Leslie Hinson on the Enneagram, Core Misbeliefs, and Why Your Friends Would Make Terrible Characters
by Writing Workshops Staff
29 minutes ago
Leslie Hinson loves her friends. They are reliable, generous, forgiving, the kind of people you'd call at 3 a.m. She would also never put them in a novel. "People you'd want to be friends with don't often make the best characters," she says, and that inversion is at the heart of Character from the Inside Out: The Enneagram as a Fiction Writer's Tool, a one-day online seminar she's teaching on Saturday, February 6, 2027, at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
Hinson, whose debut novel Salomé was published by Putnam in May 2026 under the name Leslie Baird, has spent years as a ghostwriter, editor, and book coach, building believable people on the page for a living. In this seminar, she hands over her favorite tool: the Enneagram, a map of nine personality types, each organized around a core misbelief. Type 1 believes it is not okay to make mistakes. From that one wrong idea, you can derive a backstory, a deepest fear, a deepest want, and a plot that presses where it hurts.
Students leave with a completed character-arc worksheet for a character in their own project, a plain-language breakdown of all nine types to keep at their desk, and a sharper sense of which pressures will break their protagonist and which ones won't. No prior Enneagram knowledge required. No faith in personality tests required, either.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Leslie:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Leslie. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Leslie Hinson: I'm Leslie, an American novelist, ghostwriter, editor, and book coach living in Lisbon, Portugal. Before I moved to Lisbon, I lived in Nashville for fifteen years. My debut novel, Salomé, was published by Putnam in May of 2026 under the name Leslie Baird. I have a writing retreat company called Travels With, and I'm currently planning our second retreat to France in April of 2027. I am really into pigeon rescue. (You read that correctly, and it is exactly what it sounds like.) I hate AI, and if you tell me I have to adopt it or get left behind, I'll give you the same look I give people who think they're clever by calling pigeons "rats with wings." (Way to assume I don't like rats.) When I'm not working, I'm usually writing, traveling, dreaming of traveling, nursing pigeons back to health, snuggling with my cats, or walking up a steep hill in Lisbon in search of a veggie burger.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Leslie Hinson: People you'd want to be friends with don't often make the best characters. My friends are the absolute best. Reliable, trustworthy, generous, mature, intelligent, interesting, forgiving... but put a bunch of us in a room together, and while it may be fun and fulfilling to experience, it wouldn't necessarily be good to recreate on the page. We need to write about people whose core misbeliefs are really firing off due to the external circumstances. We kind of have to torture our characters, and if everyone is incredibly reasonable, that can lead to nowhere, tension-wise. That doesn't mean your characters have to be monsters by any means! But we do need friction to come from somewhere.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Leslie Hinson: They will know how to pair a character's core misbelief with a circumstance that puts a lot of pressure on them.
"We kind of have to torture our characters, and if everyone is incredibly reasonable, that can lead to nowhere, tension-wise."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Leslie Hinson: Basically the entire story "Our Dope Future" in Tony Tulathimutte's REJECTION. The narrator hopelessly mixes multiple generations' worth of slang into a several-thousand-word online forum complaint about his ex-girlfriend. I reread it because it's a masterclass in voice, and falls in that uncomfortable gray area just short of outright satire. Here's a sample: "sometimes you heaux really wield your tears like tear gas!"
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Leslie Hinson: Learning about what Rebecca Makkai refers to as "the ear of the story" really blew open the concept of voice for me. It rolls up the idea of POV, voice, and narrative distance into something that feels sensory for me. Basically, the ear is not the reader, but the intended listener, whether that person is named or not. If you wrote a memoir intended for only your sister to read, you'd use a completely different register than if you wrote it for your boss, or a stranger, or for your great-grandmother who passed away before the internet was invented. How much do you need to explain to the ear so they can understand the story? Are your references inter-personal, cultural, or specific to a certain in-group but not another? Is the intended listener part of that group or not? All of these questions inform your voice, tone, register, and can also create a sense of mystery if the book is written for an ear that is much closer than the reader is. And when the ear is all over the place, it can make prose feel jarring. I use the ear constantly when I ghostwrite, and it's the craft I rely on the most to capture an author's voice. My professor Ryan Chapman taught this concept in a workshop I took for my MFA program. He shared Rebecca Makkai's Tin House podcast episode where she describes the ear, and I've listened to it multiple times since.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, a small, specific technique.
Leslie Hinson: Giving information on a "need to know" basis. I notice it all the time and think, "Nice."
Leslie teaches the way she writes: specific tools, no filler. Spend one Saturday with her and leave with a character roadmap you'll use on every book you write.
Enroll in the Enneagram Fiction Workshop →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Leslie Hinson: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by Gil Durán. I've been following Durán's journalism for a while now and found it incredibly helpful when I was writing my own novel (where American tech billionaires are funding a French "wellness company" that has much more insidious purposes). I think everyone needs to know how tech billionaires are literally trying to replace the US government with corporations, where CEOs are basically kings. Wouldn't that be nice for them?
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Leslie Hinson: I've heard from many graduates of prestigious MFA programs that they learned not to write in the first person POV because it is inferior to third person. What? No it isn't! It's fine to have your personal writing preferences, but to call one inferior annoys me. Some of the best novels of the past few years have been in first person. I can't imagine Mona Awad's BUNNY being in third person.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Leslie Hinson: Being a full time writer has many occupational hazards. Carpal tunnel, frozen shoulders, neck issues, etc. If you want a long term writing career, you need to take care of your body just as much as you take care of your mind. Take it from someone who couldn't turn her head at all for about six months in 2024. Physical therapy and myo-fascial massages get expensive quickly. Doing yoga a couple of times a week is a lot more sustainable than trying to fix the problem after it has already gotten bad.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Leslie Hinson: In middle school, I read Black Beauty multiple times. Of course, many many children's books are written from the POV of an animal, but Black Beauty was a novel for adults. I was a total horse girl, and I loved the idea of Anna Sewell writing this book to help readers empathize with horses. It was exciting for me to realize that art could have a much deeper purpose than entertainment alone. Unsurprisingly, most of my projects include a character who advocates for animals.
"It was exciting for me to realize that art could have a much deeper purpose than entertainment alone."
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Leslie Hinson: So enthusiastic, it's clear this is my favorite thing to do.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Leslie Hinson: I used to work as a piano tuner. It's kind of like editing a piano.
Build a Character Readers Believe
One Saturday on Zoom, nine types, one worksheet, and a protagonist who finally behaves like a person. Tuition is $99, and seats in this live seminar won't last. Pull up a chair, and bring your most unreasonable character.
Join Leslie Hinson on Saturday, February 6, 2027, and leave with a character-building roadmap you'll use on every book after this one.
Save Your Seat in the Enneagram Fiction Workshop →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
