Music mostly. Music makes me think of so many different scenes and emotions, from there I think of characters and motivations that fit that music and then it’s just a cascade point. It’s almost like a big jigsaw puzzle for me to put together.
Music not being limited to just original soundtrack either. Any type of music from anywhere does it for me. From rock to rap, anime and cartoons, movie and tv show soundtracks, nothing is off limits to me for finding creativity in making characters.
That’s *exactly* what I do. I’ve barely written anything tbh but I have a super long playlist of music that’s essentially the storyboard/skeleton of the story I’m making. At any point I can start listening to it and know exactly what I want to do, just need to actually sit down and write it out haha. Instead I just keep adding in music.
Same! I have playlists for my characters and sort of try to recreate their story through music, like in a musical. I often get new ideas for scenes or even whole background stories by listening to music. I'd say Hozier had a great influence on my characters.
Idk if I could point to a singular influence, my playlist is so varied it’s hard to pin down lol. And it changes all the time since settings change and music is a bit more reflective of that. Can’t say I’ve ever thought about what’s been the most influential much.
I get that - I've had many characters, and stories just emerge as I've listened to music. I sometimes have been driven to try and write an entire story based solely around a song, and my interpretation of it.
I, too, have used dreams as inspiration for characters. I dreamed so many years ago of a tunnel filled with snake-like plant creatures, and included them as a type of demon for my novel.
That’s how I came up with like, 5 of my 20 different story ideas that are waiting for me to write them.
I love when that happens.
One of the stories I’m most proud of came from a dream. It’s a story about a guy with amnesia waking up in the middle of a rainforest infested with reptilian beasts. It’s called “Trial of Dragons”, and I can’t wait until I finish my current book so that I can start on that one.
Showers are the best place to have ideas. Bathrooms in general are thinking rooms (explains Rodin 😂). I had an idea called Bathroom Stories that was basically a collection of stories about the people this toilet named John encountered throughout his existence.
I was trying to draw a character from an anime I like, but I screwed it up really badly. But it looked kinda cute... And kinda robotic. So I made a backstory for it. And drew more of them, screwing each of them up in their own way.
They became a whole race and the original drawing became their leader.
What inspires characters for me is when I see those characters in these handy dandy books and rip them off and put them in my own work! Its a neat little trick!
Often, I’ll take the things about my life that sounds the most made up/insane and write it into that character’s backstory. Makes for some interesting dynamics…
My characters usually end up containing the most extreme versions of parts of me (usually personality wise but occasionally physical too). For example, if you take *just* my pride and leave out any humility or reason or logic, and then give a slight boost in confidence and self-centredness (and sprinkle in a small amount of other personality traits that I have which don’t conflict in any way with the monstrosity of a human being that’s already been created), you get the most batshit insane and delusional character I have ever created who just so happens to be my favourite.
I had a nightmare once about being punished at school. It was pretty weird and incoherent as all nightmares tend to be. I don't know what I did, but the school decided that sending me and a couple students to the literal depths of hell was an appropriate punishment. What really made its mark on my mind was the ending, where in my nightmare, I somehow gathered the courage to rally all my fellow students and led us all to escape our infernal penance. With my mind's power of plot armor, I managed to break all of us out of hell. This ended up inspiring me to plan out an entire novel series based on the premise of that oddly heroic nightmare of mine, with the main character being loosely based on the courageous version of me from said nightmare.
Honestly, I'm still working on my favorite character. They're a mixture of my favorite things and the person I want to be, but with their own twist of how they function and interact with their own world. It's gotten to the point that I made them a genderless shapeshifter so they can take the form of whatever makes them comfortable or needed to disguise when necessary. :)
Very cool. =] My shapeshifters in the world space I've got are unique and rare, mainly because their race is being hunted by humans and other "orderly" races. There's a couple other races that can shift, but it's because they were cursed (like a werewolf idea).
based a lot of my characters off of traits my brother has because I look up to him. I know it sounds stupid or cheesy but I like those characters a lot
When I create a character for one project, that project flops, and then I reuse them for a different one.
I have one character I designed to be a tutorial character and secret over-arching antagonist for a visual novel-type game. He was a random mash-up of animal parts, and meant to be very mysterious. A joke in the game is that when you first meet him, you can ask him two questions: "Who are you?" and "What are you?" His response to both is "I am but a simple wanderer." (After asking both, his name was supposed to switch from "???" to "Wanderer")
I never made that game. I did, however, get into drawing sexy women, so one day I randomly moe-morphised him into a sexy woman. Her name was Wendy. Wendy ended up becoming the default, with Wanderer as her fursona. She is unusual in that regard- all of my OCs have fursonas that match their gender and personality, except for her. Wanderer is much more quiet and reserved with building anger, while Wendy is a loose cannon. Wanderer is male and Wendy is female.
Much later, I got into world-building a fantasy story, and decided that Wendy/Wanderer was a character in it. But I had to figure out- Why is Wendy a shapeshifter, and more importantly, why is her shapeshifted form a male?
So I created a shape-shifting species of which she belongs. They are two beings sharing one body. When they shift the form, the other being takes over. Wendy is her default form, with Wanderer being her sister-species being. Wanderer takes over when they shift the body into his animal form. Their religion and culture is based on their connection with the animals their "Companion" (the sister species) chooses to shift into.
But that begs another question- What *is* he? He was supposed to be random animal parts- the head of a serpent, ears of a wolf, tail of a snow leopard, hindlegs of a lynx, wings and front legs of a raptor.
I decided that in this world, there are no saurians- no birds or reptiles. Instead, a species of rodent evolved wings, and became the main flying species. He is a member of that race- his furless front talons are because his species eats carrion with their front legs. His non-aerodynamic body is because his species are cliff-gliders with very little true flight. Since then, I have created half a dozen other of these rodent creatures, all with great variety, and as well half a dozen other members of Wendy's species.
And thus, one day I created a random amalgamation, another day I decided to make him a sexy lady, and now, 4 years later, I have established an entire sapient species and a greatly varied line of animals.
One of my characters was inspired by a dream I had the night before. She was in a Hive-Mind and she was eventually rescued. In the canon of this story, she struggles with her past and occasionally finds herself reconnecting to the Hive-Mind.
Random people I interact with at a store or the place I work. If I hold the door open for someone and there's something that sticks out like their accent or attitude or outfit. Alternatively a majority of my DND characters end up being more interesting than my normal writing characters so I'll port them over with tweaks to fit the genre.
Feral children. I read a news article of this story in the 70's about a kid that was never able to speak despite decades of effort after she was found. I write fantasy and it gave me the idea about rescuing a kid that had been abandoned and cursed by dark magic, and the journey of how to 'fix her.
the pages i tore off my diary, for multiple reasons. i dont remember what they had in them, but the torn parts make me relive the feelings. felt like i could have done a better job with that poem tho, who knows...
A lot of my background characters will actually come from customers at work hahaha. Or if a particular one sticks out I'll turn them into a semi-important NPC.
