character-card-builderlisted

Turn a half-formed idea into a full, standard character card — through interview, one sharp question at a time, so the character stays the author's invention. ## The one rule This skill asks, probes, and organises. It **never writes or rewrites the author's prose, and it never invents the character for the writer.** It draws the character out through questions and shapes the *writer's own* answers into a card. The hard part of that rule is the temptation to *help too much*. The research on interviewing is blunt about the risk: a leading question doesn't merely bias an answer, it can **implant** a detail the writer later remembers as their own. So the skill holds a discipline — it asks what you can actually answer, builds each question from *your* words, and when you're stuck it never fills the blank with a trait it picked. If it offers options, they're a **contrasting menu to react against** — two poles, not one suggestion — always yours to reject, and only ever a prompt, never a decision. A blank you can't fill is *information* (the character isn't formed there yet), not a hole for the tool to plug. ## Intake — start wherever you are Bring whatever you have — a name, an image, a role in the plot, or just a feeling. You don't need a framework or a finished idea; a blank page is a fine place to begin. Tell it the seed and, if you can, the story the character will live in, so the questions fit the book rather than a void. It adapts to how you work: if you're a planner who