This page is a living document. I’ve written it, completely trashed it, and overhauled it, many times. It grows with me as an author. (And since this is git, you can look back through that change log!) Characters are everything when it comes to a story – and misbelief is everything when it comes to a character. Once you have that, you can go forth and conquer nailing the essentials of your first draft. In the blog post below, I will walk you through the absolute basics, things I consider 'pre-character creation', then I will show you the full robust break out of the character sheet. From there I can walk you through every component and what you ought to know, and hopefully set you off on your way!
The best stories explore something about human nature. Yes, perhaps they explore things about our world as they are at it, but at their core, they are inwards, introspective looking things. Usually, they pick a theme. A single undiluted emotion or truth that the story will explore different aspects of through different POVs (AKA the characters we are about to build), and the ultimate 'truth' the story would like to speak to. Loss, War, Inadequacy, Shame, Pride. These themes can grow into a sentence. 'War devours all and never ends', is a rather classic high fantasy one. Regardless of your inspiration, this theme needs to be laser focused. The strongest themes can be conveyed in a single word. They are core truths that are a part of the human experience. You’ll want to avoid words like ‘change’ and ‘sacrifice’, as all stories already include that, a giant string of change and sacrifice is what a story is at it’s core after all - you’re looking for something deeper. You’ll know when you've found a good theme because it is so primal and basic an emotion to understand, that you get that tingley feeling on your head and feel a bit emotional thinking about it.
Note that nothing I just said stops you from writing a story that comments on and critiques the world around you in any way. Many people come into story writing with the stated goal of saying something about the world around them, not just one character's introspective emotions - and the great news is, using this approach, you can be enabled to do that, not hindered. Your approach will just involve translating what interest you about the world around you, and putting it into a more specific emotional theme component. If this is you, look at the world around you, your present moment, what grabs your interest, and try to distill what you find most interesting about that down into one of these simple themes.
Let's take pride for example. I was most recently looking at the surge of right wing fascist leanings in my own culture, and decided pride was the most interesting primal core emotion tied up in all that (although reaching this conclusion took a lot of pondering!). The moment I had that realization, the rest hit me like a bag of bricks. I decided I want explore being proud of things we shouldn’t be. Not being proud of things we should be. How that interplays with our major cultural moment that we're currently in, or frankly what role that played in a society like 1930's Germany. And this is where theme starts playing into building your character.
Boom. Done. Theme acquired. Initial thoughts on what characters I will have done. Awesome. But be warned reader, this is NOT easy. Coming to an understanding that enabled me to write that single seciton was weeks of going on long walks, tossing and turning in my bed, and having existential crises on lunch breaks. Reaching a fully fleshed out conclusion like that is arguably more work than inevitably putting words to the page. But when you read that description, you can feel it. It's strong. And it all centrally revolves under the 'parent emotion' (shout out to my writer friend who taught me that concept!) of pride. Other characters that I pull into this story will have their own aspects of pride to explore, their own points to make under this umbrella. But for now, we’ll stay focused on one character.
A misbelief is the core driving thrust of a story. A misbelief is a fundamental, extremely impactful, flaw with how your main character views the world - as a result of a strong negative experience (often in their formative years). This misbelief influences their every decision and thought in the story. Shrek thinks if he lets people in, they will only hurt him, so best to just play the part of the scary ogre in the swamp when people get near, and scare them off before they even get a chance to meet him. Zuko thinks the most important thing in life is earning his fathers respect, so he feels overwhelming shame and anger at his father’s disappointment and being outcast by him, so he viciously chases the Avatar. And these misbeliefs, they have a singular, intense, emotional moment they take hold. (If all of this sounds new to you, I’d point you towards my resources page that has a ton of materials on learning this further. I would also point you towards my misbeliefs thesaurus for examples.)
