The Scientific Writer

Writing Personality: Creative Precision

Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history
to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

—Dwight Eisenhower

INTJ writers are single-minded in their pursuits. They tend to envision the conclusion even before they begin writing. With a talent for analysis, they’re skilled at communicating about technical subjects. But pragmatic INTJs tend to dismiss subjects that don’t seem rational or useful. Visualizing the big picture, they integrate the theoretical with the practical.

I: Introversion preferred to extraversion
INTJs get their energy from the internal world of thoughts and ideas. They enjoy interacting with small groups of people but find large groups draining. They generally reflect before acting.
N: iNtuition preferred to sensation
INTJs are abstract thinkers, placing more trust in flashes of insight than in experience. They’re less interested in sensory data than in the patterns perceived by the unconscious mind. INTJs tend to be intellectually restless—they want to change the world.
T: Thinking preferred to feeling
INTJs prefer to use their thinking function when making decisions. They place more emphasis on the rule of logic than on the effect that actions have on people. They tend to be skeptical in evaluating ideas, whether their own or someone else’s.
J: Judgment preferred to perception
INTJs are drawn to closure. They feel satisfied after finishing a project or reaching a decision. They think in terms of likelihoods rather than possibilities.


Writing Process of the INTJ
INTJs may approach a writing project in the following ways:

• Are conceptualizers who tend to explore a narrow topic deeply. They take a systems approach, rather than a linear one, during the planning stage. They may start a project early to test their concept, then quickly drive toward the conclusion. Once the bones are in place, INTJs further develop the content, adding facts to flesh out their ideas. If you take this approach, you may find it useful during revision to challenge yourself to consider alternatives, rather than locking yourself in to your original premise.
• Like to work independently. INTJs require long periods of concentration to form mental models. They focus deeply on the task, blocking out distractions. To facilitate this, find a secluded place to work. Schedule your writing for a time when you won’t be interrupted. Let others know that you need time alone.
• Are innovative problem-solvers who want control over the product and the process. INTJs are confident in their vision and want to bring it to life. Their writing can have a sense of inevitability, presenting an orderly progression of facts and ideas that can lead to only one possible conclusion. Their authoritative voice can instill a sense of comfort and trust in readers. Make sure that trust is warranted—use your natural skepticism to seek out possible flaws in your reasoning and research.
• Are motivated by their personal vision. Original thinkers, they have little regard for convention. They want things to make sense according to their own logical standards, and they will discard anything that doesn’t. For this reason, they tend to enjoy technical subjects. They often use visual aids that support and clarify their writing. If you’re an INTJ, one path to success as a writer is to draw on your natural curiosity about how things work and your talent for explaining this for others.

Potential Blind Spots of the INTJ
INTJs may experience the following pitfalls:

• Tend to be good at weeding out information that isn’t pertinent to the project. Be sure to keep audience needs in mind, however. Concise is good; terse is not. Where appropriate, include personal anecdotes to engage the reader. Don’t scale down to mere facts.
• Want to control their work and express their original ideas. Make sure you do so within the parameters of the project. If you’re a freelance writer, for example, remember that you’re writing for an editor, not for yourself. If something about the assignment doesn’t make sense to you, don’t ignore it—seek clarification.
• Set a high standard for themselves and can become frustrated if they can’t achieve it. Avoid pushing yourself toward an unrealistic goal. Tap into your desire for efficiency and recognize when 99% is good enough. And if you need help, ask for it. Other people don’t want you to be perfect—they want you to be human. Human is much more interesting.

Source: The INTJ Writing Personality: Creative*Precision | Andrea J. Wenger: Write*with*Personality

This seemed more focused on a technical writing bent.

It's a shame as INTJs can make great creative writers. Asimov being a prime example.

Originally Posted by Elyasis

This seemed more focused on a technical writing bent.

It's a shame as INTJs can make great creative writers. Asimov being a prime example.

I completely agree. Most of the articles in the MBTI writing series seemed bent that way, too, though. I think they were aimed towars perfecting your written voice in the work place.

Originally Posted by Elyasis

This seemed more focused on a technical writing bent.

It's a shame as INTJs can make great creative writers. Asimov being a prime example.

