Following on from our Mystery Plot Template Cheatsheet, which was following on from our Universal Storyline plot template, we are pleased to present the Romance Plot Template Cheatsheet!

This has been collated from various sources throughout the Internet.

As always, this is only intended to be a launching pad to get you started on the right track.

If you find this useful, please share and comment!

And once again, here it is as text for your convenience:

Act One

1. Introduce the protagonist (who feels incomplete)

2. Protagonist meets love interest but there is conflict

3. Characters are forced to spend time together

4. Characters’ goals are at cross purposes

Act Two

5. Characters are bound together in a situation (sexual tension occurs)

6. Protagonist’s individual desire conflicts with the growing relationship

7. Crisis – shift to prioritize relationship ends in disaster

Act Three

8. Climax – protagonist must make personal sacrifice for ultimately fulfilling relationship

It’s often said that people (or more importantly, literary agents) will stop reading your book if you haven’t hooked them within the first sentence.

I suspect that this is probably a little pessimistic, but it’s true that given the intensely competitive nature of getting published in fiction, starting strong is critically important.

But the opening scene has another important role, as well as hooking a reader. You need to set up the ending.

“What?” I hear you cry. “That’s all backwards! I’m going to work up to my ending.”

Well, yes. But also, no. A satisfying climax cannot just come out of the blue. Everything has to be foreshadowed, and a truly elegant novel will have given you all the clues right at the outset.

All satisfying stories are in essence about how a character changes (feel free to disagree with me about this statement in the comments). I like to define this change in terms of what a character wants, and what they need. Read more about this 'character journey' here.

What a character wants tends to be external – such as money, a particular partner, a job, etc. What a character needs is about personal fulfilment, and is usually some form of compassion or courage.

In the final climax, your character should be faced with a difficult challenge, where they must choose between finally getting what they’ve wanted all along, or sacrificing that in order to be who they need to be – and in doing so, realising what they actually needed all along.

In order to give this climax impact, the opening scene should foreshadow the entire thing. That means you need to introduce your protagonist and establish what they want and what they need.

Then there should be some kind of challenge – this may or may not be the inciting incident (or call to action) to which they make the wrong decision – i.e. their response is fully motivated by what they want.

This (usually selfish) decision then leads to a cascade of mishaps and challenges which they spend the rest of the book dealing with, until finally, at the end… well, we’ve already been through this.

Take another look at your opening scene from this perspective and you may find you're able to strengthen it by ensuring these elements are there.

Please leave any comments or thoughts on this below.

There’s nothing quite so gutting about wasting weeks, months and even years writing your novel only to find out that it has major plot issues.

Below are the five elements I’ve found most critical when it comes to creating a stonking plot that gives your readers the excitement and satisfaction they crave.

Start with a good premise

Premise, logline, backbone, kernel, elevator pitch… Whatever you want to call it, this is a single line which sums up the absolute core question and thrust of your novel. It should include five elements: character, situation, objective, opponent and disaster.

It should set out who the protagonist is, what they want, what’s stopping them and what disaster they need to avoid. It also helps to offer some sense of setting.

This premise is your anchor, to ensure your novel is coherent and starts on a solid footing.

Define your character’s flaw

The most popular stories follow a flawed character who redeems themselves.

They should be able to take the right action in the final scene that they would not have been capable of in the first scene. Allen Palmer of Cracking Yarns suggests that the two character flaws that offer the most reader satisfaction when overcome, are a lack of courage and a lack of compassion. I’m not saying you have to use one of those, I’m just mentioning it.

By the way, if you haven’t read Allen Palmer’s entire website, you should. http://www.crackingyarns.com.au/

Follow the timeless mythology stages

It has been shown fairly comprehensively that the vast majority of popular stories follow some or all of a series of stages. You certainly don’t have to follow these steps to the letter, but if you’re struggling to understand why your plot isn’t working, it may be worth seeing if adding in some of these stages might help:

• · Meet the protagonist in their natural state (don’t forget to demonstrate their flaw!)
• · The protagonist’s world is disrupted by a threat or opportunity
• · The protagonist expresses reluctance to respond to the threat or opportunity (or some other character voices the dangers)
• · The protagonist takes decisive action with regard to the threat or opportunity (preferably burning some bridges so they can’t turn back)
• · The protagonist is tested, either physically, emotionally or mentally
• · The protagonist learns from others – though the others don’t necessarily need to be intentionally helpful or positive
• · The protagonist should hit rock bottom, where they suffer terrible setbacks and lose something they hold dear
• · The protagonist bounces back with renewed vigour to face the final conflict
• · The protagonist returns home triumphant

Give your protagonist an impossible choice

It’s no good to just have a sword or word fight at the end of the novel and the strongest / smartest one wins, even if the protagonist was a weakling / shy guy to begin with.

