@DiAnnMills

Some of our character’s traits are easy to discover. Physical description, food preference, a career choice, favorite color or food, wants, goals, and other basic attributes that can be revealed in a non-threatening manner. 

Life experiences that had painful physical, mental, or emotional outcomes are often hidden beneath a character’s facade. Sometimes those events are shoved to a dark corner of the mind, and many times they are not topics for discussion. 

The writer can’t address issues if she doesn’t know what they are.

How does a writer force a character to be transparent? Once we understand the character psychologically, we can better predict the response to uncomfortable situations. The character will show us the answers to hard questions before telling us.

The following steps will help a writer discover deep-rooted traits resulting from wounds.

1. Establish the character’s personality. Many excellent solutions are available for personality testing, but my preference is the Jung Typology Test based on Cari Jung’s and Isabel Briggs Myers’ personality type theories. Through a list of 64 questions, temperament is established. The score indicates one of 16 personality types as well as the extent of introvert or extrovert. A perk for writers is the indicator for careers, communication strategies, learning styles, relationships, leadership abilities and style, and real and fictitious people who have the same personality.
2. Develop the character’s backstory. That’s where you’ll find the motivation for what propels the character into action in chapter one, line one of story. Through the great teacher called life, the character learned how to handle emotions, faith, values, opinions, priorities, and a view of the world. The outcomes can be positive or negative.
3. Place the character in difficult scenarios, physical, mental, and emotional based on worst fears as discovered in the personality testing and backstory.

With the above established, the writer has a foundation for what hard questions plague the character. But the work continues. 

• Write scenes that force the character to face those fears, grueling emotional happenings with deep psychological meaning. 
• Create unpredictable outcomes based on what is known about the character.
• Create high stakes with serious consequences that fit the character’s temperament and goals.
• Allow for character change, either an increase or decrease in growth.

Watch the character squirm. What are the word choices? What responses enter the character’s thoughts? Examine body language. 

Hard questions for the character demand even harder work for the writer. Are you ready to enrich your story with emotional impact?

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