Here is a writing exercise video where Jeff Kitchen shows how he uses the enneagram - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o7pnl7tjyNDWfWw.html

I consider MBTI and Enneagram personality tests to be excellent resources to lay the foundation for a character, but that's the full extent of their usefulness. People don't fit in neat boxes and any attempt to generalize personality will ultimately fall flat.

The Enneagram has been a godsend to my life. I highly recommend studying it (more than Myers-Briggs) to understand yourself and others much better. It’s the best tool I’ve ever encountered for understanding personalities. I use it, too, for developing my characters in stories.

The way this man takes a brief pause to think and reflect what to say is admirable. I wonder how is the world inside his mind

The Enneagram is about volition, what the character's desire is, their motivating WILL. There are other personality typing systems that cover emotions (the four temperaments) and styles of thinking. The Myers-Briggs is about processing information: extrovert/introvert is the intake of information, sensor/intuitive filters out "irrelevant" information, thinking/feeling processes the information, and perception/judgment makes a decision based on that information. But yeah. The Enneagram is completely awesome.

Dude, I want to look up this book just to make epic dnd characters

Ok, Jeff Kitchen is a stud! I just ordered The Wisdom Of The Enneagram and I literally just matched up a whole bunch of my characters to their specific personality styles. Now when I'm writing a scene, I literally just flip to their specific personality style and use it to develop the scene and write the dialogue accoriding to their character style. This is perfect, thank you!!

I worked with Jeff on an epic desert survival script and we used Enneagrams to help develope the characters. It was a very effective tool that enhanced the process.

When I discovered Wisdom of the Enneagram and it totally changed my life. I didn't think someone or something could know more about me than me.

I had a professor who told us “the difference between a maladaptive behavior/poor coping etc. and pervasive personality issues or disorders is awareness” For so long we (psychologists esp) talk about managing symptoms & all this criteria + the ways in which aspects of functioning must be affected by said criteria in certain ways, yet we fail to attend to the spectrum-ness & relative and contextual nature of our mental states. Enneagrams represent huge step towards understanding the internal & taking into account the effects/influence of external (including the external solely as an observer). This was a cool video. I used to act a bit here and there.. didn’t think about personality types, but I remember the roles I went for, that I perceived as “fun” for me (which I needed to justify going to auditions because I was young and didn’t have external support with regards to any creative/artistic crafts, so I carried a fear of pursuing it whole-heartedly), but the roles I could ‘justify’ were all representative of almost Jungian archetypes and characteristics that I really disliked in people & would get triggered by.. it led to cool shadow work. Acting requires an unconditional compassion towards the character you’re playing so even if you hate them, you have to love them in a sense .. it really deepened my compassion. At our core, we are all each other at one point in time in one way or another. If that makes sense. I really enjoyed this video, thank you!!

Such a brilliant tool. The thing I love about it the most is how you can use believable characteristics to sculpt character relationships that easily generate natural conflicts

This dude just categorized my life so far into character types

I'm a real story telling nerd that loves this stuff. I could watch this all day

Enneagram and creativity are both the best and most perfect tools for character development

Enneagram’s are excellent. A therapist friend recommended it to me. It’s so rich and you can easily use it to build arcs unlike Myers-Briggs. I wished I’d discovered it much earlier.

HOLY COW!!!!! MIND IS BLOWN!!!! FILM COURAGE, SERIOUSLY, THANK YOU SO MUCH, AGAIN!!!! this channel constantly and consistently brings value to my life! I really appreciate all that you do!

