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The Five-Man Band
The Five-Man Band is composed of an ideal mix of character archetypes to write action/adventure stories. Each character in the Five-Man Band has one or more specific skills that help the group to accomplish their goals. Although the moniker is Five-Man Band and some of the members in the Five-Man Band are referred to as "Guy," you can allocate gender in any way you wish.
The typical Five-Man Band includes:
The Leader
The leader's role is, in most cases, to be the hero. They can be charismatic, levelheaded, headstrong, a mastermind, or include a combination of these four attributes.
The Lancer
The lancer gives us a contrasting figure to the leader. For instance in looks. If your leader is very well groomed and pays attention to be well put together at all times, the lancer will be on the grungy side. The lancer is more of an anti-hero who might provide sarcastic commentary to challenge the leader. On the flip-side, if the leader is more of a free spirit, then the lancer will be more level-headed and task driven.
The Smart Guy
The smart guy will usually be the small, not very physical member of the band. They bring their intelligence, wit, and cleverness to the group. This character can be depicted as nerdy for comedy relief. This character might be unconventionally young, even as young to be young enough to be a whole generation removed from the rest of the group. What you have here is for instance a group of people around 25-35, but their smart guy is still in high school.
The smart guy can also work as the trickster. They are usually a buddy of the Big Guy.
The Big Guy
As the name implies, this one should be a physically larger person than the rest of the characters. This character is the strongest and brings their brawn to brawls. Some will write this one to be dumb or have another issue such as being mute. Making this character less smart is not mandatory. They can be both the Big Guy and still help the group with coming up with solutions for problems. Think Captain America: "We have a plan. Attack!"
The Heart
The heart has the role of peacekeeper in the group. They balance out aggression that may exist among other members of the group by slowing them down to a manageable medium.
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A fun exercise to do with your family or friends is to see who would be which character if you were a five-man band. It worked well in my family as we are a family of five. Since no living person truly fits into such a simplified character blue print, you will have to be open-minded toward the outcome. You can also analyze books you read or TV shows you watch to try and figure out which character was allocated which trope.
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I received the following replies to my last Action/Adventure newsletter "Time Periods"
🎼 RRodgersWrites 🎶  wrote: Thank you for today's lead item. I'm definitely guilty of getting bogged down in research ... literally years of research! Part of it is because I choose historical eras I truly enjoy, so there is an emotional and intellectual reward from the research, but it definitely becomes exceedingly time-consuming. Thanks for addressing this!
Yes. In this day and age of instant research gratification over the internet, it's easy to chase down too much information.
Quick-Quill  wrote: When I wrote my novel it was set in 2000. Now that isn't a long time ago, but there were only flip phones. Internet was still sketchy and no Ancestry.com, it was in its infancy. So much that we automatically do wasn't available. I'm reworking a Crime novel set in 1958-1959 It's a fiction based on fact. No DNA, no fingerprint database (what's a computer?) the hoops I had to jump through and now to find most of the records have been destroyed. HMM doesn't that seem odd. After 60 years and people are still reluctant to talk about what they know.
You are correct that technology moves so fast that it is tough for us writers to keep up and make sure we don't get it wrong.
gingerlyme wrote: Good advice on keeping the technology appropriate to the era in a story.
Thank you for featuring my stories "Clown Crossing" and "The Hunt" in your newsletter. I was delighted to see them there!
Thank you for reading and you're welcome for the features. |
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Action/Adventure: October 31, 2018 Issue [#9180]
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