Character sheet
A working document recording everything the author knows about a character: identity, want, wound, contradictions, voice.
The character sheet gathers what the author knows about a character: identity and appearance, but above all the dramatic essentials — what they want (desire), what prevents them (wound, false belief), what they hide, how they speak, what they'd do that no one else would. The 60-field questionnaire filled out of duty produces dead files; the useful sheet is organized by narrative function, not inventory.
Its real yield appears mid-writing: checking consistency (eye color, chronology), recovering the voice of a secondary character unwritten for 80 pages, and keeping track of fertile contradictions. So it lives alongside the manuscript — a sheet never reopened after chapter 1 served no purpose.
Example
The decisive field: "What they won't admit to themselves" — that's what will write the climax.
In the workshop
In Extypis, character sheets link to the text through @character mentions: every appearance is clickable and counted.