Comments on: Personality Traits: Creating Dimensional Characters

By: Arc: How Characters Grow and Change Organically

Arc: How Characters Grow and Change Organically — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 22:50:53 +0000

[…] Personality Traits: Creating Dimensional Characters […]

By: Louis Burklow

Louis Burklow — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 06:52:14 +0000

I’ve never taken a Myers-Briggs test and have no idea what my personality type is. When outlining a new story and writing character bios, I find it useful to try different traits for characters. This is a way to find the story with the most dramatic tension. Also, it’s fascinating to me to consider different characters – that’s part of my job as a writer.

By: Brian Pope

Brian Pope — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 23:34:05 +0000

You always give me things to think about for my current WIP.

By: bhussey

bhussey — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 23:08:40 +0000

In reply to Kristen Lamb. Thanks for your the advice. I'll be looking for such footprints in the future as I read.

By: Kristen Lamb

Kristen Lamb — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 16:45:10 +0000

In reply to Barbara.

The Mach-IV isn’t static. Supposedly people become less Machiavellian the older they get. It could be used a lot of ways (just thinking off the top of my head). I would use it for arc. It shows how the character grows more cynical after perhaps seeing life isn’t as rosy as they once believed. A great example would be Sarah Connor who would have likely been a low-Mach until the Terminator landed in her life. It could also run the opposite direction, the hopeless cynic encounters a person or situation that reminds them of the good in the world. Take the movie “As Good as It Gets” (which is a romantic comedy). Best-selling romance author Melvin Udall is a misanthropic jerk with debilitating OCD. Yet, his gay neighbor, the victim of a hate crime and his favorite waitress and her son are the reason he changes into a decent human being by the end.

I imagine we see the Mach-IV’s footprints more places than we realize, especially in romance. How many involve someone who believes love isn’t real, love is for fools, or that they will never be hurt again….only for the crisis and other characters to change that?

By: Cheril Thomas

Cheril Thomas — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 15:23:19 +0000

Really enjoyed this! Here’s what I remember about the training session where I took the MB test. I don’t recall the final leltters I got, but I was straight down the middle on all categories until the ‘judgmental’ section, where I took a hard shift to the left and wound up somewhere around ‘thinks she knows everything.’ I thought the graph looked pretty cool until I asked the administrator what it meant. She said, “It means it’s hard being you.”
Huh. Go figure.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 05:02:15 +0000

I enjoy taking personality tests but have never thought about applying them to my characters. So yesterday I took the Enneagram for the two main characters in my current manuscript. They matched perfectly. Best of all, while reading the Vice and Defects Mechanism, I feel better equipped to strengthen the conflicts between them. A very useful device! Now I’m wondering how the Mach IV could apply to romances.)

By: Jean Lamb

Jean Lamb — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 03:48:13 +0000

Meyer Briggs didn’t work that well for me–I run down the middle in three of the axes (last seen saying “But it DEPENDS!”). But it’s fun to write people like Moriarty; and I enjoy letting that character discover that they have a) temporarily run out of marks at a Bad Time, and b) discover that people remember them a lot better than Moriarty remembered *them*. Oops.

By: Personality Traits: Creating Dimensional Characters — Kristen Lamb | Ups Downs Family History

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 16:25:14 +0000

[…] Personality Traits: Creating Dimensional Characters […]

By: The Art of Writing Blockbuster Articles – The Art of Writing Blockbuster Articles

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 07:40:43 +0000

[…] Personality Traits: Creating Dimensional Characters […]