Chapter 14 - Character Building: The Tutorial

CHARACTER BUILDING!

How to not make a fucking Mary Sue OC with Elemental Slayer magic coming out of their ass!

Hopefully all of you read the building tutorials and can finally write a story that doesn't have its head up its ass.

Introduction: Character building, in short, is the process of creating your character(s) for the story. While most of the work is due to making OC's, character building can also be done to canon characters if certain events call for OOC.

Ex. A difference in backstory can easily change character traits of Erza.

There are many different steps on character building; I will go through each and everyone of these with you.

Name: Remember the Mary Sue traits? Giving your character an extremely unorthodox and meaningful name is something that you should never do. If you plan on making your character a crystal mage, don't name them Krystal Sapphire or something of that nature. If you think something along the lines of: 'Omg this name would SOO fit this character!' Chances are, you probably would end up writing a Mary Sue.

However, we DO need to pick a name that will not only suit the character, but also stick in the reader's mind. If your character is considered a strong mage, don't name them Xanthrax Ajimaticus or something completely absurd that has nothing to do with the character. A good name for a mage is Lyonel, in my opinion.

Ex. Lyonel Richards

Although it is a pretty simple name, Lyonel Richards gives off a manly, noble, and warrior-like feel in my own eyes. You could pick your names based on association; a kind girl could be named Emily Laretta, while a mean girl could be named Brittany Ivanoka.

Some of you might want to end up avoiding meaningful names altogether and decide to pick something generic, like John Smith. Actively doing the opposite of what is considered a Mary Sue is simply being an Anti-Sue. You want to find balance somewhere in the middle, that way your character is relatable and believable.

Remember, Anti-sues aren't relatable and Mary Sues aren't believable NOR relatable.

Age: Now, how old is going to be your OC? This depends on what crowd you want them to mingle with. If you want your OC to be on Team Natsu - I recommend against this as it has been done to hell, and is filled with fatalist-dialogue-spell-adding OC's. You can have him hang with Laxus, or even Gildarts.

Of course, their age will reflect their strength as well. If the OC is 25 by canon, chances are, they will be more comparable to Laxus as opposed to Gray and Natsu. If their age is 40, they might even be able to compete with Gildarts.

The one thing you DON'T want to do, is make a 16-year-old dragon slayer able to beat up Laxus because of horrible world building and power scaling. That is NOT going to do your story any justice and should just be avoided altogether.

For those of you that are making your character age different from your own, make sure you write that particular age correctly! This is an increasingly common problem I see when writing the child stages of OC's; since the writer themselves is older than the OC, they end up making the character wise-beyond-their-years. I don't blame them though, not a lot of people can remember their own thought processes five years ago without preparation.

You don't necessarily have to make a 12-year-old kid completely retarded either; remember, balance and relatability!

For Lyonel, the feeling I get from this particular character idea, is that he would be slightly older than the canon cast. I will put him at the age of 24 at X784, where his strength is comparable to Laxus.

Height and Weight: Here comes a big Mary Sue indicator. When it comes to appearance, what people tend to do is either make someone so beautiful they can crush-blush anyone into a harem, or simply make them some 5'3 below average skinny manlet that has some sort of speech impediment.

It's important to balance out the physical traits of your character, and make sure they make SENSE. For example, if your OC has been training to be a mage since a young age, chances are, they will have a good musculature. If we look at Natsu, Gray, or basically any of the male mages, most if not all of them are quite muscled. A logical reason as to why that is, would be because they fight and train on a regular basis. I also doubt there is as much junk food in the Fairy Tail universe compared to our own.

Now you understand that your OC probably WON'T be fat nor skinny, we can begin to determine their height and weight. Let's take a look at the Lyonel Richards example. Someone who has that name probably would be a larger man. We don't want to make him absolutely humongous, but we do want to put him taller than average.

