The eight archetypal characters of the story

This one is purely theoretical and rather uninteresting. But since it's quite important for story analysis, I'll write it first so I have a conceptual reference for the future.

A long novel, or usually a movie story, with roughly a dozen or more recognizable characters (with names and plots) is what we call a Grand Argument Story - a large story with a fully explored theme. The eight archetypal characters are for this type of story.

The eight archetypal characters are based on the theme of the writing, and you shouldn't be surprised to see that the traditional protagonist isn't a protagonist in the way we're defining it here. For example, Andy, the hero of The Shawshank Redemption, who escapes from prison, is the guardian in our definition; the protagonist is Reed, the narrator of the story.

This theory (calling it a theory is an exaggeration, for lack of a better word) was inspired by Dramatica, a theory of storytelling. But Dramatica is so complex - including its character theories - that I spent a lot of time eating my way through it, and eventually realized that a theory with too many rules isn't a help to creativity, it's a shackle.

We know that the base unit of a story is the scene, and that every scene contains a conflict. The reason why there is conflict between characters is because of differences in their views of the writing theme of the story. Any conflict between people stems from differences in ideas. Without the invisible thread of theme, the audience will feel that the story is vague or lacks emotional power.

In a good story, the author chooses the conflict based on whether the event implies a thematic debate. In this way, the story is a proof of a point of view (the meaning of the choices made by the protagonist). In the process of proving the story, other different points of view must be thoughtfully considered so as not to be biased. In the real world, there are tons of different viewpoints on a controversial topic. It's impossible for the story to reflect all of them, so the viewpoints are grouped into eight categories, creating eight archetypal characters.

If the theme of the story is "who do you save when you can only save one of your mom or your wife", here are the typical motivations of the eight characters:

These are the four key characters, and the following are the four supporting characters:

The protagonist is the centerpiece of the story, and the choices he makes, as well as the ending after the climax, reveal the point that the story is trying to prove. His choices, as well as the ending after the climax, reveal the point the story is trying to prove - what we call the "central idea". A typical example is Saving Private Ryan, in which Cpt. Miller and his team choose to stay and fight, but also protect Ryan and hope for a miracle. The critics' "story theme" refers to the words spoken by the elderly Ryan at the end of the movie, implying the value of sacrifice and demonstrating the righteousness of the war against fascism. But for the author, this is not the theme of the story, it is the point that the story is trying to prove.

The protagonist (or antagonist) may not have a particular point of view on the theme at the beginning (confusion), or may hold the views of the other four supporting characters (prejudice). The protagonist (or antagonist) is not the one who comes along, so it must not be possible to hold the views of the GUARDIAN or CONTRAGONIST. The protagonist's point of view can change over the course of the story; for example, in The Lion King, Simba at one point accepts the point of view of the Reason character. So the protagonist's attitude towards the theme can be a zigzag line, but the protagonist's attitude at the end must be different from that at the beginning of the story, which is what all the textbooks call a character arc, meaning that the protagonist has changed . But the writer must realize that in a good story, the character of the person remains the same; it is only his attitude - the way he sees the world - that changes.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy, the hero of the prison break, never wavers in his views on the theme of "sticking with habits vs. breaking them" (though he has moments of frustration), and he sticks with what he considers to be a good habit - the freedom to live his life. life. So the character stays the same; Red is the main character in the story because he changes. If you take away Red's story, and you just have Andy's prison break, the whole story is suddenly downgraded to a sensationalist story in the evening paper.

For Red, he's used to prison life, and he's doing well. It's a hard habit to change, and we see it in others as well (including the pigeon). The author shows us how hard it is to break a habit to adapt to a new life; even though everyone agrees that life is better when you are free, being used to bondage doesn't always give everyone the courage. But "some birds are born to be shut up, their feathers are too sharp, their songs too sweet ......". Good writers have a way of immersing the reader in the story, burying the subject matter so y that our minds never jump out of the plot and realize that the characters are arguing about something during the reading or watching of the movie.

