Episode Description:
In this special bonus episode, Claire shares practical, story-focused advice for one of the most common (and frustrating) issues writers face: not knowing their protagonist. Whether your main character feels flat, unmotivated, or like a stranger you just can’t crack, this episode offers a clear path forward—with help from the Enneagram, of course.
Claire explains how understanding your protagonist’s core fear and desire can unlock their behavior, clarify their voice, and get your story moving again. She also walks you through the process of choosing the right Enneagram type for your character, using concrete examples to show how motivation drives everything from plot to emotional depth.
Plus, she shares an exciting update about her new book, Write Iconic Characters, and its currently-running Kickstarter campaign!
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why some protagonists “refuse” to follow the plot—and how to fix it
How to use Enneagram types to shape character motivation
What to do when you’ve blended multiple Enneagram types by accident
The simplest way to start creating a protagonist who feels authentic
Why writing your own Enneagram type can actually be a storytelling superpower
How to reverse-engineer your protagonist based on your story world or theme
What to do if your usual character-building methods aren’t working
Back the Write Iconic Characters Kickstarter (ends Aug 8): https://liberatedwriter.com/kickstarter
Support the Show:
If you found this episode thought-provoking and helpful, please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform and share it with fellow authors. Every review helps more writers discover this resource.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome to the very first bonus episode of What If for Authors. I'm your host, Claire Taylor, an Enneagram certified coach for authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer, and this bonus episode is brought to you by my right iconic characters, Kickstarter that is currently live and wraps up on August 8th.
If you're listening to this episode after August 8th, never fear, you can still grab my latest book, write Iconic Characters on all major retailers once the Kickstarter concludes.
Don't worry though y'all. This is not an extended sales pitch. I'm here to offer something valuable related to a worry that a lot of authors run into once they start writing the book or as they're planning the book. I just also happened to be in the middle of promotion for my Kickstarter, and I had a real forehead smacking moment last night when I was like, why would I not tell the people who listen to this podcast about the Kickstarter?
I was joking earlier with my, uh, friend Brian Cohen, former podcasting [00:01:00] bestie from somewhere book show. I was joking with him about this. like I built a platform with this podcast and I'm just gonna forget to use it. Like it's not martial arts where the site of a good martial artist is that they don't have to fight.
Right? That's not how we use our platforms anyway. I'm still not a marketing genius, y'all. Bad news. Uh, not surprising news, but bad news. Or maybe I'm just, you know, maybe I'm just slow, but I get there eventually with the marketing. I'll just, I'll be kind to myself and say that. So if this is the first time you're hearing about the new book, right?
Iconic characters. Here's a quick rundown. It's my first book that focuses entirely on using the Enneagram for developing characters rather than what you're used to hearing me talk about on this podcast, which is using the Enneagram to develop yourself in your career. My coaching and consulting has always been kind of split this way with one wing focusing on career development and the other focusing on story development, like I offered the author alignment and [00:02:00] the story alignment calls, and those have both been a staple of FFS media from the very start.
I also like host a bunch of masterclasses about story stuff, but not as much lately just because the author Career wing has kind of taken up most of my brain space. But people keep asking me about a guide that they can use for, you know, figuring out how to use the Enneagram for storytelling. So I've finally done that.
I finally put that together. The Kickstarter offers the book, but also many courses on things like how to Write the Heroes of the Enneagram, villains of the Enneagram, and how to use the Enneagram to write five star endings. If you're interested in backing, go to liberated writer.com/kickstarter and that'll take you to the project.
Again, it ends August 8th, so if you're listening to this before that, don't miss out. And now let's look at this episode's topic where we ask, what if I don't know my protagonist? This is a common problem for authors and nothing to be ashamed about. [00:03:00] I've been there. People arrive at story ideas from all directions.
So you know, if you had a great concept idea and that's your entry point to your new series, you may not be entering from the point of who is the protagonist. Or maybe you've thought of this cool world and you're not sure whose story you want to set against that backdrop, or maybe you thought you knew your protagonist and then you write a scene and just cannot seem to get the damn protagonist to budge in the direction that you need them to go.
I have certainly been there. So if you don't know your protagonist well yet, even if you're already a few books into the series, never fear. There's a lot we can do here to help you connect with them. And yes, it involves the Enneagram. There are other things you can do, but if you come here, you know what you're getting.
