The Hero's Journey - Moments

Hello, and welcome to the Story Grid Podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is a creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we continue diving into the Hero's Journey. So last week's episode was we looked at the eight different archetypes that have to show up in your story. And then this week is all about the 12 different checkpoints, the 12 different moments in your story that you have to have to abide by, the Hero's Journey. So again, this is another lens to look at your story to make sure that it's working. Also, if you want to see, I put links to the book that we reference, a couple images I was referencing throughout this episode. All of that's going to be in the show notes, so you can check that out as well. But from here, let's just jump in and get started. So, Sean, last week we started on the Hero's Journey, looking at that as a way to look at my novel. And so when we've been going through. So this whole thing is trying to get to a point where I can write a second draft, which has been really interesting because, you know, 99% of the advice out there is how to write your first draft, how to get a manuscript done, which obviously is helpful. But then once you have that first draft done, it's kind of an opaque process to get to a second draft. And we are now on the kind of third step. Right. So the first one was the story grid spreadsheet, filling out the first half dozen columns and making a long to dobrainstorm list. And then that was like the micro version we were looking at scene by scene. And then we stepped back to look at the entire book on one sheet of paper with this full SCAP global story grid. And then now we're looking at it from the standpoint of the Hero's Journey. Do we have last week was do we have the right archetypes in it so the right roles being filled? And then this week, we're looking at the different checkpoints in the Hero's Journey to make sure I've hit each of those. And I'm kind of thinking of these as just like, you know, if I have this thing I'm inspecting, I'm like, turning it lots of different ways to get A different angle to make sure I'm not missing something. Is that kind of how you think about these as well?

Well, yeah. The first thing, the spreadsheet gives you very, very specific, you know, items to. To check off to make sure that you fix and. Or, you know, develop more. And then when you go. Then when you go globally for the Big Fools cap, then you're. You're checking to see that your entire story is actually in those scenes. So that's really important. And you check off your obligatory scenes and conventions from your chosen genres, and you literally find the scene that actually abides the convention or obligatory scene. And if it's not there, you have to make a note, oh, I gotta put in that. That obligatory scene or convention. Now, the hero's journey that we started last week and are gonna finish up today, the hero's journey is really about making sure that your lead character is arcing. We hear, you know, I'm sure you've heard that million times. And people always say it, well, your character doesn't arc, so your story doesn't work. And that's, you know, that's not very helpful. It's information that a lot of people can give you, but few can tell you actually how to check to see if you're. If the character is arcane. And for all of the big external genres, like the action genre, which is the most primal, and the thriller, which has a lead character that is heroic in nature, meaning that they end up sacrificing themselves for the greater good of humanity. That's what a hero does. The hero's journey is essential, an essential checklist to make sure that you're hitting those moments at the right time in the story. So the beginning hook of your story has like five checkpoints to make sure that you're hitting the middle build has four checkpoints, and then your ending payoff has three. Now I'm using Christopher Vogler's definition of sort of the 12 checkpoints. And he's. He's the guy who wrote the Writer's Journey. I highly recommend the book. It's very, very, you know, he really hits each of these major things very clearly. It's. It's not a difficult read, and it's a really good guide.

And I feel like, because I picked up a copy after we talked last week, and he opens the book talking about Campbell as a hero with a thousand faces, which is so brutally hard to read, that I'm like, this is almost like a layman's version of that book for the writer is what it felt like.

Yeah, the Campbell book is brilliant, but it was written for an academic audience. I mean, Campbell was, you know, an intellectual who had spent years and years comparing and contrasting all the myths around the globe. And he came up with the monomyth theory, which is the Hero's journey. And, you know, it's an academic book, so it's a lot of big words in there, a lot of long sentences. So I love Vogler's. I always recommend Vogler because he used to work in the film industry, may still do, and he, you know, he really went through Campbell's stuff and came up and really made it very clear. So let's start with the beginning hook of the story.

I have one more question before we jump in. So is this. So you've talked about, like, your hero arcing. So when do you use the hero's Journey to look at that? And when do you not? Because, like, we've talked about how, like, in the James Bond Action or the Martian, the hero doesn't change, right? It's all an external genre. There's no internal genre. So would you use the Hero's Journey to look at those books? Would you use it to look at, like, romance or other genres? Like, when do you use this tool? Because the full SCAP and the spreadsheet, that's like every first draft, no matter what genre, no matter internal, external. But do you use this for all genres or certain ones?

