Super-Snooper Blogfest

Today is the Super-Snooper Blogfest!. Instructions are to describe a setting that tells us something about your character's personality. Characters can be of any age, living in any time or place. But don't tell us about the character, tell us about his or her stuff. We'll get to know the character from what you write.

My entry:

Sticky notes covered every millimeter of the computer monitor frame. Most were yellow, a few pink or green, each with an important note on it: events, dates, inspirational sayings and little bits of wisdom. Every two seconds, the screen saver flashed a new photo. The same face appeared in each, always with at least one other person: at parties, on the beach, in the mountains, under the wide tent of a hang-glider. Many of the same faces filled frames that littered the nearby bookshelves, obscuring the few books that lay jumbled in a heap. Swim goggles hung from the corner of one frame, a snowboard leaned against the bookshelves, and the harness of the latest bungee jump spilled out of the bottom-most shelf.

What kind of personality do you imagine this character has? What part of their stuff gave you that impression?

As I mentioned, I have a copy of Sam Gosling's Snoop: what your stuff says about you to give away. Each participant will get one entry in the drawing, and the randomly-selected winner wins the book! Check back on Friday to see if you're the lucky winner, and go see what others wrote!

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Blogfest update

Two things to start: I just passed 100 followers!  I'll have to come up with something fun to celebrate! Hi to my new followers, and thanks for stopping by. And that brings me to the other thing... I'm sorry I haven't been out in the blogosphere this week. It's just been one of those weeks. But I promise I'll visit everyone else and get caught up with the new crusaders soon.

Now to the reason for today's (very late) post. Donna asked for an example for the upcoming Super-Snooper Blogfest, and I finally found a few minutes to write one. If you haven't signed up yet, join the fun. I'll be giving away a copy of Sam Gosling's SNOOP!


The shades were drawn; looked, in fact, as if they hadn't been raised in years. Clothes - all black - were crammed into the closet; several hangers jutted out at odd angles, resisting alignment in the tiny bits of space that remained. Assorted black shoes obscured the closet floor, lying at least two layers thick. In the bookshelf to the right, books lay strewn about, some stacked, others standing, still others falling to one side. Three books lay on the floor, where they must have fallen from the crowd above. Perched on the top of the bookshelf, two framed photos stared out into the room. One, a black and white landscape reminiscent of Ansel Adams, wrought a haunting, ethereal image. The second depicted a field of snow, pristine but for the wing marks flanking a single drop of bright red blood, the brightest splash of color in the room.

Based on that description, what conclusions would you draw about the owner of the room?

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Snoop!

Have you ever walked into a room, looked around, and come away with an instantaneous first impression of the inhabitant? An impression that may have been modified a bit after meeting said inhabitant, but one that was probably at least partially correct? Welcome to snooping.

Most of us snoop, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps with purpose; with the help of Sam Gosling's book Snoop: what your stuff says about you, you can learn even more about people without even meeting them.

Okay, this sounds like fun, but what does it have to do with writing? First, it's a well-written and highly entertaining book (I missed my stop when I was reading it on the bus). Second, if you know what someone's stuff says about them, you can sneak all kinds of great information about your character's personality into your novel. Your audience will come away 'knowing' the character, but they won't know why they know what they do.

Sam uses the Big Five personality traits in his work: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. You can probably identify where people you know fit into a big five personality profile. Extraverts thrive on contact with other people (I think of them as friend-collectors). People who are conscientious buy more of something before it runs out, are punctual, etc.

Now think about the characters in your story. What would their personality profile look like? Does their profile fit their profession? Introverts don't usually make good salespeople, so you may find that you need to rethink your character's personality, so that it matches their profession. Or perhaps you deliberately want to find an unusual combination for your story (the extroverted truck driver who uses his CB radio--do they still use those?--to chat with anyone and everyone on the stretch of highway).

And to add another layer of believability, what would this person's stuff say about them? If you describe a large music collection that contains everything from the Beatles to Mozart to Tool to Lady Gaga, the readers will know (although they won't know how they know) that the character is open to new ideas and experiences. See how that works? Pretty cool, huh?

And guess what? I happen to have an extra copy of Sam's book. I don't need two, so I'm going to give one away!  Details will be up tomorrow.

Where do you like snooping best? Medicine cabinet? Kitchen? Office?

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Marketing Monday - Sam Gosling

Sam Gosling, Ph.D., is a psychology professor at the University of Texas. Sam's research is remarkably well known. He studies personality.

Many psychologists study personality, but Sam is particularly interested in what we can learn about people without ever meeting them. He studies people's stuff. And he has done curious people everywhere a great service by writing Snoop: what your stuff says about you. I'll have more about Sam's book in my next post, but for today, Sam has agreed to share his experiences marketing Snoop.


What did Profile Books LTD do to market Snoop?

• [They] sent me on a 6(?) city book tour, where I gave talks at bookstores and local media.
• They sent out books and press releases to various media, with the greatest pickup in papers and radio.
• I did a day of radio interviews (where you sit in a room and do 20-ish consecutive interviews with regional radio).
• They had a double page devoted to it in their catalogue
• They sent out flyers to university professors who might adopt it.

What did you do to promote Snoop?

• I created a webpage where I posted a sample of writing, tour dates, etc.

How has the experience played out for you?

• There was a flurry of activity initially and there has been a modest but pretty constant stream of attention since then, with the occasional bigger thing.
• I also did a couple of days of media interviews in the UK.

