Main Character Questionnaire
What’s your name?
How old are you?
What’s the problem you’re facing?
What’s your family background?
Where do you live?
What do you like to do?
What’s different about you?
What do you care about? What do you want?
What do you fear?
What are your dreams?
Who are the important people in your life?
What are the important things in your life?
How will you change through confronting your problem? Possibilities:
What will you understand about yourself and your world at the end of the
story? Possibilities:
Now that you have seen a demonstration about character development and
how to complete a main character questionnaire, review these
components, which are essential elements for creating a fictional character.
Create a meaningful, interesting problem for the character, one that holds
possibilities for you as a writer and one you can imagine.
Decide what your character wants, and decide why he or she is having
trouble getting it.
Choose a name that fits the family background and setting and doesn’t take
over or distract from the story.
Choose an age you can imagine.
Choose a family background you can imagine, plus one that will support
the development of the problem.
Choose a setting you know well enough to describe in accurate, believable
detail.
Choose favorite things for the character to do that reveal what he or she is
like and that fit with each other and the character.
Choose a cast of supporting characters who will reveal the main character
and his or her problem but won’t distract from the main character.
Let the plot grow from the tensions created by the character’s problems.
Make the change in the character plausible and consistent with his or her
personality.
Make the resolution believable and consistent with who the character is
and with the personalities of the supporting characters, especially those
with whom the main character is in conflict.
Keep the main character true to himself or herself: consider, at every step,
would this person act this way?
The preliminary steps for writing strong settings are as follows:
Pay attention to your world. Wherever you are, at all hours of the day,
drink in the world through all of your senses.
When something strikes you, make time to scribble at least a quick
description wherever you can—on a napkin, an iPad notes app, a journal,
or the back of a homework assignment sheet. You might also take a
photograph of the place with your phone.
From your noted setting descriptions, choose one you might want to write
more about.
Re-immerse yourself in the setting, either by revisiting it or recalling it from
your notes.
Use this as the basis for your fictional narrative’s setting.
Imagine a movie about a young woman whose beloved has left her. We
see her staring out a rain-streaked window, wiping away her tears.