# How to write character profiles A character is the *what* of a performance. The actor — the *how* — is stable across all characters. The quality of any dialogue produced in this project is bounded by the quality of the two character profiles entering it. This document describes the profile schema, the improvisation parameter, the journal mechanism, the single-source rule, and the principles that produce performable characters rather than category-shaped sketches. --- ## What a character profile is A `profile.md` is the immutable soul of a character. The actor reads it at the start of every scene the character appears in. It must contain enough specific material for the actor to inhabit the character convincingly, including for moments the profile does not specifically anticipate. A profile is **not** a back-of-the-card character sketch. A 200-line profile produces a flat performance. A 500–800-line profile, structured per this schema, produces a performance with depth. A profile is **not** a behavioural specification (a list of what the character will say). It is a *life specification* — the substrate from which the actor improvises behaviour. --- ## The single-source rule *(critical)* **Every fact and every behavioural trait lives in exactly one section. Other sections may reference it; none may restate it.** This rule is the most-violated principle of profile authorship and the source of two distinct failure modes: 1. **Over-deployment.** If a behaviour (e.g. a named technique like *"the chaplain count"*) is described in three sections — Specific Memories, Voice & Manner, and Rules for the Actor — the actor treats it as triple-reinforced and uses it on almost every turn. Pilot experiments showed a technique described in 3 sections being deployed 9 times in 13 turns. The redundancy in the profile is the cause; the over-use in the dialogue is the symptom. 2. **Internal contradiction.** If the same date or event is restated in multiple sections, authors drift between framings. Pilot experiments produced cases like *"first and only time abroad in London 1986"* in one timeline entry contradicting another entry in the same timeline describing a Philadelphia stay in 1991. The single-source rule applies to: | Content type | Canonical home | |---|---| | Bio facts (age, occupation, location, household) | **At a glance** | | Dates and event-specific factual detail | **Detailed timeline** | | Connected life-history narrative | **Background** | | Remembered moments — including conversations with dialogue | **Specific memories** | | How the character speaks | **Voice & manner** | | Habits and physical tells | **Tells & quirks** | | Pressing/probing behaviour (for interviewer-style characters) | **Productive mode** | | Locked facts | listed as references in the **Locked facts** subsection — not restated | If you find yourself writing the same fact in two sections, pick the canonical home and reference from the other. --- ## No analyst labels in actor-visible profiles *(critical)* The actor reads the profile and treats everything in it as candidate vocabulary. If the profile uses analyst labels like *"hedges,"* *"fumbles,"* or *"marketing-precision honesty"* to describe the character's behaviour, the actor re-emits those labels in the character's thinking and speech. Pilot experiments produced cases like Maria's thinking containing the phrase *"Marketing-precision honesty"* verbatim from her own profile — second-order narration of the performance instead of first-order character interiority. The rule: **describe what the character does, in the words the character would use, not in the analyst's word for the pattern.** | Don't write | Do write | |---|---| | *"Confidence under uncertainty: hedges"* | *"When she doesn't know, she slows down. She says 'I think,' 'I'm not sure,' 'I'd have to think about it.' She rarely says 'I don't know' as a reflex."* | | *"Embellishment: low. Marketing-director precision."* | *"She does not gild stories. When she's unsure she says she's unsure rather than filling."* | | *"Honesty under pressure: high."* | *"When challenged, she does not lie. She may slow down or ask a question back. She does not change the subject."* | | *"He calls this 'the chaplain count.'"* (and described in 3 sections) | Once, in Voice & manner: *"After a heavy admission he sits in silence for several seconds before speaking — long enough for it to register as deliberate stillness, not drift."* No name. No restatement. | The forbidden vocabulary in any character-facing profile section includes: *hedges, fumbles, free zone, locked fact, hedged zone, texture, improvisation parameter, three-zone,* and any internal-named-technique that would invite per-turn re-tagging by the actor. Methodology documents (like this file) and coordinator-only notes can use these terms freely. **Actor-visible materials cannot.