I use it for all genres. And the reason why is that if you looked at a James Bond movie from the 1960s or Ian Fleming's early novels, yes, he does not have an internal change, but there is an external change in each one of the Bond movies. So you can track the hero's journey through external change as well as internal change.

The deep thrillers like Silence of the Lambs, they have an external and an internal change. So it's even more important to make sure that the hero's journey is present there. And literally remember that a couple of months ago, you had found something online where there was an explanation, a very clear explanation of the hero's journey. And I think it was from the man who created, you know, that television series, Community College or whatever, Dan something. Anyway, he uses the circle, and, you know, Vogler uses the circle too. And the circle is a good image to remember because it implies, you know, making a full revolution and a change of worldview and. Or a change of. Of circumstances. And they have to go on through trials. They have to go beneath the surface and only to rise again at the end. And you know, if you use that sort of circle idea, you know, your beginning hook is moving from, you know, the light down to the darkness. The middle build is the full everything below beneath the surface. And then the ending payoff is the final quarter when the hero rises again and again. What you have is a 25%, 50%, 25% relationship between the beginning hook, middle build and ending payoff. And some people even divide the middle build into two sections. And the all is lost moment is at the very bottom of the circle beneath the surface. So there's any number of ways of using metaphors and symbols and thought patterns to sort of get this into your mind. Now when you were writing the first draft, you know, I talked about, and we talked about the hero's journey a lot because, you know, as you're crafting it, you want to keep that stuff in mind. You want to think about the ordinary world and the extraordinary world. You want to think about those big major shifts in the hero's journey. But once you have that first draft done, in the heat of the moment of the writing, we can often think that we've written something when we actually haven't. So it's always a great idea to just go back and check your work. If you're taking, you know, a math test and you have an extra 10 minutes after you've finished it, you know, you don't go hand in your test, you go check your work, right? So that's what editing is really about. It's checking the work to make sure that the story abides the conventions and obligatory scenes of the genre, abides the five commandments of storytelling scene by scene, abides the hero's journey and abides, you know, any number of story arcs that Kurt Vonnegut talked about, you know, you know, the man in the Hole and the Cinderella, etc. Etc. So all of this stuff, all of these tools are just wonderful ways to check your work, to make sure that you are delivering a story that can satisfy the most number of readers expectations as possible. And if all of them click together, you've got a book like Lord of the Rings that sells forever. So that's really why we're going through this process. And this is the third step in a, you know, kind of a four step process. We're almost done with it, so if you don't have any other questions, let's jump in. Okay, so I'm just gonna quickly list the five checkpoints that you should have in your beginning hook of your story. And then we'll go through those five one by one, and then we'll do this. I want to break it up into beginning hook, middle build, and end payoff, because I want people to take away from. From this, you know, episode that the hero's journey does break down into beginning, hook, middle build, and ending payoff. And if you have, you know, you may think, oh, I've got that moment, that checkpoint. But if it's in the wrong place in your story, it's not going to work. So let's just start with the beginning hook. The first thing that you have to do is establish the ordinary world of your hero. Now, the ordinary world is the status quo of their existence, how they think, what they're doing, the world in which they're operating. And we've had many discussions already about how you're, you know, you're considering tinkering with the ordinary world to make it more clear. So I don't really think there's any confusion about the ordinary world. This is. You want to establish the dystopic, the dystopia of Jesse's world at the very, very start of your story. And you're going to work on that, correct?

Right, yes. So, I mean, I feel like in the current one, I have to a certain extent, but it definitely needs some work.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's absolutely clear the difference between, you know, the world at the beginning hook and the world in the middle build. But the more clear you can make the differences so that the more interesting it will be to the reader because you want to take them on a journey to a place that seems even more spectacular and more strange than the ordinary circumstances. So the great thing about a fantasy novel and the fantasy genre is that you can start in a crazy. Like Star wars starts on a planet in the middle of, you know, some distant galaxy that's, you know, kind of. It's like an old farm in the dust bowl. And that's a very strange place to start. So the ordinary world can be very strange and wonderful, but once.

Go ahead. Ordinary world from the hero's perspective.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Okay, now the. The next one is the call to adventure. And this is pretty, you know, obvious, too. In Star wars, it's when I think R2D2 plays that hologram to Luke Skywalker explaining the trouble that, you know, the galaxy's in or whatever. I haven't.

