Hi DeAnna,
I remember going to a middle management workshop (yawn, but necessary at the time) in which we were encouraged to see things from different people’s perspectives, despite being “in the same place”. We were asked to imagine being in a room of a tall building that took up the entire floor, windows to each side (north, south, east, west). We’d been invited to decide how best to decorate the room, to harmonise with our surroundings. Obviously we were all in the same room, same conditions (hot/cold/humid/dry/etc.), but we each faced a different direction. Then we had to describe what we would do next, based on what we saw outside the window. This analogy, that our outlook on life (and therefore our choices and reactions) is different depending on our personal perspective, was so strong that I still recall the exercise to this day (roughly 30 years later). It has helped me to consider that people think and react differently to the same stimuli than myself. But I still struggle to understand or predict how differently another person may react.
In writing fiction, not only do we need to predict how someone will react to the situations we put them in, but it must be believable. The thoughts and actions we give our characters must be true to the personalities, character traits, emotional wounds, and background that we give them. I took Claire Taylor’s masterclass on Enneagrams for Character Motivation earlier this year (https://www.ffs.media/enneagram-motivations-workshop). I had to think long and hard about the price as I don’t have a lot of free spending money, but I can say that it was 100% worth it. I’ve heard that she doesn’t have another enneagrams class lined up, so if she agreed to speak at Daniel’s plotting and planning summit, that would be “awesome”. I’d probably even get up at 2am (I live in New Zealand) just to listen to her speak again on the subject, live.