A lot of the OCs I run into seem to all be very similar. Now, part of that comes from the fact that many of the OCs who are protagonists are author-inserts, a topic I covered in OCs Part 2. However, it's not all due to that, so I thought I'd do a chapter on originality in the realm of OCs.

So, how do you make your character original? Give her a power no one else has? Maybe make her friends with different people? Put her in a surprising House? Not exactly. You see, to really make your character original, you have to look at her, not her environment. You can have the most cliche environment anyone's ever dreamed up, but if your character is compelling and original, no one will care.

So, where do you start?

What I do when I'm first trying to form a character is think of character traits that seem natural for her. Not desirable, but natural. There was never a point when I wanted Astra to be a stubborn jerk, but it seemed natural for a character who was so quick to jump to conclusions and had been raised in a home where her options were lash out or sink into complacency and be a shy, inactive character (something I did not need, already having Albus and Wren). I decided she was going to fight for what she believed in early on, and sometimes your characters are going to believe in the wrong things, even your protagonist. Sometimes she hurts herself with this behavior, and sometimes it's the people around her. She's a hothead, but she's also loyal, and those two traits play into each other. Sometimes, her loyalty to her friends can help her calm down when she's about to flip out on them. Sometimes, this combination can make her fight others that she probably wouldn't have taken any notice of if they'd left her friends alone. Her strengths and weaknesses work together, and seem natural.

Sometimes, it's a good idea to simply make a list, when you're first starting to work on a character, of all the traits you want them to have. For example, a list I think a lot of OCs would have is:

• Loyal
• Kind
• Good
• Fights for what's right
• Sassy
• Smart
• Forgiving
• Outgoing and Likable
• Etc.

These are all good traits. However, they should not all be used in one character, and they should definitely not be the only traits for a character. I think a character with some of these traits would be a pretty strong character if they were balanced by a few more weaknesses. Let's go through these one by one and see where we can add some balancing traits.

Loyal
Loyalty is one of those traits that every OC has in abundance. I should know, even Astra has fallen prey to this. Why is it like this? Because most people have this trait in abundance as well. Think about what. How people do you know who aren't loyal to their friends at all? If you walked up to a girl and started trash-talking her best friend, for the most part she would get upset and defend her (besides some special cases with very two-faced girls, and if you want to make your character super fake, please go for it, because I've never seen a protagonist like that). Most people are loyal to their close friends and family, and most people are willing to at least argue in their defense.

Honestly, loyalty sometimes doesn't need to be balanced. If your character is overly loyal, this can be it's own kind of flaw. It can have your character be too trusting of their friends, which can set you up to have a huge plot twist and the worst kind of betrayal. Or, it can have them constantly getting in fights on other's behalf (you can see both of those at work in Astra throughout my books). However, if you want to balance this, the weaknesses I'd prescribe are hotheadedness (see above) or being distrustful. It's hard to be loyal if you're not a very trusting person. You may punch someone who calls your friend a mudblood, but you don't trust that friend completely, and little things can make you suspicious of their intentions, even if they're the most innocent of people. It would take a long time to build up a good relationship and true loyalty.

Kind
Next up, we have kindness. Kindness is a good trait. It can create very strong characters. It's something that should be used more sparingly when creating your cast of characters, though, because if you've noticed, a lot of people in real life are not very kind. To be used well, it needs to be uncommon.

If your character's defining trait is kindness, it can be hard to find something to balance that. Of course, you can make them overly kind, refusing to see the worst in people, even if it's the worst of people. Or perhaps their kindness could lead them into traps. However, a character who is solely kind is normally a boring character.

A good trait to balance kindness would be shyness. If you have a character who's incredibly kind, and would never hurt a fly, and is always trying to help others, a way to balance that would be to often make them too shy to actually do anything. It can create an interesting internal conflict for your protagonist, the fight between kind instincts and shy instincts. As a person who has to go through this every single day, I can promise you, shyness tends to override kindness more than you'd think, and it sucks. Knowing the right thing to do and yet being too scared and shy to do it is the most frustrating feeling.

Quick side note: Shyness in and of itself is not necessarily a bad quality, and as your character grows throughout the story, they shouldn't have to overcome it, especially if they're introverted. Sometimes, yes, that's a good part of their character arc, but sometimes it's okay to leave your character shy. A character can be shy. Just make sure to give them an outgoing friend.

Good
Next up, we have plain, straight goodness. To be honest, this trait is stupid and lazy. No one is simply "good," except for God. Making your character good takes away a lot of moral dilemmas they would have to face and a lot of the internal struggles that can come from them. Sure, they can mess up sometimes, and hurt people, especially if they care more about the greater good than individual good, but this trait is unrealistic.

However, if you truly want to use it, you could balance it with impulsiveness. Someone who doesn't take the time to consider if they know all the details, and simply does what they think is good immediately, will make a lot of mistakes and wind up doing a lot of bad things accidentally. The character may be good at their core, but from the outside, it could be hard for people to tell, and that could be very interesting to watch as this character with the best intentions gets consistently labeled as a bad kid.

