![The template open in Strokes: a banner picture of a lone figure in a long coat at the end of a pier at dusk, above the title “Character profile: [Name]”.](/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic%2Fmedia%2Fhero-light.61d790a7.webp&w=3840&q=75)
![The template open in Strokes: a banner picture of a lone figure in a long coat at the end of a pier at dusk, above the title “Character profile: [Name]”.](/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic%2Fmedia%2Fhero-dark.e87b697f.webp&w=3840&q=75)
When to use it
- Planning a protagonist or point-of-view character before the first draft
- Fixing a character who keeps going flat or doing whatever the plot needs
- Giving an antagonist, love interest or foil a want of their own
- Keeping ages, looks and speech habits consistent across a long draft or a series
A character profile is a working document for one person in your story: what they look like, what they want, what they need without knowing it, what happened to them before page one and how they sound. This one keeps to the fields that change what a character does in a scene. Fill in the ones your draft needs now and leave the rest blank.
How to use this template
- Start with the sentence, the want and the need
These three lines tell you what the character does in chapter one and why the ending will cost them something. If you are a pantser and can't answer them yet, draft a few chapters first, then fill in what the pages have already shown you.
- Trace one wound to one lie
Pick a single event from the past, not a whole biography. Then write what the character concluded from it, in their own words. That belief is what the plot will test. Backstory that lives here doesn't have to arrive as an info dump in chapter one.
- Find the voice in three lines
Before you write a scene with them, write one line of dialogue at ease, one cornered and one lying. If any of the three could come from another character in the book, the voice isn't finished. The guide to writing dialogue covers the rest.
- Update the profile from the draft
When chapter 6 gives her a stammer your plan didn't, the profile changes, not chapter 6. Note the chapter where each fixed detail first appears, so you can find it when a later scene contradicts it.
What to fill in and what to leave blank
Empty fields are not the usual problem with character worksheets. The usual problem is a week spent on a protagonist's blood type and favorite cereal while chapter one stays unwritten. Use one test: fill a field when a scene will use it. Eye color earns its line if someone notices it. A childhood dog earns one if it explains why she flinches at barking. Everything else waits until the draft asks.
| Character | Fill in | Skip |
|---|---|---|
| CharacterProtagonist or POV character | Fill inEvery section | SkipTrivia no scene will use |
| CharacterAntagonist | Fill inWant, wound, voice, relationship to the MC | SkipArc, unless they change |
| CharacterLove interest, mentor or foil | Fill inAt a glance, want, voice, relationships | SkipMost of the backstory |
| CharacterWalk-on character | Fill inName, role, one detail | SkipThis template: give them a row in the story bible |
The antagonist row matters more than it looks. An opponent with a want of their own pushes back on the MC for reasons, not because the plot needs a wall. A foil needs only enough profile to show the road the protagonist didn't take. Minor characters belong in the story bible, where one row keeps their name and eye color straight.
Leave some questions open on purpose. In Aspects of the Novel (1927), E. M. Forster said a round character is "capable of surprising in a convincing way." A profile with every box filled can't surprise you. Put the open questions under Notes and let the draft answer them.
A filled-in example
This extract is from a profile for the protagonist of an imagined family novel set in a small Ohio town. It skips the fields the story doesn't use yet.
In one sentence. A Chicago sous-chef comes home to sell her late father's diner by Labor Day and finds the town still leans on it, and on her.
At a glance. 29 (born 1997). Protagonist and the only POV character. For the summer she lives in the apartment above the diner in Corliss, Ohio. First appears ch. 1, at the lawyer's office.
Personality. Fast, funny, controlling. Strength: calm in a crisis (she runs a Sunday rush with a burned hand, ch. 3). Flaw: she decides for other people. Fear: being the one left holding everything together. Tell: her car keys never leave her pocket.
Want and need. Want: sell the diner and be back at work before the head chef replaces her. Need: to let people depend on her, and to depend on them, without treating it as a trap.
