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Felizias — Creating a balanced character
Published: 2012-12-18 17:49:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 19596; Favourites: 452; Downloads: 58
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Description What is a well balanced character?
A well balanced charater is one you would believe is really existing. Creating a character like this may seem not easy at all and sometimes even impossible but it is all about relating information about your character, a bit knowledge of human nature and psychology with each other.
If you manage to master this combination, you will be able to create characters that can come to life on their own.
Sounds good  but pretty complex, right? Let me show you.

First of all: A character should always be the result of many factors being combined as I mentioned above.
-> Never say the creation progress is done when you miss out e.g. on important events in their backstory or did not mention their family/parents!

You can start out with different aspects and then build up the remaining parts very often but to keep some structure let's start with your characters backstory.


What happens to you in your life forms your personality and character.
Ever seen one of those documentaries on war? Soldiers often say that the war changed them and their countries. And they are right!

Big events change you a lot. By big events I am speaking of something like death or birth of a family member and even getting a pet or witnessing a crime counts to that.

Having a younger sibling often causes you to grow responsiable or/and become more independent than your younger sibling. A pet can cause the same if you spend time with it and maybe even take part in raising it.

Did you notice „often" and „can" here?
It's because it can cause a different change too.
Let's say your family tends to be short-tempered and you „caught that gene" too. You are more likely to hate your sibling/pet, grow to be a loner or even become violent or a criminal then.
This can happen when you are in need of attention too.

Want an example?

Let's try to imagine a girl whose parents tend to become impatient and she recently got a little sister.
She has been an only child for 10 years before and her parents spend a lot of their free time with her. But now that her baby sister is born they spend less time with her.
It makes her sad and finaly become angry and hate her sister because she has to share her parents attention and her old toys etc. with her.
In her anger she starts to throw her toys at her parents as they try to give those to her baby sister.
All in one she becomes aggressive.
And she even reflects that on other children she meets. Growing up she then turns her back at her family and become a trouble maker with friends feeling the same way because something similar happend to them.
But what if her family tended to be more patient and caring? Well, you get the idea, right?

Remember that your personality can still change due to big events no matter your age!


The example displayed above shows how your environment forms you as well.
Habbits or charcter traits that are normal in one country are viewed as pretty weird in an other.

This starts with the people raising you because they contribute their own understanding of your environment into education. After that it's your teachers and then your friends or complete strangers depending on how strong their impact is.

Also take into concern if your character is put under pressure or not and if s/he can manage, will break due to it, takes pride in it etc.

How much your environment influents you when you are no child anymore depends on what I wrote about tendencies at the beginning.


I guess you ache for finaly coming up with a personality?

Remembering everything I mentioned above you also have to think about balancing your character.

Your character is a puzzle made off small pieces that have to fit together to work out as an image.

Imagine two pieces of a puzzle that fit together. One has a small addition to fit into the others hole.
The additions of your characters are strenghts, the holes are weaknesses.
To get your character to gain his composure (or imagine like in the example) you have to balance strenghts and weaknesses 1:1!


Maybe your character is a smart-ass but total weakling? Or loved by everyone but doubts him/herself?

If you are having trouble figuring out which strenghts and weaknesses fit to your character (even regarding everything else) you should start analysing and questioning yourself or people you know very well.

A sample of my fan OC Amaya:

She is smart and a good fighter but terrified even thinking about losing or having some dear to her. Due to this she would start doubting herself over and over again too.

It is important to stay in a logical state when you create characters. Do not let your personal preferences decide! If you are unsure maybe ask someone to judge your character.


When you have environment, backstory and personality all thought up, you can continue with forming your characters everyday life.

Maybe they are shy and spend their time reading books or searching the internet?
An extroverted person would more likely hang out with his/her friends.

Try to imagine hobbies they may like and take everything in concern including if they have enough money and time for this and if there is even the possiblity to do this hobby where they live.
E.g. a poor child wouldn't be very likely to do snowboarding in a desert!

There are also different reasons to do a hobby; not only personality but strenghts and weaknesses too.
Some do a hobby because they display their strenghts, others may do it because someone they like does it too or they want to fight their weaknesses.

Furthermore, you have to think about your characters age. Would s/he go to school or work or just sit at home?

Think about the most-likely possiblities for a person at her/his age then start taking other things like family and money into concern.

