Character sheet template
A character sheet template holds what you need to know about a character before you write them: what they want, what hurts them, how they speak and what changes over the novel. This character profile template is free, with no sign-up. Fill it in here. It saves in your browser, and you can download it as Word, PDF or Markdown.
Character sheet
What you type is saved only in this browser. It never reaches us. Delete removes it.
Example: Emma Bovary's character sheet
Here is the full sheet for Emma Bovary, the protagonist of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), now in the public domain. Watch her eyes: their color changes across the book. This sheet helps you catch it.
Identity
- Name
- Emma Bovary, born Emma Rouault. The narrator nearly always calls her “Emma.”
- Aliases and nicknames
- “Madame Bovary.” Careful: the book has three: Emma, Charles's mother, and Héloïse, Charles's first wife.
- Age and occupation
- A young bride when her story opens. She keeps house for a country doctor.
Drive
- What they want
- A life like the novels she read at the convent: passion, luxury, Paris.
- What they need
- To see the life she has as it is, and stop waiting for someone to rescue her from it.
- The wound
- A convent education full of romantic novels. Marriage looks nothing like what she read.
- The lie they believe
- That happiness is what the books describe, and that some man can give it to her.
- Their fear
- An ordinary life that repeats itself until the end.
- Their flaw
- She spends and borrows to live the life she imagines.
Voice
- How they speak
- In phrases borrowed from novels when she talks about love. Curt with Charles.
Look
- Physical traits
- Black hair parted in the middle. Eyes: brown, black or blue depending on the scene (see “Facts that change”).
- Gestures and clothes
- She bites her lips when she falls silent.
Past
- Origin and family
- Daughter of old Rouault, a farmer at Les Bertaux. Her mother is dead. She was educated by the Ursuline nuns in Rouen.
- Secret
- Her lovers and her debts to the merchant Lheureux. Charles knows nothing.
Arc
- Starting point
- A new bride in Tostes, bored and sure that real life is happening somewhere else.
- End point
- She does not change: ruined and abandoned, she poisons herself with arsenic (Part III, ch. 8). Her arc is a fall.
Relationships
- Allies
- Félicité, her maid. Justin, the apothecary's apprentice, who adores her in silence.
- Rivals
- Lheureux, who sells to her on credit and ruins her.
- Key relationship
- Charles, her husband, who adores her without understanding her.
Facts
- Fixed facts
- Married to Charles Bovary. Mother of Berthe.
- What they know and since when
- From Rodolphe's letter (Part II, ch. 13), she knows he will not take her away.
Facts that change
| Chapter | What changes |
|---|---|
| Part I, ch. 9 | Moves from Tostes to Yonville-l'Abbaye, pregnant. |
| Part II, ch. 3 | Her daughter, Berthe, is born. |
| Part II, ch. 9 | Her affair with Rodolphe begins. |
| Part II, ch. 13 | Rodolphe leaves her with a letter. |
| Part III, ch. 1 | Her affair with Léon begins, in Rouen. |
| Several scenes | Her eyes are brown, black or blue. Mistake or intent? Note it and decide. |
| Part III, ch. 8 | Dies of arsenic poisoning. |
How to fill in a character sheet
A sheet is useful when you check it while you write. A questionnaire with two hundred questions gets filled in once and never opened again. That is why this sheet comes in two sizes.
- Start with the quick sheet. What they want, what they need, their wound and the lie they believe drive the scenes. Hair color can wait.
- Pick the role. An antagonist does not have a “need”: they have their reasons. A supporting character exists to change something in the protagonist, and if they change nothing, you may not need them.
- Write short sentences. A sheet you can read in a minute gets checked. A ten-page one does not.
- Move to the full sheet as the character grows: appearance, past, relationships and what they know at each point.
- Note the chapter for every fact that changes: a move, an injury, a secret coming to light. Then you know what was true at each point in the novel.
What Emma Bovary's sheet teaches
Flaubert spent five years on Madame Bovary, and still Emma's eyes are brown on one page, black on another and blue on a third. A sheet with fixed facts and facts that change makes you decide: either the change is intentional, or it is a mistake readers will notice. We tell the full story in continuity errors in famous novels.
Look at the aliases too. The book has three women called “Madame Bovary”: Emma, Charles's mother and his first wife. If you note every name on the sheet, you know who each scene means.
From the sheet to your Journzy story bible
The fields on this sheet are the fields of your story bible in Journzy. Journzy uses the aliases to find the character in your scenes and shows you where they appear. On the Author plan, the continuity checker compares each scene with the sheet and shows you the quote when something does not fit.
What should a character sheet include?
What drives the character and what readers must recognize: what they want, what they need, their wound, how they speak, and how they start and end. The full version adds look, past, relationships and the facts that change, with their chapter.
Where are my entries saved?
Only in your browser, on this device. It never reaches us. If you delete the character or clear your browser data, it is gone, so download the sheet when you finish it.
Can I keep several characters?
Yes. Create a new character for each one and switch between them with the selector. Each keeps its own role, sheet size and answers.
Which formats can I download?
Word (.docx), which LibreOffice and Google Docs also open; Markdown, which you can paste into Notion or Obsidian; and PDF through “Print or save as PDF.” Download it empty and you have a sheet to fill in by hand.
A story bible that keeps up with your manuscript
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