Are 'Stock Characters' Taboo?

We’ve all read about “stock characters.” They’re the equivalent of trite expressions. (Poison pills, right?) Let’s take a look at how they originated. Today’s stock characters began as yesterday’s fascinatingly original ones. Readers and viewers loved them. They became iconic. Authors copied them. After years of such tribute, they became debased by overuse.

I’ll begin by stating that I think it’s okay to use both stock characters and trite expressions if we employ them as we do unusual words—sparingly. Stocks seem to work fine as minor characters where they can serve as a sort of shorthand to convey an entire situation or setting quickly. I think they can be used for main characters also so long as significant modification and evolution occur as the story progresses.

The ideal, of course, is to create original characters. But how? Since we cannot imagine anything (see it, hear it, feel it) that we have not experienced either directly or vicariously, we imagine by rearranging our images to picture them in new ways. I try to develop my characters by patterning them after people I know. Then I add, subtract, or exaggerate traits. After that, I let them develop themselves in a logical manner as the story proceeds. This way, even characters that begin as stock transform into ones that are not.

What are your thoughts? What is your method?