— No More Broken Characters —

Character Sheet Template

One card per character — appearance, personality, backstory, relationships — in an 8-field version you can fill in ten minutes and a 24-field version for the people who carry the book. Every field ships with a worked example.

Use this template online

A character sheet is a card that locks down a character's appearance, personality, backstory, and relationships. In a serialized web novel running hundreds of thousands of words, keeping track of everyone's eye color or who holds a grudge against whom purely from memory is a recipe for slip-ups — and characters drift out of character (OOC) as you go. This template lays out all the fields worth recording in one place, so filling it in gives you a single source of truth you can check anytime. Apply it online and it even links up with your chapters automatically.

Template preview

Character Sheet Field Examples

Field	Example
Name / Alias	Su Wan (nickname: Wanwan)
Age / Gender	19 / Female
Appearance	Waist-length silver hair, amber eyes, a faint scar over the left brow
Personality	Cold on the outside, warm within; sharp-tongued but soft-hearted; protects others first when trouble hits
Backstory	Orphan of a military house; after the clan was wiped out, she drifted into the streets and lives off bounties
Special Ability	Echolocation — can strike with pinpoint accuracy in total darkness
Relationships	Childhood friends with Lu Chen; regards the old beggar as an adoptive father
Catchphrase / Speech Style	"So annoying." Fast-talking, short sentences, doesn't like to explain herself

Field guide

The preview above is the 8-field card. The 24 fields below are the full character profile, grouped the way you will actually fill them: who they are on paper, what they look like, what drives them, where they came from, who they know, and what the story needs from them. Each row says what to put there and shows the example character, Su Wan, filled in.

Basics

Field	What to write	Example
Name / alias	Full name, then every name other people use for them. Nicknames tell you who is close to them; titles tell you who is not.	Su Wan. Called Wanwan by Lu Chen only; the guild calls her the Silver Hound behind her back.
Age / birthday	Age at the story's opening, and the birthday if the plot or the calendar will ever need it. Write the year of birth if your world has a calendar.	19 at chapter one; born on the last night of the fog season, year 412 of the Lighthouse calendar.
Gender	How the character identifies, and how the world reads them if those differ. One line.	Female; passes as a boy when working the docks.
Height & build	Numbers only if you will use them; otherwise a comparison the reader can picture. Note anything that affects how they move.	A head shorter than Lu Chen, wiry, moves like someone used to ducking.
Affiliation	The group, house, guild, or job that claims them right now, plus any former one that still matters.	Lighthouse Keepers' Guild (courier grade). Formerly House Su, which no longer exists.

Appearance

Field	What to write	Example
Hair, eyes, skin	The three details readers will check you on. Fix them here once and stop re-deciding them in chapter 30.	Waist-length silver hair usually braided; amber eyes; pale, freckled across the nose.
Wardrobe	What they wear by default and what they wear when it matters (formal, disguise, battle). Clothing is the fastest way to show class and money.	Grey courier's coat, boots resoled twice. Owns one good dress and has worn it once.
Trademark detail	The one thing anyone would describe first: a scar, a habit, an object they never put down.	A faint scar over the left brow that she touches when she lies.

Inner life

Field	What to write	Example
Personality (three words + one caveat)	Three adjectives, then the exception that makes them a person rather than a type.	Cold, sharp-tongued, loyal — except with children, where every edge disappears.
Values / the line they won't cross	What they believe is right, and the one thing they refuse to do even when it would help. The plot will test exactly this line.	Debts are paid, always. Will never sell information about the guild, even to save herself.
Strengths	Skills and traits that solve problems in the story. Keep it to what the plot will actually use.	Echolocation: strikes with pinpoint accuracy in total darkness. Reads people fast.
Flaws & weaknesses	What gets them into trouble. A flaw the character does not see is worth more than one they apologise for.	Trusts nobody, so she does everything alone and gets hurt doing it. Cannot swim.
Fear	The thing they organise their life around avoiding. Usually connected to the defining past event below.	Being the only one left again.
Want (stated / real)	Two lines: what they say they want, and what they actually want. The gap between the two is your character arc.	Stated: enough money to leave the city. Real: someone who will notice if she does not come back.
Speech pattern	Sentence length, favourite words, what they never say, how it changes under stress. This is the field that keeps dialogue in character.	Short sentences, no explanations. "So annoying." Goes formal and polite when frightened.

