Narrative Imperative: The Protagonist’s Destiny

Reflections by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell invert the writing process.

I was introduced to the writings of Joseph Campbell as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in the early 70s. Although he was heavily influenced by Carl Jung, I didn’t really start reading him until about a decade ago. The two of them deeply inform my understanding of Story and specifically the nature of the Protagonist’s journey.

Both suggested there is an intimate relationship between an individual’s inner life and the events which transpire in their outer world.

Consider this quote from Jung:

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict.

Jung’s idea of individuation — that each of us is tasked with getting in touch with all aspects of our psyche including the negative impulses he calls the ‘shadow’ — is such that if we do not engage in it, we will experience things “outside” which compel us to, “as fate”.

Compare to Campbell:

That’s what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialities of the energies in your own system. The energies are committed in a certain way, and that commitment out there is coming toward you.

Again this idea that there is a specific relationship between dynamics within an individual’s “system” and what transpires in their world of experience, “coming toward you”. Destiny.

If we apply this perspective to writing, particularly to the Protagonist’s journey, we end up with what I call the Narrative Imperative. Whatever underlying issues and dynamics at work in the Protagonist at the beginning of the story, their Disunity, influences and shapes what transpires in the Plot. At least it should, if the writer pays attention to the Protagonist right up front in the process, delving into their psyche.

The alignment of Nemesis… Attractor… Mentor… Trickster… every single plot element can — and arguably should — arise from our engagement with the Protagonist and that character work.

Author Lisa Cron echoes this sentiment:

Story is about an internal struggle, not an external one. It’s about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses. That means that the internal problem predates the events in the plot, often by decades. So if you don’t know, specifically, what your protagonist wants, what internal misbelief is standing in their way — and most important, why — how on earth can you construct a plot that will force them to deal with it? The answer is simple: you can’t.

It’s something I come back to all the time with my university students whenever they visit me in my office with questions about their script:

What is the Protagonist’s state of Disunity and how do those dynamics connect to what you have going on in the Plot?

For most writers, this Character Driven Approach to screenwriting represents an inversion in terms of methodology. Instead of focusing on plot and story structure first, we begin with character work, lots of it, especially the Protagonist, and let that guide us into and through the story-crafting process.

As Ovid, who wrote Metamorphoses said, “The seeds of change lie within.” The way a character grows — their transformation, their arc — is indicated at the very beginning of the story.

It is their Fate.
It is their Destiny.
It is the Protagonist’s Narrative Imperative.