Making/Improving Ocs

[Hero_Lucina]

Hey guys, I wasn't sure where to put this but here it is.

 

So I'm an oc maker, and recently, I've taken on the task of revamping my ocs and making them better. But the thing is I have no idea how to improve them. Here are the ocs I want to Improve. These are fandom ocs so ya know. 

 

Ariel (Semi Improved)

Spoiler

Name: Ariel

Age: 14

Birthdate: 4/22

Zodiac Sign: Taurus

Gender: Female

Class: Master Ninja

Heart Seal: Diviner

Path: Revelations

Relationships:

Nohrian royal siblings (adoptive siblings)

Hoshidan royal siblings (step siblings)

Anankos (Father)

Mikoto (Mother)

Lillith (Sister)

Jakob, Silas (retainers, also close friends)

Kaze (friend, also husband depending on the timeline. )

Anthony (childhood friend, he has a crush on her. Some aus they are married in if he survives)
 

Appearance:

She is somewhat short for her age, barely hitting 5'3 and is of average weight. Ariel has dark brown hair that reaches her mid back, brown eyes and pale skin. The only hint of her draconic origins is her pointed ears, which she always thought was a birth deformity. She wears a blue shirt which is ripped at the shoulders and sleeves, a red scarf which was given to her by Scarlet, dark blue shorts and black boots.

Personality:

Upon first glance, Ariel is a kind and smart girl who loves junk food. Some call her a strong leader and a good friend, but Ariel often has to bottle up her insecurities of not feeling wanted or good enough to make sure that the army doesn't fall in shambles. Due to her bottling up emotions, Ariel can sometimes lash out at people and doesn't mean it, often begging for their forgiveness, despite only needing to say sorry. Cherishes her friends and family the most out of everything.

Backstory:

The child of Mikoto and Anankos, Ariel spent most of her early childhood on the run, but always had her best friend, Anthony trying to find her. At the age of 7, Ariel and her mother had left Valla for good, until Ariel returned nearly a decade later. When Ariel came to Hoshido, she often felt isolated due to being not from the land, and often had to pass off Anthony as an imaginary friend and not mention Valla in the slightest. The day of her kidnapping, Hinoka and Ryoma convinced their father to take their step sibling with them around the kingdom on errands. Ariel finally felt like she actually had family in her step siblings.

After her kidnapping, Ariel reverted back into her shy reclusive self, until one day she had stood up to some servants who were picking on the new butler. When asked why she did that, she just replied with a smile and became friends with said new butler, Jakob. Several months later, after getting to know the maid twins and some of the others around the castle, Ariel was introduced to Silas, who later became a second best friend. After they attempted to sneak out, and tearing the two apart, Ariel attempted to distance herself from everyone so she wouldn't be hurt again. Elise and Camilla, with a bit of help from Leo, were able to bring her to the state she's in now.

Upon having to make the choice between her two families, Ariel decided to fight against both of them, because if she can't have 2 families, why not have one giant family?  Upon entering Valla for the first time, Ariel realized what she had to do. Unite two armies and fight the true family. Later on, Ariel had learned that she had one last family member, her sister Lillith. Upon learning this, Ariel felt happy that she always had family with her.

Ariel became Queen of Valla and ushered it into an era of peace, like her father would have wanted

Supports:

Anthony (C-S, gains him a new weapon exclusive to him)

Kaze (C-S, gains Samurai class)

Jakob (C-S, gains Maid class)

Silas (C-S, gains Cavalier class)

Scarlet (C-S, gains Wyvern rider class)

Ryoma (C-A+, Gets the samurai class)

Xander (C-A+, Gets Cavalier class)

Camilla (C-A+, Gets Wyvern Rider class)

Hinoka (C-A+, Gets Sky Knight class)

Leo (C-A+, gets Dark Mage Class)

Takumi (C-A+, gets Archer class)

Elise (C-A+, gets Troubador class)

Sakura (C-A+, gets Shrine Maiden class)

Felicia (C-A+, gains Maid Class. If she is already married to Jakob she will get the Hero class)

Kagero (C-A+, gains a new item from it, Lucky Charm since they share the same base and heart classes)

Shura (C-S, gains Outlaw Class)

Orochi (C-A+, gains apothecary class)

Siegbert (C-A+, gains cavalier class)

Shiro (C-A+, gains Spear Fighter class)

Forrest (C-A+, gains Troubador class)

Kiragi (C-A+, gains archer class)

Her children

Other facts

A replacement of Corrin for fanfiction purposes, when he's in the story, Ariel is a ninja from Valla who came to Hoshido as a child and became a high ranking ninja there

Later reincarnated to the Digimon Frontier 02 Ariel. Unknown how that even happened.

