Um, you can do whatever you want, really, as long as you make it work. Just try stuff - maybe do a single rhythm guitar track panned a bit off to one side (would work better for funky clean stuff), do a vocal off to one side, do two tracks of vocals and pan them back and forth, whatever.
The "band" arrangement with the bass in the center, your melody instrument/vocal straight up the center, rhythm guitars in stereo off to the sides, and a balanced stereo drum mix is traditional, but it's by no means set in stone.
And if you don't want to deviate too far, do stuff like add little fills or overdubs and pan them around a bit - maybe a clean-ish
guitar playing accents panned a bit left in an otherwise "normal" mix, or in a chill, tranced out song a guitar just making little string noise chirps and squeaks being panned all over the place, mixed back a bit washed in delay - if you're just working with a handful of tracks then keeping it simple is probably the best way to get a full, "wide" sounding mix. But, the more subtle little overdubs you have to work with, the more you have to, well, work with.
For what it's worth, here's my myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/drewpeterson7
This stuff is all by and large pretty old, and while most of the fundamental tracks are mixed normally (bass up the center, stereo drum mix set up in a "kit" configuration, rhythm guitars hard left and right, leads down the center), there's a lot of textural stuff in the background of a lot of these that I have a little more fun with - fake keyboard guitar swell stuff that swirls around a bit, sampled guitar noise, some e-bow stuff on the only recent demo there, whatever works.
So, I guess what I'm saying is either do lots of stupid stuff until you get something that works, or layer the hell out of your mixes and then have fun with the overdubs. Basically, What Would
Devin Townsend Do.™
