What’s Your Type?

So many personality types and traits and tools to figure them out.

• The Enneagram
• Myer Briggs
• The OCEAN Model
• The 4 Types

These are just a few of the various personality typing tools available to writers for crafting characters.

The Enneagram is currently popular but can be overwhelming with its nine personality types and the interconnecting relationships they form.

Myer Briggs starts with four models, but with all the possible combinations, it ends with sixteen personality types.

The OCEAN model measures five traits:

• Open-mindedness
• Conscientiousness
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Nervous/High-strung

The 4 Types have had various iterations depending on who’s espousing them. I’ve heard them described as Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic, and Melancholic. Also Popular, Powerful, Peaceful, and Perfectionist. Or Tigger, Rabbit, Eeyore, and Pooh. Otter, Lion, Golden Retriever, Beaver.

What all this means is, as writers, we have a plethora of available personality traits to draw on for characters. The challenge is in making our characters seem like real people, not a list of characteristics chosen from a list.

The Hero:

• Ruggedly handsome
• Over six feet tall
• Cowboy/Navy SEAL/Billionaire
• Loves puppies and babies  

The Heroine:

• Beautiful without makeup
• Quiet and studious
• Too busy for love
• Scheduled/organized or messy/forgetful  

I got tired of reading about heroines who always had their hair up in a messy bun, so I gave my last protagonist a short, spiky pixie ‘do. Not exactly a character trait, but it was something different and it worked for her.

The best characters are complicated and full of contradictions. A cooking show host who can’t cook (Dining With Joy by Rachel Hauck). A high ropes course guide who’s afraid of heights (a story idea I’m playing with). A businesswoman who paints and creates (You’ll Be Mine by Rachel Hauck and Mandy Boerma). A 5’5” executive protection agent (The Bodyguard by Katherine Center). A doctor who faints when he sees blood (Doc Martin).

How do we “go deeper,” as my former writing mentor used to say, beyond hair and eye color, occupation and height?

Everyone has something from their childhood or adolescence that shaped them into who they are as an adult. Don’t be afraid to explore that incident or wound.

I know a writer who literally (yes, I’m using that correctly) fixes a cup of coffee for herself and her character, then sits down and asks the character all kinds of questions, starting with what kind of coffee drink do they like and why.

“Oh, you’re a tea drinker, not coffee. Why?”

“Yes, having hot coffee spilled and leaving a scar on your arm would be quite painful. Was it an accident?”

“Thrown at you? By whom? Your father? Who was he angry at? How old were you?”

And so on. She drills down until she gets at exactly what happened.

Sometimes, of course, a coffee preference has no hidden meaning. In that case, the questions start more broadly until something pings.

“Tell me about your family. What’s your birth order?”

“Youngest in a large family? Were you the spoiled baby or lost in the shuffle?” She’ll continue in this way until she learns the character was an over-achiever, always trying to get noticed, and this is why her protagonist must be the last one to leave the office every day. She’s overly conscientious and that can lead to compulsiveness and obsessiveness.

Questions are a powerful tool to help you find the personality traits that will move your character from a stock archetype contrived from an Enneagram assessment or Myer Briggs profile into a fully-fleshed out person who rises from the pages to live in the reader’s mind long after they close your book.

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever afters. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. She recently signed a contract with Sunrise Publishing to co-write a romance novel with New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck that will be published in 2022. Carrie and her husband live in the country with their high-maintenance cat and laid-back dog, within driving distance of their six grandchildren.

You can find her online at:

• Twitter: CarriePadgett
• Instagram: carpadwriter
• Facebook: WriterCarriePadgett
• Amazon Author Page: Carrie Padgett