Wound and lie. At 15 she ran the register for three days while her father was missing on a bender, and every regular pretended not to notice. Lie: "If I need no one, no one can let me down."
Voice. Short sentences, kitchen shorthand, jokes instead of answers. Never calls the town home. Cornered: "Two eggs, over hard, and don't ask how I'm doing." Lying: "It's a building. Buildings get sold."
Relationships. Cal, her brother, 24, who stayed and loves the place: her foil. Ray Duda, 66, her father's line cook, who knows about the three days and has never mentioned them.
Arc. Start: everything has a price and an exit (ch. 1). Turning point: Ray brings up the three days (ch. 14). End: she sells the diner to Ray and stays to cook for him (ch. 30). The sale goes through. The train ticket goes unused.
Notice what is missing: hair color, a birthday, favorite music. The story has no use for them yet. Every line that is there will show up in a scene, and the ending pays off the want and the need at once. She gets the sale and loses the lie.
Want, need and wound in a classic
The fields at the center of the template come from craft books. John Truby's The Anatomy of Story (2007) calls the past event the ghost. K. M. Weiland's Creating Character Arcs (2016) calls the false belief the lie. The names differ, the mechanism doesn't: a wound teaches a lie, the lie shapes a want, and the plot forces a choice between the want and the need. Charles Dickens built Pip this way.
Wound. At Satis House, Estella sneers at the blacksmith's boy: "And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!" (ch. 8).
Lie. Worth comes from class, money and manners, so Joe, the blacksmith who raised him, is something to be ashamed of.
Want. "I want to be a gentleman," he tells Biddy (ch. 17), on Estella's account.
Need. To see that Joe's loyalty and plain decency are worth more than anything a fortune buys.
Arc. Positive, the slow way. He gets his want and it makes him worse. After the money turns out to come from the convict Magwitch and is lost, Joe nurses him through a fever and quietly pays his debt (ch. 57).
Weiland sorts arcs into three types, and the Arc table takes any of them. In a positive arc the character trades the lie for the truth, as Pip does. In a negative arc they hold on to it and fall. In a flat arc they already know the truth and change the people around them.
Questions to ask your character
Character questionnaires are a standard way into a profile. The best known, the Proust Questionnaire, began as a Victorian parlor game that Marcel Proust answered as a teenager, and Vanity Fair revived it for its last page in 1993. The questions below are narrower: each one feeds a field in the template. Answer in the character's voice, not yours. A question they refuse to answer tells you as much as one they answer.
- What do you tell people you want, and what do you actually want?
- What would you do with one day of not having to be careful?
- When did you stop being the person you were as a kid, and why?
- What do you know about the world that other people are too naive to see?
- What won't you do, even to get what you want?
- What do people get wrong about you in the first five minutes?
- Who would you call at 3 a.m., and who would you never call?
- What do you do with your hands when you lie?
- When were you last completely wrong about someone?
- If this ends well for you, what will you have given up?
Question 4 usually turns up the lie. Question 10 is the arc. For the types a character can grow out of, or against, see character archetypes.
Frequently asked questions
What should a character profile include?
At minimum: the character's role in the story, what they want, what they need, the past event that shaped them and how they talk. Appearance, personality, relationships and an arc fill it out. Anything no scene will ever use is optional.
Is a character sheet the same as a character profile?
For fiction writers, mostly yes: character sheet, profile, bio and worksheet are used for the same document. In tabletop role-playing games a character sheet means stats and abilities. For a novel, motive, history and voice matter more than numbers.
How long should a character profile be?
One to three pages for a protagonist, a paragraph for a supporting character and a single line for a walk-on. If a profile is longer than the chapters the character appears in, stop filling it in and write the chapters.
Should I fill in a profile before or after drafting?
Either works. Plotters can fill in the want, need and wound before chapter one. Discovery writers often learn more from a draft, so they fill in the profile afterward and use it to revise. In both cases, keep updating it as the draft changes the character.
