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  1.  
    I've created a rough questionnaire to create a superficial image of a character. Once I have the basics, I can go in and shade things more. What other things could I add? (Note this is NOT very detailed. I'll add that later)

    BASIC INFORMATION

    Full Name:
    Age:
    Country of Origin:
    Race:
    Status:
    Also Known As:
    Occupation:
    Special Abilities/Talents:

    APPEARANCE

    Physique:
    Eye Color:
    Hair Color:
    Skin Color:
    Distinguishing Marks, if any:

    IMPORTANT PEOPLE

    Biological Parents:
    Other Family:
    Friends/Allies:
    Romantic Interests:
    Spouse:
    Children:

    GREATEST…

    Achievement:
    Regret:
    Desire:
    Fear:
    Ambition:
    Secret:
    Strength(s):
    Flaw(s):

    PAST EXPERIENCES

    Childhood Experiences:
    Worst Experience:
    Best Experience:
    Most Embarrassing Experience:
    Most Frightening Experience:

    ARE THEY…

    Introverted/Extroverted:
    Optimistic/Pessimistic:
    Impetuous/Meticulous:
    Organized/Disorganized:
    Proud/Humble:
    Insightful/Oblivious:
    Compassionate/Callous:
    Vengeful/Forgiving:
    Dignified/Informal:
    Insecure/Confident:
    Passive/Aggressive/Assertive:

    OPINIONS ON…

    Religion:
    Politics:
    Killing:
    Honesty:
    Death:
    Loyalty:
    Family:
    Power:
    Fate:

    HOW THEY DEAL WITH…

    Stress:
    Anger:
    Grief:
    Betrayal:
    Injustice:
    Guilt:
    Unrequited Love:

    OTHER PERSONALITY TRAITS

    Pet Peeves:
    Hobbies:
    Most Treasured Possession:
    Quirks/Mannerisms:
    Seen as:
    Preferred Way to Die:
    Three Words to Describe Personality:
    • CommentAuthorCodeWizard
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     

    Describing the plot and asking myself what sort of person would do these things.

  2.  
    Yeah, I guess that's one way to go.

    You could work the characters from the plot or the plot from the characters. If you have the characters down, then you can think of a situation and know what they'd do, which would make the plot progress in a smoother fashion, at least in my opinion.

    Previously, I tried to go from plot to characters, but everything felt contrived, so I'm trying this way now instead.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     
    Seems a bit long...I've tried doing this so maybe I'll just steal this right now.
    • CommentAuthorCodeWizard
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     

    Plot and character are two sides of the same coin.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSpanman
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     

    I only write out the most basic info, such as name, family, place and date of birth, occupation, and in the case of main characters, an abbreviated, unbiased life story. Everything else I keep in my head because I’m always revising it. It’s a good memory exercise, at least. Though at times it becomes sort of hard to coordinate lots of seperate sections of information with eachother so there aren’t any weird holes.

  3.  
    I just semi-finished one of these (by semi-finished I mean that there were some categories I have to flesh out more and currently don't know the answer to) and it really didn't take that long.

    For the character I've done it for, it helps me focus them a bit more, and makes them feel a bit more real. I think I'll do this at least for the main characters. It seems to be working so far.

    (I've tried the memory path before, but I'm scared of forgetting really good ideas I might have thought of in the mess that is my mind)
    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     

    My problem is that when I try to fill out these things, so few of them actually apply, at least not for some of the characters I’m trying to write about write now. I don’t even know if she has a favorite color… she’s not really the sort of person who cares about trivial things like that. (“trivial” in this case being anything not directly related with how to kill people and save the world)

    But the questions about their views are pretty useful, and you don’t usually see them in “character sheets”. I shall steal them from you. ;)

  4.  
    That's why I didn't include stuff like 'Favorite color'.

    I did include 'pet peeves', 'quirks/mannerisms' and other things that might actually turn up in a story.

    Glad you found the views part useful- I created that one mostly myself, although for many of the other categories, I did compile ideas from other lists on the web.

    (I have actually improved this list since I first posted- if anyone would like to see the revised version, tell me and I'll change it)
    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     

    Huh, is it any reflection on my own personality that my character’s reaction to most of the “how they deal with X” questions is “kill things”?

    • CommentAuthorCodeWizard
    • CommentTimeMay 30th 2009
     

    sure why not

  5.  

    I just come up with random situations and try to figure out what the character would do. It helps me see their motivations and personalities more clearly, which make it easier to figure out what they would do, which in turn strengthens my perceptions of them. It’s a wonderful cycle.