You’re character is one person before the misbelief moment takes effect, then they are a noticeably different person after that event has happened. Whether it’s the fact that they refuse to let anyone close to them again, refuse to show weakness, disassociate and refuse to believe in themselves, they are not the same person they came into that moment being. For Zuko, this was his Agni Kai fight against his father. Sure, there was a building crescendo of smaller moments of his father’s conditional love and pressure forging him in his formative years, but it explodes into this one massive concrete, specific, moment. Even if your character’s misbelief is the product of an entire childhood of awfulness, for story writing reasons, you really do want to create one specific moment where it all acutely came to ahead beyond what is normal otherwise. You want a specific memory you can point to.
Misbeliefs are hard. They are you deciding what specific world view you’re going to obsess over as an author for at least the next year of writing, what challenge you want to immerse yourself in. Much like themes, a good misbelief is inwards facing, it is primal. If it involves other people (like Zuko’s), they are people who are/were intimately close to your character. They are emotional. They are defense mechanisms against a uniquely negative experience or a string of experiences. They have a big impact on your character, they can’t be cop outs.
And yes, they need to be a negative experience. Sure, a profoundly happy/nice experience can be good and all, but it doesn’t have that same relatable pull that someone seeing their own human struggles reflected back to them on the page does. But ‘uniquely negative’ does not mean ‘huge and traumatic’. It can be small, it can be something that a ton of us go through every year, but it has to hit your main character in a uniquely impactful way (it is contorting their entire world view after all). The best misbeliefs are proactive. They aren’t ’something bad happened to my character, and then their father explained to them their new world view, and they just accepted it’. They are someone experiencing deep emotional hurt, chosing to alter their world view to cope with that hurt, make themselves feel better, and justify to themselves how they can be safe and protected from that hurt in the future.
Got it? Sound good? Check out those resources that explain all this better than I ever could.
Thought you were done with misbeliefs? Oh how wrong you were. Now that you have a theme for your story, a characters world view, and a decent idea of how they will interact with the world around them - now we want to start filling in their history as it pertains to the story. And, you know, since our story is about a theme, and our character’s stroy follows one misbelief in particular, the best way to do this is to think of a few historical examples of when this misbelief played a big role in their lives. We want to make this person feel lived in, in a way that’s relevant to the story. Why do I keep saying that last bit in italics? Well, because it’s easy to say, “this dude’s good a checkers, and also has a bad attitude, and crashed his car when he was 16” - yeah okay, boring, snoozefest. We can do better. We want this person’s emotional and worldview history. We want the history of their mind, of how they were formed, how they used to think, how they think now, what changed - that's what reader's crave most for immersing themselves in your characters, and that’s all achieved by tracking the history of their misbelief.
You’ll notice two things in particular about all of these examples, two rules. First of all, the end take away of all of them is to reinforce the misbelief. Our character walks away feeling more correct and stubborn in their ways then they were before. Second, you’ll notice that you don’t want cop outs. Much like the rest of this, you want deep cutting, strongly emotional impactful moments. Things that heavily impact their love life, their grappling with loss, pride and humiliation and anger and sadness. Characters are most interesting when they are reflections of our own struggles on the page, do not deprive us of that! If you think of smaller moments that perhaps do not rise to this level of impact, awesome, great, but put them into a separate list of smaller moments. You can briefly mention or weave them in as smaller details into your story that your readers will pick up on and love, but they aren’t doing you the full service of strong emotional impact that you need.
And finally, on our misbelief crusade, a quick sanity check. You should now be able to not only articulate to yourself what your character’s misbelief is and how it plays into exploring your theme, but you should also be able to very clearly describe what they were like before their misbelief moment, and what they were like after. At least, as it’s pertinent to your story, these before and after states should be noticeably different. Just bullet lists or a few sentences will do. If you can do this with ease, then you’re doing great!
Awesome, we have our gist, now we can fill in the details. With each detail, keep your misbelief and theme in mind. When at all relevant, you’ll want these items to reflect those aspects, but no big deal when they don’t because it’s not applicable. This is about where authors start trying to play around with their characters, envision their story arc, mold it to a story, etc. As to try to avoid making this ‘character’ focused blog post from creeping into becoming an entire post on plot and otherwise, this is about where I start stepping away from that push. But, just note how much further you could run with this, that from all that information of your character alone, you have the power to start mapping out the entire story.
