Most people have seen 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 control your character’s personality, especially the five or ten “core traits” that drive their behavior. To help you out, this article takes a 3-step approach to learning and working with your most important character traits.
Step One: Make a list of your character’s 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 large list of personality traits (PDF) and mark the ones that best suit 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 jokester, and likes to get into trouble, he could put all those qualities together in one word like “mischievous.” If your character is hotheaded, emotional, and cries easily, you could say that he is “cranky.”
However you do it, narrow your list down to the ten traits that are most important in 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 views themselves, and how that might differ from how others view them, use your list of ten key traits to answer the questions below.
Which of the top ten traits does your character value the most? Because?
How does your character want other people to see it?
How do people who don’t like your character see you? (Hint: They probably have a negative view of the qualities your character sees as positive. For example, if your character is spontaneous, her enemies might see her as impulsive or reckless. If she’s outgoing, her enemies might see her 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 encourage that trait? (The answer, of course, will depend on your definition of strong. If being physically strong is important, then you may have started lifting weights, but if your goal is to be emotionally strong, you may have gone to 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 disaster strikes. The best kind of disaster for a story, of course, is one that your character isn’t prepared for.
Regardless of the disaster, 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. Therefore, your character will either default to her strongest core trait, or jump from two to three in her attempts to deal with what happened.
So let’s say one of your top ten character traits is “smart.” And let’s say that normally the way he handles problems is reasoning to solve them. If you’re faced with disaster, you’ll try so hard to understand it that you’ll likely avoid emotion altogether. Or let’s say your character is “impulsive”. If you normally get angry when things go wrong, you 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 you keep everyone’s reactions clear when disaster strikes!