I've been struggle with one of my primary characters in the Gate. From feedback I received when I posted the first chapters over at Critique Circle, I knew I had to flesh out my character more. For several months I have been trying to get to get to the bottom of the character using character templates, questionnaires, and the like. But nothing would get to the bottom of this character for me. That is until I discovered certain very useful archetypes that deal with underlying motivations.

The usual characterisation tutorial goes something along the lines of:

• Physical Traits: How old is your character? What does he/she look like?
• Emotionally: What are his/her Strengths? Weaknesses? Fatal flaw?
• Motivations: Fears? Desires?
• Miscellaneous: Job? Family? Key history? What did they eat for breakfast?

Some people even suggest that you dress up like your character and go shopping.

So over at Critique Circle (yes, I'll be mentioning CC quite a lot in my blog), I have a 3 page dossier on a character in my Work in Progress (WIP) called Fiona.

My friends over at CC critiqued the first 20 chapters of my WIP, and almost unanimous declared that Fiona was a wimp, and no, they didn't want to spend time in her Point of View (POV), because she was weak and pathetic. Well, not everyone said that, actually, but that was the general gist of sentiment towards her. Which is a problem, since she is one of two major POV characters in the beginning of the book.

She needs an edge, my critiquers said. A reason we should like her.

The thing is, she's actually a very likeable character, but the beginning of the book sees her in a bad way. She's struggling, out of her element, and well, yes, she complains a lot.

What to do?

Getting to a character's core motivation

It seemed clear quite early on that I needed to understand my character even better than I already did. I know "stuff" about her. Her favourite colour is green, she likes reading fantasy novels, she's agnostic and works in a computer lab as a support person.

But what is the thing that drives her? The core motivation that literally affects everything she does.

I thought of friends who were like her. But no one really fit.

And in the end, I turned to the Zodiac.

Astrological Archetypes

Let's be honest, whether you believe in astrology or not, you absolutely know someone who is the epitome of the detail obsessive "Virgo", or the outgoing, fiery and creative "Leo" (although there are other types of Leos as well).

The astrological model is complex and many layered. It allows individuals to be an amalgam of various signs. Regardless of whether their sunsign is Leo, they may have a moon in Cancer, or their North Node in Pisces.

Whatever. What the astrological model provides is a set of well known Archetypes, many of the traits which you can see in people you know, and you can relate to.

Finding out what archetype suits your character is not so easy. I spoke to a friend of mine who is a Tarot reader, and knows a lot about astrology.

Originally, we'd thought Fiona was Libran, and she has many Libran traits. But the underlying motivation for Libra is related to Venus, and is therefore love.

Fiona is motivated by love at some level, but in my mind, her behaviour was the something "edgier" that people were asking for. But being so mild and likable, it was hard to tell what that might be.

So, I did what any writer does when they run out of ideas, I started surfing the internet. And I discovered this website: Astrozone, which has one of the best descriptions of the Zodiac archetypes I've come across.

So I browsed the archetypes and discovered that Fiona is a Cancerian. And her underlying motive? A "search for security". Bingo. That is so perfectly Fiona. It defines every thing about her, and many of the Cancerian traits manifest in her too (although she must have a moon in Libra I think).

The Enneagram

Now I had a place to start, so began looking for personality types that had an underlying motive of security or safety.

I came across the Enneagram. I'm not able to explain the Enneagram to you, but here are two useful links Enneagram Institute, and Introduction to the Enneagram and Psychology

No doubt there are also various Jungian Archetypes, Myers-Briggs types, and Greek Gods who could also be applied in useful ways to further understand your characters. Some of these are touched on in this article (warning this is hideously advertising heavy, but possibly useful) Archetypes in literature, films and life

Anyway, I'm just happy knowing my character more deeply, and using archetypes seems to work very well.