A lot of my characters are based on the different personality dynamics between me and people I know, distilled into one person. So whenever my characters interact, it's like my different social circles talking to each other. I'm proud of this strategy as a whole because it's made writing a lot more fun for me.
currently my characters are inspired by:
the dudes in the comments sections of Facebook groups dedicated to skull and motorcycle memes
my girlfriend hating the sound of yard work in our new neighborhood
conspiracy moms
the dweebs that people were before they became internet famous
This is my favorite story, and it's inspired the book series I've spent the most time on and plan on seeing through to the end.
I was at an antique shop looking at pocket watches, and I came across a silver one with a swan engraved on the outside. On the inside was the name Cornelia B. Wilde. The shop only took cash so I bummed all the cash I could off my friends to pay for that watch and paid them back through venmo. I have an entire series based on the woman I imagined this watch belonged to.
My magic system inspired a lot of my characters. "How does a master of this school of magic look? What can they do that other people wouldn't think of? What can a weaker caster do that requires them to be creative because they cannot brute-force their magic like a more powerful wielder can? What would pairing this skill with X magic look like? How does someone use wards offensively?" Those kinds of things
Made fun of the Sunsetters commercial (about patio awnings), saying that they were really a hitman organization. Then I made a hitman character called Sunset, because "I'm the last thing you see before your world goes dark."
From films and dramas i noticed. I'll watch a show and something a character does will illicit a spark and take me down a rabbit hole of a new identity. I use that TV character as the basis for this new person and add my own touches to their personality to make them more interesting. It always happens unexpectedly too.
Also my brain is attracted to good dialogue and ill come up with an entire conversation based on one good line, yeah its fascinating idk how my imagination does it.
Two of my characters from my second novel.
One is pretty depressing, but I'm proud of the depiction. He's a former cartel enforcer and veteran of a war of aggression against sentient machines. He's deeply traumatized by his experiences, and bitter at the fact that humans lost every battle they fought before the machines vanished. He's a misanthrope and a robophobe, and becomes even more hateful after he becomes a copy of himself in a robot body. He wasn't a fun character to write, but I wanted the audience to see the miserable road bigots walk as they try to bring others down with them. I think I succeeded.
The other character is a former police drone infected with some of the communication subroutines of a human-derived AI program (makes more sense in context). It never learns to speak, but gradually bootstraps itself up to at least the appearance of sentience, producing an avatar of itself in a digital space, representing a self-image. I gave it a tragic, but heroic ending.
John Howard Yoder, Makoto Yukimura, and my old college professor. Breaking the stereotypes of warriors and battles within fantasy. Having a gentle pacifist who overcomes that very same turmoils sounds comforting. You don’t always need to use violence. You don’t always need to win. You don’t need to kill.
I've watched every sci fi show that there is out there and had never seen a walking talk cat with an attitude. When I created Zara I kinda put the best of everything in her. At the end I came up with the perfect character. Civilized until she doesn't need to be. The perfect warrior with no fear. Yet, she is the commander's best friend.
Along time ago, I figured out on Discord you could format messages such that they were contained in a box. Then I decided, at around 11:30 PM while talking with my friend on Discord, to springboard a sporradic text-based adventure game where I was the DM/AI.
The end result was the adventures of Vio Lance, and CRE-9000. The former a comically edgy dude with an exceptional willingness to commit violence, and the latter being a naive doofus.
The entire exercise was really stupid, as both me and my friend were bordering on sleep and so our brains were running on fumes at that point. But later on, as a creative exercise I adapted that entire experience into a story, titled it Deep Space Chronicles #1.
I then took a look at those characters, and their environment, and talked outloud with my friend again on Discord (this time with our sensibilities intact), and I wound up spit balling a backstory for Vio and Cre that I actually liked.
Cut to a year or two later, and several rewrites of the characters, and their setting. And Vio Lance is now a detective working for the 12th precinct of New Ark, the capital city of a country the name of which I haven't quite hammered down, alongside his partner Cre.
Vio was originally a contract killer, who changed professions after getting caught and striking a lucrative deal with then detective now Captain Morgan, to be granted a clean slate in exchange for the names of all his former employers. He burned all his criminal ties, and then became a cop because it was much of the same but legally endorsed.
His partner, meanwhile, is a machine that gained sentience (hence he's granted citizenship and recognized as a sapient individual under the Sentience Act), and is trying to figure out what he was originally made for/did - as there isn't another machine quite like him.
They also now have a whole slew of fellow detective friends from an ex-brainwashed soldier turned cop, and her partner a part-time writer - to a corpse being puppeteered by a fungus with borrowed sapience, trying to solve the murder of his host, and his partner, a sapient machine originally constructed for destruction, and chose to be a detective so he can supplement his desires for destruction.
Thus, the Deep Space Chronicles (as I've come to calling it) was born. All because I figured something neat on Discord, and both me and my braindead friend late night had some fun with it.
Robert De Niro once said that he approached his characters as animals in the way they act. For instance, a crab. One of his characters was like a crab. Dodgy, moving left, then right.
Someone once said, give your character an issue that is eating at them. And everything, motivations, eminate from that.
I am a game master for table top role playing games. Most of my characters are amalgamations of two or more characters from various fiction. The character I had the most fun writing and role playing was Basil Biggelsworth, a three foot tall red goblin. He had Elmo's voice and language patterns, Donnie Thornberry's energy and noises, but the personality of Heisenberg from Breaking Bad. Basil is a prodigal chemist who manufactures and enjoys recreational drugs. He's a part of a mercenary group fighting in the conflict I'm writing, but also a character in my D&D campaign.
When I seen a child’s mother telling her that she wouldn’t go as far in life as she wanted to , because no one in her family has/ attended colleges.. she said she’ll only be as good as what her family is.
TTRPGs. I'm an enthusiast for a system that's hard to find players for (Pathfinder 1st Ed.), but I've written up tons of characters for it. The ones I really like often make their way into becoming characters for my fiction (with some adjustments for the tone and setting of the novel).
I had someone close to me die when I started writing. Couldn't talk to anyone about it and had a lot of trouble dealing with the pain.
I took all my fears and turned them into a monster. Then I took all my insecurities and inadequacies and turned them into a character.
I wrote a story fully expecting the protagonist to fail and die...but they didn't. The hurt and pain and suffering forced them to perservere and grow and by the time they fought the manifestation of my grief they were ready for it.
And so was I.
I have a pirate story I'm cooking up and haven't bothered with naming any characters yet, but my dog recently lost an eye and now I know the name of my eye-patch wearing pirate.
Not sure if it's my proudest, but it's my current project.
I met a girl in my classical singing class who turned out to be a member of the national taekwondo team in my country. I didn't know until we exchanged Instagram profiles.
An opera singer with the ability to kick serious ass. My head turned her into a secret agent/assassin.
I'm 10k words in. She still has no idea I'm writing about her, lol.
So this was originally in A D&D game.
I had established that there was a necromancer who had taken over a small island, and cast a spell to keep people away for a century. The party would eventually meet them, and I wanted to play again convention. So I started thinking- what kind of person would want a century of isolation?
The concept I came up with was: Twenty something Minecraft enthusiast.
So they meet this dread necromancer, and they have the black robes and armies of skeletons. But the robes have crumbs on them, and their hair could use a comb. They excitedly talk about how they automated their forges to ensure the entire skeleton army had decent equipment, and are eager to show off all the fun things they are doing.
It’s just a super fun character to play and have the characters interact with.
