The Only AI Prompt Fiction Writers Need for PERFECT Story Characters

Main Idea

The video presents a detailed AI prompt for developing one fictional character at a time. It combines a genre-aware story brief, personality sliders that can shift with circumstances, and a structured character-arc outline. Major characters receive in-depth profiles, while minor characters get concise summaries.

How the Prompt Works

1. Provide Genre Information

Include relevant genre tropes in the prompt, since genre conventions can influence which kinds of characters fit the story.

2. Set Each Character’s Baseline Personality

The prompt uses roughly 15 sliders to describe traits that can shift depending on a character’s circumstances. Each slider runs from −10 to +10, with descriptive anchors at −10, −5, 0, +5, and +10. The AI can choose intermediate values.

Examples include:

• Stress ↔ calm
• Fear ↔ courage
• Suspicion ↔ trust
• Callousness ↔ empathy
• Impulsivity ↔ self-control
• Dominance ↔ submission
• Pessimism ↔ optimism
• Introversion ↔ extroversion
• Gut-driven ↔ logic-driven
• Detail-focused ↔ big-picture thinking
• Cautiousness ↔ risk-taking
• Seriousness ↔ humor
• Deception ↔ honesty
• Stability ↔ sensitivity or ego fragility
• Shame ↔ self-worth

These scores are baselines, not fixed traits. A character’s levels can fluctuate throughout the story or from chapter to chapter. For example, their stress may rise under pressure.

3. Include a Story Dossier and Character-Specific Notes

Provide a high-level overview of the story so the AI can draw on relevant information rather than invent unrelated details. A typical dossier includes a plot summary, character list, and world-building and setting details.

Add any character-specific information to preserve, such as backstory, personal struggles, or physical features.

4. Generate a Character Sheet

Ask the AI to use the dossier to determine whether the selected character is major or minor.

For a major character, request:

• Physical description and story role
• Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, and CliftonStrengths profiles
• Core motivation or heart’s desire
• Pre-story background
• A distinctive quirk, hobby, or other interesting detail
• Dialogue style
• Baseline scores for every personality slider
• A character arc

The prompt is designed to provide more detail for major characters than for minor ones.

5. Map the Major Character’s Arc

For a major character, outline:

• Beginning: How the character starts and what they have yet to learn or do.
• Ending: How they have changed by the end. The change may be positive or negative; not every character needs a happy ending.
• Inciting push: What draws them into the plot and out of their ordinary, comfortable world.
• Midpoint: A moment when they become more proactive or undergo a significant shift.
• Climax: A moment when they fully embrace or complete the change central to their arc.

The host cautions the AI against inventing major story information that is absent from the dossier.

6. Keep Minor-Character Output Concise

For a minor character, request just two or three sentences covering their background, core desire, and relationship to the plot.

7. Specify the Output Format

Request Markdown containing only the information asked for: a structured profile for a major character or a short description for a minor character, without a preamble or extra commentary.

Additional Points

• The prompt is intended to be run separately for each character, building a set of character documents over time.
• The host says the slider approach helps characters feel less generic by letting their behavior and emotional state change in response to events.
• He credits the concept behind the slider technique to the Future Fiction Academy, while noting that he adapted the idea himself and had not seen their actual prompts.
• The host briefly promotes his writing community and prompt waitlist, and says he plans to demonstrate automating the character-development process in a future video.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• The Nerdy Novelist: The video host who presents and explains the prompt. The video metadata identifies the channel owner as Jason Hamilton.
• Future Fiction Academy: Cited by the host as the source of the slider-technique concept; no representative is heard in the subtitles.