Dialogue (19 page)

#7 — the adventurer

Adventurers are motivated by the need to be happy and plan enjoyable activities, contribute to the world, and avoid suffering and pain.

A typical conversation with a #7 might go something like this:

"It looks like it's going to rain again."

"Oh, that's wonderful." (Runs to get umbrella and boots.) "We need the

rain. I love the rain. It always makes everything smell so fresh and keeps everything moist, you know?"

"The Snohomish is about to overflow again. Remember how it overflowed last week and flooded all of those homes?" (Maybe a #6 [the questioner] here?)

"Yeah, I saw on the news where neighbors were meeting each other, and families were spending time together, you know, because they had to use their boats just to get around the neighborhood. Very touching, wasn't it?" (Sniffs.)

"You're nuts.'

"Sometimes the worst situations can become exciting adventures, you know? It gives everyone a chance to pull together. I'm planning a mission trip to Africa, did I tell you about that? Well, that's after I color code my files and make scrapbooks of my vacation to Israel."

Adventurers can make the rest of us dizzy with their many projects and adventures. Sometimes, I'll watch someone on the
Oprah Winfrey Show
or some other talk show chatter on about everything she is doing, and I'll get all down on myself because I'm doing so little to save the world, but then I'll remind myself, "Oh, yeah, that's the chatter of a #7, and I don't have to be like that person to feel okay about myself."

When you put your #7 into a dialogue scene, she chatters away, like the above, about the many projects she's working on or issues about which she feels strongly. She's in her head a lot when in conversation and often needs others to help her get down to her heart, to stop and feel her feelings.

In a dialogue scene, the main thing to know about an adventurer is that he will always come from a place of positive thinking. He doesn't want to see anything negative and will either ignore those who do put a negative spin on life events, or in his personal life, pretend negative or difficult events aren't happening when indeed they are. These characters can be funny in a story because they're always off in some fantasy that doesn't relate to the here and now. They can really annoy the characters for whom the here and now is vitally important, like the #9 (the peacemaker).

#8 — the leader

Leaders are motivated by the need to be self-reliant and strong and to avoid feeling weak or dependent.

Leaders are also often overprotective and will fight hard for social justice as is evidenced in the following excerpt from
The Street Lawyer
by John Grisham. In this scene, a man, clearly a #8, is holding a bunch of rich lawyers hostage, drilling them about how much of their money they're giving away versus keeping for themselves. Study his dialogue, as this is what's important to leaders.

He slowly shook his head. "And how much for the poor people?"

"Total contributions of one hundred eighty thousand."

"I don't want total contributions. Don't put me and my people in the same class with the symphony and the synagogue, and all your pretty white folks clubs where you auction wine and autographs and give a few bucks to the Boy Scouts. I'm talking about food. Food for hungry people who live here in the same city you live in. Food for little babies. Right here. Right in this city, with all you people making millions, we got little babies starving at night, crying 'cause they're hungry. How much for food?"

He was looking at me. I was looking at the papers in front of me. I couldn't lie.

He continued. "We got soup kitchens all over town, places where the poor and homeless can get something to eat. How much money did you folks give to the soup kitchens? Any?"

"Not directly," I said. "But some of these charities—"

"Shut up!"

He waved the damned gun again.

"How about homeless shelters? Places we sleep when it's ten degrees outside. How many shelters are listed there in those papers?"

Invention failed me. "None," I said softly.

He jumped to his feet, startling us, the red sticks fully visible under the silver duct tape. He kicked his chair back. "How 'bout clinics? We got these little clinics where doctors—good decent people who used to make lots of money—come and donate their time to help the sick. They don't charge nothing. Government used to help pay the rent, help buy the medicine and supplies. Now the government's run by Newt and all the money's gone. How much do you give to the clinics?"

Leaders are into justice. They feel protective of their environment and will crusade for causes. In the above scenario, the antagonist has gone over the edge in his crusading and is willing to kill others to make his point.

A therapist friend told me once that a lot of leaders end up in prison

because they simply get swept away by their fierce drive to protect their loved ones and their environment. This isn't all that an #8 is, of course, but this is largely what motivates him. Some Enneagram books identify this number as not the leader but the boss.

The Enneagram isn't a cut-and-dried method of putting characters in categories. For example, in the movie
Heat,
both Robert DeNiro's and Al Pacino's characters are clearly leaders. One is a professional criminal and one is a cop. Go figure.

Human beings are complex and made up of many elements. But if you need a character in your story who is driven to fight for a cause, who needs to be in charge, who likes to be close to others but who often drives them away because of his aggressive personality, choose the #8. In dialogue, this character comes across aggressively—not always as aggressively as the antagonist in Grisham's novel, but there's never any doubt as to what he wants and when he wants it. Watch out or he'll take the scene away from the other characters. He's bigger than life and, by the way, has a gentle soul and can be a loving, caring presence in your cast of characters if he's working on himself and hasn't gone over the edge like the antagonist in
The Street Lawyer.

