Thinkers and Feelers

This is Part 4 of my series on personality types (character traits, if you will) based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Remember, I'm an EXFJ.

Today I'm talking about the T(hinking) and F(eeling). From mine, you can see that I'm a Feeler. And since I've always taken the paper copy of the Kiersey, I know how many of my answers are Ts and how many are Fs.

Um, I'm not just an Feeler, I'm a flaming Feeler.

So what does that even mean?

Source: PowerPoint

Thinking: These are the folks who make decisions based upon logic, going for impersonal findings. They tend to be objective when making decisions and evaluate their options based on laws, principles, and policies. Good at arguments, they try to influence people using logic rather than emotions. They experience emotion just as much as the Feelers do but are less likely to show their feelings.

Feeling: We tend to make our decisions based on subjective reasoning and choose in the context of how our decisions impact ourselves and others. We don't usually hide our emotions. Our evaluations are usually in terms of circumstances, values, and good or bad. We can be very persuasive and appeal to emotions.

If you want to convince someone to do something, it comes in handy if you know if this person is a Thinker or a Feeler. Make your case to a Thinker using emotions or subjective reasoning, what do you think will happen?

In the communications class where I first studied the Kiersey, we were required to make three speeches. The first one was extemporaneous. The second one was to persuade using logic, and the third was to persuade using emotion.

I did okay with the first one. And I got an A with the logic speech, but the Prof said I knocked her socks off with the third one. You gotta play to your strengths.

An interesting tidbit about Thinkers and Feelers is how they react to strife. A Thinker boss facing the need to fire an employee will "feel" just as bad as the Feeler boss does. However, the Thinker boss is much less likely to have a sleepless night the day before. The Feeler has a harder time letting that kind of thing go. General office or family conflict tends to bleed into other aspects of a Feeler's life, much more so than it does to a Thinker.

Once again, there are degrees to which we may be a Thinker or a Feeler (or any of the other character groups). Someone who scores closely between the two will be different from someone like me who tests very high on the Feeler side.

So what about the main characters in your current WIP? Do you think they're Thinkers or Feelers? How might that impact how they handle the mean evil things you keep doing to them?

Marketing

Author Marsha Ward and I are members of ANWA (actually she started  it many years ago), and earlier this week one of the members who's a new author posed a question about marketing. Marsha's response was great, and I'm so glad she shared it on her blog, so I can let you folks know about it.

What's the best approach to marketing my book?

So many times, that's a question I hear from first time authors. Here's my answer, and you may not like it, but it's really the truth:

After you have announced your book to your friends via your email contacts, social media sites, and twitter, and have a short "signature" below your name in your email account, the best thing to do in the marketing arena is to write the next book and get it out there.

Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but I cannot emphasize this enough. Too many people with one book available are spending prodigious amounts of time trying in vain to influence sales, instead of writing the next book.

The thing is, the availability of multiple books/short stories/novellas is what seems to drive sales better than anything. And when someone spends all their time drumming up sales for their ONE book (and thus making a pest of themselves), what's the good of it if--when someone reads it and wants more--there is no more work available?

There IS no good that can come of that situation. After the reader exhausts their search engine capacities and their patience and doesn't find anything else by you, your name is then forgotten--once the distastefulness of the frustrating episode fades away.

DO make sure you . . .

Sorry. Go visit Marsha's blog to see the rest.

Two Kinds of Awareness - Sensing and Intuition

It's 10 degrees here, and I needed tropical. Kaua'i.

This is Part 3 of my series on personality types (character traits, if you will) based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

As a reminder, I'm an EXFJ. I'm an extrovert, a feeler (not with my hands--behave yourself), and a judger. So what does the X stand for? It means I tested dead even between the S(ensing) and iN(tuition). When I read my character descriptions, I look at both the ESFJ and the ENFJ.

So, what do the S and the N mean?

It's about how people perceive things, how they become aware.

Sensing: These folks are very much into what data they receive through their five senses. They're practical, trusting in facts and experience. As you would expect, they're grounded in reality and value what's real, practical, and sensible.

Intuition: These people are more likely to pick up on things less direct and they deal much more on the unconscious level, things that come from the outside. They would consider themselves innovative, trusting in hunches and inspiration. They love possibilities and esteem ingenuity and imagination.

When I read these two descriptions, I completely understand why I'm an X here. I feel equally strong about both of these. I'm very practical and organized. Yet, I've spend most of my life creating dreamworlds in my head. I go a lot by hunches.

