Briggs Myer's Personality Chart

[WatcherOfSky]

So a short time ago I found this very interesting chart named the Briggs Myer's Chart. I looked at it and thought it might be VERY useful  tool for deciding on how your character's will react to certain situations or which choices they will make.

http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4738568/MyersBriggsTypes.png

I'm sort of presenting this because I wanted to be able to perhaps help some people come up with more realistic characters and make their personalities more consistent. Of course this chart is 100% true, but I find it very helpful.


I would also like to hear how some of you decide on how your character behaves.

[legomaestro]

Yikes that's one complicated chart there.

To be honest I'd rather go with Stephen King on this one. There are of course technical rules to be followed when writing but when it comes to constructing stories and characters, such a scientific way of deciding the way they'll behave just doesn't work. You've got to feel out their reactions and see how they act on the actual ground.

I mean, say you make a character who is a representation of you in a story and then before you start writing you write up a 1000 word document on how they'll react to any situation from dropping ice cream to having to diffuse a nuclear bomb in 50 seconds... No matter how much you know about the character in the first place, that's all just fluff knowledge that doesn't happen in the story itself.

In fact, you risk going into 'Development Hell' and just trying to hash out your characters instead of actually writing your story and see how they act within the story.

There's charts for everything and anything. And I think the best way to learn is to draw inspiration from all sorts of media, read a heck of a lot of books, and feel your way out to see how things work.

Again, there is a place for technical knowledge, but I definitely wouldn't use a personality chart. Too restrictive. Maybe something more organic? A venn diagram of relations between characters could be useful for example. Or even practice dialogue between two characters or more.

[WatcherOfSky]

Yikes that's one complicated chart there.

To be honest I'd rather go with Stephen King on this one. There are of course technical rules to be followed when writing but when it comes to constructing stories and characters, such a scientific way of deciding the way they'll behave just doesn't work. You've got to feel out their reactions and see how they act on the actual ground.

I mean, say you make a character who is a representation of you in a story and then before you start writing you write up a 1000 word document on how they'll react to any situation from dropping ice cream to having to diffuse a nuclear bomb in 50 seconds... No matter how much you know about the character in the first place, that's all just fluff knowledge that doesn't happen in the story itself.

In fact, you risk going into 'Development Hell' and just trying to hash out your characters instead of actually writing your story and see how they act within the story.

There's charts for everything and anything. And I think the best way to learn is to draw inspiration from all sorts of media, read a heck of a lot of books, and feel your way out to see how things work.

Again, there is a place for technical knowledge, but I definitely wouldn't use a personality chart. Too restrictive. Maybe something more organic? A venn diagram of relations between characters could be useful for example. Or even practice dialogue between two characters or more.

Hmm, I take this chart as a more of an inspiration, not downright law to a character's behaviour. More or less a way to keep me on track onto how a character behaves. Of course there are also circumstantial occurences. I do take those into account as well. Because there are times when I find it hard to decide on how one of my character's should react. This chart is just a certain way of keeping me focused on that character's range of possibile reactions.

And when you mentioned Stephen King, do you mean that he has this sort of opinion as well? Just wondering lol, admittedly I haven't read much from him.

[legomaestro]

He wrote a book called On Writing that basically says dispense with all those stuff.

Honestly, in the throes of writing lets say a short story, would you bring up this chart and would it help you break through and continue writing?

The tricky thing about charts and diagrams and tips is that they make you feel like you've done something incredibly important - while the word count on your document is zero. If you're not putting words down then you aren't writing, it's that simple. That's my thought on these sorts of things.

[WatcherOfSky]

He wrote a book called On Writing that basically says dispense with all those stuff.

Honestly, in the throes of writing lets say a short story, would you bring up this chart and would it help you break through and continue writing?

The tricky thing about charts and diagrams and tips is that they make you feel like you've done something incredibly important - while the word count on your document is zero. If you're not putting words down then you aren't writing, it's that simple. That's my thought on these sorts of things.

Ah, I see. So you're the type of guy to not ponder on these kinds of these before writing, and just goes with the flow while writing right? For me, I need to have a set plan for my writing, otherwise I just sort of trip up on myself. :S

[Crackhead Johny]

Generally I see MBTI as more useful for dating sites, along with horoscope sign, blood type, etc.

If you know your characters well enough they can fill out the test properly, you have the good foundation for a character. Again you are using the test to see how familiar you are with your characters, rather than take a type and use it as a framework to build a character.

The huge failure is of course that you have to know enough actual people of a given type, before you have a chance at using MBTI effectively as a framework. Once you understand people well enough to effectively break them down into types, you have no need for "type as framework" to begin with.

[Aozora]

I've seen these sorts of charts before in classes where we've had to do group projects and the such to describe our personalities. I never really considered using these to develop my characters in stories, however. So that's a pretty interesting idea. My only hesitation with doing that though is that I feel these charts tend to generalize and oversimplify personalities. Because in real life, I would think our personalities are so complex, and involve a little bit from each category in the chart.

[legomaestro]

http://therealstanlee.com/myers-briggs-nerd-personality-tests?utm_content=buffer8ac92&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Found this fun link

[WatcherOfSky]

http://therealstanlee.com/myers-briggs-nerd-personality-tests?utm_content=buffer8ac92&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Found this fun link

LOL that's a really funny one. xD