Caitlin's Pages
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” ~Virginia Woolf
Writers can use these 12 Archetypes to create characters
The 12 Common Archetypes by Carl Golden
The twelve archetypes are divided into ego types, self types, and soul types.
1) The Four Ego Types
1. The Innocent
Motto: Free to be you and me
Core desire: to get to paradise
Goal: to be happy
Greatest fear: to be punished for doing something bad or wrong
Strategy: to do things right
Weakness: boring for all their naive innocence
Talent: faith and optimism
The Innocent is also known as: Utopian, traditionalist, naive, mystic, saint, romantic, dreamer.
2. The Orphan/Regular Guy or Gal
Motto: All men and women are created equal
Core Desire: connecting with others
Goal: to belong
Greatest fear: to be left out or to stand out from the crowd
Strategy: develop ordinary solid virtues, be down to earth, the common touch
Weakness: losing one’s own self in an effort to blend in or for the sake of superficial relationships
Talent: realism, empathy, lack of pretence
The Regular Person is also known as: The good old boy, everyman, the person next door, the realist, the working stiff, the solid citizen, the good neighbour, the silent majority.
3. The Hero
Motto: Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Core desire: to prove one’s worth through courageous acts
Goal: expert mastery in a way that improves the world
Greatest fear: weakness, vulnerability, being a “chicken”
Strategy: to be as strong and competent as possible
Weakness: arrogance, always needing another battle to fight
Talent: competence and courage
The Hero is also known as: The warrior, crusader, rescuer, superhero, the soldier, dragon slayer, the winner and the team player.
4. The Caregiver
Motto: Love your neighbour as yourself
Core desire: to protect and care for others
Goal: to help others
Greatest fear: selfishness and ingratitude
Strategy: doing things for others
Weakness: martyrdom and being exploited
Talent: compassion, generosity
The Caregiver is also known as: The saint, altruist, parent, helper, supporter.
2) The Four Soul Types
5. The Explorer
Motto: Don’t fence me in
Core desire: the freedom to find out who you are through exploring the world
Goal: to experience a better, more authentic, more fulfilling life
Biggest fear: getting trapped, conformity, and inner emptiness
Strategy: journey, seeking out and experiencing new things, escape from boredom
Weakness: aimless wandering, becoming a misfit
Talent: autonomy, ambition, being true to one’s soul
The explorer is also known as: The seeker, iconoclast, wanderer, individualist, pilgrim.
6. The Rebel
Motto: Rules are made to be broken
Core desire: revenge or revolution
Goal: to overturn what isn’t working
Greatest fear: to be powerless or ineffectual
Strategy: disrupt, destroy, or shock
Weakness: crossing over to the dark side, crime
Talent: outrageousness, radical freedom
The Outlaw is also known as: The rebel, revolutionary, wild man, the misfit, or iconoclast.
7. The Lover
Motto: You’re the only one
Core desire: intimacy and experience
Goal: being in a relationship with the people, work and surroundings they love
Greatest fear: being alone, a wallflower, unwanted, unloved
Strategy: to become more and more physically and emotionally attractive
Weakness: outward-directed desire to please others at risk of losing own identity
Talent: passion, gratitude, appreciation, and commitment
The Lover is also known as: The partner, friend, intimate, enthusiast, sensualist, spouse, team-builder.
8. The Creator
Motto: If you can imagine it, it can be done
Core desire: to create things of enduring value
Goal: to realize a vision
Greatest fear: mediocre vision or execution
Strategy: develop artistic control and skill
Task: to create culture, express own vision
Weakness: perfectionism, bad solutions
Talent: creativity and imagination
The Creator is also known as: The artist, inventor, innovator, musician, writer or dreamer.
3) The Four Self Types
9. The Jester
Motto: You only live once
Core desire: to live in the moment with full enjoyment
Goal: to have a great time and lighten up the world
Greatest fear: being bored or boring others
Strategy: play, make jokes, be funny
Weakness: frivolity, wasting time
Talent: joy
The Jester is also known as: The fool, trickster, joker, practical joker or comedian.
