Your Writing Personality Type

[Devor]

This came across my Facebook page from Writer's Circle the other day. It's based on the Myers' Briggs test, using writing style traits.

They're using:

E and I = Expressive Dialogue vs. Stoic Dialogue
C and D = Concise Descriptions vs. Detailed Descriptions
H and B = Hefty Prose vs. Breezy Prose
P and K = Patient Motion vs. Kinetic Motion

I don't know if I find the breakup too useful, personally. What do you think of it?

But maybe more importantly, what Writing Style Traits would you use to describe fantasy writers? Maybe we can come up with something more useful to us.

I think a good Writing Style Matrix could be useful when we're talking asking for or offering critiques in the Showcase. It would give you a good idea of how closely somebody offering a critique matches up with your style.

 

[Svrtnsse]

They're using:

E and I = Expressive Dialogue vs. Stoic Dialogue
C and D = Concise Descriptions vs. Detailed Descriptions
H and B = Hefty Prose vs. Breezy Prose
P and K = Patient Motion vs. Kinetic Motion

I'd say this is more of a just for fun kind of thing than actually useful. It is kind of fun though. My issue here is that I'm not entirely sure what they mean with some of the expressions they're using. Specifically, what's patient motion and kinetic motion?

I'm pretty sure I'd fit with ECB, but not sure about the last one.

 

[Jim Aikin]

Basically silly, but fun to think about. Is my dialog expressive or stoic? I think that depends on the character, or on what's going on in a particular scene. Sometimes a description needs to be concise, sometimes it needs to be detailed. I probably lean toward hefty prose, but hefty prose can also be breezy! Some scenes call for kinetic motion, some don't.

 

[Russ]

These self-help style things can be fun if you don't take them too seriously. In fact they might even produce a thought or two.

Anyways, I aspire to be a EDHK writer, but whether or not I am yet succeeding is for others to judge.

 

[Chessie]

I'm definitely SDBK although I've been working on my prose. It's my greatest weakness.

 

[evolution_rex]

I'd like to think I'm an ECBK or an SCBK, but occasionally an EDBK. But I would need examples of these terms they're using to know for sure.

 

[Devor]

I looked around for the source on this but couldn't find one. There were several links to a blog post that's been taken down, though.

 

[Tom]

I think I'm probably ECBK. My descriptions used to be lengthier, but recently I've been moving away from that.

 

[Mythopoet]

I tend to think that anything that encourages writers to choose an "either or" answer is not healthy. Writers should not lock themselves down to a certain style. While we need to develop a unique personal voice, we also need to be willing to challenge ourselves and go where the needs of the story lead us.

Also, I don't think any of these elements really are "either or" situations. They're all more of a spectrum of style with infinite possibilities of expression based on the individual author. Simplifying it like that always rubs me the wrong way.

 

[FifthView]

P and K = Patient Motion vs. Kinetic Motion

So, does this reference pacing in some way?

OTOH, I can almost see what they mean if I consider various things I've read. Some stories build gradually, at a leisurely pace, whereas others are frenetic, with many leaps and bounds. So I wonder if it references different types of strategies for building or creating tension for the reader (subtle, gradual buildup vs active and obvious ratcheting with occasional dips.)

Then again, I wonder if it's supposed to reference the types of activity used by the author when characters act. Patient motion would be relatively non-kinetic activity–conversations, investigation, travel, spying–and kinetic motion would be more action-based, with maybe some high-tension conversation, travel, etc. thrown in.

 

[FifthView]

I looked around for the source on this but couldn't find one. There were several links to a blog post that's been taken down, though.

Best I can find is that it came from a site called Lulu, apparently a self-publishing site, that used data from the "Book Genome Project" to analyze writing and tell the author various things about her work. Here's one blog post referencing it:

I sent my NaNoWriMo scribble in to Lulu.com for a check on its personality. It was fed through their book Genome project and came back as ‘An SBDK …

At another link, I've found a little more info:

While we were at the Self Publishing Book Expo last month, we got a chance to talk to some of the creative minds who run Lulu, the self publishing company. They let us know about a very cool analytics program that Lulu now offers to its customers. Called the Helix Review, this “personality test” analyzes your book manuscript for all kinds of interesting information that may help you decide how best to market your book when you eventually make it available for purchase.

Visiting Lulu, I don't find a link to their Helix Review service, and links from the Lulu blog to that service no longer work.

Apparently something called "BookLamp" was the "public-facing product of the Book Genome Project," and was bought by Apple at some point. So I wonder if the BGP was basically then put behind some kind of firewall or paywall that limited Lulu from being able to continue using the BGP for their Helix service, leading to its termination. But this is purely wild speculation on the basis of about 30 minutes' worth of Google searching.

Edit: More info on Apple's acquisition of BookLamp/BGP: Apple Secretly Acquired “Pandora For Books” Startup BookLamp To Battle Amazon

Edit#2: The above doesn't mean that the poster and setup came from Lulu, however. There may have been a NaNoWriMo collaboration with BGP, according to a comment I found under a blog entry on Livejournal.

I think that the original purpose of the "personality types" may have been for market positioning: You analyze one of your own works, find other established works of the same personality type, and then you'd have a better idea of how to market your own. So it was for describing a book, not for describing an author's habitual style per se.

 

[skip.knox]

I used to be an EBCDIC writer, but now I'm an ASCII writer. It would be fun to be an ANSI writer.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I'm the nerd getting his books dumped.

Seriously! I always get ridiculed with these things. Like when my professor introduced Meyers-Briggs, he had us guess his type. Everyone in the class was blurting out guesses, and I was so frustrated that not one guess was correct. I said, "It's so obvious he's ESTP!"

The professor asked how I could be so sure, and I said it was because he had something good to say about extroverts, seers, thinkers and perceivers. But for the four that he's not, he had a funny story like about his judgmental aunt.

When he asked what I was, I said "INFJ."

"Typical INFJ thinking," he said.