For height, let's go with 190cm and for weight, let us go with 95kg. With that height and weight, we can probably imagine Lyonel would be quite stifled. He would have a lower fat content as well due to the fact he trains and spars daily.

Oh yeah, for those of you in America, 190cm and 95kg translates to 6'2.3 and 209.4lb.

Eyes and Hair: Now we have an idea of Lyonel's basic structure, let's move on to the traits that every Mary-Sue-OC lover get hard over. Yes, that's right: eyes and hair.

When it comes to hair colour and design, I'm leaning more towards a brunette for Lyonel. I'm imagining him to be blonde in my head and it simply isn't working. Not only that, we don't want him to make him blonde because he might end up becoming a copy of Laxus.

With that brunette hair, what style would it be in? Would it be a buzzcut, long hair, spiky hair, or even bald? Just from his character, I imagine him being a gruffer, biker-like character, which means I will make him bald with a medium-lengthed beard.

Now we have hair colour and style, let us move onto the eyes. Considering he is a brunette, and the fact that his eye colour is completely irrelevant to the story - at least in my case - I will be making him brown eyed.

To recap, we have a 24-year-old mage standing at 190cm and weighing 95kg. He has a brown beard with no hair on his head, and he has eyes matching the would-be colour of his non-existent hair.

Defining Characteristics: Other than the basic appearance, we will now determine if the OC has any defining traits or characteristics. This would mean: scars, birthmarks, deformities, tattoos, or basically just anything that would stand out from the norm.

Considering the OC I am currently building is a gruff biker-like man, tattoos on his arms and scars on his body would fit his appearance. It is likely that mages gain scars from previous battles as well, especially considering he will be an S-class mage.

Instead of a scar on his face, I believe a large scar going from his hips to his chest would be a trait containing an interesting story - as to how he got it. He could have the Fairy Tail logo tattooed on one arm, and then something representing an idea of sentimental value on his other.

Let's say, a universal symbol of peace with a sword through it. That seems pretty deep and edgy at the same time.

Clothing: Another one of the Sue favourites, we will now describe the OC's main attire. It is understandable that characters may have multiple different sets of clothing, but we will figure out their MAIN getup. Ex. Erza's Heart Cruz armor, Mirajane's red dress, Natsu's scarf and his tank-top thing that is open at the chest.

Regardless of what the OC wears, the last thing you want to do is add a bunch of irrelevant details that nobody cares about. AND ESPECIALLY DON'T USE PURPLE PROSE TO DESCRIBE IT.

For some people, clothing isn't that important, Ex. I just grab whatever shirt from my closest and wear that. However, if we look at Lyonel's character, I can already imagine a few getups that would fit.

For example, leather pants and jacket with a white tank top underneath would be a pretty simple yet realistic outfit someone like him would wear.

Race or Nationality: Although not that important, we want to determine what sort of skin colour he has. Is he tan, white, asian, brown, black, or even a completely separate species and end up being green - like Piccolo.

For the most part, most if not all the Fairy Tail mages would fit as European descent. Laxus would obviously be Slavic, while the other could be British, Germans, etc. Remember, these ethnicities don't actually exist in Fairy Tail, we are simply using them as comparisons as to how the characters would look like in real life.

For my own OC, Lyonel, I would imagine him being a tanned American - in Texas specifically.

Backstory: Here is a VERY important one. The different in backstory could change your character's living habits, personality, fears, hates, likes, dislikes, almost everything! How a person is raised and the environment they grew up in are probably the greatest factors in determining how they will be like later in life.

Ex. An orphan could have a profound resentment against society, while a sheltered Noble could think the world is theirs for the taking.

Family: For the first part, we will first find out if the OC has any family, blood relatives, or just someone they are close to before the canon story.

Ex. Natsu has Igneel before anyone else, and Erza has her slave friends.

For Lyonel, I can imagine him having a little brother, one he cared for and raised from growing up in a harsh environment - ex. The slums of a poorer country. The parents could either be dead or simply absent.

