In a previous blog, I talked about character creation. To breath life into a fictional character, the artist must be consistent. At least, consistency is important to me. As a consumer, I howl when people in movies make out-of-character decisions. And as an artist, I agonize over my paper-doll people’s motives.
The things characters say and do must hang together as a believable whole. But artists have a trick: using a pattern. Humans recognize that certain attitudes and actions go together because we have seen them together before—in life or fiction. Also, artists can use various tools designed to understand the behavior of real humans to make sure their made-up people have internal consistency.
Archetypes
I love to use mythological archetypes as a character pattern. A number of books, like Forty-Five Master Archetypes, teach this method. Remember, even if you start a sketch with a pattern, the story character must still be a unique individual. A resonate image—like Artemis, The Huntress, or Anansi, The Trickster—inspires the artist and helps them maintain a consistent fictional character.
Zodiac signs are also a kind of personality archetype. This method can be as simple of choosing the fictional characters birthday and looking up their horoscope. I’ve tried this method, but since I’m not very knowledge about the zodiac, it hasn’t been as useful as some others.
Archetype, not stereotype.
Jungian Psychology
You can have a lot of fun with fictional characters and real psychology. Carl Jung‘s work continues to influence the arts. Jung’s ideas inspired both development of the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (TM) and research into cognitive functions (mental processes like thinking, remembering, and learning).
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (TM)
Many of us have taken the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality test for school, work, or just for fun. Our fictional characters can take the test, too! A number of free, on-line versions are available. (These tools are not a substitute for a real person being assessed by a real mental health professional.) If the story character has started to come together in the author’s head, making choices on the behalf of that character are pretty easy. The MBTI questionnaire measures how people interact with their surroundings (the Introvert-Extrovert scale) as well as:
- How they see the world and process information (the Sensing-Intuiting scale)
- How they make decisions and cope with emotion (the Thinking-Feeling scale)
- How they approach our work and planning (the Judging-Perceiving scale)
A set of four letters, one from each of the scales, creates the score—the character’s personality type. Type is a set of attitudes and personality aspects that hang together. Summaries and in-depth analyses of the personality are available on-line or in books.
For example, I just took an on-line version of MBTI on behalf of Sean, the investigator in my story, Water of Life. He turns out to be ESFP: Extrovert, Sensing the world, Feeling his decisions, and Perceiving his work and plans. According to Myers-Briggs, he would be quite the bon vivant: open, friendly, and nonjudgmental. The party seems to follows him around. He’s practical, has common sense, and handles people and things quite well to achieve his goals. (1) This description is pretty good, although a lot of darkness has touched his life, so if there was a way to dig deeper . . .
Cognitive Functions
And there is! Also related to Jungian psychology and the Myers-Briggs types are sixteen cognitive functions, which stack into an array of personality traits. This method is enlightening, but complex. Eryn Blaire and H. M. Wilson provide an Instagram course, #findingthegray2019, to teach cognitive functions for fiction writing.
We start by thinking about how the character functions on trait scales, similar to those of the Myers-Briggs test. The character ends up with a four-letter label, but with a number of refinements over MBTI:
- We express each cognitive function—Sensing, Feeling, Thinking, and Intuition—as Introvert or Extrovert.
- We rank the functions by how often and readily the character uses them in daily life. The lead function is used constantly, and the inferior function is a known weakness.
- Functions develop over the course of the character’s life. For example, an older character will have more cognitive resources than a child.
- The character’s environment interacts with their personality; relaxed, stressed, or stressed-to-the-max situations may bring out flaws and hidden strengths.
Cognitively, my ESFP (Extrovert, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving) character leads with Extroverted Sensing. He would be in the moment and a great performer. Naturally kind, he likes people and is concerned about their welfare and happiness. His inferior function is Introverted Intuition. He has trouble with the big picture and the root cause. But, if stressed (and that’s what we do to story people, put them up a tree and throw rocks), his usual ways of dealing with the world become liabilities. An extrovert like Sean will find himself looking inward and maybe not liking what he sees.
Enneagram of Personality
I haven’t used Enneagrams myself, but writers and other artists mention the method on social media quite often. This model of the human psyche identifies a number of inter-related personality types. The nine types are identified by number and by characteristic role in relationships. Business management and also spiritual development courses often use the Enneagram system.
Share your thoughts by clicking on the blog title to access the Comments Box. How do you feel about character consistency? Do you have a favorite method of developing characters?
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- Briggs, KC., and Myers, IB: (1983) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test Booklet, Abbreviated Version. Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto, CA. Original author copyright, 1943.