Are you writing a novel or a short story and trying to work out the details of your character?
Or, perhaps you’re in a relationship with a good guy and wondering why you thinking of dumping them. You’re not alone!
Good guys are typically seen as boring.
It may be because they don’t like to take risks, or perhaps because they don’t challenge the norms of society.
The truth is that generally no one is attracted to nice guys. Or not?
In the fifth article of Character Archetypes Series, we talk about Herald.
In the previous articles, we arrived at the last step of the Hero’s Journey. But let us stop for a moment in our narration, and return to the initial stage, that of the “Call to Adventure”.
We have always said that it is an event that starts the story. It is at this very moment, in this event, that we know the next archetype the Herald.
The Hero’s Journey begins with an inner need, a kidnapping of someone dear or with someone’s warning.
The key to successful writing is to understand who you are writing for.
If you are interested in writing, it’s not enough for you to have a vivid imagination and time to put words to paper.
You can start by letting your ideas pool and then create a storyline that you can work with. But, in order to successfully do this, you need to consider who you are writing for.
There’s a big difference between the style of the Harry Potter series and the Da Vinci Code. The difference isn’t in the writer or even defined by the genre, it’s in who the target audience is.
Understanding who will be reading your novel ensures you create a story that they will enjoy reading. This approach ensures you are aware of the most appropriate writing style to keep your reader engaged.
In the fourth article of Character Archetypes Series, we talk about Ally.
Our Hero has just crossed the First Threshold and has definitively abandoned the Ordinary World. He is now in the company of the Mentor, a fundamental character he met in the first stages of his Journey. He is, in fact, who pushes him to embark on this path.
However, this is not the only important character that the Hero meets. By approaching the first challenges that the character of the Ally is introduced.
Do you know how many times your characters meet each other? Do you know where the main character meets his lover for the first time?
This is the novel analysis and it’s really useful to have a clear vision of how our novel is structured.
So, does your novel writing software helps you to analyze your novel?
In the third article of Character Archetypes Series, we talk about Mentor.
To do this, let us resume our Hero’s Journey.
Our Hero, whom we talked about extensively in the previous article, has now just passed the third phase also called “Refusal of the Call”. Being faced with a difficult situation, he initially refuses to understand or undertake the physical journey.
It is precisely at this moment, in this fourth phase called “the Meeting with the Mentor” that he meets one of the most important characters for him and for the journey itself: the Mentor.
The Mentor acts as a compass for the Hero, advises him and guides him through the narrative.
Have you read Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare?
Do you remember when Romeo kills himself thinking that Juliet is dead? And then Juliet kills herself too?
If you do, you know that it is when the story reached its peak intensity, to its climax. Then, with the help of the falling actions, offered readers an interesting resolution.
In this article of Character Archetypes Series, we talk about Hero.
The Hero is the first of the Characters Archetypes.
Joseph Campbell in his work The Hero with a Thousand Faces talks about it in depth. Campbell’s studies also directly involved Christopher Vogler, a consultant for the Disney screenplays, who in the late 90s wrote a book taking cues from Campbell’s archetypes and his Hero’s Journey also called Monomyth, developing a useful book for the analysis of films and written stories.
So, we see in so many narratives, literary and cinematographic, that the protagonist leaves his “comfort zone” to go to another place to face challenges and inner demons that will lead him to change forever, and then return to his own world, with a different awareness of himself.
So you have got a big idea for your novel.
When you feel inspired, you sit down and write a few passages. The inspiration wears off and you stop.
After all, what’s the point of filling out pages with words if not guided by the inspiration?!
You think the fire of inspiration is what makes a novel so great.
An archetype, by definition, is the first example of something.
Carl Gustav Jung talked a lot about archetypes in the field of analytic psychology. He defined archetypes as the unconscious content of a group that replicates certain behaviors according to particular constants.
From these studies, Joseph Campbell, an American scholar of comparative mythology and history of religions, started to define the archetypes of a narrative, a canvas that guided every narration, albeit with different elements, protagonists, plot and historical periods.
His studies led to the publication in 1949 of the essay “The hero of a thousand faces“.