The hero or heroine is an archetypal character that sets out on a quest for something, then returns home, changed.
It's common to mention the best-known male heroes, but don't forget the many woman who fit this archetype, such as Katniss Everdeen ( The Hunger Games), Dorothy Gale ( The Wizard of Oz), and even, perhaps, Bridget Jones.
Archetypal characters provide a scaffolding, in some ways, saving you from having to say too much about a character, but showing how they act in accord with their archetypes. Here are some common archetypal characters in literature that you can use for inspiration: The Hero As mentioned above, once you've discovered Jack Reacher, you know a lot more about him, because of his character archetype. While you don't want all your characters to be copies of Jack Reacher or Luke Skywalker, it can be useful to examine your characters and see how they fit into the schemas of archetypes. George Lucas later used this book as a template for the first Star Wars movie, and many in Hollywood adopted Campbell's ideas. Joseph Campbell went on to sketch out the "hero's journey" archetype in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, where he compared myths and legends across cultures and centuries to highlight how this specific archetypal character and situation was used in stories from thousands of years ago. Jung suggested that these archetypes were known all throughout the world, and throughout history, and are part of our collective unconscious, or the shared mental concepts of all of humanity. As you discover the character, you feel that you know him, because he matches traits that you are instinctively familiar with.įirst elucidated by Plato, archetypes were codified by Carl Jung, notably in his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
When you read one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher mysteries, you know the character: the knight errant, the do-gooder, the loner. Some of these are as old as human experience, and have been repeated across the centuries, and across cultures. When you create a familiar archetype, the reader is able to fill in the blanks, knowing a lot about the character or situation. Archetypes are ideas that are so ingrained in humanity that they can be represented simply.
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