What is a Character Profile?
Tools to help you write your novel
So, usually one of the first things an instructor will present in a character development class is the character profile sheet, but I tend to delay this whenever I teach because of my own belief system, which is probably something I shouldn’t admit, but it basically comes down to this:
I care more about my characters’ insides than their outsides. Yes, the demographics of who they are and how they grew up and their physicality absolutely impacts who they are, but I want their yearnings, wants, big lie, human worth and flaw to be the things that matter the most to me as the writer and the reader.
But character profiles are beautifully concrete tools and approaches that can truly help you nail down your character (not literally, no hammers involved).
A character profile is basically a tool that:
Helps you not get confused with the details as you write.
Helps you round out your character’s psychographics and demographics.
Organizes your thoughts.
Writerswrite.com says,
“A Character Profile is just meant to be a guide where you can list facts and details to help you get to know your characters, especially if you get stuck on one character who doesn’t quite seem real. You also want to be sure you don’t create a Mary Sue character. Maybe he needs a new characteristic — a hidden trauma, a fabulous skill or a deadly secret — something that will make the character come alive for you. If you are having trouble coming up with character details try to see how your character performs using a writing prompt or walk them through a situation known well to you.”
When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I loved character profiles, filling in all the blanks on the sheet, but what I didn’t know then is that while the profile is a fantastic organizational tool that helps you think about your character, it isn’t what makes your characters believable or lovable or be the kind of characters that readers want to invest time in.
Bringing life to the character doesn’t happen in the outline or the profile, it happens on the page as that character deals with conflict, goes after their yearnings, takes action, interacts and moves across the story, guided by their own yearnings that we readers can relate to.
Those yearnings are a much bigger deal than demographics because it’s those yearnings that make us (and our characters) human.
The character in your story is pretty much the key to make it all work, to inspire the readers to keep turning the page or scrolling down the screen.
Dwight Swain writes:
“A character is a person in a story.
“To create story people, you grab the first stick figures that come in handy; then you flesh them out until they spring to life.”
So, the question becomes how the heck do you flesh them out, right?
Matt Bird writes, “Character is the human element of your story, the aspect that the audience actually cares about.”
And that’s the big deal.
You can have the best plot in the world and most of the time, it won’t matter because people want characters that they can cheer for, commiserate with, worry about.
Bird believes that there are certain elements that need to be there for readers to care about your character:
They have to identify with them (the character).
The character needs to be resourceful.
The character needs to be active.
The character who is misunderstood is more lovable than the one who saves the cat.
The character doesn’t have to be likeable to be lovable. Go for lovable.
A character who is vulnerable is good and even a badass can be vulnerable.
In the Secrets of Story, Bird brilliantly splits three aspects of hero/protagonists into three needs:
Believe – They have to feel like the character is real.
Care – The reader has to be emotionally engaged with the character’s journey.
Invest – The reader has to be into the character. Bird says this comes from active characters who are resourceful and aren’t like the other characters in the book.
Bird further goes on to say:
But it’s his first bit that interests me the most right now.
Humans are stunningly complex. We contradict ourselves. We don’t always make sense and to encapsulate all of that in a novel is pretty impossible, so we have to pick and choose the contradictions and details to highlight. How do you deal with that?
Swain writes,
“A story is a record of how somebody deals with danger. One danger, for a simple story; a series of inter-related dangers, for one more complex.”
He advocates developing your character only so much as it is needed to deal with the story or to ‘fulfill his function in the story. You give an impression and approximation of life, rather than attempting to duplicate life itself.”
Swain believes that character begin with a fragment and then the author adds more and more on to that character, individualizing her until she becomes more real, more believable.
That individualization occurs through free association and layering in observations and details. What begins as a fragment of an idea (guinea pig hero) becomes a believable, lovable character as the author “supplements” that fragment with “Thought and insight.”
And that can be hard.
Swain thinks it’s hard because in real life, we tend not analyze people’s behavior and motivations. We take them and their actions for granted, he says.
“Consequently, when we try to build story people, we find that we lack a grasp of mental mechanisms: motivations.”
And motivations? They are a big deal. They are why characters go after goals. They are the yearnings that we readers connect to.
So, Swain says this is where the imagination steps in.
“To understand a man,” he writes,” you have to grasp the essence of that wholeness . . . its gestalt, the totality of its configuration.. . Each of us is an entity, a personal and private whole that transcends its components.”
I advocate taking a journal or diary when you're really lost developing a character and go somewhere safe and observe people, think about why they might be acting the way they are. What is it that's going on with them. Practice trying to understand people and you build those character development skills.
Resources/Links
https://www.writerswrite.com/characters/character-profile/
https://blog.reedsy.com/character-profile/