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Archetypes 

A character archetype is a literary device that puts you characters into a box on the basis of their traits and features. It sets a mould out of which characters are formed. An original which has since been imitated, again and again, with newer twists, hidden crooks, and unknown potentials. 

“Plot or character? Which is more important? This debate is as old as the art…The argument is specious. We cannot ask which is more important, structure or character, because structure is character; character is structure. They’re the same thing, and therefore one cannot be more important than the other.”

As a reader, this is how you categorise and recognise the characters you read and then base your assumption and theories about how you expect the story to go. Soem character archetypes are universal in the sense that they have to be used in almost every story. For instance, take the Hero and the Villain. As soon as you identify the Hero and the Villain of the story, you expect the story to go a certain way, with both the Hero and the Villian on opposite sides. You expect them to be different and for their motives to clash. 

Hero is, in the classic sense of the word, a distinguished, brave, and legendary character whose main goal (in brief) is to be on the right side of the moral compass. It comes from the Greek word heros, meaning literally protector or defender. 

In modern literature, Hero is used to refer to the main character of any piece of fiction. The term is often used interchangeably with the term Protagonist. However, there is a clear distinction between the two. 

The Protagonist of any novel is the leading character of that story, and the protagonist may or may not be the Hero of the story. While the word Protagonist is relevant to the point of view of the character, the word Hero pertains to the morality of the character. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins is the protagonist but not the Hero of the story.

Similarly, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist is John Watson, but the Hero (if he can be called that) is Sherlock Holmes. The Hero of Six of Crows by Leigh bardugo is no one because no character is set in the conventional sides of black and white. Everyone has flaws and eveyone has committed crimes, the only difference is that of the degree and the desperation. 

The morally grey protagonist is often called the Antihero.

As with Protagonist and Hero, there is also a similar noticeable distinction between Antagonist and Villain of a story. While the Antagonist is against the protagonist because of mostly personal reasons, the Villain is often evil and malicious (whatever that means, today) and by virtue of these qualities is against the Hero. Not every antagonist is the villain of the story. 

Voldemort is the Villain in the Harry Potter series. Sauron in the Villain of Lord of the Rings. Professor Umbridge is an antagonist in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Severus Snape is an antagonist. 

In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Luke Castellan is an Antagonist while Cronos is the Villain. 

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is an antagonist and so is George Wickam. In Because when you start moving from fantasy to realistic fiction, the term evil becomes more and more ambiguous. There are no clear lines between good and evil. 

There is no clear definition of a Villain. An ‘antagonist’ and a ‘protagonist’ is easier to identify based on the characters motives and viewpoints. 

There are hundreds of character archetypes ranging from Sidekick to Henchmen to the western realistic Nerd to the wise Mentor and the rebellious Outlaw and so on. The Dumb Muscle, the Femme Fatale, the Damsle in Distress, the Knight in Shining Armor, the Leader, the Joker, the Love Interest, the Tragic Hero, the Innocent, the Father Figure, the Girl Next Door, the Boy Next Door, the Goth, the Loner, the Drama Queen, the Himbo, the Mad Scientist are some of the many fictional archetypes.

Why Do We Have Archetypes?

As a writer, archetypes are the way the writer is given the opportunity to communicate with the reader. Archetypes are how writers engage the reader and play with their expectations of how the characters will behave. 

As a reader, archetypes are how we identify the characters and put them in a box. It is a sort of mental shortcut, and  our brain likes it when we reduce the work it has to do in remembering all the characters and their motivation. These mental shortcuts are also a reason why stereotyping comes easy to most of us. 

One important reason people hold stereotypes is that doing so can conserve the cognitive effort that may be used for other tasks (Bodenhausen, 1993; Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994). So categorising people according to their group membership can be efficient for human beings who often act like “cognitive misers” and invest the least amount of cognitive effort possible in many situations.

Robert A Baron, Social Psychology

Archetypes work in the same way, as they reduce the mental work we have to do on remembering the motivations and attributes of each different character. For instance, when we read the Harry Potter series, we know that Voldemort is the Villain and therefore morally wrong, cruel and selfish. We likewise know that Albus Dumbledore is wise, being the Mentor. 

We don’t always label these characters as such in our mind consciously, but if we think about it, we always do know which character is the Sidekick and which is the Rebellious outlaw. We identify them in our subconscious.

However, one must remember that there is a major difference between archetypes and stereotypes. While archetypes are neutral in the sense that they are purely technical, stereotypes are often negative and demeaning as they reduce an individual or a group to a single set of characteristic taken as the primary defining feature of their being. 

Tropes 

Tropes are so fun to work with, as a writer, and equally fun to identify and dissect, as a reader. There are counteless tropes. 

The Chosen One, where a typically heroic character is chosen by destiny to fulfil a specific purpose of undertake an exhilarating quest. (Eg. Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins.)