Ex. Parents could have been killed in an accident or abandoned them early because they did not have enough money to take care of themselves.

In this story, I will make the age difference between Lyonel and his brother (I'll call him Marian) to be 4 years.

I will be going with the latter for Lyonel - in which the parents abandon them - and he grows up with his little brother in another country, fending for himself/themselves.

Place of Birth: The place of birth is very important for a character's backstory. Like I said, the environment in which the character grows up in will affect their personality in potentially adverse ways.

Many OC's authors don't actually put a lot of thought into their character's backstories. Usually it's the village-destroyed-parents-dead-found-by-dragon cliché.

However, for Lyonel, we will be going with being born in a poorer region of a city in Bosco. Why Bosco? Bora has mentioned that there is a slave market in Bosco, which means the country is probably quite lawless compared to Fiore. Meaning: more gangs, Maphia, crime, and basically just not a nice place to live in.

Since Lyonel grew up in the slums, he would have to learn to toughen up quick and would most likely resort to less honourable actions just to survive, ex. Stealing, fighting, committing crimes, dealing with gangs, etc. Of course, we can understand Lyonel does not actually like doing this, but he has to take care of his brother until he is old enough to fight for himself.

Growing Process: As your OC grows from childhood to adolescence, how were they taught? Were they taught by a dragon, learned themselves, went to some magic academy, or had parents that schooled them?

Ex. Natsu by Igneel and Lucy by tutors.

Considering Lyonel grew up without parents and had to live in the slums. We can determine that most of his knowledge was learned through trial and error. He might have learned from gangs by performing acts of thievery for them in exchange for food and other resources. He could have found a mentor to teach him magic and ways to survive, or he could have simply found out on his own and was forced to persist in the magical arts to get ahead in such a harsh life.

For this character, I will be going with the latter, him learning explosion magic (something common in Bosco), to defeat potential aggressors in fights.

Motivation: As the two brothers grew into their teenage years, they became more and more competent when it comes to surviving in the slums. At this point, Lyonel would have began to establish his own world views when it comes to society and life in general in Bosco.

He might have thoughts such as 'this is how the world is' or even 'the world doesn't have to be like this.' Considering their situations, Lyonel is would most likely have a more cynical outlook on life as this point, and his brother, Marian, would be more idealistic as he always had someone to look after him.

As the two brothers continued to gain magical strength, they will come to be noticed by the more powerful figures in the region, ex. Crime bosses and warlords.

A good prologue arc could be how they tried to incite a revolution to change the whole country, only to lose spectacularly and were forced to escape with their lives.

Marian could die here as a plot point - this is not required however.

After this, the motivation could be 'to go back to Bosco and fix the injustices in their country.' Of course, the fact that they are now fugitives could be how they (or just Lyonel) end up in Fairy Tail.

Personality: This is something that will make or break your story when it comes to an OC. Many people don't understand how character development or vulnerable moments work, and end up doing a shit job as their character become a Mary Sue. Those who try to avoid this tend to make an Anti-sue or Jerk-sue simply because they don't want the generic Mary Sue character.

Anyways, when it comes to personality, I'd like to think I have already established a good base for Lyonel's character. Due to his backstory, he would be cynical, cold, to the point, and will not show strong emotions except for his little brother. Not only that, since he took care of his brother (let's assume he survived), he will have a natural tendency to aid those struggling to accomplish certain tasks. However, because of how he grew up, he would often teach others in harsh ways. Lyonel would definitely be a character that shows affection through tough love.

Ex. If he was teaching Natsu to fight, he would beat him down, then tell him to stand up because life will always hit hard, and that you must stand up over and over again until you win.

Likes and Dislikes: What a character likes and dislikes will be a great way to show their personality. Let's assume every fucking character doesn't like it when you hurt their friends or family - just get that out of the way. Now, what are the unique traits of that character?