Everything is related but you can still play around a bit as long as you stay logical and keep the balance~
Related content
Comments: 37

PhoenixFury17 [2018-11-30 08:21:24 +0000 UTC]

Interesting. I have an OC by the name of Carmen. She's very upbeat, outgoing and just a fun person to be around. She loves sports and just being active in general. That's the side people see. She also has slight depression issues, not as far as self-harming. Carmen will take the things people say very seriously. Like if they make fun of her and call her names, she will still smile. Once she's away from people, she will start to frown and believe that everything they say is true.

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piyoh99 [2013-08-07 11:59:22 +0000 UTC]

This little thing really gets me every time. My original universe is one of weirdness and completely lacks logic. But I tend to have a very hard time with making a human OC. Or in this case a certain robot girl named Piwi. I'm planning on making her tomboyish. But I can't seem to get what her personality should be like. I can see her very rowdy and impatient. But I can't tell what else to do... Any tips?

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Felizias In reply to piyoh99 [2013-08-07 16:45:00 +0000 UTC]

Rowdy, tomboyish and impatient sounds like a reasonable combination but it might be interesting to know how she became like this. Maybe she has spent a lot of time around guys when she was a little girl and wund up adopting their behaviour?

You could try to break the traits of her current personality down in positive, negative and more neutral traits using this meme *click me* . (You can just update this with your own ideas.)
Tomboyish is pretty neutral but rowdiness and impatience are both negative so I'd recommend adding 2 positive traits to balance her.
I recommend filling out this meme and maybe you will get some ideas on your way.
Just remember to add reasonable traits you can explain regarding your OC. E.g. making her charming does not sound realy reasonable so you'd have to find a very good explaination if you want to use it. (Piwi could be strong, dominant, confident, ...)

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piyoh99 In reply to Felizias [2013-08-08 04:59:33 +0000 UTC]

Memes huh. I had quite a few memes I got. I might just do that to get a little adjusted to Piwi to give her a fresh personality. And those final 3 traits were actually very clear to her personality. Piwi's not entirely charming. In fact she can't really stand mushy romance.

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Felizias In reply to piyoh99 [2013-08-08 15:35:46 +0000 UTC]

I think some of those realy help a lot.

Being charming and being one of the more romantic kind are too different things...

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piyoh99 In reply to Felizias [2013-08-08 04:41:12 +0000 UTC]

I was actually really looking at that same perspective. Like I once said it was a draft and is still a wip. But thanks for the tips.

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Felizias In reply to piyoh99 [2013-08-08 15:37:33 +0000 UTC]

You can always alter an OCs personality.
Huge events can change you completly and your personality would change every 7 years anyway.
I simply recommend to create a personality on reasons to make them more believable.

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piyoh99 In reply to Felizias [2013-08-08 17:40:08 +0000 UTC]

I always alter my OCs for the better. In fact.

(I always seem to say "In fact" a lot)

My OC was very underdeveloped at first when I first came here. But after a while it changed a lot during the years. If the personality I picked for Piwi doesn't feel right I'll just pick another that will suit her origin right.

Thanks for the tips! ^^

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Faraleigh [2012-12-29 20:53:02 +0000 UTC]

I really appreciate you tackling the issue of psychology in character creation. It’s a vital consideration to creating a realistic character. The only problem is that most people don’t really understand psychology and thus aren’t able to make proper cause-and-effect relationships. For example, in your first example with the girl who gets the new sister, impatience has nothing to do with her becoming jealous and eventually aggressive. The simple fact that she was an only child for 10 years and suddenly gets all that attention taken away from her by a baby is enough to cause all of that. She would try to regain attention through tantrums that could eventually evolve into aggression, especially depending on how the parents react to her new behavior. You’ve definitely got the right idea, though! I also really appreciate that you don’t put anything in definite terms. Situations can cause certain reactions. They don’t necessarily cause specific reactions though some things have a far greater chance of doing so than others (such as conditioning). I also really appreciate you covering balance. Though that’s what the title says this guide’s about, you spend less time on that than the psychology aspect. All characters need flaws to fight against to be realistic. No human being is perfect and thus no character should be either. One last thing I’d like to mention (hopefully unnecessarily). In your quick description of Amaya, you mention she doubts herself because she’s afraid of losing people close to her. Doubt stems from low self-esteem or low self-confidence. That may be the root cause of her fear of losing people. You may have already dug that deep into her psychology but I thought I’d mention it regardless. Again, great guide! I’m not sure I’ll ever feel up to taking on psychology in one of my own due to its complexity.