  6.  
    Well, I guess you could factor that into a profile as well if you really wanted, but I like a bit more structure personally.
    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2009 edited
     

    Bastard is right, plot and character are the same thing. Your charater is defined by the choices he makes, this is how he reveals who he is. In a well designed story your character will be put in crisis and be forced to make true-character revealing decisions. To flesh out my characters I simply place them in my story arch. Only after you have structure should you add the details.

    I have an article in the works about the concept of character, which might help clear up some misconceptions people have about writing characters. It’s certainly a tricky issue.

    • CommentAuthorLccorp2
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2009
     

    The problem with such lists, I find, isn’t just that so many of the points usually never come into play (unless your character is on the Bridge of Death and being asked what his or her favourite colour is), but that they can tend to be very, very restrictive, the same way plot outlines do. Stories and characters change in the telling, which is the whole “character development” gig. If you’re not careful, you might end up trying to feed a story an ending which doesn’t suit it, end up with static characters, so on and so forth.

  7.  

    The way I do it is I just write on ms word, with a separate document open, titled ‘storyX characters’. In it, I list every attribute of my character as I write and develop him or her. Sometimes, if I have a set idea of a character, or a couple of bits of trivia about him or her, I’ll enter that information in. It’s character development as I go along, and this way I can see if the characters aren’t rounded out enough, or if a few of them are too similar, and where I can correct them. It’s very good for character development.

    Tamora Pierce uses a spreadsheet.

    But seriously, I don’t like writing a ‘description’, because when you have to write a deepest fear or something, you just KNOW that your character is going to end up tackling it after it’s been written in. Which is okay for some things, but other times, it’s a) not what you wanted, pushing the story in a whole nother direction from what you had set out to do, and b) It’s just plain ANNOYING! ...Maybe I covered that.

    For example, if you write that your character fears that her parents don’t really love her because she’s adopted, due to the inherant nature of stories (tying up all the loose ends is kinda status quo, if that’s the phrase I want), you will end up writing about this character meeting her parents or having some sort of heart-warming journey and psychological discussion. When what you really want to happen is that she’s involved in a bank robbery, and she has to get out alive and save her boyfriend from the gang who committed the robbery! Sometimes what your character now wants and what you want are just completely incongruous, all because you gave her an irrelevant fear to the story. Therefore, to make all sides of the character fit into the story (because we want rounded characters, don’t we? Repeat after me, rounded characters, rounded.), we have to include her deepest fear.

    Whereas if you write the characters and the plot at the same time, you can include a more relevant fear. So my rule is- don’t sketch it in to your character profile if you don’t want that feature to become permanently linked in your mind with that character.

    I don’t know whether you’d call this plot-driven or character-driven.

  8.  
    *double post* props to you if you read all that.
    • CommentAuthorCodeWizard
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2009
     

    tl;dr lol

    But seriously folks, why choose one way or the other? Why not think of a really wicked cool scene/bunch of scenes and think of what sort of decision the character is making, and once you do you realize the choices he has to make characterizes him? Then you realize what sort of person he has to be, and jump back and forth between plot and character, since all plot is is how the character develops and changes till he has the mother of all choices to make?

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2009
     

    In reference to Steph’s post (which I did read, and thought it was very good, btw) and CB’s post, I agree that it’s difficult to pin down characteristics of a character before you actually start writing plots about them. There was a character that I had all nicely planned out, down to hair and eye color, favorite things, the whole nine yards. Then I started coming up with situations about her, only to discover she quickly developed two completely different personalities. I eventually split her into two characters, but if I’d left more leeway in at the beginning, I think I wouldn’t have run into that. Then again, I would never have discovered one of my favorite characters… so I suppose it’s a toss-up.

  9.  
    Wow. You split your character and it worked?

    And, CB, I forgive you for not reading. I can assure you that you missed out on a lot. Although you basically condensed what I was saying, which maybe was the point of that post? Thanks, if it was.
  10.  

    I’m a bastard so don’t get your hopes up.

  11.  
    Thanks heaps, mate. I really appreciate it.
  12.  

    Just leaving that out there for ya so you don’t hurt yourself.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJun 1st 2009
     

    @Steph – surprisingly, it did. It ended up being her and her sister and a subplot about family relationships. It worked out a lot better in practice than it sounds on paper. (on… screen? Whatever)

  13.  

    Cool.

  14.  

    Yeah, I guess that’s one way to go.
    You could work the characters from the plot or the plot from the characters. If you have the characters down, then you can think of a situation and know what they’d do, which would make the plot progress in a smoother fashion, at least in my opinion.
    Previously, I tried to go from plot to characters, but everything felt contrived, so I’m trying this way now instead.

    Stephen King’s On Writing said that your stories should start plot driven and end character driven. Crude example:

    Meteor hits the earth.

