Character Board Template

A character questionnaire tells you their eye colour. It won’t tell you what they want.

Most character sheets are inventories: height, birthday, favourite food. Useful for continuity, useless for drama. This template asks the questions that actually generate scenes - what they want, what they need, what they’re prepared to lose - and puts every character on one Board so you can see how they pull against each other.

What’s in the character board template

A profile card per character, plus the connections between them.

• Identity Card: Name, age, role in the story and the one line you’d use to introduce them.

• Want vs Need: The goal they’re chasing and the thing they actually require - the gap between them is the arc.

• Wound & Backstory: What happened before page one, and only the parts that still bite.

• Flaw & Contradiction: The trait that costs them something, and the inconsistency that makes them real.

• Arc: Who they are at the start, at the midpoint, and at the end.

• Voice: How they speak, what they never say, and the word that’s theirs alone.

• Physicality & Presence: Appearance and habit, kept to what the reader needs to see.

• Relationship Map: Every character connected on the Board - allegiance, rivalry, debt and history, drawn rather than described.

• Appearances: Which scenes they’re in, linked to the pages in your Draft.

• Canon Notes: The continuity details you’ll contradict in chapter thirty if you don’t write them down.

Why build your characters in Skrib?

A folder of character documents is a filing system. A Board is a cast.

• See the Relationships: Drag cards, draw the links, and find the two characters who never actually meet.

• Cards Link to Scenes: Open a character and jump to where they appear in the Draft, or the other way round.

• Continuity You Can Search: Named her sister in chapter two? Search the Library and you’ll find it in seconds, not in a review.

• Built for the Long Haul: Series, sequels and multi-book canon stay consistent because the bible doesn’t live in your memory.

• Faces and References: Upload images, mood boards and research straight onto the Board.

Who is this character profile template for?

• Novelists building a cast before and during the first draft.

• Screenwriters and Playwrights who need characters who earn their scenes.

• Game Writers keeping a canon straight across branching paths and NPCs.

• Fan Writers mapping established canon and relationship arcs in a shared world.

• Serial Authors tracking a hundred installments’ worth of continuity.

Build a cast, not a filing cabinet

Drop the template on your Board, fill in one character, and watch the rest of the story move.