when working on character personalities: Why? Why do they like this specific color? Why do they behave this way? Questions like these help the characters flesh out more. You need to ask yourself these questions because your audience will be expecting answers to them. 

A few more ways to develop characters: from experience, I found that roleplaying, making AU’s (alternate universes), and writing oneshots about them are the most effective!

Here are some resources for fleshing out character personalities:

Antagonist OC Interview

How to Write Diverse Characters

OC Interview: Through Another Character’s Eyes

5 Minute OC Interview

Foolproof Ways to Flesh Out Your Characters

8 Other Ways of Fleshing Out Characters

Character Profile Sheet

Character Traits

Archetypes to Avoid in Character Creation

Strong Female Characters: How to

Characterization Ask Game

Five Traps When Creating Characters (and tips on how to improve!)

Traumatized Character Profile

So you want to make an OC? (Masterpost)

30 Uncommon Character Development Questions

The Importance of Weaknesses in Your Characters

Qualities of Realistic Characters

Ultimate Guide to Creating Authentic Villians

If anyone has any more resources feel free to add to this list! I hope this helps you out! 

WHY DO CHARACTERS MATTER? 

I’m a big fan of characters, obviously. (That’s not even all of my characters. I have two BINDERS worth of character sheets.) But why? Surely other elements of story are just as important, like the plot, setting, tone, etc. And they are! But I think characters are the most important aspect of the story, for a few reasons: 

They are the lens through which we view everything else. Characters color the world we create. Sure, you might write a world guide, but largely, we see the world through the eyes of the characters, so they have to be good eyes to see through. (Even if they’re blind.)

They can save a bad story. Not to say any of you have bad stories, but they can add something to a lackluster story that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Think about Bioshock Infinite. It’s one of my favorite games, even though the gameplay is okay and the story is convoluted at best. I praise it almost entirely for the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth. They make that game, and if the characters (especially Elizabeth) weren’t as memorable as they are, I doubt anyone would really care much about Bioshock’s failed prequel. 

The more complicated and intricate a character, the more you can do with your plot. If you have a flat character, you can’t make them act. They can’t do much except react to the plot happening around them. But a complex character with a good backstory and interesting motivation will interact with the world and change things in it, which is the basis of plot. 

HOW I MAKE MY CHARACTERS

I’m going to walk you through my process, and hopefully do my best to make it easy for you to understand.

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Hey I love your blog, it helps me a lot and now I've a question myself. How can you write about older people while you're still young yourself? The main character of my story is 43 years old but I'm 17... I try to pay attention to how her life experience has shaped her personality but sometimes I feel like she seems too much like a teenager. Have you ever written about characters older than you? And what helped you the best to make them realistic? Do you have any general tips on writing adults?

Thanks for asking, this is a good question, and I like that your MC is much older than you. You'll learn a lot by writing them.

I've written for a number of ages, and aside from some extremely minimal research online, I just started paying attention to other people. I watched films about X age group, read books by/about X age group, listened to interviews of adults with certain fields and backstories, listened to people older than me at work, listened to customers, neighbors, relatives, my own parents. Kids are tougher since I don't know many little kids, but just asking questions of teachers and family friends gave me insight into the lives of people older than me.

Once you know what a person is like on the inside and why, writing their dialogue and behavior is a piece of cake. Surely you know some adults or can look up some public figures and study their lives, dialogue, and behavior. Base your character off several real people and they will come across as more authentic.

Isn’t “complex, nuanced, morally gray villain” and “villain who is just evil with nothing more to it” a false dilemma?

I contend that villains don’t have to be morally gray to be complex. Your villains can have complex reasons for what they do, and internal conflicts, and still be completely vile. Their motivations can be nuanced and still be fundamentally twisted. Their internal conflicts can be between multiple awful, fucked up, selfish sides of themselves. Villains can be complicated by differing drives and motivations and viewpoints even if none of them are good.

Give me a villain who is like...for example, conflicted between killing his son to eliminate a threat to his power, and keeping him alive so he can continue to exercise his abusive, fucked up control and twist his son into what he wants. He’s stuck between hating his son and desiring him as a possession and puppet, but neither of his conflicting motivations are The Good One.

Give me a villain who has to choose between the ideology of the violent, corrupt organization that groomed and trained him and the desire to betray everyone, strike out on his own with no support, and begin his own genocidal terrorist group. There can be a lot of complicated, shifting emotions over this, but it’s far from being a battle between an evil path and a good path.

Idk. “purely, disgustingly evil villain” is not the same as “one dimensional villain”

How to Write Non-binary Characters: a three part guide.

Disclaimer: While this guide is written by a non-binary person in collaboration with many other non-binary writers and readers, it does not necessarily cover the views of all people within the non-binary community.

PART ONE: the basics.

First off, what is this thing you call non-binary?

