Creating Characters: Jungian Archetypes & The Hero’s Journey
How do you create characters? How do you make these fictional people feel real?
As part of my writing series, I want to publish some resources and ideas for the creative process. Here, I will be focusing on creative ideation and character development through archetypes and journaling.
First, let’s discuss what a character should achieve in a novel. Characters should feel like real people and have the same emotions, motivations, insecurities, flaws, and goals as real flesh and blood people. How do we get to know our characters and understand them better?
One such technique is character ideation through archetypes and free-flow journaling. This method allows me to explore the minds of my characters. It can also spark plot ideas or even be applied to sparking ideas for marketing, as you will see below.
I wanted to illustrate how you might explore a character’s inner workings by tapping into your subconscious mind. Jung believed that the subconscious mind was a powerful force that could help us unravel our truest intentions or self. Tapping into our more unconscious thoughts and ideas can reveal different aspects of a character’s personality or different sides of own our persona or creativity.
Jungian archetypes “are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes are thought to be the basis of many of the common themes and symbols that appear in stories, myths, and dreams across different cultures and societies.”-wiki
As you can see above, these archetypes provide useful frameworks to develop characters. The outside of the wheel is the archetype, or persona. Jung believed this is how the person presents themselves to the world. It might infer what your character is seeking or what they value. The middle part of the wheel reveals their goal. Character archetypes can help frame your plot, or drive the inner workings of the mental state of the characters in different situations.
The inside of the wheel is the driving force for the archetype. The shadow, or the flip side of his nature shows who he becomes if he completely gives into his nature and allows darker forces to take over.
For example, Indiana Jones is an Explorer/Reformer —he achieves freedom through his archeological work. It can be said Indiana Jones is seeking knowledge(reform), but his darker nature is that of an outlaw (symbolized by his more rugged persona when he is in the field). When confronted with enemies and allies, Indiana Jones needs to make choices to appeal to his higher nature — when he finds valuable treasure and is tempted to sell it, he always responds, “This belongs in a museum.”
For an interesting analysis of Indiana Jones, I recommend watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny; this movie provides a great deal of depth to the series and concludes his “Hero’s Journey” with the return to what the character considers “home” (you’ll have to watch it to see what that means).
I would also like to acknowledge from a class I took recently a discussion came up of the sexism in this series of movies - and this might be a way to dialogue on the importance of creating archetypes that break the traditional patterns that might exist and break barriers.
From this analysis, we can also see that the hero can choose to focus on growth or trauma, yielding different results. On one side of the wheel, we can see different concepts influencing the archetype, and how they might fit into various roles.
This same wheel can be applied to marketing and business domains as the example below illustrates.
Image by OptiMonk
As we can see, archetypes can create powerful connections. It is not that they are real, it is that they are perceived. Jung saw them as “personas” that people put on in the outside world. Some think of them as part of the larger, unconscious story of humanity. But that is a topic for another day.
Photo by Ricardo Rocha on Unsplash
Similarly, in The Hero’s Journey, an analysis of myths from different cultures, Joseph Campbell proposed the idea of character archetypes in stories. He considered these unifying themes in literature that transcended time and place. Campbell preferred the idea of threshold guardians, allies, and shapeshifters. His eight archetypes are listed below:
1. Hero
2. Mentor
3. Ally
4. Herald
5. Trickster
6. Shapeshifter
7. Guardian
8. Shadow
There can be variations of these archetypes. For instance, Threshold guardians are characters who test the hero’s ability to prove themselves in the face of challenges, allowing them to fully emobdy who they are meant to be. The graphic below provides an excellent representation of the Hero’s Journey through key archetypes in movies.
Now that you have explored different archetypes, it would be helpful to forget everything I just said. At least, try to forget the details.
Allow your mind to just relax.
The excercise I will propose here, helps you go into the recesses of your mind to imagine different points of view or even pull from your own experiences to create certain moods, tones, characters, or storyboards.
From there, the idea is to turn this free-flowing form into a fully fleshed-out character, idea, or plot. Again this can be applied to any context you wish.
For this exercise, find a quiet space, allow your mind to relax, and just let yourself write anything that comes to mind. Begin by meditating, or if this does not feel natural, just listen to soothing music without lyrics. The idea is to remove distractions and allow yourself to enter a waking, dreamlike state. You can write during this experience or after if you choose to have your eyes closed and just imagine.
