Description: Take your book to the next level with these three applications of the Enneagram to your story. You don’t have to be an Enneagram expert to start putting it to use right now!
Links: www.ffs.media/free-lesson
Script:
We’re talking Enneagram 101 today, and learning 3 simple ways to apply it to your fiction. I’m Claire Taylor with FFS Media, and without any further ado, let’s get into it.
Quick primer on the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a personality typing system that breaks people down into one of nine types. That might seem too simple on first blush, but it can get really, seriously complicated the deeper you go. We’re not going that deep today, because we don’t need to.
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Okay, what I love about the Enneagram, and the reason I use it for my own writing as well as the story consulting I do for other authors, is that it doesn’t describe behavior, which you can think of as diagnosing symptoms. It describes motivation, which is more like discovering the underlying cause.
Not just motivations, but core motivations. That’s an important term. It’s the one motivation to rule them all. When a single person’s motivations clash, one will inevitably win out, right? If you find yourself in a situation where you have to choose between doing what you believe is right and avoiding interpersonal conflict, which one will you choose nine times out of ten? That’s determined by your core motivations.
Each of the types is assigned a number, one through nine, and a name. The Reformer, the Helper, the Achiever, the Individualist, the Investigator, the Loyalist, the Enthusiast, the Challenger, and the Peacemaker.
And each of the types has a particular core motivation. But motivation breaks down into two types: positive and negative. Moving toward and moving away from. Also known as fear and desire.
Here are the core fears of each type.
And here are the core desires of each type.
We’re not going to walk through each of them, because that will take a lot of time, but you’re welcome to return to this video and hit pause later on, when you’re ready to apply it to your character.
So, how do we use these tools for fiction?
Here are three basic but endlessly useful ways:
One. Figure out your protagonist’s type.
What deep fear are they trying to avoid that sends them down the wrong path? For instance, if your protagonist is a type 5, the Investigator, that fear of being incompetent could send them down a path of endless study to the point where they let life pass them by. On the flip side, that desire for self-sufficiency could lead them to rejecting a romantic partner because they don’t know how to couple and feel like they can stand on their own.
Once you know the core motivation of your protagonist, you have a pretty good idea of how things might go wrong for them in the story and what lessons they need to learn if they’re going to have a satisfying and happy ending. Whether you have them actually learn those lessons is all up to you, though.
Two. Figure out your antagonist’s type.
Just like we did with the protagonist, you can apply the Enneagram to your antagonist to figure out what’s driving them deep down. This is the easiest way to make sure you don’t accidentally create a stock villain for your story. Think about it: aren’t the most memorable antagonists the ones that are also the most sympathetic?
You create a much more engrossing story when both sides of the argument raise valid points. Your readers feel deeply conflicted when they can sympathize with the antagonist, and that will keep them turning the page! Knowing that core motivation for your antagonist is the easiest way to pinpoint where that sympathy lies to make sure you don’t end up with the Mwahaha! I’m going to ruin the hero for fun! kind of antagonist, which is pretty boring.
Three. When you know your protagonist’s and antagonist’s Enneagram types, you’ll have a much easier time locating the theme of your story. Where do their core motivations look similar? Where do they clash? What words start to surface from that clash of views?
For instance, imagine if your protagonist is a type 2, the Helper. This would be a character like Samwise Gamgee. Their core desire is to be helpful or needed. They believe that being helpful is the path to being worthy of love. Now, maybe your antagonist is a type 8, the Challenger. Their core fear is to give up control or let someone else have power over them.
So, we have one character who needs to help people to feel worthy, and another character who needs to feel in charge of themself to feel worthy. These two opposing forces might share the desire to champion others, but the Helper will be doing it for a very different motivation than the Challenger.
And now imagine this scenario: the Helper offers unsolicited aid or a gift to the Challenger. Those hackles are going to go up for your antagonist, right? Why is this person giving me something I didn’t ask for? I don’t need help. If I accept this, I’ll owe reciprocation, and owing means being indebted, and being indebted to someone is a way of them having power over you.
That’s just one possible point of conflict between a Helper protagonist and a Challenger antagonist. That could even be the inciting incident. The Helper mows the overgrown lawn of her Challenger neighbor, and that sets off the Challenger, who is triggered by the feeling of being indebted to anyone.
As far as theme goes, what words are starting to emerge from this conflict between the 2 and 8? I see “dependence,” and “power” right off the bat. I could easily pluck out one of those and use it as the central one-word theme of the book, the concept I return back to whenever I need to decide what happens next.
Those three uses of the Enneagram in fiction might seem simple, but they kind of encompass the entire story, don’t they? If you only know three things about your book going into writing it, the core motivations of your two driving forces plus the theme are the things you need to know.
If you want to go a little deeper into theme, I have a free mini-lesson on it available through the link in the description. I invite you to check that out.
And if there’s a topic on storytelling you’d like me to cover, drop me the suggestion in the comments!
Happy writing.