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Character Type: Loner
“The thing is, we’ve all experienced loneliness and almost all of us are, by our human nature, social creatures. So when we happen upon a Loner in a story, our instinct is to become engaged with them and their plight.”
Those of you who have followed my blog for some time or taken courses with me through Screenwriting Master Class know how fascinated I am with character archetypes, specifically how there are five — Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster — which recur in movies over and over and over.
Some might see archetypes as a sort of reductionist approach to writing when in my experience, it is precisely the opposite.
By working with these five Primary Character Archetypes, we can identify the core narrative function of every key character, then use that knowledge as a guide as we build them out in a limitless number of ways.
One approach is to use an extensive array of Character Types available to us. So this month, I am running a series in which we will explore 20 Character Types, and consider how writers can use them to create unique, compelling figures in our stories.
Today: Loner.
The Loner is another staple in Hollywood movie history spanning across all genres and story types. If you think about it, the Loner practically defined the Western genre during the…
