Slotting the Journeys into the Four Act Structure

Pacing Your Journeys: An Overview

So let me explain all of this.

I made the leftmost column for pacing. Pacing is an important element that prevents a story from being too rushed, or dragging. Attending to pacing keeps away sagging middles in your stories. I'm a "plantser" in that I write by the seat of my pants (a pantser) and I also plan (a planner). I usually know point A, the beginning, point Z (the end), point M (the midpoint), and a set piece at G and S (pinch points or plot points, depending) before I start writing. I frequently pants how I'm going to get from point A to G to M to S to Z. Often when I get to point M beyond, I'm deep enough into the story that I will actually stop and outline the ending, and notes for revisions.

Because I instinctively write in four acts, this four-act pacing structure is very useful to me. I know some people loathe the Save the Cat idea of having assorted plot points occur within certain pages / minutes of a story or a movie. However, "this event must happen on page 30 or else" is not what I'm going for here.

My actual point is that while you can slot the Journeys into the Four Act structure, all of my sources on the Journeys agree that all of the Journey beats are optional. They can also appear more than once. I'm simply demonstrating how the beats may be used, or when they're most likely to appear within a story.

You are generally going to have the Herald of Doom appear in Act I, frequently as an inciting incident. The character you use as the Herald will likely not appear as a herald of doom in Act III, when the story is supposed to be resolved.

In the book, Dune, the reverend mother Helen Gaius Mohiam is the Herald in Act I, but in Act III she is merely a key bystander to the story’s climax. All of the Journeys have an all is lost moment, which tend to occur at the same time as the all is lost moment in the pacing structure.

But some beats might be repeated throughout the story. For example, your character might encounter several mentors, as Aang does in Avatar: the Last Airbender.

Or beats might occur “early.” In The Last Dragon (a childhood favorite), "Bruce" Leroy’s Guide is already present when the story opens. The story begins with Leroy's sensei sending him on the Journey to attain the “power of the Glow.” Yes, really, it was a cheesy 80’s movie, featuring an evil record executive (but I repeat myself) and a Shogun of Harlem!

The beat sheets demonstrate that a fairy tale hero has no choice but to “accept the call,” but there’s no law that a mythic hero must refuse it at first, as Joseph Campbell makes clear in Hero With a Thousand Faces. It's a branching option in the Journey, where the refusal leads to tragic ends. But refusing the call might not be in the nature of a Captain America or Wonder Woman type. And a hero might not refuse because he’s a coward, but because he’s “getting too old for this,” or because she's faced the danger before and "knows better," or other valid reasons.

As I said in another post, You can use beats from the Hero’s Journey to add action-adventure to the Heroine’s Journey, e.g., Alien. Beats from the Heroine’s Journey can be used to show the inner transformation of a character in the Hero’s Journey. The CGI-animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Avatar: The Last Airbender used the Heroine’s Journey for the redemption arcs of their respective antagonists, Asajj Ventress and Prince Zuko.

In my childhood I watched martial arts / wuxia movies, and the one thing I remember was that the protagonist always had to overcome some inner flaw, or awaken an inner power in order to master an external skill or problem. The point is that the Journeys don’t have to be either / or.

Caveats: In my post on the the classic fairy-tale journey (Psyche's Descent) you'll note that those who studied it observe it's used with female characters, because it's based on the pattern of life as lived by European women in the relevant time period chronicled by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, etc. However, it works just as well with a male character, and I will use my favorite book to prove it:

• After meeting the Herald who warns that his father will be killed, a youth and his family are betrayed by a trusted servant who is in the pay of their emperor. His father is indeed murdered, and the youth and his mother must flee their home.
• The youth and his mother throw their lot in with a group of dangerous outsiders, and quickly set about assimilating into the group (learning to work).
• At a peak moment, the youth risks everything to test himself — and appears to have died as a result. But he’s not dead. Instead, with the help of his mother, his true love awakens him. He is born anew as a man with wondrous and terrible powers.

• He uses those powers to lead his new kith and kin into battle against the emperor, and the henchmen who killed his father and destroyed his House.
• After overcoming the villains, he marries the princess and becomes the new emperor.

I’m talking about Paul Atreides in Dune, of course. In the Classic Fairy Tale, the last beat often includes the protagonist making a last promise. For Paul the “last promise” is to Chani, his concubine: he will always love her, even though he must marry Princess Irulan as a political necessity. So, while the Psyche's Descent / Brothers Grimm-style of Journey was based on women’s lives, it can obviously be used for a male Journeyer.