Character tracking and development

I know I’m not the only writer in the world who has trouble with characters. Most specifically, I have a hard time detailing out my villains. In the series I’m slowly working with, my villain is a complete joke. He’s a convenience to give the main character something to fight against.

That means the story is going to suck.

In talking with Rayne Hall about her Villains book, she said the villains need to be just as fleshed out as the protagonist. I don’t want a happenstance bad guy who falls down the stairs at the end and the world is saved, thanks to banana peels.

I wish you could see the dirty look my main character just gave me as I seriously contemplated doing something like that to him. If looks could kill…

I poked around through the internet and found three really good character sheets. The first is by Fire Eyes in the Dark. This sheet is seriously detailed and by the time you’re done, you’ve got a damned good idea what the character is like. Abigail Nussey also has a very detailed character sheet available. I’m really impressed with the details and some of the small things I’d never consider for my character. Epiguide.com had a pretty impressive sheet as well. I believe Fire Eyes was reposted on Gaia Online without credit (go figure) and I’ve found others of similar vein who didn’t have a PDF or RTF download like eclectics.com.

Regardless! I wanted to share some pretty damned good character sheets.

As I spent a little time searching Scrivener templates, I found one for the Snowflake Method. I believe I’ll be trying this one out as well. 🙂