JWC 2021 Charles Kowalski, "Personality Types and Character Arcs"

What do your characters want? What do they fear? The answers can provide ready-made road maps for their character arcs – the quest for what they want, and the detour that leads them to what they need. Discover how nine basic personality types help chart the course for your characters’ journey.This workshop shows how fiction writers can use a classical nine-point personality profiling system to develop characters and determine character arcs.

Participants will learn:

Nine basic personality types, each driven by a fundamental desire (love, pleasure, power…) and its corresponding fear.

Common character traits, interests, and suitable and unsuitable careers for each type.

Levels of attainment for each, from fully realized (mentor level) to striving (protagonist level) to frustration to the point of desperate acts or even psychosis (villain level).

How types and levels can help determine a character’s goals, and how well-documented pathways from one type to another can help determine the direction of character arcs, both for positive change and negative change.

Charles Kowalski is the author of the award-winning thriller MIND VIRUS, the political/espionage thriller THE DEVIL’S SON, the historical fantasy SIMON GREY AND THE MARCH OF A HUNDRED GHOSTS, and several short stories. When not writing, he teaches at Tokai University.