Maybe he needs a new characteristic - a hidden trauma, a fabulous skill or a deadly secret - something that will make the character come alive for you.
You also want to be sure you don't create a Mary Sue character. The Worksheet provides a place for you to note that fact so that when you read over your final draft you can see if you achieved your particular character development goal for that character.Ī Character Profile is just meant to be a guide where you can list facts and details to help you get to know your characters, especially if you get stuck on one character who doesn't quite seem real. Obviously,Ī character can develop over the course of the novel.
HOW TO CHANGE CHARACTER PORTRAIT IN HERO LAB ONLINE UPDATE
If you change an attribute of your character, be sure to update your Character Profile Worksheet right away. For example, if in draft 1 your heroine is just recovering from a nasty divorce and in draft 2 you've decided to make her a happily married mother of three, you will know to check every scene with dialogue about her marital statusĪs well as scenes where the (now non-existent) dastardly ex-husband is mentioned. You can use the profile to ensure continuity For example, someone who was abused as a child will most likely react differently in certain situations than someone who had a happy, loving childhood.Ī Character Profile is also of great help during the rewrite stage of your novel. 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.įor literary and mainstream novels, profiles are especially useful for keeping in mind motivations of the character - hurts and disappointments in the past which may not be alluded to directly in the dialogue, but which nevertheless color everything the character thinks and feels. Depending on the genre in which you write, you will create additional sections on the Character Profile Worksheet. Character profiles are especially helpful for novels which involve several main characters and for stories which use multiple points of view.Ĭharacter profiles are useful when writing in any genre.
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. 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.
But for the beginning writer, sometimes a more concrete approach is helpful. These are writers with years of experience developing characters and it now comes more naturally to them. 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.
The purpose of a character profile is twofold: to assist the writer in creating a character that is as lifelikeĪs possible and to help with continuity issues in the story. One technique that many writers use with success is to create a character profile for the main characters in One of the most important elements in a novel or short story is characterization: making the characters seem vivid, real,Īlive.