Sin's Advice On FanFics

Characters- Part 1

OH MAN OH MAN. AM I EXCITED ABOUT THIS ONE GUYS. *cough*Ihavelike,50charactersI'vemade*cough*

Now, I've been making OCs since like, 2014, the start of my nonexistent life. Of course... my first OCs weren't... masterpieces, and my current ones aren't either, but they're... better.

But let's get onto the advice! So, let me tell you all how I create my characters! (I'm going to do it in different chapters, this chapter is one I consider to be the most important though)

Personalities, Fears, and Quirks.
While the looks of a character are important, it's the personality of the characters that make them appear more interesting. Little quirks they have, and fears. Stuff that make the characters human, not just a blank sheet of cardboard with a face painted onto it. I normally like to have at least three good traits, and three bad traits, even if not all of them appear in the story.

Good personality traits could include: (as in good ones to use, both positive and negative)
Adventurous
Hot-headed
Humorous
Pessimistic (Always looking at the dark side of life)
Optimistic (Always looking on the bright side of life)
Sadist (Enjoying when other are hurt, doesnt' really have much empathy)
Vain
Snobby

Bad Personality traits: (Overused cliché ones)
Shy/ Timid
Kind (This isn't necessarily bad, but just don't have it as their main trait)
Forgiving (I wanna see some unforgiving angst with characters! Like, it's an opportunity to write ANGST)
Heroic (Overused as hell. Like, the OC steps in whenever they can to save anyone they can, It's not bad, but maybe not have the character save everyone they see)
Blissfully unaware (Like of romance, how they look, beautiful, make them aware. Make them vain. P l e a s e)

And those are all the ones I've come up with so far. But I'm not done with the Ouran section.

Next up. Fears. My favorite part of the character to exploit- I mean write about... yeah... write about... AnYWaYS.

Not everyone has a fear directly tied to something that happened in their past. For example, I'm absolutely terrified of needles. Just seeing them, I get nervous. I can't watch people use them on TV. I don't even have my ears pierced because I hate the thought of a needle going through my ear. (I can do shots, I just can't look and I'm terrified) but nothing happened to me to warrant my fear of needles, I just hate them.

So like, you don't have to have some extensive reason of why they have the fear, they could just... have it. Of course, torture in their backstories is always fun, but kinda overused at this point.

Mainly, what I'm trying to say here is, just give your character fears. They can be common ones such as public speaking and bugs, or strange ones such a seafood and flowers (that would be an interesting fear to have for Ouran TBH)

The last section of this is little character quirks they have.

Do they run their hand through their hair when stressed, to they bite their bottom lip when they think? All these little things your character does makes them seem more real.

Do they have little quirks when speaking? Do they drop the ending of some of some of their words, like saying words like "nothin'." 'Coz." So on so fourth.

Remember, personality is what makes the character.

Of course, I like to live by the saying: (not mine, saw it on tumblr but it's honestly pretty good)
"Your characters are like geodes. In order to see their true beauty, yo have to break them."

Also!!
If you want some good character building questions, check out characterdevelopmentforwriters on Tumblr.
Here's a link, it might not work sadly: http://characterdevelopmentforwriters.tumblr.com/ (But still try to check the blog out, it has some great character building questions!)

I hope this chapter helped you guys, I'll do more on characters, but this is what I have right now. Next chapter will hopefully be about appearances and some specific fandom stuff.

-Sin