The Individualist Who Cried Wolf

Exploring voice and POV through Enneagrams - #4 The Individualist

Jun 16, 2025

This is an experiment in point of view and character voice. In this series, I’m using the Enneagram personality system to explore how core fears, desires, and motivations shape the way a character experiences and narrates their story.

For writers, it’s a tool to deepen character psychology and craft more consistent inner lives.
For AI users, it’s a way to refine prompts and emotional tone—especially when writing complex or conflicted characters.
For readers, it’s a path to better understanding character motivation—and maybe even yourself—through stories told from the inside out.

Let’s find out what changes when we tell a familiar tale through a different emotional core.

🐺 The Original Fable: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

A young shepherd boy grew bored watching his flock and thought it would be fun to cry, “Wolf! Wolf!” to trick the villagers. They came running, only to find nothing.

He laughed. He did it again. More villagers came. No wolf.

Then one day, a real wolf came. The boy cried out, but no one came to help. The wolf scattered the flock and left the boy weeping.

Moral: Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth.

📝 Retelling: The Individualist as the Boy Who Cried Wolf

No one sees the hill the way I do.

To them it’s pasture—grass, stones, sheep. To me, it’s a cathedral of wind and silence. The trees speak in hushes. The sky writes riddles in cloud-script I can almost read.

But they don’t ask about that. They just say, “Watch the sheep.”

I do. I always do.

But no one sees me. Not really. Not the way I ache to be seen.

So I called out—“Wolf!”—just to stir the air. To make the villagers look. And they did, briefly, with eyes full of panic and purpose.

For one breathless moment, I mattered.

After they left, angry and deceived, I sat beneath the linden tree and whispered an apology to the earth. Not for lying. For needing to lie. For needing anything at all.

The second time, I told myself it was performance art.

They came again, and left sharper, colder. The air around me thickened with their disappointment.

Still, no one asked why.

Then the real wolf came—gray as dusk, eyes like voids, breath steaming in the wind. The sheep screamed and scattered.

I called out, same as before. Louder. Desperate.

But I’d told my story too many times. And now, no one believed the real one.

No one came.

Afterward, I buried one of the lambs beneath the linden. I marked the grave with stones. Not just to grieve—but to make her loss mean something.

They ask why I don’t speak anymore. But what would I say?

That I used up all my words on the wrong moments? And now the right ones come too late?

They’d only shake their heads and walk away.

📚 If You’re Enjoying These Fable Retellings…

You might love my speculative short story collections under the Echoes of Aesop series.

Each book takes one of Aesop’s ancient fables and explores its themes through original speculative fiction—experience these timeless stories from the viewpoint of mermaids, vampires, ghosts, and aliens while they struggle to survive in settings that include desert caravans, space stations, haunted mansions and alternate realities.

Available now on Amazon.

💡 Enneagram Type 4 – The Individualist

Core Desire: To be unique, authentic, and deeply known
Core Fear: Being insignificant, mundane, or emotionally cut off

Additional writing prompts, including AI prompts, are available for paid subscribers:

Narrative POV Style: An Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist tells a story like a poem set on fire. Their voice is rich, emotional, symbolic, and often nostalgic or melancholic. They process the world through beauty and longing—sometimes for what was, sometimes for what can never be. Expect powerful imagery and big emotional undercurrents, with a yearning for identity and truth.
💬 The Individualist POV Prompts for AI Writers
- Your Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist character seeks meaning and emotional truth. Ask: What wounds have they woven into their identity? What beauty do they cling to even in despair?
- Write in the voice of an Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist—lyrical, emotionally raw, symbol-laden. Let longing and aesthetic sensitivity color the tone.
- Rewrite this [line of dialogue] with the intensity and uniqueness of an Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist. Make it poetic, vulnerable, or achingly precise.