Fights For What's Right
Fighting for what's right is up next. This is one of the more overused traits, and yes, I used it for Astra. Honestly, though, most people fight for what they believe is right. Almost everyone has an opinion about President Donald Trump, for example, and I could start a huge debate right here if I felt like it, because all of you believe your opinion is right and are willing to fight for it. Regardless of whether your opinion is right or not (which I wouldn't know since I don't know your opinion), you believe it is, and you'll fight for it.

It's the same for your character. You could give them the most terrible moral code in history, but they will believe they are right, and they will fight for what they believe is right. Honestly, this could work against itself. Even if what they're fighting for is truly right, if this impulse is strong enough, their fighting could alienate friends and family and have them wind up in a whole lot of trouble on a regular basis.

A good quality to balance this would be self-doubt. It's difficult to fight for what's right if the person you're fighting can easily make you doubt yourself. You don't even necessarily need to make them doubt their beliefs, unless their beliefs weren't very strong to begin with. Self-doubt normally works to make them doubt their intentions, if their beliefs are strong enough. Self-doubt would throw them off, making it easier for someone else to beat them. Another good trait to balance this, on the other side of the spectrum, is a quick temper. Everyone always talks about "angry feminists" or "hateful Christians" or all sorts of other things. It's the same concept here—if you're trying to convince someone that you're right, screaming at them will only make them more sure that you're wrong. It will alienate them further. Not only that, but anger clouds your head, making it hard to think logically and see the big picture.

Sassy
After fighting for what's right, we have the core trait to just about every character in the last twenty years: sassiness. Honestly, that makes a lot of sense. If you look around, young people today are all very sassy, all the time. It's the cool thing to be. Whether that's a product of the books we've read or the books are a product of us, I don't know. But sassy is a very easy trait to give your character. It can make them seem witty and funny, something most teenagers aspire to be. Used too much, it can make them rude.

What's a good trait to balance sassiness? There are several options, including a lack of self-control or a quick temper. Someone with a lack of self-control or a quick temper and a tendency to be sassy could easily hurt people close to them without realizing it, or even on purpose, only to regret it a moment later. Words have power, almost more than physical violence if you say just the right ones.

Smart
Intelligence is also an overused characteristic, though it's not as prominent. OCs tend to be either highly intelligent or average. There is no in between, and there is no lower end of the spectrum. That, in itself, is a problem (I will be the first to say that there are so many more kinds of intelligence than academics!) that I could go on and on about, but we're not here for that. Say you have a character who is very smart. Aside from being a know-it-all and the object of a lot of people's jealousy, especially near exams, how can this, by itself, work against them? Speaking as the classic stereotype of the Ravenclaw nerd, being labeled as smart puts a huge amount of pressure on a person to perform up to and beyond everyone's expectations. This can lead to high amounts of stress for your character, as well as crushing disappointment over grades and such that are really good but not what they expected. It also means your character will spend a lot of time studying, especially as they move on in school and things get harder.

Now, what other traits can we balance this with? Some good qualities to pair with intelligence are low self-esteem or overly high self-esteem. Low self-esteem will leave your character second guessing themselves constantly and never being quite sure what people think of them. They'll try to avoid taking credit for their intelligence because they're too modest for their own good, and often they might even intentionally make mistakes to fit in with everyone else, which can lead to big trouble if you play that right. On the flip side, a smart character with overly high self-esteem will be very full of themselves. They'll basically expect people to worship they ground they walk on, and consider themselves better han most other people, making most other people dislike them because they're rude and self-centered.

Forgiving
Forgiving characters are less common, I'll admit. A lot of people like writing about their characters and their righteous anger, and that's good. However, in real life, a lot of people are a lot more willing to forgive their loved ones than some fiction would claim. For example, unless my brother literally killed the rest of my family, there's not much I wouldn't forgive him for. I love him, and that's strong enough to override anger at him for whatever he did.

A tendency to forgiveness can definitely work against your character. Honestly, it sometimes doesn't even need to be balanced, if used the right way. They can easily be taken advantage of. They'll keep giving second and third and fourth chances to people who don't deserve it and are using them. Because of their forgiving nature, they'll have a hard time letting people go and making them stay away, because everyone can change, even if the person who hurt them shows no sign of change.

Outgoing and Likable
There is no shortage of outgoing and likable characters. Why? Because who doesn't want to be liked? Especially since Harry Potter fanfics are mostly written with characters from the ages of 11 to 18, this is very understandable. As preteens and teens, most people feel the urge to conform, fit in, and be popular. The outgoing, likable character is the one we all aspire to be.

For the most part, this trait can't work against your character. Sure, being friends with many different people can lead to confusion and conflicting gossip, but on the whole, if your character is genuinely likable, they'll be pretty honest and straightforward while still being kind. To balance this, I would suggest making your character disorganized or hypocritical. A disorganized character could easily wind up with way too much on their plate and have to let people down on a regular basis. Hypocritical, of course speaks for itself.

You could also make them be a fraud. Perhaps they love being popular, and they orchestrating everything so they stay popular. Perhaps they're secretly manipulating everything so people turn on each other but never on them. I promise you, this character won't be a favorite among your readers, but they will be intrigued, and an intriguing character is just as good as a likable one. Just a thought.

~~~~

What traits do you think would balance well with these? Are there any interesting combinations I left out? I know I made a fairly general list here, but I'm just trying to get your creative juices flowing with some examples!

Have a question or topic I should cover? Let me know in the comments! Bye!