Characters Done Well, Part 2: Personality Traits
Actions speak louder than words
Image credit: smykcur on Pixabay
In the last post, we talked about resisting the tendency to describe our characters physically by giving a list of all their specifications as if we're listing it for a doctor’s office. Height, weight, eye color, hair color. Not only is this unimaginative and gives your reader nothing to picture in their own minds unless it's something you already told them, but it's also tedious to read through.
There’s that old “telling” versus “showing” thing again
Listing physical descriptions is the classic “telling” rather than “showing” that all new writers are warned about. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it is just fine to tell. But when you have the option of allowing your reader to discover things about the character on their own, it's much more rewarding for the reader.
The same guideline applies to dealing with our characters’ personalities or emotional state. It doesn't take long to figure out Karen is a dominant personality if she’s constantly contradicting others and insisting on her own way.
Describing a character's personality traits needs to be shown every bit as much as the physical traits. A friend can tell Joe that Karen is annoying, but until Joe sees that behavior for himself, there’s no reason for him to believe it. It’s merely Joe’s friend’s opinion.
In our own friend groups, we all know the bossy friend who never takes no for an answer, and we all know the peacemaker who smooths ruffled feathers. But we know these things because we observe them, not because someone said, “I’d like you to meet my friend, Rachel. She’s a peacemaker.”
Allow the characters to unfold for your readers
Readers enjoy figuring out what makes a character tick. Just as in real life, we allow that person to simply be themselves and then form opinions based on that behavior. I once had an author tell me how strong one of his female characters was, and I had to gently point out that all she did was cry and act helpless anytime she appeared in a scene. The writer knew the character in his head, and other characters talked about how strong this person was, but her actions as she was written didn’t match up.
How do you describe personalities without telling?
Here’s where the fun part comes in. Once you know who your characters are and what you envision them to be, you can figure out their behavior for current and future events by making good use of the classic personality tests such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or DISC profile, or the 16Personalities website. (Links to free versions of these tests are provided below.)
Let’s use the 16Personalities website for the following examples.
Example 1: the Adventurer
After answering a set of questions with a particular character in mind, we’re told this character (let’s name him Liam) is an ISFP-A: an Assertive Adventurer type, with a role as an Explorer and a strategy of Confident Individualism. What does this mean for Liam?
Well, Liam is most likely charming, imaginative, passionate, sensitive to others, artistic, and curious. Sounds great, right? But that also means he is often overly competitive, unpredictable, easily stressed, fiercely independent, and has fluctuating self-esteem issues.
These strengths and weaknesses will dictate how Adventurers act and react in romantic relationships, friendships, parenthood, and in their careers (both their career choices and workplace habits).
It’s no surprise that Adventurers include freelancers, solo athletes, musicians, and experimenters.
Example 2: the Commander
After answering those same questions from the perspective of a different character (Asher), we’re told that he tests as an ENTJ-A: a Commander personality type. Commanders are natural-born leaders, as the name suggests.
They can be efficient, energetic, self-confident, strong-willed, and strategic thinkers. They can also be charismatic, inspiring others to help them accomplish their goals. However, they can also be some of the most stubborn people you’ll ever want to meet. Impatient. Intolerant. Dominant and arrogant, cold and ruthless. They handle their emotions poorly, which often results in trampling over others’ feelings in turn.
Commander types are most likely to be found heading up an organization and loving every minute of it. They’re great at thinking objectively, so you’ll find judges and lawyers in their ranks.
Let’s put them together
If Liam and Asher were college roommates, for example, I’m sure you can see how their personalities might make them completely clash or how each one might inspire some not-as-natural traits in the other.
I imagine Liam leaving his dishes in the sink and his laundry on the floor, whereas Asher might be more inclined to clean up after himself out of routine and discipline more than even a sense of cleanliness. Liam might not even be consistently sloppy, but he’s prone to cleaning in bursts when the mood strikes, rather than keeping up with things.
If there’s an upcoming exam, you can bet that Asher will be found studying instead of going to a party the night before, because his single-minded focus is on his goal of getting into Harvard Law School. Liam may go because he can’t stand to miss out on the fun, but then he’ll be stressed about the lack of study time later.
Each one can inspire the other—once in a while, Asher will loosen up and allow himself to relax when his immediate goals have been met, and Liam will take his classes and chores seriously—but overall, their actions and reactions are fairly predictable.
Allow your characters to stay true to themselves
Taking these personality tests on behalf of your characters is a good way to figure out what motivates them to act the way they do. It also helps your writing to flow easier, because you won’t always be wondering how a character will react; you’ll already know the most likely outcome.
This can also help you to understand if a character is acting . . . well, out of character. Using Asher as an example, let’s say he starts acting in a manner that doesn’t make sense to the way he’s been written and presented so far. You either have to have a good reason in the plot (maybe he’s being blackmailed into doing something contrary to his normal behavior), or you’ve accidentally written him into a situation your readers won’t understand.
Real-book example: I read a particular book years and years ago (and don’t remember the title because it was that forgettable). In that book was a tough-gal FBI person. She was top of her game, in charge of an entire department. Yet she completely fell apart, shaking and sobbing, when she arrived home after a date and found her apartment had been broken into.
Many reviewers mentioned that they lost faith in the book at that point and didn’t finish. The author didn’t know how to write a female character who could be assertive and competent with a soft side, so he turned her into a wimp to show that she was tender and vulnerable after falling in love. What a horrible sellout. She was genuinely a crappy character after that, and I forced myself to finish the book only to see if it got resolved. It didn’t.
If the author had had a solid grasp on that character’s personality type, he would have known that her reaction would have been one of shock, but not collapse. That she would have allowed her professional instincts to kick in, and that even in the aftermath, she’d be looking for answers rather than hiding away for weeks in fear.
A little work on the front end saves time and errors later
You don’t have to go into an exhaustive study of every character, but this is a good exercise for at least your main characters, both the protagonist and the antagonist. After a while, it will become second nature to think like that particular personality type when writing a scene, and the actions will make themselves known.
What’s your personality type? Have you ever looked into it? Years ago, I had to take a DISC profile test for a job, and it was uncannily accurate. There’s a shortened (free) version of that one in the links below as well.
Have you ever done these types of tests for any of your characters, and did it help you to understand them better? Let me know!
HumanMetrics personality test (based on Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers’ typology)
