I feel as if I should voice my opinion once more. Why? Simply because I have nothing better to do.
Sometimes, you Google “character sheets” or something like that and get these really long things. They’re asking everything from name to age to maiden name to bra size to boxers or briefs to favorite animal to hairstyle to skin color to ex-girlfriends, etc. It gets long and daunting, but some people like them long. In truth, this sometimes hinders the writing process as the writer is thinking of only consistency. (And the sheets are sometimes excessively long.)
Well, truth be told, some people have contradictory traits and do things that contradict their actions, philosophies, etc. (I am one of those people.) Sometimes, people are as arbitrary as the weather. While it’s good to keep things consistent, straying slightly off the normal path isn’t exactly unheard of. So this is my character sheet.
NAME:
AGE:
DATE OF BIRTH:
*NATIONALITY/RACE:
OCCUPATION:
HAIR COLOR:
EYE COLOR:
**HEIGHT:
**WEIGHT:
PERSONALITY:
FUNCTION IN STORY:
RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER CHARACTERS:
*Nationality may not be a huge deal. However, if it’s a non-Caucasian nationality, it MAY make its way into the story and become an integral element. I can think of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and John Grisham’s A Time to Kill where nationality/race was a huge deal. Even in today’s politics, race is an issue. (Obama…)
**The specific numerical value most likely won’t be revealed in the story. The only time I mention height and weight is through words such as “tall,” “rotund,” “overweight,” etc. The numeric value, to me, helps me with character description.
Since personality can't really be limited by any means, go crazy.
This, in my opinion, is all you really need to know about any given character. If your characters happen to discuss favorite foods, write it in. However, you shouldn’t think of such trivial things when planning a character. The trivial things, such as favorite food, favorite books, etc., that have no relevance to the story should be added onto the character sheet as you write them into the story.
The “Function in Story” and “Relationship to Other Characters,” besides the name, are perhaps the most important items on this list. I personally believe it helps remind the writer where this character stands in the story. Sometimes, when you forget the point of a character being there, that can derail your entire story and into a ditch of s**t.
You may be asking, “What about the character’s past?!” Well, ******** that. In a “character sheet,” that has nothing to do with the character but everything to do with the ***plot. The personality is merely the result of the past. Therefore, timelines are an amazing tool to use in order to establish any character’s past. I have a timeline for each character’s history. Then I have an uber-timeline that shows where every character’s history overlaps. In fact, that’s easier (in my opinion) than writing paragraphs and pages of history and never knowing what overlaps where. Visually being able to see what happened when and who was where while it happened.
***I consider “plot” to be events in a linear stream of time--past, present, and future.
Does this work for everyone? No, but neither does the excessively long thing. I like my method of character sheets.
