Day 12 → What Tickles My Fancy
As a writer, I'm really interested in archetypes. I use them all the time when making up characters, and I've found the website TV Tropes to be extremely useful. To quote the website: "Tropes are storytelling devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations."
It's a Wiki-like site, where people add entries as they occur to them. If you go to the Main Tropes Index you will find a list of basic tropes, including Narrative, Genre, Media, Topical and Other Categories with sub-headings below each of them.
If you click on say, Characters under Narrative Tropes you will be directed to another page listing different sorts of archetypal tropes. Say you pick the first one (Always Female) and you will wind up with an enormous list of character types that are always female. If you pick the first one again (Abhorrent Admirer) it will tell you all about that trope type, give you links to similar or opposite tropes, and list examples from comic books, television, movies, literature, and sometimes real life.
Trust me, this site will keep you busy for days, if not weeks. Most of the entries are spot-on, and some of them are downright funny to read. If you join the site you can comment on other people's entries and add your own trope characterizations. It's fun to read, easy to use, and very very instructive.
If you're a writer of any sort of fiction, you'll find it very interesting.