Character development in Scrivener and character development in Quillen start from opposite assumptions. Scrivener gives you a document and trusts you to know what to put in it. Quillen gives you a structure and asks you to fill in the blanks. Neither is wrong, but they suit different writers, and it's worth knowing which one you actually are before you commit to a process.
Scrivener: a document, a folder, and your own system
Scrivener ships with a basic character sketch template, a freeform document with a handful of suggested headers, living inside your project's Characters folder alongside however many other character documents you create. Most writers customize this template quickly, adding or removing sections to match their own process, or replace it with something built from scratch. The upside is total control: nothing about the format is imposed on you. The downside is that "what should I actually be tracking about this character" is a question you answer yourself, every time, with no prompts to catch a detail you didn't think to ask about.
Quillen: nine sections, dozens of prompts, one consistent format
Quillen's character editor is organized into nine guided sections: Demographics, Physical Appearance, History, Psychological Traits, Communication, Strengths/Weaknesses/Abilities, Relationships, and Character Growth. Each section carries specific prompts, eye and hair color, tics, fashion style, archetype, internal and external conflicts, motivations, epiphanies, and considerably more, functioning as an exhaustive checklist rather than a blank page. A step-by-step edit mode walks through one section at a time, and a read-only summary view lays every filled-in field out at a glance for quick reference while drafting. Every character also gets a photo and shows up in a visual gallery on the character screen.
Which one actually fits how you develop characters
If you already have a strong, personal sense of what makes a character work and want nothing standing between you and a blank page, Scrivener's freeform approach won't get in your way. If you've ever finished a first draft and realized you never nailed down a character's motivation, or if "what should I know about this person before I start writing them" is a question you'd rather have answered for you, Quillen's structured prompts exist specifically to catch what a blank document won't remind you to think about.
Common questions
Does Scrivener have a character template?
Scrivener includes a basic character sketch template in its project templates, which is a freeform document with a few suggested headers. Writers commonly customize or replace it, since it doesn't prompt for specific details beyond a starting outline.
How many character details does Quillen's profile system cover?
Quillen's character editor has nine guided sections, Demographics, Physical Appearance, History, Psychological Traits, Communication, Strengths/Weaknesses/Abilities, Relationships, and Character Growth, with dozens of specific prompts across them, from eye color to internal conflict to character arc.