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Post by Avalikia on Feb 27, 2013 5:06:54 GMT -5
First of all, allow me to give a little disclaimer: Just because I'm writing this does not mean that I think that I'm an expert on original characters. I know a fair amount of people like my original characters but, while I'm flattered, like any creative work they could always be better. I don't even follow all the tips I have listed here all the time. In fact, it's probably possible to make an awesome original character while not following anything I say here, just as it's possible to make a terrible one while doing everything I say. About all I'm willing to claim is that you're more likely to wind up with a good character if you do what I say, or at least know that you're doing something you need to be careful about when you don't do what I say.
Secondly, I don't like making these guides when someone is doing the thing that I'm talking about because I don't want people to think that I'm talking about them even though I'm not. Like I waited until we'd had a long period without someone skipping someone improperly before I posted the guide about it. But as there's not about to be shortage of OCs on the site any time soon, there's going to be people who going to read this guide and will be thinking to themselves, "Um, I did that with my character that she said not to do, and that, and that..." So some advice if you're in that boat: Everything I say here is based on my own opinion and experience, which is always fallible, so feel free to decide that I don't know what I'm talking about. It's always most important that you think that your character is awesome, so if you do then your character is officially awesome. Then again, if I say something here and you think that I may have a point, it may be possible to tweak your character a bit if you want to. Though if you'd have to do a complete rewrite instead, I suggest simply deciding that you'll do better next time and letting your character be.
Now that all of that is out of the way, allow me to explain the way this guide is organized. I go through, step by step, each of the things that you need to choose about your original character in the order that I suggest that you choose them. (The exact order of the first few items especially is important for making a character that doesn't seem thrown together.) So if you read it from top to bottom, choosing things as you go along, you'll have a character pretty much figured out by the end. Better yet, fill out an OC app as you go along (though I'm going through them in a different order), and you can have it ready to post when you're finished. Or if you instead just want advice on a particular aspect, you can scroll down to that part of the guide.
The Idea
First of all, you need to have an idea. It doesn't have to be a complete idea - in fact, it's actually better if it isn't. Characters that spring fully fleshed into your mind are rarely good - they're usually a stereotype, or something that has otherwise been done already. "I want a character just like _____," for example, is a terrible idea. (Especially if the blank is filled by yourself, but I'll get to that in a couple of paragraphs.) A good idea to start with is usually just a piece of a character, and usually if you want a character that's just like another it's because you like one of the pieces of that character - better to figure out which piece that is and use just that instead of making a character based on another.
Some examples: For Nina my initial idea was her superpower, similar to one someone had in an obscure sci-fi book I read many years ago. For 63 my idea was more simply to challenge myself into coming up with an actually feasible reason why there would be a talking cat in Gotham. For Margaret the idea was more her business - I liked the idea of a coffee shop in a run down part of Gotham, and it seemed like a good place to have in the city at the time. For Phoebe the idea was stolen from Ace of the animated series - the idea of the government raising a powerful metahuman so that they could have a weapon to use against the heroes they're suspicious of - though her power and especially personality are completely different. The idea for Heather was the animated version of Livewire before she got superpowers (and I don't intend for her to get any, unless you count VerMillion). The idea for Iris was simply wanting a really good psychologist working in the asylum, as opposed to all the evil and insane ones.
How do you know when you've got a really good idea? In my experience, I'll be doing something else and frequently get thoughts that it would be cool to have a character with this trait or that piece of backstory - much too frequently, in fact, since those moments number in the thousands. But I know that it's an idea to take seriously when I get the same idea over and over again, since I obviously really like it. The ideas I get if I sit down and actually try to brainstorm about it, on the other hand, tend to not be worth using since when I try to force it then out comes the boring, predictable stuff.
To Superpower, Or Not to Superpower? (Includes other odd abilities that aren't technically superpowers...)
Wait, you're asking yourself, what's this section doing here so early on in the guide? Shouldn't you be deciding some of the more basic things about your character first? No. Deciding whether or not your character will have a superpower should be done as early on in the process as possible. Because being able to do something that others cannot ought to impact everything else about them. Personality, backstory, possibly even appearance. Therefore it needs to be kept in mind the entire time that you're deciding everything else about them. Similarly, if they're not going to have a power you also want to know that while you're picking their abilities.
But first of all, should they have one? By default, the answer to this question should be no. Because if you don't have a really good reason that the character needs a superpower, then you shouldn't just give them one. That you want them to be a hero or villain is not a good enough reason - they don't need a superpower for that. In fact, if your character can be what you want them to be without a superpower or other weird abilities, do not tack one on. The two of my OCs who have a superpower both have one because it was required as a part of my initial idea for them, while the rest don't because they can be exactly what I want them to be without one.