Non-binary genders are any gender identity that isn’t covered in the Western idea of woman (girl) and man (boy). This identity has nothing to do with which chromosomes or sexual organs a person has. Some non-binary people also identify as being trans (which is technically an umbrella term containing non-binary), while others only identify as being non-binary. Some commonly use the slang term enbie (which comes from the pronunciation of the initials for non-binary, aka N.B.) while others don’t. Some break down their gender further than simply non-binary, while others choose not to.

Some terms for common non-binary genders:

Agender: having no gender.

Bigender: having both binary genders, or aspects of two different genders, usually simultaneously. (Much like the bi in bisexual, non-binary people may also claim this term if they have any number of genders, especially if they can’t quite tell where one ends and the other begins, or they may claim the term pangender instead.)

Demi-(boy/girl/man/woman): being partially (but not wholly) binary.

Gender-fluid: transitioning between genders, which may include both binary and non-binary genders.

Gender-queer (or just queer): not of a binary gender. May be used when someone does not feel that any other terms fit them quite right, when they’re still trying to determine their gender and don’t yet wish to choose a term, or simply because the person finds it to fit them best.

There are also genders similar to what Western cultures call non-binary in many non-Western cultures, which are wonderfully diverse and all incerdibly valid, but as someone from an exclusively Western cultural heratage, I don’t feel I have the right or the knoweldge to talk about them.

So then, who are these non-binary people in real life?

The only thing that differentiates a non-binary person from a binary person is that they don’t identify as having a binary gender.

Their non-binary-ness could influence their lives in an infinite number of ways:

It could be subtle or life changing.

They could use fashion and vocal training and actions to present themselves in ways outside their society’s binary gender norms, or they could never even mention they’re non-binary to another living soul. 

They could change their pronouns, or their name, or keep one or both the same.

They could spend years re-figuring out who they are and what it means to be non-binary or they could realize it once and never feel the need to dwell on it again.

They could identity as one of the numerous non-binary labels, or they could decide they’re just not binary and don’t care to dig further than that. 

They could accept all gendered terms, or certain gendered terms, or no gendered terms at all.

People assuming they’re binary could frustrate them or sadden them or anger them, or they could not care in the slightest. 

They may feel they exhibit (or wish to exhibit) many of the traits their society designates to a certain binary gender, or they many not.

They could feel the same way about their identity all the time, or differently every day.

Each non-binary person (and character) is unique, and their non-binary-ness is just one tiny part of who they are.

The basic do’s and don’ts for writing non-binary characters respectfully if you’re a binary person…

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[drawing of an orange bird with yellow wings saying “I’m writing a book! I got this!” in a yellow speech bubble.]

I'd love to hear more about the characters! And about the city, it seems so cool!

hi i want to post stuff about hound isle as we get closer to nano but i don’t know what to post so if anyone wants to know anything pleaseeeeee let me know

(i’m tagging the people who reblogged the wip intro bc maybe one of y’all will have an idea or like. info you want idk pls help: @patiwritesstuff, @ditzysworld, @wildswrites, @bexswritingadventures, @gaybullies, @vviciously)

hi I'm 22 but I want to write a story about people in their forties. Essentially the point is that people are still figuring themselves out at any age. Do you have any advice for writing about an age group so different from yours? Especially for me, who has not experienced their forties yet, whereas older adults writing YA have experienced that time in their lives. thanks

Writing an Age Group You Have No First-Hand Experience Of

Hi! First, I would do some research. Movies, books, TV shows, articles, and interviews that center around the age group. While the emotions and trials they are going through is a universal thing, their actual issues are usually specific to that age group. 

For forties, I would watch The Meyerowitz Stories (Netflix) and read the play or watch the movie August: Osage County. These focus on the common trials of forty-year-olds such as aging/dying parents, divorce, teenage kids, reconciling with estranged family, success past 30, and the likes. 

Second, remember that everyone is at a different place than others their age. The forties, especially, have a lot of diversity in living situations. Some are getting a divorce or remarrying and some are just getting married or will never marry. Some are sending kids off to college and some are just starting a family. Some are going back to school or working an entry-level job and some are working their dream job. Some are well-off and some are in massive debt. Some feel old and some are in their prime. 

Third, find a common struggle or fear within the age group. For people in their twenties, it’s usually choosing the right path. By forty, it’s usually worrying if they chose the right path and if it’s too late to change. 

And fourth, get in the headspace through backstory. How many experiences they’ve had is just as important as the kind of experiences and vice versa. Figure out the life they have fit into all those years. 

Hope this helps!

Wanderlust

I never wanted to leave

I've only ever know here

It's all I dreamt of

And now you want me to go with you,

Sweep me far away from the only life I know

The only life I ever wanted to know

And the scary part is

I want to go with you

— write-away-from-here

Something that’s helped me a lot when writing/designing characters is to make associations with them. Usually I pick an animal, a season, or an abstract concept to define them, and I keep metaphors and similes relating to that character within those categories. It adds a nice bit of symbolism, plus it gives the story more of a mythical feeling. It also lends more weight to interactions. If character x is the moon, and character y is the sun, then their interactions are suddenly more meaningful, especially if they have a relationship that is like that of the sun and moon in mythology or astronomy.