Yeah, it's the second moment. So. Because I don't want you to get mean emails from Star wars fans, it's actually the second time it plays when he's with Obi Wan Kenobi and they play the full message for the first time. And then that's when Obi Wan Kenobi is like, you have to come with me and become a Jedi. And now I'm forgetting the dialogue, so send me the angry emails. But that. It's that moment where he's like, you've got to come with me. And that's when. So. Well, I mean, we can jump to number three, which is. What do you call number three?

The refusal of the call.

Right. So in Star wars, it's the same scene. He says, you're going to come with me. And immediately Luke says, I'm not going with you. So, yeah. And all three of these happen in the first scene for me.

Right. So, in fact, the ending of the first scene is her refusal of the call. And I think it's a strong scene. You know, the only thing that is a bit. The ordinary world isn't firmly established. And it's absolutely okay when you wrote the first draft not to establish the ordinary world, because you know what, you probably didn't even know what that world was at the time that you were constructing the story. So, you know, part of writing a first draft is allowing yourself to skip forward with a lot of two comes. And so even something as large and important as establishing the ordinary world, you can, you know, say to yourself, I don't really have it completely figured out in my mind yet, but I'm going to move forward. I'm going to just start this story, and I'm going to start this story by nailing, you know, some major, major elements in the hero's journey. In my beginning hook. And so your first scene in your novel, you know, it's the call to adventure and the refusal of the call and the establishment of the ordinary world all in the very first scene. And that's a great way of launching yourself into. Into your draft. So after the refusal of the call, the fourth thing is meeting the mentor. And meeting the mentor is the moment like when Luke meets Obi Wan Kenobi and when Jesse meets 83. Now, the one thing we have to think about here is how firmly established is 83 as a mentor.

Well, so my. I feel like it's pretty established because she's the one that introduces her.

Yeah. She shows her around and she tells her what she has to do and she sort of saves her from that plugged in woman who freaks out.

Yeah. And saves her when Jesse runs away.

And that's right.

You know, she can't do that, basically. But, I mean, is it a problem that I spend so much time establishing the world of the numbered when she's going to leave it anyway?

No, I don't think so. And the reason why is that it's a complication. It's a. It's. If you. If you look at the. The numbered as a complication in your story as opposed to.

A delay tactic, I think it works. And also, you want to establish in your ordinary world that it's a very stratified society. It's not, you know, this is not everybody. One for all and all for one. This is a very, very structured class society where there are clear distinctions between, you know, the people who mine and the people who serve the miners. So I think it works. The only thing I would suggest with 83 is, and we'll talk about this later, in the middle build. But when she comes back into the story, we really need to hammer home that Jesse is immediately going to think, oh, my God, my friend's back. I can really rely on this person.

And we've got to look at her in terms of her. Her archetype as a mentor and think about, you know, what we're going to do with her. Is she going to shape shift? Is she going to move from mentor to rival or even enemy? Is she, you know, we have to figure that out. But I think right now in the story, she's. She's a shapeshifter, and it's a little bit unclear of how she is resolved. But then again, you know, we haven't. I haven't actually read the book in so long that, you know, those are questions to ask yourself. How can I clearly make 83, you know, a major figure in this book? You know, one of the things a good cheat, a good way to look at this is. And I learned this from Steve Pressfield. Whenever, you know, he's thinking of his characters, he tries to cast them in his mind. So, you know, who would be playing this character? Is this Sigourney, you know, Weaver? Would she be the character that would be cast in the movie to play this character? Is there an archetypical sort of person that is a cultural figure that you could, you know, cast in your mind? And that can often help you in scenes when you're like, well, Sigourney, Weaver wouldn't do that. You know, that kind of thing can be really helpful. So think about that, too. Okay, so number four was meeting the mentor. We just went over that. Number five is called Crossing the Threshold.

