Author's Notes on: Writing Character Guides
For the planners!
Back in November 2021, I wrote an article on Character Building Basics where I went through the bare bones of what you need to write a character and why I don’t really tend to go into a writing session with a rigid idea of who a character is.
It’s a good article, tailored to people like me who benefit heavily from just jumping straight into a story and discovering more about who a character is as the plot develops. It’s great for breaking the preparation analysis that comes from trying to get everything right before I, well, write.
Those aren’t the only types of writers out there though. So hello, all you dedicated planners. This one is for you, and it’s about something that, as I mentioned in the basics article, I don’t do for my books, but I do make for my tabletop RPG characters: A character guide.
What is a Character Guide?
To understand why a character guide (also known as a Character Bible) is useful, it might be important to discuss what a character guide is. As you might expect, the name is sorta right there on the tin. It is a guide for everything you need to know when writing about that character.
There are different things you need to know about each character, so it’s perfectly natural if your guides end up not being standard. You can and should tailor this document to both your tastes as an author and the kind of relevant information there is concerning a character.
You are free to interpret “everything you need to know” as broadly or specifically as you want. You can put literally everything or just the main points of interest. This document is for you and will help you any time you need to remind yourself about names, people, places, clothes, personality traits, and more.
I don’t do character guides for books, but they can be used to keep track of all kinds of things. Other than the background details, you could also keep a running list of which chapters they appear in, what they were last seen wearing, how their relationships grow and change over the course of the story, and anything else you can think of. This document is meant to be a highly organized information dump.
With that out of the way, I want to explore the various types of things I put in my tabletop character guides, and that you might be interested in putting in your book character guides!
For demonstration purposes, I have decided to share three of my character guides. Feel free to check them out and/or follow along, but they aren’t necessary to understand the rest of the article.
Character Guide 1: Masked druid from a religious cult-town
Character Guide 2: Lightning cowgirl in fantasy Wild West
Character Guide 3: Cheery gal once turned into a statue by a witch
Titlepage and Table of Contents
You don’t really need a title page, but I think it helps! I like to give the character guide a fun/song pun title that relates to the character and conjures up a certain mental image. The title for my masked druid character, known only by her rank of Messenger, for example, was “Please Use Discretion”, as a reference to Message Man by Twenty-One Pilots. My hyper, lightning-magic-themed Clarabell got the title “I of the Storm”, in reference to the song of the same name by Of Monsters and Men.
In the absence of that, you can always just call it Character Guide: [Name], and you’ll be fine.
The table of contents, however, is a must. Keep very diligent track of what page everything is on so you can find it later. Some programs also have the ability to build a table of contents by using headings of various sizes, which will let you jump between different sections at your leisure.
Because you will be using this to (hopefully quickly) look up information, you really want to keep it organized so you don’t have to go pouring through the entire document all over again.
Description
Describe your character! What do they look like? What clothes do they wear or what’s their preferred style? How do they walk, talk, and sit? How do they present themselves to the world, and in return, how do others view them? This is the section for it. You can go as in-depth as you want. Most of my character descriptions have 1) art, 2) a physical description and 3) sometimes a description of their personality traits.
For Messenger, I included two descriptions of her appearance — one in her masked uniform, and the other out of it. I only ended up using the maskless appearance once, but it was still important to me to know who the woman under the mask was. I didn’t want to be surprised by an enemy removing the mask and not know what to tell the others about what the character actually looked like.
The Family Tree/Important People
You can call this section whatever you want depending on who will be in it, but this is the section where you discuss the major influences in this character’s life. I sometimes put this after the backstory, but where it goes isn’t incredibly important so long as you can find it.
This section is for answering questions about your character’s web of connections to others. You can put down whoever you want, but you should focus most directly on the people that have had the most influence in a character’s life. Who are they? How do they know the character? Do they want something from the character? Or does the character want something from them? Do they stand in the way of the character’s goals, or help them?
If you’re writing this for a book-based character, you can also take this time to note their role in the story and any important things they will do that have an effect on the character. If you can’t be bothered to type out full descriptions, a name and a 1-4 word tag like “best friend”, “antagonist”, or “lovers to enemies” will do just fine to start out.
In the character guide for my other druid, Birch, this section is referred to as “Important Players”, and examines the driving forces behind who she is and what she does. It talks about “The Lady”, a witch whose abode was full of statues, each of which containing a monster and one of which contained Birch herself, before an adventuring party confronted The Lady and she broke several of these statues and released the monsters within, as well as Birch. Part of Birch’s main quest in the game was to find the Lady and make her use her magic to free any other people that had been trapped in the statues.