In one office where I worked, one of my coworkers test X in three categories. THREE! So, was he just really flexible . . . or a flake?

And what about another coworker who asked me when I gave her the test if she should answer it like she would at home or at work? That really floored me. With me, what you see is what you get. I don't look at the world differently just because I walk in my office door. Obviously, some people do.

Now, remember. There are no right or wrong answers on the Kiersey. It's merely a way to identify people's viewpoints.

So, what about your characters? Are any of them torn between two equally valid views of the world?

My Favorite Martian Bloghop

Click here

In this bloghop we're supposed to name our favorite alien. As I considered the various ones that came to mind, my first thought stayed my first choice. My family was all about SciFi. We watched all those hokey movies. This one--Invaders from Mars--scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. But it was horrible when I got a chance to see it a few years ago.

But when I was an young teen a new television show came about. It was a space opera, kind of a Horatio Hornblower in space. And it had an alien who captured my heart. Halfway through the third season, they canceled the show.

This was before syndication. When a show was canceled, it was gone. It wasn't until I was in college that syndication came about and suddenly it was on TV again. Huge crowds of people would gather at the TV lounge on campus to watch it. Somebody in Hollywood must have cottoned on to the fact that there was still an audience.

They made a movie. A horrible movie. But it was a hit. All those fans who'd been starved for something new went to see it again and again and again. So they made another one. A good one. One that captured all the great things that made me love the series in the first place.

And then they killed off my favorite character!

It was like my uncle had died. I bawled. But they made another movie and (kind of) brought him back. And they kept making movies. And then a new series in that world but in the future. And then they made more spin off series and more movies.

And then they finally got brilliant and went back to the original show in 2009 and made a new movie.

It ROCKED! I loved what they did with it. I saw it in the theater six times and grinned all the way through. I wasn't sure at first if I would be able to see Zachary Quinto as anything but Sylar the psychopathic serial killer from HEROS, but he's done a fabulous job following Leonard Nimoy as Spock

A bit of Star Trek trivia for you. For a futuristic show, the Classic Star Trek developers wanted a futuristic look. They decided on the bangs and sideburns Spock is now famous for. The cast members revolted. No way were they going to have to have those horrible bangs for a weekly TV series. So, good sport Nimoy got to be the only one.

Who's your favorite alien?

Introverts and Extroverts, Again

Last week I took up my goal again of posting about personality types (character traits, if you will) based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter.

Today I'm going to talk about introverts and extroverts. Frequently people think introverts are shy and extroverts are not. Sometimes that's true, but sometimes it isn't.

The way to think about the introvert / extrovert traits is in terms of energy.

An introvert isn't necessarily shy. An introvert is simply energized by solitude, while an extrovert is energized by being around people.

Real life examples.

#1
I have a friend who didn't marry until she was nearly 30. She lived on her own in an apartment, but she had a day job where she worked in a solitary office and almost never dealt with people face to face. She's an extrovert, and it really wore on her. In order to get her energy back up, she needed to be with real, live people.

So she got a roommate.

However, the roommate--an introvert--was an insurance person. She dealt with people all day. By the time she got home at night, all she wanted was to go to her bedroom and be alone.

My friend said she felt lonelier with this roommate than she had when she lived by herself.

#2
My professor who taught the class where we learned about the Kiersey shared this experience. She was a therapist for many years and spent her days interacting with people. She's an introvert. By now you know what she needed when she got home. Quiet. Solitude. Time to lay in the bathtub and contemplate the universe.

Enter her younger sister who wanted to share an apartment. Not just an extrovert, but a flaming extrovert.

Anybody see potential problems?

Professor would come home from work, needing time to rejuvenate. About the time she'd just get her stuff settled, her younger sister would arrive at the apartment after work and blast the radio, sing, and want to chat with Professor.

Guess what Professor wanted to do to younger sister?

Obviously, Professor was a mature, intelligent woman, and she didn't act on her impulse to silence kid sister forever. What she did was talk with her sibling about being quiet for an hour when she first got home, so Professor had some time to fill her batteries again. Then she'd be happy to talk.

What did younger sister do? Not chill in a silent apartment. She hung out with her friends a little longer before coming home. Win/win.

My score balance for the Kiersey for years was 7 extrovert and 3 introvert. As you can see, it's not like people must be all of one or all of the other. As you consider the description of yourself, you should keep that in mind. Someone who is an extrovert with a 9 / 1 score would view things a bit differently than an extrovert with a score of 6 / 4.

Does the energy concept make you look at any of your characters differently?