Oh hello fellow Enneagrammer. Wow, very nice, sophisticated explanation of a very difficult system to capture in words. Carl Jung said that's it's so hard to talk about the archetypes because they're so broad, but the enneagram makes it possible to capture the human personality in words, but only if you're well-studied in it can you articulate it's subtle concepts. Not many people do it well. When I first learned the Enneagram, I couldn't stop talking about it. Now 10 years later, I don't even know where to start, I don't even want to try, it's a lot of work, it's just so subtle, but once you see it, you can't unsee it, and if your life was hanging together by a thread, it may blow the bottom out of your life, but in a good way. It was absolutely the most important thing I have ever learned. When I was in a workshop hearing about it for the first time, I had a distinct line pop into my head: "I was born to learn this. This is what I've been waiting for for my life to begin". And it saved my life, and over the last decade has steadied it enormously. And actually it's made me bored with the "wisdom" that life has to offer. It's kind of a blessing and a curse because it spoils you-- you have seen the psychological model that captures humans in their complexity, basically meditation on steroids, so people don't surprise you anymore, but they also don't intimidate you anymore. The wisdom of the world is boring and trite, but it also doesn't lead you astray anymore. Relationships are less difficult because instead of treading water in an angry ocean, your feet are touching the ground, but it also kind of feels like you're in the kiddie pool. Kinda unsatisfying. Ok I'm not that enlightened, I'm just going through a bored phase. Still lots and lots to learn. Anyway, this was nurturing. Thanks.

How HELPFUL is this for new writers?!!! Bravo! 👏🏻🤙🙏

Josh Keefe is doing a series on characters in TV and film and their enneagram types! I highly recommend it

The Enneagram is a bomb! but the information he mentioned after...is tremendous. we learned with this man a lot,is awesome . very very useful! love it!

You somehow knew exactly what I needed in this exact moment. Thank you guys so much!

The Enneagram? Honestly never heard of it but holy moly, such an invaluable tool. So grateful to Jeff Kitchen and Film Courage.

Been using the Enneagram to write characters for a while. Great method.

Another great interview thank you film courage, and another great tool. The enneagram has allowed me to build believable characters that are consistent with their actions and reactions to the plot.

I'm doing preproduction on my first novel and the enneagram has been a great help in understanding my main characters.

Great video and great insight! Been using this for years now and I couldn't agree more. It is an excellent tool for writers in the creative process and also a way to "test" the consistency of your characters. See if the desicions they are making make sense, for example.

For years, Psychiatry has tried to fit people into neat little boxes with well defined edges. Each year it fails, so every few years it comes up with a book more boxes. i.e. DSM-5. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Real people don’t fit into boxes. Still with fictional characters you must start somewhere. And this is a good start.

it's amazing how the craft of cinema, helps us ( if we were to use it for our personal growth) see our human complexity. The process of recreating human stories cast light on us and what we are. I often entertain the thought of creating an Android with perfect empathy, strength, etc. That process helps me realize personality traits I want to develop more in myself. let me go back to writing for my pleasure. I love KZfaq so much. The comments sections are always as valuable as the video, when the video is of good value. Really good stuff here.

Great video. Interesting speaker, and really appreciate how he describes using the enneagram. I'm going to implement this into my own process. Thank you for covering this.

The funny thing is, I see myself in so many of the enneagram types: I had a lot of the "helper" but was more seen as the "achiever" growing up, but then switched to full-blown "helper" when I found my calling as a young teenager, then after a traumatic experience briefly flopped over to the "enthusiast" ("So I'll just have fun since my 'dream' was just ripped away from me"), then launched into mature "achiever" again in college, segued into a super quirky "Individualist," slipped back into the "helper" after graduating and imagining I had found true love and meaningful (to both sides) connection, started a project as an outstanding "individualist" (always fighting the lazy irresponsible bent of the enthusiast after my early crash), took action during a brief, reactionary stint as the "challenger" after being betrayed as a naive "helper" by a guy and his family, then realised I was always mainly the "helper" in a perfect world. So, I guess the book character would go with the most prominent, deep-seated, original natural traits (I kept slipping back into the "helper" when I thought things were going reasonably well, if only in my silly imagination). Hmmm....

This is an awesome tool! I'm all into the whole character profiling thing for my stories.

Wow perfect timing. I'm taking Jeff's course right now and it's mind blowing. Hands down one of the best investments I've ever made.

And just like that I got something new to explore! Good thing I cleaned out my book shelf.

