OC Template & Profile Maker

What an OC template is for

An OC template is a set of questions about a character you invented. Answering them forces decisions you might otherwise put off: how old they are, what they do all day, who they can't stand. Artists use the answers when they draw, writers use them to keep details straight between chapters, and role-players post them so everyone else knows who they're writing alongside.

A blank template is only half the help. Twenty empty boxes labelled Personality, Backstory and Likes tell you what to write, not how to write it. That's why each field here comes with a hint and a filled example, so you can see what a good answer looks like before you write your own. Read the example, then replace it line by line. Most people find it far easier to rewrite someone else's sentence than to face an empty box.

There's a practical reason, too. A profile kept in only one place tends to get lost in an old chat or a forgotten folder. Here the same answers become a card to post, text to paste and a file to keep, so you describe the character once and carry them anywhere.

Which fields to fill first, and which can wait

Name, pronouns, role and a handful of traits carry most of the weight. Together they tell a reader who this is and what part they play, and they're what people take in first on a card. If you only have ten minutes, spend them there. The role deserves a little care: “apprentice clockmaker who keeps breaking the clocks” says far more than “apprentice”.

The quote is the field people skip most, yet it's one of the most revealing. Write something the character would really say, in their own voice, at an ordinary moment rather than a dramatic one. “I'm not lost, I'm taking the long way” hints at pride, humour and a habit of wandering, all in eight words.

Backstory and relationships can wait. Both tend to change as you draw and write the character, and a long history written on the first day often ends up in the bin. Those sections are optional, so leave them empty until you know more. When you're ready, the Character Backstory Generator can roll a past and send it straight into this form, and the Character Relationship Map is where you work out who they owe, love or resent.

An appearance an artist can draw from

Artists draw shapes, not adjectives. “Beautiful” and “striking” give them nothing to hold on to, but “broad shoulders, a round face and hair cropped short on one side” gives them an outline. Begin with build and height, then hair as a shape, then the face. Mention anything that's always there, such as glasses, a scar, a chipped tooth or a prosthetic arm, because those details make a character recognisable from across a room.

Clothes come next. Describe a usual outfit rather than a whole wardrobe: one coat, one pair of boots, one thing they never take off. Name colours plainly, like “rust red” or “faded navy”, and say which one dominates. If you have a reference picture, add it from your device; it goes on the card and stays on your own computer or phone.

A card gets a second or two in a busy feed, so make that second count. Pick the three or four traits that matter most rather than ten, and keep the quote short enough to sit on a couple of lines. Use the square shape for posts, the story shape for phone screens and the landscape one for a banner or a server header. Keep the tall sheet for when someone wants the whole profile, or for printing.

A personality section that shows rather than lists

A string of adjectives such as “kind, shy, loyal, brave” could describe half the characters ever made. The traits field is the place for that short list; the personality section should do a different job. Take one trait and show it at work. What does this person do when a stranger drops their shopping in the street, or when a friend turns up late for the third time running?

Contradictions help enormously. Someone who is patient with children and short-tempered with adults, or generous with money and stingy with praise, feels like a real person straight away. Write two or three sentences about the moments that bring out each side. Then let the likes and dislikes back it up with small, specific things: “the smell of rain on hot pavement” and “people who clap when the plane lands” say more than “music” and “rudeness”.

If the section still reads like a list, borrow a quirk from the Character Trait Generator and ask what it gives away about the person underneath. A habit of counting stairs, or of apologising to furniture, can open up a whole paragraph.

Where the profile lives, and keeping a cast in step

Each place suits a different job. Discord is for sharing: a roleplay server's character channel, an art group, a pinned introduction. A message there stops at 2,000 characters, so the Discord version counts as you type and, when the profile runs long, splits it into several messages that each fit. The text comes out formatted for Discord, so it still looks tidy in a busy channel.

Google Docs suits a long, growing profile you might print or share with a co-writer. Notion works well for a cast, since each character can have a page in the same workspace, linked to the others. For both, use the rich text copy: it pastes with its headings and bold intact, so there's nothing to format by hand. Plain text is the fallback for everywhere else, from a notes app to a forum post.

Dividers are a matter of taste. Lines and dots look neat in a document, while stars and diamonds suit the decorated, “aesthetic” profiles you see in art communities and on servers. Choose none if a server's rules ask for plain posts.

With more than one character, fill the same fields for everyone so their profiles can be read side by side. Save each one as its own .json file with the character's name in the filename, and you can reopen any of them later to fix a detail. Check ages and relationships against each other as you go: if one profile says two people grew up together, the other one should agree.