OCs: The Difference Between Sucking and Rocking · 1:38am Dec 9th, 2014
"Scootareader," I hear you saying, "your OCs all suck. Why is that?"
Well, before I block and report you, I'll tell you what my method on OC creation is! Throughout this blog, I will explain where my inspiration to create OCs comes from, why my only recurring OCs are jokes, and why most stories are, to me, extremely disinteresting.
The first OC I ever created is Enigma.
Such edge.
Now, we find the first place where I diverge from the norm in my OC creation: I didn't make Enigma before I made her story.
Enigma's story, if you're wondering, is my first story. I created her story shortly after I created my account, as the only reason I created an account on this site initially was to write a story. I put a lot of thought and planning into what story I wanted to tell, which ultimately ended up having nothing to do with the end product. Why? Because my story wasn't about how great my OC was. It was about the story I wanted to tell, nothing more.
My entire thought process that sparked my thirst for writing was, "I want to write a story about a pony that no one remembers." This was brought on by the incessant positive feelings exhibited by the show, leading me to explore the darker side of my creativity, which I'd never had a chance to do prior to this prompt.
The exact moment that I conceived Enigma, I was writing her features down on electronic paper. I didn't know her coat was going to be lavender, or that her hair was going to be an extremely curly cyan and would often cover her eyes, or that she would be an earth pony. I simply wrote what felt interesting, an OC that was necessary to tell the story.
I wrote her compatriot, Cottontooth, similarly. I wrote a few miscellaneous details in the first chapter, then, about three or four chapters in, realized while I was writing, "Hey, I could use these details!" My story altered permanently the moment I came to that realization because I wasn't even intending to include a second OC when I reached the end of chapter 2. He just seemed like the best way to tell the story, so I wrote him. BAM. I thought this was a one-OC story, but the second OC just seemed to make sense.
No chapter outlines were written; no OCs were planned. My entire creative thought process was, "If I'm not surprised by what I'm writing, the reader won't be, either. Might as well make this interesting for both of us."
You know what the worst idea is when it comes to making a story?
When this:
Comes before this:
Ten times out of ten, making a story that focuses on an OC makes the story the worse for wear. If the OC is entirely necessary to tell the story, you think about them and implement them at a later time--like when the story finds it necessary to continue the story.
Let's make this clear: The thought process of, "I want to make a story of an OC that shits fire and raises the Sun and the Moon," is just a poor excuse to shove your horrible OC to where others will see it in the light of day. No one wants to read about fire-shitting all-powerful OCs in the sense of "this is a well-done OC." They want to read about them in the sense of "holy shit this author actually thinks this OC is worth something. Let's laugh and ridicule his poorly written thousand-word blowjob."
The crucial point that separates a poorly conceived story and a well-conceived story is invariably the reasons behind creating the story. The easiest test I can do to figure out if the story is good is to ask myself, "Could this story work without the OC?" Or, in other words, "Is the OC the only reason why this story exists?"
If the OC themselves is the make or break point, the story is weak. A competent author can overlay this simple truth with superior storytelling, but when you're writing a laundry list of what you want your character to do by the end, your readers are going to read that laundry list as you slowly and ponderously check off those little boxes and realize that nothing would ever change the story in the first place because there is no story and it's just a long-winded worship session of how your great creativity can spawn something so wonderful.
It pays to mention that even a good OC is still nothing but an OC. Let's say you make an amazing, wonderful OC. Yeah, so what? Even if you stick them in a story, that doesn't make them inherently special. No one is coming here to read an OC's bio. They're coming here to read stories. If the OC is complete without the story, you're doing it wrong.
So, how do you make your OCs not suck? Simple: Don't make OCs. Make stories.
I don't see my OCs as much more than storytelling tools. They are there to emphasize what I want to communicate to my readers, nothing more. I don't want them to exist in my next story because I'm not trying to tell the same story I already told. Shit, even my parody series in which I intentionally make fun of the trope is difficult to maintain shitty OC consistency with for me.
The first story focuses on Darkness Awesome, the original shitty alicorn OC I created for the series.
The second story focuses on Shadow Incredible, his son that I made black and red due to a considerable amount of negative feedback from Darkness Awesome not being red enough.
My third story was a picture made specifically to piss off passersby by having a shitty alicorn OC (Shadow Incredible) obviously in a thing with Luna. Oddly enough, the story focuses less on Shadow Incredible and more on his son, Scootareader (yes, a self-insert, in my incessant attempts to get my readers to cringe even more).
The final chapter I created in this series was a reboot of the original, so I re-imagined Darkness Awesome to cause even more cringe and induce even more rage in his cover picture. Even the OC creation in this series was intended to cause readers to become irrationally pissed off.
Okay, so enough self-induced fellatio about how great my own OCs are; who else has made great OCs?
Big Macintosh does not suffer from auditory or visual hallucinations. He has them, but he doesn't suffer from them. He lives a simple life full of simple work and simple pleasures. Tethered neither to his reality or his phantasms, he is an amphibian. The time has come to decide where he's going to live.
