Jeff Kitchen is a chef, but of screenplays―a dramaturge whose clients include top playwrights in Broadway and screenwriters in Hollywood. He has a set of special cutleries and secret recipes to cook a good story and serve it as a dramatic plot. One of his special cutlery is the Enneagram, a psychometric framework that posits that there are nine personality types. He says it not only helps him develop credible characters, but also construct an engaging plot.
“Everyone focuses on the art of storytelling rather than the craft of the dramatist. This is why 99 per cent of scripts get rejected,” says the California-based script consultant, whose students include Oscar, Emmy and Tony award winners. One of them is Ted Melfi, whose 2016 directorial, Hidden Figures, was nominated for an Oscar in the best picture and best adapted screenplay categories.
If it was Greek physician Galen’s four temperaments―sanguine, melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic―that made Shakespearean characters multidimensional, it was Enneagram that helped Kitchen add complexity to the characters he created. Before discovering the psychometric tool, he mostly drew upon his own knowledge of the people around him. “I know a lot about how people operate in the world, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as Enneagram,” he tells THE WEEK.
Kitchen is not the only person to use personality types to develop characters. Isabel Myers, who devised the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with the help of her mother, Katharine Briggs, was also a novelist who used typology to build her characters. Her first novel, Murder Yet to Come, won the National Detective Murder Mystery Contest in 1929.
Kitchen, 73, has also tried a few other personality tests and Galen’s humours. “But, for me, the Enneagram is more comprehensive and practical. It is highly organised so that I can quickly and efficiently scout through an array of possibilities, finding what I need,” he adds.
The dramaturge came across Enneagram through his late friend Armand F. DiMele, a Manhattan-based psychotherapist and on-air radio host of The Positive Mind. DiMele was a cinephile, so he used to help Kitchen and his clients in creating psychological profiles of characters. “At one point, DiMele asked me if I had ever worked with Enneagram and told me it was the best thing out there,” he says. “So I leapt right on it and started studying Enneagram. It radically changed everything about how I approached my characters.”
Kitchen uses material from The Enneagram Institute, including the book, The Wisdom of the Enneagram, authored by its founders. According to the institute, Type 1―the reformer―is rational and idealistic, Type 2―the helper―is caring and interpersonal, Type 3―the achiever―is success-oriented and pragmatic, Type 4―the individualist―is sensitive and introspective, Type 5―the investigator―is intense and cerebral, Type 6―the loyalist―is committed and security-oriented, Type 7―the enthusiast―is busy and variety-seeking, Type 8―the challenger―is powerful and dominating, and Type 9―the peacemaker―is easygoing and self-effacing.
Enneagram describes the strengths and weaknesses of each of the nine characters, whether it is core beliefs, basic desires, preferences, fears, flaws and unconscious patterns that drive people’s behaviour, says Kitchen. Besides, it also delves deeper into healthy, average and unhealthy levels of a personality, depending on whether a person’s life is coming together or falling apart.
“The use of Enneagram makes your characters not all sound like yourself as you have deep insight into nine entirely different types,” says Kitchen. However, he also points out that when he revisits the same type of personality for a different character, it feels entirely different from the previous character he created, thanks to the complex dimensions of Enneagram.
Unlike most writers, Kitchen believes that a strong dilemma forms the core of the entire story and it has to be a choice between two equally painful options. He takes a major character in the story he is working on and looks at which of the nine Enneagram types fits that personality. “I then dig deeper to see if it holds true. If so, I study the 40-page chapter on that particular type in The Wisdom of the Enneagram, which has a huge trove of insightful information. This clarity about the mechanics of a character opens up dynamic possibilities, helping me find what the dilemma of the story is and how they interact with it during a crucial moment of the story,” he explains.
Once the character is dimensionalised and set in stone, it suggests new possibilities for the plot, says Kitchen. “If your character tends to retreat inward to first sort out their emotions before dealing with a situation, that trait might suggest a scene or a major turning point,” he said. “If the Enneagram traits ring true, then you will find many elements that validate your feelings and expand your understanding of why your character behaves that way. The more you know about your character, the more ideas suggest themselves for the story.”
Enneagram is not the only tool Kitchen relies on for scriptwriting. He devised a three-step process based on the preliminary works of Broadway script doctor William T. Price, who formed the first school of playwriting at the turn of the 20th century. Price had 28 students, of whom 24 created Broadway hits. This motivated Kitchen to explore his 1908 book, The Analysis of Play Construction and Dramatic Principle. He felt the technique mentioned in the book was incomplete, so he did some investigation and tinkering based on the material available from the works of Price and his students. He then ended up forging the ‘sequence, proposition, plot’ tool that could solve a myriad of issues vexing writers. One of these solutions included beginning the story from the climax and working in reverse, thereby helping the writer build a solid chain of causes and effects. This ensured that redundant sequences, scenes and dialogues were omitted from the script.
And, Kitchen has his pick of good scripts from India, too. “I watched RRR on big screen and it is on my list of the best movies I have ever seen,” he says. “The script was bold, adventurous and quite different, with compelling characters and an epic story. I have also watched 3 Idiots, and thought the writing was quite good, if a bit long-winded, with a lot of powerful emotion. Angamaly Diaries is a compelling drama with a likeable protagonist, great villains, rich conflict and a dynamic ending with long sequences and no cuts.”
Kitchen’s two books―Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting (2006) and The Hero’s Dilemma: Drama at the Heart of Your Story (2023)―offer a detailed overview of screenwriting techniques and are a hit among film enthusiasts. He teaches small hands-on groups via Zoom and, for users from India, his classes cost $125 a month for 55 hours of live instruction.
WORD PLAY AND MIND GAMES
If you wonder how literature and psychology are interlinked, here is some food for thought. The word ‘character’ has evolved not only to define figures portrayed in stories, but also an individual’s personality. The Latin word ‘persona’ itself has links to the Roman theatre, referring to the mask worn by actors in a play. In the 20th century, persona was redefined by psychiatrist Carl Jung to refer to the ‘mask’ of public identity that people use to hide their true self.