Believable Characters, Part 4

I'm still talking about creating believable characters. I'm pulling from several sources, but mostly Jeff Gerke's book Plot vs. Character and David Keirsey's book Please Understand Me II. 

Now that we've explored the four base pairs involved in personalities, let's have some fun. It's time to mix and match. You remember the four parts:

1.  Extrovert (E) or Introvert (I)

2.  Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N)

3.  Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

4.  Judgment (J) or Perception (P)

Now we just pick one trait from each base. If you're a math person, you realize there are 16 possibilities. Check it out:

Someone who is extroverted, sensing, thinking, and judgment is called ESTJ in the Myers-Briggs game. The letters aren't so important, but it's much easier to type the four letters than typing the words out. Stay with me. 

Keirsey calls this person THE SUPERVISOR. She is self-appointed to keep everyone in line. She likes being in a group, and she likes taking charge of it. She prefer facts to opinions and is highly practical. She will not be spontaneous (that's a perception trait) or particularly tactful (that's a feeling trait), and will not indulge in speculation, imagination, or fantasy (that would be the intuitive).

The ESTJ is eager to enforce the rules, and expects others to follow the rules or face the consequences--and this includes employees, offspring, and spouse. ESTJ's make excellent workers. They obey their superiors, and are comfortable issuing orders to subordinates. They are not always responsive to other points of view or to the emotions of others, and can be seen by others as rude or tactless.

ESTJ's are preoccupied with morality and worry about society falling apart, morality decaying, standards being undermined, and traditions being lost. They see themselves as dependable and respectable. Others see them as fatalistic and pessimistic, and that doesn't bother the ESTJ. She really doesn't care what others think about her. ESTJ's make up about ten percent of the population, so you'll run into lots of these people in life and in fiction.

Some famous ESTJ's are George W. Bush, Bette Davis, the Reverend Billy Graham, and Lucy from the Peanuts.

This type of person finds great success in occupations that require a high degree of dedication and disciple: corporate law, politics, police work, military service, and business. You will NOT find an ESTJ working as an artist/performer, a writer, or a sex trade worker. 

So, if you need a prostitute in your story, she won't be an ESTJ. If, however, you need an excellent vice cop or a drill sergeant, the ESTJ is the perfect fit! Other good careers for the ESTJ include lawyer, chief information officer, and dentist. Make sure, when you're creating your character, that you don't veer from the base personality, or he won't be believable to the exalted reader. There's room for quirks, idiosyncrasies, phobias, and aberrations, but they need to fit within the framework of the personality type. Later, I'll get into how to incorporate these exciting bits into the base personality.

Can you now see how this personality stuff can help you create believable characters? Are you excited about it now? Are you dying to study the next one? It's coming up in the next post.

-Sonja

Believable Characters, Part 3

Thanks for coming back to this deliciously useful series on creating believable characters. I'm posting a day early because it wouldn't be right to interrupt Thanksgiving to read a blog post. So today's entertainment--I mean, blog post--finishes what I started last Monday, and includes quite a bit of info from The Myers & Briggs Foundation website. 

The four base pairs of all personalities are:

1.  Extrovert (E) or Introvert (I)

2.  Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N)

3.  Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

4.  Judgment (J) or Perception (P)

Let's finish the definitions.

3.  The third pair, thinking or feeling, deal with how people make decisions.

Thinking: Someone who is tough-minded and objective. They find the truth or principle to be applied, regardless of the situation. They analyze pros and cons, then try to be logical. They try to be impersonal and don't let other's wishes (or their own) get in the way. They enjoy technical and scientific fields of study. They notice inconsistencies. They want to be fair, and believe that telling the truth is far more important than being tactful. They are sometimes seen as too task-oriented, uncaring, or indifferent.

Feeling: Someone who weighs what people care about and the points-of-view of the other people involved in the situation. Values are important, and the establishment of harmony is the most important thing. This person is seen by others as caring, warm, and tactful. They are communication-oriented, and feel nervous when conflict exists. They make decisions with their heart and want to be seen as compassionate. Others sometimes see them as too idealistic, mushy, or indirect.

