45 Master Characters

List Price: $14.99 Discount Price: $6.31

Customer Reviews:

Decent book to have around for writers interested in myth [Posted on 2006-12-26]
This book just about lives up to its title. As you might expect it lists lots of archetypal character models to get you thinking about how you might want to develop your own characters. One of the spotlight reviews above lists exactly what these are.

There are a few caveats to the methodology of this book. Firstly, the author is writing from a point of view engrained in many psychology theories, but rarely, if it all appropriately cites where she got these views. One surprising example to me was when she listed Maslow's hierarchy of needs (as a character motivation consideration) and cited it as coming from another book about writing instead of the man who invented the theory!

Secondly, she suggests in the beginning of the book that an archetype isn't a stereotype, but doesn't back that up. In my opinion an archeype is a stereotype, so you should be very careful in only thinking of these things in terms of starting point inspiration and not as copy and paste character types. The book is a bit slim on creative exercises, and usually asks the same questions about every archetype, like "What does your character fear?" that do little to spark your imagination.

However, as a book strictly with some fun ideas about how to see myths, fantasy tales, and epics and the characters that might surround them, this book is really a great idea. I think she captured in small detail a great variety of archetypes, and the real disappointment is that she didn't include lots of classical story excerpts in the same volume. You could do much worse than to keep a book like this around, just don't expect it to do your dreaming and truth searching for you.

A very helpful resource [Posted on 2007-01-05]
I enjoy creating characters, but I've always had problems not defining them enough. When I first saw this book, I thought it would help me in my character creation process. The moment I started flipping through the pages, my thoughts were affirmed.

Victoria Lynn Schmidt delves into many archetypes of characters that have come up in history, literature and film, and shows the traits that make up each universal archetype. I was also blown away at how she gives suggestions on how they would play off other character archetypes. For example, the Warlock would make for a great adversary for the Male Messiah (seeing this put pieces together for my latest story).

She also goes into depth on the masculine and feminine journeys, and how each acts and reacts to conflicts. This pattern can really help with setting an underlying structure for a story if you don't know where to go next.

I definitely consider this book to be a valuable asset to a writer's collection of resources.

Lets review the text as it applies to myth - can we people. [Posted on 2007-06-07]
...I've read two largely damaging reviews of this book, based on their very assumed impressions of the authors opinions' on gender. I would like to say as an owner of both this book and the heros and heroines book mentioned by one of the two reviewers, that this book looks at myth and archetypes through the only lenses available to her, and paints with a broad stroke sensibly and responsibly. - To approach myth and archetypes from a single, modern understanding of gender and identity, would be both foolish and negligent. There is no other way to delineate the inner and outer forms, be they journeys, traits, interactions, other than male and female, without dismissing all other previous understandings and mythic creations pre-20th century. Why should the author be forced to create a new language based on petty, semantic offensives' suffered by the possible yet improbable thin skins of potential readers. You may as well gripe about her choice of archetype titles, perhaps instead of businessman you prefer businesswoman, or business professional, even executive. To alter the impression of these histories, as handed down by time; to adjust them even slightly is to rob them of their meaning, to deny their philosophical implications. Is it so hard for you, in your own mind to imagine that the female character, a stifled, male wallflower as you put it, may easily replace stereotype, because of so, perhaps you should think about changing professions. What reason do you have to believe that her choice in using she instead of he, takes in any small part away from the information she is passing on. Yes, passing on, I'm not sure if you are aware of this but men and women are kind of different, they may be able to do all the same things, but they are in no way copies of each other, which is exactly what makes life so interesting, its what makes a book like this valuable in the first place. I enjoyed this book, found the clearly labeled sections easy enough to follow; perhaps you two should look for the up and coming scratch and sniff edition. To anyone thinking of buying this book, it is a very valuable reference, as is the other text mentioned - hero's and heroines, the link is above. It in no way does the writers job for you, but easily enriches the understanding of both literature and the human beings they represent. On behalf of the author, I'm sorry it's not perfect and up to the very high standards of some, but I'm sure in no short time those two will have versions of their own out, with all problems corrected, and every measly complaint and excuse put to rest even before they are realized.

Great Book [Posted on 2007-09-21]
I've never written a review on a book, but as I read 45 Master Character I felt compelled to say something about it. I wouldn't call it a book on building characters, but it is great at structuring your character, and surprisingly, it helps structure plot too. What this book does best is give a framework that helps bring out ideas. It is one of my favorite books and will be permanently on my desk. CP

Great, but not the Best [Posted on 2007-11-17]
Okay, so this book does give you pretty much what you pay for . . . and then some. BUT, the reason i gave it four stars instead of five is because of the way the characters are vaguely described to you. Yeah, they do go into details, BUT even the details are vague. The bad guy is 'bad. The good guy is 'good. They then go about listing said 'good' and 'bad' qualities, but never get too specific about it. NOW, there is a GREAT section at the end of the book that i absolutely recommend, and i never even ecpected it when i was ordering it. There is a detailed section about stages of you're character's 'journey' and plausible steps suggested, too. THIS part is why i like the book so much. I would have given it three stars without this section included, and i would have given it five stars if they had just went into more detail about the characters. It was almost like they were afraid to because some writer would use what they suggested, sink in the water, and then sue them or something. I dunno. My opinion? Buy the book -For the included back section on the stages of 'a hero's journey' (both male and female, and they're even friggin seperate sections to boot:-) if not for the character descriptions. Don't get me wrong, the character descriptions are good, but they aren't anything you couldn't figure out if someone said, "Hey, tell me what an independant, assertive woman would be like.", nor are they anything you can't get for free from the internet. That back section, tho . . . i've seen the jist of it before on the net, but i wasn't even expecting it. Nice inclusion ;-)

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