Contrarian View of the Hero's Journey Character Arc

Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come: an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us, like the substance of a dream. And, looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, unpredictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and women have undergone in every quarter of the world, in all recorded centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization.

This quote by Joseph Campbell appears in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (first printing 1949), the metaphorical bible for those wanting to write a classic hero’s journey story. Campbell, an eminent mythologist, looked at myths going back in time and across cultures and noted a number of similarities. He explicated those in The Hero with a Thousand Faces as well as others of his works.

Campbell identified archetypes he noted in myths, which we added into our repertoire of tropes. Tropes aren’t so bad. They are shortcuts and signal character traits so we can focus on other aspects of story. A while back, on another of my blogs, I wrote two posts, Part One and Part Two, on how tropes make writing easier but not easy.

Stereotypes are the extreme end of tropes. Where is the fresh take? Unreliable narrators as in Gone Girl and Code Name Verity turn the hero’s journey into a non-predictable path. The danger with tropes and archetypes who must complete every step of the Hero’s Journey is falling into predictable and mediocre stories. Universality is a strength and a limitation.

Using Campbell’s description of the Hero’s Journey in myths became the chichi (pretentious and overelaborate refinement) thing to do when writing one’s protagonist, male or female. The fact that it didn’t quite fit every story structure or didn’t quite fit females who operate differently in interactions, didn’t affect the popularity of creating the Hero’s Journey positive character arc.

In reaction, I suspect, The Virgin’s Promise: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spirtitual, and Sexual Awakening (Kim Hudson), was penned. What stage is your female character? Virgin, Mother, or Crone? Each has her journey, but the same female journey, like Campbell’s fell into identifiable stages:

Dependent world

Price of conformity

Opportunity to shine

Dresses the part

Secret World

No longer fits her world

Caught shining

Gives up what kept her back

Kingdom in chaos

Wanders in the wilderness

Chooses her light

Re-ordering (rescue)

The Kingdom is brighter

While the Hero’s Journey and the feminine journey make perfect sense to me when analyzing traditional literature (folk/fairytales, myths, and such), using them as a template for writing is not as easy. For me, anyway. I often felt I was force-fitting or having to retrofit to include all the stages.

This may be the most common arc in character development and change, but I’ve found these formulae restrictive. Does a character have to go through each stage? Are the stages appropriate in all genres? I can see the application in fantasy, but what about cozy mysteries? Does one need all of the stages?

I posit that not all of the stages are appropriate in every genre.

After all, Campbell was analyzing myths. I’ve never read that he thought the Hero’s Journey should be a template for writing stories. I wonder what he’d say if he learned his Hero’s Journey had become THE formula for writing character development.

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Writing a Negative Character Arc

Antagonists need not be the only negative characters in your novel. Sometimes your protagonist takes a downward turn. In fact, your actual antagonist may well be an example of a flat character arc (which is next week’s topic).

That’s because to be in a negative character arc, the character must devolve from one state to a more negative one. A downward instead of upward arc. But there must be change as in the traditional positive character arc, aka, the hero’s journey.

Anti-heroes may be an example of a negative character arc, if the anti-hero was transformed by events from a neutral or positive stance to a negative one over the course of the story. For example, Walter White, from the “Breaking Bad” television series, is thrust by circumstances into finding a way to provide for his family when he finds he is dying. The only way he can see is an illegal one, and it is a path particularly well-suited to his positive-trait talents. He shifts his focus from good to bad gradually, reluctantly (at first), until he becomes an evil hunted by the FBI.

Other instances might be a character—good, normal, Mr./Ms. Bland—who becomes a vigilante searching for revenge for one or more perceived injustices. The character devolves from a law-abiding one into a character who justifies shis behaviors as necessary to right wrongs. When one’s child is harmed, parental outrage can be turned to revenge-seeking. When a guilty character is released without punishment, an average character can be turn into a vigilante seeking justice.

One interesting way to portray the negative character arc is to make the character manipulative to the point where heesh is an unreliable narrator. Your reader doesn’t know whether to trust what heesh is being told. Are the character’s perceptions accurate? Is the character justified in pushing the envelope or even destroying the envelope? Is what heesh is doing as wrong as the wrong being righted? Is your villain convinced of shis own rightness even though the world views shim as wrong? Has heesh lied to shimself.

