Writing Archetypal Character Arcs: The Hero's Journey and Beyond

The Six Transformational Character Arcs of the Human Life

Ready to take your story’s character arcs and themes to the next level? This latest book from veteran writing teacher and story theorist K.M. Weiland ventures far beyond the popular and pervasive Hero’s Journey to explore six important archetypal character arcs, representing key moments of initiation in the human experience:

• The Maiden
• The Hero
• The Queen
• The King
• The Crone
• The Mage

Found in every genre from fantasy to drama to romance to adventure, these transformational stories are the secret of powerhouse fiction—as shown through a wide variety of real-story examples throughout the book.

Writing Archetypal Character Arcs will teach you:

• The archetypal beats for each of the six journeys
• Which archetypes are right for your particular story
• The best way to use archetypes in a series
• How to choose the right archetypes for supporting characters
• How to use archetypes to identify your story’s theme

You will also learn how to deepen your stories by implementing shadow archetypes (the negative sides of each positive archetype), resting or “flat” archetypes (the fixed stage between each of the main arcs), and archetypal antagonists (the epic antagonistic forces that oppose each of the positive archetypes in their journeys). The Hero’s Journey is just the beginning. Learning about archetypal character arcs will change the way you view stories—and life—forever.

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