Now that you have some of the background, put it all together.

In an effort to help, I have listed some tips for creating a character's history and personality:      

1. Use an Inverted Pyramid - Use this style of writing and begin your story with the most striking feature(s), perhaps the outcome, and then follow up with the detail.  

2. Personal History - Does your PC's family, customs and society influence him/her to a small or large degree? A personal history will give a basis for the PC's existence.

a. Is the family poor, rich or middle of the road?

b. Does this affect the PC in anyway?  

c. Is the family large or small? How does this affect the PC?

d. Injuries, training, relationships, a developed code of conduct? e. Poverty: embarrassed about humble family life.

f. Wealthy: could be miserly or a big spender to show-off.

g. Working Class: learned self-discipline and pride in craftsmanship.

h. Only child: spoiled with too much attention or suffered from not enough.

i. Small family: well balanced and close knit.

j. Large family: self-sufficient from helping bring up siblings, or resentful.

k. Large family: worried about inheritance.

j. The PC is physically challenged. 

3. Personal Secrets - Dredge through the PC's background and come up with some secrets that make sense. Your secrets can be simple and seemingly unimportant or very complex and as drastic as you wish. Secrets are great because your GM can make them into interesting plots or subplots, which could add to your enjoyment of the campaign.

a. Married and has a family (secretive to protect them from many enemies).

b. Has other identities (to protect him, or for undercover reasons).

c. You have a twin who died.

d. You work secretly for a benefactor (who unpopular political stands).

e. You have horrible scarring or injuries not readily apparent.

f. You have a certain phobia(s) that you keep to yourself.

4. Play a Goal - Goal playing is important because it is at the center of what the PC really wants, be it long term in life or only for the moment. The character's personal history should give some clues to long term goals, while his short term goals will change all the time (in some instances, several times a minute). The following are long term goals:

a. Adventure until having enough money to build a keep.

b. Travel to strange new lands, to open trade routes and make clients for the import company you work for.

c. Become a Knight of the Realm.

d. Start and run a fencing and fighting salle (school).

5. Use the Five Ws - Detail Who, What, When, Where and Why.  "Why?" is the most effective.  This to me is one of the most important things in PC work. "Why?" is an open-ended question. Ask this question about as many issues and choices about the PC you can come up with. We can always ask why something is the way it is. And that will, of course, lead to another why?

a. The PC chose to be a competitive archer-WHY?

b. The PC became a thief or a lock picker-WHY?

c. Selfish - WHY?

d. Thrifty - WHY?

e. Won't eat meat - WHY?

f. Gambles non-stop - WHY?

g. Always cracking jokes - WHY

6. The Quick & Basic Approach - Disregarding everything above, some players don't want to spend a lot of time on a character background.  If you want to write up something discrete & simple, briefly touch upon one or more of these elements: 

a. A bit of info about a living, non-enemy NPC who is important to the character.

b. Something the character is passionate about (an ideal; a person, place or thing; a goal).

c. A living rival or enemy NPC (or organization).