The Jarvis method, good story structure, and StoryCraft
As a fiction writer, I found that one of the hardest parts of creating a story is not in the writing process, it is finding the best structure to tell the story. Most movie scripts use the three-act structure, sometimes adding a prologue and an epilogue that essentially makes it a five-act structure in the storytelling process.
But there is more to the structure of the story than just its acts: beginning, middle, and end. The Jarvis method uses what “all the great myths and literary classics of civilization have in common,” a well-plotted and structured story.
Taking ideas from Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces,” the Jarvis method asks you questions about your characters, their adversaries, their ordinary and extraordinary worlds, and more. It helps you build a plot, themes and conflicts, as it helps in the full development of the character. Your story improves thanks to this method. It doesn’t write your story for you, it helps you develop it to its full potential.
The StoryCraft, StoryCraft Luxury, and StoryCraft Screenplay software use these elements to help design the structure of your story. You will not find the Jarvis method in any other type of software as it is proprietary to this software.
John Jarvis, a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, who also wrote screenplays while working in Hollywood, is one of the creators behind this software. He designed the Jarvis Method to work with his software creating these mythological premises found in good stories and movies today.
The writers argue about the validity of the “Hero’s Journey” in today’s story, but it still works, the proof is in the pudding. The blockbuster “Avatar” uses these mythological principles as it tells its story. It works because these mythological archetypes are present in our unconscious and resonate deeply with the moviegoer or reader as they enjoy the story.
Deep myths and archetypes go beyond cultural or social boundaries and touch something within all of us, no matter what country we are in. That is why “Avatar” is a great success, because it is in tune with the myth buried within it: the “Hero’s Journey”.
It doesn’t matter if your story is fantasy, sci-fi, drama, true story, or epic, “Hero’s Journey” works with all of them.
Find out how easy it is to use this software and incorporate “Hero’s Journey” into your story by clicking the link below to see a demonstration of how it works.