The Writer's Guide to Character Traits: Includes Profiles of Human Behaviors and Personality Types (Writer's Market Library) [Hardcover]

Linda Edelstein (Author)

Book Description

Series: Writer's Market Library | Publication Date: October 15, 1999

From serial killers to business tycoons to politicians, The Writers Guide to Character Traits profiles the mental, emotional and physical qualities of dozens of different personality types. Featuring a highly accessible format, writers can mix and match the traits of specific personality types to create original, complex characters. Unique personality styles and types are profiled including psychopaths, cult members, overachievers, addicts, amnesia victims, social climbers, career criminals and philanthropists. In addition, this guide includes sections on child personality types;

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Stereotypes exist for a reason; usually, because there's an element of truth to them. With The Writer's Guide to Character Traits, psychologist-professor Linda Edelstein has created a kind of Psych 101 for Writers. Her goal is a "friendly reference" for writers who want "to create believable characters and need accurate information about personality and behavior." Sure, disparage it if you like. But wouldn't you like to know which of your protagonist's offspring is most predisposed to warming up to their new stepfather? What kind of criminal is likely to have a religious mother? The traits of people who commit suicide? Edelstein has included more than 400 lists: of traits associated with child development, psychological disorders, criminal styles, sexual styles, love and marriage, life-changing events, physical problems, career, and so on. "Even when a writer's imagination soars to places more fascinating than reality," says Edelstein, "characters must possess an internal cohesiveness; they must make sense." And let's face it: "People," she adds, "are more consistent than not." (With real-life character anecdotes from Edelstein's own work and a huge character-trait cross-referencing index at book's end.) --Jane Steinberg

About the Author

Dr. Linda Edelstein has been a practicing psychologist for more than 15 years and is also an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She is the author of two books on psychology and has written and presented more than 40 papers at national and regional conferences. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books; First Edition edition (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898799015
• ISBN-13: 978-0898799019
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #128,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

97 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but don't get fooled, August 15, 2001

By 

ThatPoshGirl "ThatPoshGirl.com" (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Writer's Guide to Character Traits: Includes Profiles of Human Behaviors and Personality Types (Writer's Market Library) (Hardcover)

It's very important you understand what the function of this book is. This is not a book written to advise you on how to write characters. This is a book to help you create extra depth to your characters. That may sound like a contridiction, but I assure you it's not.

The book offers straight forward profiles of various personality types. It covers normal personality types, abnormal types, types connected with various occupations, etc. These profiles are presented in an easy to read and understand manner.

Use this book to create personality profiles for your characters. The book won't show you how to bring those traits out. It won't show you how to develop characters or add subtext or any of those things. What it does is give you a foundation on which to build your characters. It helps you keep your characters real and plausable.

It's excellent within its intended function. I highly recommend it. Just don't think that it's a cure all for character issues.

70 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Memorable Characters Are Created By Hard Working Writers, February 10, 2005

By 

Timothy Kearney (Haverhill, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Writer's Guide to Character Traits (Paperback)

As I read some of the reviews of THE WRITER'S GUIDE TO CHARACTER TRAITS I found a wide variety of points of view. Some love the book, others hate it. One reviewer calls it a guide for lazy writers, others praised it as an excellent resource especially for novice writers. Now I could take one side, or another, or some middle ground position that says that each reviewer is partially correct. I think it depends on how you use the resource and what you want to accomplish as a writer as to whether the book has any merit.

If you use the book as a means of developing all of your characters in a short story, novel or play, you will end up with characters that are either stereotypes or cliché. Some people like stereotypes and cliché, but isn't one of the challenges of writing trying to present original characters in a memorable way to teach us something about ourselves and give meaning to our world? If you are tempted to buy this book as a dictionary to create characters for a story, use the money you would use for this book and buy some books by Dickens, Austen, or Shakespeare. You could probably buy three since there are mid priced editions of the works of any of these masters and you will encounter memorable and interesting characters. See how the characters are developed and why they speak to us so powerfully, and emulate these great writers in your writing. Of course if you are planning on developing predictable and boring characters you probably stopped reading after the names Dickens, Austen, and Shakespeare were mentioned.

