My favorite is the Good guy who's forced to play the bad guy for a time Its interesting to see them react to the atrocious things they have to do most of the time going against their beliefs
Like most people with a checkered past, my favorite stories are those of redemption. What I find interesting in these stories is that it usually results in the death of the lead character. This dovetails into the our universal view of sin, that being, "the wages of sin is death." I walked my lead character through just about every indignity I could think of. The analogy was that if you are going to really change your ways, then you'll have to smelt your very soul into the fires of a crucible. I find a lot of guys who feel the pangs of guilt, but then make absolutely no moves to a restitution. And more than anything else in life, I despise cowards. If you are not resolved to handle the major aspects of a true life, then I openly question your motives. The major driving forces in life are galvanizing. Seeing the truths in your life should become more valuable than your very existence. Mama's boys need not apply.
Well-meaning villains are a favourite of mine. Of course they can be horrible when used incorrectly, but so far I haven't gotten tired of the 'oh crap, he was doing a better job of saving the world than we were!' moments.
I can't resist a world-weary, gin-soaked detective. Trench coat, scruffy office, sarcastic humour - the more cliches the better! I also enjoy a loveable buffoon - I love to laugh so these types of characters are always fun
Favorite? I don't play favorites in such matters, and I don't play to archetypes either. My characters are whatever they need to be for the story, and if they can truly be summed up in a sentence or two, they are probably failures (at lest if major characters).
I like the boy coming of age. For some reason, the story of a boy trying to figure out how to become a man is compelling. It's weird that I don't write these stories. I have many projects on the go, and many completed, but there's only one that fits the "boy-coming-of-age" template. I don't know why that is, but it is.
I like a bad guy who breaks all common morale and social rules but has some sort of honor rules he/she follows. An example might be a hit man who will kill people in any manner but refuses to harm children or feels the need to kill people while looking them in the face. I like to see the contrast of personal honor against society's common morale rules.
My favorites are heroic characters who can only be understood by and vulnerable around a few people. I really like how the relationships between these guys are portrayed.
Anybody proactive who makes mistakes or has what they later learn are errors in judgement. I also prefer it if they are consistently just trying to do the right thing.
"bad guys" that are really just folk brought up on the wild side of life. Products of a dysfunctional environment. My favorite being Azel from Glen Cook's The Tower of Fear. "He never looked back, never had any regrets".
Villains who are willing to die for their beliefs, even though those beliefs are horrifying. Mercenaries and professionals who risk their lives are one thing, villains who kill themselves just to spite their enemies are another, but I've always been particularly fascinated by villains who not only want to orchestrate cruelty and massacres against the innocent, but who've somehow gotten to the point where they truly believe that their vision for a brave new world is so wonderful and perfect that they don't care whether they themselves live to see it or not.
I often work with damaged characters who are in some way traumatized by an event from their past. Then I put them in an external situation that forces them to confront their inner demons. So, probably that.
I have a soft spot for the Fall, thus I greatly enjoy writing good-intentioned heroes who become good-intentioned villains. Another, and specular, kind of character I love is the naive hero; what happens in both these situations is, anyway, character development. Thus, it can be said that what I like the most in an archetype is the process; a friend of mine, who commented saying I like to grind my characters into very fine powder and put them back together, would likely agree.
I really enjoyed Ender's Game and after reading several other of Orson Scott Card's novels I've realized that he uses the same "Ender" type character in essentially every book. I don't know why but I like that character archetype but I do. If you can call it that? Whatever.