Creating an Original Character - Application

This is the second part of the OC creation/development guide, so if you haven't read the first, it's called "Creating a Well-Balanced OC." In this part we are now going to apply the points I made in the first guide to an actual character, which will be my original character, Marise. This is so that you'll have a better picture of what I mean by the specifics in each point, because usually things are better understood when it's applied to something or an example is given.

Notice that I changed the title, taking out the "well-balanced" part. This is because the evaluation I'm about to make and every little detail I give on Marise Asahina will be objective. This means that I am leaving opinions aside and am allowing YOU all to determine whether you believe this character to be well-developed or not.

An important note to consider is that this is in no way a "defense" I am creating for this OC either. I figured I wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes if I were using my own character to apply my guide to rather than taking someone else's OC.

So this guide will be shorter, but hopefully it'll give you a clear insight as to what I mean when I discuss each part of a character.

Your Character's Name

1. Don't name the character after you. Marise Asahina is most definitely not my name, which is Amber. I don't have any nicknames, online usernames or any other title relating to this name. In fact, I don't even have a particular preference for this name either. (Ex. You choose to name your character after a character off another show that you really like.)

2. Try not to make up a name. I can understand if some believe that Marise's first name is made-up, however, it is an actual name, though very uncommon. I'm…not creative enough to come up with a name on my own.

3. Keep the fandom/settings in mind. The anime Bleach takes place in Japan, however, characters can have names of different ethnicities depending on what race they are. (Arrancars can have Spanish names; Fullbringers can basically have any ethnic name, etc.) Because Mari's mother is French and her father is Japanese, she received a name that has meanings in both languages.

4. Meanings are important, but let's not take it too far. The meaning of Marise in Japanese means "infinite" or "endless," while in French it means "bitter" or "beloved." The only one of these meanings that could describe her personality might be bitter, but even then she is usually not a bitter character. And beloved is a subjective description, so it doesn't necessarily apply to her personality unless a person believes her to be a lovable character. Which, again, not everyone may agree with.

5. Multiple names…? A bit iffy. She only has a first and last name. I don't believe middle names exist in Japan even. I didn't feel that any more needed to be added, as I was satisfied with a good, solid name consisting of the first and surname. This was enough for me. Any more and it would have been too much.

Your Character's Appearance

1. Modesty, let's not go overboard now. You'll notice that I don't often talk subjectively about Marise, as in I don't mention how "cute" she is all the time or "how much I love her." You may not realize it, but there's a bit of psychology involved when you do this. If you constantly describe how amazing you think your character is, you are either purposely or involuntarily trying to force a favorable opinion about your character onto anyone who is looking at him/her. Or, you could do it in reverse psychology with modesty, constantly saying how she/he is not cute or handsome. This may be something I do, whether it's intentional or not, I'm honestly not too sure. For me it's just how I was raised by my parents, to not wholly accept the compliments others give me, because my parents pounded humility into my brain.

And yes, I believe I did create Mari to be "beautiful." But still, I'm iffy as to call that a fact, because again, some may not agree with this, and that's completely fine.

2. Don't stand out for the sake of standing out. So perhaps Marise as a character doesn't really follow this. She stands out because she has blonde hair and blue eyes, and this isn't common in Japan. But again, when you add these unique features to your OC, you have to have a reason behind this. So when creating or editing your character, always ask yourself this very important question: Why? Why am I doing this? What is the real reason behind me giving this character a certain characteristic?

You have to be completely honest with yourself here. A lot of times we lie to ourselves so we don't have to admit the not-so-modest truth. But it's okay. You can be honest with yourself. If you're not, then your character is just one big lie. So you should always have a reasonable explanation for everything you do with your character.

The reason Marise has blue eyes and blonde hair is because she inherited this trait from her mother's side of the family. It's common to have these characteristics among Europeans. There. It's as simple as that. Nothing complicated, nothing overly extravagant, just a simple, concise explanation.

3. OMG BOOBS. I'll admit it, I did not want Mari to be flat-chested. I wanted her to have breasts, because I found it annoying that I had to be afraid of people calling her the "M" word if she had them. Now, she doesn't have an enormously large chest, because I know that would be pretty unrealistic, especially if she's not even five feet tall.

4. Your character should have a natural style of dress. So if you knew Marise with the personality she had, yet she dressed in punk-style clothing…would that strike you as odd? It should. Yes, this is a stereotype, however, that's just how society works, and ninety percent of the time the way you dress is based off of your personality. She's an outgoing, energetic girl, and so her wearing pink is not obscure for someone like her at all.

Your Character's Past

1. Oh…woe is me! Mari's past is as plain as it could get. There is not really anything tragic in her life, unless you could consider bullying that, but that's not really "tragic." Unfortunate, yes, but then again, Marise is a super sensitive girl, so it's natural that she would take even fun teasing to extremes. It may be a tragedy in her opinion, but to us normal people? It's definitely not.

