Free Character Profile Template for Writers & Creators |

Compelling characters are at the heart of every great story.

As a writer, screenwriter, game designer, or storyteller, you know that well-rounded, believable characters can make or break your project. But as you begin writing, how do you keep track of all those little details that give a character depth?

A character profile template is a simple yet effective way to ensure your characters are consistent, engaging, and true to the world you’re building. By filling out a character profile, you create a clearer picture of your character’s appearance, eye color, background, education, motivations, best friends, quirks, long-term goals, and everything else that makes them come to life on the page or screen.

In this blog post, you’ll find useful character profile templates that can help you build believable, compelling characters and keep them sharp through every plot twist.

What are Character Profile Templates?

Character portfolio or character profile templates are pre-made layouts that help writers organize everything about a character in one place, from their physical traits and backstory to their personality, relationships, goals, childhood experiences, and unique traits. They’re designed to help you fully flesh out a character, inside and out.

For example, you’re not just writing ‘Sarah is brave.’ With these storyboard templates, you go deeper: Why is she brave? Maybe she grew up protecting her younger siblings or extended family. What are her flaws? Maybe she hides her fears by cracking jokes. What is her dream job, what’s her biggest accomplishment, what scares her, and how does she talk when she’s nervous?

What Makes a Good Character Profile Template?

An effective character profile template goes beyond asking surface-level details. Instead, it helps you think like your character so they act, speak, and grow in a way that feels real and true to your story.

Here’s what makes a great one:

• Prompts with depth: Prompts you to ask meaningful questions that add depth to your characters, such as ‘What past event still shapes them?’
• Room for nuance: Lets you explore contradictions, like a character who’s confident at work but insecure in relationships
• Story-relevant questions: Helps you answer things that directly affect your plot or scenes, like how they react under pressure or speak when angry
• Customizability: Adds uniqueness to your work by letting you tweak or add fields to match your genre, writing style, or process
• Collaboration-friendly: Supports teamwork with comments, shared access, and virtual whiteboards for brainstorming if you’re co-writing or working with editors
• Compatible with writing tools: Templates that integrate with book writing software make it easier to keep your character development aligned with your manuscript

14 Free Character Profile Templates 

Now let’s explore some free character profile templates that help you create characters with distinguishing features your audience won’t forget.

1. Book Planning Template

Whether you’re outlining your first chapter or tracking your character arcs, the Book Planning Template helps you break the process into clear, manageable steps. 

Add Custom Statuses like Prewriting, Writing, Revision, Editing, and Publishing, so you can visually track where each scene or chapter stands.

The template offers multiple Kanban Boards tailored to different stages of the writing process. The Plots Board is where scenes are arranged by their role in the story structure: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, or Resolution. If you’d rather view scenes by chapter, switch to the Chapters Board.

2. Story Outline Template

When you’re preparing for a storytelling-based presentation, ’s Story Outline Template helps you organize all the ideas, research, and plots in one place. 

The Story Stages List View lets you organize a novel or story project by scenes and plot structure. Each group represents a key story milestone or scene setting, and within each group are individual tasks that represent specific moments in the story.

Alternatively, you can use a Kanban-style layout where each column represents a stage or event in the story’s progression. It is ideal for visualizing the story arc, rearranging scenes easily, and keeping track of what has been written versus what is still in progress.

And when you’re running short on time or inspiration, you have ’s built-in AI editor, Brain, to help you out. Using AI prompts, you can explore additional angles for your storytelling, beyond the most obvious ones. As your brainstorming partner, it also helps you with character dialogues, scene descriptions, and improving the overall narrative flow.

Moreover, Brain gives you critical feedback on your work to help you refine it further.

3. Storyboard Template

Directing a short film, scripting cut scenes for a video game, or planning an animated series, but struggling to lay it all out visually?

The Storyboard Template is a beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop whiteboard template that provides six structured frames, mirroring a classic storytelling arc: Exposition, Conflict, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution, and an additional Exposition block for flashbacks or secondary plots.

Each scene panel includes dedicated space for Action, Dialogue, and Audio + FX, so you can map what happens, what’s said, and how it sounds. The template is also color-coded and visually intuitive, making it easy to follow even for first-time users. 

4. Story Planning Template

What if every character in your story had a digital profile with values, flaws, powers, and pet peeves? The Story Planning Template helps you do that. 

This brainstorming template provides detailed character lists that outline traits for protagonists, antagonists, and other characters, highlighting their goals, values, dark sides, and leadership styles. Scene breakdowns help you track the sequence of events and which characters are involved in each one. 

With the List View, you can organize your entire plot, track revision stages, and manage each story element like tasks on a to-do list. And the Doc View allows you to write character backstories and external conflicts, scene drafts, or other notes and link them to your main planning board. 

5. Game Design Document Template

Successful game developers map out everything before the first pixel is drawn or a single line of dialogue is written, from mechanics and story arcs to soundtracks and boss battles. 

You can do the same with ’s Game Design Document Template. 

