Writing Exercise: Developing Characters with the Myers-Briggs Typing Method

Developing Comprehensive Sketches for Your Characters

Developing characters can be an extremely fun task to do for your novel or short story, but also challenging. After all, readers want to relate or empathize with your protagonist and hate your antagonist. That’s a high standard!

Thankfully, some characters seem to pop into our imagination already made, doing all the work so we get to sit back and watch their personalities unfold.

Others, however, are more private. We must fight to discover what they love and what makes them tick.

No matter which characters come to you (probably a mix of both, I’d guess), it’s important to have a solid understanding of our characters so they will spark to life on the page.

There are a whole lotta ways one can do this, and each writer has a method which works best for them. If you are a fiction writer who works well with quizzes/questionnaires, or you are experimenting to find your novel writing process, I have a writing exercise for you!

Hopefully, this will make developing your characters a smidge easier.😊

A Test for Your Characters

Quizzes are a fun way to get to know your characters and, for me, the best one to use is the mother of them all, the Myers–Briggs personality test.

If you haven’t heard of it, the Myers-Briggs test is an extensive personality quiz that will place you into one of sixteen personalities they have typed in the world.

I like to use the free test on 16personalities.com which is drawn off the official Myers-Briggs test. What I love about this resource is that at the end of the test they give you an extensive description of the type you—or your character—tested to be.

The description pinpoints strengths and weaknesses, romantic relationships, friendships, parenthood, career paths, workplace habits, and more. It is a fantastic way to get into the mind of your character.

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Additional Benefits

Taking this quiz for your character may also. . .

1. Help you realize you don’t know your character as well as you thought.
2. Show you that you’re trying to stuff them in a box, keeping them from revealing their true nature.

If you find yourself in the #1 category, this quiz should help, but you may need to keep developing your character through other means. Maybe check out the workbook I authored that I also use myself to develop characters, Character Presentation: The Advanced Guide to Character Description, or the One Stop For Writers character builder.

Fall into #2? Consider this: When you take the quiz for yourself, it is important to be honest. We may want to choose more desirable answers for ourselves, when in reality we have our shortcomings and our test results will reflect them.

The same is true when you take the quiz in your character’s point of view (POV).

Beware you are not choosing answers YOU WANT your character to make instead of the answers THEY truly would make.

If you do the former, you may find the character you are developing feels wrong or that the character you want isn’t the character your story needs.

One more great benefit of doing this exercise is the POV practice. Thinking the way your characters do is a valuable story technique, and will help your characters sing on the page.

Related Reading: How to Nail Your Novel Planning with the One Stop for Writers Website

A Word of Caution

Even though I do recommend taking this quiz for your characters, I would also say that what will be written in these descriptions will not always be word for word your character.

There are sixteen personalities typed, but within those personalities are internal and external differentiating factors at play. Two of the same type personalities are not the same person.

We each have different levels of traits that define us, and we all have different backstories. Same is true with our fictional characters.

So if the description you got for your character doesn’t quite match with the person you know your character to be, don’t worry about it.

This test cannot asses the impact of an individual’s backstory or the character growth they will undergo. In fact, that might mean you know your character better than you think you do.

And I’ll leave you with this last thought: Our characters and ourselves are not defined by a four letter test type. The personality result may show where we are today, but it does not account for who we will become.

We humans our changing creatures. We experience, we learn, we adapt. Our world views change and so do our mental + physical health. This test result is simply a starting point for our life journeys, and our character’s arc.

Related Reading: What Every Writer Should Know About Creating Change in One’s Characters

Developing Some Incredible Characters

Ready to jump in?

1. You can read an in-depth explanation of the personality types here.
2. Take the test for your characters.
   • Note: You may want to take the test for yourself first to get an idea of how it works.
3. Asses where you are in your character development.
4. Great work!

If this tool works for you, that is fabulous. If it does not, don’t sweat it. This is just one of many ways to discover who your characters are, so maybe try the guided exercises in my workbook, Character Presentation: The Advanced Guide to Character Description.

Write your story,

Sarah

More Writing Exercises:

• 31 Creative Writing Prompts for Fiction Writers Challenge
• Creative Writing Exercise: 9 Christmas Questions to Ask Your Characters