How do you create characters that are compelling and full of life? And is there a tool that will make creating character sketches really easy, not to mention fun? Why yes there is! Read on to learn how writers use Scrivener to develop better characters.

1. Free Scrivener Templates For Windows
2. Scrivener Templates For Windows Download
3. Scrivener Templates For Windows Office
4. Scrivener Templates For Windows
5. Scrivener Templates For Windows Xp
6. Free Scrivener Templates For Windows 10
7. Scrivener Templates For Windows 10

Photo by Kevin Dooley. Modified by The Write Practice.

Nothing is born in a vacuum. Characters don’t emerge fully formed. Character development is a process of getting to know your characters and working to make them come to life. They’re developed through character sketches, through the writing process itself, through lots feedback, and diligent revision.

When you’re going through the character development process, it’s helpful to have some tools at your disposal, and one of the most helpful tools for writers, especially when it comes to working on your characters, is Scrivener.

What is a character sketch, what is Scrivener, and how can it help you create compelling characters? Read on to learn more!

Full disclosure: some of the links to Scrivener below are affiliate links. That means if you order Scrivener and use it to write your books, I will earn a few dollars to help me keep writing. That being said, this didn’t affect my opinion of Scrivener (which I personally use in my own writing).

And that file became our most popular free Scrivener template download: 4PSS (Four Part Story Structure) Scrivener novel template. It'll teach you more than just how to use Scrivener templates, it'll also give you a crash course in fiction four part story structure plotting and pacing. Scrivener has a template sheets function that makes building out character sketches easy. If you started using one of their document templates, like the novel template that comes with Scrivener, there should already be a Template Sheets folder in the your project document that looks like the screenshot to the right.

What is Scrivener?

Scrivener is a writing program and word processor designed specifically by writers, for writers. If you’re working on a book, I’ve found that Microsoft Word and other word processors just don’t cut it.

Having a tool like Scrivener that’s designed specifically for books can save you hundreds of hours and help you write a better book.

If you’re interested in learning more about Scrivener, read my Scrivener review here.

Or you’re ready to purchase scrivener now, you can get the Mac, PC, and iOS version all here:

What Is a Character Sketch?

Think of a character sketch as the rough draft of your character. It’s a place where you can freely experiment, where you can tell yourself (or your writing partner) who your characters are, how they look, and where they come from.

Importing a Scrivener Template. While using Scrivener templates is easy, it’s not as simple as just double clicking on the template file (perhaps that will be addressed when Scrivener 3 comes out later this year). In order for you to use a Scrivener template, you actually have to import the file. Fortunately, this isn’t hard at all. To import the entire project template, go to File-Import-Scrivener Project. Importing a Scrivener Project The Finder window will open, find the project in your files, and hit import. Once it loads, the entire file will be located under the Trash Can.

You can type out their whole backstory, or just the parts of the timeline that inform your character’s identity. Their inner and external conflicts will be crucial to your story, so be sure to include those, too.

Most importantly, use character sketches as a tool to discover your characters’ key motivations and goals, because those are the engine that drives your story forward.

How to Use Template Sheets in Scrivener

Scrivener has a template sheets function that makes building out character sketches easy. If you started using one of their document templates, like the novel template that comes with Scrivener, there should already be a Template Sheets folder in the your project document that looks like the screenshot to the right.

If not, you can make a Template Sheets folder by creating a new folder in the Binder (the left hand column), and then from the top menu selecting Project > Set Selection as Templates Folder.

Once you have the folder, you can add as many templates as you like!

Sidenote: I reference Scrivener’s features and include screenshots of the software, but you can still use these methods without Scrivener. Simply create a separate text file for each character and keep them in a folder named “My Story – Character Sketches.” If you’re interested in Scrivener, Joe reviewed it here.

Visualize Your Characters Using Scrivener’s Corkboard

Now that you have your template sheets folder, you can generate character sketches by creating new files from the template sheets you have.