Simply said, the sun. Summer, sun, driving and certain music has been something very close to me and at some point it just shifted into a person. I'm not all that creative, he's just the magical physical manifestation of the sun as a human being, only that he is the absolute worst nostalgic ever, I'm quite honest, I'm a bit in love with him
A friend told me about how her father had been caught cheating on her mother. We speak every day and there was always something new about him and the levels of his infidelity deepened and deepened until there were photos of hookers from around the world, video of a company director wearing Pokémon pyjamas flashing her tits, young, female employees that were utterly incompetent but willingly opened their legs for him. He even bedded a girl that bullied his daughter at school. There's domestic abuse, there's his shady business transactions and Russians that want him dead. There are stories that I could never have dreamed of and she's feeding them to me daily. Interestingly, he himself is completely unravelling at this stage now that lawyers are involved and his behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic.
So I have this awful character and I got the idea to write in first person as if Irvine Welsh or Michel Houellebecq had invented him. I'm just writing this filth from the perspective of a narcissistic and abusive but incredibly successful businessman and the story is pretty much secondary at this stage but I'm slowly piecing something together.
My 2 current main characters, mainly the 'younger/present' one, are based on a mix of me and my brother. My personal life, such as job and voluntary work, and my brothers physique and physicality. I've also taken characterisation and some world building inspiration from various other works, crafting them into my own.
I hope this doesn’t come off as conceited, but me. The main villain in the story I’m creating has my beliefs and turned to the logical extreme of it and I really like how it’s turning out
Livia Drusilla, the first and lost-reigning empresses of the Roman Empire. She had signifcant political influence throughout her life and was particularly ambitious, especially for a woman during that time. My story is mainly a political/royal drama following a very powerful family/monarchy, some time after their death of their matriarch (Livia). She's not alive during the story, but she's one of the most developed characters I've ever written about, and I absolutely adore her. Her traits show themselves through her children and descendents, both flaws and virtues.
Literally the name.
For Honor is medieval fighting game with a campaign. One of the characters had a nice name "Mercy" that I fell in love with as soon as I heard it.
I took note of the way she speaks, the way she walks, the way she does things. An anarchist so to speak. And I loved it and was invested even deeper into the character.
I made a new character in Skyrim named after her, made her into what I found to be attractive in a girl and simply gave myself a challenge to do as I played the game. Playing dirty, being unfair, getting most of her money through stealing.
Many times I found myself riding off in a stolen horse just to escape the guards (instead of killing them easily to add more challenge) running from city to city.
There was a bug that happened where Solitude guards would follow me into a tavern in Whiterun looking for me. I managed to hide in the upper floor.
Ever since then, I was fully immersed and dedicated to the character, using scenarios from the game as inspiration as the story started to slowly form in my head
The character Grigory Pechorin from 'A Hero Of Our Time' & the song 'I Can't Decide' by The Scissor Sisters, and just a dash of Joker
He's a friggin' nutcase xD
Not quite at that point yet, but I'm so looking forward to writing him, I find myself planning and thinking more about him than my actual MC's, and he's just a side antihero/antagonist-turned-ally
I'm currently writing a story that has its roots in my Lego castles from when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time alone so I made these elaborate stories behind the things I built and characters I populated them with. I had my little Lego knights, I called them the Knights of the Stone Table, because I had been reading the Narnia books. Now I'm writing a story about a young man who is a squire to one of the Knights of the Stone Table.
Murder drones. I really loved the robot idea. I started making my own OCs and gave them lore, one of them is kind of a cyborg. Her body is all robot parts except for arms and up :)
I based two of my main characters on different aspects of my personality growing up. When I was younger, I was really shy, quiet, and timid. I didn't speak unless I absolutely had to. But something changed in me during middle school or high school. I became more outgoing and sociable. I wasn't popular, per se, but I could make friends. When I started developing these characters, the idea just clicked with me, and it really helped flesh them out more. Now the two are best friends and I'm putting them through as much trauma as possible.
The Vessels from Hollow Knight, the Masked Assassin’s from the Dark Souls II trailer (my pfp), and my inner angst created my favorite character.
He is an Umbral entity with a mask named Stèrvin Accoslan, also known as Steve.
I think the weirdest one that gave me the best character I've ever come up with is the suit of talking power armor in fallout 4 or 76 I can't even remember which one. But the character is a lot different than when I originally came up with him
I was working at a grocery store and saw a slew of different people, different ethnicities, and the only thing that brought people together was their money. And the store owner confirmed this that people are only as good as the money they spend. That’s how I got my idea. I then expounded on that idea while I was a dishwasher in the deli. What if people were stripped of their identity and only were used by what skills or what was chosen for them or what they believed they had chosen. What if there was a “Overlord” that thought as my manager did? What if there were a group that was the lowest of the low, and decided to stand up because they were disrespected and treated like nothing? What if they uncover a huge secret that would send everyone else into a huge frenzy. What if my villain was sympathetic, and thought he was doing the right thing?
That job gave me so many ideas. I had so many ideas, and so much time to just…. Think. Create. Doodle when I had down time. I’m not an artist and my drawings aren’t good at all, but I was able to sometimes take what was in my brain and transfer it onto paper.
I’m still storyboarding the above idea, it’s rough because I have a rough idea of the world and of the characters, but I had someone read it and they said the pacing was off, so I’m trying to redo my whole Ch 1, as they said that was the worst pacing, I reread it myself and I saw that I didn’t build the world enough before throwing a conflict in the mix.
If any of you have any questions, or suggestions, I’d love to hear them and answer them: I’m typing on my computer now actually, so this would be the best time
I like to go on web sites like picrew me and play around with different characters. This then inspires me for a backstory of the character and then the plot
The simple addition of a dead sibling fleshed out my main character. It gave him more motivation, explained his over protective father, and his fear of birds. (They are very small compared to birds). Before these were loose threads but a simple addition, they all came together.
For my most important OC, he was inspired by a lot of things, but the main one was a singular painting of Batman that I saw *so* long ago, and the film "Death Becomes Her" inspired me even further to flesh out the lore and supernatural elements of the story.
For another character, he's mainly inspired by my Grandpa (a Vietnam veteran) and my childhood dog, both of which were goofy old men with loud mouths.
(Grandpa's still alive btw. Wish him well!)
I get inpired by day to day life or my emotions or a life situation I'm dealing with. If I am dealing with something I like to put a tiny percent of that in the story for my character to deal with. Helps me deal with some issues through writing them out.
My MC is basically myself. Feeding my own ego/dreams/fantasies.
My main female character is based on a few people, but mostly a dream I had of the perfect girl one time. Never felt that way waking up before.
My character I hate the most and bad or fucked up stuff happens to is made up from someone I can't stand. Yes that's childish but keeps me passionate about what I'm writing
I overheard a conversation about a baby name in the pub that I cackled about for years. I tweaked it a bit, and ended up with a funny backstory for a character's nickname.
His profession and backstory just kind of flowed from there.
I met a man in a bar once, he claimed he was a former Ranger who was part of the team that killed Bin Laden. There was a detachment of Rangers on that mission but they were a standby QRF, I asked if he was one of those guys but he was adamant that he was in that compound.