    That’s the start of the story and is plot driven as there are no characters influencing the event. If you took all the characters out all together, this event would still happen. However, after the meteor hits, then your story should morph into character driven. Events occur and are dictated by what the characters in your story do and react to.

    Of course a cardboard cutout of a character will, in fact, lead to plot driven. Take Eragon. Why does Galbatorix do anything? We have no real motivation or explanation for why he does what he does. Thus, Eragon’s story is in fact plot driven. (i.e. Why is Uncle Garrow killed? Because the plot demanded it.)

    The line I usually mark as “why”. Take an event and ask why did it happen. If the answer is “just because” (note that really trite answers, “he’s evil”, “she’s crazy” fall under this) then the event is plot driven. If the answer is a little more elaborate (“because he needed the money for medicine”, “because she’s trying to escape her father”, etc) then you have a character driven plot.

    • CommentAuthorCodeWizard
    • CommentTimeJun 2nd 2009 edited
     

    Now how would you write the story of a character with a terminal illness?

    There’s really no difference between the two, they’re two sides of the same coin.

  15.  

    No different from the meteor duh.

    They are two very different things. Exhibit A: Eragon. Exhibit B: anything well written.

  16.  

    The advice sucks because all good stories make it so plot and character are inseperatable.

    Even if you say “she does it because she is crazy” you have to answer the question of “why is she crazy in the first place” or hint at it to add depth, and that implies a basckstory or subplot.

  17.  

    Yes, GOOD stories.
    Unfortunately 90% of everything is crap.

  18.  

    I’m just bumping this because it’s an awesome thread. Go, guys.

    •  
      CommentAuthorDem
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2009
     
    I stay away from character sheets and notes. It's too confining and all attempts to work with them have led to disaster. My writing mentality pretty much boils down to "just go with it". Of course, I'll edit later to iron out the inconsistencies, but my characters and plots aren't something I come up with; they're something that exists. I just happen to unearth the right bits of it at varying intervals.
  19.  

    See, I have to have some idea of what I’m doing beforehand, or everything else just goes to the dogs. :P

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2009
     

    Character sheets don’t work for me because my characters change too much. At least, the ones worth the effort of writing up characters sheet do.

  20.  

    Well, do you keep the general idea the same?

    I don’t like using character sheets that demand me to think about the character’s favorite color or what kind of pet they’d like to have unless it’s important. But if it forces me to think about motivations and flaws and so on, then it’s useful for me.

  21.  

    I try not to flesh out my characters to great depth, either. When I’m writing their part in the story, it turns out that I had certain perceptions about their appearance/temperament/etc and I follow just that.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2009
     
    I'm with CB on this, and I like the list SWQ posted. I think I might've mentioned this in an article way back, but I think it's necessary to cultivate more detail about a character than will ever see the light of day in the story.

    Why? Because you have absolutely no clue what eccentricities or characteristics will surface while writing. You have to know your character(s) well enough to be prepared. Also, I disagree with the notion that good books are determined soley by what the _character_ does. This is false advertisement, and it assumes that character choice can change the fabric of the plot. A character can _choose_ to use his solar-powered energy weapon, but if that character's four thousand feet underground, sucks to be him.

    Yes, plot can morph based upon the needs of the character--and it should. If you're trying to force a deep, emotional transition for a character in a story where he/she is _not_ the central focus, then scrap your previous plot and rework it properly. But plot can change character, as well. Location and events can alter how a character behaves, no matter _how_ you design the person(s); enviroment can have a monstrous impact on who a character is, and that sort of thing isn't necessarily based upon a character's _choice_. How the character deals with an incident should never be confused with the fact that it happened at all.

    It's like CB said: characters and plot are two sides of the same coin. Trying to divorce the two is going to be an endless loop.
  22.  

    I agree with Rocky. It’s no point going into a character’s religion or sexual preference if it does not have any influence on the plot or the character, specially for minor characters.

  23.  

    Well, I like to know those kinds of things. I mean, for some reason, (taking a controversial example for some people) when I heard that Dumbledore was gay, even though it never turned up in any of the books, and wasn’t really important, per se, it felt right to me. And it might shed light on why someone does something the way they did.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2009 edited
     
    Uh, I think my statement was lost in translation. I was saying I thought it _was_ necessary to delve into detail. To use SWQ's example of Dumbledore, a character would behave, talk, or even just think and observe a certain way given a certain sexual orientation, even if it's not explicitly expressed.

    Plus, even though writers tend to sneer at the "checklist", I've found it opens my imagination to certain possibilities.
    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2009
     

    In that case, I agree with you, Rocky- you never can tell what exactly will come up in writing, so knowing certain seemingly-insignificant things could come in handy later. Real people have little quirks or likes/dislikes that come up randomly- for example, they hate milk, etc. It might not have any bearing on the plot of your story, but having a few things like that help flesh out your character and give the impression that they’re somehow more than just the handful of MAJOR PLOT-RELATED TRAITS they have to have for the story.

