Stock character
Recognizable character types used across many narratives.
A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a type of character in a narrative such as a novel, play, television show, or film. Audiences recognize these characters across many narratives or as part of a storytelling tradition or convention. There is a wide range of stock characters, covering people of various ages, social classes, and demeanors. Archetypal characters are regarded by some audiences or reviewers as simplistic cookie-cutter characters, targeted for parody and criticized as clichés. However, the presence of a particular array of stock characters is a key component of many genres, and they often help to identify that genre or subgenre.
- field
- Narrative theory, literary analysis, film studies
- known_for
- Recognizable character types used across narratives, such as damsel in distress, wise fool, knight-errant, and witch
- related_concepts
- Archetype, stereotype, cliché, alazon, eiron
Lore & Background
Stock characters serve several purposes for story creators. They are a time- and effort-saving shortcut, as authors can populate their tale with existing well-known character types. Stock characters help move the story along more efficiently by allowing the audience to already understand the character and their motivations. Furthermore, stock characters can be used to build an audience's expectations and, in some cases, enhance narrative elements like suspense, irony, or plot twists if those expectations end up subverted.
Reader's Guide
There is often confusion between stock characters, archetypes, stereotypes, and clichés, though these terms are not synonyms. Basic archetypes and stock characters are the raw source material that authors use to build on and create fleshed-out, interesting characters. In contrast, stereotypes and clichés are generally viewed as signs of bad writing or shallow thinking. Some stereotypes, such as racial stereotype characters, may be offensive to readers or viewers. According to Dwight V. Swain, all characters begin as stock characters and are fleshed out only as far as needed to advance the plot. In American popular films, stock characters have changed over the decades, with racial and ethnic stereotypes often coming to be seen as offensive in later decades and replaced with new stereotypes. Television scriptwriters often depend heavily on stock characters borrowed from popular film to quickly communicate to the audience. In the United States, courts have determined that copyright protection cannot be extended to the characteristics of stock characters in a story.
Did You Know?
- Stock characters can be further identified as an alazon, the 'impostor and self-deceiving braggart,' or an eiron, a 'self-derogatory and understating character.'
- In American films, a 1930s or 1940s film's stock characters include newspaper vendors, ice vendors, street sweepers, and cigarette girls; a 1990s film has homeless 'bag ladies,' pimps, plainclothes police, business women
- In the late 1990s, there was a trend for television screenwriters to add a gay stock character, which replaced the 1980s era's 'African-American workplace pal' stock character.
- Southern sheriff stock characters are depicted with a negative stereotype of being obese, poorly trained, uneducated, and racist, as was done with Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard.
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