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Felizias In reply to Faraleigh [2012-12-29 21:09:13 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for your comment.

Learning to relate things (like it's neccessary for psychohogy) realy seems to be a great issue a lot of people have, yeah...
I can not teach them about all relations in just one tutorial (or a few hundreds) though due to the complexity as you stated.

You are right about this example. Her impatience just adds to this and causes the issue to become even worse.
I thought I should put an extreme situation to make it easier to understand though.

I tried to cover flaws with the talking about my puzzle sample. The "negative" spots can be e.g. personality traits as well as missing skills.

About Ama-chan I have to say that I went a bit...nearly overboard with her personality. She became very complex as time went and her past, family situation and a trauma all caused her to get a low self-confidence.
This has started to change recently though as she is around her boyfriend a lot and he admires her just the way she is.
She also found other support so she has started to become more self-confident.

It's a "pain in the ass", yeah.

Well, about the flaws again... I know you wrote a tutorial on the "Nessarity of flaws" so maybe I can mention your tutorial in the description if anyone wants to get more into this theme?

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Faraleigh In reply to Felizias [2012-12-29 21:30:07 +0000 UTC]

dA keeps eating my line-breaks! So, many apologies for the giant doomful blocks of text...

I think anyone serious about writing should study logic and psychology. Understanding even the basics will improve writing by multiples. I've seen a drastic improvement in my own work. But alas, it is all so complex it probably couldn't be properly portrayed in guides on here...

Even if the subject of balance and the inclusion of flaws didn't get as much time as psychology, I'm still glad you brought it up! If nothing else, it plants a seed in your readers. And I don't mind at all if you want to link to my flaws guide (assuming you feel it's worthy enough for such treatment).

It sounds like you've gone on quite the journey with Ama-chan. I hope you've enjoyed it and I'm happy things are looking up for her. Self-confidence is a hard thing to recover (I know too well).

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Felizias In reply to Faraleigh [2012-12-29 21:43:53 +0000 UTC]

No problem.

It's a bit like drawing. You can not expect to be a genious after reading one tutorial on it.

This is all I can hope for.
I added it.

I am still on that journey with her.
It is indeed very hard, yeah... And I'd even say impossible without any support.

But as I am currently working on a comic so there is a new journey awaiting me. I'm realy looking forward to this.

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Faraleigh In reply to Felizias [2012-12-29 22:17:09 +0000 UTC]

Fantastic! I hope the comic turns out well and continues to be enjoyable.

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Felizias In reply to Faraleigh [2012-12-29 22:44:36 +0000 UTC]

Thanks. I hope so too.

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AJInu-Okami [2012-12-23 20:50:43 +0000 UTC]

Really thought out and helpful
Thanks to this, I'm rewriting my OCs' profiles ^^

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Felizias In reply to AJInu-Okami [2012-12-23 21:09:09 +0000 UTC]

Thank you~
I'm glad it's helpfull.

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AJInu-Okami In reply to Felizias [2012-12-23 21:12:38 +0000 UTC]

Yw
Indeed it is.

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manaista [2012-12-23 03:40:16 +0000 UTC]

great reference material

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Felizias In reply to manaista [2012-12-23 08:03:41 +0000 UTC]

Thanks~

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manaista In reply to Felizias [2012-12-23 16:12:54 +0000 UTC]

no problem
I gotta a lot of characters/monsters, I'm just want to really bring out their personalities.

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Felizias In reply to manaista [2012-12-23 16:14:06 +0000 UTC]

So you have their designs only?

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manaista In reply to Felizias [2012-12-23 16:44:26 +0000 UTC]

I guess so.
If you did look at some of them, it is basically just a picture and list of their abilities then a small bulleted section for their personality and their back story.

I think for the giant monster thing, it's not always necessary to give a complex personality and story line. I just think it really would help separate them from the pack if I can execute it properly. Where I have a nice eye catching picture, and then a story to add some depth.

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Felizias In reply to manaista [2012-12-23 16:48:48 +0000 UTC]

Hm, yeah, a real personality is only neccessary when you plan on relying on the same character more than once.
So if you don't plan on explaining anything or showing their thoughts etc, you don't need to think much about their personality.

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manaista In reply to Felizias [2012-12-23 17:04:38 +0000 UTC]

Ahhh... that's a really good point.
Personality is best saved for the main and recurring characters.
There's plenty of main/recurring characters I want to use, but I also want to do a lot new concepts.
I'll keep your tutorial in mind when I feel it is essential for a monster to have a complex personality.
Thank you very much for the feedback.

