Character: Arcs & Archetypes

by Amy Jones

What makes a character interesting? How do you build a convincing character arc? Does every story have a hero? How many shades of villain are there? How does a writer bring their characters alive? In this timeless little book, lecturer Amy Jones describes the secret techniques that writers use to create their characters, along with their archetypes, backstories, motivations, modes of dialogue, habits, hopes, fears, flaws, frustrations ... and eventual resolutions and redemptions.

64 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2025

About the author

AMY JONES won the 2006 CBC Literary Prize for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the 2005 Bronwen Wallace Award. She is a graduate of the Optional Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at UBC, and her fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories. Her debut collection of stories, What Boys Like, was the winner of the 2008 Metcalf-Rooke Award and a finalist for the 2010 ReLit Award. Originally from Halifax, she now lives in Thunder Bay, where she is associate editor of The Walleye. The author lives in Thunder Bay, ON.

Reviews

[Erik B.K.K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally meant to aid with writing stories, but this is such a great help for further developing my DnD character and his story/character arc. Has a lot of very handy charts. Quick and easy. I read it for free on: https://woodenbooks.com/index.php?id_...

[Angel Walker-Werth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful for what I needed it for, which was as a general guide to character arcs. Quite brief, uses good examples, but in its attempt to synthesize different approaches is sometimes contradictory