What if Character Sheets Weren't Awful

For the newest version (2.1) I changed some things so people would be able to understand the sheet without watching this video. I replaced “core belief” with “core urge.” Belief made it sound like a conscious philosophy, which I think was tripping people up. What I really meant to convey was a sense of “I must do this.” “Drive” felt too conscious as well. “Compulsion” too many letter. So urge it is. We urging. 2024 it’s urge or get urged on. I also think my emphasis on backstory was a bit confusing, so I changed some language in the first box - That slot is really just there to communicate that the urge is an adaptive mechanism to get one’s needs met. Just some small tweaks. Version 2.1 on website in resources tab :)

using these character sheets helped me understand my characters to a greater depth then ever before. they helped give me a lens to look through when writing dialogue and actions. i know exactly what they want in any given scene. my characters feel alive now

finally... someone just explained it very thoroughly

💕💕💕

Loved this!

Hey, I have a doubt

The negative experience has to be experienced in childhood, or can I use other moments in life?

I have this character whose boyfriend was killed by the villain, and she found the body. After that, she changed her ways in life and developed a trauma.

чел, ты долбаёб. Держись подальше от творчества, инженер хуев

This is beautiful. I found something earlier this year that helped me with this. Ghost - the thing that haunts your character from their past, Lie - what wrong belief do they hold because of their ghost? Want - what wrong thing do they want as a result of their lie? Need - what do they really need instead of what they want in order to overcome their lie.

Edit: after watching the whole video, I don’t allow the want to define to be so restricted or limited. lol

Discarding the word "theme" feels right. It's too big of a box with too much stuff in it. Is it character intrinsic or plot intrinsic? Does it span an entire series just individual pieces? Can themes change? Can every character embody a different theme? Is a theme just a concept like "connection" or is it a statement like "connection is necessary for us to feel human"? The word is really vague and feels like a retrospective tool rather than a prospective one. Great for literary analysis, unhelpful for actually creating literature. As long as you write characters with consistent and grounded beliefs and have them change over the course of the story, then you will never have to prescribe a theme, it will instead become an emergent property of what you're writing.

I've decided to give your sheet a try, and I've grasped everything but the Presentation. Everything else, I get--how the urge and lie affect their Goals (what they strive for), Relationships (how they treat others), Lifestyle (how they live), and Dialogue (how they talk), but what does the Presentation entail? How narrative presents the character, or how the character presents themselves? The latter feels like Lifestyle.

Accidental therapy session

I find your video very useful —- but when you spent those five hours driving around looking for a Waffle House, I don’t believe that Waffle House was your actual want, but rather, was an intermediate end to what you really wanted - a sense of normalcy.

If I believed that that search for an open Waffle House was really just about Waffle House, I would not have cared how it ended. But because of the realization I just mentioned, I actually am curious — did you end up finding a Waffle House that wasn’t closed? And if you did find it - did it give you that slight bit of normalcy that you craved —- or did you find it in a not-entirely-closed, but halfway-shut-down state that only served to further remind you about the surreal situation that we all were in at the time?

Again — if I thought it was really about Waffle House, I wouldn’t care. But I know it was about something much deeper than that —- and because of that, I truly am curious about the answers to my questions.

I'd love to see you make something like this for planning out an entire story. I know you have many videos about this but having a sheet like this might help with planning out the macro story in a coherent way rather than an endlessly long document. I always end up going into too much detail and just writing the bullet points for each chapter rather than having a good structure for thinking about the entire story as a whole.

Love your work!

Who would've thought I saw some guy talking about writing on a boat randomly and now I'm here. A guy talking about a peice of paper.

hmm i feel like that stated beliefs are more layered ontop of echother,especially for more complex charecters having litterally more layers to them,. also it is true that people can be aware of their core urge but that dosent mean that the lie should be neglected, because thats basically the thing that someone has always told themselfes or belives about themself ,so their belief about themselfs can still also subconsiously effct their descicions, way way less so than people that arent aware that its a lie at all, but still at some copacity

"some people just like crocheting" me watching this as i crochet

Maybe you can do it this way:
Core urge > behaviour (the bottom part of the page) > stated belief
The core urge leads to behavior, they look at their behavior and think of the stated belief to justify it

I’ve been watching a lot of your videos to get a grip on writing good characters, and you’ve been by far the best resource I’ve found, thank you so much. I’m still unsure about how a “round” character would work using these tools (the enneagram, character sheet, and such), as they don’t change much but still have significant depth revealed over time. Do they simply exist in an enneagram coded plot? Does it work for a character to have little “negative experiences” throughout the plot that they simply react to as their round selves? Does a “round” character even exist? Does every character need a significant enneagram problem to be an appealing, thorough character? How do you write characters that developed outside the plot, how do you flesh out the “healthy character” per se? Once a character gets a grip on their one big bullcrap, do they move onto another set of bullcrap or just stay a healthy person?

