Personally, I have mixed feelings about character questionnaires. While I appreciate their intent with character development and pinning down exactly what a character desires and why, as well as what makes them human, I find it hard to come up with answers for many questions. Some of them seem extraneous and others seem downright unanswerable. I tell myself, "I don't need to know this," and then shrug each question off. In the meantime, I tend to mostly answer the basics, like personality, strengths and flaws, goals, appearance, character relationships, and history. How do you approach seemingly incompletable questionnaires? What are other helpful techniques for character development other than a lengthy questionnaire?
I write my characters through a small, throw-away story. It's the only thing that works for me. Questionnaires, character templates/sheets, these are too static for me, to unmoving. I need to learn who a character is by walking him/her through a situation.
I do start with Character Profiles™, but never a 500-question list of "What is your character's favorite color?" "When was your character's first kiss?" "What is your character's biggest regret?" ... I always start with a quick and dirty label as the basic skeletal framework Spoiler: My personal favorite I like using Myers-Briggs and D&D Alignment because there are 144 different combinations (16 MB types * 9 Alignments) that you can instantly tell the difference between according to 6 different points of comparison and contrast. I'm a Chaotic Neutral INTP: I'm extremely antiauthoritarian, neither extremely saintly nor extremely sociopathic, asocial, theoretical, insensitive, disorganized My lead protagonist is a Neutral Evil ISTJ: she's neither extremely authoritarian nor extremely antiauthoritarian, extremely sociopathic, asocial, practical, insensitive, organized My 1st-person narrator is a Lawful Evil ESFP: he's extremely authoritarian, extremely sociopathic, social, practical, sensitive, disorganized I hate playing by The Rules™, my narrator loves playing by The Rules™, and my protagonist is more pragmatically ambivalent. None of us are saints, but I'm not a sociopath while my protagonist and narrator both are. My protagonist and I are not people-people, but my narrator is. I love playing around with abstract concepts, but my protagonist and narrator both prefer to focus on the real-world application. My narrator and I are both loose and spontaneous, but my protagonist is more methodical and step-by-step. and then fill in the blanks as I go along, frequently making changes and occasionally making some pretty big ones.
Don't mind them, but I don't use them. While structure for plots, conflicts, and story development is integral for me, I find character questionnaires restrictive - especially for character development, which, in my opinion, is more fluid and abstract.
I do that too! I thought I was the only one, hahah. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else mention it. When it comes to questionnaires/templates/etc, I do them for fun sometimes -- as some simple thing to waste time with, usually while I'm watching tv or something -- and they do occasionally offer some useful insights. You kind of have to make them work for you. Rather than going in thinking, "What should my character's favorite food be?" think, "What can my character's favorite food inform about their life/personality?" A lot of it might be trash, and I don't think it's particularly useful to just generate a ton of fodder that's not actually going to help with your story, but you definitely can use them to decent effect. (edited because my cat was chewing on the keyboard and posted too early )
I don’t use them. I try not to actually disapprove of them, since everybody’s process is different, but I have to try.
I don't use them at all - my writing method is fairly low key and informal, so I'm not a fan of expansive lists or detailed outlines. Most of the details about my characters that are relevant to the story come to me organically, by thinking about who these characters are before we meet them and what path they took to get to the beginning of my story. I can kind of compare it to getting to know a new friend; you don't hand them a questionnaire, you spend time talking with them and become familiar with them that way.
I've done Myers-Briggs for my characters sometimes, but usually just as a sort of fun thing, not a formal planning technique. I feel like I can't do the test until I've written them and figured them out, and once I've written them and figured them out I don't really NEED to do the test, so... just for fun. Adding the D&D elements is interesting... I'm a super-strong INTJ in real life, and I think I'm probably... neutral good, maybe, for D&D? But I'm not sure how to bring those two together... (I just did a quiz and it says I'm chaotic good. Huh. At least the "good" part is consistent...)
That's exactly the opposite of what I do I look at the possible types – Introvert/Extravert, iNtuitor/Sensor, Thinker/Feeler, Perceiver/Judger – and pick which type I think would be the most interesting to write about (as opposed to coming up with answers to 48 questions and then seeing which type they add up to) I'm a Chaotic Neutral INTP and the way that you bring them together is simply: use them together You're INTJ: asocial, theoretical, insensitive, and organized and you're also Chaotic Good: extremely antiauthoritarian, extremely selfless A lot of people on nerd-forums assume that Judger = Order = Lawful and that Perceiver = Disorder = Chaotic, but I can easily imagine a person being authoritarian about what to do, yet flexible and spontaneous about how to do it (Lawful Perceiver), and I can easily imagine a person being antiauthoritarian about what to do, yet step-by-step and methodical about how to do it (Chaotic Judger). Like you: you love people (Good) from a distance (I, T), and you like coming up with your own (Chaotic) step-by-step plans (J) that best fit your philosophical, big-picture worldview (N) about what people need. Or the narrator of my novel, who could not possibly be further away from you: he has exactly two best friends in the world that he loves, and anybody else could burn and die for all he cares (Evil), but he still likes being around a lot of people (E), and he likes being polite with them unless they do something to him or his friends that he takes personally (F). He's more interested in the day-to-day (S) than he is in grander narratives, and if his boss tells him to do something, then he's going to do it because She's The Boss (Lawful), though he's better with loose, flexible instructions than he is with rote procedure (P).
I do it too. Also, sometimes when I'm bored I try to imagine how a character would react to different situations around me even if they are way outside a character's world. If I imagined a fantasy MC in my office environment, for example, I'd pretty quickly know if they'd be the type to sit quietly in the corner and wait for the day to end, endlessly pace around and fiddle or get into a shouting match with the coworkers. This gives me an extended idea of who they are and how they'd react to various situations in their stories. I feel it's helping me to write in-character.
I'm intrigued... can I clarify, though... INTJs are disorganized? Is that... from the J? I would have thought J's would be organized...?
'Kay, another question (at least you know I'm reading your post closely!)... is "perceiver" another typo? Should that be "judger"?
It literally never helps me. I hate them with a burning passion. Still do them tho. For fun (boredom) and for science. But still, I'd be surprised if those things really helped anybody. Apart from the Myers briggs thing it only places human beings in simple categories but people are more complicated than that. The only reason I like the Myers Briggs test is because it's larger and the letter system is really ingenious, but you can't do that test if you don't actually know your character like that palm of your hand. Otherwise it's just what you wish it to be, and by then you might as well just write it on a piece of paper.
That’s what works for me I always start from the label and then work out the details instead of starting with the details and then testing them to assign the label
I have done them for fun. I didn't really learn anything I needed to know from them that I didn't know already, as I did it for characters that I had already fleshed out very well. My solution was think about them every chance I got, but that's not for everyone. (I'm obsessive to a degree, so that's why it worked for me) I know this doesn't really go with the original questions, but I believe that you have to know things that are kind of unimportant to write a fully fleshed out character. Yeah, you might not need to know when your character had their first kiss, or who they had it with, but it might be helpful to think about it if the character in question is going to kiss someone for the first time in the story. That way, you'll be able to better identify how it makes him/her feel. Are they less nervous because of that first kiss? More nervous because they messed up the first kiss? Do they close their eyes because they did for their their first kiss (or didn't)? I just think that you should know more about your character than what you include about him/her in the story.