So the first place to start is asking if you already know their Enneagram type. This is important information because it means you know what motivates them above all other [00:04:00] things. Literally, you know how to move them not only physically, but mentally and emotionally too. And this is crucial for an author because you are the God, the puppet master of the story world, and it can be a bitch when your characters start fighting back against your bidding.
Maybe you say, okay, protagonist, go to Amsterdam to help your dying father. And they go, hell no. And you say, seriously, you gotta go because that's where you meet your soulmate. And they're like, Ugh, I don't care about that. In times like these, there is a part of you that knows on some level that the character is not motivated by the thing you're trying to motivate them with.
They just won't bite the lure. You're, you're casting. This can be extremely frustrating because you're like, um, I'm your God. You do what I say, and they're like, screw you, smite me if you're so mighty. And it can be a little bit frustrating.
We may be holding a vague motivation in our minds for our protagonist, but looking at the list of the nine core motivations, , [00:05:00] that define the Enneagram and saying that one, that's their core of fear, that can be the difference maker. Maybe now we understand why our protagonist isn't motivated to go to Amsterdam.
There maybe a seven. The enthusiast with a core motivation of being. Trapped in pain and deprivation. That's their fear. And the idea of staying in the house to care for an ailing parent is triggering that fear, big time. And a soulmate, you mean? Someone they're tied to for the rest of their life? No, thanks.
That's not gonna be that appealing for a seven. Okay, then now we can ask what a seven seeks what they desire, and that's satisfaction. So we have to promise satisfaction in Amsterdam if we want them to go. So maybe it's not a sick parent that we use as the lure.
Maybe it's trying out for a reality show like the Amazing Race. Or maybe you gotta have the ailing father because he's the antagonist, in which case. [00:06:00] You're gonna need to find something really promising for the seven to get them to walk straight into the pain of caring for the dying. It's tricky. Sure, but you're a creative person with a brain and now you know where to point it.
That creative brain of yours to get something that works for your story.
A lot of the time, the problem with not knowing a protagonist comes down to having mixed r Enneagram type with some other iconic character archetype. We wanna sum it up for this protagonist, so maybe we like Batman. And we wanna create a Bruce Wayne like character. Now Batman is a one, the reformer, which is super apparent by the personal obligation he feels to Gotham even when it turns on him and his internalized personal and inflexible set of codes for himself, like no killing.
Now the problem may be that you are a six, the loyalist, and you are blending a six's [00:07:00] motivation with the one's motivation and your protagonist making the whole thing kind of muddy. So some of the time these motivations might align in action, both ones and sixes hate corrupt authority, for instance, and would be motivated to fight against it.
But ones tend to be loyal to their principles, and sixes tend to be loyal to people. So if there's a situation where your protagonist has to choose where their loyalties lie, you might not be clear on how they land because you've written two types into them accidentally,
if you notice that this has happened, what I suggest is simple pick one type and then just continue forward from there with that type. You don't have to do big rewrites if you don't want to, but you could. Readers will only notice that they suddenly have a much better understanding of your protagonist.
They probably won't even be consciously aware of it either. They'll just be happy. Now, what if you've picked a protagonist type but you still don't feel like you know them? Maybe you picked a type you don't really understand deeply enough yet. So reading up about that type [00:08:00] can help you start to wrap your mind around the shape.
A little bit better for a start, or maybe you do just need to create a little bit more backstory for that character to flesh them out a little bit more.
If you're struggling to wrap your head around a particular type, which we all do, we all have types that just seem like a reach for us to understand. , it can help to figure out if anyone close to you is that type. So then you create an avatar. So your default goes from what would I do in this situation, which would be incorrect if that protagonist is not your type two.
What would my avatar person do in this situation now that not, might not. Now that might not get you a hundred percent of the way to the answer, but it'll get you much, much closer, like within spitting distance. If you can't think of anyone close to you of that type to use as an avatar, never fear. You can use a public figure.
You might know a lot about like someone whose biography you've read of that type. Or you can use a fictional character, like one of those I list in write iconic [00:09:00] characters. , any of those is solid to use as an avatar, as long as you are correct on the type. So maybe you're still struggling to understand the type in that case.
Does your character need to be that particular Enneagram type? If you're really struggling to comprehend it, to wrap your mind around it,
one of the easiest things we can do as authors is to align the protagonist to our own Enneagram type. Therefore, aligning the core motivations with our own. There's almost never a reason not to do this, frankly, especially if you're writing from the protagonist's, POV. This is gonna make everything easier for you.
