Sins of Our Fathers | Author Blog

In writing any fictitious characters it is necessary to know those characters inside and out.

Every writer will have a special method of discovery when it comes to the people who inhabit the world in his head.

A method I use is something I picked up from college; a Character Bio-Worksheet. Each major character I write gets one of these worksheets and so do some of the minor characters. Some will even argue – and I won’t argue against them – that every character should have a worksheet. For my [tippy title="novel"]Sins of Our Fathers.[/tippy] I have twenty-five worksheets.

The worksheet goes into detail on three areas concerning the character.

• Sociology
• Physiology
• Psychology

Those sections are further broken into various characteristics. For example, “Psychology” would include such subjects like fear, secrets, and superstitions.

In [tippy title="Sins of Our Fathers,"]My novel of course.[/tippy] Detective Brooke Simmons is claustrophobic. A characteristic which falls under “fears.” She’s also afraid of the dark. These are two fears which take hold and thrash her at one point in the book. I have to say it’s a section in the book I’m rather proud of because of how gripping it is for readers.

It was read at a readers conference in a room full of women and fellow writers and I, though very nervous, was excited by the visceral reaction of the women in the room.

Anyway, I’ve gotten off subject.

Not all the info. will be used in the writing. Maybe very little will be used. But the point is that the writer will have a very good image of that character in his mind.

Will that image change during writing? More than likely. And there is nothing wrong with going back and changing the worksheet. Some of my pages have multiple additions and subtractions, not necessarily making for a pretty page, but then it’s for my eyes only.

Here is a blank PDF copy of the worksheet I put together and use. Right click on the file and select “Save as” or whatever it is your browser tells you to select for saving the file to your computer.

Character Bio-Worksheet

If you have any questions, or better yet examples of how you create your characters, I would love to hear about it.

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