When creating your characters, they should each have a specific role and serve a purpose in telling your story.  There’s more to adding characters than giving them lines.  (See the article on Creating New Characters for further explanation.) 

Every lead and supporting character should fall into one or more of these archetypal categories: 

Archetypes

• Hero: admirable, likeable, lead to story
• Anti-hero: non-traditional hero.  He’s not truly admirable but still root for him; underdog
• Villain: enemy preventing hero from getting what he wants or threatening to take what he has; source of conflict
• Shadow figure: what the hero is in danger of becoming if he doesn’t get what he wants
• Mentor: provides hero with support, guidance, knowledge etc on journey
• Trickster, prankster, rebel: works against the status quo
• Gatekeeper: obstacle in hero’s path to getting what he wants
• Shapeshifter: someone who changes positions along the way – friend who becomes an enemy
• Reflective character, sidekick: serves as a sounding board for the hero; often says what’s on hero’s mind

It’s not necessary that every one of these archetypes be in your story or that only one role is given to a single character, but your story needs to have balance in conflict. 

Sometimes you’ll feel like your story isn’t working and can’t quite figure out why; it’s likely that you’re missing one of these necessary roles.  For example, you might discover you only have a hero and a reflective character.  This could mean you don’t have enough conflict.  If you bump up your sidekick to villain or shapeshifter then you have conflict. 

Mess around with the roles each one plays while you’re still developing your characters and story.  You’ll find you get a different story depending on what role your characters serve and when you hit on the right combination, it just clicks.