Start by using Docs to describe your game type (e.g., platformer, RPG, FPS). Also, mention your target audience, platform (mobile, PC, console), and what makes your game unique.

Docs give you a clean, distraction-free space to brainstorm everything from genre and theme to unique gameplay mechanics. You can break your doc into sections, such as ‘Story Premise,’ ‘Target Audience,’ or ‘Gameplay Loops, ’ and use headers, checklists, and bullet points to stay organized. 

You can also use ’s Collaboration Detection feature to work seamlessly with your team in real time. Whether you’re editing a doc or dropping comments, it shows you exactly who’s viewing, typing, or making changes, so nothing overlaps.

6. Book Proposal Template

Writing the book is hard enough, but convincing someone to publish it? That’s another challenge. The Book Proposal Template helps you build a solid, professional proposal highlighting your book’s potential.

It walks you through the critical parts of a book proposal: your book’s objective summary, outline, sample chapters, and your background as an author.

Custom Views in make it easy to manage more than just the writing part of your proposal. You can start in Doc View to draft your summary, market analysis, and pitch details. 

Then, switch to List View to break the proposal into tasks like ‘Write author bio’ or ‘Attach sample chapters,’ and check them off as you go.

7. PDF Character Profile Template by Dabble

The PDF Character Profile Template by Dabble is a detailed, fill-in-the-blanks-style template that helps you flesh out your characters so they’re no longer strangers. 

Instead of vague questions like ‘What’s their backstory?’, you get writing prompts that dig deep into demographics, psychology, communication style, relationships, and character growth.

8. Character Profile Template by Twinkl

The Character Profile Template by Twinkl serves as an educational tool to help young writers develop characters for creative writing assignments and story planning.

It not only focuses on how a character looks or sounds, but it also explores why they act the way they do. Students also get a space to visualize their character, whether through a hand-drawn sketch, a pasted reference image, a nickname, or even a mood board.

9. Character Profile Breakdown Template by Set Hero

The Character Profile Template by Set Hero is a structured worksheet designed to help screenwriters build detailed, believable characters. There’s a balance of structured fields and open space so you can go deep with layered descriptions.

In addition to general information, such as birth date and hair color, there’s a ‘Personality’ section that focuses on how the character interacts with others. The ‘Inner Psyche’ lets you explore their internal world, including emotions, ambitions, beliefs, and personal goals. 

10. Game Character Profile Template by Milanote

Milanote’s Game Character Profile Template gives you a visual, structured space to develop characters with rich backstories, distinct personalities, and design elements that support gameplay and narrative.

The process starts with choosing your character’s archetype and building the backstory. Next comes appearance and style, where you can include sketches, armor designs, clothing styles, or facial expressions. 

This template also lets you map how the character moves, fights, and reacts to the world around them.

11. Character Traits Book Template by TPT

The Character Traits Book Template by TPT is a fun, easy-to-use tool that helps students analyze the characters they read about. It guides them through things like what the character looks like, what they like or dislike, their personality traits, who they’re connected to, and what challenges they face in the story. 

It’s perfect for book reports or reading assignments because it encourages students to explore not just what the character does, but why they do it.

12. Blank Character Profile Template by TPT

The Blank Character Profile Template by TPT is designed to help students with character development and analysis. 

The ‘Physical Appearance’ section lets you describe your character’s look. And right beside it, there’s a blank box inviting you to draw a picture.

There’s also a section for ‘Important Quotes’, which is perfect for storing your character’s signature lines or internal mantras. For example, if your heroine always says, ‘If I want something different, I have to become someone new,’ that could influence how she handles conflict and motivation.

13. Character Profile Form Template by JotForm

The Character Profile Form Template by JotForm uses a form-like format where you can add or modify fields to match the details you want for your characters, like physical traits, personality, backstories, and relationships.

Once you’ve set it up, you can start filling in the information for each character, which helps you keep things consistent throughout your project. To add depth to each character, the template includes specific fields to capture their economic status, religious beliefs, political views, as well as their hobbies and interests.

If you’re working with a team, you can also share the form to gather input from others.

14. Character Profile Template by Jotterpad

Jotterpad’s Character Profile Template feels like opening a scrapbook for someone who’s about to star in your next story.

At the top, you’ve got space for a photo or sketch—either draw your character from scratch or paste a Pinterest reference. Below that, this character template flows into a tidy, bordered table with straight-to-the-point prompts like Name, Age, Place of Birth, and Nationality. 

What sets this template apart is its balance of simplicity and depth. It doesn’t overwhelm you with many fields, but it gives you just enough structure to spark ideas and build momentum.

Bring Your Stories and Characters to Life With

Whether you’re creating a gritty anti-hero with a criminal record, a lovable sidekick, or a complex main character with layers of internal conflicts, strong characters are what make stories unforgettable. But keeping each character’s life details straight? That’s where it gets difficult.

With the right character profile template, you can organize your entire creative process, from backstory to dialogue quirks. ’s templates take the process a step further by letting you collaborate with editors or co-writers and keep every detail connected.

Sign up for today to make character development easier, faster, and way more organized.

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