Why am I so strict and adamant about this? Because I'm sure that like anyone you want this character that you're making to be cool and fun to play. And giving them a superpower would make them cooler and funner, right? Actually, it's been my experience that it's the opposite more often than not. Characters with superpowers aren't any cooler for it. I mean, who is cooler: Superman or Batman? (If you said Superman, get off my site!) And when it comes to it being funner, trust me when I say that the more difficult the situations your character gets into the more fun you'll be having. The more powerful a character is, the harder it becomes to find a suitable challenge for them. And when there isn't a challenge then their lives are boring and not something you want to either read or write about. That's why stories end once they get to happily ever after - the rest of what happened is too uninteresting to mention.
But if you've decided that your character needs a superpower or other strange ability, how do you go about it? First you need to decide which one, and about the only advice I can give you when it comes to choosing is that the more unique it is, the better. You've probably heard of a character before with each of the major types of abilities, but there are certain subtypes of those that don't get used very often. Take Nina's ability: micro-telekinesis. The ability to move objects with your mind is not unusual in fiction, but the twist to that old favorite of only making it work on very small things is not something that you see very often - which is why the idea stuck with me for so long after reading about it in a book many years ago.
Secondly, you need to have a very clear picture in your mind about how it works. What are their limits? What are the drawbacks? How can their ability be thwarted? You need to really think it out - like if it's a mental ability, can they use it on things they can't see, and if so is it harder? Do they have a certain limit to the amount of energy they can use? Does it still work if they're knocked unconscious? Ask yourself as many questions like these as you can think of, keeping in mind that they'll probably make enemies who want to try to defeat them by throwing creative ideas at you and you need to know whether or not what they're trying will work and have a logical reason for that. But remember that the goal here is not to come up with an ability that can't be defeated. If the ability is that strong, not only is nothing a challenge for your character (which is boring for you), but other people won't want to play with you if it's too hard for them to win.
Thirdly, independently of how the superpower works, you need to know how good your character is at controlling it unless it's an inherent ability that just works automatically in the background (like, for example, being unkillable - that just happens on its own). If it takes any degree of finesse to use, it's going to take your character quite some time to master it. Even a baby elephant needs years of practice to get the hang of their trunks, even though a trunk is a totally normal (if complex) appendage to an elephant. So either your character needs to have had the opportunity to practice, or they're going to experience the consequences of being new to it.
Fourthly, you need to consider how this ability would tie into a character's backstory, personality, etc. Were they born with it? Was it genetic? An accident? On purpose? How old were they when they got it? How did that effect their life up until now? Does it make them more confident? Does it change how they think about the world? Are they nervous about people finding out? You may not be able to answer these sorts of questions yet, but make sure that they're very much in your mind throughout the rest of the process of creating them. The more that their unique ability ties into everything else about them, the more believable the fact that they have it becomes. And, conversely, the less the fact that their different seems to have altered anything else about their lives, the more it seems like you tacked it on as an afterthought.
Gender and Age
Gender - It's always easiest to write your own gender. Then again, writing for the opposite gender is a challenge that will expand your writing skills if you give it a shot and some people find that they actually prefer it - and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Though if you do give it a shot, here's a brief list of the most common mistakes I see that you'll want to try and avoid (and I apologize in advance if I offend anyone who thinks that I'm going with stereotypes, but this is honestly just my experience): Female players tend to make their male characters think about too many things all at the same time. Guys tend to have 'modes' they go into depending on what they're doing - work mode, rest mode, food mode, etc. - and their thoughts and actions tend to stick to whichever mode they're in until they change to a new gear, so try that. Male players tend to make their female characters too one-dimensional in personality - remember that even the weakest woman isn't helpless all the time, even the toughest woman doesn't feel like she has everything under control all the time, etc. Women are complicated creatures, as you are probably well aware, so be sure to make a good attempt at making your character like that. And in all cases, never create the man or woman of your dreams - that's just asking for trouble.