Lets explore the items you haven’t encountered yet below.
So with all that stuff initially out of the way, I like to loop around to a literal brief ‘vibe check’. What is your character like? Cold? Arrogant? Hopeful? What's it like to be in the room with them? This is a lot of word vomit, usually as a big list. So for example, “vicious”, “how do you have time to do all that?”, and “now it’s my turn on the Xbox,” can all be in the same list.
What do they want? What do they concretely want? ‘World peace’ is rarely an acceptable answer. Especially as a novice author, you want ‘what your character wants’ to be something tangible that they can hold or envision: a simple life retired by a cottage by the river, the giga-stone, a lover, to look badass, etc. Subconsciously, when readers read through your book, they will be paying attention to how a current scene, and a character's actions and perceptions relating to that scene, work towards (or push them further from) this goal. If at anytime content on paper is not in direct relation to this goal, they will get very bored very fast.
Why do they want what they want? This should draw heavily from their misbelief. It’s not enough to have a goal. Real people want things for reasons. This is especially fun to massage in when an evil antagonist is monologueing, or when an MC is having a ‘dark shadow of the soul’ reflection moment when all may be for loss before the climax.
Their backstory. Stories are a moment in time, but characters have lived, and (if they’re lucky) will continue to live, full lives. You probably already have a good idea of this. We’ve mapped out their emotional and worldview history, now it’s time to, at least briefly, speaking to the rest. Generally speaking, you want to tie your character to what I call ‘fiddly bits’ here. Parts of your world you’d like to showcase. Perhaps that’s a religious institution, or a guild, or a magic system. Preferably these help your character in their mission of having something to say on the theme and even the misbelief. Likewise you can tie them into secondary characters (or even MCs) here too. Readers primarily care about what’s relevant to your character, so if there’s a culture or an institution or a place that you want to show off in your story, I strongly recommend massaging it into one of your character's backgrounds (this is also like, great Dungeons and Dragons 101 advice for character creation, but you usually want to do this in lockstep with you DM so they can work with you).
You’re well on your way here already as well. You characters misbelief moment, those three reinforcing misbelief memories, that’s already a full plate. But ultimately, not every moment is a worldview altering heavy hitting moment in their world. Sometimes you just graduate college like a normal person, or decide to move, etc. That being said, non-emotion based memories are weird imperfect things. It’s weird when you think about it, right? I sure as hell remember how much I hated that one restaurant every time I drive past it, how awful the experience was and the food was… but I don’t actually remember what I ate there. My point here is not to encourage you towards vagueness, in fact, that’s one of those places where writing has to diverge from real life, readers demand the concrete. But, what I am pointing out is that when a character recalls a concrete memory, we care more about how they felt about it, than the details themselves.
Preferably, some of these are related to their history and their motivation/goal. These points serve as cheap easy wins for an author to bring up as concrete way the character can interact with all of the rest of their dossier. “I think every day about that night my parents were murdered, the mask the murderer wore, that writing he left on the wall. That was the first time I’d ever talked to a police officer, first time I realized how useless they truly are, that this city needed something greater.” Things like that say a lot not just about a character, but everything! I usually have at least a few of these in my pocket for a character, and I will bend over backwards to create a scene where it’s relevant that it’s brought up.
What does your character do outside of the main character arc / plot thrust? If their job and story is about being a monster hunter, then this is about hobbies. If it’s an inner city romance novel, then what is their job? There’s a lot of hours in the day, and readers expect your characters to fill them (even if as real people we just spend our free time vegetating in front of a screen and waiting for our employers to have squeezed their last drop of worth and energy out of us).
