Guest Blogger: Patricia Bradley

(Patricia Bradley is a workshop speaker at the upcoming MSCWC)

 www.midsouthchristianwriters.com

Giving Your Characters an Identity

The title to this post is a little misleading. As an author, I don’t actually give my characters their identity or even their name. They tell me who they think they are. And they don’t do it all at one time. They never agree with who I think they are, but they always win.

Like my recent bout with my heroine of the last book in the Logan Point series. She was a little easier than most characters as she already had a name. Olivia Reynolds, but only her enemies and her superiors called her Olivia. To everyone else, she was Livy. What wasn’t so easy to figure out is what her identity was. I knew from the first book, Shadows of the Past, she was a detective with the Memphis Police Department. She was organized, neat, followed a plan and had a strong sense of duty.

I put those personality traits into Google and found several links to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). 

wwhw.myerbriggs.or/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics

I discovered there were several personality types that fit this profile—ISTJs (whose profile name is Duty Fulfiller) and INTJ (whose profile name is Scientist). Both are Introverts, perfectionists, detailed planners with to-do lists. I decided Livy was the Scientist-type. I wanted her to be able to envision things, foresee likely effects based on what she felt.  www.differencebetween.net/science/nature/difference-between-istj-and-intj

My character, Livy, quite rudely insisted she was an ISTJ, the Duty Fulfiller. That unlike the Scientist, she accumulated data and used it to solve problems. She focused on what’s happened in the past to decide what will happen in the future. Conversely, the scientist-type personality bases what they think will happen on their intuition. And she would never throw out some radical idea for everyone to follow.

After thinking about it, I agreed. But I got even. The hero of the book is Livy's opposite, an extrovert, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants private investigator. He-he-he.

Patricia Bradley lives in North Mississippi and is a former abstinence educator and co-author of RISE To Your Dreams, an abstinence curriculum. But her heart is tuned to suspense. Patricia’s mini-mysteries have been published in Woman’s World, and her debut novel, Shadows of the Past, is the first of three set in Mississippi and will release February 4, 2014. She will present a workshop, Writing 50,000 words in 30 days, at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference. www.midsouthchristianwriters.com