13 minutes to describe "Manic Pixie Dream Girl Trope" as if it were just discovered in the moment. Bless.

This is my favorite video because I’m autistic and my special interests are enneagrams and writing

Really enjoyed this great tour of the Enneagram!

SO unexpected to see this cross of topics- i never thought of it as a creative writing tool/inspiration for content- totally delightful!!! 🤯

Bought his book about 2 years ago. Game changer

Me and my husband love typing characters in movies. Such an amazing tool for character building and also for the viewers being able to identify with the characterts struggle/growth.

He pretty much described me. I’m gonna do it on myself for a bit and then work it on the characters for a series I’m working on.

This will definitely be in my writing toolbox at some point.

Nice, definitely gonna look at deeper to this method.

Thank you very much for what you do, it's helped me get a handle on my writing.

Wow, I've been using Enneagram too😂 I try to type my characters after writing their character concept and fill in any gaps😋

Whatttt I needed this thank you!!! 😍

Very cool. I will probably read some books on this subject.

I like this idea because I strive to create characters who remind my readers of people they may have known or observed. This makes your writing more psychologically accurate and realistic. You can also take into account what a character's enneagram wing type would be to add another layer of complexity.

Idk who Derek and Skyler are, but there is an Indian movie called Yeh Jawaani Hai Dewaani and the two lead characters are EXACTLY how he describes, right down to the personality clashing/meshing together. Using enneagram is such a good tip, thanks!

I learnt something new today. Thanks.

Thomas Condon's book "The Enneagram Movie and Video Guide" is invaluable in this context.

Incredibly helpful thank you guys for the millionth time lol

The enneagram is even more complex than this. Each type also has a wing, which is s neighboring type that further informs how you present, what you value. It has three different instinctual variants, (sexual, self preservation, and I forget the other..) also, each type tends to integrate or disintegrate toward another type in it's triad based on your psychological health level. It goes deep

It's interesting, but so confining. The fact that he said his character could fit most of the categories says it all. Most people aren't one thing, so why try to box a character in. Of course, you can start with any archetype or "enneagram" types...but eventually, your character should feel too complex for any of that, because now they are more like a real person that can't be boxed in.

How we percieve ourselves, and how we interact with the world creates a sense if self. That is beyond the enneagram or mbti. But it is an important tool because you have to form a baseline for your character so you can begin attributing character traits and show how he or she percieves themselves and interacts with the world around them. Their happiness or distress will be affected by those perceptions and interactions.

This changes everything.

I wouldn't use this at the start of character creation process, but I can see that it could be useful to go back and check characters one has already written against this tool, just to see if they can be refined and deepened any further. Otherwise it's a bit like writing music by starting from music theory. It may be accurate, but it's lifeless. Better to just start with a good tune and only then see how theory applies to it.

I love this. Been into the enneagram for quite some time. In terms of making a difference in my personal life.. ehh.. there's better tools. In terms of writing characters in fiction.. heeeeeeyyy!!

Fascinating. Are there any specific resources you’d recommend to get started with enneagrams?

Have you ever used the enneagram to help you write characters? How do you like this tool?

4:17 Enneagram in Thumbnail.

Another cool system to look at is the Colour system found in Magic the Gathering (roughly 24 possible combos rougly with subtypes within those as well)💭. I've combined both enneagram and the colour philosophy system and it works great (I'd recommend watching "Dicetry" and "The Mana Source" for some explanation).

We can be many of these types and go in and out of them throughout the day. Vedic astrology gives a very complex understanding of different types of motivations, trajectories and natures of characters. Real people are way more complex, but this is a good place to start.

The Big Lebowski: The Dude - type 9 Walter - type 8 Bunny Lebowski - type 7 Donny - type 6 The Nihilists - type 5 Maude Lebowski - type 4 Jackie Treehorn - type 3 Brandt the butler - type 2 Jeffrey Lebowski - type 1

These are but facets to the character I am building in my life.