If you really want to have the audience on the edge of their seats, you need to offer them a nail biting moment where the protagonist is offered a choice that will define their character and prove that they have grown as a person.

The choice should have these two sides:

a) They get what they ‘want’ (the boy, the job, the treasure) but other people, probably those they love will be forced to suffer
b) They can help the other people (again probably those they love), but they will lose what it is they want and probably much more

Because this is fiction and not real life, how they act will result in righteous consequences…

Don’t give your protagonist what they wanted – give them what they needed

If your protagonist chooses to do the ‘right’ thing, in other words they abandon their personal selfish desires in order to serve the greater good, then something else must happen which swings the situation in their favour and results in them getting something else which is much better than what they thought they wanted – and is actually what they need.

For example, a boy might really fancy the top cheerleader, but at the end of the story he makes a good moral choice and instead ends up with the geeky girl, who is his true soulmate and brings him much greater happiness.

Or, an archaeologist might be chasing a special artefact, but after her moral decision to give it to its rightful owners instead of having it to study herself, she is inducted into the secretive tribe to study their lives.

Of course, your protagonist doesn’t have to make the moral choice – thought of course that’s what happens 99% of the time. If you want them to make the ‘wrong’ choice, that’s fine, but then you must follow through the consequences.

As soon as they have their prize in their greedy little hands it should turn to dust, and their selfish behaviour means they are all alone.

So, on that cheerful note – what are your top secrets that help you ensure your plot holds all the keys?

Congratulations! You’ve finished your first draft! You deserve a big cigar, glass of champagne or whatever it is you celebrate these things with. Feel free to take a few days or a week off, you’ve earned it.

But then, back to work! You may think that now you’ve thrashed out a first draft, the hard part is over, and you’re reaching the finish line. Afraid not. There’s a whole lot more slog to go. But don’t be disheartened! You’re still further then 80% of people who say they’re going to write a book. Don’t give up!

Most of the large scale structure of your book should be relatively fixed by now – if you planned well, it will mean less serious redrafting is needed (for example cutting out entire chapters of characters), so you can focus on fine tuning.

We’ve already looked at some of the mistakes that will instantly mark you out as an amateur, now let’s take a look at a few aspects of writing that you can perfect to take your writing from mediocre to excellent.

Note - if you're looking for a guide to the various different drafts of a novel, you might be interested in this article.

Have you over explained your characters?

The core of this is the good old ‘show, don’t tell’. Make sure you’re not explaining the character’s personality to your readers, as they’re likely to find it dull and distancing.

Compare:

‘Jane was a slob. She hadn’t tidied up in months.’

‘Jane kicked the mouldy plate off the bed and rummaged around for the least stiff pair of jeans from the piles strewn on the floor.’

In the first example, the author makes a statement about a character, and then backs it up with a little evidence, but they’re still just giving their word. In the second example, the author is keeping out of it, just describing the action and letting the reader draw their own conclusions about the cleanliness habits of Jane.

Also, new writers often feel they need to give the entire life story of a character early on, but this isn’t a good idea. It stalls the action, and anyway, it’s more natural to get to know people in a slower, more gradual way. When you meet someone new, you don’t immediately learn everything about them, that happens over time.

By just giving consistent broad brushstrokes, you allow your reader to use their imagination and fill in the gaps, in many cases creating a character with more layers than even you thought of.

Another useful technique for building character is to use what your character notices to give information about them. When they enter a room, do they notice all the pretty girls; the stains on the carpet; or do they note all the exits and times to reach them? What they notice tells us a great deal about their outlook and priorities.

Is the Point of View clear?

A nice way of thinking about point of view is ‘whose skin are you in?’ 

This doesn’t mean that you need to write your story from the 1^st person (using ‘I’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’), or even that you have to use the same character’s point of view through the whole book (although the latter may not be a bad idea if it’s your first book – learn to walk before you run).

However, it is critical that the reader knows whose point of view they are following in any given scene, and this shouldn’t change within a scene.

This is because changing point of view character within a scene is very disorientating for the reader and it breaks their suspension of disbelief, as they have to mentally adjust.

