mine.

What’s their ancestry? Where’s their family from? Do they know? Are they proud of their ancestors?

If they could be or do anything in the world, who would they be? What would they be doing? What does their ideal world look like?

How is their relationship to their family? How often do they speak (if at all)? How close do they feel with them?

How do they cope with stress? What’s their main go-to comfort?

What skills do they have? What skills do they not have that they maybe should’ve learned?

An accident has occurred, who are they calling first? Who are they closest with, and who do they trust the most? Are those two the same person? (And who would call them in the same situation?)

What responsibilities do they have? School, work, personal?

How do they feel about their government? Or other forms of authority?

What’s their perfect day look like?

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@bluebxlle_writer on Instagram

I’ve been getting questions on how to create characters recently, because apparently lots of y’all don’t know where and how to start creating a new character. I don’t think this post will help everybody, since everyone has different methods on creating characters (eg. some come up with names first, others come up with appearance first), but in this post I’ll be sharing my character creation process. I hope it will help! <3

1. An iconic line

This is a less well-known method to start creating a character, but for some reason it's always how I do (and it always works lmao). It's hard to create a character from scratch, so instead, I think about an iconic line that the character could say, which is usually related to my wip's theme or mood. I came up with this line for an oc :

"I've been trying so damn hard to make everyone smile, but I get it now. The world would be happier without me, wouldn't it?"

Just from this single line, I already know lots of things about this character :

• They always put the happiness of others before their own.

• They've probably been told that they need to have a positive effect on others in order to have the right to live.

• They've been trying to please others, but end up worsening things.

• They're determined and desperate.

• ...They probably had a corruption arc and won't get a happy ending :"D

• The moment when they say this line is their breaking point

See? Just from two sentences, I already have an idea of their personality and backstory. Sometimes, I even get an idea for their appearance too. This is way easier than not knowing what to do first to create a character from scratch.

2. Appearance

Lots of people come up with character names before their appearance, but I always need to generate their appearance first, because otherwise, I can't visualize or imagine them. I usually play around with picrew.me (an avatar generator website) to generate their potential appearance. I don't spend too much time on this stage tho, because I'll end up changing their appearance again after figuring out more details about my wip (that's why I said potential appearance).

3. Personality & backstory

After having a rough idea of how they look like, I'll imagine them in various scenes in my wip and come up with their personality. If there are already other existing ocs in the wip, I always be careful to not repeat too much aspects from the other characters, so each character will be unique.

Then, asking why the character has a specific personality will create their backstory. For instance, if a character has trust issues, ask why. Maybe they've been betrayed by a loved one before? Or they live in a dangerous world where everyone double crosses people to survive?

4. Name

After I know their appearance, personality, and depth, that's when I decide a name for the character which fit their vibes or has symbolism. For example, my character Bayu's name is symbolic because it means "wind", reflecting how he's a thief who moves as fast as the wind.

Sometimes, I don't immediately search for a permanent name if I'm out of ideas. I'll just choose a random placeholder name that fits their vibes, and remember to come up with their real name later.

5. Character arc