In case you're curious what the "occasional bigger thing" might be, Sam was on Dr. Phil to discuss his book. He also put the contents of his book into action by snooping into the offices of Dr. Phil and some of his co-workers.

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Personality, the Big Five

I seem to be on a personality kick these days... I just came across an article in Scientific American Mind on how we become less open to new experiences as we age. People who are generally more open as children remain so as they age, but on the whole, by the time we reach 30, we have become rather set in our ways.

Psychologists use a variety of measures for personality. The Myers-Briggs test I discussed in a recent post is probably one of the best-known, but another is the Big Five Personality Test, which measures five traits (taken from Set In Our Ways by Nikolas Westerhoff, Scientific American Mind Dec 2008/Jan 2009):

• Openness: People with high scores here love novelty and are generally creative. At the other end of the scale are those who are more conventional in their thinking, prefer routines, and have a pronounced sense of right and wrong
• Extroversion: Those who score high for extroversion are companionable, sociable and able to accomplish what they set out to do. Those with low scores tend to be introverted, reserved and more submissive to authority.
• Agreeableness: This trait describes how we deal with others. High values show that someone is friendly, empathetic and warm. Shy, suspicious and egocentric individuals score low on the spectrum.
• Neuroticism: This scale measure emotional stability. People with high scores are anxious, inhibited, moody and less self-assured. Those at the lower end of are calm, confident, and contented.
• Conscientiousness: This dimension measures a person's degree of organization. Those with high scores are motivated, disciplined and trustworthy. Irresponsible and easily distracted people are found at the low end of the scale.

I encourage you to take it, too. I find it helpful to have some idea of why I do the things I do.

What does this have to do with creativity? Open people tend to be more creative, as well as being open to novel experiences (although I must say that the two go hand-in-hand: I have found that novel experiences help spark new ideas).

Interestingly, there are particular times in people's lives when they tend to be more open: before the age of 30, and again after they turn 60. Perhaps this is at the root of the observation that all great scientific discoveries are made before the age of 30. Those are the times when people are better able to look at things from a new angle, to see things in a different light.

Even if you fall in the 30-60 age range, you can consciously take steps to become more open and creative. Expose yourself to new things: take a different route to work, order something different when you go out to eat (try out a completely new restaurant), make small changes to increase your exposure to new and different things.

Just don't get fixated on unrealistic or unattainable goals. As Westerhoff points out, "...remember that your openness to new experiences is slowly declining, so you are better off making a new start today than postponing it until later. Perhaps most important of all, try to appreciate the person that you already are."

Personality and marketing

I am learning, as I explore the world of writing and publishing, that the 21st Century author must have a strong online presence.  The three big places you need to be are on your blog, on Facebook, and on twitter. I've got the first two, but I'm having a difficult time with number three.

There are quite a few people I would love to follow on twitter. They say interesting things and I'd love to hear their frequent updates. It's not that I don't want to join because I am uninterested in the tweet stream of others. It's that I just don't know what to tweet about, myself. And yet that's an important part of modern writing: marketing yourself.

I think it comes down to personality type. I recently took the Myers-Briggs personality test and discovered that I am an INFJ personality, which is, apparently, extremely rare (a whopping 1% of the population has this personality type).

INFJs focus on possibilities, think in terms of values and come easily to decisions. [They] ... have [an] unusually strong drive to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their fellow men. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people.

INFJs are usually good students, achievers who exhibit an unostentatious creativity. They take their work seriously and enjoy academic activity. They can exhibit qualities of overperfectionism and put more into a task than perhaps is justified by the nature of the task. They generally will not be visible leaders, but will quietly exert influence behind the scenes.

INFJs are hard to get to know. They have an unusually rich inner life, but they are reserved and tend not to share their reactions except with those they trust. Because of their vulnerability through a strong facility to interject, INFJs can be hurt rather easily by others, which, perhaps, is at least one reason they tend to be private people. People who have known an INFJ for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that INFJs are inconsistent; they are very consist and value integrity. But they have convoluted, complex personalities, which sometimes puzzle even them.

INFJs like to please others and tend to contribute their own best efforts in all situations. They prefer and enjoy agreeing with others, and find conflict disagreeable and destructive. ...INFJs have vivid imaginations exercised both as memory and intuition, and this can amount to genius, resulting at time in an INFJ’s being seen as mystical. This unfettered imagination often will enable this person to compose complex and often aesthetic works of art such as music, mathematical systems, poems, plays, and novels. In a sense, the INFJ is the most poetic of all the types. 

 (quoted from Myers-Briggs Type Indicator General Profile at Purdue University).

I don't know about the genius bit, but the rest describes me pretty well. And it is comforting to know that I'm in good company: Chaucer, Goethe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jimmy Carter, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and quite a few famous actors and actresses (who would have thought that introverts would become actors!).

Interestingly, this rare personality type seems to be quite common among writers. A recent blog personality survey (which seems to have been taken down) indicated that at least 25% of writer respondents shared this personality profile with me. Well over 50% shared the Introverted, iNtuitive, and Feeling traits. There must be something about these traits that make for good story-tellers. But does it make for enthusiastic tweeters?

I am working hard to overcome my introversion and am getting closer and closer to joining twitter. It's just another step on my journey, and I'll let you know what happens when I do.

Take the Myers-Briggs test, yourself.  What's your personality type? How does it affect your life?