As a college student, I saw the film, Bonnie and Clyde. My friend and I left the theater and didn’t say a word to one another for a couple of blocks. For me, it was the first time I had recognized moral ambiguity. The good guys were brutal murderers of the bad guys. And were the bad guys really that bad? They were normal folks who turned to crime during the Depression when jobs weren’t available. I was stunned that the answer wasn’t clear as it typically was.

The devolution of Bonnie and Clyde had to be believable. Walter White had to see no other options. A deft touch is required to write a negative character arc, which is likely why most of our villains have a flat arc.

Some have written that the negative and positive character arcs play out the same way over the three-act structure. But instead of confronting shis greatest flaw/fear and overcoming it, in the negative character arc, the character succumbs to it and becomes even more evil/immoral/depressed. 

K.M. Weiland put it very well. “In a word, the negative character arc is about failure, and this becomes nowhere more clear than in the Third Act. If the positive change arc is about redeeming self and the flat arc is about saving others, then the negative character arc is about destroying self and probably others as well.”

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Character Arc in a Series

Over the years, at conferences and online, I’ve asked others who write series how you deal with a character arc everyone insists must be there. In a standalone novel, the requisite character arc is expected and easy to do. But what about character arc in series writing?

It is only recently that I have come across some good answers to my question. Just to be clear, the question I asked was is there a long character arc, spanning the series or is there a series of book length arcs that might be related but that are accomplished by the end of each book?

Well, the answer appears to be, “Yes.”

K.M. Weiland, whose book is pictured above, has written extensively about character development. She says there are two choices: An arc for the entire series OR multiple character arcs across books in the series.

Well, I kinda knew that, but now what? When I asked the initial question (over and over), I really meant HOW do I write the character arc.

Weiland and others have lost of suggestions no matter which way one goes. Weiland is a big three-acts-in-a-novel person, so she offers her suggestions from that context. Character arcs across three or four books, she says, just means manipulating the time line (for character development) using that structure across books, not within.

That’s probably one reason we see books where our hero/ine hits the dirt in book two or three before salvaging shimself in the final book. The character, to change, has to encounter obstacles severe enough to force shim to change, for better or worse.

Ultimately, character change, to be real in a novel, must be intimately connected to the core values in a story. So if the value is that real family need not share blood to be family, then your character must not understand or accept that in the beginning, but encounters obstacles that reveal that to shim. Weiland calls it the Big Lie the character believes but must abandon by the end of the series.

In a series, the change in the character is incremental. A big shift starts the change process, disturbs status quo, interrupts ennui. In succeeding books the change continues but can be more gradual.

Some series are really just one long novel, like The Hunger Games (thus the three-act structure works well). Others are really standalones, but written as a series; connected to one another but the plots are independent. Thus, the long character arc goes across books all the books versus a series of smaller, but related, character arcs in each book, as I do with my culinary series. But underneath the smaller character arcs is the larger one set up in my first book. Alli struggles with what is family and she struggles with self-worth going back to her abandonment by her family. By book six, I need her to have finished that cycle.

For me, the smaller character arcs in each book present a special challenge. How can they be substantive enough without eclipsing the overarching theme of family and identity?

The best way, according to what I’ve been reading is to tie each smaller arc to the main conflict in the story. For example, in book five, Tequila Mockingbird, Alli discovers that a neighbor is a mockingbird, someone pretending to be who she is not. Alli feels this way all the time. She has suffered from Imposter Syndrome most of her life. Therefore, she has empathy for a woman who may be a cold-blooded killer. In that book, Alli needs to accept herself and how she presents herself to the world. That’s a great small character arc consistent with the long arc.

Sarah Dalziel says there are five keys to creating a character arc in a series. The five keys are: Consistency, Changing Traits, The Dissatisfying Arc, Every Character Needs a Flaw, and Write It Out.

In a nutshell, Consistency is obvious. Once you change your character, don’t retreat to the previous person. Keep shim the same across books for revealed traits.

Changing Traits allows the author to focus on different aspects of the character in each book. Perhaps your character is impulsive and learns to be more reflective in a book (and then is consistent with that in following books). In another book, your same character might have the trait of fear of something that is overcome by dealing with an obstacle in the book.

Dissatisfying Arc shows a devolution of a character, usually the villain, but not always. Think of the Anti-Hero Walter White in “Breaking Bad.” Good man goes bad. At the same time Walter is devolving, loser Jesse is evolving. Very interesting character arcs.

Every Character Needs a Flaw is also obvious. Lack of trust can lead a character down wrong paths and into greater difficulties. Trusting everyone can also lead the character astray. Find a trait for your character that can be tied to the main conflict of the book.