Age - It's easiest to play someone around your own age, but it's often funner if you don't and we don't want a forum where all the characters are about 15-30 years old or so. The key to playing a character of a different age than your own is to accurately play the maturity level of that age (assuming that your character isn't supposed to be more or less mature than normal). If you are a teenager, you'll probably be best at playing teens and children since it's difficult for a teenager to think like and adult and therefore write for them. However, if you're one of those teenagers who gets told that you're 'mature for your age' a lot, you might give it a try - just be on your most mature behavior and try to keep your character under 30 or so since young adults tend to behave just like really responsible teenagers. Adults can tend to play adults of any age without much effort, as long as you keep in mind the maturity factor - the older someone is, the less of their time they spend on immature antics (though most people never give that up completely). Adults can play teens if you can remember back far enough to recall the perspective you had about the world when you were a teenager - remember all those stupid choices you made? Children can be harder for adults to play, as that was just so long ago to remember, but if you have access to a child of the age you want to play it's easy enough use them as a model for your character's developmental level. I strongly recommend against trying anything younger than five, however, as the physical, mental, communication, etc. limits of a child any younger than that tend to make them not fun to play for an extended period.
Costume or Not a Costume?
Most of what I could say about the decision to make your character have a costume is a repeat of what I already said about superpowers: it's not something you should give your character for no reason or to try and make them more cool and fun. One slight difference, however, is that it's easier to change your mind about this later if things happen on the forum that lead them in that direction - it's harder to explain why a character without a superpower suddenly got one when changing circumstances made it convenient to have one, but obtaining a costume is simply a matter of figuring out an outfit and a really cool name.
But since it's something so easily changed, I strongly suggest starting all OCs without a costume. There are several reasons for this, but I'll explain the most fundamental: First of all, it gives you a chance as a player to get used to this new character of yours before you plunge into them juggling around their two different lives. Secondly, I've seen a lot of OCs running around with a costumed identity even though they have a very poor grasp of why they're doing it - I almost expect them to answer that question by explaining that their player thought it would be cool. The easiest way to avoid that is to instead create a character who doesn't have a costume but has some athletic and/or mental skills (and maybe a superpower) and the right personality to want to get out there and go do good or evil. Then, if they eventually decide that they need a costume, the fact that they have one becomes more natural because you didn't force them into it. And if they never get to that point, you'll simply discover that the character you've made didn't want to go that way and that's okay too.
Occupation and Skills
Now is the time to figure out what this character does for a living, as well as to start a list of their more prominent skills. For their occupation, do not pick your current job or your dream job. (Don't make me pull out my soapbox again!) But you also don't want to pick a job you don't know a lot about, unless you're prepared to do a lot of research so that you can get the details right. There are some jobs almost anyone knows the basics of with little to no research required: Margaret the cafe owner and Heather the radio personality have two such jobs. So feel free to pick any of those for your character.
For more jobs that are more complicated, especially those requiring degrees and such, you need to know more about them. But you probably already know a lot about a few, depending on what your interests are and things that you've done. For example, I can pull off Nina the medical researcher without too much trouble because I took a lot of biology classes in high school and college (I was more interested in the animal behavior chapters than the cell chapters, but I needed to know that stuff to pass the class, so I know it). Iris the psychologist is not a problem either because I've been in therapy almost constantly since I was 12 - I've seen how therapists do their job - and also my mother is a social worker. But having a character in, for example, the legal system is not a good option for me because I don't really know very much about it and wouldn't know what I'm doing without a lot of research first. So it all depends on what you know.
At this point, you should also begin to list off their skills. Some skills will be suggested by your initial idea, there's their superpower if they have one, and also they'd have some relating to their occupation if they're good at their job. In a forum such as this, it's good to make sure you know how good (or bad) they are at fighting since they'll probably end up in one at some point. As you start working on their personality and background, you'll want to refer back to this list since they'll give you ideas for more skills, and the skills list will give you ideas for their personality and background.
Personality and Weaknesses
Many of the things that you've already decided by this point will help you figure out your character's personality - they need to be the type of person who would have that job and those skills, for example. But it's always easier to write what you know, which means that it's best to have your character's personality be based off of part of your own.
"But wait!" you protest, "Didn't you say earlier that you shouldn't make yourself into a character?" Yes, I did! Your character's personality should only be part of yours, not the whole thing. And not the same mix as yours either. It's possible for you to come up with a character with a personality that is very different from your own if you choose just the right parts of your own personality.
For example, as I promised in the section on ideas, let me explain how I managed to play Dushta. He liked to kill for fun, and I of course would never do such a thing. However, after pondering the question of destructive acts that I do find fun, I remembered that there have been a few times while I was really bored and playing SimCity that I saved the game, unleashed all sorts of disasters on my city and watched it explode in a fiery mess and then reloaded my saved game once that was out of my system. Oh, and I also enjoy destroying things like, for example, sandcastles or snow sculptures when I know that the person who made it (often myself) is done with it. And after pondering this, I realized that the key parts of my destroying-things-for-fun side are that I was bored, was destroying objects and not people, and I satisfied myself that I was doing no real harm. And Dushta was merely that part of me on steroids: he was extremely intelligent and got bored easily, saw everyone besides his friends as objects, and justified it all to himself as harmless fun since it didn't harm anyone he actually cared about. And I could play that very well because I was actually playing myself - just a tiny, tiny part of me.