4.  The last pair, judgment or perception, deals with how people live their lives.

Judgment: Someone who prefers a planned or orderly way of life. They like to have things settled and organized. They feel more comfortable when decisions are made, and crave control. They may not FEEL like this on the inside, but this is how they want the world to view them. They like to appear task-oriented (and may even BE task-oriented). They like making  to-do lists. They do their work before they play. They work solidly toward a deadline so they don't have to do a last-minute rush. They focus on the goal, and sometimes miss new information.

Perceiving: Someone who prefers a flexible and spontaneous way of life. They want to understand and adapt to the world, not organize it. They are open to new experiences and information. They are seen as loose and casual. They like to keep planning to a minimum. They mix work with play, find stimulation in approaching deadlines, and work in bursts of energy. They sometimes miss making necessary decisions because they're so open to new information.

Now that we've examined the base pairs, we can go on to mix and match. We'll cover that, and more, in the next exciting installments. Same bat time, same bat channel!

-Sonja

Believable Characters, Part 2

Thanks for coming back to this deliciously useful series on creating believable characters. I'm pulling from several sources, but mostly Jeff Gerke's book Plot vs. Character and David Keirsey's book Please Understand Me II. Today's post includes quite a bit of info from The Myers & Briggs Foundation website. In my last post, I listed the eight parts that going into making a full personality. Today I'm going to define half the terms. I'll hit the other half in the next post.

The four parts are:

1.  Extrovert (E) or Introvert (I)

2.  Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N)

3.  Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

4.  Judgment (J) or Perception (P)

Let's jump into the definitions.

1.  The first pair, extrovert or introvert, deal with where people put their attention and get their energy. (Note: for all of these, everyone experiences both patterns, but everyone leans more toward one than the other.)

Extrovert: Someone who is expressive and outgoing, who re-energizes by being with other people (the more the merrier). Someone who feels at home in the world and loves to make things happen. When faced with a problem, extroverts feel the need to talk about it, preferably with lots of people. They are more likely to jump into a project without allowing enough time to think it over.

Introvert: Someone who is reserved and seclusive, who re-energizes by being alone and dealing with ideas, pictures, memories, and internal workings. Introverts don't necessarily avoid crowds, but they feel more comfortable in small groups or alone. They take time to reflect on ideas and are careful making decisions. They often enjoy the idea more than experiencing the real thing. They prefer having a few, close friends then making tons of friends they don't know very well.

2.  The second pair, sensing or intuitive, deal with how people deal with incoming information. 

Sensing: Someone who is highly observant to the physical reality around them and what they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. They are concerned with what is actual, present, current, and real. They notice facts and remember details. They look for the practical use of things and enjoy learning, and experience is the best way to learn. They work through problems by examining all the facts. They don't always see possibilities.

Intuitive: Someone who is introspective or highly imaginative, who pays more attention to impressions or the meaning and patterns rather than the information itself. They work through problems by thinking them through, as opposed to hands-on. They're interested in new things and what might be possible. They love to speculate on the future. They work with symbols and abstract theories. They are likely to remember events more as impressions than what actually happened. They are excellent at "reading between the lines" and envisioning new possibilities. 

That should keep you thinking until my next post, when I'll cover thinking/feeling and judgment/perception.

-Sonja

Oh, no. Not another series... Believable Characters Part 1

Yep, it's that time again. Time for me to devote the next 16-20 posts to a single topic--of my choosing--that I find interesting. Hopefully, you'll also enjoy it. Deep thought goes into choosing these series. (Actually, it's whatever I'm struggling with at the moment and feel the need to study more in-depth.)

This quarter, I've been struggling with absolutely everything. Writing is no longer fun for me. I'm vacillating between panic mode, compulsive eating mode, and it's-all-rubbish mode. Mostly, I'm staying in the it's-all-rubbish mode, and that's a pretty rough place to be. To be honest, I've opened the file that holds my novel at least six times in the last four days, and haven't done a thing to it. I get all woozy feeling and shut it down before I faint.