Background

Field	What to write	Example
Hometown & upbringing	Where they grew up and what that place taught them. One or two lines; the worldbuilding sheet holds the place itself.	Born in House Su's compound on the eastern cliffs; raised by the household guard after age seven.
Family	Living and dead, and the character's relationship to each. Note who they would call if things went wrong.	Parents and two brothers dead in the purge. An aunt in the capital who does not know she is alive.
The defining past event	The single event that made them who they are at chapter one. Everything in Inner life should trace back to it.	The night House Su was wiped out, she hid in a cistern and listened. She has not been in a small dark space since.
Secret	What they are hiding, from whom, and what happens if it comes out. A secret with no consequence is trivia.	She is the last heir of House Su. If the crown finds out, the purge finishes.

Relationships

Field	What to write	Example
Key relationships	The three to five people who matter, with the relationship named in one or two words each. The relationship map template holds the full web.	Lu Chen — childhood friend, the only one who uses her nickname. The old beggar — adoptive father in everything but name.
Enemies & grudges	Who wants them stopped, and who they want stopped. Include grudges the character has not acted on yet.	Captain Ren of the city guard, who led the purge and does not remember her face.

Story role

Field	What to write	Example
Role in the story	Protagonist, antagonist, mentor, foil, love interest, comic relief — and what job that role does for the plot.	Protagonist. The story is about whether she lets anyone in.
State at start → state at end	One line for who they are in chapter one and one line for who they are on the last page. If the two lines match, the character has no arc yet.	Start: alone by choice, safe. End: part of the guild by choice, exposed.
One-line pitch	The character in a single sentence you could say aloud. Useful for the query letter, the back cover, and for checking that the sheet adds up.	A courier who can fight in the dark, hiding from the man who killed her family in the city he now polices.

Plain-text version (copy & paste)

The same 24 fields as a plain-text list, ready to paste into Notes, Google Docs, Notion, or an OC profile on DeviantArt or Toyhouse. The 6-field mini sheet for side characters is at the end.

■ Basics
Name / alias:
Age / birthday:
Gender:
Height & build:
Affiliation:

■ Appearance
Hair, eyes, skin:
Wardrobe:
Trademark detail:

■ Inner life
Personality (three words + one caveat):
Values / the line they won't cross:
Strengths:
Flaws & weaknesses:
Fear:
Want (stated / real):
Speech pattern:

■ Background
Hometown & upbringing:
Family:
The defining past event:
Secret:

■ Relationships
Key relationships:
Enemies & grudges:

■ Story role
Role in the story:
State at start → state at end:
One-line pitch:


■ Mini sheet — side characters (6 fields)
Name:
Role in the story:
One-line look:
One personality tell:
What they want from the lead:
Speech tell:

8 fields, 24 fields, or the 6-field mini — which one to use

8-field card (the preview table): a character you need to keep consistent. Fill it in ten minutes before they first appear.
24-field profile: the protagonist, the antagonist, and anyone with their own point-of-view chapters. Fill Inner life and Background before you draft; fill the rest as you go.
6-field mini: the innkeeper, the guard captain's second, the cousin who appears twice. Enough to keep their voice and their one distinguishing detail stable across a 300,000-word serial.

A workable cast for a novel is two full profiles, three to five cards, and as many minis as the book needs. Filling 24 fields for everyone is how people abandon the sheet by chapter five.

Character sheet, character profile, character template — the same thing?

Yes. "Character sheet" comes from tabletop games, "character profile" from writing craft books, and "character template" is what people type when they want a blank one. All three mean a fixed set of fields you fill once per character. The 24-field profile above covers what the well-known writer templates ask for (appearance, personality, backstory, motivation, relationships), with the two fields most of them skip: what the character wants versus what they say they want, and the state they are in at the start against the end.

If you came here for a tabletop-style sheet with stats and inventory, the TRPG character sheet template is the one you want.

Filling it for a whole cast without stalling

Do the protagonist and antagonist first, and do them together. Their Values and Want fields should collide; if they do not, the plot has no engine yet.
Fill Speech pattern for every named character before writing dialogue scenes with more than two people in them. That single field prevents the most common consistency complaint from readers.
Leave Secret and Fear blank until they matter. A blank field is a note to yourself; a field filled with something you do not believe becomes a rule you will break in chapter twelve.
Write the One-line pitch last. If you cannot write it, one of the earlier fields is wrong.

