The Minimalist Character Sheet
So I am not the biggest fan of those ten page character sheets that include 100 questions like “What’s their favourite ice cream?”. Don’t get me wrong: If those help you with your writing, more power to you! Do what works for you. But I tend to discover all the little details of a character while writing. I only need the fundamental things. Maybe this works for you too!
The Basics
- Name: including all nicknames, titles, etc.
- Gender
- Age
- Role in the Narrative
- Physical Description: focus on defining features
GMC (If you want to learn more about the concept, check out this post.)
- Internal Goal
- Internal Motivation
- Internal Conflict
- External Goal
- External Motivation
- External Conflict
Personality
- Short characterization: internal personality and external behavior
- Their biggest failure/issue/flaw: and how it impacts their life/personality/behavior
- Backstory: and its consequences, such as triggers
- Speech pattern: at least three speech marks that emphasize their personality (if you want to learn more about speech patterns, check out this post)
- Behaviour pattern: at least three habits that emphasize their personality
- Character Arc: where do they start, how do they change, where do they end?
That’s it! Hope this gave you some pointers on how to start out with character creation.
Have fun writing!