Is discovery or outline writing connected to personality type (e.g. MBTI)?
I'm on a bit of a Myers-Briggs spree at the moment (which is dangerous, because it is so easy to read way more into it than you are supposed to).
For those of you who are not familiar with it, it is a personality test based on theories by Carl Jung, to determine how you are "wired", and find your preferences within work, relationships etc. A free test for those of you who are curious is found here: MBTI Test.
This question popped into my mind while listening to an episode of Writing Excuses, where they discussed their different approaches to writing: two of the guys were discovery writers, that just started writing and then let the story go wherever the characters and their minds took them. The third guy was an outliner who had to have the whole story planned up front; all the structure laid out before he filled in the meat on the story.
This got me thinking about a correlation with the MBTI, where the last of the four letters (J or P) indicate whether you are more of a "happy-go-lucky" person (P) or in need of more plans and structure (J).
Being a strong P myself, and a discovery writer to boot (not in the start-your-computer sense), I feel there might be a connection here, but have no evidence to support it.
Does anyone know more about this, or may share their personality/writing style combo to give the theory some data?
(MBTI may also be a good place to look for inspiration and for finding specific traits when creating characters.)
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/521. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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On the test, I'm in the "slight" category on three out of the four axes, which includes the judging - perceiving one that you're concerned with. I tend to work with outlines, but if the story takes me elsewhere, I don't force it. I usually find myself in the wild west when I'm getting near the end of a project. (I write song lyrics.) This may support your theory. Contact me privately if you'd like numbers.
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