I feel that templates tend to simplify inappropriately. It's not entirely about prescriptive/descriptive per @Simpson17866's post, though that's an issue as well. For example, what if you say that a character is "honest"? What kind of honest? A rule-following honest, so that he wouldn't dream of stealing anything from an employer, even so much as a stray french fry if he's a waiter, even if that employer cheated him out of his wages? A "fairness" honest, so that he would tell that thrift shop proprietor that he's selling that collectible for far too little, rather than buying it and making a profit? If it's rule-following, is he rule-following in other ways--for example, would he never dream of running a stop sign, even at midnight in a flat landscape where he can see the cross-road for a mile in both directions? You can describe all that stuff, but I think that you're still going to simplify. I think that it's better to discover those things as you write. Now, I CAN discover those things as I write; I don't know that everybody can. So I realize that I shouldn't be declaring this as a general "should." But as I said, there are some opinions that people just aren't flexible about, and this is one of mine.
Another ramble: I remember reading about an experiment where a group of people were gathered for some fake reason, and then a rapid scene was played out in front of them. I can't remember exactly what it was--in my mind, a man in a gorilla suit was being chased by another man with a nerf bat, or something. Half the witnesses were asked to write down what they had just seen. Half were not. They were all gathered again some days later (presumably for the same fake reason) and their memory was tested. The ones who had written it down before remembered LESS of the scene than those who hadn't. To me, this means that writing something down distills that something into a simpler, more compact, less-rich summary. So to me, that means that when you create a character template, you are taking the rich, detailed vision of your character as they first appeared in your head, and simplifying it, blunting it, shaving off the edges, eliminating detail. And you're doing that BEFORE the real writing. Sure, you have to write about the characters anyway, but you don't have to write a summary. You don't EVER have to write "Joe is honest." You can instead write the scene in which Joe tells the thrift shop owner what that book is worth. That scene isn't a summary, and it hasn't tried to wrap all of the concept of Joe's honesty into a few words or sentences. So I think that it has much less risk of making Joe's honesty into a simplistic summary.
I've written over twenty novels and never used a character template or done a character outline. Doesn't mean they're wrong, if they work for you, but they certainly aren't necessary for everyone. I agree with @ChickenFreak that they could lead to oversimplification, and I also think they could lead to that common issue we see with people who've spent a lot of time outlining the background of any other aspect of their novel - backstory, setting, etc. If you put all that time into coming up with things, it's really, really tempting (apparently) to include all of those things in the novel. Like, in detail, rather than just as a way to inform what you actually DO write. I also think that for at least some writers, these pre-writing sorts of activities can take the place of the actual writing. I've read comments from people who've spent months or even YEARS on this sort of planning, and then never get around to writing the book. If you enjoy the pre-writing and aren't too caught up in the "finished MS" target, then, great, carry on. But if you really want to finish a book, at some point you're going to have to stop planning and start actually writing, and I think that can be a tricky thing for some people. So, again, if this approach works for you, carry on. But please don't think it's in any way a universally necessary part of writing.
Yes, fair point LTP, though perhaps it depends on how brief an outline your outline is, and which aspects make the character for you. For me the essence of character is on the inside. It is upon the internal landscape that conflict plays out; the internal world is the source of external action. Therefore this is the most important aspect and the character outline is a great place to begin thinking about it. That's not to say an attempt should be made to capture it perfectly, nor that the outline should be chiselled in stone.
If that works for you, that's fine, but I don't see the outline producing any more internal focus. It feels a little bit like saying, "I think that cultural traditions are the most important elements of cuisine, and therefore I always use paperback cookbooks." Nothing wrong with cultural traditions, nothing wrong with paperback cookbooks, but where's the link?
Actually, now that you mention it I have written two short horror stories (both as yet unpublished) without using the two templates that I used in my novel-length sci-fi work (MyersBriggs + Alignment). Before I started writing my third horror story (also not yet published) I looked back at my first two with fresh eyes and I decided that I hadn't developed the characters in my horror stories as well as I had in my sci-fi. The second difference was that my horror stories were 3.5k and 5k words whereas I'd already gotten my sci-fi up to about 45k, but I didn't consider that to be a factor for very long because I've heard fantastic things about how the great short story writers can cram fantastic characterization into just a few thousands words. The only other difference that I could think of besides length was that I'd specifically templated my sci-fi characters according to Alignment and MyersBriggs but not my horror characters, so I decided to try templating my new horror characters, and with 2 (admittedly serious) exceptions, I feel that the characters of my third horror story were better developed than the characters in my first two. I'm not pretending that there weren't exceptions, 100% of my first beta readers from this site independently identified the same two problems with my lead protagonist Jane: 1) she was such a jerk to her girlfriend and their best friend that it didn't feel like she cared about them or about trying to keep them safe, 2) she was inconsistent from one scene to the next about whether to be freaking out or whether to be annoyed that her friends were freaking out. First point) I was trying to make Jane a jerk, but I wasn't trying to make her a jerk who didn't care about her friends. I feel I've done a good job of portraying Damien in my sci-fi story as being a jerk, but not in a way that made it look like he didn't care about his friends, and his template is so similar to that of my horror character (Damien is a Lawful Good ENTP, Jane is a Lawful Neutral ESTP) that I can't say with any degree of belief that the template itself is why I failed in showing that she cared about her friends as much as I wanted her to. Second point) That actually sounds like an issue of not keeping enough track of what kind of person my character was rather than too much track
I'm not at all suggesting that every character should be enigmatic with obfuscated motivations for everything. My point was that you should be doing your describing in the narrative where it actually matters. It's how you communicate it there that's important. Explore it in your narrative. Solve the question of why by writing a book about why. Put it together from intangibles that have take two hundred pages to create. That's what I mean by ambiguity. Going in not knowing sets you up to go find out. It means that the reveal is not just a straight road from a to b. It leaves strands unsolved so that finding out that one motivation doesn't just explain every single thing about the character. It ensures that your reveal is meaty enough to actually move the readers because you can push harder if you need to. And if you happen upon something unexpectedly interesting (or sad) in your character only after having sat and written in their voice for six weeks then that's ok. That can become the focus of your character because you didn't put them in a box. And you'll be really well served by having enough faith in you own ability to get to somewhere good with your characters without knowing where that is exactly. Or to put it another way; when you're writing a character the idea should be to go and find what already fits naturally, not to make a hole for what you've decided you're going to shove into them.
I can see templates helping the process along. But I think it depends on the work. Going defcon 5 with Myers Briggs isn't something I think I'd have the patience for, but I can see the merits if it's a complicated WIP.
@LostThePlot Actually, over the course of the 63k words that I ended up writing, I learned a lot about my characters that I hadn't planned on in my initial outlines (my lead hero turning out to be neither my lead nor a hero, for example).
Not sure how or why it feels like that to you and so I can't really follow the paperback cookbook tangent, however these are outlines that concern the character's internal circumstances and so produce what you've described as a 'more internal focus'. Pretty straightforward.
I'd say that most of the stuff in the outlines that have been presented in this thread is external. Some of it is internal. Some of what you write in the actual novel is external, and some of it is internal. They're both a mix. So I see nothing about an outline that ensures a greater internal focus. If you refer to a specific outline that is entirely internal, OK, that's an internal focus. I still think that will probably simplify your character and give them less, not more, internal complexity, but that's a separate issue.
