Hello! If you are familar with personality theories such as MBTI and Enneagram, do you think it is better to decide on character personality types such as MBTI and Enneagram when creating your characters and before writing the first draft or figure out personality types after you write the first draft?
I think it depends on the individual writer and their process. For me, I'm a discovery writer. I get a handful of surface-level traits for a character, and then I go on to explore how they work on a deeper level as I write. So part-way through the first draft, I might be able to pick out an Enneagram, because I'd have written the character enough that one would seem to suit. (I dislike the MBTI, so I would not be doing that one.) But that's my process, and I generally do not pick out personality types on that sort of thing. It just doesn't really help me. Though if you think it'd help you, I'd say go for it! As for before first draft or after, I'd say which seems the most right? Try it, but don't be stuck on it. If it's not helping you, then figure out if doing this needs to be tossed entirely, or if you just need to modify your approach.
I was pondering this. I don't have that much experience creating characters, but I can imagine at least the basic information would become apparent quite quickly: extrovert vs introvert, thinking vs feeling - that kind of thing, and then you would get a "type" more naturally. It might help to develop the character fully, especially for a longer piece. The stage at which you do that would be a personal preference, as MusingWordsmith mentioned above. Personally, I wouldn't set out specifically to write about a type.
Depends. What happens if you figure all that out, start writing, and realize that none of it works? Or worse, you predetermine a personality, force the story to conform to it, and then realize the story sucks? Then you're left with a nifty (to the writer) character idea that nobody wants to read about. Not always the case, but I find prejudging the characters before you start writing causes a lot of headaches down the road. Others, of course, have no issues with this method.
I used to do so much character work, including positive and negative traits and how they would effect the character's journey and how traits can be both good and bad. Then I just wrote something one day that I'd put no thought into at all. People who read my work regularly saw no difference, it wasn't any better for me not doing any planning. So I don't both anymore. I just think up an interesting situation with plenty of possible conflict and just write. I put the work in after it's completed and I know exactly what I'm working with. I don't bother with these sorts of things anymore.
Problem is that characters don't exist in a vacuum. They've got nothing without a story. Spend all the time you want to developing them beforehand, but there's nothing to talk about until they start doing things.
I don't see the value of referring to psychological tests at all; many great novels were written before these tests were even developed. Of course if it helps it helps.
I avoid categorizing my characters with any of these. I start with their story and develop their personality and preferences based on that; to me a reduction to 16 / 8 / howevermuch generic categories would mean losing information along the way. No two INTJs are the same.
I tend to avoid more indepth looks into this stuff myself as well. First I look into their background of where I've placed the character. My Russian soldier growing up in a military family has had a very different upbringing than my Indian who grew up just outside the slums of Chennai. I look at their families and how they would have been brought up, which is key imo. I look into the real-life experiences they might have gone through with both home and work that might shape their personalities, outlooks, hopes and fears. The Russian soldier doesn't have to worry about where the next paycheck is coming from. My Indian protagonist is trying to pay off the debts of her father to stop her family from ending up in the slums. The fact she's doing that then tells you something about the character. It partly came about from serving a story purpose, but by doing so it shaped the personality. However, I decided the Russian soldier is a soldier because he's trying to fill the hole left by his father. And to add a twist to make it interesting for the reader? He can never get satisfaction because his mother has a borderline personality disorder - she is simply unable to give him praise for doing it. That then feeds back to the type of life he's led with that type of mother, etc etc and influences his personality. Eventually, i find doing it this way (and continuing on deeper) makes these two disparate characters go from fuzzy, nebulous, vague ideas and boils them down into a concentrated idea of specifically who these two people are. I know both of them like the back of my hand now - the way they talk, think, and act. Im all for folks doing it the opposite way around if that's what they feel comfy with, but I like creating people being shaped by their life or despite of it.
Generally, I don't base them off certain archetypes, my characters and their traits come first along with the story at hand then I will assign them zodiac signs and I've even done a Myers-Briggs personality test for them but it never goes into my stories, it's just something fun for me and me alone. It might help me understand them better, or give me more ideas that I can use to flesh them out further. I suppose it's always been easier for me than most people to just come up with believable personalities and such to fit my stories so, to each their own truly.
I usually don't because all my characters are MBTI NT types and it's just silly at that point. Seriously. I did a fake test for all my 3 main characters and all of them were INTJ. XD
Might be a sign that you should change things up a bit. You want to get some variety in there. I think it's important to at least know a few things about different personality types and how they interact (we all know this from life), but it's also important not to get too caught up in the theoreticals. Just use that stuff as a rough basis—don't think about it too much once you've got a good mix of personality types. I've studied the Enneagram a bit and looked into the Meyers/Briggs, which is based on Jung. But it would be all too easy to think you can define characters through some kind of mathematical formulae. You need to instead think about people you've known and characters from movies and shows etc (assuming they're well-written). You can occasionally think about some specific thing relating to the Enneagram or whatever, but I would just use that to jog things briefly and then get back to real people and real personalities. When you learn about the Enneagram and start to fit people you've known into it, you realize just because some share a personality type doesn't mean they're identical or even close to it. They can be as different as night and day in how they express the traits.
I wouldn't put too much stock in personality tests in general. They're questionable scientifically. Doing tests for your characters is something I have done as an exercise, but mainly as a way to sort of test how strong of a character concept I have. They can be fun and somewhat helpful in that way. But the actual results for these tests are somewhat arbitrary categories. Even Jung himself, whose work the Myers-Briggs is based on, said “Every individual is an exception to the rule... to stick labels on people at first sight... (is) nothing but a childish parlor game.” These kind of tests also promote thinking of personality as essentially fixed, when it's more amorphous in reality. Real people and well written characters sometimes behave in contradictory ways, and change over time. I think it's best not to have an overly prescriptive view of your characters, but let them have a little chaos.
Everyone is very different as far as what works for them. Some people just figure as little as a eye color and they already know their character! For me, it's just finding their goals, motive and conflict and placing them within a certain character archetype. I will say that even with my minimalist approach in character creation, that understanding the different types of personalities these sorts of tests describes does help in that it can work as a template for fleshing out a character's personality.
I guess it depends on what works best for you as every writer is going to be different in their way of developing a story. Personally, I don't use them, but after my characters are already developed, I like to give them the quiz just for fun. I don't think there's a right or wrong to it. I've heard people say they find it pretty helpful, so if you want, I wouldn't advise against it.
