How To Make Amazing OCs

Fears, Beliefs and Morals

Hello, everyone! I hope you all are doing well and are happy.

Lately, I've noticed that more new people have been reading this guide and I've been getting more and more questions about if I will be finishing this book. And the answer is yes! I'm glad to hear that this is helping you all out in your quest to make ocs!

So, without further ado, onto the focus of this chapter; fears and beliefs. Fears and beliefs are something everybody has, and your oc should too. These play hand in hand with your character's morals and standards because they drive your character, determine how they act and gives them motives. You might be thinking that it's the personalities job to do all of that, and you aren't wrong. The personality does make them to act a certain way; maybe they're a funny character and always have a pun or two on hand or maybe they're hot headed and get angry easily. Fears, beliefs and morals all have a fairly similar affect on your character to their personality, which is that it determines how they act.

FEARS

Think about it real quick- what is your fear? Got an answer? Chances are that you thought of a couple or a few depending on who you are. Fears are not limited and can come from anywhere. For example, fears can come from a traumatic event, a childhood terror, and simply the world around them. Of course, these are not the only places they can come from, but are just a few examples.

So how do you pick ones for your character? Well, personally I like to pick ones that are dynamic contrast to your character's personality. I try to pick ones that the reader or audience or whoever, will be able to see without me clearly stating "(this character) is afraid of (this.)" For clarity: let's say I have a character named Rose in a story about an office scenario. Rose is a strong character with a can-do attitude who doesn't let anything get in her way. Maybe Rose is in a business meeting when a bug lands on her and she screams. So what is she afraid of? Insects. But, hearing the scenario, I didn't have to tell you in order for you to already know that. That's exactly what I mean. I could've picked that she had a fear of heights (and maybe she does- and that's perfectly okay too and you should know that about your oc) but I picked something that would affect her storyline. The bug being in the meeting could directly affect the story. Obviously, you are allowed to talk about their fears within whatever type of story they're in, that example was more for if you knew you weren't going to. And for example, Rose, being afraid of bugs gives her character and brings her to life.

Sometimes picking a fear that would seem like an oxymoron for your character is fun. Maybe you have a superhero who is afraid of heights or maybe you have a goth who is obsessed with black but is afraid of the dark. I encourage you to explore any possible options for your character because in the end, they will be more life like.

I don't know about you, but when I make an oc, I know just about anything about them down to their cousin's friend's sister's pet hamsters name they had in 3rd grade. Okay, maybe not that excessive. The point is that your character should be like an iceberg. You should know more than your audience sees about your character. Maybe the audience only knows about your character's fear of dolls. But, you should have more than one. Really get to know your character. It gives them depth.

To find examples, I typically google lists of common fears. This will bring up pages upon pages of options for your character. Play around with it and have fun!

BELIEFS

While beliefs drive your character, they drive them in a different way than what fears do. I see it as positive and negative. To me, fears make your character not do something while beliefs would drive your characters to do something. Consider religion; it's something your character believes in that would make them go to church or perform other religious activities.

Beliefs don't have to be solely religious, there are definitely others, it just takes a bit of time and mental strain to think of some. Think about your own beliefs. Where did they come from? Are they large ones that affect your everyday life or small ones that affect only something small? Something like religion would be more of a larger scale belief, but what does a smaller scale belief look like? To me, something smaller scale would be like believing that your boss absolutely hates you, or, a more open ended trait- a character that believes any rumors they get told.

MORALS

For those of you who don't know, (because I don't know how many of you do) a moral is "concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character." Already off the bat, we can see that this will affect what they do based on their choices between good and bad. These aren't always large things, sometimes they're small. If you google "types of morals" it brings up a list of different morals for your character. They're typical and common, but that's good. Why is that good? Because once you have the "normal" established you can go ahead and start breaking this a little. For example, one common moral in society is to keep your promises. But what if your character doesn't hold this moral and has no problem blowing everyone off? You're allowed to change things around to make your character unique- and you should!

So that's it for now! I hoped that helped you guys out some! I'm so sorry for such a long time in between updates; I'm really hoping to just finish it off soon so stay tuned! And as always, if you have any questions or want any help, you can always comment and I should be able to respond asap! Have a great rest of your day!