To be human is to live in contradiction. Characters feel most real when they have at least one of these. Often times this can be related to our non-aligned goals (more to come further down on that), other times this is more simple. The classic example is a pulmonologist that smokes behind the dumpster in between patients. We are flawed people living in a flawed world, and lets face it, that’s fucking messy. A nutritionist drunk at McDonald’s at 3am on a Saturday, a school history teacher that rejects previous atrocities, a well meaning politician who looks the other way when his prodigal son is involved. We live in this every day. Contradictions, contradictions, contradictions!
You don’t need a character sketch, that is, unless you want one. But, you should have some basic idea of not just what they look like, but more importantly, how they perceive what they look like, and how others perceive what they look like as well. A thirty year old dude in a white tee shirt and jeans eating at a four star Michelin restaurant in his casual clothes comes off very different in Silicon Valley where informal but rich tech bros litter the landscape versus as it does in Washington DC. What are your own character's thoughts on how they decide to present themselves? What does the culture around them think? An amazing example of this is Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3, a literal towering, muscles bulging, demon woman. She perceives herself as a monster, so she’s always trying to dress as normal as possible, and come off as nice and relatable as possible to fight that (misbelief induced internally percieved) perception, and she reflects that in her posture, her voice, her attire, everything.
Whether your writing is set in our real world and time, or a fantasy world where everyone has a third eyeball, all worlds have their beliefs – all worlds have their Overton Windows. How left or right of center is your character of their context and society? This can create some really interesting dialogue (in particular on world building aspects) that, as an author, you’d have little reason to discuss otherwise. Does one character revile dragon riders wearing red as it’s the royal color, while another thinks it’s a show of strength of the might of their nation’s economy since it sends a clear message that it is now quite affordable? There’s cool debates to be had there.
If you’re of the very small subsect of people that not only cares about writing, but then also thought it worth giving my opinions a glancing over (a dangerous decision indeed!), then you're almost certainly deep enough into the craft of writing to know that characters are defined by their goals and motivations. They're do'ers, etc. But what you might not have considered is that real people have multiple goals. Not only do they have multiple goals, they have multiple non-aligned goals. People want different things, simultaneously, and cannot pursue them all at once.
For example, at the time of writing this, I have at least two goals:
1.) Get bloody damned rich
2.) Be an author
And as anyone who's ever written can tell you – never have two goals been farther apart.
It is in this conflict of motivations, that we are at our most human. When I drag myself into my boring day job on a Monday morning, contributing yet another infinitesimally small amount to my retirement fund, perpetuating my misery, and committing myself to making precisely zero progress on my goals as an author for the next 8-9 hours to come. Or vice versa, when I call out hooky from work just so I can grind out a new chapter idea that popped into my head that morning. That is the human experience, that feels real. That is a conflict of non-aligned goals.
Characters NEED this. I repeat: NEED. Is their conflict between patriotism and family? A dedicated patriot who also cares for a family member that's less committed or downright subversive. Is it between romance and a career? A lover who’s oh so close to obtaining their dream job but has never been lonelier. Is it between revenge and happiness? A dad with a family to die for that just can’t quite shake that urge to sneak out at night and snap necks on his crusade.
These motivations should be non-aligned, but not necessarily opposite either. Opposite can be okay on occasion, but too much of that feels pre-packaged, too dramatic.
In the above examples, the non-aligned goals also prove to be aligned at times. They are shaky things, wobbly. They bend into alignment, then bend apart, then back. What if the patriot’s family member is abducted by an enemy force? Saving the family member now satisfies both the patriotism and family goals. What if the lover realizes their love interest is a wonderfully talented artist without a platform. Featuring them at a corporate gala or an art night suddenly satisfies their professional and romantic motivations. What if the dad’s family goes broke and the person he’s set to get his revenge on is filthy rich. All of the sudden those revenge and happiness goals can align quiet easily. You get the idea.
And for the finale, the cross-roads! Your story lives on two things. When two elements are at their most relevant to the reader:
Character arc is a topic I can leave for another blog post, while the details of how you want to do it will take you work down the line, that'll more so be story structure related work as you go. However, your character's motivational cross-roads needs more reflection in the here and now. You deciding what this will be and look like, is part of creating this character sheet. While you might not know much about your world or plot or story progression at all yet, you should know how your character's goals will butt heads and synergize, vaguely, throughout the story.