Now, crossing the threshold is just, you know, kind of what it sounds like. It's a shift. And from the ordinary world into the extraordinary world. It's the moment when Katniss gets on that train to go to the Capitol in Hunger Games, and she's treated like a very, very important person. Before, she was living in kind of a hardscrabble town, illegally hunting food. And then all of a sudden, after she gives herself up for the Hunger Games, you know, she's. She's transitioning from her ordinary world into the extraordinary world at the Capitol. And I. Again, I haven't read the novel in a while, but I remember that I believe she gets on a train, and there's all kinds of food, there's all kinds of clothes. People are treating her with a lot of respect. She's introduced to a lot of people who are going to help her. She meets her mentor, who's a drunk. And so that is the crossing the threshold passage or checkpoint that Suzanne Collins nailed in the Hunger Games. And when you're reading that as a reader, you're like, oh, I love this part. You don't even know it's crossing the threshold. But no. Oh, this is that moment when they get on the train, and then it slowly shifts into this other world that's extraordinary and incredible. So right now, we don't have that kind of really dramatic, interesting, incredible moment when Jesse moves from the world of the numbered into the world of this competition, the world of the threshing. So you should really make a hard note for that. And one of the things we discussed earlier was using as is sort of her. Her liaison, her. You know, the person who walks her through the Academy.

Yeah, the Threshold Guardian.

Right. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, I would say I have it in there. It's just like a 4 instead of a, you know, an 8 or a 9 or a 10. Like it's not overly interesting.

Exactly. Right? So that's a great moment when you can just let your imagination fly and sort of be your inner Steven Spielberg and figure out, what does this place look like? What kind of. How does it work? So anyway, that's the end of the beginning hook stages for the hero's journey. Let me just go over them again. Establish the ordinary world. There's a call to adventure. The hero refuses the call. The hero meets a mentor, and then the mentor.

Guides them until the moment when they cross the threshold.

They finally accept the call, and then cross the threshold from the ordinary world to the extraordinary world. Now, in terms of that big circle, I was Talking about earlier, this is the moment when we go underground in a way. If the circle has a longitude and a latitude, now we're going beneath.

The latitude. Now we're into the middle build. And the middle build. You know, I, I remember when you were struggling at the start of the middle build. And the thing that really kind of helped you was when I explained to you in the Hero's Journey, we have tests.

Yeah. Test allies and enemies. I remember that snapped me into writing some scenes that actually worked in the book.

Right.

Because that's when I started thinking, okay, well, she's got to meet the people that are going to help her. She's got to meet, you know, we got to firmly establish her allies and enemies and start setting up, you know, all the tests that she's going to have to get through in the middle build. So that's when I first, Then I, then I wrote some scenes where, you know, Randy and Alex are introduced and then as is established as the enemy and they're established as the allies and I introduce the severings and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. So, yeah, that helped me snap into, because that was when, by that point, I could pretty reliably write a scene that worked, but I was having trouble stringing together scenes that worked inside of a bigger story. So coming back to that point and you explaining that helped me move on.

Right. And I like to think of these, the tests, in terms of sequences, two or three scenes or even four or five that lead to a mini event in the story that Jane Austen was really great at doing this, where she would, you know, drop into the story. Oh, Elizabeth was invited to go visit the lake region with her uncle in the months to come, you know, in the summer. And she tells the reader that, you know, pages and pages and pages before Elizabeth ever goes on that lake trip. And the reason why she does that is you've got to give the reader something to always be looking forward to. So the reason why you have these severings and these tests is so that the reader can anticipate and think about, oh, my gosh, I can't wait till she gets into the next severing. And the other thing that you have to do is you have to progressively make the tests more and more difficult. And I think you accomplish that. So the next one in the middle build is called the Approach to the Innermost Cave. And this is the moment in the story when your lead character has their all is lost moment. It's sort of the moment when they realize they're Completely out of their element. They don't know what's going on, and they have a panic. They literally are incapable of acting properly. And you put this moment, this approach to the innermost cave in the second severing, when she's locked in that room. And the part of the severing is that if you are caught or attacked or beaten, you're out immediately. And so she has that panic moment, and that's when her brother Randy comes out of the darkness and brings her into his secret place in the virtual world. So that was a really good choice because it's about the middle of your novel, and it features her losing her way. So that's the approach to the innermost cave, and it also foreshadows the ending payoff of your entire novel. So I think that that moment and that scene and that construction, and we did talk a lot about the hero's journey during that period really, really works. Of course, you can always make it better. But, you know, the approach to the innermost cave is sort of the bottom point of the hero's journey. It's at the lowest end of that circle. Any questions about that one?

No. Well, I. Let's go on to the eighth one, because that's the one I'm curious. I'm a little confused about. You know, so talk about the eighth one, and then let's see if I still have questions after that.