Free Scrivener Templates For Windows

Fortunately, we live in a digital age and Scrivener’s digital corkboard interface gives us the power of notecards in a way that allows us to drill down from the card view into the character sketch itself.

The notecard system is well documented and has been made famous by a dead author, a living author, Writer’s Digest, and teenagers writing research papers everywhere. Scrivener simply digitizes this time-tested method.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see that I have several characters in view. They’ve all been generated from the Character Sketch template sheet we created previously.

What’s great about this is that you have a card for each character, with optional visuals or text description.

I go for visuals out of the gate, as it helps me ground my character in an image. Having a visual on hand makes writing about them easier, at first, because the photos jog my imagination. Once I’m really entrenched and know my characters (i.e. about twenty-five percent of the way through the first draft), I don’t need to look at the visuals at all.

You’ll notice that some characters don’t have photos—I added those characters during the story and didn’t bother going back to find photos for them. That’s OK. One of the most important things to remember about your planning or pre-production phase (to borrow a film term), including character sketches, is that none of it is set in stone. Your story will evolve, and so will your characters.

For the images I’ve picked a few actors and photos I found on Google Images.

To add a photo to a Character Sketch in Scrivener, click on the character’s card, open the Notes column on the right hand side, and drag your image into the image area where the instructions are:

To insert a photo inline with the text, first click where you want the photo, and then go to Edit > Insert > Image from File…

Individual Character Sketches

Here’s a screenshot of an individual sketch of one of my characters:

This sketch was created using the character sketch template that comes with Scrivener. I’ve since abandoned Scrivener’s defaults in favor of my own compilation, which follows.

An Alternative Character Sketch Template

As you learn more about character sketches, you’ll probably want to customize your character sketch template and make it your own. Personally, I find Scrivener’s default sketch sheets superficial. When sketching characters, I like less structure, and less prescriptive fields around the character’s physical appearance and personality.

If you’re just starting out and you don’t have a character sketch template, here’s one I put together based on my own experimentation.

This is what my character sketch template looks like in Scrivener:

And here’s the full text, which you can feel free to use or modify as you see fit:

[photo]

FULL NAME

One Sentence Synopsis This character in a single sentence.

Summary This is a paragraph summary of your character. Include physical attributes, habits, mannerism. Sketch your character.

Motivations & Goals What do they want?

Conflicts What makes them human?

Narrative What happens to them in the story? What else is important?

Why Character Sketches Work

There are practical reasons to do character sketches. For one, developing characters is a process. Paving the way with character sketches, along with setting sketches in the following article, are a great way to give the gel of the story time and space to set.

Yes, they’re extra work, and yes they can be difficult. But that’s part of the process.

If you feel like you really know the character and can write the story, run through this checklist to make sure before you move on:

• What is your character’s primary motivation? What are their hopes and dreams?
• How does your character change in the course of the story?
• What does your character look like? How do they act around their parents? Their friends? Their boss?
• How does your character act under stress?
• What is your character’s weakness, their kryptonite?
• What will your character die for?
• What is your character’s biggest hypocrisy?

If you can answer all of these questions with confidence, congratulations, you’re probably ready for setting sketches, which we’ll cover next week.

Ready to Develop Your Characters With Scrivener?

Now that you’ve learned how to do character development in Scrivener, put it to use!

You can get the Mac, PC, and iOS version all here and start creating your character sketches now:

Or if you’re still wondering if Scrivener can help you finish your books, read my Scrivener review here.

Then, continue to the practice section for a writing exercise to help you get started.

Does your method for sketching characters line up with how I do things? What are your tricks for helping bring your characters to life?Share in the comments section.

PRACTICE

Here’s a creative writing prompt to help you get started with character sketches.

Set aside a block of time (no more than thirty minutes to one hour) to sketch some characters in your latest work of fiction, whether it’s a short story, a novel, or a ten book series.

