I’ve compiled here some questions which I find uncommon and will help understand your character’s daily life, habits, and how their background might shape their current worldview.

These questions contain references to food and relationships to food as well of discussions of relationships to parents and alcohol.

  • What were their parents or caregivers like? Were they strict, kind, negligent? Apart from their primary caregiver(s), did anyone else have a hand in raising them?
  • Did they go to school? We’re they homeschooled? Are they just not very educated? Can they read?
  • Do they have any learning differences or challenges that interfered with their education, like a bad home life?
  • Do they live where they were born?
  • Is there a single person in their life they consider most important? If so, who? If not, is it because they intentionally don’t play favourites or some other cause?
  • Have they lost someone important to them? Did that person die, move away, or were they driven away? Did that person change?
  • Have they dealt with food insecurity and has this impacted their current relationship to food?
  • Did they have many friends growing up? Do they have more, or less friends now than they did growing up? Are they lonely or just alone? Alone in a crowded room?
  • Do they drink alcohol? How much and if not, is there a specific reason?
  • Any long term health conditions? Do these impact their daily life? Are they disabled?
  • Do they have a personal style, do they follow fashion, or do they prioritise comfort, not care about their appearance, or have no choice in their clothes?
  • What’s their relationship to their gender? This goes for cisgender characters too. Do they conform to gender expectations? If so is it just preference or compelled by external factors?
  • What do they do for money or, in other words, how do they get hold of food and other necessities?
  • Is this what they’d do in an ideal scenario? If not, what would they do instead?
  • Do they often remember their dreams? Nightmares?
  • Any allergies?
  • Do they prefer routine or novelty? How do they find routine in the new or find excitement in the mundane?
  • What is their best trait? What do they think their best trait is?
  • What is their worst trait? What do they think their worst trait is?
  • Do they collect anything? If they can’t, would they want to, and what would they collect?
  • If society collapsed overnight, would they survive long? What skills do they have? Can they grow food, sew, make plans, are they good at bringing people together?
  • Name an object they can’t do without. Are they aware of this?
  • Name an object that would improve their life that they don’t already have. Are they aware of this?
  • Describe their nature in three words. Then think of ways they could be compelled to act contrary to those three words. What could make an honest character lie? What could make a cruel character show compassion?