Are you looking for a structure for your novel, but feel the Hero’s Journey is overdone? In an article for Writer’s Digest, Stacey Simmons says writers should consider sending their hero on The Queen’s Path instead. “I have been in too many writing workshops where an instructor with the best of intentions has handed out a story map of The Hero’s Journey and told everyone to use it as a guide in helping structure their work,” she writes. The problem, Simmons writes, is tha the structure is about the trials of men.
Yes, women can be heroes. And while either men or women can take the Hero’s Journey, neither should be forced onto a path that doesn’t fit the character or the story. In fact, Simmons says the Hero’s Journey leaves out elements that would create obstacles for women. “No one asks Clark Kent if he thinks his job as a journalist at The Daily Planet is going to interfere with his desire to have a family,” she writes. “Atticus Finch doesn’t hear that he should smile more so that the jury doesn’t think he’s a bitch.”
Instead, she suggests a story structure that also reflects the reality of women’s lived experiences. “A woman’s experience is shaped by the expectations that institutions, families, and colleagues place on her,” Simmons says. That alters her experience of the quest.
Typically, women characters are portrayed as Good (passive, conforming) or Bad (rebellious, outspoken), but the reality is that women are more complex. According to Simmons, while on the Queen’s Path, the woman hero encounters the divide between Good and Bad, and through her quest reclaims her wholeness and achieves sovereignty.
Simmons says her path isn’t new, but a story that has played out for centuries in many stories. She has only recently put it into words, much like Joseph Campbell articulated the age-old Hero’s Journey 75 years ago.
The 13 Steps in The Queen’s Path Are:
- Once Upon a Time—Her arrival in the world and her invitation to the Queen’s Path is announced.
- Cursed & Marked—She receives a curse, and a mark of that curse.
- Blind—She can’t see what’s coming, even when it’s obvious.
- Cleaved—She is separated from herself, and finds herself on the track of either the Maiden In Search of Relationship or Magical Isolated Powerful & Enchanted.
- Mirror—She faces the part of herself she has been divided from, either in herself or symbolically in someone else.
- Commit—She commits to her role, trying to fit the expectations of everyone around her.
- The Hunt—She is chased, sometimes towards marriage or sex. Sometimes she is the one doing the hunting—a job, a marriage, a goal. It keeps her in a state of stress.
- Abjection—She denies the parts of herself that can make her a full human being. If she gets a Happily Ever After, the story ends here. It can also end in her choosing ambition over everything else.
- Choice—She has to confront the danger of the Abjection choice. She must choose to allow the lost sister self.
- Embodiment—She realizes that her power and identity are BECAUSE she is a woman. She finds power in her body and its capacities.
- Claim the Territory—She stakes a claim on those things that are uniquely hers. Her gifts, land, powers, values—these are the combination of qualities regardless of whether anyone agrees or not that are unique to her.
- Gather the Tribe—She gathers like-minded women (and men) around her. She realizes that her world is made up of people she loves, and who love her.
- Crowned—She takes the crown, the throne, the symbol of her sovereignty. She owns herself.
