How do you give your characters personality?

[YmaOHyd]

I think the how for me flows from the why. They have personality -- at least, I hope they do -- because without personality there's nothing to write about.

From a purely process standpoint, I do tons of character prep to get a rough idea of who the important characters are before I start writing. Then I learn more about them as they're being written and synthesize that with the concept to get something on the page, and ideally I'd like every character, even the ones without names, to pop enough that the reader can feel like they've got an internal life.

Speech cadence is something I think about a lot, and the shape of the words on the page. A couple clipped-off Gs or strategic elisions can make a big difference.

 

[forgotmyantidepressants]

I focus on internal monolog. Personality comes from within, so I use my characters thoughts and feelings as a means to describe scenes/characters and convey meaning.

In my opinion, good characters are flawed - sometimes irredeemably so. I had a hard time with this when I first started writing, but lately I've been experimenting with "unlikable" characters, and it opens up more possibilities plot wise. Who knew liars, thieves, and judgemental zealots could be so much to write about?

 

[NaughteeDragon]

I said previously that you need to pick a personality trait or two and let their actions flow from that trait. I’d like to expand on that thought.
We all want our characters to be likable, but they also need to have room to grow. That means you need to give them at least 1 negative trait that they can improve over the course of the story. That negative trait does not have to be over the top or debilitating. The character can be secretive and have to learn to trust. They can be immature and have to ‘grow up’ (mentally and emotionally), think Ahsoka from Clone Wars. They can be self-centered and have to see how that damages an important relationship.
Not only does it become a defining characteristic, but it also gives you character growth, which is what brings readers back.

 

[RetroFan]

It might sound odd, but giving the characters believable names for their personality types seems to work for me.

For example, Madison worked so well for the spoiled rich girl in my story 'Spoiled Princess Hates Camping'. Had I named her Jenny or Rebecca, it wouldn't have worked.

Likewise with 'The PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel' I named a lazy 300-pound school bully who is so stupid that he thinks about himself in the third person Todd, and the name just seemed to work for the character. Had I named him Jeremy or Paul, it just wouldn't have worked.

 

[cw5523729]

For example, Madison worked so well for the spoiled rich girl in my story 'Spoiled Princess Hates Camping'.

Madison is a spoiled rich girl's name if there ever was one.


If there are any users on here named Madison, I'm sorry but the truth hurts sometimes. I don't make the rules.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

In a story I’m working on there is this very stuck up, bitchy girl that a character calls Brittany. Her name is actually Ashleigh.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

In a story I’m working on there is this very stuck up, bitchy girl that a character calls Brittany. Her name is actually Ashleigh.

That's hilarious, because Ashleigh is a pretty solid stuck up girl name. Of course, the one I knew wasn't stuck up at all, and I had a big ol crush on her. I told her that the "eigh" just let her stick get nose up in the air so much higher than the "ey" Ashleys.

 

[CharlotteKurai]

For me, is easy to do with me. Because I write to write fanfiction and I sometimes took the characters designs but I only give better plot of all they qualities.

And too I can make characters personality and design as scratch.

But sadly on these days are characters are so fucking dull and boring. And they make me pissed me off because they add untreated topics without thinking about sensibilities but in the realistic way on erotica.

 

[AG31]

Do you assign quirks to all your characters? Some eat too much, some ask a lot of questions, some dress really well, some sloppily?

 

[crookedletter]

Do you assign quirks to all your characters? Some eat too much, some ask a lot of questions, some dress really well, some sloppily?

I think there's a fine line between subtle idiosyncrasies that can deepen characters' charms, and gimmicks that can feel like lazy writing. The latter can serve as a shorthand when a writer doesn't trust themselves to fully develop and showcase characters' personalities: make them talk funny or end every sentence of dialog with "y'know?" or constantly quote famous movies.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do you assign quirks to all your characters? Some eat too much, some ask a lot of questions, some dress really well, some sloppily?

Less is more, with me. Something as simple as Bobbie saying, "Yah, sometimes I get lazy'" or Jenny saying, "That's perfect," a couple of times in a chapter is all you need. It's not so much needing an unusual quirk, more so seeing a characteristic that you can use to give a character a little pop of colour.

 

[Writer61]

Do you assign quirks to all your characters?

No, and I prefer for them to evolve as I write rather than assigning them at the start.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Do you assign quirks to all your characters? Some eat too much, some ask a lot of questions, some dress really well, some sloppily?