Similarly, all my OCs are one or more pieces of me, and it's not that hard for me to play all the very different personalities. And that is therefore the method I recommend using for designing the personalities of your OCs because it's worked so very well for me. It takes some practice to tap into only a part of yourself, especially if it's a very small part of yourself, but it gets easier once you've done it for awhile.
One additional note on personalities: while it's possible for a person to play a character who is less intelligent than they are, it's impossible for a person to play a character as more intelligent than they are. (Though there's a bit of wiggle room if you say that your character figured out instantly something that you had to put a lot of thought into.) What this means is that you should be careful if you want to claim that your character is extremely smart - lots of people play characters who are extremely smart and, unless they decide to take a dive in whatever battle of wits you're in, your character will only be able to outsmart those characters if you, the player, can outsmart their players. And as I think that on average we're a rather intelligent bunch, that means that unless you think that you're the smartest of all of us you shouldn't bring in an OC thinking that their intelligence will impress anyone.
Once you have at least a rough sketch of their personality in mind, you should be able to look at that and your skills list to figure out what their weaknesses are. Weaknesses are often gaps in their skills or personality flaws that can come back to bite them. And if they have a superpower, there's also whatever flaws their ability has.
Background
Now is a good time to look over all of your notes on this character and bring them together into a story about how they ended up the way that they are. Every skill that they had that they weren't born with they got somehow, and all of them were probably developed in some way. Whether they're an angry person or a happy person, there's a reason they're that way. So flip through everything you've got on this character and figure out how it all happened.
Some words of advice though: A good background is like a good meal - it's a blend of things that taste good together. And tragedy is the seasoning: a character who has never had anything bad happen to them is as bland as a meal without any extra spicing of flavoring. On the other hand, a character whose history is saga of endless torment and woe isn't any better than a meal made of nothing but seasonings - it comes at you so strongly that you wish you could go back to that bland meal. A well made character has had anywhere from one to a few dramatically bad things happen to them, but not too many. You can get away with more if they've come to terms with those bad things, but you also need to be careful not to make it sound like they just shrugged off something terrible.
Another thing that's like seasoning is anything about your character that is not that common in the general population. Being extremely rich, for instance, or a twin. Having a few things like that crop up in your character's background is fine, but too many and people start questioning how one person could happen to be all of those things at the same time.
Name and Appearance
This is the last section of the guide because, honestly, what your character looks like and is called is not that important in the grand scheme of things. And yet, it can still be done either well or poorly, so I have just a few tips:
While you can get away with making a costumed name as cheesy as you like, avoid overly appropriate given names - like I didn't make Nina's last name 'Little'. That doesn't mean that you can't use a name with an appropriate meaning, just don't make it be so obvious - Phoebe Knight got her name because Phoebe means 'pure' and she's my little pure knight, but you probably didn't know that until I told you, huh? But be sure to take into account how a name is used - do not name your character Shaniqua unless they're a female African-American (or have weird parents). If possible, go so far as to figure out your character's ancestry and pick a first and last name that suits.
As for appearance, I only have three comments: Do not make your character look like you. Do not give them extremely unusual features, like purple eyes, unless you have a good reason why they have to have them. And it's a really good idea to go out and find a face claim for your character before you have your heart set on what they look like since you won't end up having to find a celebrity that matches a picture you already have in your head - that's harder.
Secondly, I don't like making these guides when someone is doing the thing that I'm talking about because I don't want people to think that I'm talking about them even though I'm not. Like I waited until we'd had a long period without someone skipping someone improperly before I posted the guide about it. But as there's not about to be shortage of OCs on the site any time soon, there's going to be people who going to read this guide and will be thinking to themselves, "Um, I did that with my character that she said not to do, and that, and that..." So some advice if you're in that boat: Everything I say here is based on my own opinion and experience, which is always fallible, so feel free to decide that I don't know what I'm talking about. It's always most important that you think that your character is awesome, so if you do then your character is officially awesome. Then again, if I say something here and you think that I may have a point, it may be possible to tweak your character a bit if you want to. Though if you'd have to do a complete rewrite instead, I suggest simply deciding that you'll do better next time and letting your character be.
