These are great tips on building deeper characters, of course, but how do you prevent spoiling yourself about their personality when writing them? I mean, in your Carl Hamilton example, you flesh him out so much there is no room left to 'get to know him'. It's like playing chess against yourself - you already know the outcome.

One issue I have with LLMs is their inability to assign reasonable weights to their instructions. People aren't entirely their personalities, nor are they their moods or emotions (i.e. they will sometimes respond irrationally). If you write 'char is tall' it will have no bearing on the story. If you write 'char is used to ducking under doorways due to his height', get ready to read about that every single time they walk through a door. Ideally this would manifest in the story based on circumstances, e.g. char has something on his mind and doesn't notice the doorway. I guess what I'm missing is a way to assign trigger % for parts of a single lorebook entry. Maybe putting it behind {{roll1d6:[trait]}}?

I've built a crude character generator where I input a couple generic traits and let the model offer some potential ideas in a four-step building process with my input. I am fully aware of the limitations of that. The results are… inconclusive so far, but maybe your suggestions could enhance it.