Average Joe

In any Hero’s Journey, your hero will start off as just another Average Joe. He or she will live in the ‘real world’ or a word devoid of the magic and/or adventure that they’ll surely be seeing later in your book. They’ll start off in a position where the reader can relate to them, whether that be by their housing situation, financial troubles, or just general restlessness. You could also go one of two ways with the mundanity of this person’s life- it could either be something they’re desperate to escape from or something they love and cling to.

Call to adventure

This is the part of the book where the person finds out they’re needed for some kind of quest. The ‘Chosen One’ mentality is very popular here, meaning that they’ve been chosen by some divine being or force and only they can save the world or kingdom or variation thereupon. Whether it be divine–or if they simply find out something no one else knows and need to get the information out there–they’ve suddenly found themselves called to action in a way they never knew possible.

Refusing the call

The hero will always try to talk themselves out of the call to action they’re faced with… at first. Whether their excuse is all of the responsibilities in their life or they like their quiet, simple existence or it’s too dangerous or various other reasons- they are reluctant to say yes. But we all know they do because then there would be no story, right?

Mentor

Gandalf, Hagrid, Wednesday, Tumnus, Obi-Wan, Abenthy…what do all of these characters have in common? They each serve as the mentor that brings the main character into the adventure of the story. Your mentor can have many different types of personalities, but the main thing they should have is a certain level of wisdom that they will impart to the protagonist, kicking them off on their journey.

The Journey

The main crux of any hero’s journey is the journey itself. This adventurous stage of the book will involve changing the hero’s perception of the world, allowing them to meet new friends, forcing them to confront enemies and face obstacles along the way. Throughout this stage, it’s important that you map out each neck of your protagonist’s journey and how it changes him or her along the way. So, for example, let’s say your character faces off with a giant spider at one point. Does this encounter make him braver, facing his demons head-on? Or does it teach him to be more cunning, stealthy, and how to think on his feet? You’ll also want to make sure you establish the ‘final boss’ or enemy that your hero will need to face early on so that your reader will know the climax of the story when you reach it.

Will They Make It?

There should be a point, right before you reach the climax of the story, when your hero and/or their crew experiences a ‘fall from grace.’ This should be where your hero’s biggest flaw ends up coming to a boiling point, causing them to feel like a failure or experience a downtick in their self-confidence. Sometimes the resulting downfall will be your group splitting up or your hero momentarily giving up on their quest. Once they’ve done some soul searching, however, they’ll realize what they must do to overcome their flaws and beat the final bad guy or overcome the last obstacle of the journey.

The Final Boss

This is the part where your hero faces their final, most challenging, obstacle. Whether that be an all-powerful evil magician, hell-bent on keeping the magical realm in darkness or whether it be crossing a boiling bridge of lava over a volcano where a lost magical ring will be waiting, this final neck of the journey should be the most climactic point of the book.

Reward & Resolution

This is the stage where the hero gets what they’ve been after since the beginning of the book. This could be presented as a happy, cheerful moment, but there are also cases where you get what you want and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be or it comes with a price you weren’t expecting. If this is the case, it’ll likely leave your hero with a choice that will affect the resolution of the story. Once your hero decides where his or her priorities lie and how they want their life to be now that they’ve changed so much throughout the journey, your story will lead to the natural conclusion that their choice will give them.

The post The ‘Hero’s Journey’ Formula appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

I’m going to kill that man.

Revenge stories are a very specific sub-section of the thriller genre. And, similarly to the ‘hero journey’ in a fantasy novel, they follow a tried and true formula.

The Cast

To start any epic revenge story, you need to put together your cast. Obviously, your story will consist of many characters with varying degrees of significance, but the main cast of a revenge plot involves three players: the hero, the villain, and the victim. Your hero is the character who is exacting his revenge on the villain of the story. The law has failed to hold the guilty party accountable so your hero needs to take matters into their own hands. The hero can be varying degrees of good or bad or morally gray or an antihero–there are many options you can play around with as far as their degree of morality. The important thing is to make your hero likable; otherwise, your readers will be rooting for the villain, and who wants that?

Next, you need the villain or the antagonist of your story. This is the person who has done the act that has gone unpunished. The act itself can have varying degrees of severity and the hero could identify the wrong villain in the beginning of your story- only to find out the truth later in a shocking twist. But you’ll need someone at the beginning to which your protagonist assigns blame. Finally, the victim who exists to elicit sympathy from your readers. The victim should be connected to the protagonist in some meaningful, emotional way. It could be a friend, a family member, or even someone who went through a similar experience to the protagonist. Ultimately, they’ll need a strong enough connection that would justify your protagonist’s journey of vengeance.

The Crime

The next step to the ultimate revenge story is to choose and execute ‘the crime’. The more monstrous the act you choose (whether it be murder, rape, torture, terrorism, etc.), the more justified your hero will be in exacting their revenge on the perpetrator. Typically you want to present the crime as tragically as possible. You see cop dramas all the time where the victim’s family talk about how he or she was ‘so young’ or ‘such a good person’ or in the prime of their lives. That’s the same feeling that the crime you create should give your readers- that your victim was so pure and undeserving of the horror they were put through. A revenge story can still work if the crime is committed prior to the beginning of the story, but portraying within the pages will make the journey much more emotional and visceral for the reader.

Hero Turned Tracker

The third stage of your revenge thriller is the tracking portion. This will likely take up the most space in your book as it’s the section where the hero tasks him or herself to track down the villain of the story with the goal of exacting the proper punishment. This stage will involve research, looking for clues, and meeting a series of individuals who will lead your hero to the villain by the end. If your story involves more than one villain, the hero will start to exact their revenge on the various guilty parties in this section- culminating in the villain they deem most guilty. In addition, to add an extra layer of conflict, you can also use this section to introduce a party who is trying to stop the hero from exacting their revenge. This could be anyone from a law enforcement official to a close friend of the hero– but it’s someone who doesn’t believe the hero’s methods of justice are righteous.

The Final Confrontation

As you could likely infer from the title, this is the part of the story where your hero and your villain finally go head to head. If you choose to have your hero mistake the villain for someone else, this is also the part of the true villain of your story is revealed. There are three potential outcomes from this point: success, failure, or peace. If your hero succeeds in exacting their revenge, the question of your ending becomes ‘Was the revenge worth it? Did it give your protagonist the satisfaction they craved?’ Though your audience will likely be most satisfied if your protagonist succeeds in their quest, you can also choose for them to fail which would culminate in either their defeat, the villain escaping, or their death. Finally, your protagonist could reach the point of exacting their revenge only to realize that revenge truly isn’t the answer, thereby finally gaining the peace they needed all along.

The post How to Write an Epic Revenge Story appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.