Life is not a pleasant place. Far from being safe and cool as the castles of Disney princesses, life is harsh, and brutal. Especially for those who dare to dream. Blunders happen. Fears take you over, and you freeze like an iceberg. To blend in with the world, you start walking around with a face of ice and eyes left glassed out with numbed emotion.
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
Huh, huh, huh, humans!
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
And then, there are humans. The world is rumbling with humans
who try to pull you down each time you struggle to rise and fulfil your life’s
greatest purpose, something that not only makes you happy but is also the best and
the most right thing for you. They will pick on your self-doubts, greatest
fears, insecurities, hesitations, conflicts and confusions, and use these as
hooks to pull you into their own mind matrix, something you didn’t subscribe
to. In disguise of “inspiration,” people will often attempt to spoil the little
joys, sometimes going all the way to disrupt your life path with barriers that
you could have easily avoided. Those that were just a waste of time.
The great hoggy-poggy soup (khichdi)
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
All these blunders, pricking humans, voices of your mind,
fears, insecurities, envies, and failures blend together to form a hoggy-poggy soup
(khichdi!) that slowly drowns you, so you forget the real purpose of why you are
doing what you are doing.
But wait, there’s good news. Simmering and bubbling within the depths of this khichdi is a little gremlin creative writers call “story.”
That little gremlin called “Story”
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
Story, this little animal, is the journey a hero navigates to overcome the obstacles, barriers, and challenges laid out by the villain. For a hero, villain is an “angel in disguise.” He is the messenger and catalyst that cooks up this khichdi for you and then drowns you in and then highlights to you “obstacles” that will help you find a way out of this khichdi.
Writers, there’s a bonus!
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
If you happen to be a writer, this entire khichdi episode turns
out to be a “bonus,” because once you start noticing this tug-of-war happening
between the hero and the villain within your mind, you put yourself on the seat
of a storyteller. If you are attentive enough, you’ll end up receiving the
bonus of a story (although it might take another few years for you to learn how
to put it out in your notebook!).
Hero and Villain: The Great Devastating Combo of Story
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
The moment a villain pops up into the picture, the hero has
to emerge. And the moment both of them materialize on the canvas of your mind, what
happens then is called a “story.”
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
Now the villain will do his best to hinder the hero’s pathway with obstacles, barriers, and challenges. Drama will unfold, event after event, scene after scene. The journey that the hero will traverse to overcome the challenges posed by the villain will become the story. His journey, both inner and outer, will make up the skeleton of the story.
Now, a story doesn’t imply a hero, but a hero and/or a villain
always implies a story.
Listening to the gremlin
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
In my own writing journey, I’ve come across zillions of obstacles, both in the inner world and the outer world, that have fueled my interest in this little gremlin called “story.” From feeling depressed after noticing beginner writers churning out thick novels in their first attempt to creeping out at my bizarre writing struggles to loathing at my gigantic lack of pure talent, I have traversed a long way. And all the while, this little gremlin has stayed with me, following me like a shadow, hovering above my shoulders, trying to tell me something, in hush whispers and tranquil bleats. Sometimes, terrifying screams.
For long, I dismissed its screams. But then, I decided, to listen. To shut my mouth, roll my sleeves, and just listen.
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
When I gaze into the abyss of mind and listen to what this
tiny gremlin has to say, I realize how fascinating this hero-villain story
archetype is. It is the type of a story every human can relate to. The human
mind, in itself, is a background for the hero and its corresponding evil twin,
the villain.
Mechanism of a Hero-Villain Story Archetype
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
Google says that this hero-villain story archetype is “one
of the most fundamental and enduring structures in narrative across all forms
of literature, myth, and film.” The core mechanism, according to Google, of
this story type is based on two factors: “polarized conflict” and “mutual
definition.” To put it from a spiritual perspective, this type of story stems
from the feature of human mind called “duality.” In this case, this is the
duality of the hero (light) and the villain (shadow).
The Hero (The Protagonist)
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
The Hero is a character who functions and operates on the “good,”
“conscious,” or the “positive” side of life. He rises to the challenge posed by
the villain to restore the balance or improve the world. His journey often
involves “inner transformation” alongside external battles. Sometimes, the role
of the hero might be to protect or sustain a code, or return to a state of normalcy
or order, or achieve a greater goal.
The Villain/Shadow (The Antagonist)
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
The Villain, in contrast to The Hero, is his “shadow.” He
represents the duality of life. He indicates all the weirdness and darkness
that lurks beneath the positive/good façade of the hero, the mud that makes the
hero, the hero. Without the existence of this villain, the hero wouldn’t exist.
They are two sides of the same coin. He represents all the unobserved fears,
desires, hatreds, anxieties, and hatreds that secretly boil within the deepest
trenches of the hero’s mind.
So while he reveals them to the hero, the agitated hero undergoes
annihilation while traversing a journey of transformation. Joseph Campbell
named this process “Hero’s Journey.”
Hero’s Journey
According to Joseph Campbell’s concept of Hero’s Journey, outlined in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this hero-villain story is constructed in three main stages: stages—departure, initiation, and return, collectively called “monomyth.” The hero receives a “call to adventure” that beckons him to leave their familiar world. They may refuse the call, but then they cross the “threshold” and this marks their initiation on the “road of trials.” Aided by allies and catalysts, they confront their greatest fears and challenges, ultimately returning to the ordinary world with a gift or bonus that will restore the balance of the world.
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
The Hero represents the human ego striving for
self-actualization and integrating the conscious and unconscious. The Hero’s
existence is the very threat to the identity of the villain, something that
forces the conflict.
Villain: Mirror of the Hero
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
In the words of Carl Jung, the villain represents the “shadow”
aspects of a hero’s personality. He manifests as the “mirror or the distorted
reflection of the hero.” Disguised as power play, revenge seeking, chaos, and a
twisted sense of justice, a villain actually proves to be the greatest “motivation”
for a Hero to navigate his journey and arrive at the goal. The Villain actively
attempts to thwart the Hero's quest, often forcing the Hero to face their
greatest fears or moral limits.
The Hero-Villain Dynamic: Conflict and Mutual Definition
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
The relationship between a hero and a villain is symbiotic,
where each character defines the other. Unless the hero integrates and
assimilates the shadow of their denied and unlived potentials, depicted by the
villain, the journey will continue to unfold. And this little gremlin called “story”
will continue to scream and bellow in the writer’s ears.
The Matrix of Morals
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
Another element of this dynamic is “moral ambiguity.” In
Moby Dick, for instance, Captain Ahab is driven by an obsessive, destructive
quest for revenge, which challenges the moral position of the protagonist. The villain
could also be an impersonal character, or the destructive force, like the Big
Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. In this case, the hero isn’t fighting against
one particular character, but an entire system or matrix.
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| Credit goes to Gemini pundit |
Personally, I have never written a story based on this
hero-villain story archetype, but as I jot down these thoughts, on a blissed-out
Saturday evening, my writing muscles are already clenching with the desire for
writing one. (In this case, the writing muscles are the hero and the
procrastination is the villain. Let’s see who wins!)
Read more writings on the topic of "Craft of Writing"
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