Forums » Smalltalk » AMA: Building deep OCs & narrative psychology

Hi! 👋
For this event, I wanted to share something I love doing in RP:

I build original characters with strong emotional depth, especially characters with trauma, internal conflict, and long-term growth arcs. By no means I claim to be an expert, but it's something I enjoy making to the best of my ability to create something believable, authentic, natural, and respectful.

I don’t mean just “sad backstory.”

I mean:

- characters who contradict themselves
- characters who want two opposite things at the same time
- characters whose flaws affect their relationships
- characters who slowly change over time because of what happens to them

My process is heavily based on emotions → behavior → growth, not just aesthetics or stats.

Here are some example questions you can ask me (but you can ask anything related to OC psychology, emotional writing, character growth, etc.):

- What inspires the emotional core of one of your OCs?
- How do you decide what trauma influences a character without making it their whole personality?
- How do you balance a character being flawed without making them unlikeable?
- How do you show emotional conflict without just stating feelings?
- How do you avoid “trauma dumping” and instead create gradual emotional depth?
- What’s your favorite character arc you’ve ever written?

If you’ve ever struggled with making a character feel real instead of flat or over-dramatic, feel free to ask.
I’m happy to talk about:

- internal vs external motivation,
- portraying trauma respectfully,
- emotional contradictions,
- character growth through relationships,
- or anything else you’re curious about!

✨ Ask Me Anything. ✨

Yes, I might have a question.
First how do you differentiate feelings and emotions?
And how do you imagine that character when you write contradictory feelings and/or emotions? Do you mimic at home their expression, or maybe remember someone, or do you base on scientific theories (like DISC for example)?
I believe you to have that knowledge to write deep emotional settings, but it would be ‘fun’ to know how you write.

Heya! To answer your questions in order:

a) The way I see it is emotions are the instinctive reaction to a situation, the ones we usually know like fear, anger, sadness, happiness. They're more reactive and they're not something the character can control. As for feelings, they're how my characters interpret their emotions from their own perspectives... which can be easily distorted or biased due to previous traumas or setbacks. That's where the fun part follows...

b) I used my experience, as well as watching other people's behaviors, both past and present, and how they cause strife in interactions, relationships, friendships, etc. I've also done extensive research and readings on a lot of psychological concepts, both old and new, and I've come to understand a lot of nuance, both in irl observation, as well as even written in fiction outside of mine. Understanding how common fictional tropes work was also done as well, but my focus was always to make sure that interactions were authentic, believable, and of course, fun to write (especially with my RP partners!) I am unfamiliar with DISC, but I did read a lot on personality psychology, and how deeply it can be embedded, and what differentiates static and flat characters from dynamic and complex ones, as well as what causes personality to change or transform (for better or worse.)

Definitely I am more of a "show" than "tell" kind of person, and I love to RP to experiment, show my knowledge, and learn more about my characters as I write with my RP partners! There's always room to learn, experiment, and grow as a writer.