Back to writing – refining my main character’s arc
I’m currently working on the first book in what could become my second series published on Amazon. Previously, I shared how I used the Hero’s Journey to restructure the individual stories into what I hope is a more complete narrative for the novel version. As I work on wrapping this tale up, I’m focused on the end of act two and the beginning of act three from a structural perspective.
Bringing the story to a satisfying climax for the reader is my biggest concern for this part of the book. I have two entangled conflicts to resolve. The first is the main character discovering and dealing with the conspiracy he is pursuing to meet his family obligations to the empire. The second is reconciling his own future with his family’s past and their position within the empire.
The first plot line is straight-forward and intended to provide opportunities for the character to explore the complex world he lives in. From a reader perspective, the MC needs to have some physical and mental challenges to overcome and resolve the plot either through elimination or apprehension of the conspirators. The ‘happy ending’ is this successful resolution. The second plot line is more subtle. It presumes the reader is invested in learning some of the family secrets that have been provided or alluded to earlier in the book. It also depends on the internal conflict of the main character being well established with the reader.
Before I can sort out the plot, I want to make certain I’m putting the main charcter into situations that will matter to him (and the reader), which means I need to know what his overall make-up is. Since I did not sit down and define this character arc at the beginning, I need to decide what archetype he is and what his personal journey should be in the overall story.
It’s easy to say he is The Hero, but stopping there would make him one-dimensional. I want the character to be more than that. A cliche hero who doesn’t grow and develop is boring. If I think a little more about what has already been written, it is apparent that his heroic qualities and attitudes are his Persona, from a Jungian Archetype perspective. Using this approach, the strengths of a typical hero become the outward facing attributes the character displays to his world. He is confident, talented, has mental and physical strength, courage and determination, and generally wants to prove his worth to his family and the empire by overcoming challenges and to be the driving force for justice and duty.
However, Jung also expresses a darkside, The Shadow, which is an unconscious aspect of an individual. Jung argued that the shadow “personifies everything that the subject [patient or individual] refuses to acknowledge about himself.” My main character has shown aspects of this, and the culture as a whole has as well. While the main character has seemingly adapted to his shadow, it has not been dealt with directly in the story. Brining this darkside out more explicitly may make for some interesting struggles to overcome and also set up a storng climax for the story.
Finally, Jung looked at the anima/animus representing the feminine side of a man and the masculine side of a woman respectively. Jung argued that society represses the natural femininity and masculinity of men and women, which causes them to fail in the process of individuation. Jung said that the Anima was a way for men to become more in touch with their emotionality, and thus, their spirituality. The main character has not really dealt with the emotions of his situation or even acknowledged them in the story so far, so this too may be something to explore in the conflicts and climax of the tale.
Jung’s final stage is unification into The Self. Jung said the Self is “is the total, timeless man…who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious,” which essentially means it’s the self-realized wholeness of a human spirit. The Self can only be found after an individual encounters their Shadow and Anima or Animus. This tells me that whatever my final climax is, it must move the main character closer to his own Self.
Reviewing the Jungian Archetypes lets me sketch out the conflicts needed for the hero’s journey to reach a final climatic scene. My climax must have a situation forcing the main character to confront and accpet his darkside and acknowledge his emotional side. Fortunately, the two conflicts building in the story so far will give me options to do just that. The revelations about his family will force him to reassess his feelings about his family history and their place within the Empire. The need to find the conspirators against the empire will give him opportunity to embrace some of the darkness he hides away, and to use it to complete his tasks. Understanding and accepting both of these parts of his own personality and how they support his persona should make for an engaging plot for the back third of the book.
I won’t go into too many details here on what the specific conflicts and resolutions are, but laying out the needs from an archetype perspective and aligning it to the overall Hero’s Journey, will make the writing of the tale much more straight forward.