    Of course, you should never force those things into a story. They have to be something that naturally flows in the story, or otherwise it’s obvious that you’re trying to make them Well-Rounded Characters TM, and if the reader ever goes “Hm! This character has many traits and is very well-rounded!”, you’ve probably failed miserably in characterization. It’s supposed to be subtle.

  24.  

    I like to build a setting, create characters who make sense within that setting and then add small details as they become relevant.

  25.  

    I use a character sheet, but a) they’re hard to fill out, and b) I’ll probably go off of them. Thing is, I base my characters on real people (my female lead is like my sister, for example), and while it’s very easy to fill out a character sheet, it’s harder to say, “What would my character do in this situation?” I’m a very plot-driven person, and so making my characters fit the plot is very, very hard for me.

  26.  

    I skip all that background stuff and build firstly on what’s “plot-relevant” using Socratic questioning. I say a character, and give them some outrageous goal or method that pushes them into the plot.

    I’ve got this woman, and she’s a hard-nose government official who created the system that’s taxing the people dry.

    My first question is always “What possible motivation is there in that?” — Her state desperately needs the money because of problems that are no fault of their own. The official’s father was a revolutionary who won, but the old Evil regime had alot of skeletons the new regime can’t clean up. Everyone is suffering. She “had” to tax the countryside.

    Aww, political excuses. How’d she develop this tax system? — The taxes are based off an old legend from this fantasy world, where the official’s people were once great nobles over the whole countryside and took care of the land and mountains. The weaker people loved them and gave them trusts. The modern tax system is meant to make the official’s people feel loved again….

    I just made up most of that. I need someplace to save this. XD

  27.  

    Yeah, I see what you’re trying to do, Proserpina (yay, love the mythology name, by the way). I’ve been trying to develop more, plotwise and characterwise, using that kind of reasining method.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2009
     
    The thing I like about the checklist is that I can assemble a character apart from the story--this, of course, requires a good, somewhat unorthodox checklist. To me, that's vital, because your character (depending on the age) has existed in some form or another before the story begins. I can put Protagonist A and Antagonist B together as characters in ways that are apart from the story to come, while connecting the necessary dots required for bad blood, or what have you.

    Think of it as assembling the backstory, determining who they are before your big story forces situations, crises, and choices upon them. With this, you can add mystery established prior to the start of the story, or revelations that propel the story (or occur somewhere in the middle).
  28.  

    Mmm, yeah. I’ve been trying to deepen my backstory lately. It’s better than last time, at least!

    (Oh god, that was a disaster)

  29.  

    Gonna drag out the Hemingway Iceberg Theory, since I like to apply it to everything. Seventh-eighths are underwater, but they’re still there, and it’s a good idea to know about the underwater part of your characters since that affects what you put on the page.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2009 edited
     

    Well, do you keep the general idea the same?

    Depends on what you mean by general idea. Physical appearances remain very fluid until I settle on something that feels “right.” Motivations may or may not change drastically depending on the character. Habits/quirks are constantly broken or formed. Basically, almost all my major characters wind up profoundly different from where they started (or not because they came full circle), so character sheets tend to hinder me more than help.

    I usually have written down somewhere a basic history of the characters and their relationships with elaborations and anecdotes as needed, but aside from that, I don’t write down anything about my characters outside what shows up in the story. Most of that stuff, I keep in my head.

  30.  

    Yeah, I have problems actually completing a character sheet. Just forcing myself to think about those things can help though.

  31.  

    Hmmm.

    I just don’t like delving into detail if that detail won’t make any great influence to the character or the plot. (In Dumbledore’s case, the fact that he was gay did make an impact to the character; come on, he was wearing high heels) If I had written down a character’s first childhood memory or pet peeve, then I would feel oblidged to put that detail into the story and I end up getting sidetracked. I’m really diffusive like that.

  32.  

    When did Dumbledore wear heels?

  33.  

    In the Sorceror’s Stone?

    High heeled boots or something. But really, what were you expecting, Converse?

  34.  

    Really? I never noticed that. Actually, I really don’t notice anyone’s footwear, even in real life – I hate shoe shopping and could care less about shoes.

  35.  

    I sympathize. I can never find shoes that really fit me, and it’s so annoying to put them on and then have to take them off again.

  36.  

    EXACTLY!

  37.  

    and could care less about shoes.

    Awww…. ;.; I love shoes…

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeSep 27th 2009
     
    My detail to footwear in my stories is odd. They're either wearing combat/work/snow boots or are barefoot.