# Character Design

> Design characters as the intersection of world and story — psychology, motivation, contradiction, arc potential, and how the world shapes who they are. Use when creating characters, when characters feel generic or disconnected from their setting, or when the step from world-bible to person-in-world hasn't been taken.

- Skill: `npbuilds/character-design` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add npbuilds/character-design`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/npbuilds/character-design/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: npbuilds (https://skillmd.com/u/npbuilds)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/npbuilds/character-design

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# Character Design — Where World Becomes Person

Characters are produced by worlds — shaped by culture, economics, religion, and magic system access. Simultaneously, characters are how readers experience worlds. This skill bridges worldbuilding (systems) and writing (consciousness).

## The Character Diamond

### 1. Want (External Goal)
What the character pursues. Visible, concrete, able to succeed or fail. Drives plot.

### 2. Need (Internal Requirement)
What they actually require to become whole — usually unrecognized. The gap between want and need is the engine of arc. Stems from a misbelief (Cron) or moral flaw (Truby).

### 3. Wound (Formative Experience)
The past event that created the misbelief. Should connect to THIS world's specific conditions. Makes them the worst person for their situation — or the only one who could survive it.

### 4. Contradiction (Internal Tension)
The unresolved split that makes them real. Not a flaw to resolve — a permanent feature. A gentle person capable of violence. A liar who values truth. Produces micro-tension on every page.

## Character From World

### The World-Shapes-Character Pipeline
1. **Culture** → values, taboos, worldview, shadow
2. **Social position** → access, constraints, blind spots
3. **Economic system** → daily reality, class consciousness, aspiration
4. **Fantasy/tech system** → ability, limitation, relationship to power
5. **History** → inherited memory, generational trauma, identity narrative

### The Character-Reveals-World Pipeline
- What they **notice** → what the world normalizes
- What they **ignore** → blind spots and assumptions
- What they **misunderstand** → dramatic irony
- What they **desire** → what the world makes scarce

## Arc Patterns

| Pattern | Structure | Best For |
|---------|-----------|----------|
| Positive change | Recognizes need, overcomes misbelief | Redemption, coming-of-age |
| Negative change | Fails to recognize need, doubles down | Tragedy, antiheroes |
| Flat/testing | Already knows truth; world tests them | Heroes, moral exemplars |
| Disillusionment | Positive belief revealed as naivety | Literary fiction, war stories |
| Fall and rise | Descends then finds way back — changed, not restored | Recovery, atonement |

## Character Relationships as System

Characters don't exist alone. The web of relationships between characters creates a system with its own dynamics.

**Complementary pairs**: Characters who embody opposite responses to the same world-condition. A world that values honor produces both the rigid paladin AND the cynical mercenary — they're both products of the honor system, from opposite sides.

**Foils**: Characters who share a situation but make different choices — illuminating the meaning of the choice itself.

**Factions as character clusters**: In worldbuilding, factions have internal structure (pyramid, SUPREME method). Characters within a faction embody different positions in that structure — the true believer, the pragmatist, the secret dissenter.

## Anti-Patterns
1. Generic protagonist — could live anywhere. 2. Motivation by plot, not psychology. 3. Wound without world connection. 4. Contradiction as quirk, not tension. 5. Static mistaken for consistent.

## Relationship to Other Skills
**From worldbuilding**: cultures-societies, faction-design, economic-systems, character-belief-tracker, conlang-craft. **From writing**: character-interiority (rendering), micro-tension (contradictions as engine), dialogue (voice), style-dna (psychic distance), point-of-view (information flow).