Hi, sorry to make this comment 6 months later, but I wanted to ask.

What if the negative experience happened because of his core belief?

I have a character who is a type 5 in the ennegram, cause he always feels like he needs to know everything, cause he's kind of a control freak. His friends got in an accident, because all of them were too curious about something, and he feels like it's his fault. But instead making his belief the opossite of what happened, can I make it as if the accident exacerbated his need of knowledge? Like his curiosity got the better of him, but "MAYBE if he had known more, it wouldn't have happened!!" Sort of thought?

Although i feel like he's kinda bias, cause if he doesn't like the truth, he ignores it, and try to search the one that he likes.

I feel like this is missing something fundamental. I'm really bad with understanding people in general, but it really does feel like that's not how you write a person. Not a criticism, just a concern, I'd love to hear what people actually think about this.

THIS IS SO BRILLIANTLY VISUALIZED!!!!! thank you so much!!!!!

Question: Is ever ok for the character to have more than one core belief (if they are linked) or should we always stick to one for the sake of brevity?

This is brilliant! Also... thank you for supporting graphic design ✨.

We don't always feel appreciated for our unique skillset... speaking as a 4 😂.

Hey hi man, i have a problem and i don't know if it is plot/subplot, character or p.o.v related all that i know is that it prevent me from learning more and actually understand how to write anything and i was wondering if you could help me ?

Ok so here is where am at when it come to the understanding of the basics:
Note: i'm french so please forgive my english.

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THE BASICS

PLOT =
The sequence of events that make up the narrative, that's easy right ? ... Everything in a story is an
- Event:
(Somebody try to lit a fire in the wood is an ACTION because it's performed by an agent/person, but is also an EVENT because well it happen, if the rain start and put out the fire, it is not an ACTION since nodody has performed it but it is still happening therefore it is an EVENT, finally if the cops came it's both action + event) and we have different level of events: minor, mid, major, those events are what is a
- Story:
the recounting or counting of events in their order of happening, CHRONO-logical order: breakfast THEN lunch THEN dinner, the only link between those event are JUST their CHRONO-logy. Event 1 happen before event 2 and event 3 happen after event 2: The king died, then the queen died.
- Plot is those story events, selected, deleted, rearranged, extended, shortened, and tied by causality, the king died, then the queen died OF GRIEF. She died because he died and let her alone, one event is the cause OR the effect of the other. In the plot the events are not linked CHRONO-logically (they can be) but rather CAUSALLY
- Character arc: is basically what it says, an arc, going from selfish to altruist, from liar to honest, from Walter White, a ridiculed teacher washing cars to HENSEINBERG, or not changing at all: Sherlock Holmes, Columbo etc...
- Plot = EXTERNAL journey : The stuff that the character does in the physical world: actions or event (happenings/occurrences due to character actions)
- Character arc = INTERNAL journey: The reason why the character do what they do and what it does to them, how the journey change them.
- Motivation > objective > goal
and then you have the
- Narrative which is just the whole, what you generally tell to people when talking in real life, the movie, the book, the complete piece !

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MY PROBLEM

I'm trying to make sense of three things:

-1. Are SUB-goals MINI-PLOTS ?
-2. What is a SUB-plot
-3. What happen to character own plots when they enter other character plots

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SUB-GOALS / MINI-PLOTS

Every goal is composed of SUB-goals !
Let's say i have a character who's goal is to protect earth by destroying an asteroid (man vs nature)

- motivation: protecting his family, friends, the human race
- goal/objectif: destroying the asteroid
- conflict: every antagonistic force in his way, preventing him from reaching his goal

Joe's plan to get rid of that asteroid is to go himself place an explosive on it but for that he needs a professor to do the trajectory calculations for him, he need to have the support from high ranks generals etc. So his goal will then be composed with a bunch of SUB goals and the success of the MAIN goal will then be conditioned by the success or failure of those SUB goals right ? So my first question his are those SUB-GOALS

- Finding a way to leave town and get to the professor
- Finding the professor
- Convincing a general to let him use military equipments

MINI-plots ? With their own exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax and resolution ?

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PLOT & SUBPLOTS

My understanding is that their is the joe's plot (MAIN PLOT) which start at the inciting incident and then end at the resolution, so for a movie it is at the end of the film, for a trilogy each film should have their own plots, and for a tv shows it is at the end of the entire show and then you have SUB plots which are side stories that are in some way tied to Joe's plot (MAIN PLOT) example:

The professor ex wife call asking him to go get their son to his baseball match cause she's seek, therefore can't ? I get that this is a sub plot because well, getting his son is not part of saving the world joe's plot but the timing and duration of that subplot will ultimately affect the trajectory calculations part of Joe's plot. Am i getting this correctly ?

