Character Interview
This prompt interviews your fictional characters like a journalist profiling a stranger: childhood, fears, contradictions, the lies they tell themselves. Answer in their voice and watch flat archetypes turn into people.
The AI interviews your character in-voice — exposing backstory, lies, and secrets you'd never outline.
You are an investigative journalist. I will describe my fictional character: [CHARACTER BASICS]. Interview them IN CHARACTER — you ask sharp questions, they answer in their own voice with their biases, evasions, and blind spots. Start with easy background questions, then press on: their biggest regret, the lie they tell themselves, what they'd never admit. If I say 'break character', pause and tell me what you learned about them that I didn't plan. Begin the interview now.
See what this prompt creates
What this prompt does
Flat characters come from thin knowledge: if you only know your protagonist's job and hair color, they'll read thin. This prompt conducts a deep interview — a hundred probing questions across childhood, desire, fear, morality, habits, and self-deception — with you answering in the character's voice. By question 40, you're not inventing anymore; you're reporting.
How to get the best result
Answer as the character, in first person, without hedging — “I” not “she would probably.” The prompt escalates from easy facts to uncomfortable truths; don't skip the uncomfortable ones, that's where character lives. Most of this never reaches the page — that's fine. The 10% that does will carry the other 90% invisibly.
Common mistakes to avoid
Interviewing every minor character equally — protagonists and antagonists earn the full hundred questions; the bartender gets five. And don't confuse backstory with character: a tragic past doesn't make someone interesting, contradictions do. The prompt hunts for those specifically.
After the interview: building the character bible
The interview transcript is raw ore. The refining step is the debrief, and it uses the prompt's own escape hatch. Say "break character" and ask the model to step outside the performance and analyze what just happened: "What contradictions did the character reveal? What did they refuse to answer, and what does the refusal protect?" Characters disclose their real architecture in their evasions, and the model — which has been tracking every answer — can surface patterns you nodded along with in the moment and forgot by question six.
Then stress-test before you write a single scene. Ask for the character's behavior in three situations the interview never touched: winning something they wanted, being publicly embarrassed, and being asked for help by someone they dislike. A character who only exists in interview answers is a voice without a spine; how they'd act under pressure is the spine. Disagreements between the interview and the stress test are gold — resolve them in the direction of the more interesting flaw, and note the resolution, because that note is your bible beginning.
Save the whole session — interview, debrief, stress tests, your rulings — as one document, and paste it at the start of future writing sessions. When you later ask for a scene, the model writes from the bible instead of from a fresh guess, and the character's voice survives across chapters instead of resetting every time you open a new chat. Writers who skip the debrief tend to rediscover their character every session. The transcript plus your rulings is what turns a fun prompt into a working tool for a novel-length project.
Try these variations
Hostile interviews: have the prompt play a skeptic who challenges the character's self-image — self-deception exposed is gold. For populating whole worlds, pair with the fantasy worldbuilding bible prompt. More in the writing prompts collection.
How to use this prompt
- Copy it — hit the copy button above to grab the raw prompt text.
- Fill the brackets — replace anything in [BRACKETS] with your own details.
- Paste into your AI tool — works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini for text prompts; Midjourney, DALL-E or Stable Diffusion for image prompts; Runway, Pika or Sora for video.
- Iterate — tweak one bracket at a time until the output is exactly right.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions does a character need?
Protagonists: 50–100 across multiple sessions. Major supporting cast: 20–30. Minor characters: 5–10. The prompt scales automatically — tell it the character's story importance and it adjusts the interview depth.
What if my character's answers feel generic?
Push for specificity: not “she's brave” but “what's the bravest thing she's done, and what did it cost?” The prompt is designed to reject abstractions and demand scenes, memories, and contradictions — generic answers get follow-up questions.
Should I do this before or during drafting?
Before for protagonists (know them cold), during for everyone else. Many writers interview a character the moment they feel flat on the page — chapter 12 is a fine time to discover your sidekick's secret fear.
Can this help with non-fiction or screenwriting too?
Screenwriters use it constantly — distinct character voices are everything in scripts. For non-fiction, adapt it to interview real subjects before profiles: the question list works on actual humans too.
