How To Write Complex Characters: Overview Of The Enneagram - Jeff Kitchen

Film Courage: Jeff, what is an enneagram and how does it help a writer create complex characters? Jeff Kitchen, Dramatist / Author / Founder / Consultant: The enneagram is a really valuable tool. It's a personality profiling system that is a mix of ancient wisdom about human nature and cutting-edge psychology. I was introduced to it by a friend of mine who was a top psychiatrist in New York City and he was a good friend and he loved movies so he loved to consult on projects that I was working on so like if I was developing a script with a client I would often bring him in. One time I brought the actor John Leguizamo to him he was working on a murder story and he wanted some in-depth stuff the kind of stuff that Armand could bring and he met with Armand and I talked to John afterwards and Armand had sat him down in front of police video of a guy who had just murdered his parents 45 minutes beforehand. This was real footage and john said Oh my gosh it messed me up. I was like I couldn't sleep that night and I was like whoa and I said well was it good research? He goes off top shelf like off the charts crazy and I worked with Armand a lot that way and at one point he said to me because he was doing character profiles on these at one point he said to me Have you ever checked out the enneagram? It's the best thing out there. I'd never heard of it before and coming from him he was really brilliant and really at the top of his game and for him to say it's the best thing out there i was like whoa it wasn't like oh i think i'll check it i was like boom i was like right on it and i studied it intensively for a couple years and it what it it purports that there's nine basic personality types and each of them has their own uh basic fears basic desires motivations preferences tendencies weaknesses flaws and there's all these different and not only all that but each of the nine types has different aspects like they're either a healthy aspect an average aspect or an unhealthy aspect and depending on what shape you're in emotionally and psychologically you are your life is either coming together you're you're integrating or your life is falling apart you're disintegrating and if you if you are coming together as a person emotionally and psychologically then you will tend to exhibit the average to healthy aspects of the type you are if you are falling apart as a person then you will tend to exhibit the average to unhealthy aspects of that personality type so it is a um and they say that the average person flickers between all those all day long where you can have extremely healthy reactions or actions in certain situations or extremely unhealthy and you flicker back and forth all day long like real people in and out of different emotional states and so on but you will tend to be what you are in other words if you tend to be healthy then most of your stuff will tend to be average to healthy and it is a so like the nine types are like um they give them labels but they don't use the labels very much type 1 they call the reformer type 2 is the helper type 3 is the achiever type 4 is the individualist type 5 is the thinker or the they have different names type six is the loyalist type seven is the enthusiast type eight is the leader or the challenger type nine is the peacemaker but because each of those labels has certain connotations with different people the people who work with it professionally they'll call you a one or a four or a seven because it's context free in a certain way the labels don't bring their own misunderstandings to people who are less skilled in the application of the of the technique so that like a type three the achiever can be very high performing it'll be like a tony robbins type where they really work hard to actualize all their best capabilities tom cruise is a type three people who can really achieve great things push themselves to be the best they can be and can really be extraordinary but in the unhealthy or in the average aspects they can be really concerned with how they appear they're constantly wanting to look good even if they aren't doing well emotionally in the unhealthy aspects they can actively lie to look good even when they're in really rough shape they're really over concerned with how they appear and will do even devious things to maintain that appearance so that in the extremely unhealthy aspects they can even be suicidal or murderous to maintain the illusion of their superiority or achieve their achievements even if they're not there so in terms of the in both the creation of a character and the development and dimensionalization of a character these the the the basic human nature which is built into the study of the enneagram and the cutting edge psychology which is built into it inform what you both find in your character and can create in your character for instance if i uh like for instance going back to your it guide derek and the young woman skyler uh i would one of the things i'd be looking at and i'd be doing that once i get a dilemma up and running i'm also looking in the early stages of developing a dilemma for derek i would go very quickly to which enneagram type is he because that's going to inform so much who he is and how he interacts with his dilemma and what his basic fears and basic desires and tendencies and motivations and disabilities and flaws and blind spots all of that inform not only what the dilemma is but how he will interact with it because of his basic fears and drives and all that so let's see if i'm looking at him might he be a one the reformer it's possible two the helper maybe three the achiever possible for the individual list possible because he is an individualist can be uh intuitive artistic want to sort out their own emotions before they deal with anything else uh possibly a type five a thinker a you know someone who is perfecting things before they launch out sherlock holmes