Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to create 3D CHARACTERS (pt. 2)

While scouring the depths of Google, I stumbled across a website that contains an extensive list of human personality traits and traits that are opposite to those. When you're trying to come up with a new character but don't really have a concrete personality already whipped up, or even if you think you do, this is a great tool/exercise to make some crucial decisions about your character's personality. This is much more useful than those character sheets you might find that tell you to write irrelevent bits of information like the character's favorite color or weight or least favorite food. Those are superficial, meaningless details that usually have nothing to do with the story anyway. The method outlined in this how-to gets right to the core of the character, and that's what gives them depth and development. It helps you develop the character's MOTIVATIONS. And motivations are what drives every decision.

First and foremost, click the EXTERNAL LINK for the website: http://www1.whsd.net/courses/H0178/Career_Project/Personality%20traits.pdf

What you should do for each of your characters is copy/paste the entire list from the website into a word doc or notepad. Go through every pair of traits, and in each pair, highlight the one that best describes your character. If you have no idea which one to choose, you can flip a coin and pick a trait at random. By the end, you'll have a full set of traits on which to base your character.

The two-column positive and negative trait set-up will also help you see the overall ratio of redeemable qualities to flaws. You should have somewhat of a balance of both, so that means a good chunk of traits in the left-hand column and a good chunk of them in the right-hand one. Some characters may lean more toward one than the other, but if a large majority of the traits fall in the positive side or the negative side, you probably have a Mary-Sue or Anti-Sue on your hands.

For people like me who don't always stay consistent with characterization throughout the novel because they may have forgotten their initial vision for the character, this is an invaluble asset! Refer to this list as you write and make sure your character isn't sloppy in one scene and immaculate in the next (unless of course, that's the trait you're changing about them and you do it in a deliberate, sensical way).

It'll also help you come up with and write developed characters. The characters who are one-dimensional and flat are only based on maybe one or two of the traits below, rather than the entire list.