Character sheet template for your story bible
More fields do not make a better character sheet. The trick is to fill first the fields you actually look up while writing, and the ones readers notice instantly when they are wrong.
Fill these first (readers notice when they slip)
- Name, nicknames, forms of address: who calls whom what, including formal vs. casual speech.
- Age and birthday: age changes as the story moves, so record a birth date or “age N as of chapter M”.
- Appearance: only what scenes keep mentioning — eye and hair colour, scars, height.
- Voice: verbal tics, sentence endings, how they refer to themselves. This drifts first when chapters are written weeks apart.
- Abilities and limits: what they can do and, more importantly, what they cannot.
Then these (what drives the story)
- What they want and what they fear.
- Affiliation and rank: where they belong and when they move.
- Secrets: who knows, who doesn’t, and in which chapter it comes out.
- Current state: injuries, items carried, location. These change every chapter, so keep them apart.
Using the template well
- 1Don’t fill every field for everyone. Side characters need little more than a name, form of address and one line of appearance.
- 2Add fields your genre needs — “mana affinity” for fantasy, “martial art and realm” for wuxia, “job and salary” for contemporary.
- 3Separate fields that change (age, state, affiliation) from fields that don’t (name, origin).
- 4Leave blanks blank. Forced details tend to collide with the manuscript later.
Where characters usually drift
- Established early as “can’t use a sword”, swinging one in chapter 50.
- Two characters switching from formal to casual speech with no reason given.
- Age written as a bare number, so the character stays the same age years later.
Doing this in Lenu
Lenu’s character page has basic info and personality fields, and you can add groups of fields your story needs (for example “Magic”). Only filled fields show; empty ones fold away. Age can be a birth date, “age M as of chapter N”, or “ageless (gods, immortals)”.
If you want, an optional AI check can point out where a new chapter may differ from earlier settings. If you don’t use it, your manuscript never leaves the service.