Creating Believable Character Growth Using The Personality Spectrum
When writing fiction, one of the things I often worry about when crafting my characters is allowing for realistic growth. How do I make sure that my character is growing and changing throughout the story without having it feel forced? One of the best tools I have found for this is the personality spectrum.
The Personality Spectrum
The personality spectrum is a chart a creative partner and I came up with based off my studies in communication and the writings of Robert McKee in his book “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”. Although the book focuses specifically on screenwriting, his observations on character and story structure are excellent for any type of storytelling. By moving characters along the scale as your story progresses, you will be able to show natural character growth in certain areas of their lives.
Understanding The Spectrum
On the personality spectrum, traits are placed on a scale between -1 and 1. These should not necessarily be thought of as good and bad, but rather different ends of a scale. For example, if we were to use the spectrum for something else, like fruit, a person who doesn’t like apples and won’t eat them would be a -1, a person who doesn’t like apples, but will occasionally eat them would be a -.5, a person who neither likes or dislikes apples is a 0, a person who likes apples occasionally is a .5, and a person who likes apples more than any other fruit would be a 1. There is nothing wrong with liking or disliking apples, they’re just different ends of the scale.
The Traits
The traits we used on our scale are Trust, Open-mindedness, Outlook on Life, Consideration, and Power Distance. When creating your own personality spectrum, you can add as many traits as you want, but we found that these are a good starting point. You can place each character at different points on this scale. In fact, we found that by charting out all the characters on the scale it became easy to create characters who would either compliment each other or cause conflict.
Trust
Trust refers to a character’s willingness to trust others. A person with extremely low trust (-1) would not trust anyone. By contrast, a person with extremely high trust (1) would trust everyone. A person with -.5 trust would naturally distrust people but would have circumstantial trust. A zero on the scale would have trust that is entirely circumstantial. A person with .5 trust would naturally trust and have circumstantial mistrust.
Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness refers to a person’s willingness to listen to and be influenced by others. A -1 on the spectrum is extremely closed-minded and believes no one’s opinion is right but their own. A foil character (1) to that would be extremely open-minded and be easily influenced by others.
Outlook On Life
What is your character’s outlook on life? Are they glass-half-full or glass-half-empty? Maybe they tend to fall somewhere else on the scale.
Consideration
Consideration refers to how considerate are they of others. In other words, is your character selfish? Now, contrary to popular opinion, selfishness is not inherently a bad thing — you may need a character to have a healthy understanding of their own needs. Writing a naturally selfish character can be fun (Han Solo comes to mind). Additionally, selfishness is a wonderful spot to push for character growth.
Power Distance
In the immortal words of Green Day: “Question everything or shut up and be a victim of authority.” How does your character view authority figures? Do they trust those in power to make good decisions? Do they believe power turns even the best people rotten? All of this falls under Power Distance.
How To Use This Spectrum
Pick a starting point for your character in each trait. For example, you might have a character with the following traits:
- Trust (1)
- Open-mindedness (.5)
- Outlook On Life (-.5)
- Consideration (-1)
- Power Distance (0)
Now, to have this character grow in a way that feels natural, you should move them either left or right on the spectrum in increments of .5. For example, over the course of your story, your characters trust might move from 1 to .5 as events in the story teach them to be less trusting. It is important to make sure that you do not move them more than .5 degrees at a time unless there is an extremely compelling incident (betrayal by a loved one, for example).
You can use this scale as many times as you want with as many characters as you want. I recommend having each character move at least .5 degrees by the end of your story, but you could make it as must as once every act. Remember, conflict is the main catalyst of change, so write your conflicts with these traits in mind and how they will move your characters along the scale.
Originally published at bethanydameron.com on February 7, 2019.
