Looking at a character’s development can become one or more stories in the storyworld. One could ask the question of how the antagonist/villain in one story came to be a villain.
A story set in an earlier storyworld time could describe the journey of the villain, with that character in the role of the protagonist. Darth Vader, the antagonist in the first three Star Wars films (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) films is an example of the protagonist in a series of stories set earlier in storyworld time. The three prequel films (Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) document the fall from grace of Anakin Skywalker and his gradual transformation to the evil Darth Vader. While George Lucas used film as the medium for those six narratives, shifting the development of a character in storyworld time provides opportunities for the use of various media.
The hero’s journey was developed in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Campbell, 1949). Campbell’s study of mythic and fairy tale narratives led him to conclude that the shapes and stages of a hero’s transformation (the hero’s journey) were similar across time and cultures.
Campbell’s structure of the hero’s journey has been adapted and used by many writers. Numerous examples of modified versions of the hero’s journey exist, but most retain the essential steps identified by Campbell. One such modified version is included in 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters, which includes a feminine version (Schmidt, 2001, pp. 199-242) as well as a masculine version (Schmidt, 2001, pp. 243-277) of the journey.
Campbell’s original version of the hero’s journey or any one of its derivatives can be used effectively to structure the transformation of the protagonist. They can also serve as the framework for structuring narratives, including transmedia narratives. Typically, each step of the journey is a different setting, with a different set of challenges. These steps are natural break points in the narrative and may serve as transition points or bridges across media platforms and media. The transition points between steps of the journey can provide an opportunity to include cliff hangers and other suspense building techniques into the narrative in order to encourage the audience to make the jump to another platform or medium. Alternate reality games (ARGs) can use transitions or the journey’s steps themselves to incorporate puzzles and other gaming elements into the narrative.