The Hollow Kingdom of Big Macintosh is my favorite story on this site to date--at least, that I can appreciate unironically. I distinctly remember Hippocampy, Shoehorn, Suave, and Coast Tucoast.
The story? The story focuses on Big Macintosh. It's about Big Macintosh's life, Big Macintosh's struggles, Big Macintosh's problems and Big Macintosh's solutions. It's not about Hippocampy, or Shoehorn, or Suave, or Coast Tucoast; they are all tools that exist purely for the story.
In the first hour of total sensory deprivation, anxiety and paranoia sets in.
After the first two days, hallucinations start to appear.
After the first week, subjects begin to experience total psychosis.
This one has been in sensory limbo for a thousand years. She'll need a lot of help.
And so will I. After all, we're not even the same Maker-damned species.
The Nightingale Effect is another one that I find top-tier. Sigurd is quite memorable in that he could have been any character, but it ended up being him and him alone.
That, to me, is the best kind of OC: The one that, when they start out, could be anybody, but, at the end, they've become somebody.
Stupid work got busy and now I have to go home. I may add more, but... probably not. I'm actually quite interested in alternative methods of OC creation; the only one that I've found most users do is the whole "the story sucks if the OC sucks" idea. It should be that the OC sucks if the story sucks. But then, that's just me. 
How do you guys come up with your OCs?
I actually make the OC before coming up with the story. I did the same with Crimson and right now, I have about 17 days left to get his story out. I made Crimson while me and some others were goofing around with nothing else to do. The name was thought up by someone else while the OC himself was mine.
oooh man
i came up with so many ocs in my life
whole 0
2641467
Suffice to say, I follow you because I like you, not your OCs.
I, uh... had a feeling you did.
2641474
A story doesn't require OCs. Only if the muse dictates one is needed should an OC be brought into a story.
2641497 good thing i do not write stories, eh
2641497 the OC's are in the works to improving. While they themselves don't seem like much, they're better than some and worse than others, just like any character on the show can be. Heck, Crimson may be the main one, but I'm being very careful with him. I'm limiting his abilities at the moment, making him weaker but still able to fight despite odds being against him. He's made to be a fighter and will continue on, despite injuries, but he does know when and when not to fight.
For example
Guards < Crimson < Sombra, Celestia, Luna, Discord, Twilight, and Cadance.
2641517
I don't think going into detail would be wise for me.
Yeah... it's a bit late to workshop your OC's issues, I'm afraid to say.
2641535 not fully too late. Work with others and make the OC's more believable. Give them something that they can't do is one of many things. And above all, the Alicorn OC's that are good need a chance. They get bashed and left alone. My plan is not quit. If anything, go back and make changes, but continue with the story. Actually, you're only seen them in blogs, not stories themselves. While in blogs they seem GS/MS, stories can be much different than that.
As you saw, I only have one story on Hiatus. That is mostly cause I've been busy with others and had no time on it. I go to groups and get advice on fixing the OC, but I keep him as his race, name, color, and all that.
I came up with my OC a long time ago when I didn't know shit about OCs. But I sorta fixed her up a little bit since then. Here was her first design (brace for horrible base and mouse art): lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UuKvH_G5IRw/U2_UjThxibI/AAAAAAAAABU/h_B2VNy1ZtY/w625-h623-no/Flaming%2Bpizza%2B2.png
And here she is today:
fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/315/d/9/pizza_shading_practice_by_zippybuffalo-d862fkq.jpg
Both pictures drawn by me, the last one draw a month or so ago. I think I've improved a bit since then.
The first OC I made has a... lame backstory. Thought process: "Hey, I've noticed that tons of people in the community have their own pony characters! I should make one too!"
The perfect bad OC.
Interestingly enough, in The Crown of Demons (what I consider my best work), there are five OCs (technically seven). Not a single one of them was conceived before I started writing. Although one is an OC of my friend's, the rest are original and, quite frankly, much better characters than my own OC. This is probably because I was writing the story and needed the character.
What confuses me about this is that conventional story writing has taught me to fully flesh out a character for a story. What I did seems more like I built the character around the situation. I get that building the situation around the character is a huge pitfall for authors, as it leads to horrible stories, but isn't what I'm doing bad too?
At least my first OC has not and never will appear in the story. I understand that he's poorly designed, and would not fit the story at all. I'm bad, but learning.
I like to think of it alongside the lines of an RPG... Er, a good one, I should say. In a good RPG, the focus isn't particularly on any one character with your team; you may start out as one character, but this character is more often than not, somewhat bland and is meant to be a slate for the player. All team members have their strengths and weaknesses, have their own reasons for being on said journey, and face legitimate threats that aren't so easily handled. I like to look at Dragon Quest VIII as an example. The "main" guy (I like to call him "Goku") never says anything, and doesn't even have a name; you get the impression that he means well, though, and putting yourself in his shoes is pretty simple. Yangus is a bit abrasive and dim-witted, but he wants to turn against his old ruffian ways, pay back "Goku," and become a good man. Jessica... I don't remember her personality because I was 12 and too busy staring at her tits, but she does want to avenge her brother's death. Angelo's a flamboyant dick-waving asshole, end of story. They all seem so different, but they've got a common goal, and their skill sets work well together, too; finding that odd middle-line is the recipe for a good story.
