Notebook.ai

I need help defining a character’s nature

@Purple-Cat flagThe Worldbuilder The Worldbuilder forum 3 comments schedule
flag
@Purple-Cat flagThe Worldbuilder
The Worldbuilder

Im finally going through my characters and filling their pages with the mentality that I’m going to write them in a book.

But I keep stopping and the Nature category and having no idea what to fill it with so most of the time it’s just blank.

So I wanted to ask what you guys might put in this category or when I could find other examples. Specifically things like motivations or fears or likes. They seem so simple but are alway the hardest for me.

emoji_events
@EldritchHorror-Davadio emoji_events
verified_user Mod

Motivation is a big category. A lot of that will come from your plot: what is it that motivates your character to move forward with the story? When you can define that big picture motivation, then you can begin defining smaller, more person motivations.
Likes and dislikes? These, as well as fears, might come from your characters background and surroundings. They live in a forest, so they have a fear of deep darkness, because it hides predators. They live in a water world, so they fear dry land, because they'll die. They live in a snowy environment, so they love crisp clean snow, but they hate ice because it's Sharp. Or maybe has more to do with their family background of those kinds of things. Unless likes, dislikes, and fears are integral to the plot line, they can kind of be developed as you go, so long as you keep track of them for each character.

group
@TouchOfColor group

I like to think of the nature category as something that is in close relation to the actual plot of my story. For example, my protagonist, Eris, is seeking out the truth behind an ancient mystery, so I've written her motivation as just that. I don't know that Eris is a seeker of all truths in all circumstances necessarily, but in the story I am trying to tell, that is her motivation. There are also some characters that do have one consistent motivation - "I must prove my father wrong" or "I must protect my lover" - but many characters' motivations are situation-dependent.
Also, not every field on this site is relevant and helpful to every story! If knowing your character's color is causing you stress rather than helping you write, you really should skip it. It might just be unnecessary.