Enneagram of Personality

[GwenhwyfarRaven]

I just started skimming through the book "The Mythic Guide to Characters," by Dr. Antonio Del Drago. I don't normally have a problem with building main characters, but I'm a little apprehensive that my side characters aren't defined enough, so I thought I'd breeze through this and see what I could gain here.

The first chapter is about subconsciousness and the part that it plays in decision making, and one of the first tools it employs to help writers understand their characters is the enneagram of personalities. This describes 9 personality types that, as a skeletal structure, can provide some guidance on how a character would act or the kinds of decisions they would make.

I found the whole thing to be somewhat unhelpful so far, perhaps because I can't actually identify definitively with any of these personalities myself. I could take a test if I wanted to, but I don't care to because that's not the point. The point is that I feel like I am a combination of these types (and not adjacent ones as the personality tests predict), and as a matter of fact, I feel like some part of each type applies to me. I know other people very well who would also not fall into any of these types definitively.

So this feels less like a helpful skeletal structure of a morality type and more like a list thrown together of things that sometimes motivate people...which I honesty didn't need. I'm actually afraid that using these personality types as a basis for a character would make them more two-dimensional and predictable when, in reality, most people (or at least interesting people) are a combination of equally important aspects of these descriptions.

Has anyone else felt this way about the enneagram, or found a useful way to use it? Other reading suggestions are also welcome.

 

[troynos]

I don't like trying to pigeonhole people into personality types. Personality is a combination of so many different things: culture where grew up, surroundings where grew up, people grew up with, experiences well growing up, etc..

I don't think you can say "personality type a" will make this decision in this circumstance because you don't know what that specific person will do. That specific person had different experiences then anyone else, different home environment (family, no family, friends, etc..) that will shape how they react.

 

[Laurence]

My issue is that I feel like most people I know make completely unexpected decisions every time. Book characters seem unrealistically predictable to me on the whole.

I think this ASoIaF's large and varied cast is great. You have an idea of which characters are needed to solve each situation but the happenings of the story are so spread out, you're always trying to figure out if and how they'll arrive on the scene.

 

[Russ]

I just started skimming through the book "The Mythic Guide to Characters," by Dr. Antonio Del Drago. I don't normally have a problem with building main characters, but I'm a little apprehensive that my side characters aren't defined enough, so I thought I'd breeze through this and see what I could gain here.

The first chapter is about subconsciousness and the part that it plays in decision making, and one of the first tools it employs to help writers understand their characters is the enneagram of personalities. This describes 9 personality types that, as a skeletal structure, can provide some guidance on how a character would act or the kinds of decisions they would make.

I found the whole thing to be somewhat unhelpful so far, perhaps because I can't actually identify definitively with any of these personalities myself. I could take a test if I wanted to, but I don't care to because that's not the point. The point is that I feel like I am a combination of these types (and not adjacent ones as the personality tests predict), and as a matter of fact, I feel like some part of each type applies to me. I know other people very well who would also not fall into any of these types definitively.

So this feels less like a helpful skeletal structure of a morality type and more like a list thrown together of things that sometimes motivate people...which I honesty didn't need. I'm actually afraid that using these personality types as a basis for a character would make them more two-dimensional and predictable when, in reality, most people (or at least interesting people) are a combination of equally important aspects of these descriptions.

Has anyone else felt this way about the enneagram, or found a useful way to use it? Other reading suggestions are also welcome.

I have found it useful but don't use it slavishly. Perhaps at least as importantly I don't assess how something works as a fiction tool by trying to compare it to myself or my perception of myself. That is pretty much impossible to do effectively.

I think you have to consider it's value as a tool, not as a complete answer.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

In life we aren't privy to interior monologue and foreshadowing, heh heh.

My issue is that I feel like most people I know make completely unexpected decisions every time. Book characters seem unrealistically predictable to me on the whole.

I think this ASoIaF's large and varied cast is great. You have an idea of which characters are needed to solve each situation but the happenings of the story are so spread out, you're always trying to figure out if and how they'll arrive on the scene.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I find charts and personality types restricting and unhelpful. Character development is a highly organic process for me, and human personality in of itself is so complex it can't be categorized.

Maybe it is this conviction that prevents me from being able to pick a Hogwarts house.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

If you create a character that makes sense, odds on it falls in the enneagram. It's an interesting way to think of things, and some folks might find it useful, but in general? Decent intellectual exercise to make a person think, maybe, but otherwise, meh.

