PJO & HP for Dummies

PJO: Creating Your OC

You've finally decided to create a Percy Jackson fanfiction! Yay! But one of the most important things to making a fic, is the main OC themselves.

Here are the basics:

1. Your OC's name

2. Your OC's gender

3. Your OC's species (are they a regular demigod, are they a nymph, etc)

4. Godly parent (if they're a demigod) and powers

5. Height

6. Age and date of birth

7. Appearance/Faceclaim

8. Some personality traits 

9. Flaws

10. Weapons

STEP ONE: NAMES

I swear to god if you name your OC some shit like "Marina Pearl Oceana Butterfly Seahorse Jackson" I will laugh at your face and then maybe throttle you if I'm bored enough.

Make the name short. Just do a first name, a middle name maybe, and then the last name.

Find a name that's actually meaningful and relates to your character. Some people like to pick names that relate to their OCs godly parent, like Daisy for a child of Demeter or Marina for a child of Poseidon.

A lot of the character's Rick wrote about—whether they're minor or major—have names that are pretty thoughtful. For example, there's Sherman Yang a son of Ares and one of Clarisse's half-brothers. He's either named after William Sherman, a Civil War general, or a literal tank called the M4 Sherman Tank. Either way, the name 'Sherman' has to do with war and relates to him being the son of Ares.

If you don't want your OCs name to be connected to their godly parent (because you don't want to spoil it or you just don't like it), then maybe have it connect to a personality trait. Or maybe a physical trait. My OC's name, Esmerelda, means "emerald" because her father is always reminded of emeralds whenever he looks at her eyes.

OR, an even cooler idea, is to name them after a figure in Greek Mythology and give out a reason why. Percy's name is a wonderful example of this. Sally named him after the Greek hero, Perseus, because Perseus is one of the only heroes to have a happy ending and judging by how Percy's life has been going so far since all the wars ended, it looks like he might actually get that happy ending :)

Unless your OCs mortal parent is supposed to be awful or they have no idea that the Greek myths are actually real, I don't suggest naming your OC after a monster, some Greek figure who was an awful person, or a Greek figure that died horribly... No decent sane parent would do that if they were aware that the Greek myths were real. If you knew that all the Greek myths you've heard of were real, would you really name your kid, let's say, Ajax? The guy who's known for raping Cassandra? Or maybe Cassiopeia, the vain mother of Andromeda who was eventually tortured by Poseidon? 

No, I don't think so (hopefully...)

STEP TWO: GENDER

Pretty simple. Male, female? Transgender? Neutral? Non-binary? The list goes on, but you get it.

STEP THREE: SPECIES

Also pretty simple. I've read stories where they OC is part god and part nymph (like Zoe basically).

You can make them mortal, a demigod, a nymph, whatever.

STEP FOUR: GODLY PARENT AND THE POWERS THEY GAIN FROM THEM