Character Creation Basics 3: Personality

These are all part of a coherent whole and do not have to be created or decided upon in order. I often don't do any of these in the order listed:
1. Name/pronouns/nicknames
2. Physical attributes
3. Mental/Personality attributes
4. Background
5. Your Intent
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Just like you and me, your characters will have rich personalities that are full of nuance and contradictions. However, in molding this character from your own mental clay, I find it very helpful for my sanity to narrow it down to one, essential trait. .
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Is your character shy, boisterous, rude, polite, gracious, selfish, suspicious, patient, hot-headed and/or chatty? This doesn't necessarily have to define your character and everything they do, but it helps to solidify them in your mind. .
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A helpful exercise for this is to do it for yourself, friends, family and characters from books or shows you like. If you had to narrow your best friend down to one descriptive personality trait what would it be? What about yourself? .
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Some other great resources are the Myers-Briggs, Enneagram and astrological personality charts. I don't recommend strictly using any of these to build a character off of, but they rely on boiling down complex personality traits to their base components, and that's what you need!