Adding More Characters

The keen observer will have noticed that there seems to be a problem: there are only eight archetypal characters on any given square, which ought to mean that only eight characters can ever be involved in a single story, and that only if exactly four of them are male and four are female, four good, and four evil. So what about Robin Hood? Depending on the version of the story, he might have eight or nine good, male merry men? What about Lawrence of Arabia? It has no female characters at all, but that doesn't limit it to four well developed men. In fact, most stories longer than a fairy tale have more than eight characters, so where do the rest come from?

There are three basic ways to involve further characters. The first thing that you can do is fill out the archetypal relationships on square until you reach the full capacity of eight. It is very rare that all eight are actually used (the majority of really good, complicated stories have a nearly-full square, but are missing one of the archetypes), but the fifth, sixth and seventh on-square characters added to a standard four-point plot definitely do help to give it colour and dimension.

The second, very common, method is to split archetypes. This means that you take one of the archetypal roles and you spread it around between more than one character. Joe Money has two Sidekicks, both of them Avengers (at least to begin with), James Bond can encounter upwards of five villainous Beasts in the same story (generally including at least one aquatic monster with sharp teeth), C. S. Lewis' Narnia stories are crawling with legions of Princes (Peter, Aslan, Caspian, etc.), and the fairy-tale tellers positive delight in multiplying faithful servants, princesses, older brothers, and suitors.

Whe you split an archetype, it becomes, in a sense, weakened. When this is done in a very simple, straight-forward manner, the result is a sort of group character, or a series of characters who are practically identical. One sword-weilding temple servant looks very like another in an Indiana Jones movie; the Twelve Dancing Princesses are not really distinguishable one from the other; the Seven Chinese Brothers are all exactly the same, just with different fantastic super-powers. If, however, you wish to have multiple characters who are actually full, well-drawn characters it is necessary to rely on more sophisticated techniques.

The first of these is the use of on-square borrowing. Lets say that you are writing Hansel and Gretel, and you want your sweet little Orphan and her brother, who is a Disciple, to encounter the evil Medea character in two different guises: first, as a wicked stepmother who drives them from their home, and second, as a witch who plans to gobble them up for dinner. You begin by splitting up the archetypal information for the character; the stepmother will get the hatred for the children, and the desire to drive them out of the house and sacrifice them to her own needs, while the witch will get to enjoy the privilege of trying to literally devour them. But that's not quite enough, so you grant the stepmother a touch of the Parasite's jealousy, making her vie with the children for the love of their father, and you let the witch borrow the Wise Man's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing act, pretending to be a kindly old lady. Now you have two solid characters, easily distinguishable one from the other, but both fulfilling the same archetypal role within the plot.

The other option is to use resonant squares. To understand this, it's necessary to be aware that the order in which the squares are presented is important: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, White. Ideally, these should be arranged in a circle, so that both a pentagon and a five-sided star can easily be derived from the diagram. The lines forming the outside of the pentagon show you the adjacent squares, while the interior lines show you the resonant squares. Now, let's say that you have a character who is a Prince (Red Square) and you want him to have two Rogues as Sidekicks. You might decide to make the first one Avenger resonant (perhaps he has been studying sword-fighting all his life in order to slay the man who killed his father) and the second one Warrior resonant (a strong, good, but not particularly bright, giant, maybe...) Once again, you end up with two complete characters, quite distinct, but each fulfilling the role of Sidekick within the main line.

Finally, you can add characters from adjacent squares by forming sub-plots (Jean Valjean's quest for redemption paired with Cosettes romance; Frodo's quest to destroy the Ring paired with Merry and Pippin's foolish meanderings, etc.) In so far as these plots interact little, and involve their own distinct sets of characters, they are relatively simple to execute: just build two separate plots and occasionally allow the characters to meet up. In so far as two plots on two adjacent squares both involve the same character to a significant degree, they are quite complicated and will be dealt with in Advanced Square Mechanics.

These three techniques, plus the addition of sub-plots, are more than ample to fully people a tale with as many characters as the heart could possibly desire, and as the reader could possibly hope to keep track of.

[Back to Main]  [Back to Aereopagus]  [Back to University]  [Back to NP201]