Hi all! A few days ago I posted my current profile for Gen, the protagonist of The Four Gods: Prince of the North. Today, I’m going to cover how you can make your own profiles for your characters! Think of profiles as an optional, but extremely helpful tool to help you get to know your characters better. It’s like an outline, but for a single person in your book.

The Basics

To start off, you need to ask yourself a few basic questions about your character:

What’s their name? 

How old are they and when is their birthday? Where are they from? 

What is their race and/or ethnicity? 

These are questions that don’t require very detailed answers and will open up to the next section, which is…

Physical Appearance

Some authors like to leave their character’s appearance up to the imagination. I’m not personally a fan of this, especially because my characters’ appearances are usually one of the first things I come up with. Some questions you might want to ask yourself are:

What is their hair color/length/style/texture?

What color are their eyes? What eye shape do they have?

How tall are they?

What is their build/body shape?

What does their skin look like? Do they have blemishes and/or scars?

What distinct features does your character have? (These are things like facial features, tattoos, etc.)

These will help you paint a picture of your character if you haven’t already, and it should also help you flesh out your character a little more. For example, in this section I might mention that Fengge has tattoos on his upper body or I might have said for Silas that his smile is always crooked. You can be as detailed as you want here, but unless you already have a good picture of your character, the more details, the better.

What’s going on in there?

So your character has a name and their physical appearance, but now to cover the true meat of the profile: what’s going on in their head?

What hobbies do they have? What other skills do they have?

Likes/dislikes?

Fears?

How do they handle pressure?

Strengths? Weaknesses?

Do they have a religion? If so, what is it, and how devout are they?

This is just a basic intro to some questions you can ask yourself. You can get as detailed as you like, but as with the physical descriptors, the more detailed you can get, the less your character will succumb to inconsistencies. 

What else is there?

You can add as much or as little as you want to this! I like to put their social relationships and backstory in mine, but it’s completely your decision on what you think needs to go in a profile because it’s for you and your personal references. There is no right or wrong way, and it’s an option to make your writing journey a little easier.