Description

PREWORK FOR THE CHARACTERS TO DEVELOP THEM FOR YOUR STORY

You have a character.
Maybe you know exactly what they want.
Maybe you have a few scenes, a compelling voice, or a story idea you can’t stop thinking about.
Maybe you know almost nothing yet.

That’s enough to begin.The FREE StoryMetric™ 5 Ps Character Arc Prework helps you gather the raw material you already have—and discover what you may need to explore next.
Choose one protagonist or important character and work through guided questions about their goals, beliefs, experiences, relationships, and possible story moments. You don’t need polished answers. The worksheet is designed to make room for possibilities, incomplete answers, and discovery.

STARTING WITH THE PREWORK FOR THE CHARACTERS
Prework for the Characters – 5PS worksheet introduces five areas that can help you understand your character and begin thinking about their arc:

• PURPOSE — What does your character want?
  Explore what your character wants to get, accomplish, stop, protect, escape, discover, or change—and what happens if they don’t get it.
• PERSPECTIVE — How does your character see things?
  Consider what makes them optimistic or pessimistic, how they react when circumstances go wrong, and which beliefs they would strongly defend.
• PSEUDOFACT — What do they remember or misremember?
  Explore the experiences, disappointments, victories, assumptions, and interpretations that may affect how your character understands themselves and their world.
• PEOPLE — Who matters?
• Identify up to five people who interact with your character and begin considering how those relationships affect what happens when your character gets—or doesn’t get—what they want.
• PLOT — What might your character do when something happens?

Bring the character into motion by considering what gets the story moving, the craziest thing they might do, and what they might do when provoked.

YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING YET.
This isn’t a test.
It’s prework.

Use it to capture what you already know, uncover questions you haven’t considered, and start seeing connections between what your character wants, how they see the world, who matters to them, what they may have gotten wrong, and what happens when the story puts all of it under pressure.

That gives you something concrete to bring into deeper StoryMetric™ character-arc work.What’s Inside?
5 pages, including:
– A guided Getting Started section
– Character Purpose questions
– Character Perspective prompts
– Pseudofact questions exploring remembered and misremembered experiences
– A People relationship exercise for up to five characters
– Plot prompts designed to get your character moving
– Fillable spaces for capturing your answers
– Guidance for continuing your StoryMetric™ work
The workbook itself identifies the next step as continuing through additional StoryMetric™ resources, trope and worksheet packets, workshops, seminars, books, and workbooks.

Who Is This For?
The Prework for the Characters – 5Ps Worksheet is designed for fiction writers who are:
Brainstorming a new story • Planning a novel • Developing a protagonist • Building a character arc • Working through a first draft • Revising a character who isn’t working yet • Preparing for a StoryMetric™ class or workshop
The worksheet itself lets writers identify whether they’re at the idea/brainstorming, planning, drafting, revising, or finished-draft stage, so the product shouldn’t be marketed only to beginners or planners.

USE IT YOUR WAY
TYPE directly into the fillable PDF.
PRINT the worksheet and work by hand.
BRING your questions and discoveries into deeper StoryMetric™ character work.

The current resource also specifically invites writers to bring questions to a class taught by Vanessa Riley or the Write of Passage Substack group.

What You Receive

One StoryMetric™ 5 Ps Character Arc Prework PDF

5 pages

FILLABLE — Type directly into applicable worksheet fields.

PRINTABLE — Print the worksheet and complete it by hand.

FREE digital download. No physical product will be shipped.

PDF form functionality may vary by software. For the best experience, use a current PDF application.

Personal Use Only

This free resource is for your personal writing use.

The worksheet may not be copied, redistributed, resold, publicly uploaded, or reproduced for students, clients, classes, workshops, or groups without permission.

About StoryMetric™

StoryMetric™ is Vanessa Riley’s systems-based approach to fiction development. It helps writers examine how character, conflict, structure, tension, emotional logic, and story purpose work together—and identify where a story needs deeper development or recalibration.