Found Family Trope, where a group of diverse yet (sometimes) like minded strangers find their way together and create a little family of their own, bound not by blood but by hearts. (Eg. The Six of Crows by Leigh Baurdugo, Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan)

The Miscommunication Trope, which can be extremely frustrating or unbelievably hilarious depending on the genre you’re writing. (It’s hilarious in comedy and frustrating in almost everything else, especially romance.)

Enemies to Lovers Trope, a romance trope in which, well, enemies become lovers. (Eg. Pride and Prejudice)

The Fish Out of Water, where a character finds themselves in an unfamiliar setting in which they find it hard to fit in. (Eg, Harry Potterand the Sorceror’s Stone)

Forbidden Romance (also called Star Crossed Lovers) where two individuals from opposite sides, cultures, or families get swept up in a forbidden and often inconvenient romance that ends badly in most cases, though there always are exceptions. (Eg. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)

Happily Ever After (HEA), where somehow, everything always works out for the best in the end, despite all the obstacle conflicts that might have been present throughout the story. ‘They all lived happily ever after’. (Eg. Cinderella)

The Evil Twin, in which a character, usually the protagonist, has a morally opposite twin who is set against them.

These are only a few handful examples of tropes found in fiction. If you are interested in exploring them further, you might check out Tv Tropes for a comprehensive list. 

As a writer, one cannot escape tropes and archetypes. 

One of the biggest mistake of a writer is to mistake Tropes, Archetypes and Genres for clichés and not acknowledge their existence. These are the building blocks of any literary work. They find their way into a story no matter what because the story is made of them. 

However, this does not mean that they cannot degenerate into clichés if they’re treated without any innovation or creativity. 

How to avoid clichés 

When a character trope or archetype has been so overused and repeated that it has become boring, it has degenerated into cliché.

Clichés are hard to work around, because at some point, everything is a cliche. Everything has been done before and if you’re too scared of clichés, you might just give up, thinking ‘why do it again?’. 

But then again, one needs to understand that in writing, as in life, there are no hard lines to separate the black from the white. As a writer, one needs to admit and accept the existence of gray areas and one needs to learn to live in them. Because they are all that exist. 

The only thing that avoids Clichés is when a writer plays with tropes and archetypes. Don’t be afraid of them, don’t ignore them, don’t treat them as if they don’t exist. But play with them, turn them upside down and look beneath the surface to find what you can make out of them. Challenge them. Claim them. Make them yours. 

Writers are Magicians

Writers are magicians and if characters archetypes and tropes are like the tools in a magicians invisible toolbox (bc magicianks told are never visible) there are also certain tricks up the magician’s sleeve that they use to capture your eyes. 

If the tropes and the archetypes are the cards in the writer’s hands, then tricks like subversion, inversion, deconstruction are the tricks with which they play with the eyes of the reader—the tricks they use to make the card vanish and reappear in your pocket. 

Writers are like magicians, and one can never completely count the number of tricks they have stored up their sleeves. 

Subversion

When a writer sets up the expectation of a particular trope being used and then doesn’t, after all, use it, it’s the classic case of subversion of trope. 

In Howl’s Moving Castle, the author Diana Wynn Jones presents different layers to her characters and their personalities by using such tricks as these up her her sleeves. 

The protagonist, Sophie is the eldest of three sisters who is cursed by a witch to be an old woman. She goes off on an adventure and happens upon the moving castle of the infamous wizard Howl Pendragon. Once inside the castle, Sophie makes a deal with the fire demon Calcifer who promises to lift her curse of she can break his contract with the Wizard Howl. 

At first glance, the reader expects Howl to be an arrogant and grumpy sort of character, all filled up with dark secrets and quiet strength. He is set up to be the misunderstood Hero.

What he turns out to be, however, is a painfully human character who is made out of  40% cowardice and 40% narcissism and 20% of pure, raw drama. He avoids things, he runs, his castle can move for god’s sake. He eats the hearts of pretty girls, metaphorically, and even that is an avoidance technique, a plea for attention, a mask to veil the truth. 

Deconstruction

Deconstructing a Trope or an Archetype is a very precise and very satisfying process to stripping it down to its bare minimal and then revealing the contradictions and the issues therein.

There are several ways of deconstruction of trope, genre and character types and all of them have a similar and lingering sense of one’s thought process and mindset being subtly yet permanently altered. When writers deconstruct something, they take it apart layer by layer. They challenge it and question it and by extension they question the society which gave birth to it. They question their surroundings in the most beautiful and the most influential way possible.

Tricks like Subversion and Deconstruction of tropes and archetypes is a clever and appealing literary move which makes a story engaging and new, while giving it hidden depths and meanings. 

If you found this post helpful, you can also check out the Elements of Storytelling.