The Practical Guide to Using Character Archetypes in Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Character archetypes are a useful tool in creating characters for a novel.

At some point in your writing journey, you’ve probably come across the term archetype. This has no doubt led you to articles quoting Carl Jung (the father of psychology) and his twelve character types. Pursuing that further, led to multiple articles about the variations of those and the common archetypes used in fiction.

And then your head likely started spinning and you wondered how the heck any of that was going to help you write a better novel.

Personally, I think there’s a difference between Jungian archetypes and fictional archetypes. Jung’s focus was on defining the human psyche, not telling a grand tale, so his list tends be more thematic in nature. Which is great if you’re writing literary fiction with Deep and Meaningful Themes, but not so great for the rest of us.

Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com