Write Better Characters with Enneagram - Introduction

Creating characters is one of my absolute favourite parts of writing, but I understand not everyone is blessed enough to have their characters appear to them fully formed from the moment of creation. Even for myself, who often instinctively knows who my characters are, there are times when I don’t understand why they are that way.

This is where the Enneagram personality types come in.

When I first started playing around with personality types for my characters, I started with the Myers-Briggs personality types. It was good at working out who my characters were on the surface level, but it didn’t go deep enough. It didn’t help me work out why they are the way they are, what they fear and what they want out of life.

After all, a good, truly layered character has:

• a desire — something they want to obtain or work towards, not always consciously,

• a fear — something they are inherently afraid of,

• and a misbelief — something they wrongly believe to be true about the world or themselves.

And those are the key qualities highlighted in the Enneagram types.

What is the Enneagram?

The Enneagram breaks all the various personality types down to nine core types. Each type is given a number and is connected to two other numbers.

The types are:

1. The Reformer: The rational, idealistic type who is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.

2. The Helper: The caring, interpersonal type who is demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, and possessive.

3. The Achiever: The success-oriented, pragmatic type who is adaptive, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.

4. The Individualist: The sensitive, withdrawn type who is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.

5. The Investigator: The intense, cerebral type who is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.

6. The Loyaltist: The committed, security-oriented type who is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious.

7. The Enthusiast: The busy, fun-loving type who is spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered.

8. The Challenger: The powerful, dominating type who is self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.

9. The Peacemaker: The easy-going, self-effacing type who is receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent.

As you can see, there is no one perfect type, just as there is no one perfect person. Each is a mix of positive and negative traits. People often have bits and pieces from all the types, but there should be one in particular that calls to you or, in our case, to your character as the most true or the most accurate. How they are when there are no outside influences.

Enneagram Wings

The order of the personality types is not coincidental. Each type has two wings — the two personalities to either side — that influence it. A person or a character can be equally influenced by both wings, but usually, one wing is dominant, and the other is suppressed.

For example, I am a Type 9 Peacemaker; that’s who I am at the core and what traits I resonate most strongly with. I am most heavily influenced by the Type 1 Reformer traits — so I’m a little bit idealistic and perfectionistic, and I value rationality and self-control — and I tend to suppress the Type 8 Challenger traits — so I don’t like confrontational or self-confident, and avoid being decisive.

Growth and Stress

The lines on the Enneagram diagram aren’t just there to make it look pretty or pleasing, either. Each line points to what type a person or character tends towards when they are under stress, or generally not doing well, or when they are thriving and things are going right for them.

This version shows the directions each type tends towards for Growth, or when things are going well.

Type 9 pulls on Type 3 tendencies and becomes adaptive, excelling, and driven. Type 3 pulls on Type 6 tendencies and becomes engaging, responsible, and committed. So on and so forth.

This diagram shows the arrows going in the opposite direction, indicating stress or what happens when things are not going well.

Type 3 pulls on Type 9 traits and becomes self-effacing and complacent. Type 9 pulls on Type 6 traits and becomes anxious and suspicious. So on and so forth.

But What About Characters?

Just as people have one central core type, so too should your characters. You can add some variety to them by looking at their past and seeing what wings they may have learned to champion or suppress, and then look at their growth and stress points to see how they would react at certain points throughout their character arc throughout the story.

This new newsletter series will be going into much greater detail of each of the Enneagram types one by one, starting, of course, with Type 1. We will be examining what it means to be a Type 1, their motivations and fears, and what drives them. We will go into detail on how each of the wings affects a Type 1 and how a Type 1 character might go from absolute destructive stress, all the way to thriving beautifully and loving life. We will also briefly be going into how Type 1 interacts with all the other types.

If that excites you and you want to dive deeper into the world of Enneagram for characters, make sure you’re subscribed!