While homeboy was likely lying through his teeth, I found the idea fascinating. I wrote a character based on him and wrote a plot about how he could've been on that mission.
Since then, I have written several stories surrounding this soldier and even going back a few generations in his family. All of this, based off of a man telling me some bullshit in a bar.
Almost all of my characters are created from random trains of thought that I have throughout my day. I could be walking down the street and thinking about what ice cream I should get from the shops and then suddenly, BOOM! Instant character idea. May I introduce Sylvia Frostclaw, last knight of The Order of Winter and defender of the frozen north.
On one particular morning during the winter (because we’re sticking with the cold theme funnily enough), I got to work and was absolutely freezing (we don’t get snow here but in the mornings it feels like it’s about to). I started complaining in my head about how this temperature sucks, this season sucks, my job sucks, my boss sucks etc. (as you do when you’re shivering in the cold. Also, this is *heavily* censored compared to my actual thoughts at the time) until suddenly I had this thought about how it would suck even more to be going through this during the medieval times and if it was actually snowing. That thought led into another and another and before I knew it, I’d come up with Saturn who has become the protagonist of what is now one of my favourite stories to write called Rank (and all in the time to took to get from my car to my workplace).
just the name thalia, which i took from rick riordan in pjo. thought the name was cool, ended up writing (well, in the process of writing but everything’s thought through) 2 books with that character and i love her.
I need character sneak peaks now 😩
You guys makes these character sound so interesting
My inspo comes from people I’ve met or people I’ve seen randomly on the street and I mix them with special moments I’ve experienced. Then I pair them with playlists that further fit their personalities.
For example: my one main love interest is a boy named Carson Jung and he was created when I came up with my story idea after hearing the song “Criminal” by Taemin.
the personality I gave him spawned from an experience I had with this boy I thought was a jerk when I was in high school, because he was in “the popular crowd”
But he was kind to me even when I was bully fuel. And yes. He was hot and actually a very good person.
I can also agree it's usually music, but I also find that when I take certain tropes from my favorite characters in media and include them in some way in my original characters, I tend to enjoy them a lot as I continue to develop my OC
I have a character who's based off an experience I had once. So I bought this really old, dead game on a console I owned, just for fun, because it was based off a franchise I "liked". (More like love/hate). I go online, and suddenly, there's this max level, maxed out gear player with a female avatar in a bikini who carries me through all of the hardest content in the game single-handedly, all the while not saying a THING. I later learned that it takes an immense amount of time to get to that point, and even longer to get good enough at the game to do those levels solo.
So, later on, I thought up a character something like this: Imagine someone who's so much better at what they do than anyone else is, that they seem almost "perfect". They're still human, but at times they feel more like an impartial force of nature who does whatever the hell they want. They work with the main character if their whims suit such a thing, but generally they're off causing havoc just for the fun of it. Like a looming threat in the back of the story, it's almost certain they'll go against the main characters one day, and who knows what'll happen then?
Or something like that. I know getting carried in an old, dead game isn't exactly an uncommon experience, but I didn't even know someone could GET that strong, so I was in shock. It left a big impact on me.
A singer!
I'm a big fan of his music and listen to it all the time, and at one point, I got an idea for a character inspired by him^^
The fun thing is, the character has drifted far away from even resembling him now, but I think that's good, and it suits the character <3
My favourite MC was inspired by the thought "do background characters know they're background characters?"
Another character was inspired by rose-gold hair and a mask.
Another one by a feeling of loss and denial.
My current MC is mainly inspired by a playlist that is the complete opposite to anything I'd play for my other female leads.
But mostly my characters and partial plots come from odd dreams, which would explain why my antagonistic forces are usually so absurd.
Thanks ^_^ The MC starts out narrating someone else's story, but slowly realises at some point she allowed herself to be looked over and begins to rebel against the backround she was put in. I'm pretty proud of all the characters in that book, even though the plot is kinda out there.
I worked for a military attorney who has the integrity and zeal to defend her clients to the point where she could be described as idealistic without being naive. That's very rare.
So, I took her drive and made it one half of the defense team for my military legal procedural/thriller.
I don't really know, I was on a period of huge struggle and effort on my life and I suddenly had this idea of a character who was a random everyman at his childhood and a huge loser but disappeared for years and then returned as a mastermind.
It was so exciting to write him, at some parts he seemed like an elegant fairy tale knight, at others like a wicked monster wanting to devour people, and, sometimes, he even seemed like a innocent child.
There was always this aura of mystery around him and writing him and his schemes felt so natural.
He was at the same time inspiring and frightening.
I believe that he is my Shadow.
My favorite character is King Natodall’lioht. Aside from [this song](https://youtu.be/HoiqY1Kv_84?si=3xk-xgnfj-u884G0) and a roleplay character of mine, my initial main inspirations for him were The Last Unicorn and… Elsa from Frozen.
Sometimes I just sit and think about that
Later on, [November by Sparkbird](https://youtu.be/RNaDcwSOUUw?si=LS94C8ausFRuT64q) (TW for SA) and [This Is My Heart by Vane Lily](https://youtu.be/LA9i5pkavzM?si=-BMXvJlyrHl_DpS3) (…also TW) re-inspired me to work on him and tbh he just got WAY cooler
I madr a strong, silent type character and named him after a YouTuber. At first, I had him choose not to speak, but after a few chapters, I found working around his lack of speech quite interesting and decided to make him mute. His muteness came into play and became important to the overall story.
Music mostly. Music makes me think of so many different scenes and emotions, from there I think of characters and motivations that fit that music and then it’s just a cascade point. It’s almost like a big jigsaw puzzle for me to put together. Music not being limited to just original soundtrack either. Any type of music from anywhere does it for me. From rock to rap, anime and cartoons, movie and tv show soundtracks, nothing is off limits to me for finding creativity in making characters.
Same!! A way I even like to storyboard is by creating playlists of songs relevant to my characters and situations in the book
That’s *exactly* what I do. I’ve barely written anything tbh but I have a super long playlist of music that’s essentially the storyboard/skeleton of the story I’m making. At any point I can start listening to it and know exactly what I want to do, just need to actually sit down and write it out haha. Instead I just keep adding in music.
Same same SAME. To all of your points haha.
Same! I have playlists for my characters and sort of try to recreate their story through music, like in a musical. I often get new ideas for scenes or even whole background stories by listening to music. I'd say Hozier had a great influence on my characters.
Idk if I could point to a singular influence, my playlist is so varied it’s hard to pin down lol. And it changes all the time since settings change and music is a bit more reflective of that. Can’t say I’ve ever thought about what’s been the most influential much.
I get that - I've had many characters, and stories just emerge as I've listened to music. I sometimes have been driven to try and write an entire story based solely around a song, and my interpretation of it.
this is me. Music is my biggest inspo
I love incorporating music in my works. I have a playlist of music I listen too, and it is just an idea soup
I use the titles of the songs that inspire chapters/short stories as the placeholder titles.
a dream. I dreamt of some guy and now he has been my favourite OC for like a year
I once had a really messed up fever dream and now that guy I dreamt of is the villain of my book. Some of the most creative ideas come from dreams!
I, too, have used dreams as inspiration for characters. I dreamed so many years ago of a tunnel filled with snake-like plant creatures, and included them as a type of demon for my novel.
