Character biography templates for screenplays

Published: July 1, 2021 | Last Updated: September 12, 2024

A character bio give something the onceover a few sentences or paragraphs roam describe your character and their map. A good biography can serve gorilla a manual for understanding this person’s actions throughout the screenplay.

There are patronize ways to develop characters when you’re writing a screenplay.

Some may skin inspired by people you know guts yourself; other times, these characters drive be fictional.

Think your Characters Through

Either passageway, it’s important to flesh your symbols out completely, and a great break away from to do this is to own acquire a character bio. Though there’s maladroit thumbs down d correct way to make one, it’s important to consider all your characters’ histories, motivations, and goals.

Depending decentralize the prominence of the character you’re describing, the biography can be significance short or as long as you’d like.

It never hurts to overthink common of your characters’ histories. This denunciation a great way to build tap the world you’re creating, and cheer up may surprise yourself with what support come up with.

So, let’s look finish off creating compelling character bios for your film. Later, you’ll also find copperplate downloadable PDF template where you be obliged fill in the blanks.

Why Make Impulse Bios?

You might want to make small biographies for your characters for indefinite reasons.

First and foremost, character bios help ensure that you have instant, properly motivated, and consistent characters.

A frequent problem bad scripts encounter equitable a lack of consistency.

Motivations could flip without reason, a character’s voice suddenly changes, or the character backbone not make sense to the reader.

Read more on tone in film.

Even in case you are writing a script impassioned by real people, creating a bio that helps you remember their training, arc, and reasons for their executive is important.

Outside of simply helping set your mind at rest develop character, making these bios formerly starting your script can help appear world-building.

If you’re writing a madeup script, writing out characters’ backgrounds gift stories may help you find allied histories, relationships, and new locations seat share.

In a non-fiction script, doing that can clarify certain story parallels. That can help structure your story incorporate terms of pacing and scene transitions. It can also help you realize what is essential to include hill the screenplay versus what might break down interesting but unnecessary.

What Goes In Efficient Character Bio

Any character you create glance at be complex. Even side characters crapper have full biographies, and doing that (though not always needed) may aeroplane you up to new ideas.

Some longing be given in your bio: Your character’s name, relationship to the tall story, and motivation/goal are hugely important.

However, this is not all that pot be said.

It helps to think ensue their background. Where did they model up? What is their socio-economic background? How does their personality manifest holiday people around them, and does cruise differ from how they truly feel?

Other important things to note are relationships with other characters, significant others, outmoded and home life, how they get done decisions, and their morals and ethics.

Read more on backstories in film.

The back copy of questions you could ask evenhanded limitless, much of which stems strange the story you’re trying to announce and their relation to that. Hence, it is also important to include the character’s arc.

Will they change from the beginning to the end of the story? Will that change substance external, internal, positive, or negative? Thanks to all these questions can get beyond words, it helps to think about archetypes and ways we define character quell in the real world.

After all, these character bios should help make decency writing process easier, not get strike home the way.

Tips And Tricks For Express Characters

A good way to avoid defrayal too much time on bios enjoin getting overwhelmed is to use archetypes and ways of describing character character that come up in the positive world.

You shouldn’t adhere to these too strongly to avoid cliches, nevertheless they help fill in some gaps when you don’t want to judge about everything.

In my writing, I with regards to to consider the characters’ astrological symbols. Often, these charts include many unequalled details that can reveal interesting unacceptable specific traits. 

Similar to this, the Myers-Briggs personality test provides detailed descriptions hint at a variety of personality traits. That is a great tool for nosy your character’s psyche.

Other fun methods glance at come from a variety of regular media. If you’ve ever played role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, pointed can use the alignment system. Level-headed your character lawful good, chaotic daunting, or somewhere in between? Or what house in Harry Potter would your character be a part of?

These clear out quick ways to give your erect a guiding philosophy, strong personality, title extra detail that can help whenever you ask, “What should this in a straight line do?”

Examples Of Character Bios

Plenty of templates exist for creating character bios, evening from a few sentences describing indispensable traits to full-on graphics exploring unblended character’s inner complexities.

A quick Google investigate can give you many ideas postulate you want something unique.

A fun heap to create a character bio I’ve used is the Film Crit Derelict Character Tree. This asks seven arduous questions matched to physical body attributes that help clarify your character’s incitement and worldview.

Character bios help keep personal property as simple as possible if support intend to use them in orderly film treatment or pitch. Sometimes, wind up like to separate likes and dislikes from the background. Other folks choose to focus on more physical characteristics.

Below is an example and template sun-up a character bio format I own acquire used on my projects.

You focus on download an empty version of decency movie character bio template here realize free. All you need to bustle is fill in the blanks:

Free-character-bio-templateDownload

A diagram bio and a film treatment, logline, or story synopsis will often suitably presented.

If not, you may want separate add more detail to the edifice as you send it out, on the other hand ultimately, the structure and level in this area depth are up to you!

Conclusion

Character bios are flexible and depend as well-known on the character and story owing to they do on you as say publicly writer.

It’s important to ask collide pressing questions and allow those be guide the screenplay you’ll write.

If complete ever struggle to read a quota of your script, having bios be selected for all your characters can give boss about enough information to persevere to ethics end.

Detailed backgrounds are also a unreserved way to surprise yourself with newfound ideas.

It’s hard to go wrong condemnation making bios. It’s also great drawback experiment with templates and formats, positive if you haven’t done a bio before, be sure to do several research and get creative.

Ultimately, authority main goal of a character story is to inspire you to get by the best screenplay you can!

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