Okay. The eighth one is the ordeal. And the ordeal is the big. You know, it's a very, very large event. And the ordeal for Jessie is when she's in the third severing. It looks like there's no way she's going to be able to outsmart these guys in this game. And she outmaneuvers them, but she ends up getting killed in the virtual world. Correct.

Right.

So that is the moment when she has this huge ordeal. It's the moment when the hero faces a task or event that is, you know, completely overwhelming. And you chose to make this the moment when she dies, and I think that was a good choice.

Okay, so looking at Vogler's map, so I have the circle here, and I'll put links to what I'm looking at here so people can get all this. And then looking at just the Cliff Notes version of his. Of the book, you know, the Ordeal. He has the ordeal in the middle of the story. And I have mine about, you know, 75% in, like, right. Right at the end of the middle. Bill, does that matter that much?

Well, I think it's a creative choice. That the writer can make the ordeal and the. The approach to the innermost cave. Usually what happens is that the approach to the innermost cave then immediately results into the ordeal. So one is a setup, okay, but you. You made the choice of. She's actually. Her approach turns out to be. She's rescued by her brother.

So, you know, we could split hairs about this, and some people could say, oh, well, the ordeal should definitely be in the middle of the book. And my thinking about it is you want to have. You need something remarkably incredible at the very end of your middle build to kick you into your ending payoff. And ideally, you'll have something that is. I think the approach to the innermost cave is an opportunity to hit an internal panic button for your character and then pay it off with an external challenge to push you, especially in a thriller, to push you into the ending payoff. In the Silence of the Lambs, the. The ordeal for Clarice Starling is when she faces Lecter right before Lecter escapes and she's caught by Chilton and told that she is off the case. She's got to get out of there. She's in deep trouble. And Lecter seemingly gives her no information that. That will be helpful to her. So she reaches her low point in the ordeal right before it kicks into the ending payoff of the story when she realizes that she has to go to Ohio.

You chose to make the. The approach to the innermost cave. And it's literally a cave. It's a dark passage inside the virtual world as the bottom of your journey in the middle build. And then you have her ordeal as sort of the. The ending of the middle build that kicks into the ending payoff. I think it works okay.

I mean, I just. I never know. It's one of those. It feels like it's breaking the rule, and I never know. You know, I'm not. I don't have enough experience to know when it's okay to break the rule and when it's not okay to break the rule.

Well, I would say this. I would say this. The four things that you need in the middle, Bill, don't necessarily have to be at specific, you know, ironclad times. You chose to sort of have hit the, you know, the. To make the third thing. I'm sorry, the. The second thing, the approach to the innermost cave as the bottom pit of your special world and have your ordeal at the. At the tail end. And I think that works. If you had chose to put the approach to the innermost cave at at the beginning hook, then you would have trouble.

Okay.

Because then you were rushing the story. You're not building to it. You're. It's just not working. Because you would have been pushing the hero's journey far too many stages far too quickly, and it would have been confusing. So these four things that we're talking about from the middle build, I think you can pretty much play with them in their order as long as it.

Works and they stay in their order. You can't, like, rearrange their order.

That's correct.

Okay.

That's correct.

I mean, it would be hard to. I think, because you can't do one without the previous one.

Yeah. The hero's journey is a progressive complication of the hero's life. So, you know, to have her face all this stuff in the first severing and then have two other severings after that would just anger the reader. Right? Because they would be like, we've already got the good stuff. Why are we having more severance? Let's get to the threshing. You know, what is this? So the choices that you made for the three trials that she undergoes progressively complicate from one to the next to the next. So the first one, she brilliantly gets out of it by not playing. Then she panics in the second one, and the third one, she literally. She dies in the virtual world and almost dies in real life. So that's definitely a progressive, you know, complication on top of a complication. Okay. So the last thing in the middle build is the reward. And the reward is when the hero accomplishes a very big task. And at the end of that, they usually get a reward. So I'm not sure that you have a reward at the end of the middle build beyond the fact that she's alive.

Yeah, I. I skipped that. We just. So the next scene after she wakes up is just them training for the threshing. So there is no. And to me, in my book, the reward is the realization that she can't die inside the virtual world. So this is the moment when this is the whole. Like, she's had the treasure all along, but now. Now she can possess it. And now everybody knows she has the treasure, because up until now, only Randy knew, but the reader didn't know either, so. Well, I need to add something in where there's some kind of addressing the fact that she can't die in the virtual world in a much more clear way.

