The Business of Building Characters

Manic pixie dream girl is a name coined for a very familiar type of character who reoccurs in films and stories like Sweet November, 300 Days of Summer, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  This girl is a “free spirit,” she often has a vaguely alluded to (but never fully explained) “troubled past,” she is sexually available and yet emotionally elusive, she’s capricious and she often has moments of profound insight that help lead the male protagonist to his ultimate inspiration and emotional epiphany.  Then she dies, or disappears.

Of course she has to die at the end of the piece, because she’s lacking a crucial element of survival:  Any actual personality, dimension, or reason to live.  She is a character who literally only exists for the benefit of her male counterpart.

There are other examples of this, both male and female.  Sometimes the protagonist is one of these characters—that’s when we call them a “Mary Sue,” an avatar for what the author wants.

Every good author has techniques they’ve developed to develop well rounded, well developed characters who don’t piss your audience off.  Today, I’m going to walk you through one of my favorites (because it’s fun!) the MBTI, or Meyer’s-Briggs-Type-Indicatororsomethinglikethatwhatever, and examples from my book, Chasing Power.

I first met the MBTI in business school.  I always loved those Cosmo Tests you find in magazines, and those personality profiles you find looking up your birthday in Astrological books, and I found that this was just like those–but twenty times more awesome because it’s way more accurate.

Why would I do this?

While many people spend hours and hours developing profiles and back story, exploring the intimate reasons of their protagonist’s history, they can miss the big question: What is the internal logic that informs how my character acts and reacts?   Further, some writers can get so caught up in developing the protagonist that other characters just become window dressing to illustrate how awesome the main character is and move the story along.  Your ultimate goal is to have a character who is so well designed that after reading your book, your audience can predict how that character would act in any given situation, even ones you haven’t yet created.

The MBTI is one way to create an easy cheat-sheet you can refer to when deciding what your character will do or say, that insures your character remains consistent and logical.

Let’s Get Started 

There are about sixteen personality profiles total, defined by four qualities.  So, at the end, your character should have four letters next to their name, which will give you a blue print to help define their actions, reactions, and decisions.  My protagonist, Samantha, is an INTJ, or a mastermind (I have a link where you can find out about the types at the end of this article).

So, let’s talk about types.  Chances are, you have a kernel of a character.  You have the person’s name, maybe what they look like.  So now comes the time to make your cheat-sheet by determining their type.  I begin by asking myself these four questions, and writing down the letter which applies to the character in question.

I or E: Introverted or extraverted?

A lot of people have a traditional view of these terms.  Introverted people sit at home, they are quiet and shy and often asocial.  While this may be true for many introverts, there are also introverts who are outgoing and socially adept, who are loud and buoyant.  Conversely, there are extraverts who are shy and have problems connecting with people.  What introverted and extraverted actually describe in the world of the MBTI is where a person draws their energy from.

A person who is extraverted draws their energy from someone outside of themselves.  An introverted person draws their energy from inside themselves.  It’s that easy.

In my book, my lead character, Samantha, is an introvert.  She’d prefer to solve her problems by herself.  She is happiest alone, in a library, with her own thoughts.   When circumstances drag her out of her cocoon of isolation, it’s not the social aspects that bother her, but rather the constant presence of other people.   Having other people around drains her energy, it makes her frustrated and short tempered.  Her companions see this as asocial behavior, but in reality, if she just had 30 minutes by herself, she would come back a happier more engaged person.   In the story, Sam often tries to leave and separate from the group that is offering her safety—not because she is a moron, but because her personality type means that she needs the alone time.  Alas, this winds up working against her more often than not, because as an author we do love torturing our characters for things they can’t change.

S or N: Sensor or intuitive?

These aspects determine how your character perceives the world.   Sensors are specific.  They are realistic and practical.  This is the person who says, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  The word “sensor” comes from the fact that they rely on their senses to get information.   Intuitives are more abstract.  The information they take in is immediately interpreted and applied to a larger, more theoretical construct.  They are known as the “big picture” thinkers of the world, or, at their worst, the conspiracy theorists.

