: Re: Is this character generator useful? After some feedback from this site and a training course, I developed a little tool to help with character generation. It's called "20 Questions" and works

@Alves689

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Some tool such as this could be useful, but I believe you are asking the wrong questions.

In my answer to the question you linked and another answer in that question by Fox Cutter, the questions we posed weren't life detail questions. They were motivation questions. There's a key difference.

I might create this shell man who gets up at 6:45 on the dot every morning, drives a car that is so small that his head constantly rubs up against the ceiling of it to work every day, drinks a cup of coffee at precisely 3 hour intervals, and leaves at precisely 5 p.m. every day, unless he has to stay late working on a presentation. Why should you care about this guy, though?

On the other hand, what if I tell you that this character has a deep-set drive to feel that his every moment is contributing to the cosmic good, and his job consists of him merely editing the sales team's answers to customer questions. At most at the end of the day he can drive home in his too-small car telling himself that he made sure the customer was clear on the order of instructions written by someone else. He's desperately afraid that he will never be able to find significant work at his current salary, which he needs to support his wife and child. All of a sudden there's a struggle. People might even identify with this guy.

Your questions need to be about

fears
desires
hopes
motivations
dreams
passions
doubts
goals

not about daily habits. We do things because we will things because we want things. Your tool should encourage me as an author to think about what my character wants, which starts the whole process off, and why he or she might not be able to get it.

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