Since most of us would rather walk barefoot on broken glass than create a dry, predictable, ordinary character, probably the words above seemed intended for someone else. After all, as we spend countless hours at the computer, writing words we hope will not be considered drivel by our writing groups. We share these words with our mothers and fathers and pray they will not decide after reading our output that our education was a waste of their time and money. We plug away and hope for the day be our works will be included in the same category as GREAT EXPECTATIONS, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and HAMLET. So will this book be helpful to those of us who await greatness, hoping it is only a few words away?

If you type in my name in the Amazon search, you will not find the great American novel yet, so maybe my recommendation may not be of merit, at least yet, but this is not a bad reference tool to include in a writing library. It should not be the basis for developing main characters. It may help with secondary characters, and it can be used as a checklist of sorts to see if our main characters are believable. The character traits included in the book are based on the norm of a drug addict, cheating spouse, dysfunctional family member, alcoholic, etc. These would also be the traits of someone we might see on television or in a formulaic book. So checking the traits listed in this book could help a writer diversify a character (e.g. not the typical alcoholic underachiever). Basically, the book will be helpful resource for people who have already done the difficult work of characterization, but it is not a substitute fro the hard work of creating characters. In all fairness to the book's author Linda Edelstein, she does not claim that the book is a one step approach to character development, but the book is marketed in this manner.

I received this book as a gift by a well meaning friend who knew I was struggling to develop a character in my novel in progress. I probably would not have purchased it on my own. Most of my main characters are already developed but I have used the book to make sure they are somewhat believable and realistic. People who have read my work and like it do say my characters are believable, so this book may have been helpful, but the traits do not seem to make my characters memorable to the people in my writing classes, the dialogue, interaction with other characters and expressions of their emotions and feelings make them believable and in some cases, not believable. If you want the traits to be believable, this book will be somewhat helpful, but it does not do the work of creating memorable characters. Characters that have their life breath coming from a writer who loves and nurtures them and puts them in believable situations where they become real are the characters we remember and can only come from a writer dedicated to the task of writing.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great resource, unfortunately misunderstood by some, May 31, 2007

By 

J. Clark (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Writer's Guide to Character Traits (Paperback)

I almost passed on this book due to some of the negative reviews here, but I'm glad I didn't. I spotted this on the shelf at a local book store and sat down with it for ten minutes. After that I bought it without hesitation. I'm only knocking one star off because it could be better organized (mostly inconsistencies in presentation, though it's easy to read, it would just be easier to scan through with a little reworking).

I think most of the negative reviewers were either expecting a book about creating characters (similar to Orson Scott Card's wonderful Characters and Viewpoints, for example), or were expecting an in depth discussion of psychological issues. This book is neither of those. I'd almost call it an overview of armchair psychology, in that is briefly discusses the behaviors most commonly associated with various disorders and life circumstances, but doesn't get into the subtleties or the exceptions. For example, the traits listed for first born children don't really fit me, but they do apply to most other first born children I've known. On the other hand, one of the personality types fits me perfectly (The Creative), and people I've known with various disorders are certainly present in the descriptions given, even if it doesn't all apply.

All of this is merely a starting point, a list of the most common traits associated with these topics. Nothing is set in stone, there are no "rules" for how to apply this information. Personally, I found this to be very helpful. For example, I was having some trouble defining an important character in a story I'm working on. At first, he was basically a collection of traits designed to serve the plot. That's fine, except that he was so important I needed him to breath, but was having trouble nailing down interesting but believable behaviors for him. After going through the personality types, it was obvious that he was a Manipulator type. Not 100%, but then no one is. The brief description and list of internal traits and interpersonal behaviors got me thinking in new directions about how he sees himself and how he acts towards others. I didn't take the traits listed and make him exactly that, because then he would be simply a stereotype, rather I took what was there as a starting point, threw half of it away, and meshed what was left with what I already had. Voila, I now have a more interesting character who rings true, and drives the story forward without being simply a plot device.

If you're looking for a brief overview of typical human behavior, this is a great resource. If you want more depth, this will still give you a solid starting point. Just expect to do the real work yourself, and to take your characters beyond that starting point if you want to make them "real".