** --- ## Required sections Every profile must include the following, in this order. Each is described in more detail in `characters/_template/profile.md`. ### 1. Front matter (YAML) ```yaml --- slug: type: character status: active created: YYYY-MM-DD last_reviewed: YYYY-MM-DD --- ``` ### 2. Essence (one line) A single sentence the actor can read in two seconds. Not a tagline; a compressed identity claim. ### 3. At-a-glance table Age, pronouns, location, citizenship, language(s), occupation, family configuration, the structural fact that defines this character's current situation. **This is the single canonical home of bio facts.** ### 4. Background 2–5 paragraphs of life history. **Single canonical home for connected life-history narrative.** ### 5. Detailed timeline A year-by-year (or event-by-event) list. **Single canonical home for dates and event-specific factual detail.** ### 6. Financial / material picture *(if relevant)* Assets, liabilities, income, advisors, beneficiary structures. Include only what the character would themselves know — and explicitly note what they don't. ### 7. Family / key people in their life Each named person with relationship, age, location, one sentence on how this character feels about them, one or two specific facts. Reference, don't restate, what's in Specific Memories. ### 8. Values & worldview With the **seams** — places where values pull in different directions. ### 9. Specific memories 6–10 concrete remembered moments. **Single canonical home for remembered moments and dialogue.** Conversations with dialogue belong here, not in a separate "Conversations" section. (Earlier versions of this template had both; the duplication was the cause of dialogue over-emphasis in pilot experiments. The Conversations section has been removed.) ### 10. Money story in detail Their relationship to money. Reference, don't restate, the Financial section dollar figures. ### 11. The recent week Day-by-day account of the days leading up to the scene. **Single canonical home for what they did this week.** ### 12. Voice & manner How this character speaks, in concrete phrasings. **No analyst labels.** The actor performs from this section more than any other. ### 13. Improvisation & response style Four subsections: - **Locked facts** — a *reference list* (pointing at the canonical sections), not a restatement. - **What they improvise freely** — kinds of detail the character invents naturally, described in plain language. - **What they hedge on** — questions outside their experience, with the character's own hedge phrasings. - **How they handle uncertainty** — short prose paragraph, concrete behaviours, no parameter labels. ### 14. Fears & motivations What keeps them up at night, what would make them act, refuse, what "doing it right" looks like. ### 15. No-go topics & sensitivities With one specific phrase or behaviour per topic. ### 16. Tells & quirks 5–12 specific habits. One specific thing per bullet. **Single canonical home for habits and physical tells.** ### 17. Stance toward outsiders Tech comfort, trust posture, what opens quickly vs. stays closed, what makes them shut down vs. open up. ### 18. Productive mode *(required for interviewer-style characters)* For any character whose role in scenes is to draw the other person out (journalists, investigators, therapists, etc.), this section is non-optional. See *"The productive-mode requirement"* below. ### 19. Rules for the actor Numbered, terse. Anything beyond what the system prompt and the rest of the profile covers. **Short.** Do not restate Voice & manner or Productive mode here. --- ## The productive-mode requirement *(critical for interviewer characters)* A character whose job in a scene is to produce material from the conversation must have **two modes** described in the profile, not one. Restraint and patience are half the job. Pressing and following up are the other half. Pilot experiments showed an interviewer character with only the restraint mode described — patience, silence, echo, "don't pitch" — winding down at 55–65% of the soft cap, treating substantive moments as graceful exits rather than openings, and producing dialogue too thin to support the article that the character was nominally producing. The character's profile celebrated the listening half of journalism and forgot the producing half. The Productive mode section must describe, concretely: - **When they press, and how** — specific moves used when the room has gone quiet too long. - **What they do with a half-opened door** — when the subject hints and stops. - **Signals that the room hasn't yielded enough yet** — what they notice, and what they do. - **When they choose to wind down vs. push for more** — the wind-down is the last move of a productive interview, not the safe move when restraint hasn't yielded yet. Without this section, an interviewer-style character defaults to restraint in every scene. With this section, the character has the second gear that real working professionals in this role have. --- ## The journal Every character has a `journal.md` alongside their `profile.md`. The journal is: - **Append-only.** Older entries are never edited. - **Written in the character's first-person voice.** Reflective, intimate, slightly diary-like. - **One entry per scene the character has been in.** Dated. - **Read by the actor at the start of every scene.