Yep, it’s that time again….Spreadsheets!!!!!

Everybody excited yet?  I hope so.  This is one of my favorite subjects, so I can’t help but want everyone to love spreadsheets as much as me.    Seriously, though.  Even if you’re not a spreadsheet lover, I hope you find something here you can use in your own character development even if it never makes it inside the cells of a spreadsheet!

This month I’ll build on what I talked about last time.  If you missed it or just need a refresher, check out my Character Requirements worksheet or last month’s post.  I use these two worksheets to develop my hero and heroine, and if I wrote suspense I’m sure I would use them for my villain too.  I complete as much as I possibly can before ever writing anything, because for me, I’ve learned that if I don’t fully see my characters before I start writing the story, I just make one big fat mess and end up having to start all over.  And I am not a fan of tossing things out and starting all over!

OK, let’s get started.  I’m going to touch on everything at a high level because there is seriously a lot of information at this stage and going into too much detail will make this post way too long.

Once I’ve figured out everything from the previous worksheet, what I do next is work on personality type, archetype, traits, strengths, flaws and GMC.  By the way, if you haven’t read Deb Dixon’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict, it’s one I highly recommend you find a copy of and read.  Understanding your characters are key to writing stories your readers can’t put down, and GMC is critical to this understanding.

So what I do is bring my character’s identity and essence over from the first worksheet.  This defines the Character Arc throughout the story.  How they will grow and change internally.  Along with the arc, I determine their Archetype.  I use the book Heroes & Heroines, Sixteen Master Archetypes, by Cowden. LaFever, and Viders to help me out here.  Sometimes my character is a combination of two archetypes, or sometimes they start out as one type and morph into another before the end of the book.  That just depends on each story and each character.

The next thing I do some of my friends find as total overkill but I happen to love.    I define my character’s Myers-Briggs Personality Type.  I have a very handy book for this as well.  What Type Am I? Discover Who You Really Are, by Renee Baron.  It touches on the personalities in an easier to understand way than some of the more dense books I’ve seen on personality types.  For each section, say Extravert or Introvert, there are lists of statements that quickly help me figure out where my character fits.  Once I have their type defined, I type in the brief description (in the large box below personality type) found in the book.  Doing all this not only helps me to really learn what type of person my character is, but adding the description to my worksheet makes it easy to immerse myself back into my character’s head when everything else about the story begins to get too muddled in my mind.

Next…GMC.  What does the character want?  Why do they want it?  Why can’t they have it?  Thanks to several worksheets that have been shared with me in the past, along with multiple workshops I’ve taken, I’ve combined what worked of those into what works for me.  I’m assuming not all of this will work for everyone, so please, use what does and toss what doesn’t.

I break GMC down into External Goals: Big Goal, Story Goal, and the Internal Goal.  Then, I add another layer of Initial Goals and Ultimate Goals.  Initial vs. Ultimate helps to show not only how the character changes, but how the story does as well.

As you can see from the screen shots I’ve uploaded, the Big Goal is the character’s life ambition.  Sometimes this is the longing from the previous worksheet.  Not always, but quite often.  Additionally, throughout the course of the book, my character may find that what she thought she wanted out of life at the beginning of the story is not exactly what she wants by the end.  The character may or may not accomplish this goal within the pages of the book, but even if the initial event which set the story in motion never took place, the character would still have this Big Goal for their life.

Story Goal.  The Story Goal is the purpose of the book.  What goal initiates the action of the story?  Often this is how the character attempts to escape, retrieve, stop, or win in reaction to the event that has happened.  Again, the goal at the beginning of the story may be modified somewhat throughout the pages of the book and look differently before the story is over.

Internal Goal.  This one ties into the character arc and the character may not even be aware it exists.  It is, according to Michael Hauge, the embodiment of longing or need and the only way they can get it is to step out of identity and into essence.  Goal – What is the character’s subconscious need?  Motivation – Why do they need it?  Conflict – Why isn’t the Big Goal meeting this need?  It’s the tug-of-war between the essence and the identity.  And yes, it too may morph throughout the story so that what they need at the beginning may not be exactly what they need before the story ends.

One note about Initial vs Ultimate in all the goals.  I’m not always able to define this change.  Most times I do, but sometimes trying to see this clearly before the story is written ends up frustrating more than helping me.  Additionally, all of these things have been known to turn out to be something somewhat different by the time I finish my first draft, but I need this roadmap or I never get out of chapter one!

Next, Error in Thinking and Lesson the character must learn.  Take a look at what you defined as the character’s Belief in the first worksheet.  That would be the Error in Thinking.  And what the character has to learn concerning this belief, as they change throughout the story, is the Lesson to be learned.

The remaining items I either fill in from digging through the archetypes and personality books, or simply fill in pertinent background information which I might need help with keeping straight later.  Two key items on this last page are the Central Strength and Default Action for problems.  I spend some amount of time on these pieces of information because when my character is confronted with difficult situations, those are the things that need to consistently come through.  Also, though it’s not clear on the worksheet, I usually place an * by the biggest flaw so I make sure to show that throughout the book as well.

Alright!  So that’s it.  Like I said in the beginning, I fill out one of these for both main characters before I start writing, but then I also constantly modify them as the story unfolds and my characters show me they’re just a bit different than I first believed.

What do you do to figure out your characters?  Are you one of those people who completely discover them as you go along through the story or do you do something similar to me and chart them out before ever beginning?