u/Independent-Win-2868

Following up on my last post, I think I've found the root of the issue.

I've been watching a video where 10 artists design characters independently, and it made me notice two different directions a story can run, sometimes the world and its rules dictate how characters act, and their actions drive the plot. And then the characters' goals and choices are what drive the plot, and the world just sits underneath that.

The clearest example from the video was a fantasy/post apocalyptic zombie story as the concept, a member of a 6 person group gets infected and runs off to find a cure, which pulls her toward a scientist and learning about how she could save humanity brought her to necromancy and ties back to the villain and the group and scientist searching for her is what eventually brings everyone together for the final confrontation. There the world's setting kind of dictated how characters had acted and decisions they made, and the way they acted dictated the plot.

I'm new to this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like most stories lean this way

Here's why this matters for me: my characters didn't start out in this story. They began as side characters somewhere else, and now I'm trying to fit a world underneath them, so I have the conflict but the characters aren't grounded in that world to make decisions to have the plot moving.

So my question is: How do I take characters who already exist and ground them in a world so their personalities and actions feel like a natural product of that setting, so then it can eventually generate plot from they're choices and actions?

On a side note I hope got my point was clear I tend to overexplain sometimes.

I've been working on my own series for about 2 and a half years now, and it's been a genuinely hard but rewarding process. I recently hit a point where I felt pretty proud of my characters, my main character's arc, and the writing so far. Then I came across a youtube video on my fyp where someone basically kind of dumped the lore for their novel's cast, and one of their characters was on the surface kind of similar to mine, bright, bubbly, sweet, but way more detailed and fleshed out. It kind of knocked the wind out of me for a bit, but I've worked through that part.

What it did make me realize, though, is a real problem with how I'm writing my characters. They have solid traits and clear personalities, but I can't always point to why they act the way they do. It ends up feeling less like a person and more like something built in a lab, I like the traits themselves, I just don't think they feel like they're coming from anywhere.

So my question is: how do you take a character who's really feels like a over polished creation and turn them into something who feels like they'd actually exist, instead of something assembled like pieces of lego's or something?