Now that all of that is out of the way, allow me to explain the way this guide is organized. I go through, step by step, each of the things that you need to choose about your original character in the order that I suggest that you choose them. (The exact order of the first few items especially is important for making a character that doesn't seem thrown together.) So if you read it from top to bottom, choosing things as you go along, you'll have a character pretty much figured out by the end. Better yet, fill out an OC app as you go along (though I'm going through them in a different order), and you can have it ready to post when you're finished. Or if you instead just want advice on a particular aspect, you can scroll down to that part of the guide.
The Idea
First of all, you need to have an idea. It doesn't have to be a complete idea - in fact, it's actually better if it isn't. Characters that spring fully fleshed into your mind are rarely good - they're usually a stereotype, or something that has otherwise been done already. "I want a character just like _____," for example, is a terrible idea. (Especially if the blank is filled by yourself, but I'll get to that in a couple of paragraphs.) A good idea to start with is usually just a piece of a character, and usually if you want a character that's just like another it's because you like one of the pieces of that character - better to figure out which piece that is and use just that instead of making a character based on another.
Some examples: For Nina my initial idea was her superpower, similar to one someone had in an obscure sci-fi book I read many years ago. For 63 my idea was more simply to challenge myself into coming up with an actually feasible reason why there would be a talking cat in Gotham. For Margaret the idea was more her business - I liked the idea of a coffee shop in a run down part of Gotham, and it seemed like a good place to have in the city at the time. For Phoebe the idea was stolen from Ace of the animated series - the idea of the government raising a powerful metahuman so that they could have a weapon to use against the heroes they're suspicious of - though her power and especially personality are completely different. The idea for Heather was the animated version of Livewire before she got superpowers (and I don't intend for her to get any, unless you count VerMillion). The idea for Iris was simply wanting a really good psychologist working in the asylum, as opposed to all the evil and insane ones.
[soapbox]Notice that none of these ideas are me. Because it's not a good idea to create a character based on you. You are boring. No, no don't get offended and tell me how interesting of a person you are - I don't care who you are, you're boring in character form. You can put parts of yourself into a character - in fact, you should do that and I'll explain how as we go along - but you never want to make one that is really like you, even if you tweak a few things. Why? Because you're a real person. Real people are extremely complex, but not complex in a good way for writing fiction - you know every last detail of your life without giving it a second thought and it's tempting for you to add it all into your posts even though 99% of it is tediously boring even if you're an extremely quirky person. Real people are also somewhat lacking in extreme personality traits, which are fun to play and fun to respond to. Real people react to even extraordinary events by doing ordinary things, which is also less interesting to read and write about.
Usually when people justify doing this to me, they say they like to do it because it's easy - but writing easy things is not good for you as a writer. While writing someone who is very unlike you is hard, if you do it enough you get better at it. And then you find yourself doing stranger, funner, things that are totally unlike anything that would happen to you IRL. And you want your character to get into those more dramatic situations since it's harder to see a character who is so much like you experience something that causes them pain since you feel more sorry for them. Your ability to write also develops faster since you're challenging yourself.
Oh, and you know that FC you've always wanted to try writing for, but just don't think you can get the personality right? The more you play characters that are unlike you, the easier it is to do that sort of thing since you're more likely to have done something similar before. Before I played Poison Ivy, I played a character named Dushta. Who was really, really, really hard for me because I'm a naturally very kind-hearted person (it's actually kind of hard for me to kill Sims on purpose because I feel sorry for them, and they aren't even real...), and he was a serial killer who really enjoyed his work and wasn't insane. Took me forever to get the hang of the character, but after mastering that personality it was extremely easy for me to play Poison Ivy killing people for reasons that actually make more sense to me. In fact, I now often find it harder to come up with reasons why she doesn't kill someone even when I have to because their player won't allow it. But it's all because I played Dushta first.
And if you want to know how I figured out how to play Dushta even though he was that hard, read the section on personalities since I have lots of tips on playing characters with personality traits that are hard for you.[/soapbox]
How do you know when you've got a really good idea? In my experience, I'll be doing something else and frequently get thoughts that it would be cool to have a character with this trait or that piece of backstory - much too frequently, in fact, since those moments number in the thousands. But I know that it's an idea to take seriously when I get the same idea over and over again, since I obviously really like it. The ideas I get if I sit down and actually try to brainstorm about it, on the other hand, tend to not be worth using since when I try to force it then out comes the boring, predictable stuff.
