Jeffrey Alan Schechter, Author/Screenwriter/Founder of Writers Room Pro:
And I noticed that the main character moves through four of the six archetypes like clockwork.
Film Courage: What is the Jungian concept
of the hero within and how does it work within storytelling?
Jeffrey: The whole Jungian approach for filmmakers feels like it's a bit of a catch-all bucket
where everybody likes to put into Jungian and [Carl] Jung it was very dealt with a lot of like
symbols and hidden meanings and things like that. But in the most concise and well constructed
version of this came from the book Hero Within by a person named Carol S. Pearson
who I don't think she's alive anymore. This book's fairly old (but Carol if you're still with us,
I apologize), I think she may have passed on but anyway she was a psychologist who wrote a book
as a self-help book what the idea, and the hero within I think it's like six
archetypes we live by. Her idea was that if you can define yourself by one of these six
archetypes which was like warrior, wanderer, orphan, martyr, innocent,
magician, there we go I actually got them all so if can kind of define yourself by one of these
archetypes you could then say Well I don't want to be a martyr, I want to be a warrior. Then she was
able to chart well based on classic literature, how did stories that had orphans who became or
martyrs who became warriors, what was that journey like? She was sort of interestingly extrapolating
from literature, self-help lessons which is really kind of interesting. I, like most people,
get into writing kind of define I want to be like Bruce Wayne when I grow up. I want to be like
whatever you know Harry in When Harry Met Sally, it's like you start imagining yourself as these
characters she kind of went the other way she says she was kind of like you can you can learn lessons
from those characters and reimagine yourself into a different character it was kind of like
an interesting approach so so for her it was it was a self-help manual and which kind of described
sort of the history of literature and I think it was like literature and poetry
and theater that she was she was pulling her information from I mean I tripped upon it a friend
of mine who's very gifted writer who who got kind of shafted by one of the writer's guild strikes
kind of like just cut him off at the knees at a certain point but brilliant mind brilliant writer
great insights into storytelling a lot of a lot of the the things that I understand about story
came from this ongoing conversation I had with him his name was Gilbert Evans and so very much the
a lot of my whole approach to storytelling was based on this ongoing conversation Gil and I would
have back and forth about oh I just realized this oh I just realized this and we would like kind of
share this information and he had stumbled across this book the hero within and and I like clearly
remember this conversation and I'm talking about like 1997 1998 somewhere around there where where
Gil calls me up and goes I just discovered this really cool book called the hero within it's got
these six archetypes and I was looking at some of the movies that I really like and I noticed that
the main character moves through four of the six archetypes like clockwork I was like really
so you're saying yeah it's like act one the main character is an orphan of some kind either a
figurative orphan or a literal often orphan so the main character is an orphan of some kind in act
one act two they become a wanderer and we'll we'll tie it back to the central question at some point
but act two they become a wanderer act three in my four act structure they become a warrior in
act four they become a martyr it's like wow it's really interesting it can't possibly be true but
it's really interesting and I started looking at movies and stories and going oh my god it is
true like every well-constructed story the main character goes through these four archetypes
like clockwork and it's it just became like this it almost became like the it's like one of the
defining cornerstones of of of my whole understanding of story was that like so many
things kind of like fell into place as a result of understanding those four archetypes even to
the point where like one of the earliest kind of aha moments I had was talking to an exec at Disney
who I pitched some store I don't remember what it was anymore I pitched him a story and he
went yeah that was okay but your story didn't answer the four central questions I was like
okay what what might those four central questions be and it's like who's your main character what
are they trying to accomplish who's trying to stop them and what happens if they fail
right so so suddenly you went understanding the archetypes suddenly start started to
shed some light on the the central question that not central questions the the four questions of
of the film like who's your main character it's on the orphan what's he trying to accomplish that's
wanderer right who's trying to stop them right that's warrior because somebody's trying to stop
you you're going to stop them back that's warrior and what happens if they fail that's martyr
so it's like suddenly like everything started folding in on itself that these archetypes started
now relaying relating to the four main questions of of your story which just started relating into
the four acts of the of the structure that I had you can now start saying oh well act one is
who's your main character and orphan now act two right and it's just everything just started like