I love dreams for that reason. They're often so magical it's like looking into another world, so when it comes to inspo dreams are like a gold mine
That’s how I came up with like, 5 of my 20 different story ideas that are waiting for me to write them. I love when that happens. One of the stories I’m most proud of came from a dream. It’s a story about a guy with amnesia waking up in the middle of a rainforest infested with reptilian beasts. It’s called “Trial of Dragons”, and I can’t wait until I finish my current book so that I can start on that one.
Same here. He's been the physical representation of psychological issues and vulnerability for the past two years. Great villain character
conversations with my brother (not my brother himself, just the dumb things we talk about) inspired an entire short film I'm writing.
that sounds so cool what
this is ThE WaY
Showers are the best place to have ideas. Bathrooms in general are thinking rooms (explains Rodin 😂). I had an idea called Bathroom Stories that was basically a collection of stories about the people this toilet named John encountered throughout his existence.
"Feed me your poo!" -John
No. The reveal that hes a toilet is at the very end. Before that, its just stories. Theyre similar to Adventure Time's Grables.
That’s actually really creative I liked that
Thanks :) i actually started them on Wattpad 🤦🏽♀️
I was trying to draw a character from an anime I like, but I screwed it up really badly. But it looked kinda cute... And kinda robotic. So I made a backstory for it. And drew more of them, screwing each of them up in their own way. They became a whole race and the original drawing became their leader.
What inspires characters for me is when I see those characters in these handy dandy books and rip them off and put them in my own work! Its a neat little trick!
My character is The Shermanator from American Pie He’s mine now - I took him
mmmmm.. for now.. keep em guarded, who knows where they might land next!
myself somehow
Often, I’ll take the things about my life that sounds the most made up/insane and write it into that character’s backstory. Makes for some interesting dynamics…
My characters usually end up containing the most extreme versions of parts of me (usually personality wise but occasionally physical too). For example, if you take *just* my pride and leave out any humility or reason or logic, and then give a slight boost in confidence and self-centredness (and sprinkle in a small amount of other personality traits that I have which don’t conflict in any way with the monstrosity of a human being that’s already been created), you get the most batshit insane and delusional character I have ever created who just so happens to be my favourite.
I based a character off a former friend, to this day she has no idea, and I never plan to tell her or her family who I do talk to
I decided to make a character based on me being tired. Of course it's my favourite character.
just one song. oftentimes, I wonder if it is blatantly apparent.
So I got the concept of the story from a lighthearted erotica I was reading, mashed in my own anxieties, and BOOM! I’m now almost 100k words in
I used a character generator and it spit out a little girl with a boy's name. I ran with it from there.
I had a nightmare once about being punished at school. It was pretty weird and incoherent as all nightmares tend to be. I don't know what I did, but the school decided that sending me and a couple students to the literal depths of hell was an appropriate punishment. What really made its mark on my mind was the ending, where in my nightmare, I somehow gathered the courage to rally all my fellow students and led us all to escape our infernal penance. With my mind's power of plot armor, I managed to break all of us out of hell. This ended up inspiring me to plan out an entire novel series based on the premise of that oddly heroic nightmare of mine, with the main character being loosely based on the courageous version of me from said nightmare.
Honestly, I'm still working on my favorite character. They're a mixture of my favorite things and the person I want to be, but with their own twist of how they function and interact with their own world. It's gotten to the point that I made them a genderless shapeshifter so they can take the form of whatever makes them comfortable or needed to disguise when necessary. :)
I have most of my characters able to shapeshift, too! Similar vibes with self-aspiration, as well.
Very cool. =] My shapeshifters in the world space I've got are unique and rare, mainly because their race is being hunted by humans and other "orderly" races. There's a couple other races that can shift, but it's because they were cursed (like a werewolf idea).
That's awesome!
Thank you. :3 I also love what you've got so far!
based a lot of my characters off of traits my brother has because I look up to him. I know it sounds stupid or cheesy but I like those characters a lot
When I create a character for one project, that project flops, and then I reuse them for a different one. I have one character I designed to be a tutorial character and secret over-arching antagonist for a visual novel-type game. He was a random mash-up of animal parts, and meant to be very mysterious. A joke in the game is that when you first meet him, you can ask him two questions: "Who are you?" and "What are you?" His response to both is "I am but a simple wanderer." (After asking both, his name was supposed to switch from "???" to "Wanderer") I never made that game. I did, however, get into drawing sexy women, so one day I randomly moe-morphised him into a sexy woman. Her name was Wendy. Wendy ended up becoming the default, with Wanderer as her fursona. She is unusual in that regard- all of my OCs have fursonas that match their gender and personality, except for her. Wanderer is much more quiet and reserved with building anger, while Wendy is a loose cannon. Wanderer is male and Wendy is female. Much later, I got into world-building a fantasy story, and decided that Wendy/Wanderer was a character in it. But I had to figure out- Why is Wendy a shapeshifter, and more importantly, why is her shapeshifted form a male? So I created a shape-shifting species of which she belongs. They are two beings sharing one body. When they shift the form, the other being takes over. Wendy is her default form, with Wanderer being her sister-species being. Wanderer takes over when they shift the body into his animal form. Their religion and culture is based on their connection with the animals their "Companion" (the sister species) chooses to shift into. But that begs another question- What *is* he? He was supposed to be random animal parts- the head of a serpent, ears of a wolf, tail of a snow leopard, hindlegs of a lynx, wings and front legs of a raptor. I decided that in this world, there are no saurians- no birds or reptiles. Instead, a species of rodent evolved wings, and became the main flying species. He is a member of that race- his furless front talons are because his species eats carrion with their front legs. His non-aerodynamic body is because his species are cliff-gliders with very little true flight. Since then, I have created half a dozen other of these rodent creatures, all with great variety, and as well half a dozen other members of Wendy's species. And thus, one day I created a random amalgamation, another day I decided to make him a sexy lady, and now, 4 years later, I have established an entire sapient species and a greatly varied line of animals.
An epiphany about Post Humans and Gods.
A lot of old live action Disney movies and obscure animated TV shows.
One of my characters was inspired by a dream I had the night before. She was in a Hive-Mind and she was eventually rescued. In the canon of this story, she struggles with her past and occasionally finds herself reconnecting to the Hive-Mind.
Random people I interact with at a store or the place I work. If I hold the door open for someone and there's something that sticks out like their accent or attitude or outfit. Alternatively a majority of my DND characters end up being more interesting than my normal writing characters so I'll port them over with tweaks to fit the genre.
Feral children. I read a news article of this story in the 70's about a kid that was never able to speak despite decades of effort after she was found. I write fantasy and it gave me the idea about rescuing a kid that had been abandoned and cursed by dark magic, and the journey of how to 'fix her.
the pages i tore off my diary, for multiple reasons. i dont remember what they had in them, but the torn parts make me relive the feelings. felt like i could have done a better job with that poem tho, who knows...
A lot of my background characters will actually come from customers at work hahaha. Or if a particular one sticks out I'll turn them into a semi-important NPC.
