45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters

I found this book more than helpful for writing characters. I have several books on this topic and this is one of the best that I have encountered. Each chapter is well organized and easy to understand. The author makes reference to characters in TV, film, novels, and history that most of us would recognize. Each chapter covers how the character should act, what his or her fears may be, how others perceive the character and gives ideas on how to develop a character arc. Each archetype is shown as a "hero" and as a "villain" with great detail given to each (and a summary at the end, in case you need to quickly reference). I found the information as a starting point to character creation. When discussing archetypes, I always see them as "shadows". What I mean is that they lack depth. However, you can take these and build to make original characters. To anyone who is interested in building more colorful characters and keeping them in character, I recommended this book.

Fiction is not reality. I had forgotten this when I was creating the characters in my current book. My characters were complex, but were not compelling. They were boring. They didn't interest me and would not interest a reader. 45 Master Characters fixed that problem for me. For example, I had a character who is a woman trying to advance in a company. I had muddled ideas of whether she should be using sex to try to get ahead, how soft or tough she should be, and how she should think. 45 Master Characters helped me see that she fell into the category of the Father's Daughter. An archetype exemplified by Athena, Captain Janeway and Murphy Brown. Once I knew this I was able to see that she would not use sex to get ahead, that she would be fairly tough minded, and that she would be independent. I dropped a family from her backstory, removed any thoughts of her using sex to get ahead and generally tightened my picture of her. Ironically, my backstory included significant influence from her father, so I was already seeing glimmers of the "Father's Daughter" archetype before the book made it clear. Schmidt gives us the positive and negative for each Archetype. For example the Father's Daughter has a negative side called The Backstabber (Katherine Parker "Sigorney Weaver" in Working Girl) The book is an essential part of an author's reference library.

Victoria Schmidt was told in film school that scripts about female heroes didn't sell, and instead of meekly giving in she started doing research. She latched onto the woman's journey into the self: the tale of the descent of the goddess Innana. She connected this to such works as "The Wizard of Oz," "Titanic," and other stories and films, and decided a book was in order. Jack Heffron, editor of most of the writing books I've ever read & reviewed, said sure, but what about the male hero while you're at it? And thus this book was born.Ms. Schmidt discusses the difference between a stereotype and an archetype. She talks a bit about individualizing characters using aspects of appearance, what the characters care about and fear, motivations, how others see the character, and so on. When providing examples of each archetype she deliberately provides a wide spectrum of possibilities so that you can see some of the variations that are possible.My only problem here is that I can still see, having read through the book, how it would be easy to accidentally get trapped into creating stereotypes using these character archetypes. Why? Because many of our stereotypes are variations on (or simplified, judgmental versions of) these archetypes, and it's hard not to let all that history influence us. Perhaps if Ms. Schmidt had included an extra (small) section within each archetype reminding the reader to play with things, and including a few further suggestions and examples for how to do so, it would have allayed this fear.The archetypes are quite detailed. Each has both a positive and a negative side. The author includes all sorts of information about the archetypes, from things they tend to care about, to which other archetypes they pair well with, and what their assets and flaws tend to be. Then Ms. Schmidt does more in the list of examples to break the stereotype worry than she does anywhere else. She includes examples from TV, film, literature, and history, so no matter what your reading or viewing pleasure, you should find something you can relate to.Oddly, while the character archetypes are what sell the book, they turned out not to be the main attraction for me. There's a great section on supporting characters, for example. But best of all, roughly a full 95 pages of the book cover the feminine and masculine archetypal journeys. This is where things really take off and catch at the imagination. All in all, this book is interesting, useful, and well-detailed. If your characterizations could use a little help, this might be a fun place to start!

I found 45 Master Characters by Victoria Schmidt to be very helpful in writing my novel because showed me how my characters' weaknesses and fears would hinder them. I had already built several archetypes, and having names for the type, either Greek Pathenon-oriented or descriptive, gave me handles to steer the plot where it needed to go. One special feature of this approach is the delineation of the "Feminine Journey" as well as the "Masculine Journey". I wish I had had this resource when I wrote a paper comparing Joseph Campbell's _Hero of a Tousand Faces_ to Clarissa Pinkola Estes' _Women who run with Wolves_. I have used this approach in teaching my English classes especially with more "modern" stories that do not follow the hero path.On a personal note, my friends and I have also sized each other up with the archetypes, and they have fit us very well. Anyone who is interested in archetype for teaching literature or in using archetype for writing fiction should check out this book. It is well worth the price.