My Favorite Method for Building Characters' Personalities
Photo by Elijah M. Henderson on Unsplash
Can you define what makes your characters unique?
As writers, it’s easy to craft characters who embody common archetypes. Take, for example, the noble-hearted hero, the femme fatale, the wise old man, or the snarky sidekick.
There’s nothing wrong with characters who fit these molds at first glance, yet there’s something inherently uninteresting about characters who fail to break free of these pigeon-holed identities. Readers already know their stories. They’ve read them a thousand times over, leading archetypical characters to feel stale and cliché.
To fill our stories with characters who feel as real as the people around us, we must delve deeper than archetypes and easy characterizations. This work begins with developing richly complex personalities for our characters that lend to their most vibrant portrayals.
How can you develop complex personalities for your characters?
A character’s personality is more than just a list of traits; it’s a complex web of interrelated characteristics that determines how a character thinks and operates, as well as how they perceive and interact with the world around them.
With such a wide range of impact, taking the time to determine and explore your character’s personality (especially when that personality is so unlike your own) is key to developing characters that feel alive on the page. To accomplish this mission, I recommend utilizing a popular real-life personality tool: the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (or MBTI).
The MBTI was compiled by Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers-Briggs to make the work of psychologist Carl Jung available and applicable to the average person. This personality assessment classifies participants into one of sixteen personality types based on the most relevant indicators in four dichotomous categories.
In essence, the MBTI defines a participant's personality type by asking them a series of questions that determine how they resonate with four "this or that" pillars. The Myers & Briggs Foundation website defines these pillars as follows:
Favorite World:
Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).
Information:
Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).
Decisions:
When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? This is called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).
Structure:
In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
The letters that accompany the preferences in each category combine to determine a participant’s personality type.
For example, I’m an INFJ. This means that I’m introverted, that I prefer to apply my intuition to the information I receive rather than taking it at face value, that I tend to make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, and that I prefer determined structures over evolution and change.
The MBTI assessment reveals how these aspects of my personality interrelate to determine how I operate and interact with the world around me. By extension, the assessment can do the same for you and your characters. You can find a brief summary of each MBTI personality type below.
The official MBTI assessment from The Myers & Briggs Foundation will set you back $50. However, several unofficial tests are free to use and, in my experience, provide just as much insight into one’s personality. My test of choice can be found at 16Personalities.com.
In addition to identifying one’s personality type, 16 Personalities offers in-depth reviews that break down what it means to be a certain MBTI type. By taking the 16 Personalities test from the perspective of one of your characters, you’ll learn how your character would respond to each of the four main questions the assessment addresses:
How does the act of engaging with other people affect you?
How do you process new information?
How do you make decisions?
How do you prefer your life to be structured?
The answers to these questions combine to reveal numerous elements of your character’s personality, as well as how that personality shapes your character’s inner world and their experiences with the world around them. This includes your character’s strengths and weaknesses, the goals they might set for their life, what they seek in relationships, how they might handle stressful situations, and more.
Not sure the test is worth the effort? Consider how the MBTI can help you determine how your character would act in the following situations:
Unsure of how your character might handle being put in the spotlight?
Discover if they are introverted (I) or extroverted (E).
Unsure of how your character might react to a shocking revelation?
Discover if they are sensing (S) or intuitive (N).
Unsure of how your character might make a tough decision?
Discover if they are thinking (T) or feeling (F).
Unsure of what approach your character might take to achieve their goal?
Discover if they are judging (J) or perceiving (P).
With a firm knowledge of the foundational pillars that form your character’s personality, you can write your character into the pages of your book in the confidence that you’re portraying them as realistically and complexly as they deserve. Any time you’re unsure of how your character might think or act, simply return to their personality review for confirmation.
Because determining your characters’ personalities should affect their actions and reactions throughout your story, I recommend taking the MBTI assessment from the perspective of any character whose actions directly impact your plot.
To achieve the most helpful assessment results, focus on what you already know about your characters. Do you intend for your romantic lead to be dark and brooding? For their love interest to be sociable but a bit stuck-up? Use these personality basics as the basis for your assessment, answering each question as best aligns with the traits you’ve predetermined for the character.
Once you've completed the assessment, note your character's personality type and key assessment insights in an accessible place, allowing for easy reference as you write and revise.
Repeat this process as many times as necessary to get to know each of your major characters, and you’ll write a story that contains a cast so vibrant and compelling that readers will lose themselves in the pages of your book.
