Scrivener Character Template by Pen & Muse

What you'll learn.

Scrivener Template Requirements

To use any Scrivener template you're going to need the software.

If you don't have it already, you can get your copy of Scrivener for Mac or Scrivener for Windows by clicking one of the buttons below.

Author Credit

Kristen and Jolene run an author website over at Pen and Muse. In their own words, “If life were a YA novel, we’d be twins living in a dystopian world, separated at birth.”

They and what looks like about ten other “muses” blog about author marketing, branding, and self publishing.

They used to offer services to authors, but a note on their services page says they're on hiatus for the foreseeable future. (2016)

Between the two of them, they authored this Scrivener character template.

Template Screenshot

Template Strengths

When you first open the template up, you notice that they've created several different levels of character-centric research templates.

From eye color to motivation, each sheet/document has some impressive details that you can fill in. Details about your main and secondary character templates.

They've even provided a completed character template example about a fictitious woman named, Celia Molyneux, including an inspirational image of what she might look like in real life. (Very helpful to us novelists.)

Depending on whether or not you want to get really wild with it, you can create details down to the who, what, where, when, and why your characters do anything.

In addition, there's a pretty good scene worksheet at the top of the binder. It has detail sections you can complete like, character strategy, stakes and what are the goals of the scene. For example, what do you as an author want to accomplish with the scene?

Template Weaknesses

This template has some useful page templates for researching and cataloging character traits and details.

And we found a couple of scene templates, but no story structure or book outline folders and docs.

Download

You can instantly download a .zip file of this Scrivener template by clicking the button below.

Template Instructions

As with all Scrivener templates, once you unzip the file, you'll have to import the Template into Scrivener in order to use it. Here are the steps.

• Download the file to your computer
• Unzip the the .zip file
• Remember the downloaded location of the Muse KJ's Fiction Template.scrivtemplate file
• Open Scrivener
• Go to the Scrivener menu item FILE>NEW PROJECT
• Then select the “options” drop down button and click “Import Template.”
• Navigate to where you downloaded the file, select the .scrivtemplate file, and then click “import.”
• Once the template is imported to the “Project Templates” window, select the “Fiction” tab on the left. The new template file should be in that section.
• Select the template and then click the “Choose” button.
• You'll be prompted to save a new .scriv project file based on your new template, and then you're ready to go.

Our Suggestions

• Copy the Main Character One character profile pages questions for use in building your own character template.
• Copy the Scene Worksheet as well to use in customizing your own.

Template Feedback

Now, it's your turn.

Let us know what you thought of this template in the comments below. If you have any questions about to use Scrivener templates, see our Scrivener Templates Tutorial post.