Think of the theme as the core, the attitudes of the eight archetypal characters as the eight spokes, with the length of each spoke indicating the depth of each character's interaction with the theme, and the outermost great circle indicating the complete emotional experience in the reader's mind. A good story is an octagon that is basically close to the great circle, as shown in the following diagram:

Now define the eight archetypal characters.

These are the four characters that are directly related to the theme, and we call them the Four Key Characters. If you're using a point of view (POV) narrative, you'll usually choose those POV people among these four.

Four secondary characters, who often have an indirect impact on the theme through their interactions with the four key characters:

In some stories, there are only four characters as soon as they ****, e.g., "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", and "The Mechanical Girl", and the four characters in such stories are usually the four key characters.

Archetypal characters are unadorned as specific characters, and can be rather faceless (hence the name "archetypal"). Star Wars IV's characters are more faceless, so there's no need to explain them too much. It's not a bad example to start with.

Protagonist - Luke Skywalker

Mentor Guardian - Obi-wan Kenobi

Co-conspirator Contagonist - Lord Darth Vader

The differences between the real characters and the archetypes can be very large. Limit your imagination. For example, when we think of the guardian, we always see Dumbledore and Gandalf as the white-bearded grandfather tutor, but in Silence of the Lambs, the guardian is Hannibal the ogre; in Roman Holiday, the hero and heroine alternate between the guardian and the protagonist, who inspire each other to grow up, which is the most perfect way to handle a two-hander's story. HANDER story handled the most perfect example (the last time I introduced the BL type of story, I had to omit this part for the sake of simplification. The essence behind her question is that she should mature herself and stop reciting answers written down by others like a puppet. And life is her best teacher.)

The famous Dr. Hyde, where the protagonist and antagonist are the same person, who is normally the good guy and turns bad when he drinks the potion. The fat professor from The Fat Professor, who was also the protagonist and antagonist before and after he drank the potion.

Nature in a disaster movie or MITH is often the antagonist because nature doesn't have to answer to human questions, so it doesn't need to be confronted, a special form of avoidance of sorts. And of course there's God.

A lot of actual characters, because they have the same point of view, can be lumped into the same archetypal role. That's what they say when they say that people are all alike. Different characters hold the same views, there are three ways to deal with it: first, if not necessary, remove the redundant character, because his contribution to the story is repeated; second, grouped into a group, their actual personalities are different and complementary, forming a single archetypal character. An example is the Six Monsters of Jiangnan. Another example is the Pig and the Fox in The Lion King, both of whom are single Reason archetypal characters; third, same-type characters are arranged in different scenes, e.g., Luke's uncle is also a skeptical character in Star Wars IV, who does not appear in the same scene as Han Solo.

The actual relationships between characters must be as the plot requires. We've seen many stories where the co-conspirators are in cahoots with the antagonists; in Star Wars IV, Darth Vader and the Imperial General have this relationship. But in The Silence of the Lambs, the co-conspirator is Chilton, who has no contact with the murderer; he instead seeks to benefit himself by catching him.

There's a lot more to the prototype role, and it's too boring to just talk about the theory, so we'll slowly learn from other people's good experiences in the future as we analyze the story with examples.

According to this archetypal character theory, it will bring some convenience in concrete creation, but there are also twisted places. That is, we lose the traditional concepts of HERO, VILLIAN, hero, heroine, because there is only one protagonist or antagonist. But overall, the good outweighs the bad. The biggest benefit is that there is no need to portray two separate characters with the same point of view in any given story, as the repetition of emotions is ineffective and detrimental to the story.

I would suggest that new authors whose creative craft is not yet settled try this new idea of archetypal characters, and it may be less of a detour. For the same reason, I also suggest using English instead of Chinese terms like contagonist, which you know as "accomplice" or "accomplice". But words like "accomplice" and "accomplice" are too intrusive, especially in life stories, where there are only different points of view, not good guys and bad guys. Using concepts in a language we're not familiar with removes some of the natural bias.

One last mention of specific character design, which is not the issue at hand. In addition to sources of life experience, there are many templates available on the web, here are some URLs.

mon_archetypes.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_characters

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki. php/Main/ArchetypalCharacter