Posting it as an OC profile

The copy-paste version above is laid out for the places original characters get shared: a DeviantArt description, a Toyhouse profile, a Tumblr post, a Discord pinned message. Paste it, delete the fields you keep private, and you have a profile that reads as finished. For a card with the bio laid out as an image, the OC card template article shows LitMemo's character cards, which build the layout from the sheet you filled in here.

How to fill in this template

A character sheet isn't for your readers — it's for the future you. Serialized web novels easily run hundreds of thousands of words, and by the later chapters there's no way your memory holds onto what color someone's eyes are or who has a grudge against whom. A fully filled-in character card is the single source of truth you turn to whenever you need to double-check.

A good character sheet has at least three layers. The first is identifying information — name, alias, age, gender, appearance — the things you reach for over and over when writing scenes. The second is inner drive — personality, values, backstory, motivation — which determines how they choose at the pivotal moments. The third is the relationship web — the loves and grudges between them and other characters, which is where your story's tension comes from.

Two fields deserve a special warning because they trip people up the most. For "Appearance," lock down the details readers will actually remember (scars, eye color, dominant hand) — don't just write "good-looking." And "Catchphrase / Speech Style" is what makes dialogue sound like it belongs to the same person; once you have a lot of side characters, without this field you'll end up writing everyone in the same voice.

You don't have to fill it all in at once — get name, appearance, and personality down in those three cells and you're ready to start writing; backstory and relationships can come as you go. The point is having one fixed place to keep these details, instead of scattering them across a dozen notepad files.

Fill the template in four steps

1

List the basics

Start with name, alias, age, and gender — the identifying details you'll reach for most often when describing scenes and tagging dialogue.

2

Add appearance and personality

Lock down the appearance details readers will remember (eye color, scars, dominant hand), then pin down the personality with three to five keywords.

3

Write the backstory and motivation

Spell out where they came from, what they've been through, and what they want most — that's what drives their choices at the critical moments.

4

Build the relationships

Note how they relate to other characters (mentor, lover, rival) — the web of relationships is where your story's tension comes from.

Better together

Don't want to draw the table yourself? Do it with LitMemo

This template maps to these LitMemo features — fill it in online and everything auto-links:

Character Management Character Relationship Graph

Want to write it better? Start with these

Frequently asked questions

How full should a character sheet be? What if fields are blank?

Blanks are fine. Filling every field doesn't make a character three-dimensional; it tends to pile up data you never use. Start with what they want, what they fear, and what they won't admit. Add the rest when you reach it.

Do supporting characters need sheets?

Only ones with names who will appear again, and one or two lines is enough. When a supporting character's sheet grows detailed, it usually means they should be promoted to a main character or merged into someone else.

The sheet is filled in and the character still feels flat. What now?

Flatness is usually a shortage of contradiction, not of data. Give them a pair of traits that fight each other — fiercely protective yet a stickler for rules, wanting to be seen yet afraid of being judged — and scenes start growing on their own.

The character has drifted from the sheet mid-draft. Which do I change?

Usually the sheet. The version that grew while writing is typically closer to the character than what you imagined beforehand. Do go back and check whether earlier chapters stopped making sense as a result.

Is this the same as a character profile template?

Yes. Character sheet, character profile, and character template are three names for one thing: a fixed set of fields you fill once per character. The 8-field card and the 24-field profile on this page cover the fields the common writer templates use, plus want-versus-stated-want and start-state-versus-end-state, which are the two that produce an arc.

Can I download the template as a PDF or Word file?

The copy-paste block on this page gives you the full 24-field list as plain text, which pastes cleanly into Word, Google Docs, Notion, or Scrivener. If you fill the sheet in LitMemo instead, each character exports as a card image (PNG) and the whole cast exports together.

How is a character sheet for writing different from a D&D character sheet?

A tabletop sheet tracks numbers the rules need: stats, hit points, inventory, spells. A writing sheet tracks what the prose needs: how the character looks, talks, wants, and changes. LitMemo has a separate TRPG character sheet template with the stat blocks; this page is the writing one.

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