Recipe 4: Story and Plot

This is the pivotal recipe and it helps you to create a plotline that can bring value awareness and personal growth

Christopher Vogler identifies twelve stages in the journey of a hero, grouped into three acts. Each of these stages corresponds to a particular response from the hero (See table 3.2.1 below). The succession of these responses, form what is called a ‘character arc’ a term used to describe the gradual stages of change in a character (1998: 211-212). Vistor Turner’s (1990) description of ‘social drama’ makes the same journey applicable to the growth of entire communities. Social drama is the narrative structure of change which any society follows in times of conflict and crisis. An arch similar to that of Vogler’s hero is experienced by persons or communities taking part in a ritual (liminal) or in dramatic and theatrical (liminoid) activities which form part of the redressive phase of the social drama. Some of his descriptions will therefore be insightful when compared to Vogler’s journey of a hero.

The first stage of the fictional story describes the hero’s Ordinary World (Vogler, 1998: 81-98). The hero is as yet unconscious of the problems in his world that are causing instability. This instability is, however communicated to the audience along with the hero’s attitude toward his world, his values and beliefs. In the next stage, The Call to Adventure (1998: 99-106), a person or event makes the hero aware of the problem threatening the security of his world. Turner writes that the instability, and consequent need for action, is caused when “a person or subgroup breaks a rule deliberately or by inward compulsion, in a public setting” (Turner, 1990: 8). The ‘rule’ referred to here relates to the rules of the society in which the change is about to occur, the Ordinary World. The hero reacts with interest, but is reluctant to get involved, since it would mean leaving old ways behind and entering unknown territory. This reluctance leads to the Refusal of the Call (1998: 107-116), a moment of hesitating on a threshold to weigh the risks carefully before making the difficult choice for change. All doubts and fears must be clearly expressed. In Turner’s terms, the breach in rules leads to a state of crisis; it is in this state of crisis that “hidden clashes of character, interest, and ambition” are revealed (Turner, 1990: 8).

Next the hero Meets a Mentor (1998: 117-126), a source of wisdom that exhorts him to action. He agrees to undertake the adventure armed with new confidence, often symbolised by a magic item or special power provided by the mentor. It is time to commit and enter the space where the problem is to be addressed. His commitment takes him Across the First Threshold (1998: 127-133), the one between his world and the world of the unknown.

For the person involved in a ritual or social drama, the role of guidance is taken by the community’s leaders, elders or guardians. The person or persons that undertake the redressive action must be those who consider themselves or are considered the most legitimate or authoritative representatives of the relevant community. What follows is the redressive phase of liminality and ambiguity.

The second act of the fictional adventure plays out in a Special World, removed from the hero’s Ordinary World, but always informed by the conditions and needs of that Ordinary world. Everything that happens here is of a semi-magical sort. This world is riddled with characteristics of the liminal, of the in-between existence of being and not being that is also characteristic of the play space, or temenos, and of the ritual space of transformation – indeed of the aesthetic space where the dramatic paradox is most poignant and where one is both yourself and not yourself at once. According to Turner, the liminal space is “detached from mundane life and characterized by the presence of ambiguous ideas, monstrous images, sacred symbols, ordeals, humiliations, esoteric and paradoxical instructions, the emergence of ‘symbolic types’” (Turner, 1990: 11).

Character Arc	The Hero’s Journey	Social Drama
Act One		Breech and Crisis
1) Limited awareness of a problem.	Ordinary World.	Peace of social life is interrupted by a breach of a rule.
2) Increased awareness.	Call to Adventure.	Leads to state of crisis, exposing conflict.
3) Reluctance to change.	Refusal.	If the crisis is not addressed then it could pose a threat to the group’s unity.
4) Overcoming reluctance.	Meeting with the Mentor.	The group’s authority takes redressive action in the form of law, politics or religion to save the community.
5) Committing to change.	Crossing the Threshold.	Harmony is restored or the group regresses into crisis.
Act Two		Redressive Action
6) Experimenting with first change.	Tests, Allies, Enemies.	Alternative solutions are explored and extreme measures are taken.
7) Preparing for difficult change.	Approach to Inmost Cave.	The group is restructured; an alternative redressive action is taken. Stories about the community are told.
Attempting difficult change.	Ordeal.	The ultimate Liminal phase is experienced through ritual. Values are re-evaluated and transformed.
9) Consequences of the attempt. (improvements and setbacks)	Reward (Seizing the Sword)	If they succeed, the crisis is resolved; if not then the damage is irreversible.
Act Three		Reflexive Phase
10) Rededication to change.	The Road Back.	Sense of harmony can only be achieved by working through the underlying reason for the crisis.
11) Final attempt at difficult change.	Resurrection.	Outmoded behaviour is released and new behaviour is internalized.
12) Final mastery of the problem.	Return with the Elixir.	Communitas and new meaning is attained.

