One piece of advice that has really helped me and that I don't see often enough about establishing your characters' personalities is to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test as that character and answer all the questions how you think they'd answer. This will not only make you consider what they would do in certain situations and what beliefs they would hold as you answer the questions, but it will also give you a solid personality archetype to build off of for that character, with the extensive writeups about the personality types that you will get with your results.
I think that KM Weiland discussed how she uses the Myers-Briggs personality test as a guide for her own characters a few years ago. Whilst I had heard of its applications for psychology prior to that, I'd never considered applying it to character development. Looking into it, I could see how useful it was in fleshing out the personality (with motivations) of a character.
@@KeikoMushi Ah, that may have been where I first saw it. I'm familiar with KM Weiland's _Creating Character Arcs_. Tbh I don't remember where or how I first came across this advice, but unlike a lot of writing advice you tend to see from a lot of different sources, I just haven't seen this one in many different places. I just think it needs to be shared more.
"...so your character doesn't say...change their eye color halfway through the book." I have a character whose eye color changes halfway through the series, but that was deliberate and ties into the plot lol
Making character profiles can be tons of fun. But for me I typically come up motivations, backstories, interesting psychologies/philosophies way before I get into how they look like or what they dress as. Some people do it the other way around. So just do it however you want!
I greatly appreciate the focus on quick and clear information instead of having a long long long video i have to wade through for the tidbits. THANK YOU!
Hi. I came across your channel and find your videos incredibly helpful. Just wanna say thank you for helping me with my writing. Keep up the good work!
I was wondering if you could talk about screenplays or script writing. I write novels and short stories but I love using the script form and want to write a script, but I have little to none experience on that. Does anybody have any resources or advice I can use?
Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences could be somewhat useful for the last step. If anybody else knows of some other methods, be sure to yell out. Even if I don't end up using it myself, it might be of use to some other people following the comments.
me:*trying to finish a character profile thats due tommorow* Reedsy: so we need this and next we need this and then this add that so it relates to that then add that to this so it relates to that me:im ready to drink more tea
I just looked at your template for the character profile. 13 pages for a character profile seems way too long for me, I usually keep it around 3 pages max, I just think there is too much unnecessary details we need to know or would even care about.
You can choose the details that you think are important for you! No need to use all 13 pages but it's nice to have options based on what will help you and what won't.
I've seen an online character profile (at critiquecircle.com) where the profile expands as you fill in more detail. In view mode you see only the bits you've filled in. Then when you edit a category all those hidden fields pop up and you fill in what's relevant.