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Felizias In reply to manaista [2012-12-23 17:08:20 +0000 UTC]

That's about how I'm going with my recent project too.

No problem.

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iamsobizarre [2012-12-19 10:51:34 +0000 UTC]

This is great! Thanks

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Felizias In reply to iamsobizarre [2012-12-19 17:59:05 +0000 UTC]

I'm glad you like it.

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crazy-aika [2012-12-19 04:50:40 +0000 UTC]

Nice tutorial, i can say if someone have told me this when i started writing it would have better stories xDu

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Felizias In reply to crazy-aika [2012-12-19 06:16:23 +0000 UTC]

Thanks~

We always know how to make it better when it's too late, huh?

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crazy-aika In reply to Felizias [2012-12-19 06:56:08 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, is a kind of sad story xD

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DiddyJakal [2012-12-19 01:29:43 +0000 UTC]

Definitely the one essential guide to writing a good character. Good work.

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Felizias In reply to DiddyJakal [2012-12-19 06:15:48 +0000 UTC]

Thanks~

I'm glad you think it's helpfull.

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DarkDevilZaria [2012-12-19 00:22:08 +0000 UTC]

You did a good job with this but because I took a personality class I have some tidbits of wisdom about Personality and age to throw at you XD (oh look Shimmack stuff your favourite XD)
First off look at the big 5 or like the 5 personality traits considered most in Personality Psych...these would be Openness, Concientiousness, Extraversion, Neroticism and Agreeableness
As we get older...we tend to get more concientious, less extraverted...HOWEVER, these changes are small and happen at about the same rate for everyone
Also consider the Halo Bias...this is how much you have an ego basically...Positive bias means you see yourself much better than other's see you and negative (like mine) means you see yourself worse than others see you...that will affect your actions as well ...
Then look at the 7 smarts Kinesthetic, Self, Social, Visual Spatial, Musical, Linguistic, and Mathematical...most people are strong in 2-3 or strong in 1 and average at most of the rest or >.>...point = can't be good at all of them...no one is...
Also consider culture's effect here is some additional info Born in Japan/collectivistic culture and you look out for the good of society and the collective whole...you shame your parents when you do something wrong etc... Individualistic culture such as USA/Canada = do stuff for yourself...what I did to win instead of what the team did together that affects personality, but what they did find was that personality varies much more within one country/group than it does through different societies :3 Further environment doesn't affect things that much in some cases and in others it has huge effect >.>...the effect of environment is different depending on the individual trait you are looking at so >.>...things are super tricky to analyze sometimes :S and it's even been said for situations that maybe your personality affects your decisions which affect the situations you find yourself in so even for that >.>...hard to tell things sometimes
Also men with high testostorone levels are more likely to beat or cheat on their wives, high openess to experience = more chance a marriage will fail...excitement seeking may lead to pre-mature death though cause isn't clear on that one...people who do more spooning in high school are also more likely to die early and again cause isn't clear, personality is a fairly stable characteristic and chances are it won't change much at all throught the lifetime but values and life satisfaction are not as stable and those can change :3
and I don't even know what i didn't tell you anymore so I'll stop there >.>...if any of that is helpful to you :3
Nice job on the design tutorial though

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Felizias In reply to DarkDevilZaria [2012-12-19 06:22:39 +0000 UTC]

Well, it's kinda like what I wrote. Your personality keeps changing as you grow up. So of course you would act different than an adult when you are a child.

I did mention culture differences. (E.g. Japan = more
collective thinking than in Germany)

I dunno why I should put the stuff about testostorone here though. Since that would depend on your family too, wouldn't it?

"Won't change much" applies to a regular going life. I was talking about "big events" that can cause big changes here.
(Like my own personality changed when I left my second school. )

Thanks? (Lol, the design?!)

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DarkDevilZaria In reply to Felizias [2012-12-19 16:25:23 +0000 UTC]

I was just giving you a bunch of background and suggestions from my school notes in case they helped XD it's up to you if you wanted to put them/expand on things you already have or not

You're welcome (what's funny about that? )

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Felizias In reply to DarkDevilZaria [2012-12-19 18:44:18 +0000 UTC]

Alright...

I didn't do much?!

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DarkDevilZaria In reply to Felizias [2012-12-20 00:02:52 +0000 UTC]

...okay...

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