I learned MBTI & Socionics in my mid-teens, so I can't stop thinking about this aspect of character writing even if I wanted to :P

When he says “Armand” he’s talking about Armand Dimele, who was the BEST!! He had a radio show on WABI in NYC up until he died. Highly recommend exploring the archives 🙏🏻

This is great if writing from a character's perspective. But a good story is not limited by that. World building is the bigger piece of good story writing. And what you want to achieve through your story. But it is very handy to profile people in certain ways.

where can we get the one-sheets from??

Hey Karen from Film Courage. Have you gotten started in making this indie film with Derek and Skylar a reality? It seems so intriguing from what's discussed here.

Can I use enneagram for writing a biography book ?

What's the best site to determine ennegram?

I didn't even know enneagram's existed because I'm an amateur writer of fiction, but I always want to improve so this is neat to learn about it. I will use it now, especially since I took it to see more about myself. It was spot on for who I was, and showed me things I hadn't thought about.

I feel like this man is describing an idea that I know to be called a "finite state machine". They are very useful for many things, it turns out.

Hi, I scored a 98 on 3, 97 on 3 and 89 on 7. I cant seem to find any information that talks about being a 3, 8, or 3,8, and 7. Can you help? I have a steady positive mood, full of energy, uplifting, caring, direct, assertive, someone who cares about goals and will strive to lengths to achieve them. I personally don't have any set goals so I haven't been working as hard as I know I can. I'm in tune with my emotions and I can articulate what I'm feeling. I'm generally the life of a party and some people consider me to be a party animal. I'm not sure if this helps but I am a ENFP-A and ENFJ-A. The first time was a enfp-a and around a year later my results showed that u was a enfj-a.

Evey actor includes their enneagram profile type with their headshot to match them to the right character. lol I also like the DISC & KOLBE plus a few other tools to get an even more distinct profile.

i watched other people's videos for a few hours, and the more interesting theories of it are the ones NOT advocating for it, as the ones that DO don't seem to explain much of anything. i've come to the assumption the enneagram is a tool that people use to "worship" a particular value. which "god" of a value do you place on the highest pedestal? this assumption is one that i take from one lady who argues against the enneagram's use for practicing christianity with several reasons, and a philosophy channel that used the word "worship" to highlight the message he was trying to explain. but it made sense to me since the enneagram itself doesn't really have a logical structure. it's just a bunch of archetypes in very pretty formats. do our personalities follow very pretty and geometrical formats like the enneagram suggests? NO. but it is very comforting to think that something so complex can be confined into this box. so how do people interpret the enneagram? i was very confused. i did not see the logical through line of how people viewed this personality model. but the theory that people are using this enneagram to find which value that they identify with the most, and then they can choose to "worship" it and its subsequent values with its "arrows" and "wings" made more sense to me. people aren't following this because it makes sense. they follow the enneagram... because it makes them feel GOOD. it validates them. and... as much as i can appreciate the value that THEY extract from this... eh, whatever. i extract value from stories and they're all made up too. anyways. enneagram. TLDR: IT'S A PAGAN SYMBOL FOR WHICH GOD YOU PREFER TO WORSHIP, IF YOU WANT AN EASY WAY TO UNDERSTAND BOTH IT AND THE PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW IT. edit: it's not really a pagan symbol. i don't know where it came from. the philosophy video said that two latin american academics stole it from a russian guy (i forget his profession), who MAY have stole the general symbol from a middle eastern religion. i have no idea if the actual symbol is "pagan" or not. i was just using it to illustrate how each number correlates to a "god" or value. kind of like the greek and roman gods, and how they all represented something.

18:23 this is probably the most important thing in this video

9 out of 9 for this video :)

What movies did he write?

Is the film John Paul rice directed ?

I've got Jeff as a 5w6.

It's always easier to deal with people when you can assign them to arbitarily defined pigeonholes.

I've been using mbti types to write my book

Ahhh another late night find 😂😂

Nothing compares to the big five.

