The Supreme Ordeal

My characters are approaching the supreme ordeal at the end of the book.

The Supreme Ordeal is one of the stages mapped out by  Joseph Cambell. A great writer on myths, Campbell studied the similarities between different stories.  His The Hero With a Thousand Faces is the work everybody refers to.

For writers, Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey is one of the most useful books about imposing  order on stories.  Vogler re-interprets Campbell's research in a way that helps the novelist to shape their work.  The stages of the story start with the Ordinary  World of the character, then quickly move on to The Call to Adventure, where the hero/ heroine is asked to leave their cozy life behind and go on a difficult or dangerous adventure. Not surprisingly, the next stage is The Refusal of the Call.  But eventually our heroine can't ignore her destiny, and that's Crossing The Threshold.

Now our heroine faces a series of tests where it seems that everybody in the world (or universe, in my case), is out to see she doesn't succeed.  Eventually the tests culminate in the Supreme Ordeal, the biggest test of all.  And that's where I'm at now with Ren and Nic Hunter.

Thinking about my chapter plan has made me realise that they don't face enough danger in the Supreme Ordeal, so I was spending some time last night thinking about how to ramp up the danger.  I've decided that they need to be shot at, and that shoot-out is going to start a fire.  As they're stuck in claustrophobic tunnels and have to get out fast, that should do the trick.

I often find myself returning to The Writer's Journey when my plot's coming off the rails, and following it never fails to give me the solution.

The second half of Vogler's book has a handy analysis of archetypes,  also based on Campbell's work.  They're useful to dip into to identify what role your character is playing if you're not sure whether he/she is earning their keep in your story.

I bought Vogler's book back in the late 1970s when I was living in London.  The book is still in print today, and I'd recommend it to any writer who needs to fix their story structure.