Exploring Personality: Part Seven -- "I'm watching you." (an IWM post)

"I'm watching you, Wazowski. Always watching." -- Monsters, Inc.

The Observer

Perhaps a better name for the Five would be "the Outsider," though the more politically correct term has come to be "the Investigator." However, of all the types, the Five is the one most likely to be hanging out on the fringes looking in. Or, perhaps, not even looking in, just involved in his own world. The Five, then, is almost the definition of "introvert," inferiority complex and all. It's the person we think of when we hear the word, even if that's not precisely correct.

Fives are ill-equipped emotionally to deal with the world...

So, if you want to know how they do deal with it, you'll have to -- you guessed it -- click the link and hop on over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out.
Do it now!

Exploring Personality: Part Three -- "What's My Type?" (an IWM post)

"I know there's all this talk about my charisma deficit and I have to admit that I'm not a wild, in-your-face actor. It's not my nature to be flashy or extroverted, and that's why I see it a great challenge to me as an actor to be able to play against type and shake up people's perceptions of me." -- Tobey Maguire

One of the most common ways that writers move the plot forward in their books is to have a character do something that would generally be considered "out of character" for that character. What this usually means is they have an otherwise "smart" character do something stupid. The understood reasoning is that, hey, everyone does something stupid now and then, right? Those things never ring true to me. Do you know why? They're not.

Stupidity is not the same as personality. That is to say, even a stupid action has to fit within the character's personality. That's not always an easy thing to do, especially when we need a character to act in a way that the audience won't expect.

This is where the Enneagram can be very useful as a typing system for your characters.

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And this is where you need to click the link to Indie Writers Monthly. Go find out about personalities, maybe even your own. Do you know what number you are?