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Feb 2019

So i'm currently in the process of characterization of my new oc's, like the have a role in the story and a background as well but i can't figure out their personalities.
Usually with my favorite and old ones in my imaginary they are very well characterized and i can totally picture them into moving and talking and thinking: in my mind they feel almost as real as living actors. The problem is that they were born naturally without me purposely trying to give them a character insight, but this time we can say i can't "frame" the ones i'm trying to create.
How do you build your characters? How do you figure out their personalities? Do you have a crystal clear image of them in your mind during the story? Cause mine is still quite blurry and uncertain.

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    Feb '19
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    Feb '19
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Okay, so this is my personal planning book so it's geared up to make me write (and contains swearing and stuff), but from page 16 there's a bunch of resources I use to plan my characters. Take a look and see what works for you and what doesn't:

It wasn't very hard to develop those of the main characters. I just tweaked them already to be more family friendly. Everyone else was built around the two main. What kind of people they needed, what kind of enemies would play well off of them and what kind of women they would fall in love with.

it took years to eventually get my characters to a decent personality but thats cause i worked with them for 6 years before the comic started on tapas

I used to roleplay a lot in groups, and so I kind of have a huge backlog of characters I made over 8 years with pretty established personalities that I pull from. Roleplaying with other people is infinitely helpful in building character personalities ><

For me it's a combination of roleplaying, chatting about them with friends, and drawing them in random situations.

for the most part I imagine some scenes that I want to happen and then think about the kinds of personalities that would fit into the scene and expand from that point on. Very specific character defining moments.

It's kind of hard to explain with out an example, so I will use the back story of one of my characters as an example.

~~~~
I have a prince and his body guard. They've known each other their entire life and are very close. The prince proposes to his guard one day and the guard is surprised enough that they hurt them selves from shock. No matter how much the prince presses, the guard wants to accept but declines to answer because if they do, not matter what they say, it cause trouble for the prince, which goes against what they've been taught and trained to do.

Now since the prince is pressing for an answer despite it being a dangerous thing, it would make sense if he was either reckless, immature, or very passionate. I elected to go with the second two.

I also wanted to prince to actually be good at his job, ergo he's also intelligent and perceptive.

Given that wars civil or otherwise have started over forbidden romances and the guard is actively trying to prevent that, they must clearly take their job very seriously.

People who take their jobs seriously are generally responsible, practical, dutiful, and follow an honor code of some sort.

Since a proposak from the prince is also an extremely loaded question. (accept and people will accuse you of rising above your station, decline and get accused for insubordination. rumors fly either way) the guard is also clever and sharp to dodge it altogether. By extension, the guard is also very good at her job if they have been with the prince for a long time.

I made them more straight laced so as to better compliment the passionate prince. Cold to compliment the hot so to speak.

When I thought of this scene I wanted it to be both funny and kind of sad. Slapstick doesn't quite fit the story, so the humor has to come from sharp lines. which works because both characters would have the personality for it.

The sadder parts of the story would come from the fact that they can never be together with out causing a war and the reluctant acceptance of this from both parties. I found this to be too depressing, so now they both make jokes about it.

Tadaa! Now they are both fond of gallows and other dark bits of humor.

~~~~
I do this several times for each character to develop them and use different kinds of scenes for different effects.

It's a lot of fun, even if you don't use every scene. Kind of like roleplaying with your own characters.

It's really interesting to see everyone's different methods.

I have a list I follow.

Name.

Nickname.

Age.

Gender.

Occupation.

Personality.

Strengths.

Weaknesses.

Short Term Goals.

Long Term Goals.

Internal Motivation and Conflict.

External Motivation and Conflict.

Bio.

Just to get a feel of my characters. Then I write with these details in mind.

I develop them naturally. There isn't really anything outside 2-3 personality traits that I think of at first. It's a slow process taking about 2 weeks for characters to come to fruition.

It's pretty easy for me to come up with an OC. In general, the more world building I do, the more freedom I have to try portray characters the way I see fit, if that makes any sense. It's how they interact with other characters that's the challenge, and in those cases, I refer back to my sources of inspiration to get an accurate feel of said character in the open world.

Make an archetype and add more details such as motivations, flaws and whatever else

Usually when I build characters around a set story, I try and think of personalities that will work together and play off each other as a unit, depending on the relationships between the characters. Like if you have a couple, one can be more extroverted than the other. If you've got a villain, they can be flamboyant and showy compared to the hero's stoic and grim nature. With such varying personalities, dialogues and scenes can be more dynamic and you avoid accidentally giving everyone the same persona.

.... sorry I'm weird my OC's talk to me in their own way as I write and tell me about themselves (Not literally- I'm not that crazy). I get nudges in my brain of "No they like this" and "that makes them sad". Sorry it's not more useful advice.

I am actually working on a fun project that's all about building on the personality of your character!
The way it works is by asking you really specific questions to kind of force you to characterise them subconsciously.... It's hard to explain but if you need something to help you "get to know" your OC's personality in more detail, maybe it will help!!! It's a little passion project I do on the side but take a look at my Character Writing Gauntlet. I use it myself sometimes and I've challenged other writers too.

It might work for you, or it might not! I have seen really good results with everyone who has used it so far, though.

Admittedly, a lot of my characters' personalities are improvised. They're based more around the premise I have for a story most of the time.
One way I start with the personalities is by drawing gestural sketches. How do they interact with each other, with conflict, with trivial things?

I don't really have many examples on me right now, but I can say that I don't really have a method to the madness XD

I got into RPing early on, so the first lessons I ever learned (even if I'm not too strict on them anymor) were:1) balancing interesting traits with some flaws; 2) nobody wants to RP with a character who's not willing/too passive to engage with other people at all unless there are Possibilities; 3) you're gonna be w your OC a lot, so make sure it's one you'll enjoy working with in some capacity/appealing to you

For a time I used a lot of those character templates,
but while it's great to know everything about them from the beginning, I find I'm the type to figure it out organically better/have a brief understanding as I go, so I start with a general idea of them.

To personality build, I look at the character's own concept/traits and how I see their dynamic to others. (Ex. MC is stupidly self-confident, is annoying brat to cousin but fun family dynamic, but somehow appealing as someone to date to LI bc funny, hateful/awe-inspiring/a meme to coworkers etc) Dialogue is something that comes pretty okay to me, and how someone responds to people around them helps me the most!