To Superpower, Or Not to Superpower? (Includes other odd abilities that aren't technically superpowers...)
Wait, you're asking yourself, what's this section doing here so early on in the guide? Shouldn't you be deciding some of the more basic things about your character first? No. Deciding whether or not your character will have a superpower should be done as early on in the process as possible. Because being able to do something that others cannot ought to impact everything else about them. Personality, backstory, possibly even appearance. Therefore it needs to be kept in mind the entire time that you're deciding everything else about them. Similarly, if they're not going to have a power you also want to know that while you're picking their abilities.
But first of all, should they have one? By default, the answer to this question should be no. Because if you don't have a really good reason that the character needs a superpower, then you shouldn't just give them one. That you want them to be a hero or villain is not a good enough reason - they don't need a superpower for that. In fact, if your character can be what you want them to be without a superpower or other weird abilities, do not tack one on. The two of my OCs who have a superpower both have one because it was required as a part of my initial idea for them, while the rest don't because they can be exactly what I want them to be without one.
Why am I so strict and adamant about this? Because I'm sure that like anyone you want this character that you're making to be cool and fun to play. And giving them a superpower would make them cooler and funner, right? Actually, it's been my experience that it's the opposite more often than not. Characters with superpowers aren't any cooler for it. I mean, who is cooler: Superman or Batman? (If you said Superman, get off my site!) And when it comes to it being funner, trust me when I say that the more difficult the situations your character gets into the more fun you'll be having. The more powerful a character is, the harder it becomes to find a suitable challenge for them. And when there isn't a challenge then their lives are boring and not something you want to either read or write about. That's why stories end once they get to happily ever after - the rest of what happened is too uninteresting to mention.
But if you've decided that your character needs a superpower or other strange ability, how do you go about it? First you need to decide which one, and about the only advice I can give you when it comes to choosing is that the more unique it is, the better. You've probably heard of a character before with each of the major types of abilities, but there are certain subtypes of those that don't get used very often. Take Nina's ability: micro-telekinesis. The ability to move objects with your mind is not unusual in fiction, but the twist to that old favorite of only making it work on very small things is not something that you see very often - which is why the idea stuck with me for so long after reading about it in a book many years ago.
Secondly, you need to have a very clear picture in your mind about how it works. What are their limits? What are the drawbacks? How can their ability be thwarted? You need to really think it out - like if it's a mental ability, can they use it on things they can't see, and if so is it harder? Do they have a certain limit to the amount of energy they can use? Does it still work if they're knocked unconscious? Ask yourself as many questions like these as you can think of, keeping in mind that they'll probably make enemies who want to try to defeat them by throwing creative ideas at you and you need to know whether or not what they're trying will work and have a logical reason for that. But remember that the goal here is not to come up with an ability that can't be defeated. If the ability is that strong, not only is nothing a challenge for your character (which is boring for you), but other people won't want to play with you if it's too hard for them to win.
Thirdly, independently of how the superpower works, you need to know how good your character is at controlling it unless it's an inherent ability that just works automatically in the background (like, for example, being unkillable - that just happens on its own). If it takes any degree of finesse to use, it's going to take your character quite some time to master it. Even a baby elephant needs years of practice to get the hang of their trunks, even though a trunk is a totally normal (if complex) appendage to an elephant. So either your character needs to have had the opportunity to practice, or they're going to experience the consequences of being new to it.
Fourthly, you need to consider how this ability would tie into a character's backstory, personality, etc. Were they born with it? Was it genetic? An accident? On purpose? How old were they when they got it? How did that effect their life up until now? Does it make them more confident? Does it change how they think about the world? Are they nervous about people finding out? You may not be able to answer these sorts of questions yet, but make sure that they're very much in your mind throughout the rest of the process of creating them. The more that their unique ability ties into everything else about them, the more believable the fact that they have it becomes. And, conversely, the less the fact that their different seems to have altered anything else about their lives, the more it seems like you tacked it on as an afterthought.
Gender and Age
Gender - It's always easiest to write your own gender. Then again, writing for the opposite gender is a challenge that will expand your writing skills if you give it a shot and some people find that they actually prefer it - and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Though if you do give it a shot, here's a brief list of the most common mistakes I see that you'll want to try and avoid (and I apologize in advance if I offend anyone who thinks that I'm going with stereotypes, but this is honestly just my experience): Female players tend to make their male characters think about too many things all at the same time. Guys tend to have 'modes' they go into depending on what they're doing - work mode, rest mode, food mode, etc. - and their thoughts and actions tend to stick to whichever mode they're in until they change to a new gear, so try that. Male players tend to make their female characters too one-dimensional in personality - remember that even the weakest woman isn't helpless all the time, even the toughest woman doesn't feel like she has everything under control all the time, etc. Women are complicated creatures, as you are probably well aware, so be sure to make a good attempt at making your character like that. And in all cases, never create the man or woman of your dreams - that's just asking for trouble.
