2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron

Author:Rachel Aaron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Reference, Writing
Published: 2012-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

Character Sheets

So let’s get into the actual writing down of character details. Like most authors, I like to make a sheet for each major personality for easy organization and reference, but the sheets themselves are highly variable. If you look around online for character reference sheets, you’ll find millions. Some are bogglingly enormous with hundreds of questions detailing histories and favorite colors and all sorts of minutia I probably don’t even know about myself. Others are simpler, just names, basic facts, maybe a line or two for history. I can’t tell you which ones to use because I bounce all over. I’ve had characters with huge questionnaires full of information and characters who were little more than a few lines on notebook paper. Some characters just needed more than others, it really depends on the person and what I required from them at the time.

Developing a character isn’t just personal for the author, it’s personal for each character. Sometimes my people will walk into my head fully formed, other times I can mess with a character for weeks before I understand why they do what they do. My process for character creation is as wildly varied as the characters I come up with, and while the control freak in me wishes I could streamline things a little, I doubt I’ll ever create the One True Character Sheet. That said, however, every character I create starts like this:

Name:

Age:

Physical Description:

I like:

I hate:

More than anything, I want:

This is the stuff I fill out when I’m first getting a character down (this would be during step 2 of plotting for those of you keeping track). As you see, it’s very basic, and almost all of it changes several times before actual writing begins. The first three fields are strictly for reference (no character was ever defined by his hair color). It’s the last three are actually important, because these determine who the character is.

As Facebook has taught us, a person’s likes and dislikes tell us way more about them than any biography could. I went a step further, adding an “I hate” section, and the two of these combined can tell you a lot about your character’s personality. Are they a hard worker who likes getting stuff done and hates lazy people or a laid back sort who likes good times with friends and hates being bossed around? Do they like having power over others or do they hate bullies? Little stuff like that can reveal so much, even if you don’t know why they’re like that yet, but the most important question by far is what does the character want?

Every character in a book, even the most minor, needs a motivation. They have to want something. This is where agency comes from, because characters who want things are the ones who strive and push the story forward. Wants can be simple and generic (fame, freedom, wealth, not dying, make this wolf stop eating me, etc.) or complex and setting specific (earn a one million gold bounty, master my magic, take my place as the true king, destroy the One Ring, etc.

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