Tricksters are inherently ironic, and irony is necessary for any story to work. The hidden layer of a trickster is that there is an ironic distance between what they appear to do and what they really do.

Even when your main characters aren’t trickster archetypes, it’s really helpful if they sometimes use trickster tools to get what they want.Īn audience identifies with a trickster because we all feel like we have hidden layers (the public, private and secret self). Notice how 4 and 5 are the most lively scenes? They both involve tricksters. Both Try To Trick and Trap Each Other And One Or Both Succeed Scenes.Extract Information or Action Through Tricks and Traps Scenes.Extract Information or Action Directly Scenes.From weakest to strongest scenes he lists: In his book Secrets of Story, Matt Bird ranks five levels of scene work. Foxes, ravens and other animals who live on their wits are most likely to get the trickster treatment in our stories. Some animal characters are tricksters, established by storytellers such as Aesop. For this same reason, native cultures have sometimes been reluctant to share their trickster stories with ethnographers, which means the stories have probably gone under-recorded as a result. Because tricksters don’t worry so much about taboos, some of them are extremely scatological. Some of them, if real people, might be analysed as psychopaths. Tricksters don’t care about the usual taboos, and can therefore help challenge them. This includes comedians, jesters, Medieval court fools, the masked actors of the Commedia dell’Arte, Punch and Judy. Think Pennywise the Clown, who changes from scene to scene to be the monster the plot requires him to be.īy the way, all clowns are descended from the trickster archetype. Most often they’re ambivalent, shifting back and forth as the story sees fit. They can be supremely evil or extremely good. Tricksters can be found along the entire spectrum of morality. In stories for adults and young adults, tricksters can also have a sinister side.

Tricksters often appear as pranksters or mischief-makers. All people who are clever and persuasive know they must pepper their conversation with tricks and traps. Clever people play their cards close to the vest and lead their verbal sparring partners on until they can trap them with their own words.ĭon’t assume that only unsympathetic or devious characters do this. This is true whether you want a kiss, a confession, or a treaty. In any negotiation, the one who lays out their position first usually loses because it allows their opponent to reposition accordingly and outflank them. Most characters in children’s literature have an element of trickster about them, but this archetype is found frequently across the history of storytelling. Tricksters are characters who make secret plans to get away with stuff and to get what they want.

Define trickster