[1429] The Doppelganger

This is where your story ends. Looking over the story circle, you will see you do not have a Rescue From Without, Crossing the Return Threshold, Master of Two Worlds, or Freedom to Live. Which is fine, not every story needs every ritual. There is a theory about prose which believes omission of certain writing can strengthen your piece. There is truth to that, thus not every story need apply every single detail of the Monomyth. Those that do habitually abuse it and worsen their work. This said, of the rituals you do have, they are undeveloped. They do not satisfy the subsconcious of your reader. I am writing this with full quantitative and deliberate choice of those words as an exact science.

This dissatisfaction is why you feel the story is incomplete. And you have the strong understanding of story to feel it. Your subconscious is telling you directly in bold face terms. Most don’t, write their half baked rituals, and they call it a day. You do not need Rescue through Freedom, but they are passages of a complete finished story. This too could be irking your subconscious. If I may, I’d like to finish your story in the monomythic story circle.

Status Quo: Maxwell is out drinking with friends. He spots a beautiful woman.

Call: She beckons him over for a drink.

Threshold: Maxwell passes out leaving the bar with the woman. He wakes up in the cell:

Belly: He awakes to find the woman who beats him with the crowbar.

Trials: He awakes. Tries to escape. Possibly breaks an actual chain.

Goddess: Mid escape, the woman comes and feeds and fucks him.

Boon: She Doppelgängers in front of him.

Atonement: Maxwell asks for death. She mentions the brother and leaves, saying if he tries to escape again she’ll kill him.

Apotheosis: He sits and thinks and wants death. Considering he has nothing to live for, he breaks his thumb, and escapes the handcuffs.

Rescue: He is trying to open the locked cell door. He uses the handcuff to punch and break the door’s security window and opens the lock.

Return: He escapes the cell and sees daylight.

Master: Maxwell runs and tries to find a new life. Minutes after he escapes, the doppelgänger finds him in the street. They are both Maxwell. They fight.

Freedom: The real Maxwell wins, having recovered his old life, new with the freedom of the doppelgänger’s actions. Be as they may, if you want to keep the political aspect, or focus on the family.

The status quo lends to Maxwell cheating on his wife. He will relearn love for his wife after he kills the Doppelgänger. Perhaps the Doppelgänger makes some remark about how the wife likes the female demon creature better in bed. It’s your story though, I'm just cracking it. If you plan on keeping the rituals as is, perfectly valid and worthy of literature, I’d recommend developing these moments to be satisfying for the reader’s subconscious. There are those who disagree with the Monomyth and perhaps you will be one. For those who cannot compare mythology, they find their own best, which is a hubris betraying the craft of a writer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

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