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theelvenreader-blog · 6 years

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Character Profiles

Today, and for the past few weeks, I have been working on my character profiles, world-building, and thought dumping my fantasy novel. Since I could write books about all three topics, I’ve decided to talk about them in different posts as a series. Today will be character profiles, Wednesday will be thought dumping, and Friday will be world-building. As you’ve noticed, Monday’s post is late (that would be today’s). I was busy yesterday and didn’t get around to finishing the post so it’ll just be today.

When I first started writing I thought you had to know everything about your world and characters right off the bat. I thought you were somehow a “bad writer” if you had to sit and think at all about your character’s personalities or your world’s government. Over time, however, I’ve realized it’s totally normal to have to sit and think about characters or worlds.

Now, one of my favorite parts of writing are world building and outlining. I love researching themes and the insertion of “easter eggs” for readers to find. In order to do this, I have to do tons of research and thinking. They don’t just come to me as I’m character or world building.

More of my favorite parts of the outlining phase are building complex characters (mainly going through my character profile template) and building rich cultures and parts of it like religions, politics, and since my college degree is in history, histories.

Today’s post is in character profiles. I’ve built myself a pretty good process for myself (it’s nothing special but it get’s the job done):

First thing I do is make a list of all my characters in my cast so far. If as I’m outlining or brain dumping I realize another character that is necessary for the plot I add them in immediately and do a character profile of them. Since I write fantasy I tend to sort this list into races of beings such as elves, dwarves, merpeople, humans, etc. I have a template on my computer that I can just open a copy of any time I need. This makes the process a lot easier for me.

The goal is to get to know your characters like they’re people you know in real life, so you want to ask yourself a variety of questions to help you in that process. Try to think of as many questions as you can that you might ask someone you were trying to get to know. You can also look at other blogs or just online and get some ideas from other writers’ character profiles. Keep in mind many can get pretty detailed and pretty long. Some questions I ask myself are:

o “What was their childhood like?”

o “What is their romantic history?”

o “What is their sexual history?”

o “What Is their sexual orientation?”

o “What is their sex?” Meaning their biology, not their gender.

o “What is their gender?” This means what do they identify as. For instance, one of my character’s biology is male, but they identify as female or feminine.

o “What are their hobbies. This involves something they enjoy doing outside the main plot of the story. For instance, they could be a warrior, but really like to knit in their free time.

o If the story involves magical or supernatural elements, I ask myself what these powers entail and what their limits are (power’s limits are very important, but we’ll talk about this in another post)

o I also ask myself what they look like, and either try to draw them myself or find an image on google for reference. I also do a drawing of a few pieces of clothing they would wear and some of their favorite objects

It’s also important that you aren’t afraid to make your characters quirky or enjoy strange activities. You want your characters memorable and original to themselves so if a quirky or different hobby is what makes sense for the character, go for it. Brown eyes and hair are common, so you might want to include a bit in your story. Especially amongst fantasy writers, it’s really popular for many characters to have lavender eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, ANYTHING but brown eyes. Be realistic here.

As an example, here is an example of one of my own character profiles. This is for my protagonist in my current WIP, which used to be called Freedom Bringer but is now unnamed because I didn’t think the name suit the fantasy genre or story the way I wanted it to. I’ve omitted/deleted some parts that are spoilers for the book.

You’ll notice that I based this character profile closely on Jenna Moreci’s on her blog. You should check both her and her blog and youtube channel out and definitely her character profile. Her writing is great and a great deal of what I know I learned from her.

Character Profile: Fäel (pronounced like fay-EL)

Based on the example given by Jenna Moreci on her blog: count blogula

CATEGORY #1: BASIC STATISTICS

Sex: Male

Gender: He identifies as masculine, but he’s not an alpha male. He’s actually quite small. If he was in public school in our world, he would probably be teased for being “puny”.

Age: 250 years old, but if I had to compare this to a human age it would be somewhere between 19 and 21 years old.

Race, Ethnicity, Culture: Feräan (a race of elves that usually has brown hair and the ability to control fire. The most common race of elves)

Height: 5’ 7”

Body Type: Thin build. Think adolescent boy. You would never guess that he is fully grown if you took a good look at him. Though this is probably mostly due to malnutrition.

Appearance: Short, Straight as a board Almond colored hair

He is fairly short for an elf. Around 5’7” in American human measurements. Slightly darker tan complexion. Elves do not normally get acne, so his skin is very clear. Narrow face with defined rounded jawline, cheekbones not high but not super low eitherSmall hands with narrow, feminine fingers, which have been hardened and callused from heavy slave labor. Though he is normally given very demanding labor, he still isn’t muscular. He can definitely lift a bit more than before, but elves don’t grow muscle or muscle mass very easily, so he stays relatively small in stature.Thin build, not much muscle mass but fairly strong as well.Lips a light coral color, nothing special. Shape of lips resemble a heart at the cupid’s bow.Fairly large round forehead.Full eyebrows with a few strands in the middle where a unibrow would be (not a full unibrow, just a couple of hairs)

Where are they from? Fael was born in the elven realm but since he was 50 years old (a toddler) he has been in the Kingdom of Türmé because of the elven slavery. Because of this, he doesn’t remember the elven realm at all.

