Your characters Myers-Briggs type?

[HandsInTheDark]

A friend mentioned this test to me recently; I'd forgotten about it for years. Back when employers made you take it, I was INTJ; now I test closer to INTP.

Ever applied it to your characters?

That kick-ass female character who lays down the smack on bad actors but then gets lost in a bottle in the evening. INSP? Social butterfly who is just hit her 18th birthday and hopes to get humped in style - ESFP? Cold, calculating male with the wide smile who gets the girls all afflutter - ENTP?

Like anything that breaks humanity into a small number of categories, your mileage may vary with this test and how well it fits. But it does a surprisingly decent job in a lot of circumstances and might give insight into what you're writing and why.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

INTP, here.

 

[Serafina1210]

I once tried to get one of my characters to take the Myers-Briggs test, but she got bored four questions in and went out to a bar to get picked up and fucked.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Don't know about my characters, but their writer is INTP (with an occasional tiny touch of INTJ).

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Don't know about my characters, but their writer is INTP (with an occasional tiny touch of INTJ).

I'd expect a lot of INTx in a writer's group. The Exxx aren't going to stay at a computer long enough and the S and F's are all about actual relationships, not fictional ones. Though in here I'd expect a couple of surprises.

 

[Handley_Page]

Never heard of this at all!

 

[sr71plt]

As a manager in government, I had to take this test several times--I came out a bit different (never an S, though) on the tests, with what I registered coordinating with the particular management problems I had going at the time. (For instance, to get the same work result, you'd have to use four different approaches with a Thai, an Indian, a Saudi, and an Aussie. When you had all four in the same office needing to get them all to the same goal, you had to be more than one Meyer-Briggs personality.)

I was mostly an INTJ. A psychologist friend at one time asked my family of four to take the test together, which came out as he suspected it would--we hit all four corners of the spectrum.

 

[Serafina1210]

Turns out I'm ISFP. This is, as far as I can tell, useless to know, but I had fun taking the test.

 

[legerdemer]

INTP-A (logician)

too funny - the descriptions fit me to a T

 

[legerdemer]

I am curious if anyone else has more trouble writing characters of opposite personality type than their own? It would seem logical. I have to work extra to envision myself in an extrovert's shoes.

 

[Serafina1210]

I think I'm getting better at extroverts. I used to make my heroes and heroines as secretive about their persons as I am. A trenchant commenter complained that they had no personalities (which is how I come off--aside from fat!). Since then I've worked on trying to make them the way I wish I was.

 

[TheNaughtyCraftsman]

It says INTP's are rare

Everything that I read about us says that we are a rarity, and you won't find us in the wild. That would be because most are here, and not wandering around intruding. Just a thought anyway.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

They always said mine was...

ISFP stereotype

and the 2nd closest was

INFP.

 

[Fierywhore]

An ESTJ here

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I am curious if anyone else has more trouble writing characters of opposite personality type than their own? It would seem logical. I have to work extra to envision myself in an extrovert's shoes.

My characters are mostly all over the map. Readers probably prefer Exxx characters as they tend to be easier to figure out. Most of my characters are Es; I'm not one myself. But all my characters are xxTx. It's very hard for me to write a xxFx character. I don't think I could write a ESFJ (opposite of me) at all. They are nice people, and nice people would look around at my somewhat dystopian story environments and buy a ticket to somewhere nicer.

 

[SamScribble]

In my younger days, I was ENTP. But as I got older, I gradually moved closer to INTP - and that puts me in the same box as JBJ. Perhaps I'll grow out of it.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

In my younger days, I was ENTP. But as I got older, I gradually moved closer to INTP - and that puts me in the same box as JBJ. Perhaps I'll grow out of it.

I took the test long ago at a company rest and recreation day. My boss had a bad day after she scored INTP like me.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I am curious if anyone else has more trouble writing characters of opposite personality type than their own? It would seem logical. I have to work extra to envision myself in an extrovert's shoes.

I'm INTP and have no trouble getting in the heads of touchy feelers. I assume theyre at least stupid, and likely retarded. They avoid discomfort in any form. And carry around a strong sense of entitlement.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think sketching out fictional characters is the best and possibly only legitimate use of Myers-Briggs It's fine as a source of ideas for fiction; as a way of measuring real people it's badly flawed.

But people love personality typing - MBTI, DISC, astrology, blood-type-personality, four humors, take your pick. My work went through a phase where we'd get a new "how to work as a team" course every few months, and each provider had their own preferred personality typing system.

My favourite is DISC, because it means I get to tell corporate trainers "hey, you know this system was originally designed by the creator of Wonder Woman to explain his theories about how female sexual domination would lead to world peace?" (True story.)

 

[emma72]

INFP on the INFJ borderline...so many I's here.

 

[legerdemer]

My characters are mostly all over the map. Readers probably prefer Exxx characters as they tend to be easier to figure out. Most of my characters are Es; I'm not one myself. But all my characters are xxTx. It's very hard for me to write a xxFx character. I don't think I could write a ESFJ (opposite of me) at all. They are nice people, and nice people would look around at my somewhat dystopian story environments and buy a ticket to somewhere nicer.

Ah... so that explains LC's issues with your stories! He's just nice!

 

[legerdemer]

I'm INTP and have no trouble getting in the heads of touchy feelers. I assume theyre at least stupid, and likely retarded. They avoid discomfort in any form. And carry around a strong sense of entitlement.

i can mime touchy-feely well enough; it's extroversion and the 'gift of gab' I have a hard time putting down on the page.

 

[legerdemer]

I think sketching out fictional characters is the best and possibly only legitimate use of Myers-Briggs It's fine as a source of ideas for fiction; as a way of measuring real people it's badly flawed.

But people love personality typing - MBTI, DISC, astrology, blood-type-personality, four humors, take your pick. My work went through a phase where we'd get a new "how to work as a team" course every few months, and each provider had their own preferred personality typing system.

My favourite is DISC, because it means I get to tell corporate trainers "hey, you know this system was originally designed by the creator of Wonder Woman to explain his theories about how female sexual domination would lead to world peace?" (True story.)

Yeah, I got my pillar of salt right here( LOL) but they're fun in the same way fortune cookies are.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

i can mime touchy-feely well enough; its extroversion and the 'gift of gab' I have a hard time putting on down on the page.

Youre no sociopath so it comes hard for you.

I'm a sociopath, and most of us are charming tho we hate people. I cant imagine any worse way to spend time than with others but I invented hospitality. If you look at it closely empathy and seduction are the same process.

 

[LWulf]

Careful, I suggested something like this once and all the unholy idiots came in to bounce off the walls; "You can't do that!" "It doesn't work!" "You shouldn't write up character sheets!"
blah blah blah blah blah.

Some thought it might be handy, but the idjits outweigh every time.

For myself, I think one of my characters is an ES... something something. and her bo is an introvert of some kind. I don't think he was an INTJ like me, though I'd have to admit, he was an introvert of some kind.

For another story, I have too many characters all over the rainbow. Most are expressives... I don't think I actually have an introvert among the lot. The setting is a strip club and an introvert wouldn't be caught dead up on a stage, needless to say, naked.