What is a character fact file

These strengths and weaknesses will shape your character arc and the plot as a whole, so know them well before writing. Create a list of 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses for your characters. Make sure these play into the plot in order to cause conflict and gain sympathy from readers who can relate. I pick at the skin around my nails. This can be a key characteristic that will make your characters feel more real and help make them more relatable to your readers, which will make them want to give you those 5-star reviews.

Make a small list for each of your characters. Write down 2 odd habits for each of them and decide which is their go-to the one they do without even thinking about it and which is made worse through nerves or anxiety. It can be really hard to write your favorite fictional person as having flaws. After all, we want people to love them, right? These are often called Mary Sue characters.

You have to build flaws into your character just like we all have drawbacks in real like. You need to let your characters fail. List 3 major flaws your character has that can actually become problems within your plot. No matter which character they or what they want in your story, they need to have a real and valid reason for feeling this way. Voldemort woops! This is largely how plot holes arise so in order to avoid them, stick to this character development method.

For Voldemort, it would be the fact that Harry can kill him and that he wants to rule the wizarding world. Your bad character has to have at least 2 strong reasons for opposing your protagonist and they should make sense given their history. When writing a book , you want your readers to easily visualize and differentiate the cast. You want each character to stand out as individuals. Harry has glasses. Hermione has buck teeth up until she has them shortened a bit too much — and this is only in the books for those of you about to argue , and Ron has flaming red hair.

These are very distinct features that can help you picture them as wildly different characters. If you have a main character with brown wavy hair, have the next with blonde curly hair, etc. Create a spreadsheet or other document that lists all your characters and document their features.

You can even back up their personality with real-life psychology. As an example, I have two characters who both have a tragic background.

One character takes on a very withdrawn approach while the other hides his pain with humor. This gives them very different personalities despite having similar histories. Develop it from there in order to have realistic personalities that differ. This is when some research will come into play, which should be required anyway. Looking into some psychological effects of trauma can help you accurately and realistically dive into character development.

Now, not all characters go through trauma, but there are other big life events that can shape how they behave. Nice I was gonna make one myself but this is great since normally I obsess to the point of procrastination. Hi Gwendolyn, could you drop us an email at service reedy. With Gmail, our emails often can be found in the Promotions folder. This my be a crazy question, but I am writing a science fiction book, and I already made character profiles for my ow use. But, that being said, would it make sense to also include a section in the book that includes all the main characters profiles.

It would serve as a reference in case someone wants to know the characters hair color, birth date, and other details. It would be a somewhat unusual move — but it's not for me to say if it's wrong. Often, you see books provide family trees and brief histories of the 'world' of the story In almost all cases, readers won't really need to know things like hair color or date of birth.

So, I'd think hard before putting a character stat sheet in your book. I don't see why not! I don't think including one would be a bad move.

Definitely not something that would kill your story. Keep in mind that I'm a beginner when it comes to books, so I may not know any better. I'm just saying that in my opinion, I don't think it's a bad move. Are they a college grad? What did they study? Did they leave school at 18 and take up an apprenticeship — that sort of thing. Hi Sky, if you're still having trouble downloading the template, could you drop us a message at marketing reedsy.

Symbolism is used to represent important ideas in fiction. Learn more with these classic examples of symbolism in literature! In other words, an affect produces an effect. If you're tired of staring at a blank sheet, check out these 30 things to write about. Feel free to steal these ideas! In this post, we reveal the seven essential story elements and show you how they work together. Whether you're working on a story, an essay, or an article, here's how to write better with these 5 tips.

Try them on for size! Reedsy is more than just a blog. The purpose of a character profile is twofold: to assist the writer in creating a character that is as lifelike as possible and to help with continuity issues in the story. In our author interviews many bestselling authors have stated that they came up with the basics of a character's personality and then they found that the character just "came alive" for them and ended up driving the story all on his own.

These are writers with years of experience developing characters and it now comes more naturally to them. But for the beginning writer, sometimes a more concrete approach is helpful. That is where the character profile comes in -- it is simply a tool for organizing your thoughts about a certain character and keeping track of a particular character's idiosyncrasies and relationships.

It can help flesh out a cardboard character and even make you think about facets of his or her personality that you had not considered before. Character profiles are especially helpful for novels which involve several main characters and for stories which use multiple points of view. Character profiles are useful when writing in any genre. Depending on the genre in which you write, you will create additional sections on the Character Profile Worksheet.

For example, fantasy writers can use the character profiles to keep track of factors such as magical abilities, family lineage, spells the character is under, and limitations on the character's power to ensure continuity in the action.