Angela here, happy to welcome Savannah Cordova from Reedsy who has done some sleuthing to find tools that might help you create your characters. Play around with ideas, or take a deep dive into their backstory, personality, and the forces that drive them to achieve meaningful story goals, it’s up to you!
We all know characters are the beating heartof any good story. No matter how original or exciting your plot is, readerssimply won’t be able to get invested unless they care about the people (or robots,or animals, or whatever your characters are!). That’s why before you startwriting — possibly before you even figure out your plot — you need to createcharacters that are well-rounded and compelling.
It’s this prerequisite of characterdevelopment that makes features like the occupation thesaurus so valuable. Because whencreating characters, you can’t leave anything out! We’re all “round” inreal life, after all. So if some of your characters are mysteriously missingcareers, motivations, or discernible personalities, readers are going tonotice.
Luckily, there are plenty of stellar tools to assist you with character development and profiling. Here are five character tools you need to know, each one designed to serve a different purpose.
1. The Character Creator
Though this tool is titled the rather general-sounding “Character Creator,” it really encompasses just one aspect of the character: their physical appearance. Though there are plenty of “physical appearance” generators out there, they tend to just spit out a combination of traits (“curly brown hair/green eyes/freckles”) rather than actually showing you what the character would look like. I find it much more helpful to have concrete visuals of your characters as you’re writing about them — plus it’s just fun to experiment with different physical traits and see how they manifest.
Of course, you can always comb through headshots on sites like Backstage, or use images of your favorite actors or models. This may be best if you need a visual for a character who’s especially tall, short, fat, or skinny; the main drawback of Character Creator is its lack of diverse body types. But everything else is intricately customizable, from face shape to hairstyle to the wide range of accessories.
TIP: If you need help describing your character’s appearance, make sure to check out this Physical Features Descriptive Database.
2. Reedsy’s Character Name Generator
After you’ve checked off character appearances, Reedsy’s character name generator should be your next stop. In the name (get it?) of full disclosure, my team created this tool, so I might be a bit biased as to how cool it is. But seriously — it’s divided by language, archetype, and even various countries’ mythologies, with over a million potential options for character names.
If you want a strong moniker for your protag,you can try out the hero name generator to find one that means something empowering,like “fighter” or “radiant.” Or say one of your characters is Korean, but youdon’t speak Korean: you can use the relevant language generator to produce someauthentic names. In any case, for those who agonize over picking out characternames (and are sick and tired of baby name websites!), this generator is yourlifeline.
3. RanGen’s Personality Generator
Now we’re getting into the meat and potatoesof your characters: their personalities. You’ve probably already thought abouthow your characters will behave and interact with one another, since characterdynamics are often pretty intertwined with plot. However, you may not haveconsidered how their outward behavior actually relates to their personality.For example, you might have a character who’s always loud, energetic, and thelife of the party — but do they act that way because they’re actually very confident and secure, orbecause they crave attention and approval? This is where personality comes intoplay.
As you’re coming up with characterpersonalities, you may wish to consult a personality generator like RanGen’s. Itprovides lists of qualities pertaining to a character’s friendliness,confidence, emotional capacity, intelligence, and other attributes. But ofcourse, true to the “RanGen” name, this is a random generator — which means the traits may be completely arbitraryin relation to the characters you’ve started constructing, and even in relationto each other. For instance, I got a profile where the character’s friendlinesswas “callous,”yet theiragreeableness was “harmonic” (needless to say, not the most compatiblecombination).
While character personalities don’t need to be perfectly cohesive — to paraphrase Whitman, they can contain multitudes — you probably shouldn’t have traits that clearly contradict one another. And you definitely don’t want your characters to seem cobbled together at random, especially because their experiences and environments affect them in very specific ways, which a generator cannot take into account. As a result, this tool is best used for brainstorming, rather than creating full-on character profiles.
TIP: Planning your character’s personality using the database of positive traits and negative traits at One Stop for Writers is also a great option, as it helps you describe these traits through behaviors, attitudes, etc.
4. Springhole’s Character Motivation Generator
It’s designed for roleplaying, but thischaracter motivation tool can definitely be applied to the characters in yourstory. You might have to rephrase certain motivations for them to make sense(for example, instead of “character wants to bring glory to their planet,” youmight say “to their family” or “to their community” instead), but otherwiseit’s a pretty nuanced tool.
Again, as with character dynamics, youprobably already have some idea of your characters’ motivations, as they’llrelate closely to your plot. However, for any characters you’re unsure about,or who might need additional motivationsto make them more complex, this generator can really help. It might even sparka subplot or spin-off for a secondary character, who suddenly gets a lot moreinteresting with the help of motivations!
TIP: For more motivations (and indeed in-depth descriptive characteristics of all stripes), you should check out the Character Motivation Database over at One Stop for Writers. Which brings us to…
5. One Stop for Writers Character Builder
Naturally, I have to give a shout out to One Stop for Writers’ super-comprehensive Character Builder. For those who haven’t tried it already, this is no average character template. Rather than merely providing the minimum number of blank spaces for you to fill in, the Character Builder walks you through the whole process and highlights the importance of connection among every aspect of your character.
You’ll start with the basics: your character’s backstory, which will emphasize how their past experience has led to their current vulnerabilities. This foundation allows you to build their personality, behavior, motivations, and more intuitively from there. Indeed, the Character Builder’s greatest strength is that it truly helps you breathe life into your characters: while all the other tools on this list will give you ideas, the Character Builder will enable you to hone those ideas into consistent, realistic, in-depth characters. Watch it in action:
Best of all? You can try the Character Builder any time because One Stop for Writers has a 2-Week FREE TRIAL.
Yes, all these tools have their own individual strengths — but they’re best used in conjunction with one another. The whole here is definitely greater than the sum of the parts, because the whole is ultimately the character themselves, and that character has limitless potential.
Have a favorite character tool?
Let us know in the comments!
Savannah Cordova is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors and publishers with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys reading contemporary fiction and writing short stories (and occasionally terrible novels).
You can read more of her professional work on the Reedsy blog, or personal writing on Medium.
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