Age - It's easiest to play someone around your own age, but it's often funner if you don't and we don't want a forum where all the characters are about 15-30 years old or so. The key to playing a character of a different age than your own is to accurately play the maturity level of that age (assuming that your character isn't supposed to be more or less mature than normal). If you are a teenager, you'll probably be best at playing teens and children since it's difficult for a teenager to think like and adult and therefore write for them. However, if you're one of those teenagers who gets told that you're 'mature for your age' a lot, you might give it a try - just be on your most mature behavior and try to keep your character under 30 or so since young adults tend to behave just like really responsible teenagers. Adults can tend to play adults of any age without much effort, as long as you keep in mind the maturity factor - the older someone is, the less of their time they spend on immature antics (though most people never give that up completely). Adults can play teens if you can remember back far enough to recall the perspective you had about the world when you were a teenager - remember all those stupid choices you made? Children can be harder for adults to play, as that was just so long ago to remember, but if you have access to a child of the age you want to play it's easy enough use them as a model for your character's developmental level. I strongly recommend against trying anything younger than five, however, as the physical, mental, communication, etc. limits of a child any younger than that tend to make them not fun to play for an extended period.
Costume or Not a Costume?
Most of what I could say about the decision to make your character have a costume is a repeat of what I already said about superpowers: it's not something you should give your character for no reason or to try and make them more cool and fun. One slight difference, however, is that it's easier to change your mind about this later if things happen on the forum that lead them in that direction - it's harder to explain why a character without a superpower suddenly got one when changing circumstances made it convenient to have one, but obtaining a costume is simply a matter of figuring out an outfit and a really cool name.
But since it's something so easily changed, I strongly suggest starting all OCs without a costume. There are several reasons for this, but I'll explain the most fundamental: First of all, it gives you a chance as a player to get used to this new character of yours before you plunge into them juggling around their two different lives. Secondly, I've seen a lot of OCs running around with a costumed identity even though they have a very poor grasp of why they're doing it - I almost expect them to answer that question by explaining that their player thought it would be cool. The easiest way to avoid that is to instead create a character who doesn't have a costume but has some athletic and/or mental skills (and maybe a superpower) and the right personality to want to get out there and go do good or evil. Then, if they eventually decide that they need a costume, the fact that they have one becomes more natural because you didn't force them into it. And if they never get to that point, you'll simply discover that the character you've made didn't want to go that way and that's okay too.
Occupation and Skills
Now is the time to figure out what this character does for a living, as well as to start a list of their more prominent skills. For their occupation, do not pick your current job or your dream job. (Don't make me pull out my soapbox again!) But you also don't want to pick a job you don't know a lot about, unless you're prepared to do a lot of research so that you can get the details right. There are some jobs almost anyone knows the basics of with little to no research required: Margaret the cafe owner and Heather the radio personality have two such jobs. So feel free to pick any of those for your character.
For more jobs that are more complicated, especially those requiring degrees and such, you need to know more about them. But you probably already know a lot about a few, depending on what your interests are and things that you've done. For example, I can pull off Nina the medical researcher without too much trouble because I took a lot of biology classes in high school and college (I was more interested in the animal behavior chapters than the cell chapters, but I needed to know that stuff to pass the class, so I know it). Iris the psychologist is not a problem either because I've been in therapy almost constantly since I was 12 - I've seen how therapists do their job - and also my mother is a social worker. But having a character in, for example, the legal system is not a good option for me because I don't really know very much about it and wouldn't know what I'm doing without a lot of research first. So it all depends on what you know.
At this point, you should also begin to list off their skills. Some skills will be suggested by your initial idea, there's their superpower if they have one, and also they'd have some relating to their occupation if they're good at their job. In a forum such as this, it's good to make sure you know how good (or bad) they are at fighting since they'll probably end up in one at some point. As you start working on their personality and background, you'll want to refer back to this list since they'll give you ideas for more skills, and the skills list will give you ideas for their personality and background.
Personality and Weaknesses
Many of the things that you've already decided by this point will help you figure out your character's personality - they need to be the type of person who would have that job and those skills, for example. But it's always easier to write what you know, which means that it's best to have your character's personality be based off of part of your own.
