Using the Hero’s Journey to Plot

At the Michigan SCBWI conference two weeks ago, I was asked to teach about the Hero’s Journey. Taken from Joseph Campbell’s classic work on folklore, the hero’s journey is a classic paradigm for plot, especially for quest stories. The best book for studying the hero’s journey is The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.

While we usually see the hero’s journey used for a quest story, it can be used in many other types of stories, including contemporary children’s stories. Here’s my take on how The Bridge to Terabithia fits into the Hero’s Journey. I doubt Paterson was thinking about this paradigm as she wrote; but it’s a classic paradigm that can shortcut your plotting process and give you something great to work with.

ORDINARY WORLD

OPENING or BRIDGING CONFLICT: Jess wants to run, but his family doesn’t appreciate him.
Main Supporting Character hinted at: new family moving into Perkin’s old place.

Jess wants to do art, as supported by (Mentor) Miss Edmunds, but his family doesn’t think it’s worth his time to pursue.

Meets Leslie and the first week of classes, she beats all the boys at running. (Notice that Leslie doesn’t enter the story until chapter 3! The Ordinary World is often slighted by beginning writers and this is an excellent example to study for the importance of this stage.)

CALL TO ADVENTURE/REFUSAL

After the race Leslie tries to befriend him, telling him he’s the “only kid in this durned school worth shooting,” but he brushes her off brusquely, telling her, “So shoot me.”

MEETING WITH MENTOR

The one bright spot on the horizon is Miss Edmunds’s weekly visit to the school.

2ND CALL TO ADVENTURE

Leslie admits to class that her family doesn’t have a TV. Jess wants to protect/comfort her, but can’t.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

Jess supports Leslie against girl bully, Janice Avery.
Their friendship begins.

TESTS, ENEMIES AND ALLIES

Jess and Leslie’s friendship continues to grow and deepen in the next couple of months, both in school and in Terabithia.

• Enemies: Janice Avery has a subplot of her own.
• Tests: Christmas gifts – Jess finds free puppy, Prince Terrin, for Leslie; she gives him paint supplies

SUPREME ORDEAL: FEELS ABANDONED

Leslie helps Dad remodel their house and Jess feels abandoned. When Leslie realizes this, she invites Jess to help paint the golden room.

REWARD

Golden room and play in Terabithia.

ROAD BACK: HE IS CHANGING LESLIE NOW

Jess convinces Leslie that they have to try to help Janice, the bully.
Raise the stakes: Jess’ Dad is laid off work.

DEATH & RESURRECTION

When Jess goes with his teacher to an art gallery, Leslie goes to Terabithia alone and is drowned.
He thinks about how Leslie has changed him, and he realizes that the only way to preserve both those changes and her memory is to preserve Terabithia.

RETURN WITH ELIXIR

In one of the most poignant “return with elixir” moments in children’s literature, Jess introduces his little sister, MayBelle to Terabithia saying, “there’s a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arriving today might be the queen they’ve been waiting for.” He’s passing on the wider outlook on life that Leslie had introduced to him.

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In part 1, I covered plot patterns beginning with character or beginning with a pattern such as the Hero’s Journey. This continues the discussion of 9 ways to plot.

5. Combinations of Plot Paradigms

Many descriptions of how to write plot combine a couple of these paradigms:

Overlaid with Three Act Structure.
Syd Field: Snowflake + Important Points Paradigm. Syd Field basically advises a Snowflake approach to writing plot, but overlays a paradigm that points to important events and connections among those events. His plot points aren’t labeled with reference to the hero and his journey, but with reference to the three act structure; often, however they coincide. Field works mostly with screenwriters, so is emphasis on the three act structure comes from that.

Emphasis on Inner Plot. Peter Dunne in Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot likewise has a chart of events, with a variation of the hero’s journey. Dunne, however, emphasizes the difference in the inner and outer plot, relegating most of the outer story to acts one and three, leaving act two as the character or inner plot. Same story, but with a variation when you want the story to be about two people changing each other. It won’t work, though, when the main antagonist is man v. nature or man v. himself.

To emphasize the importance of both inner and outer plots, Dunne recommends you write plot points on an index card with the outer conflict on one side and the inner conflict on the other.

Major Change at Midpoint. Another idea for patterns is from David Seigel, a screenwriting, who emphasized that at the midpoint of a story, there must be a change in the main character’s goal. It’s the understanding that interesting characters grow and their needs and wants change because of events. His classic example is from The Lion King. In the first half of the story, Simba wants to be happy; in the second half, he wants to be restored to his rightful place as king of the lions. Seigel said that without this major change, stories are ineffective. He basically falls in with the hero’s journey type structure, but puts his emphasis on this major shift of the story. (Seigel had his plot paradigm on line at one time, but it’s no longer available.)

6. Emphasis on Writing in Scenes

One other variation in writing and plotting novels is the emphasis or de-emphasis on writing in scenes. Screenplays and theater plays must be written in scenes, but novels can be fuzzier about this and still succeed. However, I think there’s value in learning to write in scenes, as it keeps a story focused better. Dwight Swain’s classic Techniques of the Selling Writer, is followed by Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. One of the most helpful on scene writing is Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer.

When you write in scenes, it’s possible to plan every scene in a novel, as Swain and Bickham recommend. But generally, you need some other paradigm of the overall structure to do a good job of it.

7. MICE quotient

There are other approaches to plot patterns that I find less helpful; nevertheless, knowing them sometimes makes it easier to be bold in doing something different. For example, Orson Scott Card in Character & Viewpoint discusses the MICE quotient: stories are governed either by their milieu (For example, fantasy which invents and explores a new world), an idea (mysteries), a character (romance or character novels) or an event (an imbalance in the world, an injustice that must be put right). The author’s focus on one of these elements determines what actually makes it into the story.

