One of the issues (read: excuses to procrastinate) that I have with building characters is the fact that real people are not stagnant. Especially in a fantasy setting where your profession, personality, environment, and goals can flip as the wind changes, the sheet I build for one character isn't going to stick. By the end of a book or so, I know that this is not going to hold and I probably should make a new character sheet because they are not quite the same person.

It also might be to my detriment that I am a plot over character type of person. I know where, when, and - if I'm lucky - how people need to get to plot points, but then the people become hilariously archetypal and flat.

How do ya'll reconcile this growth factor into creating or building characters?

And to make it worth your while anyway, this is a character sheet from Hirohiko Araki's book Manga in Theory and Practice that I've liked.

https://img.fireden.net/tg/image/1532/0 ... 441317.pdf

Since you're a plot-over-characters kind of person, I assume you know what your book's ending is, right?

I would take your character sheet, as designed for the beginning of the book, and then look at your ending. What kind of people do you want your characters to be? What lesson do they need to have learned to support the "point" your book is making? How do you want your readers to grow as people? Do your characters need any personality traits, skills, scars, or other life experiences to make the ending work?

Try inverting your process and designing a character explicitly for the end of the book. Then compare the two sheets and connect the dots.

Pretty much. The journey is the hard part now.



Ah, that's an interesting way to put it. Thx!