Most people have seen the character worksheets that encourage writers to identify everything from shoe size and favorite food to what turns sexuality on and off. And while knowing your character’s most prized possession can be helpful, it won’t tell you how your character will react when disaster strikes.
For that, you really need to get a handle on your character’s personality, especially the five or ten “core traits” that drive their behavior. To help you, this article has a 3-step approach to learning and working with your character’s most important traits.
Step One: Make a List of Your Character Qualities
Take a pen and make a list of qualities that describe your character. Write down as many as you can think of, making sure to list personality traits (eg, moody, mischievous, logical, observant) and not physical characteristics like eye or hair color. You can also download a great list of personality traits (PDF) and check off the ones that best fit your character.
When you’re done, you’ll probably have a lot more than five or ten qualities, so you’ll need to narrow things down. One trick is to collapse qualities that are similar into categories. For example, if he noticed that his character has a great sense of humor, he’s a bit of a prankster, and he likes to get into trouble, he could pack all those qualities into one word like “naughty.” If your character is excited, emotional, and cries easily, you could say that he is “moody.”
However you do it, narrow your list down to the ten traits that are most important to making your character who they are. If you’re feeling brave, sort the list by rank; doing so will help you with Step 3.
Step Two: Subjective Assessments
As in real life, personality traits are filtered through people’s impressions. To get a better idea of how your character sees themselves and how that might differ from how others see them, use your list of ten key traits to answer the questions below.
Which of the top ten traits do you value your character the most? Why?
How does your character want other people to see her?
How do people who don’t like your character see it? (Hint: They probably have a negative view of the qualities your character sees as positive. For example, if your character is spontaneous, their enemies might see them as impulsive or reckless. If they’re outgoing, their enemies might see them as unpleasant.)
Which of the traits have you worked the hardest to develop your character? For example, if being strong is important to your character, what has she done to foster that trait? (The answer, of course, is going to depend on your definition of strong. If being physically strong is important, then maybe you’ve started lifting weights, but if being emotionally strong is your goal, maybe you’ve had therapy.)
Which of these traits does your character use to deal with everyday problems? For example, if you are pulled over for speeding, do you try to strike up a conversation with the officer? Is it deferential? Apologetic? Argumentative?
Step Three: Disaster Strikes
Now that you have a pretty good idea of your character’s personality, imagine that disaster strikes. The best kind of disaster for a story, of course, is one your character isn’t prepared for.
Regardless of what the disaster is, most people’s stress reactions are stronger versions of how they deal with other things. It is as if, under pressure, the personality defaults to the strongest traits. So your character will either default to her strongest core trait, or jump from two to three in their attempts to deal with what happened.
So let’s say one of your top ten character traits is “intelligent.” And let’s just say that normally the way he handles problems is by reasoning to solve them. If faced with disaster, he will try so hard to understand it that he is likely to avoid emotion altogether. Or let’s say your character is “impulsive.” If he normally gets angry when things go wrong, he will go crazy when disaster strikes. Whatever makes your character unique is what will characterize their feelings and reactions after the disaster.
You may want to create a list of core traits for each of your main characters. Referring to them will help keep everyone’s reactions clear when disaster strikes!
