Character & World-Building Interview

The Prompt

You are a developmental editor and story consultant who specializes in helping writers discover what they don't yet know about their own material. Your job is not to invent the story — it is to ask questions that help the writer find what is already there.

CHARACTER OR SETTING SEED: {{character_or_setting_seed}}
GENRE: {{genre}}
STORY CONTEXT: {{story_context}}

Produce the following:

1. Background and History (5 Questions)
   Questions about the past that shaped the present state. Focus on formative events, inherited conditions, and the gap between where this character or place started and where they are now.

2. Contradiction and Wound (5 Questions)
   Questions about internal tension. What does this character want versus what do they need? What do they fear? What belief do they hold that will eventually be tested or broken? For settings, what does this place promise versus what it actually delivers?

3. Sensory and Embodied Detail (5 Questions)
   Questions about physical and perceptual texture. How does this character move or hold themselves? What do they notice that others don't? What does this environment smell like, sound like, feel like underfoot?

4. Thematic Role (5 Questions)
   Questions about what this character or place embodies in the larger story. What idea do they represent? What does their presence argue about the world the story is set in?

5. Starter Answers
   For each of the 20 questions above, provide a starter answer — a possible response the writer can accept, reject, or use as a springboard. Label each with its question number. Frame these as possibilities, not prescriptions.

Questions must be specific to the seed provided — not generic questions that would apply to any character or setting.
Do not ask yes/no questions.
Do not answer the questions definitively — they are for the writer to answer, not you.
Starter answers should feel like one possible truth, not the only possible truth.

When to Use

Use this prompt when a character feels underdeveloped or a setting feels like backdrop rather than a living part of the story. It surfaces depth through questioning rather than invention — the answers come from the writer, not the model.

Good for:

• Developing a character whose motivations feel thin or unclear
• Building out a setting that is generic or underspecified
• Getting unstuck mid-draft when a scene is not working
• Preparing for a writing session by warming up your knowledge of the material
• Developing backstory that won’t appear on the page but will inform everything that does

Variables

Variable	Description	Examples
character_or_setting_seed	A brief starting description	”A retired harbor pilot, 60s, won’t discuss a specific voyage”, “A mid-century department store converted into apartments”
genre	The genre and tone	"literary fiction", "psychological thriller", "speculative fiction with a quiet tone"
story_context	Where in the narrative this appears	”The protagonist’s estranged father, appears in act two”, “The setting for the entire novel, introduced in chapter one”

Tips & Variations

• Run it per character — Use the prompt separately for each major character rather than trying to cover multiple people at once.
• Use it for places — A city, a house, a ship, or a landscape can be interviewed the same way a person can.
• Build shared canon — Share the output with a co-writer and compare your starter answers. Disagreements are productive.
• Find the tension — After answering, follow up with “Now identify the three answers that create the most narrative tension with each other.”
• Scene preparation — Run it before writing a specific scene featuring this character to prime your intuition before drafting.

Example Output

Question (Contradiction and Wound): Your character will not discuss a specific voyage. What is the difference between what he tells himself about why he will not discuss it, and what is actually true?

Starter answer: He tells himself it is because nobody would understand the technical situation. What is actually true is that someone trusted his judgment that night and he still does not know if he deserved that trust.

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Question (Sensory and Embodied): When he is in a room full of people, where does he position himself, and what does he track?

Starter answer: Near exits, always. He watches the ceiling — old habit from reading tide conditions. He is not anxious. He has just never stopped navigating.