Character Building

Found this Character Building Workshop via Stumble Upon.  I am not going to go through all of the tests for all of my characters, because that would take weeks and I'm not sure what it would get me.  But I'll do one, for the sake of exploring the usefulness of the tool.

Right off the bat, one thing that is annoying about the character tests is that it is a series of binary choices that are sometimes given in an order that doesn't make sense.  For example:

   17.) Would your character be more likely to write a screenplay (A) or act in a screenplay (B)?
   18.) Would your character be considered the life of the party (B) or a wallflower (A)?

Why is choice A listed first in #17 and choice B listed first in #18?  This is confusing and likely to lead people to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore fill out the form incorrectly.  (This is just one example; there are multiple instances throughout all three character tests.  Also, sorry for the 12-year-old reference.)

Also, for character test 2, what is the obsession with sleep habits?

Character test 3 suddenly changes, to having yes, no, and question mark answers.  I'm glad for the question mark, as I did not always feel that the binary choice presented to me made a lot of sense.  Especially for a character in a fantasy novel, for whom some of the options simply don't apply.

I don't like this question, though:

53.) Would your character decline an invitation to go skydiving?

Why the negative?  Why not just, "would your character go skydiving?"  No, my character would not decline such an invitation, unless it was from a particular person he didn't trust, but there were no airplanes so it's irrelevant, unless you choose some other dangerous activity.  But you can't argue that, because there are also underwater diving and hang gliding among the questions.

And this one is irrelevant:

71.) Is football one of your character's favorite sports?

At least in fantasy.  First of all, not sure if they mean soccer or American football.  In a contemporary novel, that could be a huge difference.  In a novel where such games don't exist, it makes no sense at all.

Character test 3 is also way too long.  And repetitive.  Over 200 questions, many of which assess the same goddamn things.

Anyway, my character scored:

• 7 on test 1
• 21 on test 2
• 219 on test 3

But the category he fits into doesn't make sense, because according to the test 2 and 3 scoring pages, he's both the Director and the Detective.  He's definitely not the detective, if you go to read the description.  So someone screwed up here, with the list.

Side note: I'm having a lot of trouble with broken links on the site I'm blogging about.  That, coupled with the inaccuracies and repetitiveness of the character tests, tells me not to recommend this tool to anyone.