The Writer's Guide to Character Traits

Rating:
Summary: I love lists that I can reference...
Review: 1) I love lists that I can reference when I need them and that is how this book is organized. It isn't meant to be read from front cover to back but for you to jump around and use the sections you need.

2) I'm sure this book could be the size of six volumes but the areas the author chooses to focus on are well selected and very helpful

3) I'm finding that to keep some of my character true I can reference different aspects that make up a person and cut & past them into something that makes sense, people can relate to and has some consistency.

4) Better understanding what drives an Obsessive personality or an Adventurer is opening up more plot options during my brainstorming session. This is a nice "research" book on people and what makes us tick.

Rating:
Summary: Memorable Characters Are Created By Hard Working Writers
Review: 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.


Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Resource
Review: Based on the Amazon description for this book, I had imagined it would be useful in fleshing out existing characters. I already write very detailed histories on major characters, but there are always those minor characters whose stories I'd like to explore without taking massive amounts of time to do it. When this book arrived, I decided to run through it with one particular fellow and see what it could tell me about him.

Nothing. Sure, he fits within several categories, but there's no detailed information about any of them. And some of them are so sketchy as to defy classification as traits.

Take "symphorophiliac" for instance. Edelstein advises that "Individual is sexually aroused by accidents or catastrophes." She explains that at the extreme, individuals may arrange accidents for personal pleasure. She doesn't say who these symphorophiliacs are or where they come from. It takes quite a stretch to consider that a profile of a human behavior or personality type.

I give the book some credit for its potential in sparking ideas. Read through it and you might find inspiration for a character you'd like to create. However, if you really want to know what makes that character tick, you're going to have to look somewhere else. The answer simply isn't here.

Rating:
Summary: Child prodigy finds great source.
Review: I find it difficult to believe that any serious writer would feel comfortable using this overly simplistic approach to character development.

A character created from a mish-mash of bullet point-ed traits would be very flat...existing merely as a stereotype.

And I can't decide whether to be overjoyed or dismayed that librarians are not included (omitted perhaps to leave room for the 'careers' of "kept woman", "corporate wife", or "shadow mom"). Perhaps some "types" of people are already so stereotyped that Dr. Edelstein felt no need for inclusion.

Oh yes, and did I mention that use of eyedrops and incense is a sure sign that the character is a marijuana user?

Please.

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful addition to any writer's library and resources
Review: I was pleasantly surprised by the enormous amount of valuable information that this ambitious text presented in an easily accessible and truly informational format. The examples given are clear and understandable and the information itself is invaluable. This book should be on a writer's shelf next to the Thesaurus and Dictionary. It will undoubtedly help writers to create more authentic characters and more realistic interactions between characters who encounter each other and a variety of scenarios as booksand stories unfold. I think it will be a great resource when authors are struggling with which type of character to introduce into their writings. Well done.

Rating:
Summary: A great way to flesh out your characters
Review: I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but when I picked it up looking for assistance, I found the format extremely useful and easy to employ.

Edelstein gives us "people ingredients -- components that work together naturally, coherently, and authentically." _The Writer's Guide to Character Traits_ is, in many ways, a simplified _Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_ that drops much of the information which would be less useful for writers, and presents the crux of each personality style, disorder, et cetera.

There are chapters on many useful subjects, such as psychological disorders, criminal styles, sexual styles, love and marriage, career traits, and many others. Edelstein's career as a psychologist has given her a vast experience in observing people and the ways in which they behave, and she distills it down to very concise, informative lists and chapters, while giving advice on how to create believable characters by selecting traits she mentions.

This isn't so much a book to be read cover-to-cover as it's a reference to be flipped through when needed. There are a few general informational chapters that will be helpful to read all the way through, but by and large, it's a "search for X Type of Character" resource.

I really recommend this book for any writer of fiction.

Rating:
Summary: I tried to like this book, really I did
Review: The front cover of this book shows a character broken into more than a dozen parts. I felt disjointed, just like the cover, when I tried to work my way through the book. It doesn't flow in any intuitive way and I felt lost even when I thought I knew what I was looking for.

I'd like to have a great writers guide to stimulate thought on different personality types, mannerisms, etc. But I'm afraid this isn't the one.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of great info, poorly documented and structured
Review: This book includes a lot of very useful and interesting information. It's all there, everything they say is true: personality summaries, sexual abnormalities, profiles of murderers, etc. If you are the target audience for this book, you will probably benefit from this information. (FYI: I bought it for characters to create in games.)

However, I found it incredibly difficult to actually use this book. Everything is listed in a bullet-like format, so each point is incredibly brief and usually incomplete. You don't get an understanding for these concepts, you get a summary. This makes it difficult to actually put the content to good use.

On to the nit-picky issues:

There are a number of times when the use of headings in the book made it difficult to tell what I was actually reading. I would be in one section, and suddenly I was reading about a completely different topic - the section had changed, but there had not been a heading to indicate the transition. You learn quickly to ignore the formatting of the headings, as it doesn't seem to actually be useful.

There are a number of typographical errors in the book, also, far more than I would expect from a book that actually gets published. However, it isn't an extremely expensive book, so this isn't a major complaint. If this kind of thing bothers you, keep it in mind.

Rating:
Summary: The Writer's Guide to Character Traits
Review: THIS BOOK IS GREAT! I'm a new writer and it gave me tons of information, quickly and simply. I've also enjoyed using it as a quick reference guide for different personalities among people I know as well as potiential characters. I highly reccomend it, for writers and those looking for some psychology written with the novice in mind.

Rating:
Summary: Character
Review: This is a good book for people who want to get skin deep with devolping who they are writting about.Though it doesn't have answers to everything.It is an excelent refrense book.