was a type 5 wants to have everything like a type 4 wants to figure out their emotional stuff before they move ahead a type 5 wants to figure out the mechanics of a situation and have a lot of knowledge because their basic fear is that they're not well prepared so they're protecting themselves so they want to know everything before they take a step so they spend too much time figuring out before they take action so they can be extremely world-changing when they're on top of their game and see things in a completely fresh way but they can also be paranoid and reclusive and dissociated from who they really are because they're desperately trying to figure it all out in their head before they do their debut um so maybe he's a five he could be a sixth the loyalist which is lends itself to the it was the guard watchdog for this mainframe and the whole company the type one of the main motivating factors in a type six is they are constantly hoping that the next person they latch onto is going to be the one who can show them how to navigate life successfully are you the one can you help me learn how to make my life work which see that goes with the watchdog for the corporation but also skyler like are you the one that's going to show me how to make my life work finally so a six is a possibility a four is a possibility because the um a four is inwardly tuned has a lot of artistic sensitivities and a lot of inner debate and wants to make things work at an emotional level uh i'm not describing it accurately enough but this is really an overview too but a four is an interesting possibility for derrick a six is an interesting possibility a seven the enthusiast is the busy fun-loving type which could be a very interesting possibility for uh skyler someone who's like wildly enthusiastic the life of the party always busy a healthy seven is a lot of fun an unhealthy seven can be a drug addict they're a constant escapist mode a seven's main motivation is to um in the unhealthy aspect of their fears they wanna they wanna what's the word kind of dispel unease they can't sit and deal with emotional complexity they want to escape from it they they don't have the the bone that enables them to sit there and figure it out they're in escape mode a lot if they're average to unhealthy so they're always looking for the next thing they're always planning even if they've spent three months planning a big cruise with all their friends they can't enjoy the cruise because they're busy planning the next thing it's always about their plans but they can be really fun to be around and a healthy seven is really fun and a really healthy happy integrated person so i would think that she's gonna be pretty unhealthy but they look dazzlingly fun especially to someone who is feeling miserable and trapped and caught in a rut and no way out so it's kind of an interesting chemical connection where her malfunction meshes with his malfunction in a way that she looks like his savior and he may look like her savior so they sink on a lot of levels and they fit each other's compulsive pattern in a certain way that even though it's an unhealthy relationship they get a lot of mileage out of it before the each realizes that wow i'm back where i started or worse because he's just as messed up as i am in a completely different way and we really screwed this thing up you know it's that kind of thing so in many ways it's a mixture of what you bring to the picture with your story and what the enneagram offers as possibilities for character traits and possibilities for character you you when you come with your story you have a certain amount of something already you're not coming with nothing and just looking at the enneagram for instance with the story of derek you've already got a raw story and we've done some work with dilemma so you've got him trapped and then if you find that he seems like a type six enneagram then the tendencies and basic fears and all the things that make up a six influence your story and your story influences how you use those parts of the enneagram for instance if you are looking at the mechanics of a type 6 and it offers some dynamic possibilities for what derek might be like as he falls apart in a crucial moment of the story then that could really inform the story choices that you make and the story choices that you make can inform what parts of the enneagram you use or amplify or play with you know so much of it is an experimental mix as you're really working with everything to gel that which you decide to run with one of the key ways that i use the enneagram is that if you've got a story idea that's up and running and you've worked on dilemma then that's a point as as you begin to get into dilemma for your protagonist that's when it's very useful to look at the enneagram because the the character traits of the type of your protagonist the personality type will inform and influence your insight into the dilemma it can suggest possibilities it can deepen and dimensionalize the dilemma and the way that i tackle that is that i'll have that character in mind like derek and then i'll look at the one sheet for each of the nine types and those come from the um enneagram institute.com website i work with a slightly older one sheet from when i wrote my book around 2006. it it fits on one sheet of paper and it has a lot of information what they have for their one sheet now is they've expanded upon it so there's more complexity which is great i just like going back to the one sheets that are in my book writing a great movie because it's short and sweet then once you've worked with that you'll find the stuff on their website which opens it up a little more to be very useful too but what i do is that i think i put myself in the position of my character or i think about my character the lead character and look at the one sheet for each of the nine types and i'll sometimes just use my book or i often i print out the one sheets because i've saved them