like lining up really really neatly as a result of that so I think there's probably all sorts
of reasons that really smart people know why it works that way I was just happy that it worked
it's like I don't need to understand the schematic to my microwave to fill up a piece of chicken
I'm just happy it does it when I hit the thought button so there's probably people out there with a
much more intellectual and academic understanding of exactly why this works I'm just happy it does
and I think there's also a school of thought that in each of these archetypes that we all possess
or all of our characters possess that there's a dark and a light to them and and how that could be
a hindrance or helpful in the story to your character's journey so right you could say the
warrior is is brave but also the warrior could also start fights and and and it could cause
problems the innocent could be charming and sweet but also it could be taken advantage of
so there's different things that yeah absolutely right and that and that and that actually plays in
with the unity of opposites which is like a whole other part of it that whole idea that that there's
you you want to have a layered character you want to have characters that that are
not just one-dimensional you can and and those are those are perfectly fine characters and they
live in perfectly fine stories where it starts getting interesting though right it's the
difference between Bruce Wayne and the in the Dark Knight versus Luke Skywalker and star wars
right so it's it's this you you get a more complex character but but there there's a caution that
comes with that is that people sometimes will overly complicate a character just for the sake of
overly complicating them and and then the pieces don't hold together right you want to be able to
you want to be able to like really understand why a character does what they do
like I'm not even necessarily talking about like anti-heroes or like a good example because
by their very nature but but you want to have these layered complex characters Walter White
from Breaking Bad was a brilliantly complex character right which was just by itself
like a brilliant piece of storytelling yeah by Vince Gilligan the the idea how do do you take
like I think even he said like we want to take mr chips and turn him into scarface
right so that idea of how do you take a guy who's just a family man and he's dying of cancer and
he's a high school chemistry teacher and a really really good guy and turn him into this brutal
drug lord right that's a complex character and all those pieces were kind of there from the beginning
they just like slowly made themselves known to the the audience as as the series progressed right so
you don't want to just have like my character is this right my character is that there's
there's a I don't remember who came up with it but of course it was
probably in conversation with Gil Evans that that we started talking about it is is
use the term like accept when right so like Woody from toy story is is the is the friendliest
best toy and leader in the entire history of toys except when his relationship with Andy gets
threatened right and that's what happens with Buzz Lightyear because life throws up and threatens
Woody's relationship with Andy now we see a whole other side of Woody so you can take your
main character and say this is who my character is except when this thing happens and then that and
that's a trigger to explore another aspect aspect of the character and with Walter White I think we
start to see him just become this other person a hundred percent of the time whereas it slowly
starts with the car wash and then buying the genes and seeing his son bullied and and you start to
see it bubble out yeah but but it's not there yet and then finally it's full on and there's
no turning back yeah yeah yeah it's kind of interesting like just joining on me now it's like
another fantastic movie with complex characters was Unforgiven the Clint Eastwood movie from
okay I don't know is it 20 years ago by now 30 it's a long time but yeah a terrific Oscar-winning
screenplay but but Clint Eastwood's character of Bill or William Money I guess was his name
had this horrible past but we don't know about his horrible past until we see him in the present
as this kind of bumbling inept kind of broken rancher his wife is dead and and he's losing his
abilities like he's trying to he was like he was trying to shoot and feel like when he's thinking
about going on this mission to raise some money to save the farm he tries shooting at some cans
you know in the distance with his pistol and he can't hit him and he like goes inside his
kids are watching him kind of like unimpressed he goes inside and grabs a shotgun because now he can
at least hit it with the shotgun so he's you're seeing this guy who's like past his prime and and
it's only as the story progresses you go oh my god this was the most notorious killer in the west who
who settled down and forswore his bad ways and is now coming back
right I mean it's kind of a very interesting story arc but he's not but none of that is obvious at
first right when you first meet Walter White it's not obvious what he's going to turn into
when you first meet build money it's not obvious what he's going to turn into so it's a I always
found that stuff to be very inspirational as far as like developing a character and taking them on
that journey and how do you how do you layer in stuff like that and and build it out but
and there are all sorts of tricks and techniques to how to define that but yeah I love that stuff.