How about this method? You take a character, and for every circumstance he encounters, from dialogue, to conflict, to reflection, he responds in a unique way dictated by the author on the fly. This isn't the theory of the forms. Your character's actions don't have to represent some "ideal" version of himself where every attribute is perfectly defined, it just has to appear this way to the reader. If I read about a jock who parks in handicap spots but one day takes home a stray kitten on the street, I'm not going to say, "this makes no sense because the attributes assigned to event A contradict those of event B!" No, I'm going to put on my beatnik glasses and write a 100 page dissertation on how the jock suffers from an inflated ego, fails to show compassion for those weaker than him, but then decides to protect the kitten because his id is in all actuality tender and kind. The author didn't have to do any of that. I'm not saying do random stuff, but intuition should take you along way. After all, writing is an art.
This, exactly. I use a character sheet as a place where I can write down and explore information as it comes to me. It's not a place to make things up - you come up with character information through exploring that character during the writing experience. Nor is it restricting. It's a reminder. If I write things down, I'm more likely to remember it. That doesn't mean that that can't change.
I've never seen anyone in this forum, or any other, for that matter, argue that character sheets are better than any other method. Or even "probably better." But, directly addressign the question of "What do character sheets give you that my method doesn't?" They work for me. They give me a place to break down information into smaller parts and explore them individually. They give me a place other than my story to clutter together a bunch of words and explore my character. Character sheets aren't about saying "My character's first, middle and last name are _______ and they were born on ________ and their star sign is ________ and their favorite color is ________." At least, not my character sheets. My character sheets are about breaking down different aspects of my characters' lives into smaller portions and writing about them. Usually, what they end up being, are a collection of small scenes that I wrote about my characters. Not Name: Age: Hair Color: Eye Color: You keep talking about "superior character development tool," and what's "better." You talk about the issue like there's a set black-and-white answer. And I'm genuinely very sorry if there was a person somewhere that sat you down in front of your computer and forced you to write a character bio sheet, and it was the most excrutiatingly painful experience of your life. But just because a particular method doesn't work for you - just because you're able to keep information straight in your head without writing it down - doesn't mean that everyone else has your extraordinary level of mental stamina. You found the method that works for you. Congratulations. Work with it. Use it. Build off of it. I found mind, and mine includes having a character sheet where I can slap information. And I'll keep using it, however pointless it may seem to someone who has a "better," tool that they use than I do. Because it works for me. So that's the answer you get. Character sheets give me a way to break down my information in a way that makes sense to me.
One major reason I and KaTrian use character data sheets is to avoid confusion: we write together, so she has to learn to know my characters as well as possible and vice versa, otherwise writing together becomes a tad too confusing. For us anyway. That being said, we don't usually write them out for every single character, but with some weirder cases we sometimes have to go into quite a bit of detail if there are some elements in said character the other writer doesn't fully comprehend or they've formed the wrong kind of an idea about a character's, say, physical strength or size, so that's when we've included stuff like how much a character could lift at the gym in a given exercise, how tall they are, what's their body fat percentage etc. to give the other writer a general idea of what a character is capable of, what they look like etc. Naturally nothing is set in stone and a lot of times characters change and evolve over the course of a story (it'd be a bit weird if they didn't, actually), so of course at least some of the information in an initial data sheet will become obsolete at some point and no longer corresponds to the "reality." We don't usually bother rewriting the data sheet, though, unless there's frequent confusion about a character's development, but that's rarely the case. Sometimes characters turn out way different than what the data sheet indicates, so we let them, we just adjust the facts on the data sheet if need be, but usually can't be arsed to do even that. Sometimes we even scratch a character; so much for the data sheet. To us they're just tools among many, no more, no less. Oh, and we rarely sacrifice actual writing time for filling out data sheets. We usually do that on the bus, during a lecture, on the can...