and i'll look at a type one thinking about derek and be like okay silver former there's some key aspects maybe a couple on my underline that's a maybe look at the two go through that three oh that has more stuff that's interesting four has some distinct possibilities five and you know and maybe when i'm looking at a five well even while i'm thinking about derek i may notice that wow that could really be the the predator who's operating skyler and it just jumps out at me like wow there's there's that person so you're just kind of like going through the nine one sheeps nine one sheets mostly one character at a time but sometimes other ones will just jump out at you and so i found that i think derek really seems like a six and kind of like this you know as you're looking through the one sheet a whole bunch of stuff starts to light up for you and then once you've figured out who your main characters are which type your main characters are even if you have a couple possibilities like at first you're not sure you think derek might be a four or a six and you play with that for a while and then usually your understanding of it will crystallize after a while where perhaps you see how derek reacts in a key moment and that really resonates with a tendency of a type six and then you really see yeah i really think he is a type six not a type four so your gra your understanding gradually crystallizes at first it's tentative and you keep the possibilities open because you're not trying to force any of these types on your characters you're just trying to listen to who your characters are and listen to what the enneagram is saying as possibilities for them which type they might be and so on but after a while you will um your understanding will crystallize and at that point it's really interesting to go to the book the wisdom of the enneagram which is written by the same guys from the enneagram institute and it's a big thick book and there's a 40 page chapter on each type which takes you much much deeper than the one sheet did and it really goes so deep into so many aspects of that character type that it helps you dimensionalize them it shows the reasons why these tendencies are there and why their fear is there and the way in which they fall apart when things really go bad for them and the way in which they can go from being in an extremely unhealthy reactive state to a healthy proactive integration where they they can pull themselves together and become a healthy aspect of themselves you know and scripts deal with character arcs so where a person's flaws and weaknesses and disabilities and all that are either resolved if there's a creative resolution and they become a more healthy version of themselves or they disintegrate and become you know fall apart completely in in a tragic resolution but the uh the 40 page chapter is really a deep and complex journey through the full mechanics of what makes this person tick and it really gives you tremendous depth and dimension and flaws and strengths and hopes and subconscious attitudes and how they react in a bad situation and how they can pull themselves out of a tail spin in certain types of situations so it really is very comprehensive and one of the things that's most interesting about working with the enneagram is that i've done it hundreds of times for so many different characters and for instance when i'm going through the 40 page chapter for a character that's maybe a five maybe i've already done 15 different characters that are fives and really studied them in depth and really know them well but maybe one was like a serial killer in you know the bombings of ireland and one is a you know a schizophrenic baker in argentina and like completely like comedy and so that the characters come in such completely different contexts that when i start going back through something that i've been through a whole whole bunch of times like the 40 page chapter on a type 5 it's like i've never seen it before because it's completely different because i'm inhabiting this baker now instead of this bomber and it's literally like i've never seen this stuff before which is so interesting because i've been soaking my head in it for years so it's fresh each time which is great because that's what you want when you're developing characters it's not just a rehash of people you already know but a completely fresh discovery from a completely new character and you're not only are you pulling new material out of what you've already been through but your facility with the tool grows and expands each time so you know you just have more facility more ability to understand more complexities and also the ability to just see it more simply and clearly like oh it's just that instead of like it's all this stuff so you you know your your capacity to work with the tool both clarifies and deepens into more complexity because sometimes the ability to just see thing clearly and simply is the aha moment that you've been working toward maybe for years in terms of using this tool where you start to understand the different personality types more clearly even if you have to work hard to get there each time but you're a little better at it each time and yet it's always new that's endlessly fascinating okay so that's a good tour through the enneagram. Questions For The Viewers: Have you ever used the enneagram to help you write characters? How do you like this tool?

Channel: Film Courage

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Keywords: Screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting for beginners, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting advice, writing a screenplay, how to write a movie, go into story, Jeff Kitchen, writing teacher, author, writing a great movie, filmcourage, film courage, interview, Enneagram, 36 Dramatic Situations, screenwriting sequence, how to write plot, how to write screenplay plot

Id: nFGInL05ivc

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021