Oc's For Dummies

Ego Death: I Am Not An Anime Boy

Something I see alot of people struggle with, from roleplaying to story writing is when they want their character to do something morally questionable, they often 'chicken out' of the direction they want to take their character. Or even hesitence in giving their character their own moral compass independent from their authors.

Its important to understand you are not an anime boy, or epic warmaiden, or dragon, or living symbolism for modern capitalism. You are you, and your character is themselves.

To start I think it's best to learn to seperate yourself from your character as much as possible. Unless your character is a self-insert* it helps to consider them their own person and their actions do not nessisarily reflect your own or have to match choice you would make.

Just because a character has bad moral, doesn't make you as their creater a bad person or mean that you have bad morals.

Its just like how actors may play terrible people in shows and movies but are actually super nice people themselves.

Like Danny Davitos role in Matilda as Matilda's abusive and negelctful father. As the dad he was cruel and heartless, but even behind scenes he acted as a friend and guide to actress, driving her too and from the hospital to visit her sick mother.

Or from the Sound of Music the lead actor who's heart is warmed by his children learning to sing and play again, hated children in real life and esspessially the children actors he worked with as well ad the entire film. He has even gone on record to call it "The Sound Of Mucus".

While these are actors writting a character well isn't much different from acting.

You got to get into your characters head, figure out what makes them tick and the rest figures itself out.

Really once you master getting into your characters head, the stories will write themselves. Almost like magic.

Being able to seperate what you would like to do, what you would do, and what your character would like to do and what your character would do makes a world of difference and can help with creating personality in a natural way.