Every novelist, screenwriter and oral storyteller faces the challenge of creating original and exciting characters, Archetypes - mythic, cross-cultural models from which all characters originate - provide a solid foundation upon which to fashion new and vastly different story people. 45 Master Characters explores the most common male and female archetypes, provides instructions for using them to create your own original characters, and gives examples of how other authors have brought such archetypes to life in novels, film and television. Worksheets are then included for writers to develop and map the lives of their own characters.