Well, the other thing to do is that, you know, think about the Hunger Games when, you know she set up that great device where people can lend aid to the Hunger Games competitors by, you know, parachuting in supplies and all that stuff.

Right.

And that was a way that she was building in rewards for every time, you know, Katniss did something incredible, there would be a reward afterwards. So the reward that you're talking about is more of a metaphysical reward. I think you need a literal reward. Maybe there's some ceremony where, like an Olympic ceremony where the top three stand up and they're honored because they will be representing the faction in this in the threshing. So she could be honored in some sort of fashion and rewarded for her surviving, you know, the third severing in some kind of literal way like that. Or she could be. Another thing that you could do is you could bring back 83 and the mentor rewards her with, you know, a special sword. You know, this is the sword that, you know, when you go to the threshing, here, I want you to wear this locket. You know, this is the locket my mother had. You know, that's a really nice way to do it too, because often you can use the reward as a setup for a solution to a problem later on. So, you know, when the mentor gives a gift, it's. It's an amazing thing for the mentee to get a gift from their mentor and they. They hold that gift so dearly for the rest of their lives. So that could be a really cool thing to do. And it could be, you know, a shape shifting gift where, you know, 83 is giving it to her for other reasons, like maybe it's a surveillance thing or I don't know.

So, I mean, should this. I mean, this could potentially be something I set up early in the book too, where like, every, you know, all of the train, you know, all of the trainees trying to make it to the threshing, really, really want the thing they get when they. When they're one of the final three.

Right. You could do that. That's one way of setting up the reward. But you have to remember, you have to make it a surprise, though, as opposed to, oh, you get the gold watch. Oh, here's your gold watch. Thanks. You know, that's not a. That's not a really great scene. Everybody's dying to get the gold watch, and then she gets the gold watch at the end, and it just doesn't. But if you did something where it's an unexpected gift.

Oh, you know. Did you ever read the Magicians by Lev Grossman?

No, I haven't.

So it's a great book. It's like a mix of Harry Potter in the lion, the Witch of Wardrobe.

Right.

The Narnia World, and it's really, really dark. So if you've. If you read Harry Potter and you're like, this is not how real kids would act if they had magic, then read the magicians. But it's when you were saying that there's a moment. So it's. It's the same setup where, like, they all go into this school for magic people or whatever, and when they graduate, spoiler alert. They get this thing seared into their back that I think. They don't fully explain what it is, but it's like their graduation gift. And it ends up being the thing they use to say one of them uses to save them at the end of the book when they fight the final guy. That popped in my head when you were talking about that. So they were given this.

Yeah, that's a very good device to use, too, especially when it's a weird gift. Like, here's this, you know, I'm gonna now cut off your third finger.

Something like that. And then it proves to be the thing that saves them at the end. And that's fun because then the reader who's familiar with these kinds of stories, they go, oh, that. That gift is going to pay off somehow. But I don't know how, you know, like, oh, my gosh, that's weird. I wonder how that's gonna. You know, what. What is the significance of that? And then it makes them want to. You know, there's mystery. You want to create. Give a gift that is mysterious, not, you know, obvious. Like, don't give a gift where she gets a crown. I don't know. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, I think. I think I'm with you.

So the reward is sort of the thing that you take the reward moment and it brings down the blood pressure of the story just before you kick into the ending payoff. So that's why it's a. It's a really nice thing to have because you get a breather after all of this, after that huge ordeal. Now, the big ordeal, you know, this is the moment when the reader's like, there's no way the writer is going to be able to top this. How are they going to make this better? Or there's. How are they even going to get to the ending payoff? Like in Silence the Lambs, we were like, how is she going to find Buffalo Bill? There's no way she's been kicked out of the FBI investigation and she has to go back to Quantico. If she does anything in the future, she'll. She'll be flushed out of the program. She's going to have to start all over again. She has no clues. How is she going to ever get the bad guy? And that's the end of the middle build in the Silence of the like, oh, my gosh, how this doesn't make any sense because Crawford and his team are, you know, hot on the trail. They're going to definitely get Buffalo Bill before she does.

