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 Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 11:51 pm
So I've been running into a lot of articles and posts lately about the iffy usefulness of those huge, long character sheets, which list everything from important stuff like the character's name and background to tiny minutiae like their favorite color or what their favorite song is.
I will admit to loving and frequently participating in that kind of stuff, because... it's fun. For me, at least. It's fun to see how much I can just make up off the top of my head about a character, and sometimes it gives me good (or at least amusing) ideas. And sometimes, info I put on those sheets that isn't particularly relevant or useful to anything in the story at the time actually does come up later.
But I've seen a lot of people either calling these kinds of character sheets useless or just warning newbies away from them. To an extent, I agree. Not that they're useless, but that their usefulness is certainly limited to HOW you use them. There are a lot of random, irrelevant details in those things and it's often a waste of time if you're just trying to create a few characters to play with in a story. I don't think anyone should feel pressured to know every little nitpicky detail there is to know about a fictional person if it's not even going to help them.
I sort of want to create an alternative "character sheet." (This may have already been done, but oh well.)
The fact is, no matter how much I boiled this stuff down, even the most basic items on my sheet could be useless depending on the character. Heck, you could have a character without a name, or one that doesn't know their age. But I want to put together something with the stuff that people should worry about the most, at least before they start choosing favorite songs, making scattered "like" and "dislike" lists, and wondering what their character would do if stuck on a train full of clowns.
So, Wrimos, what do you think are THE most important details to know about a character? I mean, the core things that will really determine how they act and why they act that way, and be immediately helpful to the writer. Let's make a list. Here's what I've got so far:
-Name
-Age
-Backstory-- how'd they get to where they are?
-Goals
-Fears/Concerns
-Wishes/Dreams
-Spiritual beliefs/Religion/lack thereof
-Mannerisms/Tics
-Physical appearance
Conversely, if you think there's anything already on the list that SHOULDN'T be, make a good argument as to why. ;D
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Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 12:34 pm
Hmm..I don't know if it's super important, but what about any conditions/diseases the character might have?
Something serious like cancer could definitely cause their reactions to certain things change, perhaps even their entire view of life itself.
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Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:36 pm
Whenever I'm using a throwaway character, or are building a new one these are what comes to mind first:
Name, Occupation, Physical appearance, reasons for various things about that appearance, breed (I tend to uh, have an awful lot of odd species), favorite thing to do/hobbies, mini-backstory.
So this is how one would come out, I'll use an established Character of mine that I put together WITH this style. *Laughs.*
Marè Huck, she's here to f- um... She's a slim, almost anorexic creature with tan fur with bright blue chipmunk markings and a hot pink and white lollipop on her hip with yellow sparkles around it. She is a half My Little Pony, and half Chipmunk, explaining the hip design. She is a stripper, who is called Candy, for obvious reasons. She likes dancing, and being annoying. She has a crayon as an earring in one ear, and is fairly childish.
This? She explodes onto the paper and I can't stop writing her just from that.
Of course I'm blessed with a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of my world. it's scary, but the characters seem to already exist and I'm just learning new things about them. They can write themselves, and I don't need to know everything about them.
._.; It gets creepy when I've been writing a random thing they tend to do a whole story, and at the end find out they do it because they're a murderer or something and suddenly everything falls together.
Oh, and I have my usual epic Character Sheets that I fill out for others. I do reference them occasionally, mostly to reassociate with characters I haven't heard from in years, and everything I have had written down has helped me at one time or another. I keep a clean one on my wiki in case of well, necessity.
[link]Cat.Silver 
g o d d e s s o f c h a o s ™.
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Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 6:52 pm
I usually start by just fleshing a character out with the bare basics. Physical stuff mostly. Then I do things like personality then background. But it can be done Vis versa. Then I worry about things like mannerisms and any social skills that aren't covered.
Most important things have pretty much been listed.
I have discovered that relations (Blood and friend wise) are really important so that you're not stopping part way through a story just to name someone's sister. But that could be included in Backstory depending on how you use a character sheet.
I did the one character sheet that was posted here (the extremely long one) I deleted things that wouldn't apply and filled in the rest. But I only finished about two people and I find myself wishing I had filled them out completely for each character.
PS. A character sheet like the one you want to make would be amazing. Very time efficient and super useful. Long ones are nice but tedious and are usually filled with crap and you delete a bunch of stuff anyways.
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Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 7:11 am
I like to include passions and motivations.
I use the term passion to describe something the character more than likes- everyone has something that if you bring it up, the person will talk for hours about.
Motives can be useful to have on paper so that if you get too far afield in your story, you can see it there and bring the character back into focus.
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Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:19 pm
For me, I use two different types of character sheets. I use ones that ask for everything under the sun for characters that are Important and Vital (I don't always fill them to completion though) and that I plan to use for a while or over multiple projects.
I'm writing my third NaNo using the same cast of characters and universe. Now, it may not be important for a reader to know, but it is important for me to know that Jess, my main character, hates pickles (all pickles. Can't stand them. Yuk). It may never even come up in something I write about her, but it's that kind of information that shapes her into a person you would meet and interact with as opposed to an "extra". I say that the info is important because knowing it helps me be consistent and solid in my characterization. Things that aren't obvious do affect how we act and what we say, think, or do and it helps my characters be better characters when I do know that one hates how velvet feels because she was forced to wear a velvet dress every Christmas as a child or that one of them has a chipped tooth from face planting into the fire place when he was 10.
The other type I use is a really short basic one for non-essential characters. Name, age, occupation, role they fill... that sort of thing.
I do think that something important for any character sheet is "How does this character know/feel about the main character?" There's a big difference in character relationship building if one is the MC's best friend as opposed to someone who just met the MC.
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Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 6:20 pm
That's a pretty good place to start.
For me, the list helps me to be consistent. A description of the character helps if days later if something dies in my brain, and I start to say "so and so brushed her brown hair" and earlier on, I wrote she had blonde hair, I can consult the list (and either change the text or the list, depending upon what is more important. Later on a certain detail may become important).
I would add to the list whether the character is introvert/extrovert. And occupation.
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Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:21 pm
I don't think the religion bit should be in there unless its somehow important to the story. Atheists have the same moral code as Christians a lot of the time and it doesn't really effect either's everyday life unless they're really hardcore and abrasive about it. I never know someone's religion for several months and then its usually because we run into a fanatic or see a show that brings it up or something.
If its important to the character/theme/plot, sure it needs to be known, but generally it doesn't.
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