For example, let's say you have a character who's primary goal is to liberate themselves and their peers from the lower castes of society, and that (at least one of) their secondary goals is to protect and keep safe their loved ones. Well now you can start brain storming what these conflicts and synergies might look like at peak character moments, or worded differently, what some of your character's main 'plot' conflict moments are (if there is even such a thing as seperating plot structure and character arc). In this example, your character's most compelling plot moments will be when their efforts for freedom and liberation come either at the extreme, very tangible real threat, to them and their families, or when it is concretley required under some immediate pressure to ensure as much while still achieving the primary goal of liberation. Your story's most visceral 'plot moments' will involve precislely this conflict.
Just to hit home how important these motivational cross-roads are, here’s some boring singular goal examples, and then we'll rework them. A dude who fights through thick and thin until he’s obtained the magical sword. A king who wants to expand his kingdom. A mother that wants the best for her son. Blah, blah, blah. These are all good, but not on their own! Let’s try again.
A dude who fights through thick and thin until he’s obtained the magical sword, but also strongly believes in a pacifist religion. So he’s either finding very creative solutions, or juggling more guilt than a sane man should. A mother who wants the best for her son and also wants a successful career on the city council. Well, what happens when her son turns out to be a serial killer ruining the town’s reputation, and she must now help him cover it up or report him? A king who’s wants to expand his kingdom while shrinking the political rights and wealth of adversarial nobles beneath him. It’s damned hard to get someone to give you a significant investment while also getting them to agree to be screwed over. Now those sound more interesting!
Not only do those sound more interesting, these cross-roads are where the story happens. Your book’s/campaign’s/game’s most interesting points will be when these motivations are either sharply converging or competing. At the apex of your book, maybe your king realizes how he can expand his kingdom and screw over his nobles in one bold move, and now we have a finale! Or perhaps to kick things off, your character has to make a pain staking choice between reporting her serial killer son to the authorities, or covering up his crime. That is all, of course, assuming your respecting the character arc and how pivotal moments involving grappling with, and overcoming, your character's misbelief also feed into intense narrative story moments.
A final final note! No - this is not part of YACS, but it’s good enough advice that it needs a call out all it’s own. Remember that characters are proactive. They don’t just do things, they want things, they think about things. Having a motivation and a goal is only half the battle. Constantly keeping characters to account to be going out of their way to pursue what they want is a related, but separate thing entirely. This is as true in Dungeons and Dragons as it is in a book.
What’s the difference you ask? Often times writers fall into the trap of putting their characters into worlds that force decisions upon them. Wherein their characters simply exist, and the world is railroading them towards things they must do. This sucks! A forced decision is okay on occasion, but not as a default. Whether it’s a book or a lazy/over controlling dungeon master, not having proactivity and agency to drive a story where a character naturally needs to take it becomes a real snooze.
A negative example of this in writing is in military settings where characters receive orders. Where they don’t need to have any personal goals or motivations because superiors are constantly brushing them through the plot. We can do better! It’s possible to receive and adhere to orders while also pursuing a goal! In another smattering of bad examples, unfortunately this is the stock standard experience in many Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. So much so that ‘rail roading’ is a common term among nerds. Do not be a rail roader!
There's a lot here. An entire history of a person's emotions and world view. A whole screwed up misbelief world view for moving forward. A ton of connective tissue binding them to their worlds and how they tie to it and interact with it. Their motivations and goals, and how they synergize and conflict. I have essentially walked you through writing a giant awesome thing... with a million loose ends. You can decide what to do with it next, your process. However you like to map out your plot and character arc, whether you view those as different or the same, etc. I have walked you absolutley as far as I can possibly go without you having to make a single claim of 'this happens' in the story to come. However you decide to move forward, best of luck.
Enjoy!