Character Driven
Believable Characters and Authentic Dialogue
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Character Driven Believable Characters and Authentic Dialogue
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Ian Blei
is the founder of Optimized Results, a premier communications consulting
and coaching organization
for over 25 years, and author of "Kind Ambition - Practical Steps to
Achieve Success Without Losing Your Soul." To understand the
diversity and breadth of studies and disciplines that formed the
foundation of his work, and the blurring of boundaries between
business, art, spirituality, and philosophy, you need to understand the
twisting path taken by its founder. As a child, Ian saw things differently. He liked to solve jigsaw puzzles with the picture face down. How the pieces fit together was the most interesting part of the puzzle. Independent Studies classes with more in-depth academic challenges were all that prevented Ian from leaving High School before graduating. His hero was Leonardo da Vinci, and he wanted to study everything from paleontology and cosmology, to music, art, and Shakespeare (played Romeo, and the latter day Mercutio, in the form of Riff, from "West Side Story.") After college, and throughout decades of Business, Management, Process, and Organizational Consulting, he found that the overriding obstacle to implementation of improvements was dysfunctional human interaction. This motivated him to return to his studies of philosophy, psychology, and communications, which in turn led him to the Enneagram. Using the Enneagram for a system of understanding people’s ego-structures and motivations opened the door to their communication styles. This in turn gave Ian a model for communicating directly to their individual motivations, which at last garnered participation in the design and implementation of process improvements. The consistent success of this process encouraged Ian to delve further into the Enneagram. The more philosophy, physics, and psychology he studied, the more the Enneagram seemed to fit the blend of all of them. And of course, what is more critical to the authenticity of characters, dialogue, and interaction than motivations? And how do you convey that authenticity? Communication. Ian used his “secret weapon” of the Enneagram for many years until one day in conversation with a friend, he illustrated the dynamics of his relationship with her in a diagram on paper. Using the premise that a relationship is a universal concept, (everything is in relationship to everything else) atoms coming together to form a molecule would be similar to people coming together to form a relationship. If you could describe the core characteristics of the atoms, you would have a good idea about the characteristics of the resulting molecule. The diagram was both simple and exceptionally accurate in explaining a myriad of relatively complex dynamics. His friend, who was a successful and respected psychologist was impressed enough to share this with her professional peers, and soon Ian was diagramming the relationships of numerous psychologists and their partners. There was no blame, no judgment, and no pathologizing involved in the process, so there was no resistance to understanding the truth. Taking this concept further, Ian returned to the organizational application, realizing that a team was basically a large couple, and began utilizing and teaching the Enneagram overtly in business settings. Once again, the model proved remarkably successful, and people were able to connect with each other and communicate effectively, enhancing morale, productivity, and everything that the prior 25 years of consulting had been working toward. Once again, almost by accident, Ian was asked to help a couple of screenwriters with the dialogue and interaction between several characters in their screenplay. They figured that if Ian could help real people understand where their motivations and conflicts reside, why not apply it to fictional characters as well? In no time, the characters became almost real; having perspectives, worldviews, linguistic characteristics, and reacting to events and each other as real people would. Studying character traits, motivations, and interaction dynamics for most of his life, Ian saw why we believe certain characters, look up to (but don't believe) others, and how a character straying from their natural dynamic breaks the magic spell. It all sprang from the seeds of core ego-structure and survival strategies. This in turn was all beautifully modeled by the Enneagram, so it was just a matter of applying the right aspects to the right characters for the right reasons. “As George Gurdjieff, (who is credited with taking the Enneagram from an oral tradition to a written study) would point out, the Enneagram is more universally applicable than we will ever understand. And yet just the tip of this iceberg provides the schematics of our psyches, our communication, and our paths to spirituality and fulfillment.” – Ian Blei.
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