There's nothing wrong with eliminating friction in this way. There's no better type than another to write. Sure. Deciding to go with your type rather than another type will certainly change the nature of the story you end up telling. But so what?
There's also no correlation between a genre and any type that a protagonist must be, [00:10:00] though. There are trends that people certainly fall into, but just because a bunch of authors in your genre are writing, say, type A protagonist. Doesn't mean you can't write a type two protagonist. In fact, doing so might be what sets your story apart and makes it much more interesting to readers who are starting to get bored of the same old type eight bashing down walls all the time.
No offense to eights, obviously. Okay, so how do you do this though, right? How do you pick the Enneagram type that makes the most sense for the story and the character as you know them? Let me break it down for you. Look up the nine types online and their associated core fears and desires. Once you have my book, you can use that as a reference, but it's not out yet.
So start with type one and ask yourself, does this resonate with the protagonist as I know them so far? Yes. No. It can be a scale of one to 10, but go through each of the core fears and do this because you will immediately eliminate a few as possibilities, and that's a great start. Then what you can do is start.
Pitting the [00:11:00] remaining types against one another until you get one that seems most like what you've been imagining your protagonist to be. So if you need some help, read up about how the types generally present and see which one lines up most with your protagonist as you imagine them. It doesn't have to be completely them right away, but now you have a type you can work from, , a framework to sort of build into.
It may mean adjusting a little bit of your protagonist to better align with a specific type, which is akay. And if you don't have a protagonist in mind and you're starting from scratch, think about the world you're creating for them. Which of those nine types would be most triggered by it? What kind of plot are you writing?
Do you imagine your protagonist will be the one who saves the world? Which fear would create the most conflict with that role? What are you trying to say with the story if you already know that? Like are you trying to show something about greed power? Look at the fears and think about which one might [00:12:00] be the most interesting to mix with that.
For instance, you see a lot of that type one reformer starring in a hard boil detective fiction because that genre is defined by someone taking on or at least trying to navigate a corrupt system. And yes, the most recent Batman film is an example of this. It is a hard boiled detective, , film, even though it's a superhero film as well.
Okay, so you got the one taking on a corrupt system and what's the type one sphere? Yeah, it's being bad, wrong, or corrupt. So now you have interesting chemistry happening inside your protagonist as they face corruption and maybe even have to ask themselves if they are participating in it, which is very, very scary for a one.
At the very least, they'll be incredibly motivated to shine a light on the corruption due to their core fear. Now, that's not to say every detective in hard boiled fiction has to be a one. You can do any type, but you're also doing [00:13:00] yourself a huge favor if you're new to the writing the Enneagram, to like make them a one if that, especially if that's your type, right?
Because hard boiled detective fiction, the whole genre it, this is not your cerebral Sherlock character, which is a five. This is more action focused. Do-gooder, right? But again, you can throw any type in there if you're not a one. Think about throwing your type in there and see what happens. If it's just not working, maybe you wanna branch out to some other type.
So those are a couple practical steps to get you started using the method. And of course, I have much more information in this vein in my right, iconic characters book and the associated courses being offered through the Kickstarter. So if you're wondering, what if I don't know, my protagonist and the usual backstory exercises aren't helping turn your attention with the intensity of the eye of Saron toward the Enneagram type of that character.
Use the suggestions in this episode to troubleshoot or [00:14:00] develop from scratch. A protagonist with clear core motivations. Who you can motivate at will keep their fear and desire crystal clear in your head, and you'll know them more deeply than you know most of your close friends. That's it for this bonus episode.
Definitely go check out the right iconic characters. Kickstarter, if you're interested in mastering these motivations for your storytelling. Not only is it a user's guide for the types, but I go pretty deep into each of the nine types, even showing you how to write a character's dialogue to show their core fear and focus of attention.
Then I show you some first steps for getting started, turning your knowledge into action. So go to liberated writer.com/kickstarter to check out the project and see if any of it piques your interest. There are plenty of bonuses and such coming up that will only be available through Kickstarter, but if you miss the Kickstarter, you can still go get the book, which I'll put on pre-order once the Kickstarter concludes.
Thanks so much for taking a break with me for this episode. I'm Claire Taylor, and I [00:15:00] hope you'll join me in the next full episode of the What If for Authors Podcast. Happy writing.