"Deep reading . . . engaging with stories that explore the complexity of this character’s motivations or that character’s wounds, is a training ground for understanding human variety." David Brooks, The New York Times
In Iris Murdoch’s novel The Green Knight, Clement considers the qualities of Louise Anderson, whom he’s loved from afar:
“. . . she instinctively made all things better, speaking no evil, disarming hostility, turning ill away, making peace: her gentleness, which made her seem, sometimes, to some people, weak, insipid, dull. ‘She’s not exactly a strong drink!’ someone said.”
What a beautifully condensed metaphor: “She’s not exactly a strong
drink.” Murdoch’s insight into human nature extends far beyond the usual guidelines
for deepening character descriptions.
In contrast, you’ve perhaps been asked to critique a beginning writer’s
work, where characters seem flat and their voices similar, making it
hard to distinguish among them.
"Of course we want to create people our readers will remember," writes Laurie Schnebly in Believable Characters. "Maybe not fondly, not if they're someone like Hannibal Lector . . . but our characters don't need to be loved, just remembered. How can we make that happen?" (See also Schnebly's article in the April 2025 issue of Enneagram Monthly).
Knowledge of key issues in each of nine personalities, suggests Judith Searle, in The Literary Enneagram, can help writers create “credible character arcs and character-driven plot twists that seem both inevitable and surprising.” Familiarity with these patterns helps “sharpen conflicts between characters to make dramatic situations more compelling.”
The Enneagram—long a favorite guide among consultants, coaches, therapists, and spiritual teachers for leadership/team development and personal/spiritual growth—is not a quickie take on "types." These dimensions of human behavior and potential for spiritual growth have been known at least as long ago as Homer in 750 BCE (as shown by Michael J. Goldberg in Travels with Odysseus)* and as recently as neuropsychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.'s description in The Mindful Therapist of Patterns of Developmental Pathways or PDP.As a writer and retired Enneagram coach/mentor, I’ll share some ideas to stimulate your thinking about character development. Whether writing about people you know in memoir or creating characters for fiction, you’ll benefit from deeper understanding of nine characteristic motivations, personality patterns, and growth potential.
First, a quick overview, then in posts that follow I delve deeper into each of the nine Enneagram points with examples from published works. Though we all have all patterns within us, we tend to be boxed in, or "fixated" in one of the nine until we develop deep self-awareness to break free of the habitual patterns associated with each. The same will be true of your fictional characters, and of family members and friends who appear in your creative nonfiction. Note that I'm not "typing" people mentioned in memoir or biography, only making guesses based on their observable behavior.
The brief paragraphs below show habitual patterns of behavior that predominate at points One though Nine (to go directly to the longer description, click on the link at "Point One," "Point Two," etc.). As in your own personal growth, a character arc would show an increase in self-awareness and freedom from the most automatic reactions, but the characters we're especially drawn to are often distinguished by their most obvious traits, including those we find a bit flawed. Think of your favorite books and you'll know exactly what I mean.
Point One:
The gift here is our ability to see and work toward perfection. Those of us more boxed in at this point tend to see first what’s wrong; perfectionism driven
by a fix-it kind of anger, a rejection of something less than the ideal
of what should be (Isabelle Goodrow in Elizabeth Strout's Amy & Isabelle; pianist Jeremy Denk in The New Yorker essay, "Every Good Boy Does Fine").
Point Two:
The gift here is our ability to anticipate and tend to someone else’s
needs. Those of us boxed in at this point can lose ourselves as we become too intent on
taking care of others. Characters demonstrating this set of patterns find it difficult to admit their own needs
and can become manipulative in their efforts to be "helpful" (Dennis Lynch in Alice McDermott's Charming Billy, Marge Piercy's recollections in Sleeping with Cats).
Point Three:
The gift here is our drive to succeed in attaining a goal. When stuck at this point, we can become
competitive strivers, such as Olympic athletes, but pushed to extremes this could rob us of our souls: with success measured
in the eyes of others, and characters may be ruthless in search of their idealized goal (Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley; Lennox Lewis in Melissa Mathison's biography, Lennox).
Point Four:
The gift here is a passion for creativity, emotional depth, and a profound
desire for authenticity. When boxed in at point Four, our need to be special is accompanied by a fear of being ordinary. Characters may be stuck in melancholy, feeling different or flawed (Diane Arbus in Arthur Lebow's biography Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer, Sarah Woodruff in John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman).
Point Five:
The gift here is the ability to conceptualize and master knowledge. When stuck at point Five, we tend to value intellect more than the physical side of life. Characters reflecting these personality patterns may be socially remote or even awkward, and are typically conserving--of money, of emotions, of compliments (Robert Hendricks in Sebastian Faulks' Where My Heart Used to Beat, Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking).
Point Six: The gift here is loyalty, which causes those of us boxed in at this point to question our own inner
power and to anxiously anticipate anything that could go wrong. Characters at point Six will look to some authority (the family, the social group, the company, the church, the society) for security, rules, and norms, yet paradoxically are
often the ones to challenge authority (Flora 717 in Laline Paull's The Bees, Harry, Duke of Sussex in Spare).
Point Seven:
The gift here is positive, energetic, upbeat energy, which can cause
frustration when things slow down. When boxed in at point Seven, characters can be gluttons for pleasure,
variety, and novelty to the point of having little tolerance for boredom
or discomfort of any kind (Monica Szabo in Mary Gordon's Spending, Alan Cumming in Not My Father's Son, Matthew McConaughey in Greenlights).
Point Eight:
The gift here is confidence and the ability to take charge. The boxed-in Eight claims power whether others like it or not. These characters will be driven to
excess—more is better. The thrill is in the hunt, so they tend to stir
things up to add spice to a situation (Javier Fuentes in Jeanine Cummins' American Dirt, V.I. Warshawski in Sara
Paretsky’s Shell Game, Joyce Schulz in David Michaelis' Schulz and Peanuts).
Point Nine:
The gift here is in being calm, easy-going, and understanding divergent opinions. Characters stuck at this point will avoid anything that could upset their sense
of inner peace and they may be passive or passive aggressive (Charles Schulz in David Michaelis' Schulz and Peanuts, Louise Anderson in Iris Murdoch’s The Green Knight, Nathan Staples in A.L. Kennedy's Everything You Need).
This last description, of Enneagram point Nine, brings us
back to the beginning quote describing Murdoch’s character Louise
Anderson. Louise's calmness, gentleness, avoidance of conflict, speaking no
evil, and disarming all hostility made her seem “weak, insipid, dull” to
some people. But how interesting she is as a character.
_______________________
*"The Enneagram is rooted in a long and
wide-ranging history of philosophic and theurgic traditions which describe a
soul's journey of evolution and initiation. At each stop in the journey the
soul confronts certain difficulties, or encounters some wisdom or power, or
experiences a paradigm; from this the soul secures particular characteristics
or learnings, or fails to and gets stuck . . . Homer must have known something
of the relationships among the Enneagram types . . . because he knew the
critical order.” Michael J. Goldberg, The 9 Ways of Working (pp. 340-341).
