From The Odyssey to The Avengers, stories hinge on good characters. Without heroes to care about and believable villains to vex them, plot is just a bunch of stuff that happens. Persona aims to help writers organize information about their characters while using archetypes to discover what makes them tick –– and how they can interact in dramatically juicy ways. But like a well-meaning tragic hero, Persona is undone by glaring flaws.
To create characters, you add them to Persona’s iTunes-style sidebar, then enter vital statistics, a photo and notes, and tags like hobbies or other distinguishing labels. It’s enough info for a baseball card, but not enough to flesh out a character’s background and history. The tiny text entry fields don’t help; except for the Notes field, they can’t be resized, leading to lots of scrolling and even cut-off text. Character data can’t be exported (though it can be printed), so you’ll want to do your serious writing outside Persona, defeating the convenience of working on characters in one app.
Choosing archetypes that fit your characters –– like the Rebel, Evil Genius, or Femme Fatale –– is key. With 32 to choose from, each with two different styles, odds are one will match your character (a Tony Stark type might be a Crusader Playboy, for example). Pick an archetype, and Persona offers several paragraphs of dry but handy advice (unfortunately peppered with typos) about how that character might think, appropriate occupations, similar characters in pop culture, and more. The brief material doesn’t come close to the depth of a good writing book, but Persona’s approach adds some fun to thinking characters through. It’s almost like you’re building them for an RPG, which might get your creative wheels turning.
However, with just-adequate writing advice and frustrating writing tools, Persona doesn’t offer enough value. An Interact mode suggests how your characters could clash, mesh, and change with each other over time, but it’s just more built-in text based on each characters’ archetype. None of your own character details are included, reinforcing the impression that Persona is basically an archetype picker with other features included as an afterthought. A name database offers, well, a customizable list of character names, and smart groups let you organize characters by various criteria, but similar results can be had with Google searches and the writing software you probably already own.
The bottom line. With limited features and too many rough edges, Persona needs more drafts before it can be recommended for serious writers. How-to books can help you craft characters less expensively, and many other writing apps are more powerful and easier to use.
Persona 1.0
Mac OS 10.6.8 or higher
Makes discovering characters feel like building them for an RPG. Some useful writing suggestions.
Cramped text entry fields. No export options. Limited interactivity. Frequent typos.
