Persona Writing Guide

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Step One: Read ALL of the information on the website – not just the rules, but any other information that is pertinent to your character's creation. This will prevent you having to re-do your character sheet because you have contradicted something in either our rules, guide or world information. You may also get some ideas about your character while doing the reading.

Step Two: Physicalities and Statistics. If you are adopting an already-existing persona, some or all of this may already be decided for you. If not, then now is the time to decide. Do not feel restricted to playing personas that are your gender or simply a carbon copy of you. We strongly recommend you play at least one persona that is NOT the same gender as you – especially as the vast majority of fan members are female, if no one played a gender other than their own, we would have almost no male personae at all!

Your description should be as detailed as possible – not just skin color, but also shade, undertones, freckles, etc. Describe the person as though you were talking to a blind person. This will help your fellow role-players when they look at your sheet – they will have an instant picture in their mind of what your persona looks like.

The best recommendation is to remember that people come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages! Experiment!

Step Three: Personality. This shouldn't be a list of traits – take the time to actually describe what the person is like. You might also think about this: how do other people perceive your persona? Describe how your persona reacts to certain situations or actions, how they treat other people, and how they respond to other's emotions.

Step Four: History. The more you write, the better. Not just because it makes the persona sheet look better, but because it will help solidify the persona in your mind and make the persona three-dimensional rather than just a piece of paper. We recommend writing at least three paragraphs – one on the persona's childhood, one on their teen years, and one on their adulthood. If the persona is still fairly young, then that last paragraph can be about their Impression, their Craft experience, or another important event. This is a minimum – again, the more you can write, the better.

Things that you can include here are key events in the persona's life, influential people in his/her life, how they got along with family members, what they did on a normal day. Also, if your character is not Weyr-bred, and is now at a Weyr, why are they there? What made them leave their home and family? Just because someone is Searched does NOT mean they have to go to the Weyr. Your persona decided to go – why?

One word of warning – your persona can't have done "everything" – so you need to keep that in mind when you write the history. Also, don't contradict yourself – maintain continuity in your persona's background. This is not to say that your persona can't grow, mature and change as they get older – but you should explain this in detail. For example, if your persona was deathly afraid of runnerbeasts as a child, don't just suddenly have the persona riding around on runners without explaining how he/she got over the fear.

Step Five: Little Details. Now is the time to fill in the little details – your character's habits and hobbies. It's better to do this here at the end after you've written up your character's personality and history because these will give you some ideas about possible habits, hobbies and idiosyncrasies.

Step Six: Name!! We put this all the way down here because this can be tough! Sometimes, as you write the persona, a name will come to you. Sometimes, you already have a name in mind and want to write a persona around that. Do whatever works! Some things to keep in mind – while you can make your name as long and as syllabic as you like, if and when you Impress, your honorific MUST BE two or three syllables, and two is preferable. No exceptions. The whole point of the honorific is to make the name faster to say during Threadfall (read CoP, "The Second Weyr") – having a long, multi-syllabic honorific defeats the entire purpose. As an example of how to take a long name and make it an honorific, the High Reaches Weyrleader's full name is Jerohajan: his honorific is J'han. It could also have been J'haj or J'roh or J'ran.

Step Seven: Read your Persona Sheet!! We can't stress this enough. Wait at least an hour or so after you've finished, then go back and read the entire sheet. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and especially contradictions! If you were still making decisions about your persona while you were writing, you may have written in conflicting information – the time to catch that is now, before you sent it to the BoD.

Step Eight: Make any changes or corrections. Then, you're ready to send the persona to the persona approval team! Keep in mind that they may still ask you to make changes. Good luck!

TIPS:

Here are some questions to get your creative juices flowing:

Where is the first place your persona heads for when they go to a Gather?

What was the weather like when you were born?

Are you more comfortable in large crowds, small intimate gatherings, one-on-one or all by yourself?

Are you left-handed or right-handed? (Please remember that, just as on Earth, more people are right-handed than left-handed.

What's your favorite food? drink? Color?

Do you like children? Animals?

Are you Type A or Type B?

Are you high-energy or laid back?

Trusting or suspicious?

Sophisticated or a "hayseed?"

Good-natured or hot-headed?

Do you like the outdoors, or are you more comfortable with indoor activities?

What basic skills do you have?

What skills are you really good at (not a Craft, just basic, everyday skills)?

What skills are you absolutely terrible at (again, not a Craft, just basic skills)?

And here is a list of clichés to avoid like the plague (unless you can prove in writing the persona sheet that you can do something different with it):