The instincts are solid for both of you.<br/><br/>For Beliefs I'm looking for something distinctively Active: goals, directions, and courses of action they are going to actively pursue.  We already know the broad strokes of your character's reactions and inclinations between Motivation, Intimacies, and Virtues, but there's a difference between saying 'My character has tremendous Compassion' and 'My character has tremendous Compassion and is therefore going to (build an orphanage/free slaves/overthrow tyrants/take care of my hometown)'.<br/><br/>I've likely been ambiguous about that specificity, for which I apologize.  Let's redo the Beliefs demand this way:<br/><br/>Choose one fact about the setting that interests you-the-player-- a war, an artifact, a disaster, an NPC, whatever.  Describe your character's opinion about that fact.  Tell us what your character intends to do about that opinion in the immediate future; if the opinion does not demand immediate action, rewrite it until it does.  Then, ask yourself why the character hasn't finished the job yet.  You've free authorship in this to determine why that is, whether that involves inventing people, situations, things, romances, vendettas, or more.<br/><br/>Choose a character who interests you-the-player.  Preferrably a PC, but since we're down to a core posting group of three-odd, an NPC is also acceptable.  Frame your-the-player's opinion as your character's opinion.  Then, determine what the character intends to do about this opinion.  If the opinion is adversarial, then think of why they haven't acted upon them.  It's often acceptable to be open-ended about this one; a character-directed Belief of "This person is overly ambitious, so I'm going to take them down a peg by exposing their affair" is as valid as "This person is overly ambitious, so I'm going to make sure they don't overreach themselves."<br/><br/>Lastly, choose a fact that interests you and an opinion the character has on that fact that is likely to run afoul of one of the first two.  It still has to be something you-the-player still find entertaining enough to hold-- not something you-the-player can't ever see yourself legitimately supporting.  What's the worst thing your character could believe or do that would occasionally totally screw up their ability to deal with their first and second Beliefs?  This third opinion doesn't -have- to have an action component (though it often can and does!).  The 'adversarial' aspect of this particular Belief usually comes from the fact that it comes at cross purposes with one of the other two.<br/><br/>If you find yourself saying "Well, my character would do/believe/want to" about the facts you're choosing to write about, stop yourself right there.  This is stuff that interests you-the-player, not your character.  I don't want to create stories stuff your character would be interested in if you don't particularly want to go in depth about those explorations.<br/><br/>Avoid nuance in writing these Beliefs.  Sanger's rewritten Beliefs are very much on the explicit and are a good place to look for on reference in the absence of nuance.  No legalese, no weaseling opportunities, no edge cases.  You can implement the nuance and the subtlety in the execution, but the statements themselves must have no room for ambiguity.<br/><br/>If you can't determine your character's next step in a given overarching situation by looking at your Beliefs, they aren't solid Beliefs.<br/><br/>Lastly, there are no in-game bonuses or penalties if your character acts in violation of their Beliefs (unless, of course, you adopt them as your Motivation or Intimacies).  This is something to help me (and you) out with future planning.