 

[CupofJoe]

Maybe it is this conviction that prevents me from being able to pick a Hogwarts house.

Doesn't the hat pick for you?
As for Enneagrams, I think they can be a useful tool to let you know how a character might act, but not how they will act.

 

[FifthView]

In life we aren't privy to interior monologue and foreshadowing, heh heh.

This reminded me of this bit from Auden's essay Hic et Ille:

Subjectively, my experience of life is one of having to make a series of choices between given alternatives and it is this experience of doubt, indecision, temptation, that seems more important and memorable than the actions I take. Further, if I make a choice which I consider the wrong one, I can never believe, however strong the temptation to make it, that it was inevitable, that I could not and should not have made the opposite choice. But when I look at others, I cannot see them making choices; I can only see what they actually do and, if I know them well, it is rarely that I am surprised, that I could not have predicted, given his character and upbringing, how so-and-so would behave.

Compared with myself, that is, other people seem at once less free and stronger in character.​

So for the OP's concerns....

I found the whole thing to be somewhat unhelpful so far, perhaps because I can't actually identify definitively with any of these personalities myself.....The point is that I feel like I am a combination of these types (and not adjacent ones as the personality tests predict), and as a matter of fact, I feel like some part of each type applies to me. I know other people very well who would also not fall into any of these types definitively.

....I'm actually afraid that using these personality types as a basis for a character would make them more two-dimensional and predictable when, in reality, most people (or at least interesting people) are a combination of equally important aspects of these descriptions.

....This feels like it relates to something Heliotrope recently brought up in a different thread. Fictional characters are not real–usually we don't know anyone like them in real life–but it's this unreality that, handled well, can make them feel real for readers.

How this happens, why it works–I don't know for certain.

I do think that side characters, at least those I find myself enjoying most, usually have one or two traits that are emphasized over all other possibilities. Extreme cases, "types" of personality. If I mention Hermione, everyone familiar with the series will be able to nail her down rather quickly when asked to describe her. She's not really a melange of those enneagram personalities, at least not in equal mixture.

I'm currently working under the hypothesis that most people have a devilishly hard time keeping complexity in mind, while reading, so it's easier if a roster of side characters keeps each of those side characters simple–I don't mean boring cut-outs, but just something easily identifiable and sensible.

But I also wonder if our own daily experience, our natural way of interacting with people in our own world, is "mirrored" when we experience those side characters. We don't see the decision-making processes of our acquaintances, all their internal complexity, much of the time but come to think of them in relatively simplistic terms (rightly or wrongly) if we think much about them at all.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yeah, I don't like Enneagrams either. My big problem with them is that I identify with INFP, so I can write another INFP personality (or whatever on an Enneagram matches me) but I can't write a character from another personality type accurately. I have no clue how a thinking/analyzing person functions.

I have learned to simplify my characters down to two main things: Emotional goal and physical goal. These must be related to the story (usually as the theme and the plot) and if they can be in opposition to each other even better.

For example: Micheal Scott

Emotional Goal: Make friends, have everyone love him.
Physical Goal: Run a business.

He absolutely (and this ENTIRE series is based on this fact) cannot do both. So there is nine seasons worth of material showing how he tries to simultaneously achieve both these goals, but can't.

Frodo Baggins

Physical Goal: Deliver the ring to Mordor

Emotional Goal: Don't allow it to change him into something different.

He does deliver the ring, but he can't stop the journey from changing him to the point where he can never go back to the shire. The two goals are not compatible.

Once you have figured out your character's inner goal, then you can play it up like crazy. You can over exaggerate it (as is often done with side characters: Hermione's need to be the smartest, Monica (Friends) need to be constantly cleaning and organizing, Micheal Scott's need to always be funny no matter what) so it informs their behavior:

Monica trying to eat at a restaurant might first check the photos and reviews on Tripadvisor, then when she gets there she might not like the table the waiter offers and ask for another one, and then she might take out a sani-wipe and wipe everything down before she sits, and then she might 'pretend' to go the-the bathroom, but she is really sneaking into the kitchen to see if the kitchen is up to her standards, and then might get in the way of the chef, offering him tips on organization, much to the annoyance of the people in the restaurant wanting their food...

Or, you might have a character like Jaimie Lannister, who's emotional need is to please his lover/sister to the point where he would push a boy out of a window... but his physical need is to protect the King (who is his sister's husband)... not mutually compatible.

This sort of characterization is much more simple for me.