by Selene Grace Silver
Developing unique characters is the most important thing a writer does, especially in genre fiction. Characters shape the action and trajectory of a story. They make the reader and audience care about the story. And, ultimately, they make a story unforgettable.
When we read Pride and Prejudice, we don’t imagine what it’s like to fall in love with someone we don’t like at first sight; we imagine what it’s like to be Elizabeth Bennett falling in love with Mr. Darcy, or to be Darcy trying to earn Elizabeth’s love.
Why Use Personality Theory?
Researchers tell us that reading fiction helps people develop empathy. Readers don’t develop empathy by solving the mystery, falling in love, or going on an adventure. They develop empathy by connecting with characters and living the story through those character’s experiences.
Creating memorable characters requires developing their personalities deeply and widely. Listing a character’s physical attributes and exploring their backstories and emotional wounds helps us describe them and understand their motivations, but doesn’t necessarily help us show their actions on the page.
Fortunately, using personality theory with its well-documented traits is a fantastic way to bring our characters to life on the page.
The 16 Personality Types
Based on the Myers-Briggs theory and originally developed from psychologist Carl Jung's turn-of-the-century work on extroversion vs. introversion, these types are the most dynamic system for understanding personality traits and how they manifest in people and in characters.
Professional psychologists study and develop personality theory from extensive observation and research. Versions of Myers-Briggs theory get taught in university courses. Corporations and the military use it to determine job placement for new hires and recruits. Writers use it to create characters.
The Basics of Personality Theory
Before we explore using personality theory to develop characters, it’s important to understand two important words underlying it: tendency and preference.
The 16 personality types are scored on a spectrum. Classification depends on how someone tends to be. Of the hundreds of individual traits, a single person can exhibit all of them at some time or another, depending on where they fall on the spectrum. The theory asserts that some types prefer to be punctual more than other types, not that tardy types are incapable of arriving on time for their own wedding. Also, personalities, like tendencies and preferences, can change for an individual as they mature. The flexibility of the system actually makes it the best theory for shaping authentic fictional characters and their arcs.
The Paired Traits
The 16 Personalities/Myers-Briggs theory combines four sets of paired traits on a spectrum from low to high to produce 16 unique types:
- Extroversion vs. Introversion: how a person tends to interact with the world socially.
- Sensing vs. Intuition: how a person tends to gather evidence to make important decisions.
- Thinking vs. Feeling: how a person tends to value specific types of evidence.
- Perceiving vs. Judging: how a person tends to resist or embrace decision-making.
Those traits are then represented by the associated letters. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is an ENFJ—favoring extroversion, intuition, feeling, and judging, while Mr. Darcy is an ISTJ, favoring introversion, sensing, thinking, and judging.
Most people slide one way or the other in each category.
Introverts vs Extroverts
Some people tend to be extroverts, meaning they are happiest when around other people in social situations, while others tend to be introverts, meaning they are happiest when alone or around only a few people at a time.
Extroverts can still like reading a book, but they’ll tend to talk about the book with other readers before, during, and after. Introverts can enjoy large social gatherings like family reunions, but they’ll tend to be the first going home at the end of the night.
Sensing vs Intuition
When faced with a decision, an individual who tends toward sensing asks for other people’s opinions—sometimes a lot of other people’s opinions—before they make up their mind. An individual tending towards intuition is more inclined to follow their instincts when they make decisions.
Thinkers vs Feelers
Thinkers place greater value on facts and objectivity, while feelers place more importance on emotions.
Perceivers vs Judgers
Perceivers are slower to make decisions, preferring to keep their options open, while judgers prefer to make quick decisions before moving on. Judgers also have fewer regrets if the decision turns out to be a poor one.
Other considerations
As we mature, we often become less extreme, and even, on occasion, slide across the middle to an opposing trait. An introvert, after years of working in a job that requires public speaking may cross over into extroversion. A feeler may eventually place more value on facts and logic after training to be a critical thinker.
All of these traits can be applied to our characters’ development as they act and react throughout our stories. Matching a character up with one of the 16 types helps us create recognizable but complex characters, not unlike the people we know in the real world.
Six Ways to Use Personality Theory to Create Better Characters
1. Expand & Deepen the Characters’ Personality Traits
The 16 personalities do a deep dive into important aspects of human life: individual strengths and weaknesses, relationships, work, responses to stress, decision-making strategies, career choices, etc.
