Do you need easy character creator to develop new characters? Are you looking for a simple way to make characters real and vivid in your writing? Do you need visual character creator or software to assist you in exploring, building and refining your characters? Creating realistic and authentic characters is one of the most challenging and rewarding things a writer can do. Realistic characters must be multi-faceted and complex and they must appeal to readers of all kinds — that means we must create a deeply textured tapestry of traits, characteristics, emotions and behaviors.
Here are some good writing tools for character.
The Character Creator
Though this tool is titled the rather general-sounding “Character Creator,” it really encompasses just one aspect of the character: their physical appearance. However, it’s the most useful tool I’ve discovered for this particular function. Though there are plenty of “physical appearance” generators out there, they tend to just spit out a combination of traits (“curly brown hair/green eyes/freckles”) rather than actually showing you what the character would look like. I find it much more helpful to have concrete visuals of your characters as you’re writing about them — plus it’s just fun to experiment with different physical traits and see how they manifest.
Of course, you can always comb through head shots on sites like Backstage, or use images of your favorite actors or models. This may be best if you need a visual for a character who’s especially tall, short, fat, or skinny; the main drawback of Character Creator is its lack of diverse body types. But everything else is intricately customizable, from face shape to hairstyle to the wide range of accessories.
Reedsy’s Character Name Generator
After you’ve checked off character appearances, Reedsy’s character name generator should be your next stop. In the name (get it?) of full disclosure, my team created this tool, so I might be a bit biased as to how cool it is. But seriously — it’s divided by language, archetype, and even various countries’ mythologies, with over a million potential options for character names.
If you want a strong moniker for your protag, you can try out the hero name generator to find one that means something empowering, like “fighter” or “radiant.” Or say one of your characters is Korean, but you don’t speak Korean: you can use the relevant language generator to produce some authentic names. In any case, for those who agonize over picking out character names (and are sick and tired of baby name websites!), this generator is your lifeline.
RanGen’s Personality Generator
Now we’re getting into the meat and potatoes of your characters: their personalities. You’ve probably already thought about how your characters will behave and interact with one another, since character dynamics are often pretty intertwined with plot. However, you may not have considered how their outward behavior actually relates to their personality. For example, you might have a character who’s always loud, energetic, and the life of the party — but do they act that way because they’re actually very confident and secure, or because they crave attention and approval? This is where personality comes into play.
As you’re coming up with character personalities, you may wish to consult a personality generator like RanGen’s. It provides lists of qualities pertaining to a character’s friendliness, confidence, emotional capacity, intelligence, and other attributes. But of course, true to the “RanGen” name, this is a random generator — which means the traits may be completely arbitrary in relation to the characters you’ve started constructing, and even in relation to each other. For instance, I got a profile where the character’s friendliness was “callous,”yet their agreeableness was “harmonic” (needless to say, not the most compatible combination).
While character personalities don’t need to be perfectly cohesive — to paraphrase Whitman, they can contain multitudes — you probably shouldn’t have traits that clearly contradict one another. And you definitely don’t want your characters to seem cobbled together at random, especially because their experiences and environments affect them in very specific ways, which a generator cannot take into account. As a result, this tool is best used for brainstorming, rather than creating full-on character profiles.
One Stop for Writers Character Builder
Naturally, I have to give a shout out to One Stop for Writers’ super-comprehensive Character Builder. For those who haven’t tried it already, this is no average character template. Rather than merely providing the minimum number of blank spaces for you to fill in, the Character Builder walks you through the whole process and highlights the importance of connection among every aspect of your character.
You’ll start with the basics: your character’s backstory, which will emphasize how their past experience has led to their current vulnerabilities. This foundation allows you to build their personality, behavior, motivations, and more intuitively from there. Indeed, the Character Builder’s greatest strength is that it truly helps you breathe life into your characters: while all the other tools on this list will give you ideas, the Character Builder will enable you to hone those ideas into consistent, realistic, in-depth characters. Here’s a character profile built with this tool.
ARTBREEDER – BLEND YOUR OWN FREE CHARACTER PORTRAITS
If you’re looking for customizable, real-life, artsy, or cartoonish free character portraits of humans, then Artbreeder may be the resource for you!
WHAT IS ARTBREEDER?
In brief, Artbreeder is a freemium service (I’ve only used the free version) that allows you to upload images, blend them with others, and customize certain assets! You can upload images and blend them together, or take images which already exist on the site. For the portraits, there are sliders for many aspects of an image, including Age, Happiness, Anger, Mouth Open, Art Style, Phenotypes, and Gender.
Artbreeder doesn’t just make character portraits – here are the categories of images you can find and make using Artbreeder!
HOW MUCH DOES ARTBREEDER COST?
Artbreeder is a freemium service, and there’s a lot available for free! The paid service comes in several tiers starting at $8.99 per month, and offers privacy, hi-res downloads, and more image uploads and animation frames, which are limited with the free account. I confess I haven’t needed to try the paid mode, as the free account offers all the services I need!
WHAT’S THE ART STYLE OF ARTBREEDER CHARACTER PORTRAITS?
Artbreeder’s art style for character portraits varies. You can create portraits that look downright anime, like a watercolor, or like a photograph. Because it works with a neural net (aka artificial intelligence) some of the sliders create some unusual effects. One thing it’s worth mentioning is that Artbreeder does great for human characters, but it doesn’t have assets for fantasy races. Whilst you can create some monstrous things using the sliders, certainly worthy of a horror story or game, it won’t easily produce standard Tielfings and elves for you.
This World Anvil character profile shows examples of Artbreeder images both on the family tree, and as the featured image!
HOW CUSTOMISABLE IS ARTBREEDER?
Artbreeder offers a lot of customizability of image compared to other software, in terms of facial features, expression, coloring, and more. As mentioned, you can’t create the standard fantasy races with it easily, but it can still make some great and varied character portraits!
HOW EASY TO USE IS ARTBREEDER?
Artbreeder isn’t the easiest thing to use, nor does it have great support or documentation. However, with just a little bit of fiddling, you’ll be able to figure out how it works!
Story Tracker
Available for: iOS
What it’ll cost you: $9
What it does: Keeps track of your submitted stories, novels, poems, scripts, articles, blog posts… you get the idea. Not only does the app record when you submitted a piece, it can also be tagged with sent/response due/response dates, income earned, and other important details.
Why writers need it: Especially if you’re a freelancer, keeping track of what pieces you submitted when, to whom, and for how much, can get overwhelming fast. And if you’re submitting a manuscript to several different agents or publishers, it’s pretty embarrassing to query the same person twice.
Available for: iOS
What it’ll cost you: $2
What it does: Cures writers block. OK, maybe it won’t cure it, but these exercises will definitely help get your creative juices flowing again. Plus it’s fun to use, you just spin the wheel to randomly combine a plot, a subject, and a setting or style. Either use the included wheels, or edit the wheels to build entirely new scenarios (like with your own characters and settings).
Why writers need it: Writer’s block can be crippling. A really bad case can throw you off your game for weeks, and this app can help. Even if you don’t use the exact scenario the wheel chooses, it may get your brain going on a whole new brilliant story line. The mind is a mysterious thing, and sometimes we need all the help we can get because…
Conclusion
I’ve seen a lot of character development tools and character creator programs, but this is the only software I recommend. Even though it isn’t free I think it’s completely worth it because it helps you create a more detailed and realistic character.