Writing from a particular character’s point of view is more than just where they are standing; it’s also about what they notice. As mentioned above in the section on characters, different characters will have completely different experiences from exactly the same environment. 

For example, you’d be unlikely to have a teenager commenting on the ancient gothic architecture (unless that’s a strong part of their character), and an old lady might notice a gang of louts hanging on a corner, but have no idea what the gang bands on their arms represented.

Also, remember that you may be able to mind-read the Point of View character even if you’re writing from the third person, but you absolutely cannot read the minds of anyone else (unless your PoV character happens to be psychic), so you’ll have to get across their opinions through what they say, how they say it, actions and body language.

How proportionate is your plot?

How does your prose balance? How much is action, dialogue or description?

In general, no sentence should be included if it isn’t critical to the plot, but this doesn’t mean there’s no time to stop and smell the roses. As long as the roses have some relevance to atmosphere, and they are described in a way that reflects the mood of the scene.

If you’re going to spend a lot of lines describing something, make sure it’s relevant. For example, don’t spend two pages describing the interior of one building and two lines on another, unless the first building is central to the plot. Because you can be sure your readers are going to think it is.

Likewise, if your character is doing something, such as cooking, or fixing a saddle, don’t describe it in too much detail unless it’s important to the plot or builds atmosphere. Just because you find a hobby interesting, doesn’t mean your readers will.

On the other hand, if there’s an action scene which is central to the plot, shows key aspects of a main character and throbs with atmosphere – then break it down into moment by moment detail.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to follow about how much description to have and how much detail to include in a particular spot – it’s all about balance.

With the second draft in the bag you can see the finish line. It's time for Step 14: Refining the Final Draft of your novel.

For more guidance on novel writing, click here.

Before actually getting down to your first draft, it can be very valuable to prepare a rough outline.

This blocks out the scene from beginning to end, including where any important plot points come up, and roughly what people say, where they’re standing (or sitting or lying), gestures and important points regarding the location.

It should not be written in a prose form, and don’t worry about how rough and riddled with repetitive phrases or clichés it is, we’ll tidy all that up in our drafts.

At this point, keep referring to your notes on characters, locations and plot points to make sure everything is woven in, however bluntly.

Read about out lining a novel or  blocking in more detail here.

Or read about the principles behind our novel writing software (which incorporates a step by step guide to writing a novel).

Goodness, I'm exhausted just writing about it - you've done so well to get this far. Now it's time to get really stuck in. That's right. It's time for step 12 - to write your first draft.

Even if you’re telling the whole story from one character’s viewpoint, it’s a great idea to walk through the story from each character’s viewpoint.

This can highlight continuity errors, and also add dimensions to your characters.

For each character, make a note of the scenes they appear in, then walk through that list - ignoring the scenes they’re not in. Make sure their appearances make sense from their point of view, and then imagine what the character is doing while they’re not present in a scene.

This helps you avoid ‘teacher syndrome’ where pupils assume teachers only exist during school hours with the idea of them having lives of their own being quite unimaginable. By filling in the gaps in your character’s existence, you give them their own life and realistic motivations.

This can add flavour to your story, for example, outside of a story a character may have just had a fight with their partner, so when your lead turns up they’re in no mood to chat. This adds more realism and interest than every character your lead encounters being in a neutral mood.

Note - If you’re nifty with excel, and have followed the previous step you can create a new column for each character, mark the corresponding box that lines up with each scene, create a table, then filter by character to do this in a power-user type of way. But if you didn’t follow any of that, don’t worry about it – you can generate the same results by hand.

Read more about this character viewpoint technique here.

Ready for Step 11? Blocking is the last step before you are ready to write your first draft. 

Not only for diabolical villains.

It’s time to weave all the elements of your story into a bulletproof plot, identifying the holes and patching them up and ensuring there are no carts coming before horses, that sort of thing.

A large block of text is not very good for giving you information at a glance and making it easy to move things about without getting tangled up, so at this stage it’s best to create a spreadsheet (or use some purpose built software).

Make a list of all scenes and plot points (colour coding them if you want to get fancy).

A scene can be defined as: A subdivision of an act in a dramatic presentation in which the setting is fixed and the time continuous. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scene). For more guidance on scenes, see this post.

A plot point is something important you need to remember to put in, but isn’t actually a whole scene – such as: Bob discovers the knife in her knicker drawer.

