I ran across a book called Cinescopes: What Your Favorite Movies Reveal About You. It looked interesting, so I checked out the website. The authors claim that if you give them your top ten favorite movies, they can pinpoint your personality.
A quick browse of the website reveals the concept is a clever updating of the traditional personality breakdowns with new monikers and illustrations from movies. For instance, the movies I picked put me in the “Vivacious Romantic” category. VRs are “witty, quirky, amiable, like to flirt, enjoy playing the game of love…” to quote the website.
Okay…I’m not so sure that the quiz reveals your true personality since most of my friends and family would tell you I have a large practical streak in me. Although, it is hard to argue with a result that puts me in the same category as Mark Darcy. I go to the movies to escape and like my movies to have large helpings of humor and romance, so I’d say the quiz does a great job predicting the types of movies you enjoy.
Anyway, getting around to my point—the rather long way—is that the part of the website that I find most interesting is the breakdown of personality types. I’ve used this sort of broad categorizing system to help me get a handle on characters when I start plotting a book. I’ve never used “Invincible Optimist” or “Magical Creator” as the starting point, but I think this website is a place I’ll go back to when I plot my next book simply because it gives me a new way to think about characters.
So what about you? Do you use personality types when you think about character? And, if you took the movie quiz, how close was it to your personality?
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Interesting stuff. Turns out I’m an adventurer. I can live with that, I guess. Thanks for sharing, Sara!
by JennieB
on March 5th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
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Hey, JennieB! Adventurer sounds pretty good. It brings to mind Indiana Jones. 
by Sara
on March 5th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
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I am the passionate maverick.
Yeah, I can deal with that.
And no, I don’t use that sort of personality type when drawing characters. I like to give them more rough edges than can be fit into an archetype.
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From my list of movies, I’m the Vivacious Romantic, which is probably true, but it wasn’t one of the four I first picked out for myself. I thought Determined survivor or Magical creator would be more my style.
As far as my characters, I tend to know them when I start writing. Boy that sounds weird. The voices tell me who they are. I better stop here before someone locks me up.
by Lynn
on March 5th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
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I use the personality type thing more as a starting point and see where the character goes from there.
“Passion maverick”–that so fits you JD!
by Sara
on March 5th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
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“The voices tell me who they are. I better stop here before someone locks me up.”
Sounds exactly right, Lynn. It’s always interesting to see what happens when you actually start writing the story. I’ve had characters take directions that were–well, let’s just say unexpected!
by Sara
on March 5th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
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After our conversation, I did sit down and try to work through a romance I’m working on and the main character with a q/a sheet out of this how to write a mystery book I bought. It was interesting how much more depth I can give her without really changing a lot of the writing I’ve already done. I was also amazed at how little I described her looks in the first chapter. What she drove, where she lived, her job, but not her.
by Lynn
on March 6th, 2008 at 7:40 am
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Hi, found this accidentally through google alerts! Thanks for checking out our website (and hopefully the book too). We love to hear from other writers about using the types as a tool for writing - that’s great! A lot of what we wrote is on what Campbell had to say about mythic heroes. Take care, best of luck - Risa W. co-author, Cinescopes
by Risa W.
on March 6th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
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