Cenonn's How to Holofic and Writing in General

Original Characters are a bit tricky so good luck

We talked about writing Hololive characters in the previous chapter. However, we all know that there are some roles that don't fit any of the existing characters. Luckily, as fanfic writers, we can go ahead and write an "Original Character" (OC).

What's an OC? An OC is a character who is the creation of a fanfic author rather than part of the original canon cast. In other words, it's a character you created for the sake of the story.

Unlike writing about already existing Hololive characters, you don't have to worry about your OC being OOC or in-character since well... It's your own work. But I'll tell you how to make a good OC.

For starters.... I'll use my favorite word: "RESEARCH."

If you're writing about a college student, research about the life of a normal college student. If you're writing about a Japanese person, research about the values and knowledge of an average Japanese person. If you're gonna write about a musician, research what skills he should have.

Once you have that, you work on the OC's background information.

You might ask, "Why work on the OC's background information first? Aren't you supposed to decide his appearance or personality before that?"

Ya see... According to psychology, our current personalities are determined by many factors but one huge factor is our history.

If your OC has trauma, they'll be bound to have an anxious personality. If your OC is from a broken family, they'll value bonds much more. Whatever happened in your OC's past, it'll affect their current personalities.

For example, we got Haru Shinzo from Holonatural Occurrences by Phanzuru. He is a loner and a bit pessimistic because of his guilt from what he did in his past. See? His history affected his personality.

It wouldn't be too far off if an OC is defined by his history. I mean... If you wrote an unbelievably optimistic OC despite all the tragedies that happened in their past, your readers wouldn't find it realistic. But if the OC is someone who is very wary and suspicious of people instead, your readers would believe that OC.

Oh... And speaking of tragedies, don't go wild on them to your OCs. I've seen waaay too many traumatized and abused OCs that it's already a joke for me. Like I said, being unique doesn't mean being interesting. And your OCs are humans too. If by some chance that a Re:Creator stuff would happen and your OCs would come to this world, there's a huge chance that they'll kill ya for making their lives hell.

And I said it before and I'll say it again, unique =/= interesting. Don't make your OC have a really complicated background that your readers will have a headache from all the info dump. No matter how unique you think your OC was, it would be pretty pointless if you failed in execution and made them boring.

If you take a look at the anime called Oregairu, Hikigaya Hachiman is not a unique person. He's just a regular high school student. However, the execution of his character made him interesting. He didn't have to be a god or whatever hybrid just to catch the reader's attention. Like I said, unique =/= interesting.

Now that you're done with the background information, you decide on your OC's personality. Make sure that their personality is pretty believable for their history. If your OC had their hearts broken before, then make them be more wary of new relationships. If your OC has trauma (which I want you to do in moderation), make sure they have the appropriate reactions to things (like for example, being uncomfortable with being shown too much love cause they never experienced it before.)

Once you get the background information and personality, you decide on their appearance. Of course, their appearance requires attention to detail. For example, try to learn a bit about genetics and don't have a pink-haired OC to be born from two black-haired parents.