Once you’ve got your list, you can set about checking your Head and Tail Scenes, ensuring there are no gaps or unexpected leaps and that you're following the Goal >> Conflict >> Disaster >> Reaction >> Dilemma >> Decision cycle. You may have loose plot points that need to be assigned a scene, or even given a new one. If you do create a new scene, you’ll need to create its partner Head or Tail.

Keep shuffling, adding, editing and deleting until you’re satisfied that your plot is in good shape. Once your happy with it, we'll move onto checking multiple threads.

If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory.

Or you can go onto the next step of advanced plotting - dealing with multiple threads.

The Novel Formula - A Novel Writing Method: Step Eight

Head Scenes and Tail Scenes

Now we're really going to get into the nitty-gritty technics of writing a plot that is compelling, while feeling natural and balanced to the reader.

And we're going to do it with the cunning use of Head and Tail scenes. This method is based on Dwight Swain's 'scenes' and 'sequels'.

Roughly speaking, Head scenes are where your character is being active, doing stuff, hopefully getting into trouble, getting into people's faces, that sort of thing. But a character can't do that relentlessly throughout the whole book or both they and the reader will be exhausted, not to mention they're unlikely to develop much as characters.

So, inbetween Head scenes you have Tail scenes, which are where your character pauses to take stock, reflect, regroup and plan their next move.

Now, it doesn't have to be 50/50. The balance decides what sort of story you have. If it's 80% Head scenes, you've got a fast-paced, action type story. If it's 80% Tail scenes, it's a more reflective, thoughtful story.

As a general rule, Head scenes should be immediate, happening right here and now, with the action described in detail. Whereas, in tail scenes it's possible to compress time more, even skipping over weeks, months or even years in a few sentences or pages.

Head Scenes

Head scenes can be broken down into three parts:

• Goal
• Conflict
• Disaster

At the beginning of a Head scene, your character should have some kind of goal, something they want to achieve. Otherwise it's possible for them to spend the whole scene mooching about, and very few people want to read about that.

So your character should go for their goal and get it, right? Wrong. Boring. You're character should go for their goal and -bam!  Conflict. Something stops them achieving their goal. Now your reader is interested. They want to know if the character is going to overcome this obstacle to achieve their goal. If you're good, you'll come up with a series of mounting obstacles. Then...

Disaster! Not only does your character not achieve their goal, but they're in a much worse situation than before. After all that excitement, they're spent. In fact, the disaster was so great, they may even be locked up. It's time for a Tail scene.

Tail Scenes

Tail scenes can also be broken down into three parts:

• Reaction
• Dilemma
• Decision

The first bit is their reaction to the disaster. It should be an emotional reaction rather than an active one (we'll get to the active one later). Are they furious? Despairing? They've been through a lot, they ought to be feeling something.

Once the emotions have had a chance to settle, they're going to start assessing the situation. What are they going to do next? They should have at least two options, though they may have more. At a most basic level, the two options are sit there and do nothing, or take action. Ideally, there will be no good options. Having good options makes things too easy, and readers don't want to read about someone waltzing through the story easily - they want to see them struggle and strive, so they can root for them, and genuinely worry that they'll the thwarted.

Having weighed up all the options, the character settles on one of the options. The least bad one. Though it's risky, it's worth it, in order to stick to their principles. Now they've got a goal, and the cycle is ready to turn once more.

And repeat

By applying this pattern skilfully to all of your scenes, your story will keep gaining momentum and will feel balanced and real to the reader. You'll avoid having a character that seems to just leap to conclusions out of nowhere, or meandering scenes with no direction.

Of course, you may really need a scene where your character sets out to do something, and achieves it, or something similar which doesn't fit into the structure above. That's fine - you can insert Supporting scenes in where you need them. Just try to avoid having too many of them, or you may find that your story has lost the plot.

Next step: 9a. Settings Part One: mood, atmosphere, character development and foreshadowing

The Novel Formula - A Novel Writing Method: Step Six

Extended Synopsis

It's time to expand on your short synopsis. This is a really fun time, because you can let your imagination loose and start adding the detail that will make your story delicious and compelling.

Take your short synopsis and expand it into about four or five pages - but don't worry about being too dogmatic, give yourself a free rein. If it turns out to be ten pages, so be it.

The combination of your short synopsis and character synopses mean you'll probably be bursting with ideas, and getting new ones faster than you can get them down - but these ideas can be fitted into a robust structure, rather than just being an incoherent spaghetti mess.