#9 — the peacemaker

Peacemakers are motivated by the need to keep the peace, merge with others, and avoid conflict. Since they, especially, take on qualities of the other eight types, peacemakers have many variations in their personalities, from gentle and mild mannered to independent and forceful.

The peacemaker's dialogue is usually soft-spoken and meant to please the listener, not always having a lot to do with the #9 herself. She often seeks to hear and understand what everyone else wants and forgets to listen to her own heart's needs. A typical #9 in your story will do anything to avoid conflict, putting all of her energies and efforts into calming everyone down in a crisis and denying the seriousness of a situation if it looks like drama or conflict is on the horizon. With this character, it's "peace at any price," and sometimes it's a heavy price, as in the sacrifice of her goals.

I'm writing a novel at the moment with a #1 (the reformer) protagonist who is dead set on revenge. Someone killed her daughter and she's obsessed with making sure the killer comes to justice. I knew I needed her husband to be a peacemaker, as this would provide the maximum conflict for her. If

she were married to a #8 (the leader), he'd simply come alongside her in her goal, possibly even stabbing the dude himself in a dark alley some night. Or a #3 (the achiever) might strategically go about the goal of bringing this guy to justice as well. Either of these Enneagram numbers would most likely agree with my #1 protagonist, but not a #9. He just wants the entire situation to go away. He's not interested in a prolonged fight with anyone, not even in court. In his grief, he simply goes inward and despairs rather than fights. This drives my protagonist crazy and allows for a lot of verbal conflict between her and her husband throughout the story.

A typical conversation between them might go something like:

"What is taking the cops so long to find that monster?" Linda said for the hundredth time since this nightmare began two months before.

"Well, it's probably not their only case," Dan said quietly. He never knew exactly what to do with Linda when she got like this. "I mean, I'm sure they're doing the best they can — "

"The best they can?" she screeched. "How can you say that? Half the time when I call, I have to explain all over again who I am. They're idiots."

"I'm sure they're frustrated, too. They want to find the guy who did this, I'm sure—"

"Why do you always take their side?" she cried. "It's like you don't even care—"

That's when he shut down. How could she say he didn't care that they'd never see their 19-year-old daughter alive again? It was too much for him to bear, that's all. He sunk deeper into the chair and closed his eyes.

Dan can't cope with his aggressive reformer-wife. He feels hopeless and helpless and overwhelmed and her ranting and raving simply puts pressure on him to fix a problem that can never, ever be right again. Peacemakers like to roll up their sleeves and fix problems, but when they can't, their enthusiasm turns to despair.

using the enneagram in stories

The best time to wonder about which Enneagram numbers you need in a particular story is before you begin writing—if you're writing a plot-driven or idea-driven story. If you're writing a character-driven story, the character's Enneagram number may only emerge for you after you've begun to

write the story and come to know the character a bit.

For example, if you're writing a plot-driven murder mystery, neither the sleuth nor the murderer is probably a #2 (the giver) or a #9 (the peacemaker). This is simply because these Enneagram characters don't have enough aggression to go after criminals or to be criminals. You could have a #2 or #9 who could be assisting the sleuth or criminal. That would work, but these folks just don't tend to take charge.

So, depending on what kind of story I'm writing, and I usually write character-driven stories, I sit down and think through which Enneagram number I need for each character I'm planning for my story. Then I write first-person character sketches where I let the character
talk
to me in his own words. It almost feels like channeling the character. What's most important to know about any character from the very start, before anything else, goes back to what Johnny Depp's acting coach taught him—what the character
wants.
Your character's Enneagram number will determine this, then you're off and running. Your character's Enneagram number will drive that character's action in the story. You'll never have to wonder who she is or where she's coming from if you've studied who she is on the Enneagram. You'll
know.
And this one thing alone can make writing your character's dialogue a lot of fun.

You've read enough now to know whether this is a tool that might work for you in developing fictional characters and their dialogue. As I mentioned before, this is only one of the many tools available to us as fiction writers, but I hope you'll find it as helpful as I have. In this chapter I've just begun to scratch the surface of all there is to know about the Enneagram. If you want to become a serious student of the Enneagram, you can do an Internet search and pull up dozens of sites for more information. Or you can go to any bookstore and find any number of books on the Enneagram. In a well-written story, everything is connected: dialogue, characterization,

viewpoint, plot, theme, and as we've seen in this chapter, motivation. In the next chapter, we'll see how
setting
can be woven into our characters' dialogue naturally and authentically so the reader has a sense of
who
our characters are based on their backgrounds as well as
where
they are in any given scene.