Customer Reviews

Writer's Guide to Character Traits

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

The Writer's Guide to Character Traits The book is great! Everything I wanted and more. I highly recommend it as a must-have resource book for any writer, including anyone in the juvenile market. It's easy to navigate, the 'traits' are exhaustive, and listed for clarity and quick research. Invaluable!

Handy, quick reference for writers who are looking for a quick list of symptoms, characteristics, quirks related to all sorts of different personality types, dysfunctions, etc. Very helpful if you are searching for basic info. But for more flavour and detail, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Secondary side points: 1) the page layout / formatting is very distracting - way too much bolded text and graphics, 2) the "writer's exercises" are somewhat patronizing and superfluous (I would have preferred more info on the characteristics).

This book goes into a lot of detail about character traits. It helps quite a bit. Very interesting book to help you develop your characters. It helps to understand why people do the things they do.

This is an excellent reference book, especially for genre fiction writers whose characters often need to fit a "type." This book's incredibly clear lists and excellent organizational layout, help the writer to sketch out the history and details of their characters. (i.e. My villain's a violent control freak, what kind of a mother would he have? or My heroine's a quiet librarian type, what's she like in a relationship?)

Since the book is formed primarily from lists, without much extensive text, it is even more helpful to a writer who doesn't want to impede the flow of working on character sketches (or whatever) by reading something extensive.

This is a really nice resource.

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.

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.

This book delivers less than it promises but it makes a useful resource. "Character Traits" is not so much a finished reference book as a sketchy set of notes placed between two covers. The overall organization of the card file is good. The cards themselves are uneven in quality.

The author eschews complete sentences in favor of bullet-like phrases filling a series of lists. In some places she provides a stimulating wealth of details. Chapter 5, for example, presents an outline of the different criminal styles that exist. Chapter 11 provides a useful description of how groups function. But sometimes potentially valuable information is poorly presented. Chapter 7's "Stages of Marital Separation" presents a chart in which chronology and details are so vaguely expressed that it's hard to know what is going on. Uneven too is the survey of personality characteristics associated with various professions (Chapter 10). Here we find a long, interesting lists of traits for pool players and sales reps, but next to nothing about poets. We are told only about their vulnerability to psychological disturbance. In fact, a number of other traits are far more typical of this profession (see Anthony Storr's "The Dynamics of Creation" and related works). Then there are those categories that got such simplistic treatment that you wonder why anyone bothered. It hardly requires a Ph.D. to come up with the lazy, laughable generalizations found in "Traits of Religious Attitudes Toward Sex" (Chapter 6). These are so useless that the reader does better just to go [URL] and ask.

Less than it might have been? Sure. Indispensable? No--not when we have the web, comprehensive guides like the DSM-IV, and any number of specialized books. Still, "The Writer's Guide to Character Traits" represents a useful tool for the price. Think of it someone else's card file opened for your use. Browsing it is sure to stimulate your writer's imagination. But expect to do the same amount of research you would have to do anyway once you get started. In the end it is your book, your story, that must show us something meaningful about human nature.

I thought this book was unique.It explores an area most character building books don't include. By giving a psychological perspective to character profiles, it enables writers to incorporate more depth into their characters.