You'll probably find that you need to keep going back and making small adjustments as you realise this or that needs to have happened, been foreshadowed or mentioned, in order for something later to work.

Having this high level overview but beginning to work the character and story threads together, and seeing the scenes unfold allows you to spot plot holes and inconsistencies early, and iron them our before you've written ten chapters that will all need binning because of the flaw.

This synopsis will not only give you a great grounding for writing a great story with the minimum rambling and wasted effort, but is also what publishers will be asking you for when you want to submit your novel. It's likely to be the deal maker or breaker, before they even read the first line of your manuscript - so you want to make sure it doesn't let you down!

Click here for the next step - full character questionnaires.

The Novel Formula - A Novel Writing Method: Step Four

The Short Synopsis

By now you should have a basic premise, a strong story arc and some information about your characters. If you haven't, check out the previous steps.

• The Novel Formula Overview
• The Novel Formula Step One
• The Novel Formula Step Two
• The Novel Formula Step Three

Next we're going to write a short synopsis of the story. Re-read your premise to make sure it's solid in your mind, then take your skeleton and expand it into a full page with each sentence turning into a paragraph.

Keep in mind your characters and make sure what you're plotting for them to do sounds like something they would actually do.

Evolving your story in this way offers two major benefits:

• You avoid writing a rambling first draft with countless pointless scenes that end up needing to be cut
• When you get to writing your first draft you won't spend half the time tapping your lip with your pen, wondering what should happen next

The story should really start to take shape at this point, and writing the short synopsis should be a great deal of fun - let your imagination loose.

Click here for the next step in the Novel Formula!

The Novel Formula - Step Two Examples

Here are some examples of the Universal Storyline in some of the most popular movies and books.

Read more about the Universal Storyline here.

	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	Star Wars	The Matrix	The Lion King
Introduction	Harry's life with his aunt. Uncle and cousin	Luke is living with his aunt and uncle	Neo is working in a boring job	Simba's idyllic world
Call to Action	Invitation to Hogwarts	Princess Leia's message	Follow the White Rabbit	Nala tells him of Scar's bad ruling
Crossing the threshold	The train to Hogwarts	Family home destroyed	Neo is taken out of the matrix for the first time	Leaves Timon and Pumbaa to return to Pride Rock
Mentor teaches the lead	Lots of lessons and discussion with Dumbledore	Obi Wan Kenobi teaches	Morpheus explains	Rafiki bops him on the head
First challenge	Troll in the toilet	Trash Compactor	Battle with Agent Smith	Hyenas
Temptation	Harry becomes addicted to the Mirror's visions	Luke is tempted by the Dark side	Live in the illusion of the matrix	Give up the throne to Scar
Dark moment	Harry realises the Philosopher's Stone isn't safe and Dumbledore is away	Obi Wan killed	Morpheus is tortured	Tells everyone he is responsible for his father's death
Final conflict	The trials to reach the stone	Battle with the death star	Subway battle	Fight with Scar
Return home	Returns to the Dursleys house	Luke is rewarded with medals	Neo speaks to the awoken masses	The circle of life continues

The Novel Formula - A Novel Writing Method: Step Two

The Skeleton - aka. The Universal Storyline

Now we've got a basic premise, which means we've got the beginnings of a story. It's time to give it a few more bones, and see how it starts to take shape.

Luckily, we don't have to grope around in the dark, guessing at what elements we should include and in what order, to create a gripping and satisfactory story with a good beginning, middle and end. That's because there's already an established series of stages that the vast majority of all decent stories go through - The Universal Storyline

It's based on the Hero's Journey and the Monomyth, but adjusted to be more universal to all genres, rather than focused more on 'adventure'.

It goes something like this:

Overview of The Universal Storyline

Act 1

• Introduction to the protagonist's world
• Call to action
• Crossing the threshold

Act 2

• Mentor teaches the lead
• First challenge
• Temptation
• Dark moment

Act 3

• Final conflict
• Return home

This set of stages can be interpreted in a million different ways to create every story from The Lord of the Rings to The Da Vinci Code to Harry Potter.

Next time you're watching a movie or reading a book, look out for the stages and try to identify the ways in which the author has portrayed them.



Detail of the Universal Storyline

In order to create your own stages, you'll need to know a little bit more about each one, so here are brief summaries of each:

Act 1

• Introduction to the hero's world

You set the scene, introduce your character and their normal life, just in time for them to...