Ex. Erza likes strawberry cake and wearing her armor because she feels safer.

Your OC could like dragons because they were raised by one, or they dislike bigots because they were abused or mistreated simply because the OC had a weird hair colour.

So what exactly would Lyonel like and dislike?

Let's assume that particular list of things would be right after escaping Bosco.

Likes: Marian, being in control, peace, meat, coffee, freedom, Bosco.

Dislikes: Crime, gangs, warlords, chaos, uncertainty, Bosco (situational), rotten bread, war, slavery, oppression.

The character biography will be on Gildarts Clive as I plan on writing him in depth in later arcs, I omitted some details because they were specific to my own story and would actually spoil the arcs.

Name: Gildarts Clive

Family Relations: Father of Cana Alberona, Husband of Cornelia Alberona

Character Description: Laid back person who loves training his magic as well as teaching the new generation of mages magic.

Does not pay attention to his surroundings and tends to destroy buildings by accident.

Gildarts states he is rather bad at holding back, despite his mastery of his magic, he has so much raw power that any usage of his power can end in devastating destruction.

When he gets drunk, his control slips even further and ends up destroying landmarks and mountains unintentionally.

Does not like responsibility, being held down, and paper work - immediately passed 5th guild master position to Makarov in canon.

Gildarts is very muscular and is 205cm tall.

Motivation: Despite not being a battle nut, training his magic is something of a passion and hobby. He has the utmost faith in the newest generation of mages and strives to improve them.

Likes: Helping others, teaching others, Fairy Tail, Cana, Cornelia, DRINKING, partying, training magic.

Dislikes: Those who threaten the safety of his guild and his guild mates, those who badmouth his guild, responsibility, office work.

This is what I do for all the characters I plan on writing in depth, it is very helpful to keep characters IN character if you yourself know how they would think and react in certain situation. Keep referring to your own notes until you know it by heart!

Now we have a have basic outline for Lyonel, I will be using the same character biography template to illustrate his own traits - I will add a few details as well.

Name: Lyonel Richards

Family Relations: Older Broth of Marian Richards

Character Description: Grew up in the slums of Bosco, this made him cynical, cold, straight-to-the-point, tough, aggressive, and only shows the true depths of his emotion to his brother.

Lyonel had brown eyes and shaggy hair by the time he and his brother escaped Bosco. However, he later decided to shave his hair in favour of growing a beard.

He has a large scar on his chest due to one of the battles he had with the warlords during the conflict he and his brother incited.

He has tanned skin and a hardened exterior, a strong jaw, a broad frame, and he rarely smiles except to his brother.

Motivation: Due to the circumstances of his growth, Lyonel wishes to change Bosco for the better. After being persuaded by his brother that the world doesn't have to remain a certain way, he began actively fighting for things he believes are right. Despite losing a decisive battle and had the majority of his supporters killed, he was able to escape with his life to Fiore, in which he intends to become stronger to once again go back to Bosco.

Likes: Marian, being in control, peace, meat, coffee, freedom, Bosco.

Dislikes: Crime, gangs, warlords, chaos, uncertainty, Bosco (situational), rotten bread, war, slavery, oppression.

This is just the basic structure. I usually have his magics, fighting style, mock interactions with other characters, and spell names listed underneath this part. However, this is the minimum of what you SHOULD put down that way you can refer back your notes to keep your character in character.

Character Development and Conflict: This particular aspect is just as important as building your character's base. If you have a static character that never changes, then there really isn't a story! Just like how romance changes a character, so will all the events that they go through in the course of the story!

What exactly is character development? By definition, it is the change in characterization of a Dynamic Character over the course of a narrative. At its core, it will show the character changing. Traits they had at the beginning could become completely opposite ones.

The different between good and bad development is simply whether or not it seems forced. A character that changes from bad to good within a single speech would be considered bad character development. The same character taking multiple interactions and experiences to actually change could be considered good character development - simply because it was more gradual and prepared.