For example, Elizabeth Bennet is extroverted and highly social, witnessed by her enjoyment at dances. Her passionate desire to marry for love demonstrates her preference for feelings over ideas. She is intuitive, trusting her instincts about Darcy and Wickham, even when her sister Jane warns her against making rash judgements. Only when presented with indisputable facts about both men’s actions is Elizabeth willing to revise her initial judgements.
2. Avoid All-Good & All-Bad Characters
Because the 16 personalities identify both positive and negative traits for each personality, using their descriptions helps a writer build more complicated characters. Elizabeth tends to be overly idealistic, and that negative trait makes it difficult for her to understand initially why her friend Charlotte would marry the horrible Mr. Collins. She is also condescending towards Darcy, another negative ENFJ trait, mocking him after his stinging comment about her not being attractive enough to entice him into dancing.
3. Assign Each Character Consistent, Authentic Actions
It’s one thing to say an ENFJ wants to create a positive impact on the world, but sometimes difficult to figure out how that trait reveals itself in her actions and reactions. But at various times, Elizabeth enjoys seeing her efforts pay off by standing back to witness and appreciate both her friend Charlotte’s contented life and her sister Jane’s renewed romance with Bingley. The fact that Darcy actively helps Elizabeth achieve her sister’s happiness only reinforces her change of heart about his core values.
4. Tie the Protagonist’s Wound or Misbelief to Their Weak Traits
ENFJs also like to right every wrong. This tendency leads Elizabeth into believing Wickham’s lies about how Darcy wronged him. It blinds her to Wickham’s duplicity, convincing her that her instincts about Darcy must be right, further strengthening her prejudices. Elizabeth’s already deep resentment towards society’s rules about marriage is irrevocably connected to her personality type, and even moves her to reject Darcy’s first proposal.
5. Enhance the Character Arc
One of the best things about the 16 personalities system is that it’s not static. People develop and evolve, moving towards the center of each spectrum as they become older and wiser. Feelers learn to place increasing value on facts and to consider them fairly instead of reacting emotionally to stressful situations.
Elizabeth learns to do this when Darcy discloses Wickham’s true nature with facts about the villain’s predatory nature with young women. Knowing how the opposing descriptors work and exhibit people’s personalities helps writers persistently move their characters from an unhealthy extreme on the spectrum to a more moderate one, and in Pride and Prejudice, allows Elizabeth to experience her true feelings for Darcy.
6. Choose Complementary/Contradictory Personalities for Rivals and Lovers
Jungian psychologists theorize that people are attracted to similar personalities in their friends—we can hear the extroverts screaming “let’s party!” while the introverts think “let’s not”—and are attracted to opposite personalities in their partners.
Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth’s extroverted, charming personality and her confidence. He is an introvert, a thinker, and slow to trust his instincts about Elizabeth. As an ISTJ, Darcy is nearly Elizabeth’s exact opposite. The only trait they share is being judgmental. Readers witness this trait expressed in Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth, in which he lists every reason he should not marry her, analyzing and then passing judgement on Elizabeth’s suitability to be his bride. Elizabeth reacts emotionally with her own scathing judgement over Darcy’s cold, arrogant attitude.
Ancient Greek philosophers encouraged us to Know Thyself
If you’ve never taken a Myers-Briggs or equivalent test, free tests and resources about the theory and the 16 types are easily found online. The challenge is to answer the questions quickly and honestly, resisting the urge to choose answers that are still aspirations.
One of the best sites, https://www.16personalities.com/ offers a free basic test and explanations of the different types. The site also maintains a growing database of articles and surveys on personality traits. In addition, the researchers behind 16 Personalities have further expanded the types, tagging each with assertive and turbulent classifications to address how optimism and pessimism can affect each personality type.
Do you use Myers-Briggs when you're developing your characters? What tools do you love to use for characterization?
Want to learn more? Next Monday, Selene begins an online class called "Build a Romance Blueprint in Four Weeks," where she will cover the nuts and bolts of using the 16 Character Types for your stories.
About Selene
Selene Grace Silver resides near the beach in Southern California with her romantic Scottish husband. Trained to read and write literary fiction, she never quite abandoned her early love of the romance genre.
After 20 + years teaching English, writing, and literature at the high school and college levels, she’s retired to write fiction full-time. She’s had to adjust her writing style and craft to suit genre fiction, which includes learning to plot and write complex characters. For Selene, an INFJ, writing is a journey of constant self-improvement. She occasionally teaches online, including the upcoming Orange County Romance Writers’ class Build a Romance Blueprint in Four Weeks.
To read a short prequel to the small-town beach romance series she’s developing, sign up for her newsletter. She’s also on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Featured photo purchased from Depositphotos.
