Orphan, Wanderer, Warrior, Martyr

Jason Holborn is a fan of The Moral Premise and independent filmmaker residing in Toronto, Canada. A while back he came across The Story Diamond on my writing aids page and how it demonstrates the coincidence of various story structures.

[A full explanation of the Story Diamond is presented in my On-Line Storycraft Training series.]

The latest PDF of the Story Diamond is HERE.

The latest PDF Annotated NOTES document for The Story Diamond is HERE.

The structure that caught his fancy was Jeffrey Schechter's interpretation of Carol S. Pearson's archetypes explained in her earlier book THE HERO WITHIN. (Jeffrey's book is MY STORY CAN BEAT UP YOUR STORY! and I discuss Carol's latest effort in a recent blog on AWAKENING THE HEROES WITHIN.)

The structure that Jason vamped on in a blog back in 2013, but which I just came across, is Orphan, Wandered, Warrior, Martyr.

Jeffrey's take, which I have used in The Story Diamond is very simple and yet profound. The four archetypes identify the protagonist's primary mode of operation in each of the four equal acts of the movie.

1. In Act 1: ORPHAN...lost...needing a quest.
2. In Act 2A: WANDERER...chose the quest...but unsure how to achieve it.
3. (stick in here a MOMENT OF GRACE (MOG) where S/He discovers what the story is really about)
4. In Act 2B: WARRIOR...having discovered through the moral premise how to actually get what he needs.
5. In Act 3: MARTYR for what he and his village back home needs.

Jason has contributed something very valuable, here. He's analyzed a number of films and described for us the above structure in them. Thank you, Jason, for permission to reprint this.

Immediately in the next paragraph, is Jason's post...