Tropes and Cliches

Character Archetypes: In General

Wow, I made it, what? 60-ish chapters in and I haven't talked about character archetypes... let's fix that shall we.
Character Archetypes represents specific actions, nuances, and characteristics all rolled into one character. It's basically a bunch of tropes and cliches, but for one person. Now each character archetype is flexible, and doesn't have to check off every trope that applies to them, so they can be anything really. 

For example. the Mentor archetype is more likely than not older than the Hero/Main Characters by a lot of years, a man, and disgruntled about some traumatizing event and it shows. However, Iroh was a happy go lucky person, that grieved his son but also put that into nurturing his nephew when he saw that his niece was too far gone for him. 

And there's so many. I googled it, and one source says there like 201 and most of them are just branches of one specific archetype. In fact, I actually talked about a few earlier in this book, like  The Trickster or the components of the Five Man Band. Each archetype has a purpose in the story you want to tell, and not every character will fit exactly as how it should. 
For example, I said that The Trickster can be the hero, antagonist, or just who's moving the story forward/ plot device. One of the main feature of Tricksters is the fact that they are cunning in a way to solve a problem presented before them. In the Odyssey, Odysseus calls himself Nemo ( or Nobody in some translations) in order to escape a cyclop's cave because imagine hearing " Nobody stabbed my eye out"...like if nobody stabbed your eye...who did? And on the other end of the spectrum we have Loki causing the problem of the week among the Aesir.  

Now because this is a In General chapter, I'll be using a lot of examples and then do a deep dive in their own individual chapter later. Because with each one, there like 13 subcategories of it and many varying ways of it being deconstructed to break the mold. 

You can use archetypes as a way to establish your characters. Going back to the Iroh example, Iroh was just like Ozai and was hellbent on world domination. But we never knew that until after the first few episodes of the show. You'd think he was just one of the standard wise old Mentor. But after gaining more knowledge on his backstory, you see his journey to get that wisdom. 

Interactions between Mentor and Protege or even the Five Man Band often tells more about the characters than dialogue and actions. Allowing room for them to break out of the assigned roles. For example, Character C is the Damsel of the group, but the group rarely worries because they're an escape artist or bare minimum was assigned the role of Damsel because everyone seems to under estimate their abilities. 

There's no one way to write them, but you can fall into traps with them and that's where the stereotyping comes in, and that's a chapter on it's own.