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 510 stages of the journey you need to know about .
Developing an advanced understanding of the archetypes is hugely critical for story and screenwriters.
The same archetypes repeatedly appear in all successful stories and story forms. Specific archetypes repeatedly appear at specific stages of successful stories. This is so prevalent that it is unusual when the convention is broken (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); Marcellus is the Major Threshold Guardian in Spartacus (1960), Sollozzo is the Major Threshold Guardian in The Godfather (1972) and so on.
One way to get a handle on archetypes is to define them as categories of functions (or symbolisms, which are functional) and they are best understood within the context of the complete Hero's Journey...more than 510 stages of the journey you need to know about. Conversely, it is easier to understand story structure through the lense of archetypes.
This is about more than just creating a list.
Archetypes have hierarchies. Archetypes alter form. There are so many functions performed in a successful story that characters must adopt multiple archetypal roles. Archetypal roles change at specific stages. Archetypes perform different functions at various stages of the screenplay.
Common mistakes writers (and psychologists) make when analysing archetypes (and thus complicating matters) include:
a) Not differentiating. Not grouping.
b) Not establishing a framework. Not establishing context.
c) Not understanding the hierarchies. Not understanding the derivations.
When writing a successful screenplay, you need to know what archetypes to use and when and why. This is about understanding an archetype's function in relation to the movement of the story, the transformation, the capacities gained, the detachment and attachment and so on. If you know what stage of the journey and transformation the hero et al are at and what the next step must be, then you can choose archetypes to assist that movement.
So, if you haven't already got it, this is key to character development, subplot, backstory and much more.
(Requires that you first purchase and accept the principles contained in: the Complete Hero's Journey...more than 510 stages of the journey you need to know about... . )
Buy the Complete Hero's Journey...more than 510 stages of the journey you need to know about...
Download Complete Hero's Journey SAMPLE (zipped Adobe PDF file)