Well you can extrapolate. I'm in the process of writing a novel-length work right now. Months later and not one word has been written. But when I get down to write the novel will write itself because every detail will have been sorted out. It fits in with the goal oriented writing described in the article- I will never write a meandering story that doesn't known when to die already. I already know the end and how to get there, how I want the major characters to develop and how many rough plot arcs there will be. I just haven't decided on minor details yet. Which is why I also hate TV shows that drag out (like Heroes​). A fiction writer in my opinion should know where he's going, or he's going to end up nowhere at all.

Originally Posted by Persephone

Well you can extrapolate. I'm in the process of writing a novel-length work right now. Months later and not one word has been written. But when I get down to write the novel will write itself because every detail will have been sorted out. It fits in with the goal oriented writing described in the article- I will never write a meandering story that doesn't known when to die already. I already know the end and how to get there, how I want the major characters to develop and how many rough plot arcs there will be. I just haven't decided on minor details yet. Which is why I also hate TV shows that drag out (like Heroes​). A fiction writer in my opinion should know where he's going, or he's going to end up nowhere at all.

I always have a crystal clear idea of where I want something to go. Ends are easy, not much difference between one end and the next. The middle part of any story trips me up. I have to make bullet points with ideas while I'm charged up or I'll stop writing halfway in. I love the beginning too much so I often skip planning just to write for hours and hours while everything is clear in my head. Essentially I'm doomed to a lot of unfinished stories.

Originally Posted by Fern

I completely agree. Most of the articles in the MBTI writing series seemed bent that way, too, though. I think they were aimed towars perfecting your written voice in the work place.

Some of the things they posted also work for creative writing.

Tend to be good at weeding out information that isn’t pertinent to the project. Be sure to keep audience needs in mind, however. Concise is good; terse is not. Where appropriate, include personal anecdotes to engage the reader. Don’t scale down to mere facts.

Like that.

Originally Posted by Elyasis

I always have a crystal clear idea of where I want something to go. Ends are easy, not much difference between one end and the next. The middle part of any story trips me up. I have to make bullet points with ideas while I'm charged up or I'll stop writing halfway in. I love the beginning too much so I often skip planning just to write for hours and hours while everything is clear in my head. Essentially I'm doomed to a lot of unfinished stories.

Haha believe me this is very tempting. I have an awesome beginning planned. It was all sci-fi'y and dystopian and weird, morbid shit are going on (kids disappearing or turning up dead), and my characters (who are all kids) are not fazed because they're all living in their little heads and only care about their little lives not caring what this might all mean for them... I actually think that's one of the coolest expositions I've come up with so far. But I'm afraid the story will run away with me. The danger of not having a proper outline is that once you start writing you can quickly realize your story sort of got the better of you, and you're not reaching the right milestones. Any attempt to turn it around might result in...

1. rewrites. Lots of it
2. plot holes
3. deus ex machina and WTF moments
4. ragequit

Must go plan more, in typical INTJ fashion.

PS have you ever planned so much that by the end you felt like you'd already written the story, so when you actually get down to writing you've lost interest? This is another danger I face right now, unfortunately...

Originally Posted by Persephone

PS have you ever planned so much that by the end you felt like you'd already written the story, so when you actually get down to writing you've lost interest? This is another danger I face right now, unfortunately...

Well, I tried just doing planning once but then my planning document turned into the story. Bullet points kind of got away from me. It's a gift and a curse.

I leave the story for another time if I'm starting to get burnt out on it. I'll write something shorter to clear my head. Or do some other activities. That way I can come back to it because I want to work on it. Not because I feel like I need to.

Interesting, this will be useful for improving my writing skills. I only have written fanfiction, and I've never planned a novel, but still I began to diverge from my original ideas, mixing concepts from different series for creating a different version of Digimon. Yeah, that series is childish, so my goal was to do something more complex, and for that I used other concepts that aren't found in that anime.

Besides, I always tend to write crossovers, somehow they're more fun for me because you have to plan a lot for creating a coherent story, and you have different possibilities for writing the fanfic.

I'm also slow at writing, even I can have a dry spell during a whole year. I also get the point that when I have planned the story I tend to lose interest.