Writing Archetypal Character Arcs

The Hero's Journey and Beyond (Helping Writers Become Authors, Book 11)

By: K.M. Weiland

Narrated by: Sonja Field

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.

©2023 Katie M. Weiland (P)2024 Katie M. Weiland

Outstanding resource for fiction writers

As a new writer, I had only heard of 'the hero's journey'. This book reveals character stories from childhood to death, opening up a plethora of possibilities to add structure and depth to any story you want to tell. I love that there are beat sheets for each main archetype and examples to find them in popular books and movies. KM Weiland also includes shadow types, antagonists and an easy to understand explanation of how archetypes connect with basic story structure. I highly recommend this book to other newbie writers wanting to improve their storytelling.