45 Master Characters, Revised Edition: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters

it's really useful, thank you very much. It has contributed to my writing greatly and given me things to think about and the tools to think with.

This book is excellent for a simple foundation for creating characters, but should not be followed as a bible on the subject.I feel this book would be even better if a little more variety of archtypes was added, and a section on developing those characters into truly unique beings. Hopefully something similar will be added in a later version.And finally, there are definitly notes of sexism sprinkled throughout this book, as I'm sure many would agree. In this day and age, it is quite irritating that sterotypes regarding women are still used as they are in this book, and I think the author should adress this as to not affend any more women and men alike.Overall, very good but with a few issues that could do with being fixed.

The book is well written and well researched. All the current stereotyped characters are laid bare and clearly explained. I was even tempted to plot a character using a snippet of one of the character descriptions. Then, I stopped. I realised it would drive me into a corner I so wanted to avoid. The reason this book has 4 stars instead of 5, is because the author focusses only on characters types that already exist, and doesn't delve into creative character sketches that are truly unique - and how to build those. I'm fed up with the bog standard script of female characters, in particular. Maybe that is a book I'll need to write myself.

By far the strongest part of this book are the forty-five archetypes and the elaborate detail that accompanies each. It is more than a little annoying that a forty-sixth archetype is available as a downloadable extra; I buy a book to have all my information in one place, not in a book and a second wad of printed pages! When the book discusses the masculine and feminine journeys, I found it borrowed quite heavily from Vogler's 'The Writer's Journey' without any references to that or other texts. I would recommend Vogler's book before diving in here, so you can follow the journeys more coherently. Although good, this book would benefit from some illustrations to show how the journeys compare, rather than the rather poor comparison table tacked into the appendix. In summary, worth it for the archetypes alone, but the journey information feels a bit like filler and downloadable content is just a pain.NB I agree with the gender polarisation issues expressed in the reviews for the Kindle edition of this title. Worth a read before you purchase!