decide backstory. Who were her parents? Under what circumstances was she conceived and born? does she have siblings? Is her upbringing going to be happy or tragic?
what was her family's social-economic status? How was she educated? Did she make friends easily? did she have a lot of anger, fear, or shyness from any of the previous factors?
who did she cone to look up to as a person who was cool and aspired to be like? Who did she hate and resolve to never be like? How'd she deal with bullies? Did they actively want to destroy her happiness or was it just harmless pranks? What adult figures helped her? Or loathed her?
When she reached an age she could start to think for herself, what interests did she have? Did dhe honestly start to consider what "philosophy" she had, or did she just kind of let her experiences shape her world view? was she religious? Generally tolerant? Staunchly against religion or experimenting? How'd that relate to her philosophy or world view?
How did her friends start to influence her? Was she living up to her parents or other adult figures expectations? Did they judge her or punish her? What lesson did she learn? Did she take education seriously or did she have to be forced, or did she only like one particular area of study? (art, writing, mechanics, history, guns, etc.)
What was the settings situation like and how was it affecting her? Was there an oppressive political regime brainwashing her and forcing her to accept a world view? Did she question it? Did she live in a desert or something and constantly had to deal with a water shortage, etc?
Did she travel to other countries or otherwise meet other people, see other cultures? Why? Did she care? Was she repulsed? Did she come back with an appreciation? Did she outright want to adopt their ways? Did it open her eyes?
Did she go on to further education, if it existed? Why? Expectations? Forced? Genuine interest? What subject? Does she have a mentor or is she aimless? Is she bored, burnt out, or thriving? Is there even education, or is she being forced to work in a coal mine or her family's dirt farm and she has to run away?
How does she blow off steam? Does she have a broad social network? Is she just an introvert? Does she actively hate people.l because of a childhood trauma, or that oppressive political regime, or anything else you already decided? Does her world view make her think people are scum? Is that a philosophical conclusion or just her experience?
Is she going to affect society? Does she want to? Does she believe she's capable of doing some great feat before she dies? Does she just want to have a comfortable existence? How does she feel about love? Having children? Is she in a state that could change, or would she have no choice because of oops pregnancy or adopting because of a partner's pressure?
(Careful here, it's tempting to just slap a label on a character. Think of how it affects her background more than just saying she's straight, bi, gay, ir trans. But a trans story is going to bring real baggage depending on her goal.)
Given all this... You tell me what's going to happen to her. You should now be at a point your character can be put into any situation and you know how to react as that character. If she runs and hides from confrontation, how she deals with dismissive jerks, if she cares about being liked...
If she's in a situation someone wants to kill her ("been there done that" or "oh no, I am in danger someone help). What happens when she's trapped in a jam jar and needs to make friends with people who say they have magic powers or whatever?
People's personalities are informed by their life experiences and motivations and if you, the author/creator know all this stuff, you can write anything.
See I tend to work backwards to start with, I decide what key traits I want them to have and then work out what in their history made them that way, if it was one singular event, if it was how they were raised, if it is literally in the genetics. Once I map that out, I then work forward, how does this affect how their operate in their "present".
There are a lot of questionnaires out there, they're easy to find, that have hundreds of history building questions. Those can be helpful but for me, personally, filling them out in their entirety has never been helpful.
What helps me also is to think about characters I like and what we know about how they became the person they are. Sometimes you don't know what their breakfast cereal is or the most embarrassing that happened to them in grade school and that's okay.
Oh yeah. Nothing wrong with that. But there can't be a major conflict... like internally. Anchoring the character to a specific traumatic upbringing and then later anchoring another aspect to "she always loved every part of her childhood", etc.
Ok but no sometimes that also does work. One of my most cherished OCs is one that I just... had a suuuuper barebones idea of who she is, and kind of threw out there and started playing in PSLs and such and just... let her develop in whatever way felt satisfying.
I mean, even going backwards, you're just as likely to be contradictory as going forwards? And it's not like you can't change things. If you decide you want to axe the traumatic backstory, then do it.
Yeah like, saying she had friends in childhood, leaving it vague, then later bringing out more details or how said friend affected her.if it'd be interesting... that's just standard. Got to be flexible.
person I am talking to: cool, what's literally one thing about her
me: uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh
You tell me what's going to happen to her.
You should now be at a point your character can be put into any situation and you know how to react as that character.
If she runs and hides from confrontation, how she deals with dismissive jerks, if she cares about being liked...
What happens when she's trapped in a jam jar and needs to make friends with people who say they have magic powers or whatever?
But there can't be a major conflict... like internally. Anchoring the character to a specific traumatic upbringing and then later anchoring another aspect to "she always loved every part of her childhood", etc.