How Are Character Archetypes Different from Tropes?

What exactly is a character archetype? How many are there? And how are they different from character tropes?

These are the questions that were keeping me up at night as Angela and I started to research this thesaurus at our blog. So, as I often do when I’m confused by terminology, I started with a generic definition.

Archetype: a prototype that can be copied, adapted, or used to create other versions

Okay, so a character archetype is a common kind of character that others are fashioned after. That led to my next question: if there are certain prototypes off which other characters are patterned, what are those original archetypes? I went looking and got buried in a deluge of contradictory information. So many lists, each with its own variety of characters. Some people called them archetypes, others called them tropes, and there was very little documentation or references to verify what I was seeing.

As a truth-seeker, the lack of consensus was driving me crazy. So I armed myself with chocolate and did a deep dive into psychology—directly to the source of where character archetypes began and how they evolved. I’m clear on this now, and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned with you.

Archetypes in Psychology

The term “archetype” has been referenced in various historical documents all the way back to the time of Christ, so it’s by no means a new concept. But it wasn’t until the early 1900s that Carl Jung, a cohort of Freud’s, applied the term to psychology and brought it into the mainstream.

Jung had studied many myths, fairy tales, stories, religions, and dreams throughout history and realized that there were repeated events, figures, and motifs in these narratives—despite them coming from wildly disparate cultures and time periods. After a ton of research and discussion on the subject, he deduced that there are 12 archetypical figures that are common to the human experience and have become part of the stories we tell. Definitions vary, but here are Jung’s character archetypes.

1. The Caregiver: Caregivers are helpers—typically categorized as supportive, selfless, and nurturing.
2. The Creator: Imaginative and driven, creators are the artists, inventors, and scientists who are driven to come up with something new and innovative.
3. The Explorer: Explorers are adventurous and are intrigued by the unknown. Where others quail, explorers are keen to explore new places and ideas and go where no one has gone before.
4. The Hero: Heroes are driven to right wrongs and prove their own worth. They often achieve their goals by employing their own specific mix of strengths, talents, and skills.
5. The Innocent: Morally upright and blind to the evils of the world, innocents are dreamers and optimists who have good intentions and tend to do the right thing.
6. The Jester: As comedians and tricksters in the story, jesters make light of serious things and provide comic relief. They often impart wisdom through their shenanigans.
7. The Lover: Lovers are romantics who are all heart. They’re highly relational and are guided by their passions.
8. The Magician: For magicians, the pursuit of knowledge isn’t enough; fulfillment only comes through understanding and mastering the seemingly unknowable. For this reason, they make great shamans, seers, and wise men and women.
9. The Orphan: Orphans are characterized by trauma, neglect, and/or rejection. Having lost their own family (or never having one to begin with), they’re driven by a need to belong and will go to great lengths to find acceptance.
10. The Rebel: Rebels are out-of-the-box thinkers who like to push boundaries and are undaunted by chaos. They’re often the catalyst for change.
11. The Ruler: Rulers are leaders with a measure of control over others. Their intentions—good or bad—and the level to which they desire power will determine the kind of ruler they are.
12. The Sage: Sages are wise, always seeking knowledge, but they also desire to impart their learnings to others. This makes them ideal mentors and parental figures.

According to Jung, character archetypes are recurring figures that show up in the dreams of all people and the stories of all cultures. They can be part of any narrative, regardless of the time period or audience. This universality is what makes a character an archetype. It’s why these 12 made the cut. 

Jung’s is the original list of archetypes. Since he pretty much invented the concept, I feel good using this as my go-to index. But there’s another list many people like to use, and it has merit because its archetypes are established according to their roles in storytelling.

Archetypes in Storytelling

Forty or so years after Jung, Joseph Campbell was also exploring narratives throughout history and noticed a similar pattern in their structure. He discovered that many of these stories contained the following archetypal structure, which he titled The Hero’s Journey:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

~Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Through his exploration of this mythical structure (and greatly influenced by Jung’s teachings) Campbell identified some characters that appear again and again in these stories over time. But while his thoughts on the subject were insightful and inspirational, his writings weren’t the easiest to understand for many lay people. And this is why we all owe a debt of gratitude to Christopher Vogler.

