When writing bios, specifics are your friend. For instance, under “Dislikes” I almost always see some variation of “Mean people, stupid people, bullies, bigots, etc” The thing is, almost EVERYONE dislikes these…but also many people have very different definitions of what qualifies as each one. For instance, the average person has a very different conception of what “bigotry” looks like than someone who is active in the social justice scene; they tend to imagine large and overt acts of direct bigotry, rather than small or “invisible” discriminations. And to some people, “bigotry” is things like affirmative action or women not dating them. Now, that may be stupid, but it’s their perception and it says something distinct about them that helps you imagine better what kind of person this is. Speaking of stupid, what someone considers “stupidity” is a very personal thing, with an even wider range. To some people, simple spelling mistakes in the age of autocorrect are the height of stupidity, while other people find it stupid to be overly pedantic about such things. In fact, the things that this character considers “stupid” might not be stupid at all to the person reading it! What someone considers “stupid” can say a whole lot about them, so putting down that they just dislike “stupid people” or “stupidity” is not only unhelpfully vague and generic, it misses out on a chance to really give a sense of who your character is through what their pet peeves are. It tells me a lot more about someone if she can’t stand conspiracy theorists, climate change deniers, and Creationists than if her bio just said she didn’t like “people who believe dumb things”
