When using the archetypal pattern of the hero’s journey to structure a story, writers can carefully look through the elements and design their characters and story around those elements. This article is the 6th in a series that explains how to use the hero’s journey pattern in writing a story. Each article explains one or more elements of the journey. This one focuses on the element called the Road of Trials.
In the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros, Psyche finds herself cast from Paradise with Eros and is faced with a Road of Trials. Did she choose this road? Why is she on this road and will she stay on it?
Road of Trials: Reason, Choice, Challenge
For writers wishing to structure their main character’s journey, they need to consider how to design this road of trials. One way to do so is by looking at three considerations: reason, choice, and challenge. According to writer Cynthea Jones, “There must be a reason, a reason we are willing to choose to take the more demanding road, a reason to commit our lives to something that asks us for excellence or service.” What is the reason your character has gone on the adventure?
After considering the reason for the adventure, choice can be addressed. What choices does the character make? What choices did the hero decide not to make? How can the character be designed in a way where choices serve reason rather than comfort or caution? Therein, lies the excitement for the reader!
Lastly, consider the challenges. On the Road of Trials, Psyche, like most heroes of myth, fiction, or film, is faced with challenges. According to Jones, “Those challenges aren’t random tasks that Aphrodite invented to discourage or test Psyche. They are the challenges that will enable us to grow into our power. They are the challenges that will allow us to turn knowledge into wisdom.”
The Hero’s Challenges
In the Coen brothers’ modern retelling of Homer’s class Odyssey - O Brother, Where Art Thou - the protagonist Everett, played George Clooney, continually refers to the “ob-STACK-uhls” along the way to their escape from prison and search for treasure. The obstacles in any work of fiction are what make the story worth reading. The hero must be challenged over and over and prove an ability to rise above the problems and persevere.
After considering reason, choice, and challenge, writers should make a specific list of challenges or obstacles that their hero might encounter. Developing scenes around each of these challenges will be the bulk of the writing work, since the road of trials corresponds to the rising action of the story.
In some versions of Psyche’s story, Psyche is faced with 3 types of challenges (similar to Cinderella’s and other mythic characters): filling a chalice, sorting the seeds, and finding the golden fleece. A character’s challenges can be categorized in each of these three ways.
Filling the chalice will involve challenges that require the hero’s control over his or her emotions and the need to amend errors and make things right in the world. Sorting the seeds will ask the hero to have discernment about his or her actions and to choose the best option when faced with a challenge. Finding the golden fleece involves challenges that test the hero’s newfound sense of power as he or she continues on the journey.
For the five preceding articles in this series see:
Journey in Words: The Hero Pattern as Writing Guide
Journey in Words: The Writing Year with the Hero’s Journey
Journey in Words: The Call to Adventure and the Refusal
Journey in Words: Supernatural Aid and Crossing the 1st Threshold
Journey in Words: Belly of the Whale
For the next article in this series, see:
Journey in Words: Meeting with the Goddess
References:
Jones, Cynthea. Moon Shadows. Diana’s Grove, 2006.
Coen, Ethan and Joel Coen. O Brother, Where Art Thou. Touchstone, 2000.
Shaun Perkins - Shaun Perkins, teacher, poet, storyteller, porch-sitter, beekeeper, gardener, writer, has been a high school and university teacher for ...
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