Write It Out means planning the character arc for the series is as important as plot planning. Know the character and develop flaws and consistent traits that you can play off.

See how focusing on one of these keys in each book can allow a different character arc within the series?

Another way to envision the character arc in a series is described by Veronica Sicoe.

She describes three types of character arcs: The Change Arc, The Growth Arc, and the Shift Arc. The Change Arc is analogous to the Hero’s Journey that is the most commonly employed character arc.

The Growth Arc has your character being a new improved version of who heesh has always been; essentially the same, but better. The Shift Arc is a variant of the Growth Arc. In the Shift Arc, your character “changes his perspective, learns different skills, or gains a different role.” So, the character may not be “better” at the end, but heesh is definitely different.

Using Sicoe’s definitions, I can see how across a series, you could use these three to show a character arc without it having to be tied to a long arc.

I hope this gives you some ideas to chew on. I’m going to be addressing additional aspects of developing character arcs in a few follow-up posts. What do you struggle with in developing your character arcs?  Come back and join the conversation.

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Book Review: The Emotional Craft of Fiction

This book does more than give you strategies and tips and writing exercises. It does more than elucidate principles with stellar writing from others’ novels. The Emotional Craft of Writing is at heart a book about how to write an enduring book, a book for the ages.

What do “books for the ages” all have in common? They create a resonance that remains in the mind and heart of the reader. An emotional chord is played and reverberates long after the song has ended.

Maass’ is a unique book among my myriad writing craft books. From the first chapter you know this book will be different. He makes a strong case for taking the reader on the emotional journey of the characters, not just describing the journey.

Merely telling or showing those inner conflicts and effects is the skin-deep part of the novel. Getting to the internal organs and the skeleton is what we should be aiming to do. The visceral reaction, not merely the goosebumps of reaction.

You might not need to read this book if you want to be a good writer. Lots of serviceable and successful writers don’t tap the emotion of fiction as deeply as Maass directs us to.

But if you want to be a great writer, start here. Plan to read this book more than once. Get your stickies out to tag the segments that speak to your need as a writer.

As Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” Maass understands that very well. His analysis of thousands of books over the decades informed and guided this book. The subheading delineates that: The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface.

Here are some quotes that show the depth of his expectations for our writing:

“How many novels have moved you to tears, rage, and a resolution to live differently?  How many have left a permanent mark, branding you with a story that you will never forget?”

“What makes them classics? Artful storytelling, sure, but beyond the storytelling, classics have enduring appeal mostly because we remember the experiences we had while reading them; we remember not the art but the impact.”

“What all that means is that readers fundamentally want to feel something, not about your story, but about themselves. They want to play. They want to anticipate, guess, think, and judge. They want to finish a story and feel competent. They want to feel like they’ve been through something. They want to connect with your characters and live their fictional experience, or believe that they have.”

“When a plot resolves, readers are satisfied, but what they remember of a novel is what they felt while reading it. Hooks may hook, twists may intrigue, tension may turn pages, and prose may dazzle, but all of those effects fade as quickly as fireworks in a night sky. Ask readers what they best remember about novels and most will say the characters, but is that accurate? It’s true that characters become real to us but that is because of what they cause us to feel. Characters aren’t actually real; only our own feelings are.”

“When readers feel strongly, their hearts are open. Your stories can not only reach them for a moment, but they can change them forever.”

“What shapes us and gives our lives meaning are not the things that happen to us, but their significance. Life lessons, revelations, changes, and growing convictions are what we think of when we ponder who we are.”

Each of the seven chapters concludes with exercises for you to apply what you were just taught. The seven chapters are:

~The Emotional Craft of Writing

~Inner versus Outer

~The Emotional World

~Emotions, Meaning, and Arc

~The Emotional Plot

~The Reader’s Emotional Journey

~The Writer’s Emotional Journey

Interspersed among the seven chapters are thirty-four “Emotional Mastery” elements (like moral stakes, shifting from tension to energy, and the emotional mirror) with exercises for you to internalize the lessons.

An appendix, “The Emotional Mastery Checklist”, provides you a list in one place of these thirty-four elements you need to embed in your writing. The depth of thinking Maass demonstrates is impressive. The task before us to learn the principles is daunting.

As I said, a remarkable book filled with the wisdom of what it takes to write a powerful book, words that will affect the hearts, minds, and souls of others.

Pick up your copy of The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass. I think it’s his best yet.

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