• Call to action

... be torn from it! Actually it's better if they're not torn, but have to commit to the decision themselves. In any case, the challenge is put forward. You can start building sympathy for your character by ensuring their decision is something the reader can identify with and / or respect.

• Crossing the threshold

In order to ensure your protagonist has the pressure on and therefore your readers are hooked into wondering how they'll ever get out of this mess, they should cross some kind of threshold that makes it difficult to get back to normal life. It could be a physical journey across land, the removal of allies, self inflicted isolation or becoming wanted but on the run.

Act 2

• Mentor teaches the hero

Readers want to see a character develop into someone who can overcome the odds. Everybody needs help sometimes.

• First challenge

Time to put your protagonist under pressure. It may be that they have a first encounter with the villain, or for a slower build, it could be the villain's cronies.

• Temptation

I can resist everything except temptation, said someone pithy. Add depth to your lead by giving them a challenge they have to find the strength of character to overcome.

• Dark moment

As you near the climax of your book, circumstances start piling up. Push your lead to the limits to the point they are questioning everything they know, and very nearly slip to the dark side. The closer they get to failing, the more nailbiting it will be. But in the end they pull through, which brings them to...

Act 3

• Final battle

The final battle! This is the climax of your story and you must pull out all the stops to make it great. We'll work on this in great detail later, looking at what makes a satisfying ending, so for now you should just have a loose idea of whether your hero succeeds or fails.

• Return home

Once your climax is completed all there is to do is tie up loose ends, will your lead live happily ever after? Do they return home or stay in their new place? Who is with them at the end?


Now, if you're excited about being given the secret formula to writing an engaging and satisfying story, go ahead and write a single sentence for each of the steps.

If you need a bit more help with this stage, click here for examples of the hero's journey in popular fiction.

Once you're ready - click here to go to the third step in the first novel writing guide.

...

Overview:

The Novel Formula is a creative writing method designed to bring together established fiction-writing theory, useful practical advice and all the major story elements, in order to help new writers learn their craft at the same time as completing their first novel.

The Formula works on the principle that good fiction novels which sell want are gripping, satisfying, and contain believable, interesting characters.

The Novel Formula uses a carefully structured step-by-step approach to build all the critical elements in a practical, relational way - allowing the characters, plot, situation, opponents and disaster to influence each other and evolve together as the novel is planned, drafted and edited.

The Formula assumes minimum prior knowledge, so if you're already familiar with many of the principles of creative writing, you may wish to skip some of the theory.

Each step contains an achievable task which builds on the last, and includes introductions and explanations of the common features of fiction writing which sells, and examples for clarification.
These are the fifteen steps:

1. The backbone - aka. The Premise
2. The skeleton - aka. The Universal Storyline
3. Character Introductions
4. Short Synopsis
5. Character Viewpoints
6. Extended Synopsis
7. Full Character Profiles
8. Head Scenes and Tail Scenes
9. Settings
10. Advanced Plotting
11. Scene Blocking
12. Draft One
13. Weather, Time, Senses
14. Draft Two
15. Final Draft

If you've followed all the steps and adhered to most of the theory, at the end of the steps, you should have a manuscript in excellent shape - ready to submit to literary agents!


Click here to go to Step One

...

Ever wondered if there guide you could follow to make sure your plot works?

Well, there is. The hero's journey is a simple plot arc that is used by the vast majority of successful novels and films, to a greater or lesser degree. It sets out markers that can be followed to ensure a reader is drawn in, empathizes with the protagonist and is satisfied by the ending.

The basic hero's journey steps are as follows:

1. Introduction to the hero's world
2. Call to action
3. Crossing the Threshold
4. Meet the Mentor
5. First challenge
6. Temptation
7. Dark inner moment
8. Final battle
9. The return home

This is not set in stone, and there are a range of varieties (look up the monomyth) and of course each of these steps can be interpreted in different ways.

And don't think because it's called the 'hero's journey that it only applies to fantasy type stories. It's not about having a long haired youth wielding a ruby hilted sword - Crossing the Threshold could be flying to start a new English Teaching job in Greece, the First Challenge could be an ambitious actress's audition upon arriving in Hollywood and the Final Battle might be confronting an offensive boss at the office Christmas party.

More detail on each of these hero's journey steps coming soon... 

The Novel Factory Writing software uses the Hero's Journey to make writing a novel easier. Learn more about the principles of the Novel Factory novel writing method here.