Characters and their personalities

[neodoering]

It seems that many writers of fantasy create characters based not on race and sex. However, I would like to recommend another way of looking at characters, and that is by personality types. There are books about this subject, and I would recommend the book Personality Types Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson. These are not fantasy-oriented books, but the way the authors discuss the 18 personality types is easy to understand, interesting, and applicable to a fantasy campaign. Some of the types are: the Investigator (intellectual/thinker), the Helper (like a social worker, etc), and the Individualist (artists, architects, etc.)

With this system in mind I can design the more challenging characters based on real-world models.

You can find this book at a used book dealer, for a few bucks.

Does anyone else use models like this one? Or the Myers-Briggs personality test?

 

[skip.knox]

I tend to dismiss this because they're too simplistic. If you came up with a thousand personality types you would still be doing humanity a disservice. At the same time, everyone can be divided into two kinds of people: those who divide everyone into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

It's all an exercise in abstraction, which is sort of the opposite of what a writer does. We deal with the unique, or strive to. We want our characters to stand out, even if they're not outstanding.

All that having been said, I have gone to such charts when I'm stuck, especially on secondary characters, to give them *more*. That is, I often find myself having a secondary character who is one-dimensional when they first enter. Sometimes just writing them into scenes helps me add depth, but sometimes nothing clicks. That's when I might look again at the types, especially at discussions and examples, looking specifically for a contrary or unexpected trait to add to the mix. It's all about being inconsistent.

 

[FifthView]

Josh Lanyon in his book on writing M/M fiction suggests using astrological signs. First, come up with a real world birthday for your characters, then check out the descriptions of traits for each corresponding sign. His book covers writing romance, and he thinks this is a great tool for finding flaws in characters, flaws that can cause some conflict between the two principle characters. Any "comprehensive" description of an astrological sign always includes a list of flaws, so this is a good tool for brainstorming those problematic personality quirks–no need to believe in astrology, heh.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm not sure dismissing character types as too simplistic is entirely fair. I'm thinking that even with how complex we are as humans it's rare that we know anyone other than ourselves all that well - and sometimes not even ourselves. It's easy and convenient to categorise things - including people, and especially people we don't know, or don't care about.

When writing characters we do need to know them well, but even then we have to start somewhere. I think most characters start as stereotypes, and then we chip away at them with exception after exception until they become something else entirely.

That said...

I don't really use character models like that myself.
What I do is I select music that fits with the character, and then pick out a handful of songs that'll symbolise the core of who they are. It's not very formal, but it gives me a lot of opportunity to consider the identity of the character while I do it.

 

[Aurora]

Hm. Nope. Characters typically pop into my head and then I create a story around their setting and place in life. Never thought about using something like this before.

 

[Insolent Lad]

I tend to borrow my personalities from real life people, or at least start from them. Friends, acquaintances, even historical figures. Ready-made characters, in a sense. Any I create on my own are likely to be less realistic, being abstract from the start.

 

[neodoering]

Music and characters

I don't really use character models like that myself.
What I do is I select music that fits with the character, and then pick out a handful of songs that'll symbolise the core of who they are. It's not very formal, but it gives me a lot of opportunity to consider the identity of the character while I do it.

I have used music to set mood while exploring characters, myself. I wrote and self-published a novel entitled Knifing the Heart (available on amazon.com), which is about an adventuring party of American Indians who take a commission from a god, to destroy another god. It took a few years to write the book and add simple illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. I bought about a dozen CDs of American Indian music and played them while I was writing and editing. Great idea. Music really puts you in the mood to explore an exotic culture and its people.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Personally, I sort mine into Hogwarts houses.

 

[Jorunn]

A lot of the time mine will show up with a defining trait or two and a couple of facts about themselves and their situation, and I build out from that keeping the trajectory of their story in mind. What sort of person would make the choices that lead them on that path?