A great comparison of this are the nerdy friends of my book, Al and Harry.  Al is a dreamer.  He sees everything that’s happening as part of a great and grand story.   Even his special power may seem immediate and practical—being a mechanic—but rather he excels because he sees how all of the tiny pieces fit in to the larger system.  His best friend Harry, however, is a sensor.  He’s concerned with the immediate—where they will sleep, how they will eat.  He is worried about Samantha’s impact on his friends, and what type of person she is.  He thinks practically about the dangers and risk of the person directly in front of him.  His power, to control lightning, is an immediate and very practical one.

T or F: Thinking or feeling?

You have two employees and you have to fire one of them.  How do you make the decision?  Maybe you make a list of positive and negative attributes, including how much each one is paid, their good and bad qualities, and how many sales they made that quarter.  Or maybe you think about who they are—one of them is a nice person, keeping her around might improve morale.   The other, however, is a father of two small children, what will happen to them?  This is the dichotomy of thinking versus feeling.   Thinkers make decisions mostly based on objective facts.  Feelers make decisions based on subjective criteria such as emotions.

In Chasing Power, when Samantha has a problem, she breaks things down objectively and tries to keep her emotions out of it.  Finances, for example, frequently figure in to her decisions.  Even if she takes emotions in to account, she does it from an objective perspective: “If I do X, this person will like me.  If this person likes me, they are more likely to do what I want.”  When Lane, the romantic interest, has a problem, he makes decisions based emotional ideals like his internal code of honor, or wanting what’s best for his friends.  As a result, they are often both confused and upset with the other’s decisions.  Unless, of course, it happens to be the rare time that both decisions coincide.

J or P: Judging or perceiving?   What do you do when you have the information, when you have the information you need to make a decision?  Either you make a judgment and take that action, or you continue to perceive and collect more information.   One type likes to keep their options open, to keep thinking about things as long as possible.  The other wants closure and structure.   A judger will arrive at a coffee date exactly on time, as they have a clear idea of the passage of time.   A perceiver would be late to coffee—probably because they couldn’t decide whether or not they wanted to come.

Back to Harry and Al, our favorite set of opposites.   Al drives Harry up the wall.  He can’t ever decide where he wants to eat dinner, when Sam and Lane argue he can’t decide who to support, and he is impulsive, going where the world takes him.  Harry, in turn, is a complete downer to Al, being as the guy is always trying to keep him focused on the task at hand.

I have my character’s type, now what? 

INTJ, ESFP, ENTP… so you have your four letters, what next?  You keep going.

Creatures of conflict.

Of course, books are built around conflict.  The more conflicts you can build in, the better.  Building your characters off of the MBTI gives you a quick and easy way to see possible conflicts.  Need to create a pain in the ass of your lead, someone who’s a thorn and just always manages to see things the wrong way?  Just make them the protagonist’s MBTI opposite.

• Extraverts  often try and drag introverts into social situations thinking they are going to make them happy and “bring them out of their shell.”  Of course, usually the opposite happens.
• Judgers get annoyed by perceivers, because they can’t understand how someone can be chronically late.  They see it as flakey and rude.
• Intuitives often see sensors as short-sighted and limited.  Sensors can see intuitives as illogical dreamers.
• Feelers see thinkers as uncaring, and thinkers can see a feeler as overly-emotional and irrational.

A recipe for romantic success.

Just as MBTI can predict who is going to butt heads and when, it can also predict the personality types most likely to get along.  We often hear that opposites attract—but do they really?  Sharing certain personality types make for better relationships, as can having complementary personality types.  These are tendencies, not absolutes, but they are great for a jumping off point when developing a romantic interest.