So, you know, the reward for Clarice Starling was the respect of Crawford. And Crawford literally giving him. Giving her his money. He takes out all the money in his pockets, and he gives her a blank check and says, go. Go to Ohio. You know, do it. So her mentor gives her the gift by giving her the respect and confidence that you can do this. You have to do this, because nobody else can. And here's everything I have to help you get there. So that reward moment is just before the ending payoff of the Silence of the Lambs. And it's a beautiful moment because it's this moment when these two people, the mentor, looks at Starling and knows that he had been using her throughout the investigation and realizes she's the key. She's the one who can fix it. She's the one who has the knowledge, not him. And so that's a great moment in the Silence of the Lambs that kicks us into the ending pale. So think about a scene like that. Maybe it's between 83. I'd like that. I think 83 and Jesse have a mentor mentee relationship that's pretty interesting. And, you know, maybe, you know, you can play with that in some way. Let's move into the ending payoff. Now. These are sort of the main checkpoints for the. For the final. And there's only three of them, which gives you a lot of breathing room to. And they're pretty obvious. The first one is called the Road Back. And what the road back means is you need to. To establish so that the reader knows how Jesse's going to get back home, how she's going to get back to the ordinary world. And you established this really early on in the book when you said, you know, if at the end of the threshing, she'll be able to go home. And you might want to hit that one or two times in the book, literally, where somebody literally says a herald says something like, well, you know, you get to Go home after you win the threshing, and you get to go home in a way that is incredible. So the road back has to be reiterated in the ending payoff.

So that's one place I've always. Okay, I've always been a little confused because I thought the road back was like, okay, she's, she's not back. And I'm like, well, how do you put her back in the original world when she hasn't won yet? So this is just establishing the road back. So the way that she's gonna go. So to me, one of these should also be a moment between her and Randy where he reiterates the promise that they'll get to be a family again after the threshing's over.

Right, Right. But she needs to want to go literally go back to the ordinary world where Balaam and her friends are.

Yeah.

And her mom and dad and all that.

And her mom and dad. Yeah. So she wants to go back to that place. And you, you firmly established that in at the very beginning of the middle build, when she tries to get kicked out of the program so she can go, go back. So you just need to reiterate that at the beginning of the ending payoff. And it can be as simple as Ernst saying, geez, where do you get home? You know, after the threshing, at least you'll get to go home, win or lose, you know?

And then I think it heightens the final decision she makes too, to give that up.

Yes.

The second to last one is called resurrection. And the resurrection is the moment, you know, this is the big, big.

Big, big climax of the story is when your hero faces this final extraordinary challenge that they are absolutely no way. It doesn't look like they're ever going to get out of it. And they use.

Their special gift to win. So this is the hero at the mercy of the villain scene. When your hero resurrects, they go from what seemingly seems like a death or dishonor or damnation to life and success. So it's an external. In the thriller, it's an external success. So in Silence of the Lambs, the resurrection is when Starling hears the click of Buffalo Bill's gun and fires directly in that area before he can shoot her. So she remembers she's down in the basement. He's wearing infrared glasses so that he can see in the dark.

Yeah, I saw that in my dreams for weeks after watching the movie. So I remember the scene.

And it's great because you're like, how is. There's no way she's going to survive. How is he going to get her out of this? And he firmly established she's the best shot in the FBI. And you know, she, she does not hesitate. She empties her, you know, her weapon better than anybody. So when she hears that snick. And she also smells him, remember, because the goats. The goats. So she uses two senses to overcome the villain. And it's brilliant solution. So this is the moment, the resurrection, when certain death is outplayed and the hero wins. So that's the climax of the story. It's hero at the mercy of the villain scene. You definitely have that. You need to, of course, make it better. And then the final stage of the ending payoff and of the novel is when of the story is when the hero returns to the ordinary world. They go home and they have an elixir. That's what Vogler calls it, the return with the elixir. And so you, you definitely have that when. When Jesse heads back when with the win for the faction. But she is now, you know, looked to as the one with all the answers. So she had. Go ahead.

What. When it's return with the elixir. And you say, I have that. I know I have the return, but what is she bringing back that would constitute the elixir?

She's bringing back freedom from the tyranny of the faction.

So that is a definite elixir. These people were being used to do the dirty work for a very small group of people. And now that whole system.

Has been blown up, there's no more requirements to mine. And it's a wonderful gift, but it also brings a lot of anxiety. So in the moments at the end of your novel, Jessie is being touted as a savior. And she also knows, oh no, what have I gotten myself into now? Maybe it wasn't so bad. Why did I have to do that? And when they look to her and say, what are we going to do now? And she says, I don't know. That's a, you know, I think that's a really good ending to this first step of your novel of your, you know, trilogy or whatever.