No characters coming to mind? Try sketching some of these characters and see how it goes!

• A disciplined, medal-winning Jui Jitsu practitioner whose sister just died
• A mother of three on a Thursday morning
• A soldier who has returned home after being a prisoner of war in Iraq
• A journalist covering the derailing of a local train that killed four passengers

Naming them is just the beginning. Don’t be afraid to get personal with the characters you create. When you’re finished, share a few paragraphs about one of your characters in the comments section below. We’d love to see who you come up with!

Happy writing!

Download the step-by-step guide and learn the best tools to help you write a novel today.

The easiest way to explain scrivener templates.

Before we delve into how to use Scrivener templates, it would be nice to know what they are.

As simple as the Scrivener manual itself puts it, Scrivener project templates are just customized projects. Think of them as base settings that you can build yourself or use free templates that other writers have built to learn from.

But if that isn't enough, here's an analogy:

Picture yourself sliding into the comfy seat of your brand new car. Not one of those base model versions, but a top of the line sports car with​ every button, knob, dial, and feature you could imagine.

You spend about ten to fifteen minutes setting up the radio stations, adjusting your luxury leather seat just the way you like it. Then you point the air vents perfectly, getting the temperature just so. Finally, you adjust the mirrors so you can see perfectly.

You're locked and loaded and ready for the most exquisite ride of your life.​ And it is the smoothest and most spectacular ride you've ever owned.

The best part about it, is that this model is so awesome it has a button that saves all of that preset information.

So the next time you get into your car, you simply press that button and all those settings are programmed and set automatically, saving you tons of time.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Those preset “buttons” that remember everything about your writing environment? Those are Scrivener templates.​

Why you should create a project template.

An example:

Let's say you're going to write a three-part novel series.

Each book will be roughly the same length, use the same physical book size, use the same fonts and chapter headings. They'll contain the same character outlines, scene and setting descriptions, too.

Also, the front matter and back matter documents will be virtually identical with a few minor changes. Most importantly, the workflow you use to write, edit, and self publish them will be the exactly the same. /mac-spindle-oil-cooler-manual.html.

To make sure you don't duplicate all of that work for each book, inside a Scrivener project file, you could create custom:

• Scrivener character templates: documents with an outline of a character's traits in them.
• Custom folder, document, and story structure outlines in the Binder
• Custom scene settings and descriptions
• Custom labels and status: color-coded and personalized tags that you can use to identify a document's type and status.
• Compile settings: how you organize and output your book or ebook file to the different media formats that the different online publishers require.
• And virtually anything that you don't want to have to recreate for each book.

I know that sounds like a lot of work. Luckily, Scrivener ships with some built-in templates.

Why Scrivener's built-in templates fall short.

The Literature and a Latte—Scrivener creators—have done a great job of providing you with a few built-in scrivener project templates to help you learn how to use scrivener templates.

• Fiction novel templates
• A Short story template
• A Scrivener non fiction book template
• And more.

The templates that ship with Scrivener do have some custom items in the binder, and some settings tweaks and changes.

The trouble with all those free scrivener templates is that they're too generic to do you any good.

Beyond the basics, you're better off learning how to use Scrivener templates, and then creating your own.

As I mentioned before, customizing a project template to your workflow, and then tweaking it to make the process of writing, editing and self publishing your books easier. That's the real power behind Scrivener templates.

A cheat sheet on how to use scrivener templates.

Let's create your first template. Now, you could sift through the 526 pages in the Scrivener manual.

But here's all you need to know about how to create your own template file.

5 easy steps to creating a template:​

1. Create a blank Scrivener .scriv project file
2. Customize everything you want to inside that file: Binder folders and documents, Label and Status presets, Compile presets and settings, and any other meta and formatting customizations you can think of.
3. Then select the menu item File>Save As Template.
4. The “Template Information” box will come up. You need to fill in:
• Title (what will appear beneath the thumbnail in the template browser)
• Category (Which section of the Project Templates dialog box to add the template to in the browser)
• Description (A description of the template.
• The “Icon” box on the right gives you options for setting the appearance of a template thumbnail.
• All this information helps explain the template to other users when and if you decide to share it with the author community.
5. Click OK, to save your template as a .scrivtemplate file

Your newly created template is now ready to select in the Project Templates dialog box and use.