Similarities (let’s get along):

• Intuitives tend to be best with other intuitives and sensors are best with other sensors.  This boils down to the simple fact of communication.  Communication depends on how you perceive the world, and if your ideas are large, abstract, and figurative, you are going to have a hard time connecting with someone who bases everything around just the facts.
• Perceivers thrive with perceivers and vice-versa:  And it almost always comes down to a matter of time.  One of my parents is a P, the other a J.   I can’t tell you how many screaming matches I endured as a child over the fact that P was late.  Again.   While a perceiver can help the judger loosen up, and a judger can help the perceiver stay organized, in my personal experience, if a perceiver can’t at least learn to be on time, the relationship is going to be a rocky one.  When both partners are judgers, they are both happy with schedules and timelines.  When they are both perceivers, they can be spontaneous together and neither cares if the other isn’t exactly where they said they’d be when they said they’d be.   At the very least, if you have a relationship between a judger and perceiver, you know that either one partner is very, very accommodating, or that it’s going to be tempestuous.

Complementary (opposites attract)

• Introverts and extraverts:  Often, introverts can become very  comfortable with one or two people, so they aren’t bad at being in relationships.  But extraverts are great at making sure the introverts get out in to the world and don’t retreat too far, and introverts are great at making sure extraverts get in touch with their inner-selves while still providing the companionship desired.
• Feelers and thinkers:  I, personally, think it’s ideal when thinkers and feelers form partnerships.  Then again, I may be biased as I’m a thinker and my partner is a feeler.  But often isn’t this the case?   Thinkers and feelers make great partners because it’s important to bring subjectivity in to a decision less one become too hard hearted, but it’s also vital that there is one person preventing them both from being taken advantage of.   Meanwhile, it’s easy for each type to perceive these differences and respect, rather than resent, it.

So how did I use MBTI for my romantic lead?  Easy.  While he’s a character in his own right, Samantha is the protagonist.  Therefore, he should be her ideal.  So after determining her type (INTJ, if you remember) I broke down a type of partner that would provide short-term conflict to keep the interest of the reader, but have enough in common with her that they would make a realistic long-term compatibility.  As a result, I came up with Lane, an ENFJ.  If you were paying attention to the previous few sections, you probably saw it coming, but at the time it was a huge help for me in moving forward.  As an extravert, Lane can’t understand why Samantha “just doesn’t like people.”  As a thinker, Samantha is frequently angered by Lane’s being “overemotional.”   However, in the long term they make a good couple because they communicate well with one another, they see the world in the same way and they both are comfortable making decisions.

Final notes and a caveat.

There are degrees of everything, and training and conditioning play a large part in anyone’s development.  There is intense social pressure on young girls to “go out and make friends” and “be nice.”  As a result, many women would identify themselves as extraverts when, in their heart of hearts, they are introverts.  They’ve been trained in to extraversion.  How previous life events affected their personality is something you can easily build in to your character.  There’s also the fact that there are no absolutes in life—everyone exists on a sliding scale.  Most of the time my husband makes his decisions based on subjective, feeling criteria, but in the right circumstances he’ll make an objective decision as well.   When he took the MBTI test, there was a one question difference that labeled him as a “feeler” over a “thinker”.  These are all things you can explore with your characters once you’ve narrowed down their type.

If you feel you know your character inside and out, but still aren’t sure what their “type” is, or you just want to have some fun, take the type test online.  There is a free one available here Jungian Typology Test.   You can take it as yourself to see what your personality is, or you can take it as your character for a fast and easy summation of their personality.  Once you figure out your type, you can also visit Type Logic for an in-depth run-down of the 16 different personalities.

I hope I provided you with some food for thought and a jumping off point with your characters!  MBTI is not just a great way to build in conflict and compatibility with characters, it’s also a quick and easy way to build personality into secondary characters who might otherwise go underdeveloped.   As you learn more about types, you will also find very in-depth personality types that will help you with even greater character complexities.

If you’d like to learn more, I would recommend the books:

“Type Talk,” by Otto Kroeger and Janet M. Thuesen and Hile Rutledge

and

“Please Understand Me II” by David Keirsey.

Oh, and also, of course, my own book, Chasing Power by Genevieve Pearson.