You’re making ten of these, so let’s make each one good cheaply. Here is what actually separates an avatar people come back to from one they open once and close.
Pick the type before the personality
The nine types aren’t decoration. They set expectations for the person arriving, and an avatar that fights its own type disappoints everyone.
Likeness (a real person, with consent and verification) · Fantasy · Roleplay · Entertainment · Gameplay · Debate · Venting · Companionship · Custom.
Pick the one that matches the need, not the one that matches your idea. A character you think of as “a wise mentor” is probably Companionship if people will talk to them at midnight, Debate if they’ll argue, and Custom if they’re really neither. Choosing honestly here does more for the avatar than an hour of writing.
Give them a point of view, not a résumé
The most common first-avatar mistake is a biography: born here, studied this, likes that. Nobody talks to a résumé.
What makes a character feel alive is a stance — something they believe, something they refuse, something they push you toward. “A running coach” is a category. “A running coach who thinks your excuses are more interesting than your times, and says so” is somebody. The second one has a first line, a reaction to your bad news, and an opinion about your plan.
Write two or three sentences of stance before you write anything else. If those sentences aren’t fun to read, the avatar won’t be fun to talk to.
Let them disagree with you
An avatar that agrees with everything is a mirror, and mirrors get boring in about four messages.
Give yours the right to push back, to have preferences, to find something boring. I’d take a character who occasionally annoys me over one that flatters me every time. The friction is the relationship — it’s the difference between a character and a very polite search box. This matters most for Debate and coaching characters, and more than you’d expect for Companionship.
Say what they won’t do
You define the boundaries — creators page puts it as “define what your avatar will and won’t do. Your creation, your terms.” Use it. Boundaries are part of the characterisation, not a compliance chore: a character with limits reads as a person, and a character without them drifts into whatever the conversation pulls toward.
Two platform rules sit above yours, and they aren’t negotiable: content sorts into General (the default), Mature (18+, opt-in in Settings), and Prohibited (blocked for everyone). Minors are General-only, always. Build for the level you’re actually aiming at.
Voice early
A voice turns a character into a presence, and it’s the single fastest upgrade available. Have a call with your own avatar before you publish it — you’ll hear immediately whether the personality holds up when it has to answer in real time, which is a much harder test than text.
Calls are metered per minute; the plans page has the rate.
The description is the trailer
In Discover, most people decide from one line. Write it as a promise about the experience, not a summary of the lore: what will this conversation feel like, and who is it for?
“An ex-chef who’ll plan your week’s meals around what’s already in your fridge” beats “A culinary AI companion with extensive knowledge.” One tells you what happens next. The other tells you a category exists.
Then stop and ship it
Somewhere around here you’ll want to keep polishing. Don’t — part two is the reason. Ship it, start the next one, and let the ratings and the return visits tell you which one deserved the extra hours. Your judgment about your own characters is worse than the data, and the data is free.
The test I’d apply before publishing
Talk to it for five minutes as though you were a stranger. Ask something it should refuse, something it should be great at, and something completely off-topic.
If it stays itself through all three, it’s ready. If it becomes a generic assistant in any of them, the stance isn’t strong enough yet — go back to those two or three sentences, not to the backstory.
Next: your orbit is a room, not a feed — where the people who liked your avatar go.