Notably, though, it also took the time to talk about “Birch’s Big Book of Baddies”, a leatherbound tome she stole from the witch that contained descriptions of monsters as well as medicinal herbs and things like that. It was through this book that Birch herself became a druid in her own right. All this to say, this section doesn’t need to include just people that were important to the story, but can also include objects if it works for your character.
Game Masters I’ve worked with tend to suggest starting with parents, 1-2 siblings or friends who were particularly impactful on the character, and a hook NPC. A hook NPC (non-player character) is just another character with ties to yours that the game master can use to provide quests and motivations. They could be a friend who gambles too much and you might get a quest to bail out. It could be a rival who seeks to cause trouble for you.
In a story, the “hook NPC” can either be omitted or thought of as “who is the character that gets this character into the most plot-related messes?”. It’s really up to you and the kind of story you’re telling, and you can always add as many people as are relevant.
History/Story/Backstory
This is usually the meat of any character guide for a dungeons and dragons character, but might not be so long for a character whose story is only just beginning.
As you might imagine, this is the time to explain who the character is and how they ended up where they are when the story starts. This is paramount for a dungeons and dragons character, but may not be super notable for your book depending on who your characters are. They may have had unremarkable lives or their lives before the start of the story may not be important.
If you don’t really have anything backstory-wise to put here, consider instead keeping a record of any memories the character talks about, or just giving a summary of what they do throughout your story. Make note of important decisions they’re a part of and places where they enter and exit the narrative and why.
If necessary, you can leave a mention to yourself of where else to find more information on a topic if it doesn’t make sense to spend half the story explaining the background of their nation before you even get to the point where they’re born. For example, Clarabell’s backstory section contains a note to refer to the Atlantis section for more information about her city of birth.
If you had trouble with the “important players” section discussed previously, you might try writing this section first, then going through and picking out what the most important pieces and people in the story are.
The “Notables”
The Notables refers to several types of pages you can add at your leisure, and is essentially a catchall term for “a thing that’s so important to this character that it warrants having its own section to explain what it is”.
Messenger’s hometown was a huge part of her backstory. She came from a highly religious area in a remote valley that was almost definitely a cult to a moon-and-stars goddess they called “Dumitore”. Because this was such a big part of her origin and important to understanding her character, Messenger’s character sheet had the following “notables” sections: The Lunaia Valley and Town, Religion (which itself is broken up into a description of Dumitore and her worship, star signs, and additional lore about werecreatures), and the notes at the very end of the document, which contain the Truth about the Valley and Dumitore.
Clarabell and Birch’s stories were less complex. Clarabell only has one Notable section, which discusses Atlantis, and Birch has none.
You can and should have as many Notables as you see fit. If you already have documents or notes that explain these things, consider just linking to them or copying/pasting anything relevant.
Other ideas for Notables:
A page about a very important object like the spaceship they stole or the magical book they’re hiding from the guards.
A discussion of magic either in this setting or as it pertains specifically to the character if it’s something they’re passionate about. If they don’t have magic, what are their thoughts about people that do have it? If they do have magic, what does it look like? How does it manifest, and what kind of spells do they have the easiest/hardest time doing?
Passions in general! What does your character care a lot about and know a lot about? How has that played into their daily life? Do they get to engage in this passion often?
The Cover Story. The rest of the document deals with who the character is, but this page deals with who the character SAYS they are. What’s their alias? Who do they want people to think they are? How do they convince people they are this person? Why are they hiding who they are?
If they have several forms, which are their go-to’s? Why?
An important character that deserves their own page separate from the Important People section. What is their relationship? Why is it special enough to talk about separately?
A pet or companion that means the world to the character. How did they meet? What forged their bond?
Vices and flaws, for characters whose vices and flaws run deep. What are your character’s weaknesses? Why and when do they come up?
Symbolism. What do you relate to your character? What do they relate to themselves? What do you want the reader to relate them to?
Literally anything you want
Goals, Motivations (and Hooks)
What does your character want? What drives them? This is the section for getting right to the heart of what your character wishes to accomplish and why they have the motivation to do it.
This is the stuff that’s usually the only thing I have sort of fleshed out for my book characters. What does the character want, why, what’s stopping them, and how do they plan on achieving it? You can also phrase these as inward and outward goals and motivations.
“Inward” refers to questions the character is asking themselves, or goals they want to accomplish that revolve around their own physical/ mental/ spiritual/ magical capabilities, like becoming stronger or more knowledgeable. “Outward” refers to questions about the world, motivation from outside sources, and goals they want to enact on the world and people around them.
