The voice of reason

thatfrenchhelper:

When creating a character, there’s a lot of questions you ask yourself. Whether it’s an original character or one you’ve been playing for a long time, using a character sheet to get to know your character better can always be a nice idea. With it’s help, you’ll be able to think about things you didn’t necesarily thought about, and ask some important questions to yourself that might activate your character’s voice, or help you to get your muse back with them. Everyone has their favorite character sheets, some people prefer to have a lot of questions, some others like it a bit more vague, so here’s a masterlist of the character sheets I found on various websites and found quite interesting, plus some other things that could be used to help you see, for example, how other character view yours. 

• Blank Character Sheet (+370 Questions)
• Abridged Character Sheet (100 Questions)
• Big-Ass Character Sheet
• Character Creation Form
• Character Sheet by Jody Hedlund
• Creating a character Bio Sheet
• Character Analysis Worksheet
• 100 Character Development questions for writers
• Create a Character Profile
• Character Development Worksheet
• Original Character Bio-Sheet
• Character Chart for Fiction Writers
• A Character Chart By Charlotte Dillon
• Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
• Detailed Character Sheet
• Character Sheet Template
• Character Twenty-Question Worksheet
• In-Depth Character Sheet
• Character Worksheet
• Character Interview Sheet (First Person)
• Background Questionnaire (First Person)
• Characters Perceptions (How do other people perceive your character?)
• A lot of questions to develop your character here

With these sheets, you could also try to find your character’s Jung and Enneagram Type or use the Moral Alignment tool. All of these things can be really useful to get a better grip on a character.

Then, if you’re trying to create a character, and do not have many ideas, or get stuck, I’d suggest for you to roam around TVTropes, which gives you a lot of tropes used for character creation. Maybe you could try to mix a few of these and create an original character?

Or, if you’re a skillful writer and know how to make your character different from another, make a list of characters in fiction you happen to find interesting and why. Try to keep it short. Then, maybe, try to mix and match things from two or three characters, take a character and change their backstory, to see what would change. Play with them to inspire yourself and create something new, original and truly yours.

Oh, and here’s a little guide to Mary-Sues and OCs, just in case you want to make sure your character isn’t going to become a Mary-Sue or a Gary-Stu

And last but not least, this article about building fictional character definitely seemed interesting to me, and is full of many other links that could guide you during the creating of your character and help you file one of these sheets.