Craft characters your readers won’t forget — Characters are the engine of every story. Quite often, indeed, they live longer than the story itself. How many of you happened to remember perfectly the characters of a novel you read many years ago and not remember the plot at all? Plot is no more than footprints left in…

Avoid improbable expedients to end your story — The "Deus Ex Machina" Lesson — You are reading the last chapters of the novel. You are in suspense because the protagonist is in a dead-end, with no possibility of escape. The enemy has an ax in his hand and is about to hit him. …

Believable characters are key to a memorable story — Harry Potter, Tom Sawyer, Princess Leia, Romeo and Juliet. If you are an aspiring writer or an avid reader, you know the abovementioned names aren’t of any ordinary people. They are the protagonists, the main characters of some of the greatest novels of all time. See how swiftly you recognized…

Is your product made with love? Consider this pricing strategy. — When creating a product, one of the hardest things is setting the price. What is the right price? What if I choose a price that is too high and no one buys my product? What if I choose a price that is too low and implicitly undervalue my product? …

Is the shoulder of the Hero and helps to ease the tension during the Journey. — We have thus come to the end of this long Journey. We explored the Hero’s Journey with its stages and Campbell’s archetypes. However, we need to know the latest archetype that supports the Hero on their Journey: the Trickster. We talk about them in the last article of the Character…

Tests the Hero by creating difficulties for them, probing their strength and will to complete their Journey. — Speaking of the difficulties the Hero faces before considering their venture and Journey over, we now encounter another archetype, the Guardian, in the eighth article of the Character Archetypes Series. The Guardian tests the Hero by creating difficulties for them, probing their strength and will to complete their Journey.

Hinders the Hero during their exploits and creates difficulties the Hero is forced to overcome to continue their Journey. — The seventh article of the Character Archetypes Series talks about Shadow. We have arrived at the “Supreme Ordeal”, the moment in which the Hero wages battle against his enemy, The Shadow.

Creates doubts, suspicions, and uncertainty. And makes a twist in the story. — Before getting to the final part of the Hero’s Journey, we stop to describe two essential characters in the narrative. In the previous article, we talked about the Herald, and in this article of Character Archetypes Series, we talk about Shapeshifter. This is a character who changes throughout the story…

Communicates the beginning of the Hero’s Journey: it’s the triggering event that starts the whole story. — The fifth article of the Character Archetypes Series talks about Herald. In the previous article, we arrived at the last step of the Hero’s Journey. But let us stop for a moment in our narration and return to the initial stage, the “Call to Adventure”.