According to Vogler’s journey, in this world, the hero is exposed to a series of Tests and Trials (1998: 133-143) designed to train him for the final ordeal. He meets different people, some of whom are friends and allies, others who are enemies. He experiments with the idea of change. Once the new world is introduced and its rules understood, the hero and his friends begin their Approach to the Inmost Cave (1998: 133-157). This is where the greatest test will take place. During the approach the hero has time to prepare himself, take reconnaissance and reorganise his group. Often he realises how strong the defences of the enemy are and sometimes the stakes are raised by introducing the risk of losing a life or missing the goal.

The hero now faces the Ordeal (1998: 158-180). This is the central dramatic moment, the moment of transformation. Here in the inmost cave he meets the fiercest of his enemies, his greatest fears and desires come to life and are brought to the light. Turner (1990) explains that through the symbolic and abstract actions of the ritual or the drama the society is able to deal concretely with those forces that are creating conflict and division. In this liminal/liminoid space the hero in Vogler’s journey must die and be reborn – die to the negative possibilities of his own psyche and be reborn to its positive potential.

No matter how alien the villain’s values, in some way they are the dark reflection of the hero’s own desires, magnified. (1998: 169)

For our purposes, this is the moment when the hero comes face to face with the consequences of his own values and choices. He cannot step away from this moment without dying to an old belief system and being reborn to a deeper understanding of life. The entire story thus far leads up to this point and the rest will flow from it as logical consequence of the change that has occurred. One such consequence is the balancing of the two sides of the hero, what Campbell called the “sacred marriage” (1988a: 109). He dies to a one-sided interpretation of life and is reborn to a new multidimensional perspective (Vogler, 1998: 177).

After having faced death and sacrificed a piece of himself, the hero is recompensed by his seizing a Reward – a special treasure or secret (1998: 181-192). It is what Campbell calls the Elixir or magic boon (1988a: 172-192). Like the fire Prometheus steals from the gods, it will bring healing to mankind. Often the reward is a new power, an insight, or a new understanding of himself and his quest.

They see who they are and how they fit into the scheme of things. … The scales fall from their eyes and the illusion of their lives is replaced with clarity and truth. (Vogler, 1998: 188)

At the heart of this experience of growth is the built-in reflection upon values that occurs – an interrogation made possible by their (the values’) concrete expression in the guise of the hero’s nemesis. It is the moment of catharsis where the emotional experience is understood cognitively (Winston, 1988), or where aesthetic distance is achieved (Landy, 1993).

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In social drama, it can be said that it is through the ritual or dramatic process that deeper understanding is realized because the liminal space provokes the visitor to question her paradigm that contains the existing ideology. I deliberately use the word ‘visitor’ here because it implies that the one who enters the liminal space can not stay there indefinitely. In Turner’s terms this is because the liminal space or Inmost Cave of the Special World (Vogler), is a dangerous place. It is dangerous because of its instability and ambiguity. It is set up especially to create this ambiguity so that the visitor can question her ideologies and values, but at the same time it is denaturing to the visitor who must restructure and come to a new stable state to survive the liminal experience.

The moment of insight therefore pre-empts a return to stability. In Vogler’s journey, having undergone deep change, the hero must return to his own world and embarks on The Road Back (1998: 193-201). Act Three starts with his resolve to cross the threshold back to his own world, although sometimes he is chased across it. Often he experiences setbacks on his return which threaten to rekindle the flaw, addiction or desire that he had supposedly overcome in the ordeal. The lesson learned in the ordeal will be put to the final test as the hero faces death and Resurrection. The hero must provide external proof of the change in his character by his behaviour or appearance. It is one thing to learn something of oneself in the Special World; it is another to apply that knowledge back home in the ordinary world. Vogler writes:

A difficult choice tests a hero’s values: will he choose in accordanvce with his old, flawed ways, or will the choice reflect the new person he’s become? (1998: 207)

The resurrection is characterised by the hero rising from the Special World as a new creation having sacrificed an old habit or belief. Having provided proof of growth, the hero may now Return with the Elixir, the item or the wisdom that can heal his wound and perhaps that of his world.

The story may end neatly with all loose ends tied or it may have an open ending. Either way the hero gives his world and/or the audience a new perspective. As Vogler puts it:

… a good story like a good journey, leaves us with an Elixir that changes us, makes us more aware, more alive, more human, more whole, more a part of everything that is. (1998: 235)

The elixir is the tangible proof that change has occurred. In some stories, as in tragedies, the hero does not change or only understands the necessity to change too late and the audience is left with the realisation that, if he had, things would have turned out differently. If the hero or the leaders of the community undergoing change in Turner’s social drama, succeed, “the breach is healed and the status quo, or something resembling it, is restored; if they do not, it is accepted as incapable of remedy and things fall apart into various sorts of unhappy endings: migrations, divorces, or murders in the cathedral” (Turner, 1990: 15).