Personalities, Again

One of the goals I had for 2012 was to do a series of posts about personality types, based upon the Kiersey Personality Sorter, which I find fascinating.

Epic fail.

Not the Kiersery, but my follow through. Well, I'm going to try again. Someday, I'd like to write a novel where I base the characteristics completely upon the sixteen personality types. Which is kind of funny, really, considering that I'm a hybrid on one area. Keep reading to find out.

My first two posts will be repeats of posts I did last year.

I've been fascinated for years (all right, decades) with the Kiersey Personality Sorter. It was based on the MMPI, which is a comprehensive test, something like 600 questions. The MMPI is used a lot in dealing with mental illness, but for people trained in what to look for it tells a lot more about the people taking it than they would ever dream.

The Kiersey is much shorter and has many practical uses. They give it to department heads at work. There are no right or wrong answers to the questions, but merely give insight into how the taker views the world.

Here's a real life example from the business world. I used to work as the lead secretary for a department that oversaw physical facilities--buildings, etc. My old boss developed a health issue and retired. He was a detail-oriented person when it came to the budget and was very hands on. His replacement, however, was a big picture kind of guy. The finance director commented after the first budget meeting with the new director that he wished he'd known this about the new boss because he'd have prepared his presentation completely differently.

People's personalities change a lot as they mature, but settle in somewhere around age twenty-five. So for young people under that age, their results are . . . questionable. Once you reach twenty-five, your scores aren't likely to change much. Now, there can be traumatic things people go through that would impact how they answer the questions, but eventually things settle down again.

Some people also answer the questions differently if they're looking at them as they are at home as opposed to at work. When I had a coworker mention that, it floored me because I am what I am. I'm the same at home or at work. With me, what you see is what you get.

What does this have to do with writing? When you're creating characters, their personality traits are important if you don't want them to be flat. But what characteristics fit which personality types? The Kiersey would be a great tool for that.

So over the next few blog posts, I'm going to be talking about different aspects of the Kiersey and what it has to say about people. It separates people into sixteen different personality types. I'll start with me.

I'm an EXFJ.

The E means I'm an extrovert. (the other option is introvert, of course)

The X is going to be confusing because it means that I test dead even between the two options: S (sensing--dealing with information from your five sense) and N (intuitive).

The F means I'm a feeler. (the other choice is a thinker--don't even say it!)

The J is for judging. (the other option is perceiving).

If you have the time, I suggest you go and take the test and find out what you are. I'll start with the introvert/extravert topic next week.

ETA: I think it's important to know what your split is between the types, so if you're interested in taking the test to find that out, email me and I'll send you a pdf of the test.

Have you ever taken a personality test? If so what kind was it? What did you think of the results?

Happy New Year!

Source: PowerPoint

A new year is like the blank page of a new project. So, are you a pantster or a plotter when it comes to your life? Do you give thought to what you want to accomplish or just wing it?

Some years ago, a lady at church made a rather profound observation about goals. She said a goal that cannot be achieved isn't a goal at all. It's a dream. You know about dreams, right? Those things we spend time thinking about but never actually doing anything about?

I know many people who don't like to do New Years resolutions, and I can kind of understand it. These resolutions have gotten to be a bit of joke, where people set them and by February 1st they've given up on them.

This begs the question then: why do resolutions so often fail?

I think it may go back to that statement by the lady at church. Are we setting resolutions that are really dreams, things we think might be fun to accomplish but for which we're doing nothing to prepare ourselves for success?

A goal (resolution) must be achievable. If my goal is to take a vacation in Hawaii yet I make no effort to save money to pay for it, I won't ever be going to Hawaii. If I want to write a book but never do anything but edit the first three chapters, then it can never be anything but a dream.

So what if I choose a goal that's too big to achieve? Break it down into steps that can be achieved. Maybe you don't have enough discretionary income to save for your trip to Hawaii. So, perhaps it's time to look at ways to get rid of that debt, cut some things you don't really need. Maybe you don't know how to finish your book, so attend some writing conferences, become a member of a critique group, sign up for Camp NaNo.

The bottom line is this: DO something.

Some of my goals:
* Keep track of the books I read
* Do my first writing presentation (twice)
* Attend LTUE
* Attend the ANWA conference
* Attend Storymaker
* Survive the launch of my first book this June
* Finish editing my NaNo project (writing it was one of my 2012 goals) by the end of this month so I can submit it to my critique group with the plan to submit to my publisher later this year
* Spend Christmas on Kaui'i (with my daughter who lives there)

What are your plans for 2013?