3 simple steps to making a template you downloaded available for use:

1. ​Open Scrivener and click the menu item File>New Project.
2. ​​In the Project Templates dialogue box, select the Options drop down menu item and click Import Templates.
3. Select the .scrivtemplate file you downloaded and click Import

Your new template is now in your Project Templates dialog box. Any time you decide to create a new project, you can use it as the basis.​

Why you shouldn't create your own template.

If the steps in #3 sounded like a bunch of “blah-blah-blah,” chances are that you're still at the beginning of the Scrivener learning curve.

What we need to do is get you up that learning curve, faster than just learning by doing or reading the manual. And that leads us to the best way to learn about templates.

Use free Scrivener templates to start your next project.

Not every template you find on the Internet is awesome, far from it. The awesome ones you do find, however, will not only give you a great basis to start your next project, but they'll also teach you about self publishing in the process.

Here's what to look for in a free Scrivener template:

• ​If you need help outlining your characters, look for Scrivener character templates that have detailed questionnaires to help you define your characters’ traits.
• If you need help plotting a novel, look for Scrivener novel templates that focus on the four part, three act story structure, folder and document details.
• If you're a non fiction writer, search for a Scrivener non fiction book template. Make sure it has detailed chapter and subchapter sections.
• Searches on Google include writers looking for Scrivener blog, academic, dissertation, journal, thesis, and ebook templates. So the types of templates are limitless.

How to download movies without getting caught. But we'd like to help you skip the painstaking job of sifting through templates.

Scrivener Templates For Windows Download

The best place to find free scrivener templates.

The Internet abounds with a stunning variety of free Scrivener templates. Some are awesome but some, unfortunately, are a waste of your time.

So we've surfed the web to find and detail as many worthwhile free templates as we can find.

We've catalogued the good, the bad, and the awesome of each one so you can skip the tedious “download, install, and check out the usefulness” phase.

You can find and learn how to use Scrivener templates we've reviewed by clicking the button below.

(If you've got a FREE Scrivener template that you'd like us to share with our readers, send us an email with the contact form. Provide a link to the template and we'll review it as soon as we can. If we think it can benefit our readers, we'll write a post about how to use your Scrivener template and link back to your site.)

The real difference between templates and projects.

In my “first” life, as an IT Director, my engineers had a favorite support acronym: RTFM (Read the fu—friendly manual) But seriously, user manuals are packed with great information, buried between the lines of all that techno-babble.

And Scrivener's manual​ is no different. Here's what it has to say about templates and project files.

“Since the built-in templates are just starter projects.”

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And.

Scrivener Templates For Windows

There are a few differences (mostly pertaining to how a template is loaded and the description and thumbnail that can be saved with it), but for the most part you should consider a template no different from an ordinary project.​

And there it is right there in black and white. How you open them up and a thumbnail image? That's the difference?

But that got me thinking. Why couldn't I just create a Scrivener template as a preformatted-with-all-my-settings .scriv file to open and then Save As whenever I wanted to start a new novel?

Scrivener Templates For Windows Xp

As it turns out, I could, so I did. And that file became our most popular free Scrivener template download: 4PSS (Four Part Story Structure) Scrivener novel template.

It'll teach you more than just how to use Scrivener templates, it'll also give you a crash course in fiction four part story structure plotting and pacing.

Free Scrivener Templates For Windows 10

How do you use Scrivener templates?

Scrivener Templates For Windows 10

Now it's your turn.

If you have any suggestions on how to use Scrivener templates or favorite templates you'd like to share, let us know in the comments below.