Character Profiling

[kajones_writing]

Today I’ve been looking online at some character profiling questionnaires and they really haven’t helped at all. Instead I feel like I have less of an idea about what I want to do with my character profiles than I did before. With the number of characters I have I need to make a start on profiling them, but I’m not entirely sure how I want to do it, because I could mix and match my options or just focus on one way of writing the profiles.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is whether I do them in first person or third person. All of my fiction is in third person, although I once wrote everything in first, so I think doing the profiles in first would give an interesting insight into the characters. However then I need to think about how I want to do it. I could interview them, which seems a little weird, so I don’t think I’d do that (especially as I’m awful at thinking up questions); I could have my readers interview them after writing a short introductory post; or I could just write a post.

If I do it in third person I can use the profiles, although I think a lot of them are pretty generic, and I’d have to work out some of my own questions for almost all of my collections. Take, as an example, the World Walkers collection. I’d need home world; current world; travelling ability; and all sorts of other things, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like the World Walkers collection. There are stories where people travel between worlds, but I don’t think those worlds were ever created to gather magic.

No matter what I’d like some input. Would anyone enjoy interviewing my characters? If I write a profile what would you like to see in it? Anything right now is going to be very helpful, because I’m really not sure what to do with this.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Comments

[ariestess]

What specifically are you looking for for the profiles?

[kajones_writing]

I'm not entirely sure. Basic information would be good, like height and weight, but once I've got past all the basic information I'm not sure where to go from there. Especially as I write in such a variety of worlds, that are all slightly different, even the fantasy worlds. I can't use a generic profile, so I think I might need to create a profile for each collection, and go from there, although I've never done it before and don't quite know what to do.

[ariestess]

*nods* Yeah, I can see how that might be difficult to make a decision. I haven't gotten that far yet, other than starting to create character bios for the SSW I'm doing under my pro name.