When you ask someone a direct question, and the first words out of his mouth are vapid marketing copy and buzz phrases instead of a direct answer, you've got yourself a scam artist

I need more characters with my personality type

5 mins in and this smacks of an infomercial, HARRRD

Personality tests are great as starting points, but that's all they will ever be. If you go through your life thinking about ppl as their personality types then you will never truly get to know who they are. We are all every personality type to some extent, and under different circumstances.

I can see how an enneagram could help develop characters for stories, but when I go through the personality descriptions there were like 3 or 4 that would fit my own.

Types 2, 3, and 4 are the image types, 5, 6, and 7 are the intellectual/fear types, and 8, 9, and 1 are the anger types. I myself, am a 9 with an 8 and 1 wing.

This reminds me of Myers Briggs

From the very first Character that I ever actively profiled, instead of just pouring drivel from my head onto the page "as it came to me"... I started with a "Player's Handbook" and went through "Character Creation" from Alignment to Stat's, Class, Race, Skills and Powers, and so forth in D&D... AND among the most useful "Supplements" (also known as "Splat Books") for D&D was "The Big Book of Villains"... In those pages, I started asking the things about villains, like "How did he/she turn to evil?" and started thinking more about the fact that nobody just wakes up one morning and decides, "Hey, I think I'm going to take up being a TRULY sh*tty person." Maybe some of us have a certain proclivity or pre-disposition that can add to our chances of being "an evil bastard"... BUT the mantra on TTRPG's is consistent if nothing else. "Everybody is the PROTAGONIST of their own novel." We RP'ers also often say things like "If you live long enough, you'll eventually turn into the villain." It's interesting, and there are SO MANY Character building and development systems and mechanics in TTRPG's it's just ridiculous. Every RPG seems to have a new and different way to create personalities, from GURPS with an open ended series of Disadvantages, Advantages, and then Stat's, and Skills... You don't even really get Templates to start to cookie cutter anything... unless there might be some in a Splat Book somewhere for guidance. In the Basic Set, at least, there's a few examples, but largely nothing to speak of for a framework... Then there's Call of Cthulu, where in the first edition, almost EVERYONE was a detective or investigator of some kind... with a backstory as to how they became a detective. I mean, you COULD technically build about anybody, but the majority middle of the curve were detectives as simple as that. Some games have a series of steps with questions and dice rolls to randomize how your Character is cultivated and starts out, and others have a short list of prompts and the format of a Character Sheet, a visual and relatively basic profiling form... at least for the numbers and figures that explain how the Character will function with the mechanics (read dice and situations) inside the Game itself... When we Play, the RP is all the artistic stuff of "Acting" where you declare actions, make choices, and navigate the world of the Game (like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawke in D&D)... There are relative dictations from the Dice, where things are up to chance, but YOU (Player) still make the active choices for the Character... If he's going to draw a sword, you choose and declare it... If he's going to throw a fireball, then YOU have to declare and choose that... BUT the dice decide whether the sword hits and how much damage it does WHEN you've declared an attack on another Character or Monster... or how much damage and how big the Fireball is when it's thrown... They get the intangible part of WILL you accomplish this or that. You can choose and declare your Character is TRYING to do about anything. The stat's and numbers set his chance per roll of doing whatever you say you want to do. In any case, things like the Enneagram are interesting. It's always fun to try to get a more complete or better intimate understanding of a Character (even that I create it) "under the hood" so to say, and this might be an interesting exercise if nothing else. ;o)

Same as virtues and vices scale...

Marvel writers should take notes on this lesson

Weird I don't see a connection from the arrows of numbers 3,6,9 those are a separate triangle the rest seem to bounce back and forth repeatedly.

It was an exciting discovery for me BUT let me just give you an advice about the video : it would've been better with the enneagram in the background when Maestro Kitchen speaks. See ?...

💪🏼💜

omg !

Do U agree that perhaps the ennyagram ascribes too much to nurture at the expense of nature? That is, the two childhood wounds from the trigger incident, are interpreted according to ones apriora genetic tendenceys. Two individuals, different from birth, suffer different wounds and wind up as different numbers.