@T.Trian, that's the best reason I've yet heard for maintaining character sheets. I don't collaborate, so the issue never crossed my mind, but obviously you and @KaTrian have a need for them. Thanks for pointing that out.
I like this approach & will use it... I'm trying to write a story without getting hung up on the finer details, so will write it out once focusing mostly on the stories structure, then go back through adding the characters personal details & point of view later on. So anything character specific that comes to mind in the mean time I'll just takes notes on a character sheet of sorts.
I use character building sheets early in my planning process. For some characters it's more to do with getting to know them. They are already in my head, but I like to analyse them (it's what I do to people anyway, so it's a natural way for me to understand someone). I don't use anything quite so 'pop culture' as Myers-Briggs, I find it useless and superficial. I prefer to think in terms of developmental history, life experience and personality traits. But as I get to know a character better, I don't bother with character sheet anymore. What I use from there on is a backstory (which I have for all main characters) and quick scenes I wrote about them.
I use the weirdest character sheets--AKA I jot down in my notebook everything that ever crosses my mind about a character just in case is becomes relevant. If asked, I can tell you what brand of soap my protagonist uses and what kind of soap he'd like to buy provided he had the money for something more luxurious--or if he'd even be interested in something more luxurious. I write down little things that will never, ever make it into the story but work to inform the character I craft on a page. I don't know if my scribblings can be considered a "character sheet" considering they don't follow a specific format or pre-set list of characteristics, but I do write down all the little trivia facts à la a character sheet. I write down every childhood story I can find in their history and every insecurity they've ever faced. Again, none of these make it into their actual story. They're just for me as I develop my character before I set him loose.
I choose what sorts of capabilities I want my characters to have, then decide what sort of personality they might have if they had those sorts of capabilities. For example, my secondary protagonist has super intelligence and is mildly socially awkward. He's developed an invisibility suit by the age of 12 and created magnetic boots and gauntlets as part of the suit so he gets free travel. He wants free travel because he's poor. He's poor because he lost his father a few years ago, so he's looking for him. In spite of his super intelligence, he often overlooks details that would be obvious to most people, because he's usually got is mind on his next invention. Based on these details, I have developed dialogue and behaviour which suits this sort of person, rather than picking various attributes with scales and measures and then deciding how they would behave.
A few years ago my employer organized a team building and part of it was a "know yourself" type of training. It was based on Myers-Briggs preferences and I consider it as one of the most useful trainings I have ever attended. I suddenly realized that those people who were seemingly live in another world and do crazy things are really live there because they see the world very differently than I do. Since that I look at people with more understanding and patience. I can accept that they have motivations totally alien for me but still they are great persons. Even better I can find out what their motivation is, an ability I did not have before that training. The instructor gave us a test (several pages) and based on the results he separated the team to two smaller groups and gave us some basic tasks and asked questions. It was amazing that people in the same group agreed on these things but the two group strongly disagreed. It lead to a heavy debate including "Are you guys crazy?" and so. BUT then he re-organized the groups mixing up the members and gave other kind of tasks/questions with the same result : group members agreed with each other but disagreed with the other group. I know that the tasks he gave (like describing a picture) or questions he asked (like "You are selling a TV. One of your friends wants to buy it but offers less money than you would get if selling it on E-bay. What do you do?") were carefully crafted with the intention to show the differences but they have done their job very well. The instructor made it clear that it's not about 16 personality types or where a person is on the scale. It's about preference and preference is not a measure of the quality of a person. It also can't be used to predict what a person will do in a given situation, but if you watch him long enough you will see some trend in his behavior. Having a preference for sweet fruits does not mean that you never buy tart ones, however if you buy fruits every few days in the same shop the owner will know that. PS : in the last few days I considered to write an article about Myers-Briggs but now seeing how many people are against it I think it's better to re-consider that
I'm not huge into detailed personality test stuff but I do actually build a lot on "shallower trivia". I'm very big into knowing what music my characters listen to, where and when they grew up, what religion they practice if any, what their hobbies are. I usually plot out a couple of things like that and build from there - I give the characters some odd interests or traits depending on how I see them in my head - then ask myself "now why would they do that". It's really fun when you start out with traits that seem mildly contradictory and unrelated - and then build a character who somehow embodies both sides of the contradiction (I did this with a character who is a semi-devout follower of Jainism - a highly anti-materialistic faith - but simultaneously obsessed with fashion and pop-culture). I didn't set up the contradiction on purpose - I was just filling two "holes" with the same person, but as I dug deeper into those two things, they played off of each-other and built an identity crisis into the character's psyche...now probably my favorite character to write.
