Character profile template for screenwriters, with an example

A character profile template is a short list of questions — name, want, need, flaw, wound, voice, arc, relationships and look — that you answer for each major character before and during a draft. Its job is to make choices you can test in scenes, not to record a biography no audience will ever see.

Below is a nine-field character sheet template you can copy, a filled example for an original character, and notes on keeping a character bible useful once the writing starts. If you are still shaping the story itself, start with the logline guide; a character profile is easier to fill once you know what the story is about.

The character profile template

Copy these fields into a document, a spreadsheet or a story bible, one block per character. Answer each in one to three sentences; if a field needs a page, the character is not decided yet.

1. Name and role — full name, what people call them, age and their function in the story (protagonist, antagonist, mentor, rival).
2. Want — the concrete, visible goal they chase in the plot. Something a camera could film them getting or losing.
3. Need — what would actually make their life better, usually something they cannot see or refuse to admit.
4. Flaw — the habit or belief that stops them reaching the need and makes the want harder.
5. Wound — the past event that taught them the flaw. Keep it to one event; it explains, it does not excuse.
6. Voice — how they talk: vocabulary, rhythm, what they never say, a phrase they repeat. Add one sample line of dialogue.
7. Arc — who they are on page one and who they are on the last page, in one sentence each. A flat arc (they stay the same and change others) is a valid answer.
8. Relationships — the three people who matter most to them and what each relationship wants from them.
9. Look — age, build, what they wear and one detail a reader will remember. Write it the way you would introduce them in an action line.

A filled example

Here is the template filled in for Ines Varga, the lead of an invented bus-depot drama. Notice how short each answer is.

• Name and role: Ines Varga, 52, called "Chief" by the drivers. Protagonist; night supervisor at a city bus depot.
• Want: to keep the night route running after the city announces it will be cut in thirty days.
• Need: to let her estranged son help her, instead of carrying every problem alone.
• Flaw: treats asking for help as failure; fixes other people's problems to avoid her own.
• Wound: her husband left when the depot went on strike twenty years ago, and she kept the house running without a word to anyone.
• Voice: short sentences, depot slang, answers questions with instructions. Never says "sorry". Sample line: "Route nine leaves at two-forty. Be on it or be a reason."
• Arc: starts as the woman who holds everything together alone; ends handing her son the keys to the depot office for one night.
• Relationships: Teo, her son (wants her to admit she is tired); Dobos, the depot manager (wants her to accept the cut quietly); Mara, a young driver (wants Ines to be the mother she does not have).
• Look: tall, gray braid, a driver's jacket two sizes too big that belonged to her husband. Carries a ring of keys she never puts down.

Each answer suggests a scene. The keys she never puts down tell you what the ending can show; the line she never says tells you where the climax can break her habit. Here is how that profile turns into an introduction on the page:

INT. CITY BUS DEPOT - OFFICE - NIGHT

INES VARGA (52), gray braid, a driver's jacket two sizes too big, works through a stack of route sheets. A ring of keys sits by her hand.

The phone rings. She lets it ring twice, picks up.

INES
Depot. Route nine leaves at
two-forty. Be on it or be a reason.

Character sheet template vs character bible

A character sheet covers one person. A character bible is the collection of every sheet plus what connects them — family trees, shared history, a timeline of who knew what and when. Feature writers often keep only sheets for the leads. Series writers usually need a bible, because writers who join later must keep each character consistent across episodes; the TV pilot guide covers what a show bible carries beyond characters.

How to use a character profile while writing

• Fill the template before the outline, but only to the depth you can defend. Unknown fields are fine; invented trivia is not.
• Test each field against a scene. If the flaw never costs the character anything on the page, it is not the flaw.
• Update it from the draft. Characters change as you write them; when the script and the sheet disagree, the script usually wins.
• Read the voice field before writing dialogue. A single sample line is often enough to stop every character sounding like you.
• Keep the look field to what an action line would say. Anything a reader cannot see in a sentence belongs in the bio, not the description.

Write it in Scenaloom

In Scenaloom, character pages are built from the cues in your script, so every speaking character already has a page with their scenes and line counts. Each page holds appearance, personality, background, goals and motivation and how they speak, with a relationships graph across the cast and an optional generated portrait or look sheet. Longer story-bible entries live in Worldview, which Scenaloom AI reads before it answers — see characters and entities, or start a project and paste your profile in.