The Hero's Journey: A Guide to Plot Structure and Disturbances

1. Contemporary language: creative writing (professor: Pavle Pavlovic)

2. The plot structure • Beginnings are always about the who of the story (chapter four goes into greater detail about beginnings). • The entry point is a Lead character, and the writer should begin by connecting the reader to the Lead as quickly as possible—Robin Hood went riding. • Imagine the courtroom scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird coming at the beginning of the book..

3. Mythic structure • Act 1 – call to adventure • Act 2- encounters with the forces of darkness • Act 3 -The final battle is fought

4. The Disturbance and two doorways

5. Disturbance

6. How to structure the act 1 • (1] Readers are introduced to the hero’s world. • [ 2 ] A “call to adventure” or a disturbance interrupts the hero’s world. • [ 3 ] The hero may ignore the call or the disturbance. • [ 4 ] The hero “crosses the threshold” into a dark world • [ 5 ] A mentor may appear to teach the hero. • [ 6 ] Various encounters occur with forces of darkness.(Bell 2004: 32)

7. How to structure the Act number Two • [ 5 ] A mentor may appear to teach the hero. • [ 6 ] Various encounters occur with forces of darkness. • [ 7 ] The hero has a dark moment within himself that he must overcome. • [ 8 ] A talisman aids in battle. (Bell 2004: 31)

8. How to structure the Act Three • ACT III [ 9 ] The final battle is fought. [10] The hero returns to his own world (Bell 2004: 26).

9. The disturbance part in the Act 1 • Early in Act I something has to disturb the status quo. • Just think about it from the reader’s standpoint—something’s got to happen to make us feel there’s some threat or challenge happening to the characters (Bell 2004: 33). .

10. How to structure the Disturbance part (within the first act) • The number of possible disturbances is endless. 4Here are some examples: • A phone call in the middle of the night • A letter with some intriguing news • The boss calling the character into his office • A child being taken to the hospital • • The car breaking down in a desert town • • The Lead winning the lottery • • The Lead witnessing an accident—or a murder • • A note from the Lead’s wife (or husband), who is leaving (Bell 2004: 35),

12. Disturbance and doorways (transition and inevitability). • Doorways How you get from beginning to middle (Act I to Act II), and from middle to end (Act II to Act III), is a matter of transitioning. • That explains the feeling you want to create. A thrusting of the character forward. A sense of inevitability. • We are creatures of habit; we search for security. Our characters are the same. So unless there is something to push the Lead into Act II, he will be quite content to stay in Act I! (Bell 2004: 36).

13. The doorway number one: examples • Professional duty can be the doorway. A lawyer taking a case has the duty to see it through. • So does a cop with an assignment. • Similarly, moral duty works for transition.. • Examples: Book I of The Godfather ends with that transition. • Michael shoots the Don’s enemy, Sollozzo, and the crooked cop, McCluskey. Now Michael can never go straight again. • He’s in the conflict up to his eyeballs. He cannot walk away from his choices. • For Nicholas Darrow, the charismatic minister in Susan Howatch’s The Wonder Worker, the inner stakes are raised when he receives a shock to his upwardly spiraling ministry—his wife and the mother of his two sons leaves him (Bell 2004: 35).

14. The doorway number two • Lead is facing a series of confrontations and challenges. • It will go on indefinitely unless some crisis, setback, discovery opens the door to a path that leads to the climax. • On this side, the Lead can gather his forces, inner and outer, for the final battle or final choice that will end the story. There’s no going back through the door. The story must end (Bell 2004: 38).

15. The doorway number 2 • Through Door Number 2 To move from the middle to the end—the second doorway of no return— something has to happen that sets up the final confrontation. • Usually it is some major clue or piece of information, or a huge setback or crisis, that hurtles the action toward a conclusion—usually with one quarter or less of the novel to go. • In The Godfather, the Don’s death is a setback to peace among the mafia families. • It emboldens the enemies of the Corleone family, forcing Michael to unleash a torrent of death to establish his power once and for all. These doorways work equally well in literary fiction. • Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River has two perfectly placed transitions. The first occurs when Reuben’s older brother, Davy, shoots and kills two people and must flee. This thrusts Reuben into the middle—the quest to find Davy. The second doorway opens when Davy reappears, setting up the final battle within Reuben—should he reveal where Davy is? (Bell 2004: 36)

16. Beginnings • Beginnings have other tasks to perform. The four most important are: • • Present the story world—tell us something about the setting, the time, and the immediate context. • • Establish the tone the reader will rely upon. Is this to be a sweeping epic or a zany farce? • Action packed or dwelling more on character change? Fast moving or leisurely? •

17. Middles • The major part of the novel is the confrontation, a series of battles between the Lead and the opposition. They fought. • This is also where subplots blossom, adding complexity to the novel and usually reflecting the deeper meaning of the book.

18. Endings • • Tie up all loose ends. Are there story threads that are left dangling? • You must either resolve these in a way that does not distract from the main plot line or go back and snip them out. Readers have long memories. • • Give a feeling of resonance. • The best endings leave a sense of something beyond the confines of the book. What does the story mean in the larger sense?