Character Traits in Stories

Hi, and welcome to this video lesson on character traits. What are character traits? Well, they’re the parts of a person’s behavior and attitude that make up their personality. Everyone has character traits, both good and bad, even characters in books. Character traits are often shown with descriptive adjectives, like patient, faithful, or jealous.

A character trait might also have something to do with the way character looks: they might be tall, or short, wear a heavy coat, or maybe never wear a coat, but don’t forget a character trait is also how a character acts. A character may do good things or bad things.

A character may be mean or friendly. A description of a character is a character trait, so we can describe the way someone behaves, and we can also describe the way someone looks. An author uses traits to describe a character. Character traits help a reader learn more about characters.

These traits can help a reader understand the character better. Character traits can also help a reader understand why a character acts the way he or she does in the story. Alright, let’s practice trying to find some character traits in a story. I’ll go ahead and read it to you. I want you to look for the traits of each of these characters.

“His red hair was uncombed, but that didn’t matter to Jon because he wanted to be the first one out the door. He wanted to be the first one on the bus, too” These sentences have to do with Jon’s character traits. One of them has to do with the way that he looks: his uncombed hair.

Another one has to do with the way that he acts: he loves to go to school and he wants to be the first one there all the time. Make sense? Let’s try this again. “Sarah got home from school and immediately began doing her homework. She did not even take a break until she was completely finished. Sarah often wanted to do her homework during lunchtime at school because she enjoyed it so much.”

Were you able to figure out what character traits that we’re looking for in Sarah? It sounds like she’s just very hardworking, she’s always studying, and wants to get done as quickly as possible. Does that make sense?

I hope this helped. Thanks for watching this video lesson, and until next time, happy studying.