Vogler was a devotee of Campbell’s and used his ideas frequently in his career as a movie script analyst. They were so helpful in troubleshooting and strengthening the stories he read that Vogler wrote a seven-page guide about The Hero’s Journey and began distributing it to his colleagues at Disney. It soon became required reading, and the demand for his pamphlet was so great that he expanded it into a book called The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Twenty-five years later, it’s still being sold and has become a foundational text for storytellers.

In this book, Vogler distilled Campbell’s ideas into an accessible list of 8 character archetypes:

1. Hero: The protagonist who has a goal to achieve, will undergo change or growth along the way, and will need to make some kind of sacrifice to succeed
2. Mentor: A positive figure who helps or trains the hero
3. Threshold Guardian: A creature, person, or force who guards the gateway to the new world the hero must enter
4. Herald: Someone who issues a challenge to the hero or informs them of significant change to come
5. Shapeshifter: A character whose nature is shifting and unpredictable, causing uncertainty and doubt for the hero
6. Shadow: Someone or something that opposes the hero, often manifesting as a villain, antagonist, or enemy
7. Ally: A character who accompanies, assists, complements, or constructively challenges the hero along their journey
8. Trickster: A mischievous character who often shares wisdom while dispelling tension through comic relief

These are essentially a reconfiguring of Jung’s archetypes so they’re defined by the role each plays in a story. As writers, we can see how valuable this perspective can be.

When it comes to archetypes, you can’t go wrong with either of these breakdowns. Personally, I prefer Jung’s because his is the original model—the prototype—that everything else is based on. But both are valid for establishing the kinds of characters you’ll want to include in your story.

Now. If these 12 or 8 characters are the only true archetypes, what about all the rest of the character types you find on the internet? There are dozens and dozens of listings containing 25, 50, 200+ characters. The queen bee, the mad scientist, the nerd, the class clown, the hot billionaire—are these archetypes, as well? If not, what are they?

Simply put, these are character tropes, not archetypes. Here’s why.

Character Tropes

A literary trope is a recurring element that’s frequently used across narrative works. This makes character tropes very similar to archetypes. The difference is that archetypes, by Jung’s original criteria, are universal in nature and can be found in any story from any culture and time period. 

If a character couldn’t appear in multiple narratives from multiple time periods for multiple audiences, then that character isn’t an archetype; it’s a trope. And most of the time, the character is a trope because it has been culturally influenced so it only works within a certain culture or timeframe. 

Let’s take the nerd trope as an example.

Conventionally, nerd characters are highly intelligent, socially awkward, and are hyper-focused on topics most people aren’t interested in. They’re also clueless about fashion and style. This rendering is specific to Western culture and wouldn’t translate for certain other people groups. This makes it a trope rather than an archetype.

Class clowns need a classroom or school setting, so this character is a trope.

You wouldn’t find hot billionaires in a culture without an über-rich demographic, so this character is a trope…

It’s a relatively easy litmus test for determining whether a character is trope or an archetype.

Another clue that you’re dealing with a trope is when the character is clearly a derivative or modified version of an archetype. The class clown, for example, is a trope based on the Jester. The nerd is a form of either the Sage or Magician. The queen bee is a specific kind of Ruler, and so on. 

A Quick Summary

So, to sum all of this up….

• Character archetypes are universal figures that are repeated through narratives across cultures, time periods, and locations.
• While there are many lists of archetypes, the most commonly accepted are the ones established by Carl Jung and by Joseph Campbell/Christopher Vogler. 
• A character trope is a familiar figure that recurs in many stories, but unlike archetypes, it isn’t universally recognizable.
• A character trope can also be a modified—often more specific—version of an archetype.

On the surface, it’s not easy to the see the difference between these kinds of characters. But this historical study has helped me understand things better. I hope it also clarifies these important character elements for you.

Check out the Character Type and Trope Thesaurus!

The upside of tropes is that they’re familiar to readers, who will recognize them and immediately know the role they’re meant to play. The downside? They’ve been used so many times that they can easily become clichéd and predictable. But with The Character Type and Trope Thesaurus, they no longer have to be.

Use this resource to familiarize yourself with the commonalities for a certain kind of character while also exploring ways to elevate them and make them memorable, more interesting, and perfectly suited for the story you want to tell.

Additional Resources:
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CJ Jung
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers, by Christopher Vogler

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