Coming-of-age stories all have similar character developments - in which the MC 'grows up.'

How do we develop a character? Remember, characters, just like people, won't really change unless there is a factor that forces a realization.

Ex. Someone could start working out because they realized they were getting too fat after failing to walk up the stairs.

Ex 2. A person that abused many others could realize their own mistakes after being abused themselves for the first time.

This is where we get into internal conflicts within the character, as well as the character's own failures, and how they learn from it. Internal conflicts ARE related to external conflicts, as it is often external factors in a story that might cause a character to change - being beat up by charging in and then realizing that they have to strategize in battles, which also in turns makes them less stubborn and mature.

Ex. A conflict for Lyonel would be between his desire to go back to Bosco and his desire to simply reside in Fiore, where there is peace. Although nobody is really expecting him to, he could take it as a self-given duty to save his place of birth, despite no longer being affected by it.

In a Shonen anime, Lyonel would probably go back and save Bosco with some bullshit asspulls, but realistically, the development could be Lyonel realizing that there is nothing he could do about the situation of the country. He is no longer in that place and he should try his hardest to build his own life in a different country. In reality, he owes nothing to Bosco. The desire to go back is self-given responsibility that will probably lead him down a self-destructive path.

This is actually how many people suffer, they think going to University despite asking themselves why they are there in the first place; then realizing they never actually want to do it. Then they kill themselves because they go down a spiral of self-destruction, feeling trapped due to the self-given responsibility exaggerated from their parents' desires.

Anyway, to understand how to develop your characters, you can take examples from people you know, as well as yourself. I'm sure all of you had made mistakes in your life; through that, you most likely changed how you would tackle the same problem, or simply change, however slightly, how you live your life.

Let's say, getting bullied over and over until you snap, then deciding to fight back; this causes a change in self-confidence and causes the person to realize that problems won't go away by themselves.

Common Mistakes when Writing Characters

Remember the Sue traits? This is where the mistakes of character building come in play. When they go through the process of creating the appearance, personality, backstory, and motivations, first-time authors often do a lackluster job, and end up with a Mary Sue. Not only that, second-time authors that get criticized of having a Mary Sue the first time, end up having a Victim/Jerk Sue because they are now actively trying to get rid of the Sue traits.

Age: While age itself is not THAT big of a problem, it CAN be a factor of relatability and believability especially if their age does not reflect the power scaling. Someone who is as strong as Erza should be similar or equal in age as making your character a one-in-a-million child prodigy is Mary Sue.

Don't make a character than can kick Natsu's ass and make him young enough to be paired with Wendy. You don't need to make a Macao character either and make someone far too weak for their age when compared to the canon cast. BALANCE!

Appearance: You shouldn't make your character drop dead beautiful NOR the most repulsive ordering of chromosomes in scientific history. Eye and hair colour should not be absurd or completely out of the ordinary without a logical explanation. 'I do this because I want to,' is the worst explanation you could possible have. Giving someone Yugi Moto level hair while adding a touch of LGBTQ colours is not a great way to begin the character building process.

If we look at Lyonel's appearance, he would not necessarily be beautiful, and may actually be ugly by some standards. Considering he is bald, bearded, rough looking, and quite intimidating, he would look more like a criminal than a guild mage. However, that particular appearance fits his character, and gives him a personality that fits as well.

Remember, you are not building a character because you want him to be Mary or Anti Sue. You want to build a character that is believable and relatable based on the backstories you have written. If you didn't bother giving a proper backstory and simply inserted the OC into canon, you should considering rewriting the entire story and go through the proper steps of building your ideas before starting.

Clothing: While clothing itself isn't that important, unless your character wears nothing and prefers to fight in the nude, the real issue actually comes from people overly describing them - often in laundry-list format. The character is immediately introduced and described at the beginning of the chapter, everything from head to toe is given, leaving nothing to the imagination. Things such as hair colour, eye colour, whether or not they wear accessories, every layer of clothing and they might even repeat certain phrases such as the ones they used to describe their eyes.