But it's not as if her entire life was a fairytale either. She did have a hard time making friends because of moving so often, so that was a challenging time. A past event doesn't always have to be tragic for your character to grow and develop. I personally like to save these events for the future, where I can actually show how Mari has grown in relation to how she will deal with a tragic event.

Your Character's Powers

1. Your character is not God. Oh, she's definitely not God. She's like the weakest of the weak and I'm okay with admitting that. I don't think there's anything wrong with creating a character that is weak in powers, because this gives you the opportunity to show how your character becomes stronger, not only physically, but mentally as well. And that just adds amazing character depth.

2. All-in-one? I don't think so. There are pictures of Marise as a Shinigami, but it's not like she combined that with her Fullbring powers. That's kind of like an "AU" thing of what she'd look like as a Shinigami after she dies.

Your Character's Personality

1. Traits, you gotta have the good and the bad. You know you have a good character when you can easily list off both good and bad traits of them with ease.

Marise:
Good traits – honest, energetic, thoughtful
Bad traits – dramatic, nosy, judgmental, conceited, insecure

You shouldn't have 10-15 different traits, but rather go into detail on a few. A lot of the times some traits sound similar so you should combine them to narrow down your list. Another thing to remember is that you should be consistent. If you describe your character as a rebel, but they only break the rules every once in a blue moon in your fanfic/RPs, then maybe they aren't so rebellious after all.

This was a problem I had with Marise. I changed her entire personality about half a year ago when I realized that a lot of the traits that I initially thought she had weren't showing up in my story. So I looked at the story to see what traits I displayed and from that I was able to rewrite her personality so that it was more accurate.

2. Show a little quirkiness. This is probably one of the parts my OC fails at, because I believe she has too many quirks. Bad at math, the magazines, Lupin III, ice cream…it's just too much. And it's unfortunate that I can't imagine taking any part out. One of the problems with her is that I based her off a real human instead of just an anime character, and so a lot of times she embodies characteristics that we have – you can't just sum up all of our quirks into a few, there are an endless number of them, the strange things that we do.

Your Character in Love

1. Are we turning this into a teen chick flick? I feel like I also epically fail at this part, even though it wasn't love at first sight for Shinji and Mari, there aren't going to be love triangles, Shinji is in-character (I hope), they haven't had sex and won't for a long time, no one has died…YET. Pfft. But still, I did turn a shonen anime into a shojo fanfic. I'm sorry. I can't help it, I used to read a lot of shojo!

Your Character and the Plot

1. Keep check on the hero complex. One thing Mari definitely is NOT is a hero. In fact, she's quite the opposite, possibly an anti-hero? A hero always chooses to protect people – Mari could care less about people, she'd run away to save her own behind! A hero fights to become stronger – Mari would rather not fight at all…but run away! A hero would be a person that everyone looks up to – umm…everyone looks down on Mari, literally and figuratively. She is a cowardly character, however, she gets better. And this is where we get into the whole character development over time, more specifically, in relation to the story. Hopefully, after I finish Goldilocks, you'll be able to see a big difference between Marise from the first chapter and Marise from the very last chapter. This is my hope…but we'll see what happens!

Your Character and Criticism

I'm going to be honest with you guys, I don't believe anyone has criticized this Mari, as in the most recent version of her. I've mentioned before that I changed her many times, and her "past selves," well, one of them anyway, did receive criticism. In fact, the first version of Goldilocks I had posted (it was titled something else at the time, I can't remember), someone actually called her the "M" word.

LE GASP!

And just like some of you guys may have felt…I was upset. I wanted to get defensive against this person, thinking they obviously knew nothing about anything and that they were just saying that to be mean/rude/spiteful and believe that they were clearly jealous!

However. I thought about it. I sat there, staring at the review on my computer screen, and thought. And thought. And thought. And then I realized something.

…Maybe this person was right. I mean, not completely, but haven't you heard the saying that everything that's said, even lies, have some truth to them? I could just go on and tell myself that this person was just a "flamer," but then I would just be doing that the rest of my life about everything, not just relating to fanfiction. If someone criticized my essay – pfft, they're jealous. If a person told me that I could have done better on handling a situation – well, they're obviously just a hater. Was that how I wanted to be? Even though at the time I felt like that reviewer was jumping to conclusions…perhaps I was the one doing that.

The review was vague, so I didn't know specifically what the person was talking about. But I looked back and analyzed everything I had written, and noticed that afterwards what I had read had left a bitter taste in my mouth…Mari came off as appalling. She had too many negative traits to the point where no one could even continue reading for the sheer fact that she was just so unpleasant…even I wanted to stop!

So the moral of this story is take everything a person says to you as thought it has a little truth to it, because, you never know…it just might.

I hope this had made it clearer for you all in case anything in the first part was confusing. Again, the most important part of this entire process is your happiness, your satisfaction with your original character. So keep that in mind as you are creating/editing. Good luck with your original characters!