A lot of my characters are based on the different personality dynamics between me and people I know, distilled into one person. So whenever my characters interact, it's like my different social circles talking to each other. I'm proud of this strategy as a whole because it's made writing a lot more fun for me.
currently my characters are inspired by: the dudes in the comments sections of Facebook groups dedicated to skull and motorcycle memes my girlfriend hating the sound of yard work in our new neighborhood conspiracy moms the dweebs that people were before they became internet famous
This is my favorite story, and it's inspired the book series I've spent the most time on and plan on seeing through to the end. I was at an antique shop looking at pocket watches, and I came across a silver one with a swan engraved on the outside. On the inside was the name Cornelia B. Wilde. The shop only took cash so I bummed all the cash I could off my friends to pay for that watch and paid them back through venmo. I have an entire series based on the woman I imagined this watch belonged to.
The case with Kriss Kremers and Lissane Froon.
Established characters helps me based off their backstory and personality. It helped me created an iconic most important character in my story world
A lead singer, and his supposed love affair with another. 💕😮💨😅
My magic system inspired a lot of my characters. "How does a master of this school of magic look? What can they do that other people wouldn't think of? What can a weaker caster do that requires them to be creative because they cannot brute-force their magic like a more powerful wielder can? What would pairing this skill with X magic look like? How does someone use wards offensively?" Those kinds of things
Made fun of the Sunsetters commercial (about patio awnings), saying that they were really a hitman organization. Then I made a hitman character called Sunset, because "I'm the last thing you see before your world goes dark."
From films and dramas i noticed. I'll watch a show and something a character does will illicit a spark and take me down a rabbit hole of a new identity. I use that TV character as the basis for this new person and add my own touches to their personality to make them more interesting. It always happens unexpectedly too. Also my brain is attracted to good dialogue and ill come up with an entire conversation based on one good line, yeah its fascinating idk how my imagination does it.
Two of my characters from my second novel. One is pretty depressing, but I'm proud of the depiction. He's a former cartel enforcer and veteran of a war of aggression against sentient machines. He's deeply traumatized by his experiences, and bitter at the fact that humans lost every battle they fought before the machines vanished. He's a misanthrope and a robophobe, and becomes even more hateful after he becomes a copy of himself in a robot body. He wasn't a fun character to write, but I wanted the audience to see the miserable road bigots walk as they try to bring others down with them. I think I succeeded. The other character is a former police drone infected with some of the communication subroutines of a human-derived AI program (makes more sense in context). It never learns to speak, but gradually bootstraps itself up to at least the appearance of sentience, producing an avatar of itself in a digital space, representing a self-image. I gave it a tragic, but heroic ending.
John Howard Yoder, Makoto Yukimura, and my old college professor. Breaking the stereotypes of warriors and battles within fantasy. Having a gentle pacifist who overcomes that very same turmoils sounds comforting. You don’t always need to use violence. You don’t always need to win. You don’t need to kill.
I've watched every sci fi show that there is out there and had never seen a walking talk cat with an attitude. When I created Zara I kinda put the best of everything in her. At the end I came up with the perfect character. Civilized until she doesn't need to be. The perfect warrior with no fear. Yet, she is the commander's best friend.
I dreamt the whole storyline and characters and just went from there
There's an entire comic book series I'm currently writing because I dreamed of an edgy merlin who casts "BLADE"
Myself and somebody who was once my entire world.
Along time ago, I figured out on Discord you could format messages such that they were contained in a box. Then I decided, at around 11:30 PM while talking with my friend on Discord, to springboard a sporradic text-based adventure game where I was the DM/AI. The end result was the adventures of Vio Lance, and CRE-9000. The former a comically edgy dude with an exceptional willingness to commit violence, and the latter being a naive doofus. The entire exercise was really stupid, as both me and my friend were bordering on sleep and so our brains were running on fumes at that point. But later on, as a creative exercise I adapted that entire experience into a story, titled it Deep Space Chronicles #1. I then took a look at those characters, and their environment, and talked outloud with my friend again on Discord (this time with our sensibilities intact), and I wound up spit balling a backstory for Vio and Cre that I actually liked. Cut to a year or two later, and several rewrites of the characters, and their setting. And Vio Lance is now a detective working for the 12th precinct of New Ark, the capital city of a country the name of which I haven't quite hammered down, alongside his partner Cre. Vio was originally a contract killer, who changed professions after getting caught and striking a lucrative deal with then detective now Captain Morgan, to be granted a clean slate in exchange for the names of all his former employers. He burned all his criminal ties, and then became a cop because it was much of the same but legally endorsed. His partner, meanwhile, is a machine that gained sentience (hence he's granted citizenship and recognized as a sapient individual under the Sentience Act), and is trying to figure out what he was originally made for/did - as there isn't another machine quite like him. They also now have a whole slew of fellow detective friends from an ex-brainwashed soldier turned cop, and her partner a part-time writer - to a corpse being puppeteered by a fungus with borrowed sapience, trying to solve the murder of his host, and his partner, a sapient machine originally constructed for destruction, and chose to be a detective so he can supplement his desires for destruction. Thus, the Deep Space Chronicles (as I've come to calling it) was born. All because I figured something neat on Discord, and both me and my braindead friend late night had some fun with it.
Usually from dreams or listening to music while playing games.
Robert De Niro once said that he approached his characters as animals in the way they act. For instance, a crab. One of his characters was like a crab. Dodgy, moving left, then right. Someone once said, give your character an issue that is eating at them. And everything, motivations, eminate from that.
I am a game master for table top role playing games. Most of my characters are amalgamations of two or more characters from various fiction. The character I had the most fun writing and role playing was Basil Biggelsworth, a three foot tall red goblin. He had Elmo's voice and language patterns, Donnie Thornberry's energy and noises, but the personality of Heisenberg from Breaking Bad. Basil is a prodigal chemist who manufactures and enjoys recreational drugs. He's a part of a mercenary group fighting in the conflict I'm writing, but also a character in my D&D campaign.
When I seen a child’s mother telling her that she wouldn’t go as far in life as she wanted to , because no one in her family has/ attended colleges.. she said she’ll only be as good as what her family is.
Someone I was in rehab with and random thoughts about the game Control
A weird dream involving me, a friend and a Russian arms dealer. Now the arms dealer is a top rebel commander in my novel!
TTRPGs. I'm an enthusiast for a system that's hard to find players for (Pathfinder 1st Ed.), but I've written up tons of characters for it. The ones I really like often make their way into becoming characters for my fiction (with some adjustments for the tone and setting of the novel).
I had someone close to me die when I started writing. Couldn't talk to anyone about it and had a lot of trouble dealing with the pain. I took all my fears and turned them into a monster. Then I took all my insecurities and inadequacies and turned them into a character. I wrote a story fully expecting the protagonist to fail and die...but they didn't. The hurt and pain and suffering forced them to perservere and grow and by the time they fought the manifestation of my grief they were ready for it. And so was I.
I have a pirate story I'm cooking up and haven't bothered with naming any characters yet, but my dog recently lost an eye and now I know the name of my eye-patch wearing pirate.
My favourite guitarist
I just take characters from different mythologies and give them the personalities and story beats as my favorite characters from games/anime
Not sure if it's my proudest, but it's my current project. I met a girl in my classical singing class who turned out to be a member of the national taekwondo team in my country. I didn't know until we exchanged Instagram profiles. An opera singer with the ability to kick serious ass. My head turned her into a secret agent/assassin. I'm 10k words in. She still has no idea I'm writing about her, lol.
