Common Character Types

By: Laura Onofrio

Secondary Types:

6. Self-Made Businesspersons: These characters are wealthy, ruthless and autocratic. Their lives and loves are run like an accountant's ledger; they perceive other characters as 'friends' or 'foes' depending on their needs at the time.
7. Contented Youths: These characters are the middle-class, high-school teenagers or college students who are members of traditional family units. They have strong ties to friends and family, and often suffer from the typical pains of growing up.
8. Troubled Teens: These characters suffer from the inability to cope with their transition from childhood to adulthood. They frequently fall prey to drinking, drugs, sex and ill-suited friends. These characters are the "rebels" of daytime dramas.
9. Happy Homemakers: These women are seen as the true pillars of love, strength and virtue in the family unit.
10. Dissatisfied Homemakers: These characters are often frustrated with their assigned roles as wives, mothers and homemakers. They yearn for more self-fulfillment - usually from a professional career rather than charity work or civic duties. Because no one truly understands them, they cause strain in their relationships with family and friends.
11. Retired Homebodies: These characters have often been members of their soap opera family since its 1st program; as such, they carry with them a wisdom and strength to reconcile even the most discordant members of the family. They are known for their stability in a crisis and are considered to be very pleasant, congenial people who help without meddling, give advice without seeming dictatorial, and provide overwhelming and unselfish love for each and every member of their families
12. Frustrated Laborers: These characters are mostly males. They are either young (19-34), unsettled blue collar workers who have no clear-cut direction to their lives or the middle aged (50-64) lower middle or middle-class laborers who have become bored and dissatisfied with their work and lives and are contemplating ways to change their fate.