10. The Sage
Motto: The truth will set you free
Core desire: to find the truth.
Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world.
Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.
Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and understanding thought processes.
Weakness: can study details forever and never act.
Talent: wisdom, intelligence.
The Sage is also known as: The expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher, academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher, contemplative.
11. The Magician
Motto: I make things happen.
Core desire: understanding the fundamental laws of the universe
Goal: to make dreams come true
Greatest fear: unintended negative consequences
Strategy: develop a vision and live by it
Weakness: becoming manipulative
Talent: finding win-win solutions
The Magician is also known as: The visionary, catalyst, inventor, charismatic leader, shaman, healer, medicine man.
12. The Ruler
Motto: Power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Core desire: control
Goal: create a prosperous, successful family or community
Strategy: exercise power
Greatest fear: chaos, being overthrown
Weakness: being authoritarian, unable to delegate
Talent: responsibility, leadership
The Ruler is also known as: The boss, leader, aristocrat, king, queen, politician, role model, manager or administrator.Note: There are four cardinal orientations: freedom, social, ego, order. The types have a place on these orientations.
Article via soulcraft.co
(via writeworld)
“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”
(Source: noseinabook, via yeahwriters)
The Writers Helpers: Character Development: P.O.V and Background
One of the key elements of character development is the ability to see through your character’s eyes. Get a good look at how they see the world, what they perceive as good or bad and WHY they perceive it as good or bad.
You need to think about where that person came from….
10 Reasons You Should Do NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is just around the bend! How around the bend? The sites are launching this week; that’s right, this week. Are you unsure about committing to writing a novel this November? Are there people you want to convince to join the world’s biggest writing event? Or do you just need to explain why you’ll be writing a novel this November?
You’re in the right place, because we have ten great reasons why you should do NaNoWriMo:
1. Because you get this deep down feeling in your bones after you read an amazing story; a need to drop everything right then and write something, too. Because every once in a while, while riding your bike, you mull over the dream you had last night and suddenly wish you were being chauffeured so you could whip out a pen and jot that bit of dialogue down and see where it takes you.
WriteWorld: The Basics of Creating a Likeable Character
Creating a Likeable Character from the Ground Up – The Basics
So maybe you have a character in your mind that you’ve been gestating, just waiting to give birth too. (Not the best metaphor in the book, Hannah. But then again, writing can be bloody, painful, and just…
Undergraduate Publishing Programs: What’s the Advantage?
We’ve had some people writing in about publishing and education lately, and I think this article (written by an intern at the website I interned at last summer, Publishing Trendsetter) sums it up really, really well. Check it out!
Also funny that she’s the second intern at Trendsetter who started out in the Emerson Writing, Literature, and Publishing program and then left!
The Writers Helpers: Eight Tips to Bring Your Setting to Life
by Anne Marble
Description is something that gets in the way of many authors. Why? Well, because it’s so darn hard to write. And no wonder. If you’re not careful, descriptive sequences can become static, even dull. Writing action and dialogue is so much more fun. On top of…
(via work-of-fiction)
What Kind of Book Reader Are You? A Diagnostics Guide -- The Atlantic Wire
“We, too, have occasionally set one good book down and picked up another, and forgotten the first nearly entirely, even though we’d been quite smitten with it before. Sometimes we engage in threeways, fourways, or even orgies of reading, in which there are so many books involved, well, we might not even be keeping track. It’s horrible, isn’t it? But, for as many books as exist, there are also any number of different reading types a book lover (or even a book hater) might demonstrate. What kind are you?”
(Source: beardtv, via penandpoison)
WriteWorld: Symbolism for the Symbolically Challenged
As I said in an early post, I really really suck at identifying symbolism in literature. Symbolic scenes generally just look like tripped out nonsense to me. (I’m looking at you, green light in The Great Gatsby!) But writing something sometimes requires me to use symbolism…
Thinking of them as real people, even using real people as inspiration, is will make your characters more three-dimensional.
ACD
