How to Use the 12 Jungian Archetypes in Your Novel

Today’s post is by Ingvaras Galinskas.

If you’ve read the archetype series on this blog, you’ll know just how much of an impact a good archetype can have. Susanne has already dealt with eight male archetypes and eight female archetypes, together with the mentors, rivals, and friends who accompany the hero. Those articles explain the roles a cast member plays in a story. This one introduces a different sort of set to your toolkit: the twelve archetypes most commonly referred to as Jungian. These describe something different, something a novelist needs on every page. They show what a character wants and what a character fears.

Where the Twelve Actually Come From

A little correction to save you from the know-it-alls in your comments. Carl Jung never produced a list of twelve archetypes; he spoke of archetypes as patterns we all possess, and the ones he identified sound rather odd next to the neat lists you come across online: the Persona, the Shadow, the Anima and the Animus, the Wise Old Man, the Great Mother, and the Trickster. The twelve that fill most articles nowadays, the Hero, the Sage, the Rebel and their nine counterparts, came much later, from Carol Pearson’s books on heroic archetypes, and in 2001 she and Margaret Mark formalized the group in The Hero and the Outlaw, a book written for brand marketers.

It may seem like merely a matter of trivia, but it’s good news for novelists. Mark and Pearson devised a system for describing motivation since a brand has to understand what its customers long for. Each of the twelve is built on two things fiction depends on: a basic desire and a basic fear.

Desire Plus Fear Is a Plot Engine

Role archetypes answer the question of what this character does in my story; the twelve instead answer two questions: what does this character want and what would they crawl over broken glass to avoid? Desire causes a character to take action, while fear leads them to avoidance, denial, and bad decisions. Combine both forces in a single person and the scenes begin to write themselves, since now every choice involves a cost.

The Twelve at a Glance

Read the list with one of your characters in mind.

The Innocent craves safety and a world where things are done properly, and is afraid of doing anything wrong or being punished. Dorothy Gale’s only wish is to get home.

The Everyman wants to fit in and is afraid of being picked out and left out. When Bilbo Baggins starts The Hobbit, he is sure that adventures will make him late for dinner.

The Hero is determined to demonstrate their bravery and fears showing weakness more than anything else; Katniss Everdeen volunteers since it would be unimaginable to fail her sister.

The Caregiver wants to protect other people, and is afraid of their own selfishness, or of a loved one suffering while they watch. Samwise Gamgee carries the carrier.

The Explorer desires the freedom to discover who they are and is afraid of the trap of conforming. Huck Finn sets off for the Territory.

The Rebel aims at overturning what is currently wrong and is afraid of being powerless. Lisbeth Salander destroys corrupt men.

The Lover craves closeness and is afraid of being left behind; Romeo would rather die than be separated, and he does.

The Creator wishes to make something that will last and is afraid of mediocrity. Jo March writes her way out of an ordinary life.

The Jester craves joy and the next laugh and is afraid of the quiet after a joke has been told. Falstaff plays the clown to keep the dark away.

The Sage is seeking the truth and is afraid of being wrong or fooled. Hermione Granger goes to the library just as other people go to church.

The Magician wishes to turn their visions into reality and is afraid of the consequences they did not intend. Prospero causes a storm and will have to account for it.

The Ruler craves order and control and is afraid of chaos and losing their position. Instead of receiving love as a tribute, King Lear suffers the storm.

Split the Desire and the Fear

The most useful lesson I have picked up from working with these twelve every day is to avoid giving your protagonist both the desire and the fear of the same archetype; paired desires and fears result in consistent characters, and consistent characters are boring. Give them the desire of one archetype and the fear of a different one and you create contradiction, and contradiction is where behavior comes from.

Fitzgerald did exactly this with Gatsby: Gatsby embodies the Lover’s desire, since everything is aimed at Daisy, but his fear belongs to the Creator, the terror of being an ordinary James Gatz. The desire tells him to knock on her door, while the fear tells him first to become someone else entirely; five years of parties later, that contradiction has built the entire novel.

One note from the quiz side of my job: when we score people on all twelve archetypes at once, very few turn out to be a single, clear type; the two highest scores are generally close, and the interesting tension lies between them. Fictional people are constructed the same way.

Grow the Flaw from the Same Root as the Strength

A flaw seems to be bolted on whenever it has nothing to do with the character’s underlying nature. The twelve overcome this since each one fails in its own typical way. The Caregiver’s helpfulness turns into control. The Hero begins to need enemies. The Sage knows so much that deciding becomes impossible, and contempt creeps in for people who know less. The Ruler regards disagreement as treachery.

Lear is not a kind king with an anger problem added on; his flaw is his archetype with the brakes removed, a ruler who demands love as a tribute. Frankenstein is a creator whose fear of being ordinary outruns his responsibility for the creature he has made. Write one scene in which your character’s strength is the source of the damage, and the flaw will never seem merely decorative again.

Scaffolding, Not Cages

Susanne established this at the beginning of her series and it deserves repeating: archetypes serve only as a starting point, not as a fixed imprint. Use the twelve as scaffolding and take it down as the character becomes more real. Begin on a small scale: name the protagonist’s deepest desire, name the fear that opposes it, and check whether they fit the same archetype. If they do, think about giving one of them away.

What archetype is behind your present protagonist, and is their fear rooted in the same source? I’d really like to know what you think in the comments.

Ingvaras Galinskas runs Rare Personas, a quiz studio website. If you would like to find out which of the twelve archetypes is influencing you or your protagonist, you can take the free 12 archetype quiz there. The quiz takes about five minutes, and each archetype has its own page with beautiful illustrations, including its shadow side.