Spaztique on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/spaztique/art/I-don-t-think-an-OC-works-that-way-363435968Spaztique

Deviation Actions

Spaztique's avatar

I don't think an OC works that way...

By
Published:
5K Views

Description

This one came about when people complimented my OCs, and then asking me to work on their characters' backstories. You could say it's a follow-up to The Life Of An Unushed OC ([link])

Seeing as this is the third time I've used Tutoree, want his DNA for whatever reason?
Here it is: 3.39:tutoree:70:0:200:311:169:3:95:80:0:0:0:2A344C

Addendum: I feel I should address my views on backstory a bit further. My philosophy is you only need as much backstory as it will help you write your character.

In the case of all of my OCs, I never wrote any backstory beyond this: two gappies (a stu and a normal guy), two natives (a sue and a normal girl), and two gag characters (an escapist character and a total weirdo). While some peeps can accidentally write stereotypes with too little information, I know enough about character stuff to where I can boil it down to the essentials and make it work.

Then there are peeps who write a decent amount of backstory, but also do their part writing the story proper, and this is perfectly acceptable. ~MiniWitch3 is an amazing example of how to do this properly: he has detailed bios of his characters, but at the same time, these bios help create a functioning cast that weave well-told stories.

Where I draw the line is when people focus all of their time and energy adding parts onto a character they will never use or expanding a cast into something totally unusable, creating OC after OC after OC in hopes of eventually writing a story, but they never do. These writers are addicted to creating characters and dreaming up backstories, but they never write stories themselves. Perhaps it's because the rules for backstory are less rigid and they feel writing a regular story would either be too difficult or they couldn't justify using such awesome characters in what could be an otherwise terrible story.

In a nutshell...
-Short Bios are okay if you know how to make a character work.
-Medium and Large Bios are okay if you use them.
-Giant Bios with no intent on using them for a story is not okay.
Image size
800x3712px 1.63 MB
© 2013 - 2024 Spaztique
Comments30
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Anhilliator1's avatar
Most of my character "Backstories" are a list of traits. I don't try to make them perfect.

Case in point:
"Mostly frozen piece of 20-grit sandpaper."

Make of that what you will.