Voice: (U.G. of Constructive Criticism)

   

Shade (Semi Improved)

Spoiler

   

Name: Shade

Gender: Female

Age: At least 15

Class: Summoner

Game: Heroes (the summoner)

Relations:

Alfonse and Sharena: Good friends

Fjorm: Wants to know her after the fighting's done

Her Heroes: All close friends, semi likes Reinhardt but she has no clue what this means

Berkut: S Support for now as he needs the stats

Nayoi: Classmate before she got sent to Askr

Appearance:

Shade is very similar to Ariel with having Brown hair and eyes along with blue glasses, but she attempts to be different than her. Shade has a light blue streak in her hair and is 5'0. Shade wears a White and Light Blue summoner's jacket, since her original was destroyed when fighting Veronica on Hard mode, a light blue shirt, brown pants and brown boots.

Personality:

Shade is like Ariel's various incarnations, except for one thing. Shade gets really whiny when she gets 3*'s, because not many people like 3* despite that being the rank Lon'qu, Berkut and Eliwood came at. Often writes shipping fics out of her army to relive herself from the massive amounts of stress she's under. Shade often bottles up her emotions until she cracks and breaks down into someone's arms, usually Berkut or Reinhardt.

Teams

1: Lon'qu, Raquesis/Lachesis, Young Tiki, Reinhardt

2: Seliph, Lukas, Boey, Lucius

Other members of her legion: Berkut, Soren, Matthew, Eliwood, Titania, Seth, Hector, Celica, Genny, Ike, Hector, Gordin, Oscar,Leon, Conrad and Anthony

Backstory

A girl from our world summoned to fight for Askr, she honestly had no idea what she was doing, until Tiki and Lon'qu had to explain it to her. She grew close with her heroes, even fighting alongside them with a training blade. In her world, Shade was seen as a semi outcast as that one wierd girl that means well but can't control her emotions. In the face of the flame kingdom, Shade had flashbacks to these times and almost got captured by Loki due to Shade being fooled by her illusions. With a little bit of support, Shade is back on her feet and kicking butt. 

Other
Has a crush on Reinhardt, but knows that he's out of her league. Still writes shipping fics between them.

First unit she ever summoned outside of Virion is Nino, her first 5* was Young Tiki, who was her second summon.

Takes holidays way too seriously

Despite what they've done to her, she's off battlefield friends with Laevateinn and Loki (Calls Laevateinn Val for short)

Headcanon Voice: Feferi (she's the one outlined in bright pink)

   

Ariel Akuma (Haven't Revamped her)
 

Spoiler

Name: Ariel Akuma

Gender: Female

Age: 14

Appearance: Like her previous incarnation, Ariel has brown hair and eyes and pale skin. She wears blue glasses, red shirt, blue jacket, dark blue cargo shorts with red and white sneakers and a blue bandanna on her head similar to her friend Koji.

Personality: Ariel is a kind and smart girl who is a generally good friend. She does have a bit of a problem of not being able to control her rage or filter her swearing.

Relations:

Koji, Ronku: Childhood friends

Anthony,Tommy, Sumi: Friends in general

Zoe: Penpal, later friends

 

Season: Frontier

Spirit: Water

Human: SeaDevimon

Beast: OceanGreymon

Fusion: OceanMagemon

Unify: ArchSagemon

Ancient: Posidmon

 

Other Fusions

Krakenmon: With Spirit of Darkness

Lapismon: With Spirit of Angels

Garnetmon: Spirit other not known

 

Other

The reincarnation of the FE: Fates Ariel.

 

[Dragoncat]

So...we have a Digimon OC who's the reincarnation of a Fates OC? How does that work, exactly? 

I consider myself pretty good at this, so you're welcome to PM me for advice. Also, I always recommend springhole.net, it's a gold mine for stuff like this.

