47 Creative Questions to Drive Your Fictional Character Design

We writers know that creating entire people inside your brain can be hard sometimes. Really freaking hard. 

If you’re like me, plotting methods like Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method can help you out, but figuring out what a character does and discovering who he is are two completely different things. There are so many things you need to learn about your character—things that often don’t make it into the story proper—to enhance your writing and truly bring him to life. Here, I’ve listed 47 sample questions you can ask yourself about each of your characters in order to bring your writing to the next level.

1. What is their age?
2. When is their birthday? (What is their astrological sign?)
3. How tall are they?
4. What is their body type/shape?
5. How do they feel about their height/weight?
6. How do they feel about their overall appearance? What do they consider to be their best physical feature?
7. What color are their eyes?
8. What color is their hair?
9. How long is their hair? How do they usually style it?
10. What color is their skin?
11. Do they have any other unique characteristics (scars, once-broken nose, physical disability, etc)?
12. How does their appearance affect how others treat them?
13. Do they have any kind of mental illness? (If yes, how does this impact their relationships with others?
14. What is their MBTI personality type?
15. What was their childhood like? 
16. What are their best and worst memories?
17. Are their parents and/or extended family still alive?
18. Are their parents and/or extended family present in their life? What kind of a relationship does the character have with them?
19. Does the character stick to a certain motto or set of beliefs?
20. Where do they go when they’re stressed (physically or mentally)?
21. Do they have a nervous tic? What is it, and when does it come out most?
22. Are they a good liar? Do they have a good poker face?
23. When faced with a conflict or struggle, do they fight, flee, or freeze? (Bonus: Why?)

24. What’s their favorite food?
25. What’s their favorite drink?
26. Favorite book?
27. Favorite song?
28. Favorite place?
29. Favorite person/confidant(e)?
30. Can they use chopsticks?
31. What do they do when they can’t seem to fall asleep?
32. How are they around kids?
33. If they don’t already, do they want to have kids? Why/why not?
34. Do they make their bed every day? (If they do, how do they do it? Do they loosely toss the top blanket up, or do they meticulously tuck in every corner and smooth every crease?)
35. What is their motivation?
36. What is their goal?
37. What is their greatest fear(s)?
38. What are their physical strengths/talents?
39. What are their physical weaknesses?
40. What are their mental/emotional strengths?
41. What are their mental/emotional weaknesses or flaws?
42. How do their strengths and flaws feed into each other? How does this affect the overall story?
43. What do they like best about themselves?
44. What do they dislike about themselves?
45. What do others like best about them?
46. What do others dislike about them?
47. How does this character feel about their government/ruler?

Creating entire people out of absolutely nothing is a difficult—yet important—undertaking for all writers. With a little bit of legwork beforehand, your richer understanding of your characters will begin to show in the complexity of their actions and responses, and your story will truly shine.

How do you like to develop your characters? Do you create character profiles and answer questions like these, or do you prefer to dive right into the story and sort out uncharacteristic actions during the revision process? Feel free to share in the comments below—I’d love to hear from you. And, as always, happy writing!

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