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Stock Characters - TV Tropes

  • ️Sat Jun 28 2008

A Stock Character is a character who is instantly recognizable to us from other stories: the gruff grandpa, the snooty cheerleader, the bratty younger sibling. You can sum up their role in the story in a sentence or less and people will know exactly what you're talking about. Such characters are frequently one-dimensional in nature. Sometimes that's okay, because it's a storytelling shortcut. Of course, just because you use a stock character as a starting point, this doesn't mean you can't flesh them out. Indeed, Major, and Rounded characters will likely embody more than one of these Tropes, depending on the story.

Sometimes using a stock character opens the door to Playing With Tropes as well. Sometimes two or more character types get combined as well. For example, a traveling bard (medieval singer) may also be a joke-cracking Court Jester.

A stock character can be an Archetype, an example of Characters as Device, or just very recognizable.

See also Archetypal Character, as well as the Other Wiki's article and list on the subject.

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