These posts display a baffling level of ignorance, and it is disappointing to see so many additional people parroting these opinions and deluding themselves into believing that they are increasing their sophistication of character development by dismissing personality models out of hand. The comparison to the zodiac is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard regarding Meyers-Briggs. It is common wisdom that if someone uses a well-established tool and the desired results are not produced, then that is attributable not to a failure of the tool, but a failure of the person using the tool. What I observe in this thread is an excellent example of that rule of thumb. Meyers-Briggs is two things: a way to describe personality traits shared in common by different people, and a theory of cognitive functions. The axes (E-I, S-N, F-T, J-P) are only a small part of the story; they are secondary to the hierarchy of cognitive functions (introverted and extroverted versions of sensing, intuition, thought, and feeling). They tie together in order to explain how someone's cognitive inclinations and lifestyle preferences combine and form a recognizable pattern of perception and action. Rather than pigeonholing people into certain types, it recognizes that people do not always behave predictably, and it even explains why people often break from their predicted behavioral patterns. It explains what happens when they grow. Meyers-Briggs describes a dynamic system of a person. It is not a description of a static state of being, as people seem to think. If you care about writing a story about people, rather than a story about players of a game called "the plot", then you have every reason to use all the psychological knowledge and theory available to you. Personality typology and cognitive function theory are some of the most useful tools in the hands of someone who knows how they work. Using Myers-Briggs to design a character involves so much more than just choosing four letters arbitrarily and deriving the character's life story from the first page you find on Google. It involves the same processes that you would normally use (namely, thinking about what the character has experienced, and what they currently want in life), but it turns the character's mind from a black box into a system that is transparent to you. You no longer think in terms of "this happened, and the character reacted this way, and learned this lesson"; you think in terms of "these three cognitive functions interacted in a feedback loop which stifled development of the other functions, but when the character was forced to break out of the loop, these other two cognitive functions came into play, and when the character became more aware of their importance, the previously neglected functions entered the forefront of cognitive development." It is tempting just to say "I do not need to analyze the character; I can just feel what it is like to be in their shoes"; but that places an ungodly amount of confidence in your own intuitive abilities.
@ToeKneeBlack @daemon Exactly. Just because psychologists don't use MB clinically anymore doesn't mean that normal people can't use it to better understand each other on an informal level. Exactly again. [SARCASM]Not all of us are the kind of super-geniuses for whom characters magically appear in our heads as fully-formed Athenas, some of us instead have to work to separate the ideas we like from the ones we don't [/SARCASM]
@daemon: I am a psychiatrist by profession and my understanding of personality and human condition is so much deeper then Myers-Briggs, I indeed find that method inadequate and superficial and don't even give it a thought when I create characters. I never said someone else won't find it adequate for their level of understanding, so knock yourself out, by all means. Therefore, I would appreciate if you would kindly refrain from referring to me and others you quoted as 'deluding ourselves' or 'parroting'. It is offensive considering your knowledge of psychology is evidently not adequate to make such value judgements. Your jumping to conclusion that we somehow have no idea what we are talking about, just because we aren't enamoured by a test you like to 'dabble' in, is arrogant. Being able to conceptualise characters and fully fledged people might seem like 'ungodly' hocus-pocus to you, but I worked with hundreds of patients in psychotherapy, as a doctor I got to know thousands more, so for me, nothing could be more normal.