For example, on The Lord of the Rings, it could be classed as an event story, with the Dark Lord disturbing the balance of the world order. Card argues, though, that it is rightly understood as a milieu story. The story begins in the Shire, travels through Middle Earth, and as it is destroyed by the battle, it returns to the Shire; Frodo can’t remain there, though, because he’s been too damaged by his contact with evil, and takes the boat ride with the elves across the Western Sea. If it was just an event story, the story ends with the defeat of the Dark Lord. But as a milieu story, it doesn’t end until we see the end of Middle Earth.

8. Author’s idiosyncratic plot pattern

Hero’s journey overlaid with the process of grief. Pattern can also come in the shape of any process of change or growth that a human might undergo. For example, in my novel, The Wayfinder, I used the process of grief as a structure: loss, denial, acceptance, healing, You can even combine several of these structures: the process of grief overlays the hero’s journey for a more complex structure.

Patterns can come from any other source: you can think of a novel as peeling away layers of an onion; as way-stations on a long journey; as episodes.

What plot patterns work best for you?

Books Mentioned in This Series

• Bickham, Jack. Scene & Structure
• Card, Orson Scott. Character & Viewpoint
• Dunne, Peter Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot
• Field, Syd.
• Noble, June & William. Steal this Plot.
• Scofield, Sandra. The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer.
• Swain, Dwight.Techniques of the Selling Writer
• Tobias, Ronald. 20 Master Plots
• Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey.
• Vorhaus, John. The Comic Toolbox.

Websites Mentioned in This Series

• Free Write to Let Characters Reveal Themselves
• Idea, Idea, Character, Character, Character, Setting
• Plot Starts with Character
• Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method

Next: Enhancing the Basic Plot

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Plot: 9 Ways of Looking at Plot

I’ve been thinking about plot and looking through my library of writing books to see the big picture of how plot is discussed and taught, how writers approach plot. It seems to me that the discussions fall into about 9 camps.

1. Plot equals character. This camp says that the characters and their problems will move the story. If you know your characters well enough, they will get into and out of scraps and fights and interesting problems. Usually, but not always, this is accompanied with the encouragement to just start writing and see where the character takes you.

It seems to me that people who successfully write this way have a deeply ingrained, unconsciously competent, intuitive grasp of a story arc that includes a character facing his deepest fears and growing or changing some way as a result. As they write, they try to align the character with this inner sense of character. In Jack Bickham’s book, Scene & Structure, one appendix is of a Master Plot, detailing one particular way to conceive of the plot structure; authors who begin with character have an internal Master Plot of character.

Those who are unsuccessful at this approach can create interesting characters who do interesting things, but they don’t key in to the deepest fears, don’t make the character suffer and change and grow.

Other readings about starting with character:

• Free Write to Let Characters Reveal Themselves
• Idea, Idea, Character, Character, Character, Setting
• Plot Starts with Character

2. Plot is a branching structure. If you start with a single statement, you can split it to two statements, and split that to four and that to eight and so on. Examples of proponents of this method are the Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method, and How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey.

Basically, you start with the Deep Theme (Snowflake) or Premise (Frey) which could describe the entire novel in a single sentence. Then you develop it by making it two (or three) sentences. Then each of those is divided into several sentences, 4-6 sentences. And so on.

The key to this is knowing, rather than discovering, the deep theme or premise. Some people start from the thinnest of threads and need those exploratory drafts to find out about character and theme. If you fall into this camp, then use Snowflaking as a revision strategy, instead of a first draft strategy.

More reading:

• If you like structured steps, or you want support for your first time plotting, you may like the Snowflake 10-step method.
• Outline by Snowflaking

3. Universal Plots. Some say there are only two plots in the world: a stranger comes to town or a character goes on a journey. Ronald Tobias’ book 20 Master Plots discusses some of the major universal plot schemes and generally lays out a structure for each; most helpful is when he designates some as character plots and others as action-oriented plots. For example the difference in a Quest and an Adventure is whether you focus on the inner or outer plot.

Other books in this vein are the classic from June & William Noble, Steal this Plot.

Or look at this 1916 book, which expresses the same idea of universality of plot:

4. Plot Patterns. Plot is a series of events that present the character with increasingly difficult choices until at the climax the conflict is resolved. This is the basic narrative arc you learned in high school. It may be enough to analyze a story by, but I’ve rarely seen it successful in leading a writer through the convolutions of plot.

However, there are patterns of plot which would fit the general idea of a narrative arc. The Hero’s Journey (orginally from Joseph Campbell, but best presented for writers by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey) establishes steps a character must face: call to action, denial, crossing the threshold, enemies & allies, approach to the inmost cave, supreme ordeal, reward, the road back, resurrection, return with elixir. John Vorhaus proposed a similar idea with his Comic Throughline in The Comic Toolbox.

I find this type pattern helpful because it fills in the smaller details left out by the English teacher’s description of plot. The Hero’s Journey is open-ended and general enough to allow for flexibility, while still being specific enough to point the writer in a useful direction. In other words, the English teacher’s plot says that the character faces a series of obstacles before reaching a final climax. The Hero’s Journey describes what some specific obstacles will look like AND it sequences those obstacles into an ideal timeline.

Books Mentioned in This Series

• Bickham, Jack. Scene & Structure
• Noble, June & William. Steal this Plot.
• Tobias, Ronald. 20 Master Plots
• Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey.
• Vorhaus, John. The Comic Toolbox.

Websites Mentioned in This Series

• Free Write to Let Characters Reveal Themselves
• Idea, Idea, Character, Character, Character, Setting
• Plot Starts with Character
• Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method

Do you use one of these plot paradigms? Why that one?

Tomorrow: 4 more variations of plotting.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win