Young Writers Society

Before you write your story you should always write a charater qeustinare.
just follow this formant.

name:
age:
birth place:
personality:
pet peeves:
fears:
weaknesses:
familly:
job:
edgucation:

and any thing else that you might want to include in your story. This always helps.

I want to disagree just a smidge. I used to write out stuff like that and honestly, most of those characters turned out to be generic duds. Characters shouldn't be planned they should just...Be.

Characters should be planned out as thoroughly as possible, so that they are three-dimensional (or called round, I believe?) rather than with only one dimension to them (called flat characters)

This is a good way to start character development, but in the end it only gives you the basics. You don't want to know your character as a list of info, which is why I tend to avoid these types of character development. Instead, you want to know your character as a person. My recommendation would be to hang around the Character Development group (although, it's always been slightly hard for me to actually use that to my advantage...) or do some of the writing activities that involve characters (though, now you have to use points to post there).

For me, I know my characters...hardly at all, honestly. I know their basics, from the beginning. What I want them to look like, how I hope they will act, their personality, their role in the story. But they always look like real people to me, and because of that, they develop as I develop the plot.

No one has ever told me my characters are weak (well, in my short stories maybe) so I'm not sure I struggle with it, but I feel like I do...

Maybe that helped?

I don't like to plan out what a character is going to be like before I write. Largely because I can't write like - they'll come out completely different to how I planned them.

Rather, I prefer to only really have one or two basics concepts about them (eg. agressive, or quiet, or cocky, or whatever), and then I simply write. I find they often develop their own personality and voice naturally, saving me lottsa time.

But really, everyone's different. And my way doesn't work for everyone.

Aw, what a cute little character sheet. (One of my standard ones is about two pages long empty.) I agree, though: these are a great place to start. I usually continue to update mine as the story goes on, while saving the original drafts so that I can see how the characters develop over time (both as "people" in the story and as "characters" in my writing, if that makes sense).

Like Claudette, I'd recommend the Writing Activities and Character Development sub-forums, but also just role playing. I believe there's a Storybook sub-forum here somewhere that works almost like your standard play-by-post role playing game.

I would have to agree with Till/Claudette I can't write a word unless I know who my character is... which makes things a bit difficult because I very rarely if ever write characters with whom I can directly relate - no fifteen year old American girls for me. ^_~

The sheet you have there, Dragon, is a good basis for getting your character started in any event - as you say, you can always expound off of it. (Though I believe you have a typo in 'education').

I'd have to say, I've been impishly elitist. I disdain character sheets - have rather, always.

When I begin to write, if a character doesn't slip in vividly, I've dead paper and I toss it away, feeling bleak. But usually they do show up, after a bit if not from the start, and they end up introducing themselves like any odd fellow in a cafe. Appearance, vague age perhaps - or its ambiguity, mannerism - speech. Er, I'm afraid I always lose them when I write out information as if I were filling out a passport application. ^_^

That comes later, I suppose. So then, it may or may not help, depending upon the writer and story. But it never can hurt to throw it out for storytellers to peruse and wonder at.



IMP

I like doing the character sheets after I'm done writing...mostly because it's fun and I like to talk about my characters. I miss them when their story is done. Haha. I don't usually use them for character development though. I make sure I know the important things without listing them.