Forgotten Realms Wiki:Help-Writing an article about a person

The Help:Writing an article about a person page is intended to provide help, instructions, and tips for writing an article about a character on the Forgotten Realms Wiki. It can be used both creating a new article or for adding to an existing article.

The term "person" is used quite loosely to mean any distinct inhabitant of the Forgotten Realms. An article about a person could be about a human, a dwarf, or even a dragon or a god. This can also be used for unnamed and generic characters, as well as named characters. Please note these are all non-player characters (NPC), and player-characters (PC) are usually homebrew, and not allowed on the wiki. If your article is about a species or a race, then you should see Help:Writing an article about a creature.

You might also want to refer to the policy on citing sources to provide references for the statements in your article.

Infobox
You should begin the article by using the Person template to create an infobox. Visit that template page, and copy the text from the usage box. Once you open the "edit source" option, you can just paste this at the beginning of your article and fill in the blanks. Don't worry about trying to fill in every entry, as not all entries will be necessary. The template automatically knows only to display the information that you fill in, so if you leave any of the fields blank, they will just not be displayed. You may remove entries that won't be used to reduce the length, but save some that may be filled in by other uses at a later date. Do try to fill in as many as are applicable, particularly the character's name, species or race, home, and classes if they are known. The template page explains the purpose of each entry and how it may be used. See also the example Person template for Tessaril Winter on this page.

If writing an article about a deity or similar powerful or divine entity or concept, then use the Deity template, which has many more entries relevant to deities.

Introduction
Next, begin with a short introduction, to quickly tell the reader who the character is, what they are, and why they're important. As usual for wiki articles, begin with the name—or names—of the character in bold. For fun, you can treat this like a NPC's statblock or a PC's character sheet, with name, gender, race, class (alignment is typically too crunchy). You can follow with a mention of where they're from and what they do. For a particularly important character, or a very long article, you can also add a brief summary of other key aspects of the character: their personality, achievements, relationships with other important people, and other unique features.

For example:
 * Tessaril Winter, formerly known as Tessar the Mage, was a female human fighter and wizard. Previously an adventurer, she became the lord of the town of Eveningstar in Cormyr. She was beloved as an easy-going and attentive ruler, who used her magic to keep the peace. She was good friends and a one-time lover of King Azoun IV, and notably had a tressym familiar.

This is the common style evolved on the wiki, but you may feel a different arrangement is more effective. But please consider if it's really necessary first.

Citations should be placed here, as everywhere, especially those that give a good overview, first appearance, or main appearance of the character.

Sections
There are no hard-and-fast rules on what sections should or should not exist within an article about a person, although there is a logical convention that has built up on the wiki with the creation of many articles about people. You might use different section titles, but bear in mind some editors may change these as a matter of habit. You can also change the order of sections, particularly if some aspect of a character needs to be explained first before another aspect makes sense. History can often go first, to explain why a character is in the position they're in.

Sections are not essential either. A very short article about a minor character, such as Dualah, does not require sections. An article may look odd if it has only one line per section or has more sections than text.

Section headings
You might consider using, but are not forced to use, the following sections in your article:

Subsections
If a section gets very long or must focus on distinct topics, then subsections can be used to further arrange the article and break up a wall-of-text.

Appendix
A very involved article might have an appendix&mdash;a separate section containing out-of-universe discussion under different subheadings. Note that References also appears here as a subsection. If an appendix is used, then don’t use the lone References section above.

Categorization
Although the following list is not exhaustive, generally an article about a person should be categorized according to:

Race
The race or species of the person. This might be something simple like Category:Humans or could be more specific, such as Category:Shield dwarves. For half-breeds, if there is already an establish half-breed race, use that category, for example Category:Half-elves. In the case of an unusual half-breed, it might be necessary to use two categories, so for a half-dragon, half-ogre, you might want to use both Category:Dragons and Category:Ogres. This is because it would not be worth creating a category for this specific half-breed, due to its rarity.

Occupation
The job or role that the person plays in society. This is not the class of the person, so using Category:Barbarians for this would not be necessary. The person might be a fisherman, merchant or king, which would all be examples of occupations that could be categorized. Because there are so many different terms for the same job, it is recommended you look in Category:Inhabitants by occupation to find an existing category if possible.

Membership
Membership of an organization should be categorized. This is so that the reader can quickly see all the known members of a particular organization. These categories will typically begin with "Members of". It is quite possible for there to be some duality between membership and occupation. For example, a person might be in Category:Guards and Category:Members of the Purple Dragons.

Religion
This is very obvious for clerics, because a cleric of Lathander must be a worshiper of Lathander. For other people, although it is not often known, it is sometimes useful to list deities where possible. These categories will typically begin with "Worshipers of". Note that this uses the American spelling of the word. It is quite possible for one person to be in many religion categories, since it is quite possible that a person will worship more than one deity simlutaneously.

Home
Be as specific as possible with this categorization, although this is not always straightforward. These categories will typically begin with "Inhabitants of". For example, if you know that a person lives in Suzail, use Category:Inhabitants of Suzail. There is no need to put the person in Category:Inhabitants of Cormyr, unless you could only be as specific as this. There is no need to be more specific that the town or city level. For example, if you knew that someone lived in the docks ward of a particular city, just categorize them under that city, not the specific ward. If a person has previously lived in different places, add those as categories too, but if a person is nomadic in nature, it is probably not appropriate to add them to any habitation categories.

Alignment
Quite simply a categorization of a person by their alignment. Be sure to include them all if that person has gone through changes in their personal alignment. For example Bren Tallsword should be added to Category:Inhabitants of lawful neutral alignment as he is of lawful neutral alignment. All of these categories also begin with "Inhabitants of"; they end with one of the nine possible character alignments.

Class and level
Add the person to their class-specific category and to their class-and-level category. For example, Bobby is a level 4 fighter. Add the Bobby article to Category:Fighters and Category:4th level fighters. This is to ensure that readers can find Bobby if they are looking for a fighter of 4th level, or even if they are just looking for a fighter, and Bobby's level is of no consequence. Levels of NPC classes (commoner, expert, warrior i.e.) are to be added before the base class and levels of prestige classes (Mystic Theurge, Dwarven Defender, etc.) are to be added after.

Articles about more than one person
Although articles are usually about a single person, it is sometimes more appropriate to use a single article for more than one person. This should not be a group of people, because a person can be mentioned in a group article while also having their own article. It is more useful for articles such as twins who have only a brief mention and have very little information separating them. You should consider whether, by having more than one article, the articles would be a copy of one another in all but title. If this is the case, it is worth using a single article. If there is any differing information beyond this, it is probably worth using one article per person.

Examples:
 * Haddenbils is an example of a single article about more than one person.
 * Iraun and Srivven are very similar, but sufficiently different that it makes two separate articles worthwhile.
 * Arno and Julian is an example of an article that appears to be about more than one person, but on closer inspection, it is about one creature with two heads, each of which having a different name!