OCs will develop as you use them too, write fanfics with them in them, RP with them, etc. And then you can add to the profiles. Or just keep the quirks they pick up in mind. For example, long ago I was on a Pokemon forum, and I came up with a contest. Everybody had to give a leader or high ranking person (or two) of a villain team a kid. I only got one entry, but the example I created for it is now one of my regulars. He's developed, grown, fleshed out, etc, all from writing him. The original profile said he'd rather sit in front of the TV eating cheesy poofs than chase girls, that's been expanded, and now he's addicted to cheetos and a fan of superhero movies, his favorite is Deadpool. He still doesn't do much girl chasing, but he did once and caught her and ended up with twin daughters and a son, because I wanted to ship him SO BAD.

Link to his profile on RP Repository

Hope that helps! I'll give the ones you posted a proper read later. Don't be afraid to shoot me PMs for OC help, whenever!

Edited December 2, 2017 by Dragoncat

[Hero_Lucina]

1 hour ago, Dragoncat said:

So...we have a Digimon OC who's the reincarnation of a Fates OC? How does that work, exactly? 

I consider myself pretty good at this, so you're welcome to PM me for advice. Also, I always recommend springhole.net, it's a gold mine for stuff like this.

OCs will develop as you use them too, write fanfics with them in them, RP with them, etc. And then you can add to the profiles. Or just keep the quirks they pick up in mind. For example, long ago I was on a Pokemon forum, and I came up with a contest. Everybody had to give a leader or high ranking person (or two) of a villain team a kid. I only got one entry, but the example I created for it is now one of my regulars. He's developed, grown, fleshed out, etc, all from writing him. The original profile said he'd rather sit in front of the TV eating cheesy poofs than chase girls, that's been expanded, and now he's addicted to cheetos and a fan of superhero movies, his favorite is Deadpool. He still doesn't do much girl chasing, but he did once and caught her and ended up with twin daughters and a son, because I wanted to ship him SO BAD.

Link to his profile on RP Repository

Hope that helps! I'll give the ones you posted a proper read later. Don't be afraid to shoot me PMs for OC help, whenever!

Thanks!

[Sunwoo]

You can't really force an OC to "improve", that's something you can only do after you get the gist of their character. Sometimes, they will change on you. Or sometimes, you will realize that they're not coming off in the way you actually want them to, and need to rewrite them.

OC litmus tests won't really help you out for the most part, because I find that they don't always test for the right things. There's so much heavy emphasis on "what are the origins of a character's name" or "are they exotic looking" or other trivial things that things which make a character not a great OC are relegated to the background.

To write and improve a good character, you need to understand people and accept basic facts about the state of people ... such as how not everyone will like everyone (for reasons that are not always rational), people who dislike you aren't just bad people, or that no one is right all the time. A character can be the protagonist or a very important part of a story, but they shouldn't be the sole focus of the story. They should not warp the story (and the established rules of the universe) around them, a character that is too important and is portrayed as such by the author is probably not going to be liked as much, especially in fanfiction where people want to read about their favorite characters. Not someone's OCs.

Another thing to keep in mind is whether you're writing for original fiction or a fanfiction. There's a bit more you can get away in original fiction, where all characters are OCs, but in fanfiction I feel that the less OCs the better, and unless you're specifically writing a story focusing on an OC the less attention they get the better. Fanfiction OCs should not warp existing characters' personalities around them, unless said existing character is the type to let that happen to them, and they should avoid making other characters jealous in an OOC way (if the canon character already gets jealous, that's fine). If you have all that, the best way to improving them is to make sure that their interaction with other characters feels realistic enough. If they have a character flaw that is prominent enough to be mentioned, it should actually affect them and their decisions ... and maybe how the story unfolds.

Basically, do they feel like they could be an actual human being already? If your OC is at this stage, then improvement will come naturally once you figure out what more you want to do with the character.

[Dragoncat]

Yes, Sunwoo has good points. Mary Sue/Gary Stu tests do help though. If you get a bad score then you know you have to do some improving, but I admit that they shouldn't be the be all and end all.

You have to be careful with OCs and their interactions with canon characters, especially if they're supposed to be a canon's relative. And if they're a canon's KID, for the love of all that is holy, avoid wonderbabies like the plague. Wonderbabies have all their parents' talents, powers, whatever, and may even be better at things that are important to the story than their parents. You'll also need a good grasp on genetics and realism here. Don't do what Sailor Moon did and have blond hair and blue eyes + black hair and brown eyes = pink hair and red eyes, AND the kid is super powerful and spescul. 

