Soul / Self / Mask / Surface — a writer's grammar
Concrete prompts and anti-patterns for each layer. Take a thin character and make them readable.
The four-layer model is a writing grammar. This guide is the sentence-by-sentence drill.
Soul prompts
Stuck on a layer? Ask yourself one question per field:
- Desire — what does the character chase even when it costs them?
- Fear — what truth would they refuse aloud at gunpoint?
- Wound — what one moment, before they were 15, still hurts?
- Growth arc — by the story's end, what shifts?
Anti-pattern: each field should be a sentence, not a trait. "She wants to be respected" is a trait; "She wants the chair her mother was passed over for at the law firm" is Soul.
Self prompts
Resist the urge to pin every Big Five trait at 0.5. A real person has 1–2 traits at the extreme. Pick which.
- Where on the openness axis? (0.2 = traditionalist, 0.9 = restless)
- Conscientiousness? (0.2 = chaotic, 0.9 = compulsive)
- Extraversion? (0.2 = silent presence, 0.9 = fills the room)
- Agreeableness? (0.2 = adversarial, 0.9 = unable to refuse)
- Neuroticism? (0.2 = level, 0.9 = vibrating)
Anti-pattern: 0.5 everywhere produces a character with no shape.
Mask prompts
The voice test: write three sentences in their voice. Read aloud. If your reader doesn't immediately know which of two characters said which, the Mask isn't done.
- Register: one word. Formal, clinical, lyrical, plain, sardonic.
- Tempo: fast, deliberate, halting, fluent.
- Lexical tic: one word or phrase they overuse ("look,", "more or less," "in fairness").
- Sentence shape: long or short? Loose or periodic?
Anti-pattern: "she speaks warmly but with confidence" is unusable. Show the voice.
Surface prompts
Surface is the only layer that should sound demographic. Write it plain:
- Name (one that fits Self's register).
- Age.
- City, neighborhood, room.
- Job title.
- Two visual details — one ordinary, one specific.
Anti-pattern: writing Surface first locks the model into stereotype. Write Surface last.
Failure modes
When a generated persona feels flat, the failure is almost always in Soul. Common Soul failures:
- Generic desire: "to succeed", "to be happy". Not a Soul. Soul is desire-with-a-thorn.
- Tame fear: "of failure". Fear is what they hide. "Fear of failure" is a public answer.
- No wound: a Soul without wound is a brand statement.
Re-prompt Soul. The downstream layers usually fall into line.