@jazzabel You are right, I did jump to a false conclusion about why you said what you said, so my rather harsh language does not apply to you. I mistakenly lumped your post with the others in my reply. I was referring to authors who do not have a professional working knowledge of psychiatry. By "parroting", I meant that they assume that if an author like you has nothing left to gain from a theory like Myers-Briggs, then neither do they. Not unlike aspiring authors who idolize an author who "breaks all the rules", and then assume that they can jump right into doing the same thing without first mastering the established conventions.
More concisely: if you think you have nothing to gain from understanding Myers-Briggs and applying it to fictional characters, then either you are an expert on psychology or you misunderstand the theory pretty badly.
Because many people will develop shallow characters. How many stories have you read with shallow mains or protagonists or movies that are similar in characters that don't really live?
I'm not rejecting the Myers-Briggs method outright, as I had never heard of it before I had encountered this topic. However, it doesn't sound like a very flexible system and I wouldn't use it on it's own for developing a new character. Yes, M-B can be used to start building a character, but I feel I would need to be more inventive when it comes to fleshing out the character to add more detail and personality to what is essentially a set of numbers.
Check out my favorite Myers-Briggs resource on the web. Be sure to read all of the pages on the site, as a single "typology 101" article cannot begin to do justice to the theory.
If people want to rely on Myers-Briggs to construct characters, I have no problem with that. Whatever works for you. However, Myers-Briggs is a relatively new 'thing.' Authors who wrote and created characters we all know and love BEFORE the Myers-Briggs idea became widely known, must have used some other method. Imagination coupled with observation and experience? I strongly believe that good characterisation–and a feel for what characters will do in certain circumstances—comes from experience and imagination. You can do worse than base characters on people you actually know. (Heavily disguise them, of course ...even change gender.) You KNOW these people. If you use real people as models, not only will they make believable characters, but you can work your own reaction to them into your story.
Despite the nature of the resource I created, after spending a year with a psychology undergrad and understanding every which way personality can't be defined, I came to the conclusion that I would probably never use it myself. Having said that, I would not think it useless to employ some degree of planning, because if you have a poor sense of direction like me, you tend to get lost, as I sometimes do in my essays.
@daemon : I also think @jannert made an excellent point (and I know Cogito and minstrel could relate to it). If one has a keen observation sense and is a good listener, they can come up with incredibly three-dimensional characters simply by drawing inspiration from people they know and have met. Some people instinctively know what works and what doesn't, and literary classics are packed full of such characters. Take Agatha Christie's Poirot. She nailed the obsessive-compulsive angle, from the way he speaks, dresses, approaches the investigation to his relationships. That man literally lives in our minds because of that. But you are right, having some sort of a tool is always useful. I like to think in terms of personality traits. It's an idea derived from the study of personality disorders, there's a certain number of them, profiles of personality in terms of it's 'flavour' and difficulties, paranoid, narcissistic, avoidant, and so on. People can become disordered, yes, but everyone has a trait or two, it's what we call our 'quirks' and 'hangups' ways of behaving and looking at the world that's based in immature defence mechanisms and largely rooted in our past, how we grew up, family dynamics and so on. I learned to look for this aspect in order to better understand people, so that's what helps me.
I agree here, if you have a regimented set of rules to define the character, you miss the opportunity to allow the story to shape and nurture the character. The development has almost been done and it can lead to forced narration. I agree have notes about what they are like, but use as a guide not a answer. You wouldn't like a character sheet about you, one you had to follow. Adventure and story is about breaking the social norm, doing something out of character.
How is that different from any other sort of note-taking that could be part of a writing process? Any system used for it's own sake instead of for the sake of the story would appear equally inflexible. That doesn't mean "never use a system" it means "use the system for the story, not the other way around."