Merc up there is the son of TWO canons, but he's not a wonderbaby or a Gary Stu. He does eventually become Galactic boss, but only because Cyrus is old and senile by that time among other things. It wasn't handed to him on a silver platter. He doesn't just have traits from his parents (Mars and Saturn) either, he resembles both of them in some way because of genetics, but has his own traits that make him him, like the times he's in a "leave me the hell alone" mood, which is more of a Cyrus thing.

Making OC canon relatives will help you develop the canons themselves if they're not fully developed already, if you know what you're doing. Also if you make an OC kid from a canon and another OC, make the other OC someone the canon would reasonably make sweet, sweet love to. Some canons would have random one night stands, but certainly not all, and that's a major overused cliche anyway. Also goes for completely canon pairings with OC kids. Saturn and Mars work, but like...Cyrus and Dawn? Not happening. Cyrus is probably asexual anyway, but yeah.

Springhole has articles on all of those topics, seriously, @Hero_Lucina, you'd be wasting your time NOT checking out that site.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Dragoncat

[Rapier]

I'm no expert, but this is what I've noticed from the time I've spent participating in roleplays and trying to write stuff:

• Practice: Really, this might be obvious to many people, but I need to say this regardless. Writing is about how much you actually get yourself to write something. You're not going to get anywhere if you don't practice, no matter how much you read about writing / how many novels you read. Practice develops our skills and intuition for knowing what to do in certain situations, ie. how I should advance with the plot, how I should build/change a character, how I describle the environment and characters and so on. Participating in roleplaying games is a fun way of doing that, but writing fictions is just as valid.
• Feedback: You are also not going to get very far if you live inside your bubble, where your view of what is good and true are absolute and you're completely biased about your work. If you have at least one person to share it with, who comments on your work and provides you with feedback, that's going to help you surpass that bias and notice things that you couldn't before. The more people, the better.
• Read: This is the primary source for learning how to write, in my opinion. If you're not very fond of books and is just using that media to convey a story, maybe writing is not the best way for you to do that. I'm not saying you need to read constantly (which would help, but is unnecessary), I'm saying it's necessary that you enjoy doing that. Anyway, reading other authors' styles, analyzing how they progress with the story, how they describle things and people, how they build their characters and how they change along time is a very useful way to see how these things work in a novel. Imitation of your favorite styles isn't bad and many people (if not everyone) do that on the beginning. It's a start for picking what you appreciate and working your own style from there. You can also read about writing, but I don't know many sites for that. I think the site Dragoncat recommended is good, from what I've read so far.

... Says a guy who hasn't really written on ages (other than participating on casual RPs with friends sometimes) and who's daunted about writing about my own fictional universe because I think it's just going to suck due to my lack of skill. Hooray, hipocrisy!

Edited December 3, 2017 by Rapier

[Sunwoo]

Unless you know very, very well what you are doing, I would very highly suggest not making your OC in a relationship with an existing character. Or, at the very least, if it can't be helped (pairing the FE13/14 avatar, for example) don't make their relationship the entire/major focus of the story or super exemplary or other people jealous of them either.

Forget writing romances well in fanfiction, even published stories can fail at writing good romances. Making two characters fall in love with one another can be the trickiest, most aggravating thing you can ever write well. (One-sided crushes are fine, especially if it doesn't actually go anywhere.) And this especially goes back to my "you have to understand people well to write characters well" statement.

All too often love in fanfiction is written as a wish-fulfillment thing. Two characters fall in love, and they're either so desirable that others envy them, or the universe itself conspires to keep them apart and the characters prove the strength of their bond by staying together. That's nice and all, but that's not a good love story, in my opinion. What comes after the initial flame is lit? Does it change anything about how they interact with each other? Their other friends? Are they focusing too much on their love for one another and neglecting everything else? Does their relationship put a strain on something else in their lives? Does jealousy become a thing? What other ugly aspects about the characters show up? Are they actually compatible with one another?

No one really wants to show the ugly side of their character, and this goes especially so for relationships. But sometimes characters do have an ugly side, and you have to be able to let it show. Flaws aren't some token thing that you give a character and point at to say, "See? They have a flaw, they're not a Mary Sue." Flaws are aspects of a person that affect how they interact with others, the decisions they make, and yes ... they do lead to failure and shortcomings, too. When writing relationships, there is often too much of a focus on only the good parts. Or the "bad parts" are dismissed as just "that's how they show their love" or as a factor created by someone or something else, so that the fault does not lie on either of the characters.

You should never, ever create a character just for the sake of pairing them up with someone, because if you do then you've already failed. And they will never improve unless they exist for something more than just love.