For tabletop characters, I also have a “Hooks” section that covers unanswered questions from their backstory, intended to give the person running the game inspiration about where to take the character’s stories and the kinds of questions and themes I’m interested in exploring. Feel free to take this however works for you and your story, or omit it entirely.
Resources
Resources encompass anything that’s a link to anywhere else that you might need to refer to. Have more art or a face claim elsewhere? Link it. Is the character obsessed with dream symbolism and you found the perfect website to look up those kinds of things? Link it. Have a more in-depth document about how magic works in the setting that’s super important because this character is the almighty magic-caster? Link it!
Birch’s resources page has a link to a glossary of medicinal and spiritual uses of herbs, because I wanted her to be able to recommend natural remedies for everything from sadness to a cut. I referred to it quite often over her short runtime as a character.
This doesn’t have to be as official as a works cited page on a paper (because you’re probably the only one that’ll be looking at it), but if there’s anywhere on the internet you got information that you want to be able to refer back to, this is the place to put that.
Music
Also known as the “Doot doot potato floot singsong area” in Clarabell’s character guide (because why not), this is sometimes looped in with the resources page, and won’t be helpful for everyone, but I’ve always found it extremely useful.
Make a playlist for your character wherever you listen to music and link it somewhere in the guide! If you’re so inclined, leave notes about why each song reminds you of the character. This can be from a lyrical standpoint, or just a general vibe you get from the song.
I happen to be a very musical/music-loving person, and having music that gets me into the headspace of the character really helps me envision who they are, how they act, and what they’ve gone through.
aaaaand The Pocketlitter Section
It happens. You’ve been trying so hard to keep everything in its proper section, but you have a sudden, brilliant idea and can’t afford to go searching for the right place to write it down! Enter the pocketlitter section. These are your messy notes, your no-formatting, I-Just-Need-To-Get-it-on-Paper notes, to be sorted later.
…just remember to actually go back later and put these notes where they belong, or you’ll end up with a whole mess at the end of your document.
Final Thoughts and Disclaimers
And that’s it! Those are the main sections I think about when building a character guide. Not every guide will need all of them, and again, this is specifically for people that get something out of planning and organizing their books.
This isn’t a thing I do for my book characters, so I’m well aware I’m not the authority on it. Even for my tabletop characters, if you’ve been following along with the documents themselves I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are some unfinished, unpolished areas. This is because often I put a tremendous amount of work into getting everything down before the first time I play the character, then don’t return to write anything more after I begin playing them.
Some guides don’t even have a personality description at all because I know I won’t know the character’s exact demeanor until I put on my headset and say their first words in the game.
I refer back to my character guides for history, names, places, and that sort of thing, but don’t tend to touch them much after session one. Anything that made it in made it in, and unless there’s something VERY important, anything else ends up getting relegated to either the pocketlitter section or my own memories.
However, I can definitely see the appeal of making a character guide for people that are actually good at being organized and keeping it updated.
There’s been more than a few times that I’ve had to go rooting around in Cardinal or Sleepless’s previous chapters trying to see what color a shirt was or whether or not a character had been mentioned to have a fear of water. Especially with my outline getting more and more off track with every chapter, having that structure to tell me what I’ve remembered to put in and what still needs to be explained could be invaluable.
I’ve really tried to make guides like this for book characters, but the same thing tends to happen with them that happens with tabletop characters. I don’t truly know who the character is until I’m there and writing them, and in the case of book characters, the few times I’ve tried to make guides for them, by the time the character is introduced, the story idea has been changed so much that effectively the character isn’t even the same person and the guide is useless.
As discussed in more detail in Character Building Basics, putting together a doc for my book characters just doesn’t work for me. But if you’re the kind of person that can make and maintain that level of organization and have a solid idea of what the story is, they can be great! It’s a great way to get everything important about a character in one place, and you can continue to update it and tailor it as needed.
If you’re one of those hardcore planner people, I hope you’ve gotten something out of this examination of how I write character guides and how you might do it too! I recommend everyone try it at least once, just to see how their writerbrain handles it and whether or not it helps them. Remember that you’re the only person who is gonna see this (most likely). Take notes in the way that works best for you. If you prefer to be serious, you can do that. If you prefer to give each section a pun for a title and make lots of jokes, you can do that! Hell — include memes, vines, and tiktoks if those help!
As always, I’m an avid supporter of writing the way that works for you. Take from this what lessons might help you, and don’t feel bad about anything that doesn’t. There’s no one right way to write, but there is a right way for every individual person to write, and it’s something you discover only by trial and error.
Experiment, and, if you like, let me know how it goes!