Ex. 'Her aquamarine orbs looked to the left.'

What most people do when describing clothing, is go through an entire paragraph of 'he wore, he wore, etc.' until everything has been covered. Not only that, many people would use common prosey words such as 'Cerulean Eyes,' 'Sun-kissed blond hair,' or other wordier descriptors.

To prevent this sort of repetitive description, it's more effective to describe a character through behaviour, action, body language, and dialogue. Not only that, if you are describing a character from another character's perspective, you can have them notice things that would fit their character. If one character was wearing an anime shirt, it might be the first thing an anime geek describes when coming in contact with that specific character.

Backstory: What people tend to screw up in terms of backstory is really just the lack of story and world building. Often times, many people who actually start writing a story in which the reader knows nothing about the MC's backstory. Although this can be revealed later on, many OC authors don't actually write it until it comes. Writing as you go leads to plot holes and inconsistencies, not just in logic but also in personality.

You want to craft your backstory before writing the character so you can really understand to a deep level, in terms of what your character would do and react in and to certain situations.

Remember how I used Lyonel's simple backstory to change how he views the world and his personality? Your character's backstory reveals everything to how your character acts. You can't just bullshit 2 chapters then all of a sudden go from a depressed child to a I-WILL-GET-STRONGER-TO-PROTECT-MY-PRECIOUS-PEOPLE generic Mary Sue. If you want to go that path, make sure you expand on all the obstacles ON that specific path as well. Some plot inconsistencies or character development issues can be fixed by simply adding scenes to ease the change - make it more gradual persay.

DO NOT use the parents-killed-by-dark-mages-and-is-found-by-a-dragon-in-a-single-chapter backstory. That is unimaginative and just shows you are trying to rush through the backstory to begin writing canon. NEVER DO THIS. Just because 1,000 authors do it doesn't mean you should hop on the incompetence bandwagon.

Motivation: Motivation is directly tied into your character's backstory. Things like 'I-want-to-make-the-world-a-better-place,' 'I-want-to-get-rid-of-the-darkness-in-the-world,' or 'I-will-protect-my-friends,' have all been done to hell. Are they necessarily bad? Not really, I'm sure there are many people in real life that are motivated from those reasons. The REAL issue, is the lackluster backstories that usually accompanies OC stories that use those motivations.

Someone's motivation is based on their experiences in the past; not outlining the experiences can cause confusion and hinder its believability.

Conflict: What OC authors tend to do when they get good enough to actually understand what internal conflict means, is that they will give the character a vulnerable moment, just to bring them out right away. Not only that, these characters often don't learn anything.

Experiences or pain that causes internal conflict, will often hurt themselves or others in some way. This will make them doubt-themselves, breeding conflict as they become unsure what they should be doing. It is through this experience that allows them to willingly go a different path, allowing them to make different decisions in the same situations.

Ex. Vegeta was a ruthless Saiyan Warrior, but after having a child with Bulma, he began to soften - not by much. Not only that, this development took YEARS. Then he had conflict during the Majin Buu arc in which he almost went back to the ruthless killer, but then he sacrificed himself after a moment of vulnerability.

Conclusion: All the steps of character building connect with one another. If you don't balance your effort every single step, then the believability and relatability of your character(s) will suffer! Going through the steps as I ordered it is a good way to design your character. You can start from the physical attributes, to the backstory, then to how that particular backstory affects the motivation and the personality. Have a beta look at your character as well!

Theme: SPREAD OUT YOUR EFFORT IN ALL ASPECTS.

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Chapter 14 Done! Next Chapter - General Advice & Pet Peeves Part III

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[ROTLB: Light of Fairies]

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[The Nothing Dragon Slayer's Misadventures in Fairy Tail]

Minipa, out!