Something I did with my main characters from one of my stories was to describe them as though I were an outside observer of a real person, with a physical description, personality, habits/mannerisms, and a bit of basic life history. Not only is it fun, it was really helpful!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Personality types, things like the enneagram, are interesting, and can work for fiction because no character in a book is ever as complex as a real person. There are some interseting theories on using the enneagram to make sure characters act consistent... but that said... I don't use a bit of it. Which isn't to say it can't be useful to someone. If soeone has trouble creating consistent complex characters, I can see where it might be useful.

 

[Simpson17866]

My favorites are MyersBriggs Personality and Dungeons&Dragons Alignment, and I have a chart of 31 characters that I've come up with for 4 stories – a novel-length Doctor Who fanfiction, a YA horror novella, a Lovecraftian short story, and a vampire novel that I am about 1/4 of the way into (despite previously thinking that I was half-way into it) – according to the two systems:

I tend to dismiss this because they're too simplistic. If you came up with a thousand personality types you would still be doing humanity a disservice.

Should we treat physical appearance the same way? Does the fact that the description "I am a 6'0" white man with blue eyes who wears glasses, shaves himself completely bald, and likes wearing a pork pie hat" does not say everything about what I look like as a person mean that anything the description does say about me is useless?

Does the fact that a stethoscope only measures a person's pulse and not a person's brain activity mean that we shouldn't use stethoscopes to measure a person's pulse?

Does the fact that the first Harry Potter book is not the entire series mean that the first book isn't valuable?

I can play this all day

It's all an exercise in abstraction, which is sort of the opposite of what a writer does. We deal with the unique, or strive to. We want our characters to stand out, even if they're not outstanding.

All that having been said, I have gone to such charts when I'm stuck, especially on secondary characters, to give them *more*. That is, I often find myself having a secondary character who is one-dimensional when they first enter. Sometimes just writing them into scenes helps me add depth, but sometimes nothing clicks. That's when I might look again at the types, especially at discussions and examples, looking specifically for a contrary or unexpected trait to add to the mix. It's all about being inconsistent.

That's what I do too!

I start with a basic framework - especially one that's counter-stereotypical in some way - and then I fill in the blanks that the framework doesn't cover

 

[skip.knox]

Point taken, Simpson17866
Myers-Briggs is a place to start. My objection comes when people treat it as a place to stop.

 

[Simpson17866]

My objection comes when people treat it as a place to stop.

Fair enough

 

[Vadosity]

I honestly don't use any of those kinds of tricks to build characters as my human characters (few as those are) come fully formed in how I want them to behave and how they affect the story.

With my mythical cast of characters though, I do research the myths and legends behind a creature but that is just so that I can work with or around the possible perceptions of a creature and those things never affect their personalities, rather I tend to play off them like with my one short about a Dragon. He is nothing like most myths say dragons are like.

 

[WaffleSingSong]

I guess we ISTPs don't exist

Related to the OP, personality is something that is hugely complex, and it is something that you shouldn't bog yourself over. I think personality inventories can be a good start in outlining your characters. If you are going to use MBTI, Micheal Pierce on YouTube has a great series about MBTI/Jungian Typology.

However, how about basing characters off real-life people? Not necessarily carbon-copy, but have clear influences of specific famous figures. Want a badass combat character? Use people like Simo Hayha and Miyamoto Musashi. Charismatic leader? Why not Alexander the Great, or maybe even Hitler or Oprah? (I'm serious with the last one.) Read biographies of people, and perhaps you might get a spark of inspiration or two.

 

[Simpson17866]

I guess we ISTPs don't exist

Yet. I haven't written any ISTPs YET

Would you like me to PM you a spoiler for something I won't be putting to paper anytime soon?

However, how about basing characters off real-life people? Not necessarily carbon-copy, but have clear influences of specific famous figures. Want a badass combat character? Use people like Simo Hayha and Miyamoto Musashi. Charismatic leader? Why not Alexander the Great, or maybe even Hitler or Oprah? (I'm serious with the last one.) Read biographies of people, and perhaps you might get a spark of inspiration or two.

That's never worked for me, but there are a lot of people that it has worked for