You might use music like the example below. Since my novel is based mainly in Celtic mythology and Iron Age culture, this seemed fitting, but choose anything that might spark your own creativity. If you can’t relax when you first try, don’t try to force it — go for a walk near nature or just take some deep breaths. Start when you feel ready.
Another method is to record your dreams upon waking waking.
Sleeping "conversations" might also help the dreamer solve problems, learn new skills, or even come up with creative ideas, Baird says. "The dream is a highly associative state that may have advantages when it comes to creativity." Sleep researchers quoted in -science.org
Here is one of my creative ideations from my journal for a fantasy novel:
Stories are lies that speak the truth — and the truth is the greatest story of all. One way or another, I am going to tell you this story, although you may not believe it right now, just listen. Let it sink into your mind in quiet hours, perhaps my memories will awaken in you something beautiful — a glimmer of understanding, a seed of hope, a drink of the tree of knowledge, that is after all what this journey did for me.
Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash
I almost drowned. And so, my story began in water, in the deepest depths of the midnight lake, a place where dreams die and in magic moments are reborn — saved by those who came before us —-the souls who dared to create their own destiny -their hands reaching into the abyss and saving us from ourselves. It all began at the edge of the lake . . .
A woman in a hooded cloak approached me and told me to follow her. Her cloak was a regal emerald green, and the hood hid her face — but I could see she had beautiful raven black hair and light brown eyes that formed small wrinkles around the corners, she was an older woman. I trusted her. She reminded me of my mother — had it not been for her age, I might have thought she was my own mother — but she had died in my childhood. I never really memorized her face. She led me, and I followed without asking questions. This new world was so full of bizarre events that it didn’t even matter anymore to ask. She seemed to want to help me find something. I yielded to the curiosity of the mysterious woman. She pointed to the lake. It seemed like a bottomless pit of blue-black water.
“This,” she began, “is where all the dreams in the world go when they are left unfinished. It is a well of lost hopes — it is dark as it is heavy, and it is filled with the tears of those whose desires, hopes, and life dreams were not fulfilled.”
“Why?” I asked her, not with words but with my mind. I was afraid of the water, and did not want to look too closely for fear I might fall in.
“Because every time someone leaves a dream here, it fills the void and hopes to fill the mind of someone new — to enter their mind so that the idea might find new life. Their only hope is that someone will find the inspiration to live it honestly — to take their story and make it their own.
Some of the stories are painful and others are happy — but they are all lost unless they are written in the experiences of humanity— they explain what it means to be human — to find oneself in the image of another — you can choose to live, or to wait. To wait is to die.”
And then I fell into the river. I am not sure if the woman pushed me, or if I jumped, but the coldness of the water created something new in me. . .I could feel again.
So perhaps in retelling my story, I will be able to pass the eternal batton of light to those who most need it. To elucidate in another across the pages of time, the beauty of living, of truly living, and to let my story — although it may sound fantastical, transcend the boundaries of the here and now take you, and take you where I have been. Just imagine it.
Photo by negin bahramii on Unsplash
The excerpt above is a journal of a fantasy book excerpt I am working on (1st draft for ideation). This type of journaling allows your mind to just wander while focusing less on your official draft and just opening a window to another space and time. The woman is a guardian — a threshold guardian who is a source of knowledge and inspiration. The writer is seeking safety and represents innocence, but ultimately chooses to jump in the water or is pushed. This character ultimately is seeking freedom.
I hope illustrating this exercise is helpful to see how you might take creative, free-flowing inspiration and use it to spark your imagination. You can use it to create a fully fleshed-out character or develop a plot when you are stuck.
This journal entry helped to create a tone for my work. It made me think about the mood and setting of the book — the plight of the characters, supernatural elements, and how they might influence the drivers of the story.
Upon examination, it is obvious to me, that the character is expressing my dream of finishing my first book, much like my real life experience. It revealed to me that the mood of the book is one not of darkness, but of fighting against supernatural forces while embodying a protagonist rooted in a more ordinary world.
Try this type of free-flowing journaling to access your subconscious and see if it helps you create scenes or characters. It may also be used to understand yourself better or to envision solutions. If you find it helpful, please do let me know!
I hope this is helpful. Feel free to post questions or comments.
