Personality
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This is a very personal section because your own personality will always want to leak through the cracks in your characters. If you choose to make your character very different from yourself you have to be very careful not to leave cracks. After all, you want to make your character as believable as possible. 

There are many ways to do this. I, personally, imagine situations that my character could possibly find herself in and how she reacts. It's also helpful though, as a starting point, to decide 

what kind of person your character is

 It isn't very convincing to read "So-and-so was a nice person" or "So-and-so was a grumpy person". The first exercise in creating a character personality therefore should be to decide what kind of person your character is. Here's a table that I hope helps you do this. 

What I suggest is that you copy and paste it to a word processing document and change the colour of the best adjectives to something bright. Choose a colour for the words that most describe your character and choose another for those which are least like your character. Then drag and drop the top five of each to underneath so you have a nice list that can be used in your bio.

Which of the following describe your character?

 So once I'm finished I have two lists for my character. For arguments sake let's say that she's aggressive, capable, confident, cooperative and detail-minded and she definitely isn't emotional, flexible, friendly, imaginative or laid-back. From these two lists I can draw up a pretty vivid image of her. She seems very anti-social and I certainly wouldn't want to be on her wrong side! So now I can start to 

answer questions about what matters to her

 Here are some that you can do just to get warmed up. A nice place to find some more is in those 'personality tests' in magazines. You can answer as your character instead for fun. Just don't let someone else find the magazine or they might think you're schizo. For this test my example answers are in green.  

1. What is your character's most valued possession?
   A gold wristwatch which has been passed down generations 

2. What would s/he do if s/he had unlimited resources and time?
   The same as she'd do if she didn't: her job

3. What was/is your character's dream/goal in life?
   To make a difference

4. If your character was alive today, who would his/her role model be?
   She wouldn't have a role-model

5. Why is s/he doing the job s/he's doing presently.
   She is a scientist because she loves the logical way everything always works out

6. If one of her friends, colleagues or someone she admired was threatened in any way what would s/he do?
   Everything she could for them

7. In his/her off-time. What does s/he do?
   She has very little off-time but on the rare occasion she is forced to stop working she reads and studies background information relating to her current project.

8. If a 6-year-old child was to meet your character what would his/her first impression be?
   Admiration 

9. There is a conflict between someone your character loves and someone who your character admires. Who's side does s/he take?
   The side of the person she admires

10. Someone who works with your character shows interest in a little more than friendship. Your character...
    Ignores their advances

Great. Your character's beginning to take shape. Now's the time to 

place your character in a few difficult situations and see how s/he squirms.

Use your imagination. 
What is the worst possible predicament your character could find his or herself in? How does s/he react? How does your character think? Once you've had a bit of fun here you're done! Time to move on!

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