Personalities for Your Characters

Believable characters don’t just happen, they are created. To create a character that the readers can relate to you have to not only give them a body but to also give them a personality. You can decide to give your protagonist(s) and villains a history first then give them a personality to match it. For instance a woman who underwent physical abuse early in life would turn out to be your jaded heroine or a wilting flower who is mentally disturbed.

Some authors prefer to create the personality first then try to think of what could have made their characters who they are now. Either way your main character must be someone that you could fall in love with…because that is what you want your readers to do. Don’t create a demi-god because then we’ll just want to tear him/her down and make them not so perfect. Your villain should be someone that you would love to hate.

So now you’ve managed to Give Your Character a Body, to give your character a history focus on the family background (relationship to mother, father and other relatives), the nature of their childhood ( earliest memory, saddest memory, happiest memory, school life ), past relationships, regrets, proudest accomplishments and their biggest secret.  

How has the history affected your character’s personality? has it made him/her eager to prove themselves and gain attention thus become a social bird? Has it made him/her withdrawn and distrustful? I love using the Personality Page because they’ve basically done most of the foot work for me. All I have to do is decide on one overriding trait then check out the chart on the sixteen personality types. Plus the page gives me both virtues and vices of the personality type (check this Personality Chart for a summary). You can also use people you know as prototypes for your character just be sure not to make them exactly identical.

Using the personality and history for your character you can now update your profile to include where they are now. What’s their occupation, relationship status, how are they perceived by other people, do they have close friends, what’s their relationship with their relatives? Then comes the most important part of their current status – what is their Goal in your story and how does this relate to their past? For a full template check out this Character Chart

Easy wasn’t it?