More than 100 deconstructed Hollywood Blockbusters from our main page.
Successful use of the following products requires that you have bought, read, understood and accepted the principles and terminology of the Hero's Journey / Transformation as contained in: The Complete Hero's Journey...more than 188 stages of the journey you need to know about .
The same archtypes repeatedly appear in all successful stories and story forms. This is so prevalent that it is unusual when certain archetypes do not appear in stories (when this happens, more often than not, the story is poorer). For example, Ash is the Shape Shifter in Alien (1979), Tessio is the Shape Shifter in The Godfather (1972) and Thornton is the Shape Shifter in The WIld Bunch (1969); Joey is the Joker / Fool in Friends, Woody is the Joker / Fool in Cheers and Karen is the Joker / Fool in Will and Grace.
There are a number of core archetypes and a number of peripheral archetypes. From our analysis of hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters and successful stories, we have detected more than thirty in total. Core archetypes include the Hero, AntiHero, Shape Shifter, Mentor / Supernatural Aid, Interdictor, Romantic Challenge etc. Peripheral archetypes include Doves, Hawks, Loser, Joker, Fool etc. Often characters function as multiple archetypes, for example, it is not unusual for the Romantic Challenge to also be an Interdictor; for the Loyal Ally to be a Dove.
The first and most important stage of character development is knowing the character's function in relation to the Journey (the physical movement) and Transformation (the psychological movement). Once you know that, you can choose the most appropriate archetype. Then you can develop that character.
Thus, in a sense, the biggest part of character development is already done for you. Because archetypes are ready made character templates. All you have to do is adapt them to fit your story's particular situation. If you use a Hero's Journey Plot, then the archetypes are already in place, sequence by sequence.
Developing an advanced understanding of the Archetypes is hugely critical for story and screen writers.
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