Also, Speaking of threats, all enemies encountered need to possess that potential; imagine if you could play through an RPG doing nothing put pressing the action button. Just sitting for hours on end, repeatedly pressing X to the same crap over and over. It's boring, right? Not only boring for you, or anyone watching, and you can most likely imagine the developers being half asleep and not even caring anymore. In a good RPG, the threat of death is a real thing, and the team (player) must figure out how to face what new challenges they face; what elements might this one be weak to, do melee attacks even work, how should I set my team's actions so that I can survive this, all that.
I haven't written anything too serious, but even in my stories where the readers start out with Bob or Steve, it isn't complete without the input and balance of other characters, struggles, and situations. Bob wants to work but is unable to due to several factors; it describes his "worker" personality,, the reasons why he can't work in Equestria, and ultimately sheds light on what he must do if he does wish to work and live on his own. Within the same story, Suri is down on her luck, facing eviction, ridicule, and has essentially lost the meaning behind her cutie mark. Thus, their paths face the same direction, they must cross, and the fun can begin.
Then again, i'm using a shoddy clopfic I wrote in a half an hour or so as an example, which I now realize as being a bit dumb. Anywho, that's my input.
Also, you might remember me when I was "Unknown NPC" and you tried to guess that my NPC was from Zelda? It was a fortune teller from DQVIII, lol.
images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/8000000/Dragon-Quest-VIII-dragon-quest-viii-8045201-600-742.jpg
2641560
A persona OC is radically different than a story OC. I'm speaking strictly on the point of OCs who are in stories.
2641668
What you just described seems exactly the point I was trying to get across in this blog. I'm glad I am not the only one to have noted and realized this phenomenon.
2641935
I actually think that's a good example! A good OC is like a good RPG character.
You start out with a blank slate. They are not a specialist, they are not notably talented, and they barely manage to scrape by, surviving from battle to battle and slowly building up their strength.
By the end of the game, they are exactly the person they need to be to defeat this crazy amazing final boss. There's no one else who they could have been; you molded them into who you wanted them to be, and they have taken on that life through your actions. They started out as no one particularly noteworthy; and, by the end, they became someone.
I can see the parallels.
You slowly mold the OC's personality as it makes sense and is entertaining in the story, not beforehand so you have to force yourself to do something your OC wouldn't have done sensibly. I guess the best word for an OC who's created as part of a story is "malleable." Zero personality and zero talent until you draw it upon them as relevant to the story. 
2643670 "
You should have been more specific.
2643700
My apologies.
Oh. I thought the context was indicative that it was focusing on OCs in relation to stories that they are included in.
2643878 No, I knew that's what you were talking about, just being difficult is all. I know you would have shared the OC I made you if we were talking about person OCs.
2643902
Oh, would I have?
2643944 Yes. You would.
I come up with a name... then google color names. Pick two colors or more that seems to fit together, if needed I come up with a cutiemark.
Their personality usually evolves during the story... It works fine, I guess
2798741
Two-word OCs are so common, I try to stay away from them consistently. Sometimes the two-word name works, but I only take it if it's a perfect fit.
I think all this applies when stories are meant to be serious. I, however, am not a fan of serious writing.
I currently only have one OC, ever, and I am not at all ashamed to admit I'm writing a story about him (although I dare say the story would work with other characters). Neither am I ashamed to admit he starts the story in a sexual relationship with Princess Luna, is fanmared over by Rainbow Dash (to the point that in less than a minute after their first meeting, she wants him in bed), and is a red-and-black alicorn who can raise both the sun and the moon. Okay, I made that last bit up, but the first two points hold true.
SPOILER ALERT: Notice how I typed "he starts the story". The story is supposed to be about video games, but subtly, it's about his transformation from a bad OC to a good OC.
3180277
I wanted to go judge this book by its cover, but then there wasn't a book with a cover to judge.
I've made bad OCs on purpose before for satire. Depending on what you're aiming to do, a bad OC can be good for a story, typically if you're writing a circlejerk story (which is not a bad thing--my purposely bad OCs are part of a circlejerk series I wrote); if you want your story to be taken seriously, however, you don't follow the iconically poor method of OC creation I detailed in this blog post.
3181410 What I was about to write here was:
So no, I'm not taking Original the Character seriously, but bias is a cruel mistress. Maybe the character I'm writing is actually terrible all the way through and I just don't know it.
3182845
Questioning your capabilities as a writer leads to growth therein. Your uncertainty warms my heart.
3183264
... alrighty then. Generally uncertainty is a more negative feeling, but hey ho, whatever floats your goat.