The Hero's Journey plot and subplots explained

To me. I have explained it to me in a way that makes sense to me, not as a circle, but as a deep dark lake with deep dark water and a humongous scary monster sitting in a deep dark cave smack in the middle of the lake's bottom. Anya magically transformed my quick flimsy sketch into the pretty diagram above, with the heroine (of course) jumping into said lake, about to meet her near death. 

Okay, let me step back a little. I have only started learning about this whole hero's concept recently, but I can already see it everywhere. Of course. It's the journey of life, in a way. And the journey of learning. We have to come close to death to learn anything, it seems. Stubborn idiots. Anyway. It does look like a boob in crosscut, doesn't it? The reason I made it this way is I can picture it easily in my head when I write and read, and if the simple three-act structure needs more subplots, then I can just break up one of the curves into more curves, like I did for the cave at the bottom. It could be simple, with no additional curve, or it could be more complex. This way any story can fit into this model. Precisely what I wanted to make sense of it.

And the best part? Now subplots make sense too. For the general plot there could be many subplots, the more important ones have more curves, the less important ones fewer. But ALL of them have to have at least three curves, e.g., three acts. And if any subplot at all is present in my book, it MUST have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Otherwise I need to cut it out. 

I picture the Hero's Journey as literally having to step into cold dark water:

1. You take a walk, unaware of the danger ahead.
2. You stumble on a way down to the lake.
3. You look at it and shiver, "No fucking way I'm going in there."
4. Baba Yaga shows up, tells you there are riches in the lake (a bottle of vodka).
5. You commit to it. "Fine. I'll do it." You jump in.
6. You're wet and cold, you meet weird floating alcoholics: friends, enemies, mentors.
7. You swim up to a dark cave where the bottle is (and a monster)
8. You get in. Your air runs out! The monster nearly kills you! You change into a fish! Magically.
9. You grab the bottle of vodka and swim up. Yes! You did it!
10. You get out of the lake. Fuck! You can't breathe! You're a fish now, remember?
11. You make it halfway up, the monster is after you. You kill him with the bottle. It breaks.
12. You shed your fish skin, but alas! The vodka is gone! But you gained wisdom.

What's the wisdom you gained?

DON'T FUCKING DIVE INTO DEEP DARK LAKES FOR VODKA, IDIOT.

Go to a store, like normal people do. But then again, since you're a hero, you must be touched in a head little...but that's a whole another post.

All right, this was a totally absurd nonsense, but it's got all the main plot points. And you can reduce them or expand them as it suits you, starting from the end of the plot, then jumping to the beginning, then to the middle, then to the in-between parts, and so on. I'll illustrate.

3-POINT PLOT:

1. The protagonist is afraid of the water.
2. The protagonist nearly drowns but swims out to the shore. Yes!
3. The protagonist is not afraid of the water.

5-POINT PLOT:

1. The protagonist is afraid of the water.
2. The antagonist pushes the protagonist into the water.
3. The protagonist nearly drowns but swims out to the shore. Yes!
4. The antagonist pursues the protagonist who pushes him into the water.
5. The protagonist is not afraid of the water.

7-POINT PLOT:

1. The protagonist is afraid of the water.
2. The antagonist pushes the protagonist into the water.
3. The protagonist nearly drowns but swims out to the shore.
4. The antagonist pulls the protagonist from the shore down to the bottom.
5. The protagonist battles the antagonist and once more swims out to the shore. Yes!
6. The antagonist pursues the protagonist who pushes him into the water.
7. The protagonist is not afraid of the water.

I can keep going like this, but you'll get bored. The idea is that ups and downs happen. Up, down. Up, down. And then we end on the up. Or if you're writing something tragic, on the down. Then it goes down, up, down, up. Down. Oh, and there are two types of subplots: action and character. The action plot is the outer problem of the protagonist. The stuff that happens and propels the story forward. The character plot is the inner problem of the protagonist. The internal struggle. More important protagonists will have both, less important ones will have them collapsed into just the inner problem. Or, if you're action-oriented, just the outer one. Though we tend to love reading books about characters more than about pure action. So just create a character we like, then have awful stuff happen to her, and there you've got your plots and subplots.

To string them together you have to write an outline like the ones above for each character, either split into ACTION and CHARACTER, or only one for the CHARACTER. Then draw those curves, if you're following my method, on a piece of paper, note all the plot points, and stack the curves underneath each other. See where the subplots start and make sure you tie them all up by the end (Western storytelling style) or leave some of them open (Eastern storytelling style), and make sure that each subplot point is present at least three times, once in each act. Then, once you have them done, write a plot summary that follows all the scenes chronologically, and once that's done, you're ready to start writing.

I know, it sounds so easy, but it isn't. I tried to make it as simple for you as I can, as I was able to make it simple for myself. I have started importing TUBE plot summary according to this formula into Scrivener, making up my own metadata tags and labels and statuses and such. I have given a certain color to each plot, and a number to each plot turn, to keep track of them. So the next blog post will be about that. How I did it. And maybe some pros and cons on using Scrivener versus Word. As much as I can give you from having only used it for one week.

ONWARD.