Over the next coming week and a half (or so), I'm going to be breaking down a variety of important archetypes that reflect the roles of characters in stories. These are distinct from things like personality archetypes: personality archetypes reflect standard modes of action, while this will focus more on the broader narrative archetypes; think of this more like Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey rather than something like Pearson's archetypes, which give a great insight into the mind but do not focus on characters in a narrative sense (though, of course, characters can be used in Pearson's model to illustrate the archetypes).
The purpose of this series is two-fold: understanding archetypes permits a better understanding of how we tell stories and why and also provides better tools for writers and storytellers struggling to create compelling narratives.
Archetypes are deeply tied to symbols as well, and learning archetypes helps further connect a variety of stories and forms together; I strongly suggest Jung's Man and His Symbols (affiliate link) as a potential source for further reading, as it helps tie the symbolic and archetypal elements of stories together through comparative analysis via analytical psychology; however, no prior understanding is required.
Each of these character archetypes reflects a role that a character can play in a story, and I'll be updating the list below with links to each article as they release.
- Hero
- Herald
- Underdog
- Mentor
- Trickster
- Ally (Part 1) (Part 2)
- Villain (Part 1) (Part 2)
- Shapeshifter (Part 1) (Part 2)
- Outsider
- Serpent
For each of these archetypes, I'll be looking at the narrative implications, some examples, and derivative forms of the archetype, as well as how they can be used in both general storytelling and game narratives.