** This is how the character "remembers" prior performances. - **Written by the actor at the end of every scene.** The coordinator saves it; the actor produces the content while still in the character. The journal is what makes characters feel persistent rather than re-rolled each session. After several scenes, a character's journal becomes substantial — and the character behaves like someone who has lived through those scenes. For a new character, the journal starts empty (just a one-line marker indicating where entries will be appended). --- ## Principles ### Specificity beats summary *"They have a pet"* fails. *"They have a cat named Pancake who sleeps on the heating vent"* succeeds. The specific concrete detail produces a performable behaviour; the summary produces nothing. ### Show, don't tell Don't write *"this character is anxious."* Write *"they check their phone every two minutes when waiting for a reply."* The actor performs behaviour; behaviour is the substrate. ### Cultural seams must do load-bearing work If a character is from a particular culture, the culture must change what they actually do or say — not just provide a few decorative phrases. A character labelled *"Japanese"* who behaves identically to a character labelled *"American"* is mis-specified. ### Recent material matters more than distant material Behaviour in a scene is shaped more by what the character did yesterday than by what they did in 2009. The Detailed Timeline and Recent Week sections should both be substantial, but the Recent Week is what the actor draws on most frequently. ### Quotes the character remembers having said are more useful than descriptions of their views *"She believes in equal treatment of children"* is thin. *"Last Thursday she told her sister, 'I don't care if it's traditional, the boys and the girls will get the same'"* is performable. ### The Improvisation section is non-optional Profiles without this section produce one of two failure modes: characters who refuse all unseen questions (robotic), or characters who invent confidently against the profile (incoherent). The section is what separates a profile that works from a profile that doesn't. ### The Productive-mode section is non-optional for interviewer characters If the character's role in scenes is to draw the other person out, the profile must describe both restraint and production. A profile that gives only restraint produces an unproductive interviewer who looks patient and gentle but goes home with nothing usable. --- ## Common authorship failures | Failure | Symptom in performance | Fix | |---|---|---| | **Sparse profile** | Actor invents facts on the fly that contradict each other across the scene | Enrich; aim for 500–800 lines; add Specific Memories, Money Story, Recent Week | | **No Improvisation section** | Either robotic (*"I don't know"*) or incoherent (confidently invented facts) | Add the three-part structure (Locked / Improvises freely / Hedges on) plus the uncertainty paragraph | | **No Productive-mode section (interviewer)** | Character closes early, never presses, looks gentle but extracts nothing | Add a Productive mode section with concrete pressing behaviours | | **Same fact in multiple sections** | Drift between framings; over-deployment of the most-restated material | Apply the single-source rule; pick the canonical home; reference from elsewhere | | **Analyst labels in actor-facing sections** | Character emits the labels (*"marketing-precision honesty,"* *"hedges,"* etc.) in their own thinking and speech | Replace labels with concrete prose descriptions of the behaviour | | **Same dialogue in Specific Memories AND a separate Conversations section** | Actor reproduces the dialogue verbatim when the topic arises (load-bearing magnet) | Removed: the Conversations section. Dialogue lives in Specific Memories only | | **Named technique described in 3+ sections** | Actor labels every instance of the technique (e.g. *"the chaplain count"* ×9 in 13 turns) | Describe the technique once, in Voice & manner, with no name. If the character has a private name, mention it once and never restate | | **Generic Voice & manner** | Character sounds like every other character | Add specific phrases, specific hedges, specific pushback patterns — in the character's own words | | **Decorative culture** | Cultural label has no behavioural consequence | Identify a structural decision the character's culture changes; bake it into the profile | | **All "nice" characters** | Performances feel synthetic and cooperative | Some characters should be difficult, withholding, dismissive, or lying for hidden reasons | --- ## When in doubt Default to **more specific, more recent, more verbatim, single-sourced.** A profile that feels excessive to write usually produces a character that feels right to perform. A profile that feels efficient to write usually produces a character that feels flat. The actor cannot inhabit what is not on the page. The actor can also not avoid re-emitting what is on the page in the wrong words — so the wrong words must not be on the page.