RWBY OC GUIDELINES AND TIPS

(1) Personality

Starting off, personality is crucial to having a good character or OC. They define their motives and behaviour, and show every aspect of their opinions and hates.
You know the drill. Brave, intelligent, swift, sneaky, nice, funny, and strong. Most of those traits, if not all of them, will be tempting to put in your OC. And it's true, they are good and realistic basic traits. Basic traits. I tend to make a lot of characters and they end up pretty similar sometimes, honestly. A way to majorly avoid this is to use synonyms. Instead of saying brave, day your character is highly/easily motivated. If your character is sneaky, say they are cunning or skilled in espionage instead. Using synonyms that detail more on your character rather than generic and broad terms helps people and yourself understand your OC better. They aren't a tool, they are a character. If Olivia is optimistic, that's nice but maybe don't use that word. It's a fine word but if you want more detail and a better character, maybe say that Olivia is optimistic, in hopes to inspire others and keep people out of the gutters. Yeah that's what optimistic means but confirm that. Brave can mean anything, from quick-witted to reckless. Explain what you mean by the words you choose, rather than just throwing them down.
To make your OC more believable, use more detailed forms of the personality traits to describe them and explain why they are like that, if possible. I understand many people have similar personalities, but use a thesaurus in your advantage.
Also make sure the personality makes sense to the character. If Olivia had a really good past but feels she is missing out on life because of the security of her home, then say so. Make sure all the traits match a character's past.

Well, that's a chapter 1 wrap up, hope it made sense and wasn't so boring.