Persona

A story is only as good as its characters, and a character is much more than just a name. They have a personality, like and dislike certain things and react differently to other characters, based on their traits. While you can find a wide range of specialized applications that help you come up with a story outline, there aren't as many applications that focus on character building as Persona does. This piece of software lets you create character sheets with various details, but the important part is that it tells you how they should interact, based on their personalities. It gives you a good amount of useful information to make your heroes and villains believable.

The software is free to try, without any noticeable restrictions. Its setup package is small, so you won't have to spend too much time downloading and installing. There is no need to install prerequisite tools or services, and the impact on your computer's performance will be insignificant.

Persona has a clean user interface, with a straightforward layout. All you have to do is create new characters on the left side of the window, and fill in a series of input fields in the larger area on the right. Besides giving them a name and attaching an image, you can also type in their age, height, weight, sex, eye and hair color and even their blood type. You can write other things as well, like a character's occupation, hobbies, background, add notes and tags, specify various connections and much more.

The most important specifications you can make to a character is their archetype and style, which are major factors in determining how characters interact with each other. You can pick from a long list of archetypes, such as rebel, outsider, tyrant and so on, which are grouped separately for heroes, heroines, villains and villainesses. Additionally, the software lets you group your characters in a tree structure if you're working with several factions. For example, you could have a Fellowship of the Ring group. What's more, the software lets you create smart groups, which automatically takes characters and groups them together, based on one or more traits of your choice.

Once your roster is complete, you can go to the interactions guide, located on a different tab, to see how your characters would interact with each other. If you select one of your characters, the software will tell you how they'll clash and mesh with all other characters, and what changes are likely to happen, based on the archetype and style you've selected for each of them. Another useful feature is the learning material Persona comes with. The software provides you with a detailed guide for each character archetype and style, so you will know what type of character would work best in your particular story.

Persona may not look like much on the surface, but it can certainly help you create unique characters and make them as convincing as possible.