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CHARACTER PLOTS

Then this is the most important thing for me: What happen to character plots when they enter someone else's plot ?

Let's say.

Joe he's leaving his best life when the NASA call him tell him they need him cause an asteroid is about to destroy earth, this is the inciting incident, the event that will force Joe to do a bunch of actions related to that asteroid ! It is joe's plot, SAVING THE PLANET

Joe will not do this alone, he's gonna have several characters that help him pull this off, some will help some will inder him, what happen to those characters plots when they enter joe's one ? and at which part of their plots (inciting incident, rising action, climax, resolution) do they enter Joe's plot ?

Finally a chart that makes sense, thank you!

Man I want a movie about some dude finding an open waffle house during COVID. I think it’d be so stupid that it would be the best movie ever. Just sounds like the perfect ironic movie and it’d be so relatable.

This chart doesn't seem to account for people who are extremely stubborn and who develop coping mechanisms for the things in their life that never actually helped, and therefor are just kind of unrelated. That might seem like a complete inversion of your whole philosophy but it's basically how I am/was; I never really learned to fix the bad situations I was in I just stood my ground on everything all the time and it only caused more conflict but I simply could not stop myself. My personality isn't directly related to any previous issues, they sort of exist in spite of them. How would this chart account for a character with a similar development?

Teacher, teacher! Are we allowed to put multiple traumas in the "negative experience" box? You know, as a treat

Oh my god thank you for this. It's made my writing and profiling of my characters so much easier

What if my character shatters their core belief in the first act, but I don't want their arc to be flat for the rest of the story. Should I replace that shattered core belief with a slightly better, but still ultimately toxic one? And how do I figure out what that replacement belief is?

Man u are just one step ahead. Like I have been looking stuff and this is just so much WHAT I NEED. More than what I want. Like I like to put random stuff on my characters and all but I felt that I was missing something really important, ur videos are light in the darkness of my brain. Ty bro <3

Edit: Im happy to see that some stuff I made up by myself are in the bonus part! I guess I wasnt that lost as I thought, I had the idea lack the structure that really matters

That last discussion, about how if you take away the core coping mechanisms you're left with a pure person who cares for others, is why I find writing difficult.

It's bullshit. Innocence is a bad ideal and bad character goal, and I see it everywhere and it's probably why I don't bother to watch a lot of movies or read a lot of fiction anymore. There are conflicts - that's important to story, as stated - and the important ones boil down to zero-sum games. Every character and every person wants to win their conflicts in some way. Not buying into an ideal of innocence doesn't mean that someone just harms others with no recognition of how that matters, either. It means they recognize that fairness isn't what they thought it was when they were kids and they've grown up. I don't see that angle much anymore, and it's one of the reasons I started writing. There aren't enough examples that have real sophistication to them and aren't just caricatured badass moments, although they're out there. We need more.

How does the core belief due to the negative experience intersect with the enneagram type’s core motivation? Is it the same thing?

I think theme is more of a question or subject to think about, than an answer or messsage.
Examples:
What does war/violence do to a person?
The difference between good and evil.
Religion
Etc.
Edit: it can be a helpfull tool to inspire the more secondary stuff in your story. For example, I was writing a chapter which dealt with the theme of inprisonment (among other things). For reasons i will not divulge on, there were a lot of flies inserting themselves into the dialogue between the characters. At the end of the scene, one of the characters trapped a fly under his empty glass. Bc of the theme, this litlle detail fit nicely into the scene.

Dude, this is great work! I want to try using it. I have DnD, armchair psych reading, personality test, etc; ways from teachers, writers/actors talks, and some notes I've made; but getting tripped up on form and keeping track- and enjoy freestyling a bit too much- so I'll try your sheet out and let you know.
Thanks!!
<enjoying your other vids so far too>

We making it out of the draft phase with this one 🗣️🗣️🗣️

Not only have you helped me a lot trimming the fat from the ideas i've been working with as well as putting them in order, you've got a surprisingly good kermit impression.
Man of many talents. Keep it up.

The fact that this is free

can you make a full fillable pdf version alongside the individual pages? idk how to merge them D:

When introducing a character for the first time do you think it's better to establish the core belief/core urge first or to establish the stated belief first?

Thank you for making these tools! This is awesome. I like how you explained things thoroughly; it really helped me understand how to use this sheet

character sheets limit me so much it's frustrating, but this one is actually helpful and gets to the root of the problem. thanks!

this looks useful.

It's amazing how consistently I can rewatch these videos and in the process manage to work out just a little more of my characters, arcs, and plots. "Actionable" is the term of the century. Your advice is infinitely more usable to me than most other writers'.