Broadly, melodrama is a type of narrative in which the over-dramatic plot-line is designed to play on people's emotions—sometimes at the expense of character development, sub-text, and nuance. Moreover, melodramas tend to feature reductive plot lines and characters that are stereotypical archetypes. In literature and narrative, an archetype is a character that is a quintessential example of a theme or virtue or idea. Satan, for example, is a classic archetype of absolute evil.