All? No. But it's something that I include in my outlines and sometimes I put stuff there. Emily has bad texting grammar, Dafydd doesn't. She's more likely to include like as a filler word. He's more likely to use uh. Corey's bad at keeping her place in lists.

"Okay, first we have to go to the hardware store. Then we need to stop at Michael's."

"What do you need there?" / "dunno some junk" / "what's the junk for"

"project I'm starting. Where was I? Number four: we need to --"

"Three" / "what?" / "Number three, you only said two things."

That kind of thing. Probably happens every time she makes a list and gets interrupted, but how many times is that going to happen per chapter? Probably fewer than one. Katherine doesn't say "right" or "that's right" or any variation; it's always "this is true."

Some of those are assigned -- I knew Emily said like before I knew almost anything else about the character. Corey's list problem I didn't know would happen until it did.

 

[StillStunned]

In my sword & sorcery series "The Rivals", the two main characters are a mercenary called Avilia and a scholar called Sligh. When Sligh curses, he says "By the Skies!" or just "Skies!" Avilia always says "Fuck!".

Except by the fourth instalment she starts saying "Skies!" too, and he throws in the occasional "Fuck!" I doubt any of my readers noticed, but I did that deliberately to show how they're growing on each other.

 

[Britva415]

Do you assign quirks to all your characters?

Discover? Sure.

Assign? Only as a Chekhov's Gun.

There are two ideas which I like:

One is, letting characters give us their personality.

The other is, letting characters have enough un-sketched lines so that readers can project their own ideas onto them. I was just thinking yesterday about certain kinds of amateurish character descriptions. The kind which, aside numerically precise figure measurements and eye-rollingly superlative looks-related adjectives, could be police sketch artist instructions. Because such an author somehow thinks they need to impart to the reader a photo-accurate copy of what the writer has in their own mind's eye.

They don't. But this same kind of heavy-handedness can be composed of other traits besides just appearance.

In my experience, personality happens. A character's function in the plot defines or at least suggests certain things about them, and I just color within the necessary ones of those lines while being improvisatory about the coloring, the angles and the extraneous strokes I sketch in.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

First step to giving a character personality: make sure she's not a unicorn. ; )

 

[nice90sguy]

letting characters give us their personality.

This is the greatest pleasure I get from writing, when that happens

 

[NaughteeDragon]

As I've said previously, I give my characters a couple of defining traits and let that lead where it will. Today I knocked this out in prep for the Sex at Work challenge for 2026.

Michael- older twin (20 minutes). Age 32. 6’ 200#, football, wrestling, track and field in high school. Hospitality Mgmt Degree. Brown hair, clean shaven, Gregarious and outgoing. Good at sales and client interface.

Melissa- younger twin. Age 32. 5’10, 175#. Women’s basketball, lacrosse, track and field, and fine arts in high school. Cullinary Arts degree. Reddish brown hair, lightly freckled. Athletic build. Competitive, serious, bit of a perfectionist.

Evelyn- Michael’s wife. Age 34. Book-keeper/accountant. 4th of 5 children from Nebraska. Came to Colorado with a boyfriend and broke up. 5’4” 115#, thin, pale blonde hair. Fair skinned. Quiet, detail oriented. Is a huge Cornhuskers football fan.

It's not exhaustive, it doesn't need to be, but it gives me enough outline to start thinking about them as people.
The next thing is to figure out what their interpersonal background is, and how that will impact their interactions.

Twins went to school at Escoffier Cullinary arts school in Boulder. Michael went to CU on a football scholarship (partial). Melissa found Escoffier so she could stay close to Michael. He blew out his knee freshman year, changed schools with plan that he and Melissa would buy out their uncle’s catering business since he planned to retire around the time they were going to graduate.

Melissa was married right after college. When they divorced five years later, her soon to be ex tried to take the business. Twins almost lost the business trying to keep it. Melissa and Michael met at a wedding they were catering. She was the location manager. Evelyn started dating Michael as Melissa’s marriage was starting to crumble. She gave them a cash infusion from an inheritance to buy out Melissa’s ex. Signed a pre-nup so that Melissa wouldn’t think she was also after the business.

This should be enough to give me a basis for their interactions, particularly when combined with what I know about them as characters. Of course the main conflict of the story will alter that, but I have a basis to work from now.