Describe their Childhood: His parents, the king and queen of the elven people (and therefore all magical creatures) died in battle during the first Elven-Mankind war 235 years ago. Since then, his people have been enslaved by the humans. The human king has a way of making sure he is completely miserable. For example, he gives him the hardest labor and insists he stands in the front of every whipping and execution.

CATEGORY #2: RELATIONSHIPS

Family: Fäel’s biological family is dead. However, he has many elves he considers family, and therefore so do I. Baelym, for instance, is his caretaker. Fäel sees him as an older brother. Not quite a father, even though Baelym does tend to act like his father at times.

Friends: Mäikash is Fael’s best friend. You could say these two are so close they are like brothers, but the extent of their relationship is that of a friendship, not family. Fäel doesn’t have any other friends at the beginning of the book but gains more as he grows as an individual and gains knowledge of the outside world.

CATEGORY #3: THE SEXY STUFF

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

What are they Attracted to? Fäel is attracted to both men and women who have their own sense of responsibility. They know what they must do and do it. Even if this means they give up what they want. Normally the physical aspects he is attracted to is strength. He also tends to be attracted to lighter colored hair and chiseled facial features. He likes the look of facial hair, but doesn’t like the feeling when he kisses someone with it. In terms of women, he’s attracted to women with medium sized breasts and strong shoulders.

Sexual Experience: Fael is a complete virgin. He hadn’t even thought of the idea of sex until he and Mäikash had their conversation about sexuality.

Romantic Experience: Like his sexual experience, Fael hadn’t thought much about romance until later in the book. He had thought about having a wife and he in the beginning of the book has a dream about his future with a wife and son. He never really becomes completely in tune with the sexual side of him like Mäikash, but becomes much more comfortable. CATEGORY #4: SKILLS

Skills: Fäel is really good at working with his Magic. He can handle it with more stress than others can and it is more powerful than usual. He’s also not bad at all in sword fighting (though not as good as his Magic). He takes this from his grandfather, Sälavel. Who died in battle thousands of years ago.

Occupation/Schooling: Elven Prince, Slave to the Royal Kingdom of the Türmé. Later King of Ferä. Elves are forbidden from learning the elven language, though they learn to speak it anyway, very few know how to write or read. Fael can write a little, but he definitely couldn’t write an academic paper or even full sentences.

Hobbies: Practicing sword fighting and magic is one of his favorite things to do. He hides himself in the forest from anyone else and will practice setting things on fire and hitting trees with a sword. Türmé will go out to the forest and wonder why everything looks burnt and slashed, but they have never been able to find out who it was. Even after many searches of elves and tents. If he had access to books or even literature he would be a very avid reader.

Magical/Supernatural Abilities: Like any other Ferä, he has the ability to manifest fire. This means he can do anything from lighting a fireplace to making fire appear in thin air (if it’s directly above his hand or protruding from it like a flamethrower). He cannot, however, do this if he feels pressured or over stressed, or if his magic is taken away from him

CATEGORY #5: PERSONALITY & CHARACTER

Introvert or Extrovert? Though he is an introvert, he’s very good at hiding this when he is around other elves that don’t know him as anything other than a prince. He doesn’t have anxiety toward crowds or company, he just prefers to be alone or with a very small amount of people at once.

Right-Brained or Left-Brained? Fael is very, very left brained. He thinks about everything very logically and doesn’t cling to his emotions. He has been trained by his caretaker to follow his duties as a prince and he refuses to rebel from this, rather following his path and accepting anything that is given to him. He thinks through every problem as if it is a puzzle with one correct, logical solution he needs to follow.

Strengths: Fael can easily separate emotions from duties or actions. Even if he feels emotional or vulnerable he can completely hide that until it is completely safe to show it. He can hide his weaknesses very well to the point that everyone thinks he has no weaknesses. Because of this, he comes across as very charismatic, which isn’t completely wrong. He just prefers not to be around large groups. Weaknesses:Fael can, however, have problems finding when he needs help and asking when he needs it. He is in the mindset at first that he needs to do everything on his own, which he later learns isn’t necessarily the case. He also has quite a bit of physical weaknesses but these are more obvious because of his small stature. He’s still stronger than a human adult. But compared to an elven adult of his age he is fairly weak.

Goals/Dreams/Aspirations: As a child he would dream of becoming a king and freeing the elves. As he became older these dreams would fade and he would seek to accept the hard lifestyle he leads as an elven slave. By the inciting incident he starts to grow a new goal.

Beliefs/Affiliations: Most elven races follow a polytheistic religious belief that believes that there are 8 gods that control each element of the universe that establishes balance. These elements are Light, Fire, Earth (for instance dirt, trees, rocks), Water, Darkness, Beauty, Power, and Knowledge.

Fears: He has an extreme fear of death. He does learn to deal with this fear over time, but he initially does have panic attacks over the idea of dying and this drives his motivation to make the decision to run away with Mäikash and convince Baelym to come with. Fael also has some other fears, such as his obscure fear of chickens.

Insecurities: He knows he is very small for his age and race, but this doesn’t bother him until someone says that they would be worried if he were the Ferä king because he wouldn’t be very powerful. After this he starts to pay attention to how small he is and this continues to be an insecurity of his throughout his adventure. What would he Die for? His best friend and caretaker. Eventually his wife and child.

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