Okay, so gone through all of them.

And what's your takeaway? What are the things that you think you need to tweak and work on better?

Well, I feel like I. There is none except for the reward that I just flat don't have. So.

Right.

All the other other 11 I have, at some level, I would say about half of them I needed like up the ante on how I'M establishing them and how I'm doing them. But I feel like overall, and it was because we discussed this so much while we were doing the first draft, but overall, I hit most of, you know, 11 of the 12 marks.

Yeah. So that's always good news. And it's always, you know, it's always a great thing to review because now you understand you're feeling better about your first draft because you're like, I did hit 11 of the 12 in the Hero's Journey, the character definitely arcs. I just need to tweak them and make them better. And it's those moments when you can allow your imagination to run wild, and it's actually serving you. You're not fantasizing. You're actually putting your imagination to use as opposed to getting lost in the weeds while you're writing your first draft, thinking about, you know, what kind of spacesuits they're wearing in the Academy. Like, that doesn't matter now you get to earn. You have to earn those moments of being able to fantasize about what kind of helmets they have. You know.

You can bet George Lucas had nailed all of these points in Star wars before he was thinking about the lightsabers and the stormtroopers and what they're looking like. And he nailed these moments so that later on, he could really let his mind run wild and come up with these great little wonderful bits of fantastical, you know, adornment. Those are the adornments that you get to play with after you've built your city. So you've got, you know, you got a really nice foundation of a city here, and there's just some. A lot of TKs that are kind of fun to fill up.

Okay, so what's next? What are we. What are we doing next? Because it. I think you said we had four things we got to go through, so we've hit three. What's the fourth one?

Well, the fourth one is a bear.

But.

It'S also the thing that will really kick you into having very clear directives for each scene that you work through in your second draft. So what it is, is a way to create a story grid for your work in progress now. And what we're going to do is we're going to use the power of 10. It's actually going to be the power of, you know, 30 and negative 30 to go through each of your scenes and give it a number. You know, I think you have 60 scenes. So what we're going to do is we're going to go scene by scene. Or what you're going to do is you're going to go scene by scene and assign it a number in terms of your external genre and your internal genre. So, for example, the lowest point for Jessie internally is when she panics in the second Severin. Right. Yeah.

The approach to the innermost cave, the scene right before that.

Right. So that scene when she panics will be your negative 30 for your internal genre. So when. When you go and you map out your story grid, and you would. The way you would do it is you would have a long line that would be the. The horizontal axis, and you would write number one through 60.

And then your vertical axis at the top will be positive, below the horizontal line will be negative. So you will take a pen and you will go to that scene that's negative 30, and you'll put a negative 30 down below the horizontal line. You'll also. Yeah. So what you need to do now is to assign numbers to each of your scenes in terms of the external and the internal genre. So where on between the number of positive 30 and negative 30.

Are you for each individual scene?

Okay. And this is like the micro version of that column of the full scap, that right column where we went through and did the plus minus. We're now doing that for each individual scene and giving it a number.

No, the plus minus is the individual. Each value in the scene is a plus or a minus. So the value in the scene could shift from shift.

It's not the actual place on the map.

The place on the map is determined by where that scene is in terms of the global values at stake, not the micro values at stake.

Okay, so here's what I'm gonna do, and you tell me if this sounds good. I'm gonna do that for, like, the first. How about the beginning? Hook those first set of scenes and I'll send you those, and then we can go over that. Because with. I had such a struggle with that part of the foolscap. I would hate to try to do this for all 60 scenes. Just miss every one of them. So how about I do that for, like, the first 11? We go over that next week, and you can kind of course correct me before I do it for the entire first draft.

Okay.

Does that sound like a plan?

It does. The. The only fly in the ointment is that the way I do it is that I begin at the. The most negative and the most positive I can do.

So should I just try to identify.

Yeah, identify the most negative scenes in terms of the life value and the most negative scenes in terms of the maturity value.

And the most positive scene in terms of life and the most positive in terms of maturation.

Okay. All right, so I'll do that and I'll send you that and then we'll go over that next week and then that will. Then after that I'll be able to actually do all 60 and then we'll, you know, we can do the map from there, the full story grid from there.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Sounds good.

Okay, thanks.

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