Research: Better Writing through Social Anthropology and Psychology

My horoscope for the day from Yahoo and astrology.com:
Research and planning is always a good idea, but you may be getting too caught up in the details of it all.

Scarily accurate. I was getting caught up in my research and here is the condensed version, Part One.

The use of myths and archetypes helps the writer create complex, believable characters and tell stories that echoes of the human psyche. The value in using archetypal characters in fiction is that the majority of our population unconsciously recognize the archetype and the character's motivations.

"The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers" by Christopher Vogler, inspired by Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" reveals the hero’s journey by identifying 12 steps seen in myths. The journey is a narrative archetype where the protagonist must overcome increasingly difficult obstacles before reaching the goal. Vogler identifies major character archetypes:

• The Hero
• Mentor
• Trickster
• Shadow
• Herald
• Ally
• Shapeshifter
  

Maud Bodkin, "Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination", compared Jungian archetypes to poetry. Among the archetypal patterns: the “Oedipus complex,” the “rebirth archetype,” the “archetype of Heaven and Hell,” and “images of the Devil, the Hero, and God.

"Heroes and Heroines: 16 Master Archetypes," by Caro LeFever, Tami Cowden and Sue Viders is an exceptional resource for the writer. The authors define 8 male and 8 female archetypes.

The Eight Male Archetypes:

The Chief
The Bad Boy
The Best
The Charmer
The Lost Soul
The Professor
The Swashbuckler
The Warrior

The Eight Female Archetypes:

The Boss
The Seductress
The Spunky kid
The Free Spirit
The Waif
The Librarian
The Crusader
The Nurturer

Next week, Part Two: Defining the male archetypes and identifying a character from film or fiction for each category.

Oh wait – there’s more. Sixteen Villain Archetypes, Jungian archetypes, Volger’s archetypes and the Hero’s Journey. Coming soon to a blog near you