Deep character builder with contradictions

Build a believable fictional character with wants, fears, contradictions, a voice and a secret, ready to drop into your story.

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Prompt template
Help me build a fully realized character for a {{medium}}.

Basics: {{basics}}
Story role: {{role}}
Genre and world: {{world}}
Depth level: {{depth}}

Create a character profile with these sections:
- Snapshot: name, age, occupation, and a vivid first impression in two sentences
- What they want (external goal) and what they need (internal need), and how these clash
- Core fear and the lie they believe about themselves
- Three contradictions that make them feel human, each shown through a concrete behavior
- Voice: how they talk, three sample lines of dialogue, and words or rhythms they would never use
- A habit, object or ritual that reveals character without explanation
- A secret and the moment it is most likely to surface
- Key relationships: two people who see them differently
- How they would change across the story, and what would stop them

Be specific and unexpected. Prefer concrete detail over personality adjectives, and avoid backstory clichés such as a dead parent unless I asked for one. Finish with five questions I should answer to decide where this character goes next.
Example output
**Snapshot:** Ines Valdar, 46, mechanic on the Karrow Island ferry. She smells faintly of diesel and peppermint, and she answers every compliment by pointing out what is still broken. **Want / need:** She wants the ferry to keep running without anyone noticing her work. She needs to be relied on openly, which would mean admitting she wants to be. **Fear and lie:** Fear of being the reason something fails. Lie: "If I am invisible, I cannot be blamed." **Contradictions:** - Meticulous with engines, careless with her own unopened mail, which she stacks under the kettle. - Gruff to adults, endlessly patient with children who wander into the engine room. - Hates gossip yet knows everyone's secrets from what they leave in the ferry lost-and-found. **Voice:** Short, dry sentences. "It runs. Don't thank it." / "Ask me tomorrow." / "That's not a problem, that's a Tuesday." She never says "sorry"; she says "my fault." She would never use "amazing" or "journey." **Ritual:** She taps the engine room door twice before entering, and wipes her hands on a rag she keeps even when they are clean. **Secret:** Years ago she signed off a repair she was unsure of. Nothing happened, and she has never forgiven herself. It is most likely to surface during a storm crossing, when the same part starts to rattle. **Relationships:** - Captain Roe, who sees her as the island's quiet backbone and tries to pay her more than she accepts. - The protagonist, a young deckhand, who sees her as a closed door that sometimes opens a crack. **Arc:** She moves from refusing thanks to accepting one in public. What stops her is the fear that being seen means being blamed, and the moment the engine fails, she has to choose between hiding and speaking. **Questions for you:** 1. What failure does the story force her to face? 2. Who thanks her first, sincerely, and how does she react? 3. Does the protagonist learn the secret from her or from someone else? 4. What does she do with her unopened mail when it finally matters? 5. Does she stay on the island at the end, or leave?

Why it works

The want-versus-need clash and the contradictions are what stop a profile from reading like a list of traits. Paste the result back later and ask the model to write a scene that tests the secret.

Licensed CC0 (public domain) Version 1 · history