5.2 Turn types into toys
Types are a way of…
Creating an identity for yourself,
Understanding other people, and
Making key decisions in your life.
Systems of types are supposed to help you get to know yourself better and know why you feel what you feel and do what you do.
But types typically put you in a box. Different systems have different numbers of boxes, for example two, four, nine, or sixteen.
And if you use these types to restrict yourself, limit yourself, or dumb yourself down so to speak, that’s not a good thing, not for you personally and not for you as a writer.
Let me explain what I mean by looking at three typologies.
Enneagram
This system has nine types. When you get diagnosed either through an online test or in person with an expert, you get labelled as one of those types, which are arranged in three Triads…
The Feeling Triad
2 = The Helper
3 = The Motivator
4 = The Individualist
The Thinking Triad
5 = The Investigator
6 = The Loyalist
7 = The Enthusiast
The Instinctive Triad
8 = The Leader
9 = The Peacemaker
1 = The Reformer
For years, I was told I was a Five, no doubt about it, an easy diagnosis. Turns out that was wrong, that was just an overlay from childhood.
When I found the book Personality Types by Riso and Hudson and did my own typing, it was clear to me I was actually a Four.
And it was a relief to make that discovery. I like being a Four so much better than a Five. I feel at home there.
But I don’t like to put myself in a box, any box. So instead of saying, “I’m a Four,” I prefer to say, “I have a lot of Four in me.”
And even though Riso and Hudson is my favorite book on the Enneagram, I didn’t like their label for Fours, “The Individualist,” so I went shopping. I found an author who says a Four is “The Romantic.” Cool. I like that.
But my favorite, and the one I embrace is “The Artist.” That suits me best.
So notice I’m talking about complications. The Enneagram at first glance might seem all nice and neat and nailed down, but it’s not.
When I read the list of characteristics for a Four that Riso and Hudson lay out, I identified with a lot of them but not all of them. Some of them are definitely not me. And when I read through the other types, I noticed that I had some characteristics of each of them.
So I’m not a pure type. I’m more complex. For which I’m thankful.
And really, there are more than nine different, discrete types of people in the world.
Jeff Kitchen in his book on screenwriting recommends using the Enneagram to make each of your characters a type. And for some writers, that can be a good place to start.
But here’s my favorite thing about Riso and Hudson. They have nine subtypes for each of the nine major types, which means 81 variations on human character.
So that gives writers something to play with. A place to look for inspiration. Prompts to fire up their imagination.
And then if you combine three, four, or five different subtypes to make up the personality of a character, now the possibilities become astronomical, and this gives you a much better chance of creating a character who’s fresh, one we maybe haven’t seen before.
So I’m saying, instead of letting the Enneagram lock you down into a type, making you a caricature, making you less than you really are, and instead of letting it make your characters less than they are…
You get to turn the types into toys and play with them.
You get to use them to provoke your own creativity.
Tarot
You’ve got a deck of 78 cards total, each representing dimensions of the human psyche. That’s a lot of cards and a lot of possibilities to play with.
There are 22 cards in what’s called the Major Arcana, which includes cards like The Magician, The Empress, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Hanged Man, and The Fool.
There are 56 cards in the Minor Arcana, which is divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. Fourteen cards are in each suit.
What do you do with the cards? A Reading. And what does that entail?
First you think about a decision you need to make. Then you turn it into a question. Then you work over that question to make sure you’ve got it exactly right.
Then the person doing the Reading for you takes a shuffled deck and lays out cards in a pattern and explains to you how these particular cards are answering your question.
There are two things I like about the Tarot that give it complexity…
First, there are myriad ways to lay out cards to do a Reading. And you can use different numbers of cards, from just a single card to a dozen or more.
Second, even though the Rider Waite deck is popular and traditional, Tarot aficionados have created many, many different kinds of decks each with their own character and personality.
So if you’re struggling to develop a character you’ve created, you can grab a deck and do a Reading about the character or for the character to begin to flesh out her personality traits and moral core.
And there are two more ways I like to play with Tarot. First…
You get to do a Reverse Reading. Instead of asking a question of the Tarot, imagine your a character in your story, then pick a card at random, or pick one that calls to you, and let it ask you a question, or a bunch of questions.
Like the Lover might ask, “How can you bring more sweetness to your relationship?”
Or the Fool card might ask, “What spell are you under in your relationship that you would like to break?”
And if there were a Primal–Play card, it might ask, “How can you play your way deeper into intimacy with your partner?”
Second…
You get to do a Tarot Party.
Pull three, four, or five cards from the deck, and personify them and get them talking about you and playing off each other as you listen in and maybe get surprised by what they say.
And of course you can use Tarot to explore nonfiction writing as well. Instead of imagining yourself as a character, you can imagine yourself as the personification of your message.
Myers-Briggs
When you take the assessment for this typology, you get labelled with one of sixteen types.
Here’s how it works. There are four pairs of preferences…
Extraversion or Introversion
Sensing or iNtuition
Thinking or Feeling
Judging or Perceiving
The assessment will pick one of each pair to label you with. This is where you get those four capital letters as types like: ESTJ or INFP.
Now, as I said I really don’t like being put in a box. In fact, when someone asks me my type…
I tell them I’m an EISNTFJP.
I claim all the eight dimensions.
Because, for instance, even though I’m basically an introvert, there are situations where I turn into a happy extravert.
As far as I’m concerned, the saving grace of Myers–Briggs is that when you get your report back, it will show you where you are on the continuum of each pair. Like it might tell you that you’re very Introverted, but only moderately iNtuitive, etc.
So while you’ll be anchored in one of sixteen boxes, there is variability.
And like with the Enneagram, you can use the eight preferences as a starting place for developing a character.
Or when you’re getting ready to write an essay, you might ask yourself, what type do I want to be as the narrator of this essay? What type would be best suited to the topic and the points I want to make?
Let me emphasize, I don’t let any type or typology make my decisions for me. Either about my life or my writing. I don’t let any type or typology make a final decision about a character or the narrative voice I want to use in a nonfiction essay.
But I love having typologies in my writer’s toy chest so I can play with them whenever I’m stuck and want to get back in motion. Or whenever I want to think outside the box and create a character or a narrator who’s something very new and different for me.