"But wait!" you protest, "Didn't you say earlier that you shouldn't make yourself into a character?" Yes, I did! Your character's personality should only be part of yours, not the whole thing. And not the same mix as yours either. It's possible for you to come up with a character with a personality that is very different from your own if you choose just the right parts of your own personality.
For example, as I promised in the section on ideas, let me explain how I managed to play Dushta. He liked to kill for fun, and I of course would never do such a thing. However, after pondering the question of destructive acts that I do find fun, I remembered that there have been a few times while I was really bored and playing SimCity that I saved the game, unleashed all sorts of disasters on my city and watched it explode in a fiery mess and then reloaded my saved game once that was out of my system. Oh, and I also enjoy destroying things like, for example, sandcastles or snow sculptures when I know that the person who made it (often myself) is done with it. And after pondering this, I realized that the key parts of my destroying-things-for-fun side are that I was bored, was destroying objects and not people, and I satisfied myself that I was doing no real harm. And Dushta was merely that part of me on steroids: he was extremely intelligent and got bored easily, saw everyone besides his friends as objects, and justified it all to himself as harmless fun since it didn't harm anyone he actually cared about. And I could play that very well because I was actually playing myself - just a tiny, tiny part of me.
Similarly, all my OCs are one or more pieces of me, and it's not that hard for me to play all the very different personalities. And that is therefore the method I recommend using for designing the personalities of your OCs because it's worked so very well for me. It takes some practice to tap into only a part of yourself, especially if it's a very small part of yourself, but it gets easier once you've done it for awhile.
One additional note on personalities: while it's possible for a person to play a character who is less intelligent than they are, it's impossible for a person to play a character as more intelligent than they are. (Though there's a bit of wiggle room if you say that your character figured out instantly something that you had to put a lot of thought into.) What this means is that you should be careful if you want to claim that your character is extremely smart - lots of people play characters who are extremely smart and, unless they decide to take a dive in whatever battle of wits you're in, your character will only be able to outsmart those characters if you, the player, can outsmart their players. And as I think that on average we're a rather intelligent bunch, that means that unless you think that you're the smartest of all of us you shouldn't bring in an OC thinking that their intelligence will impress anyone.
Once you have at least a rough sketch of their personality in mind, you should be able to look at that and your skills list to figure out what their weaknesses are. Weaknesses are often gaps in their skills or personality flaws that can come back to bite them. And if they have a superpower, there's also whatever flaws their ability has.
Background
Now is a good time to look over all of your notes on this character and bring them together into a story about how they ended up the way that they are. Every skill that they had that they weren't born with they got somehow, and all of them were probably developed in some way. Whether they're an angry person or a happy person, there's a reason they're that way. So flip through everything you've got on this character and figure out how it all happened.
Some words of advice though: A good background is like a good meal - it's a blend of things that taste good together. And tragedy is the seasoning: a character who has never had anything bad happen to them is as bland as a meal without any extra spicing of flavoring. On the other hand, a character whose history is saga of endless torment and woe isn't any better than a meal made of nothing but seasonings - it comes at you so strongly that you wish you could go back to that bland meal. A well made character has had anywhere from one to a few dramatically bad things happen to them, but not too many. You can get away with more if they've come to terms with those bad things, but you also need to be careful not to make it sound like they just shrugged off something terrible.
Another thing that's like seasoning is anything about your character that is not that common in the general population. Being extremely rich, for instance, or a twin. Having a few things like that crop up in your character's background is fine, but too many and people start questioning how one person could happen to be all of those things at the same time.
Name and Appearance
This is the last section of the guide because, honestly, what your character looks like and is called is not that important in the grand scheme of things. And yet, it can still be done either well or poorly, so I have just a few tips:
While you can get away with making a costumed name as cheesy as you like, avoid overly appropriate given names - like I didn't make Nina's last name 'Little'. That doesn't mean that you can't use a name with an appropriate meaning, just don't make it be so obvious - Phoebe Knight got her name because Phoebe means 'pure' and she's my little pure knight, but you probably didn't know that until I told you, huh? But be sure to take into account how a name is used - do not name your character Shaniqua unless they're a female African-American (or have weird parents). If possible, go so far as to figure out your character's ancestry and pick a first and last name that suits.
As for appearance, I only have three comments: Do not make your character look like you. Do not give them extremely unusual features, like purple eyes, unless you have a good reason why they have to have them. And it's a really good idea to go out and find a face claim for your character before you have your heart set on what they look like since you won't end up having to find a celebrity that matches a picture you already have in your head - that's harder.