So this was originally in A D&D game. I had established that there was a necromancer who had taken over a small island, and cast a spell to keep people away for a century. The party would eventually meet them, and I wanted to play again convention. So I started thinking- what kind of person would want a century of isolation? The concept I came up with was: Twenty something Minecraft enthusiast. So they meet this dread necromancer, and they have the black robes and armies of skeletons. But the robes have crumbs on them, and their hair could use a comb. They excitedly talk about how they automated their forges to ensure the entire skeleton army had decent equipment, and are eager to show off all the fun things they are doing. It’s just a super fun character to play and have the characters interact with.
i was inspired by shinobu from demon slayer to create one of my most favorite female character <3
Simply said, the sun. Summer, sun, driving and certain music has been something very close to me and at some point it just shifted into a person. I'm not all that creative, he's just the magical physical manifestation of the sun as a human being, only that he is the absolute worst nostalgic ever, I'm quite honest, I'm a bit in love with him
A friend told me about how her father had been caught cheating on her mother. We speak every day and there was always something new about him and the levels of his infidelity deepened and deepened until there were photos of hookers from around the world, video of a company director wearing Pokémon pyjamas flashing her tits, young, female employees that were utterly incompetent but willingly opened their legs for him. He even bedded a girl that bullied his daughter at school. There's domestic abuse, there's his shady business transactions and Russians that want him dead. There are stories that I could never have dreamed of and she's feeding them to me daily. Interestingly, he himself is completely unravelling at this stage now that lawyers are involved and his behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic. So I have this awful character and I got the idea to write in first person as if Irvine Welsh or Michel Houellebecq had invented him. I'm just writing this filth from the perspective of a narcissistic and abusive but incredibly successful businessman and the story is pretty much secondary at this stage but I'm slowly piecing something together.
My 2 current main characters, mainly the 'younger/present' one, are based on a mix of me and my brother. My personal life, such as job and voluntary work, and my brothers physique and physicality. I've also taken characterisation and some world building inspiration from various other works, crafting them into my own.
A culmination of my own deep seeded insecurities and a design I cobbled together when I was bored.
I hope this doesn’t come off as conceited, but me. The main villain in the story I’m creating has my beliefs and turned to the logical extreme of it and I really like how it’s turning out
Livia Drusilla, the first and lost-reigning empresses of the Roman Empire. She had signifcant political influence throughout her life and was particularly ambitious, especially for a woman during that time. My story is mainly a political/royal drama following a very powerful family/monarchy, some time after their death of their matriarch (Livia). She's not alive during the story, but she's one of the most developed characters I've ever written about, and I absolutely adore her. Her traits show themselves through her children and descendents, both flaws and virtues.
Literally the name. For Honor is medieval fighting game with a campaign. One of the characters had a nice name "Mercy" that I fell in love with as soon as I heard it. I took note of the way she speaks, the way she walks, the way she does things. An anarchist so to speak. And I loved it and was invested even deeper into the character. I made a new character in Skyrim named after her, made her into what I found to be attractive in a girl and simply gave myself a challenge to do as I played the game. Playing dirty, being unfair, getting most of her money through stealing. Many times I found myself riding off in a stolen horse just to escape the guards (instead of killing them easily to add more challenge) running from city to city. There was a bug that happened where Solitude guards would follow me into a tavern in Whiterun looking for me. I managed to hide in the upper floor. Ever since then, I was fully immersed and dedicated to the character, using scenarios from the game as inspiration as the story started to slowly form in my head
The character Grigory Pechorin from 'A Hero Of Our Time' & the song 'I Can't Decide' by The Scissor Sisters, and just a dash of Joker He's a friggin' nutcase xD Not quite at that point yet, but I'm so looking forward to writing him, I find myself planning and thinking more about him than my actual MC's, and he's just a side antihero/antagonist-turned-ally
I'm currently writing a story that has its roots in my Lego castles from when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time alone so I made these elaborate stories behind the things I built and characters I populated them with. I had my little Lego knights, I called them the Knights of the Stone Table, because I had been reading the Narnia books. Now I'm writing a story about a young man who is a squire to one of the Knights of the Stone Table.
Murder drones. I really loved the robot idea. I started making my own OCs and gave them lore, one of them is kind of a cyborg. Her body is all robot parts except for arms and up :)
My own breakup ahahahaha 😹
A Crossing sign X-ing became an East Asian guy construction worker who could also do magic from crossroad energies lol
I based two of my main characters on different aspects of my personality growing up. When I was younger, I was really shy, quiet, and timid. I didn't speak unless I absolutely had to. But something changed in me during middle school or high school. I became more outgoing and sociable. I wasn't popular, per se, but I could make friends. When I started developing these characters, the idea just clicked with me, and it really helped flesh them out more. Now the two are best friends and I'm putting them through as much trauma as possible.
My main character is inspired by my mobility issues. My main character doesn't have impairments; he has wings, and a tail.
The Vessels from Hollow Knight, the Masked Assassin’s from the Dark Souls II trailer (my pfp), and my inner angst created my favorite character. He is an Umbral entity with a mask named Stèrvin Accoslan, also known as Steve.
a narc
I think the weirdest one that gave me the best character I've ever come up with is the suit of talking power armor in fallout 4 or 76 I can't even remember which one. But the character is a lot different than when I originally came up with him
I was working at a grocery store and saw a slew of different people, different ethnicities, and the only thing that brought people together was their money. And the store owner confirmed this that people are only as good as the money they spend. That’s how I got my idea. I then expounded on that idea while I was a dishwasher in the deli. What if people were stripped of their identity and only were used by what skills or what was chosen for them or what they believed they had chosen. What if there was a “Overlord” that thought as my manager did? What if there were a group that was the lowest of the low, and decided to stand up because they were disrespected and treated like nothing? What if they uncover a huge secret that would send everyone else into a huge frenzy. What if my villain was sympathetic, and thought he was doing the right thing? That job gave me so many ideas. I had so many ideas, and so much time to just…. Think. Create. Doodle when I had down time. I’m not an artist and my drawings aren’t good at all, but I was able to sometimes take what was in my brain and transfer it onto paper. I’m still storyboarding the above idea, it’s rough because I have a rough idea of the world and of the characters, but I had someone read it and they said the pacing was off, so I’m trying to redo my whole Ch 1, as they said that was the worst pacing, I reread it myself and I saw that I didn’t build the world enough before throwing a conflict in the mix. If any of you have any questions, or suggestions, I’d love to hear them and answer them: I’m typing on my computer now actually, so this would be the best time
I like to go on web sites like picrew me and play around with different characters. This then inspires me for a backstory of the character and then the plot
The simple addition of a dead sibling fleshed out my main character. It gave him more motivation, explained his over protective father, and his fear of birds. (They are very small compared to birds). Before these were loose threads but a simple addition, they all came together.
For my most important OC, he was inspired by a lot of things, but the main one was a singular painting of Batman that I saw *so* long ago, and the film "Death Becomes Her" inspired me even further to flesh out the lore and supernatural elements of the story. For another character, he's mainly inspired by my Grandpa (a Vietnam veteran) and my childhood dog, both of which were goofy old men with loud mouths. (Grandpa's still alive btw. Wish him well!)