So it's time to get my mind back on track. Time to get back into my story. Time to dig into what the experts say and hope to find some inspiration. 

This series' expert is Jeff Gerke, from Where The Map Ends, Marcher Lord Press, and FictionAcademy.com. I picked up his book Plot vs. Character a while back and blitzed right through it. Twice. Now it's time to pull some things out to share with you (and hope that some of it sticks in my brain long enough to get it into my novel). The focus will be mainly on creating believable characters. Gerke depends heavily on the Myers-Briggs personality test and the book Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey. 

The first step in creating a believable character is to begin with a core personality. Myers-Briggs (MB) says there's 16 of 'em. The Thompson Concept says there's eight, and I've heard there are other systems that come up with different numbers. But I'm sticking with MB because that's what Gerke did. (By the way, we won't actually get to Gerke's text for awhile because there are other things to look at, first.)

So let's dig in to the first MB personality type and figure out what to do with it in a novel. There are eight parts to a personality, according to MB. Before we can play with them, we need to know what they mean. Then we can mix and match to come up with a core personality that's believable. After that, we add the extra quirks, flaws, and idiosyncrasies. These eight parts are four sets of opposites. People either veer toward one end or the other. These four parts are:

Extrovert (E) or Introvert (I)

Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N)

Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

Judgment (J) or Perception (P)

According to the MB system, every person has a combination of these elements. When you mix and match every possibility, you end up with 16 core personalities. And that's where the fun starts. 

I'll take my time over the next umpteen posts to look in-depth at these combinations, what they mean by themselves, and what fun you can have mixing and matching when creating characters for novels. Then we'll dig into Gerke's book and see what he says to do with these characters once we've built them.

For what it's worth,

-Sonja

Guilt vs. Fear

Mike Duran recently posted a blog about blogging, specifically a condition he calls Shizo-blog. Here are the symptoms (copied word for word from his blog so you don't have to read it if you don't want to):

* You feel guilty for blogging because you should be writing your novel

* You feel guilty for writing because you haven't updated your blog in two weeks

* You feel guilty prioritizing one over the other because with some creative management or self-discipline, you should be able to do both

* You feel guilty about feeling guilty because you expected this writer's gig would be a lot more fun.

To add to the misery, he quoted from Rachelle Gardner's blog, where she stated that one of the biggest turn-offs in blogs is when a writer has irregular or infrequent posts.

I have experienced all those guilty feelings from the list. I have been guilty of irregular and infrequent posts. I have been guilty of playing computer games when I should be writing (blogs AND novels). 

And I have discovered that feeling the guilt doesn't actually motivate me to do what I'm supposed to do. I can happily play solitaire all day long while the guilt simmers in the backfield. At the end of the day, when I have nothing to show for my time, I just think to myself, "I'll do something tomorrow - today was a mental health break."

I seem to need quite a few of those mental health breaks. What's going on? I love to write. I love the feeling I get after a long writing section that produces bunches of good words, all in the right order, and on topic. So why is blogging harder than writing novels? It's not like I have a word count to meet. I definitely don't run out of things to say (just ask my husband).

I've discovered the true problem: I'm worried that my readers won't find what I have to say interesting. I'll bore you into moving on to the next blogger before you've finished reading what I wrote. And you won't leave me comments. And Google Analytics will tell me that only three people read my blog. And they only stick around for 3.4 seconds. And I'm one of those three people, checking to see if the thing actually posted.

So there you have it. The problem isn't guilt. It's fear. The solution? Quit being a wuss. Two readers isn't so bad, is it? It's better than none. 

-Sonja

NaNo progress

I announced my intention to use the frenzy of November NaNoWriMo to finish the edits on my Cassandra story, and that you, my loyal blog readers, were to keep me accountable. So here's my progress report:

I'm on page 116 of 350. I've written four new scenes, altered the pacing of the first 50 pages, and changed the first two visions from 3rd person to 1st person. I've also re-arranged the sequence of the visions so that they get progressively scarier.
Bottom line: I'm not that far. I'm going to have to pick up the pace if I want to finish on time. Scold me in private, please, so it's not quite so humiliating.

-Sonja