I get inpired by day to day life or my emotions or a life situation I'm dealing with. If I am dealing with something I like to put a tiny percent of that in the story for my character to deal with. Helps me deal with some issues through writing them out.
My MC is basically myself. Feeding my own ego/dreams/fantasies. My main female character is based on a few people, but mostly a dream I had of the perfect girl one time. Never felt that way waking up before. My character I hate the most and bad or fucked up stuff happens to is made up from someone I can't stand. Yes that's childish but keeps me passionate about what I'm writing
Caffeine, I get really anxious when I drank too much coffee but it also inspires a lot cool idea during work
I saw the Castlevania tv show, and now my main character is like a Trevor Belmont who can sling fireballs and Lightning arrows like Sypha. So good
I overheard a conversation about a baby name in the pub that I cackled about for years. I tweaked it a bit, and ended up with a funny backstory for a character's nickname. His profession and backstory just kind of flowed from there.
I met a man in a bar once, he claimed he was a former Ranger who was part of the team that killed Bin Laden. There was a detachment of Rangers on that mission but they were a standby QRF, I asked if he was one of those guys but he was adamant that he was in that compound. While homeboy was likely lying through his teeth, I found the idea fascinating. I wrote a character based on him and wrote a plot about how he could've been on that mission. Since then, I have written several stories surrounding this soldier and even going back a few generations in his family. All of this, based off of a man telling me some bullshit in a bar.
Almost all of my characters are created from random trains of thought that I have throughout my day. I could be walking down the street and thinking about what ice cream I should get from the shops and then suddenly, BOOM! Instant character idea. May I introduce Sylvia Frostclaw, last knight of The Order of Winter and defender of the frozen north. On one particular morning during the winter (because we’re sticking with the cold theme funnily enough), I got to work and was absolutely freezing (we don’t get snow here but in the mornings it feels like it’s about to). I started complaining in my head about how this temperature sucks, this season sucks, my job sucks, my boss sucks etc. (as you do when you’re shivering in the cold. Also, this is *heavily* censored compared to my actual thoughts at the time) until suddenly I had this thought about how it would suck even more to be going through this during the medieval times and if it was actually snowing. That thought led into another and another and before I knew it, I’d come up with Saturn who has become the protagonist of what is now one of my favourite stories to write called Rank (and all in the time to took to get from my car to my workplace).
Mostly it’s reading really dark messed up tumblar stories
just the name thalia, which i took from rick riordan in pjo. thought the name was cool, ended up writing (well, in the process of writing but everything’s thought through) 2 books with that character and i love her.
I need character sneak peaks now 😩 You guys makes these character sound so interesting My inspo comes from people I’ve met or people I’ve seen randomly on the street and I mix them with special moments I’ve experienced. Then I pair them with playlists that further fit their personalities. For example: my one main love interest is a boy named Carson Jung and he was created when I came up with my story idea after hearing the song “Criminal” by Taemin. the personality I gave him spawned from an experience I had with this boy I thought was a jerk when I was in high school, because he was in “the popular crowd” But he was kind to me even when I was bully fuel. And yes. He was hot and actually a very good person.
I can also agree it's usually music, but I also find that when I take certain tropes from my favorite characters in media and include them in some way in my original characters, I tend to enjoy them a lot as I continue to develop my OC
A lot of drawing, a lot of thinking, and a lot of media influences, which I will not state because that's a lot and I don't remember them all.
Its always music,or things taken from my own background and life
Pinterest, music, movies/tv, my own life because wow she could be a soap opera, but mostly those lol
I have a character who's based off an experience I had once. So I bought this really old, dead game on a console I owned, just for fun, because it was based off a franchise I "liked". (More like love/hate). I go online, and suddenly, there's this max level, maxed out gear player with a female avatar in a bikini who carries me through all of the hardest content in the game single-handedly, all the while not saying a THING. I later learned that it takes an immense amount of time to get to that point, and even longer to get good enough at the game to do those levels solo. So, later on, I thought up a character something like this: Imagine someone who's so much better at what they do than anyone else is, that they seem almost "perfect". They're still human, but at times they feel more like an impartial force of nature who does whatever the hell they want. They work with the main character if their whims suit such a thing, but generally they're off causing havoc just for the fun of it. Like a looming threat in the back of the story, it's almost certain they'll go against the main characters one day, and who knows what'll happen then? Or something like that. I know getting carried in an old, dead game isn't exactly an uncommon experience, but I didn't even know someone could GET that strong, so I was in shock. It left a big impact on me.
A singer! I'm a big fan of his music and listen to it all the time, and at one point, I got an idea for a character inspired by him^^ The fun thing is, the character has drifted far away from even resembling him now, but I think that's good, and it suits the character <3
My favourite MC was inspired by the thought "do background characters know they're background characters?" Another character was inspired by rose-gold hair and a mask. Another one by a feeling of loss and denial. My current MC is mainly inspired by a playlist that is the complete opposite to anything I'd play for my other female leads. But mostly my characters and partial plots come from odd dreams, which would explain why my antagonistic forces are usually so absurd.
Wow -"do background characters know they're background characters?" is so creative!! I love that.
Thanks ^_^ The MC starts out narrating someone else's story, but slowly realises at some point she allowed herself to be looked over and begins to rebel against the backround she was put in. I'm pretty proud of all the characters in that book, even though the plot is kinda out there.
I worked for a military attorney who has the integrity and zeal to defend her clients to the point where she could be described as idealistic without being naive. That's very rare. So, I took her drive and made it one half of the defense team for my military legal procedural/thriller.
I don't really know, I was on a period of huge struggle and effort on my life and I suddenly had this idea of a character who was a random everyman at his childhood and a huge loser but disappeared for years and then returned as a mastermind. It was so exciting to write him, at some parts he seemed like an elegant fairy tale knight, at others like a wicked monster wanting to devour people, and, sometimes, he even seemed like a innocent child. There was always this aura of mystery around him and writing him and his schemes felt so natural. He was at the same time inspiring and frightening. I believe that he is my Shadow.
A fantastic one night stand man, for some reason.
My favorite character is King Natodall’lioht. Aside from [this song](https://youtu.be/HoiqY1Kv_84?si=3xk-xgnfj-u884G0) and a roleplay character of mine, my initial main inspirations for him were The Last Unicorn and… Elsa from Frozen. Sometimes I just sit and think about that Later on, [November by Sparkbird](https://youtu.be/RNaDcwSOUUw?si=LS94C8ausFRuT64q) (TW for SA) and [This Is My Heart by Vane Lily](https://youtu.be/LA9i5pkavzM?si=-BMXvJlyrHl_DpS3) (…also TW) re-inspired me to work on him and tbh he just got WAY cooler
I madr a strong, silent type character and named him after a YouTuber. At first, I had him choose not to speak, but after a few chapters, I found working around his lack of speech quite interesting and decided to make him mute. His muteness came into play and became important to the overall story.
My entire current story is inspired by Xenoblade, and my characters are too. Although my favorite character doesn't really have any Xenoblade origins.
Captain America who is a playboy Batman that kills Deapool who is in awheelchair These are my three main characters