This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 538 episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode, Arcotypeal Character Arks Part 5, The King Arc.

If we view the human life and thus the six archetypal

character arcs of the life arcs as taking on the classic story structure

format of three acts, then it is no coincidence that the all-important

midpoint marks the transition from the Queen Arc to the King Arc.

In any story, the structural midpoint represents in many ways the turning point of the entire story

within the plot it signifies a shift out of the

reactive phase in which the protagonist has been distracted by the lie and by surface

conflicts.

Equally, it signifies the shift into the active phase in which the protagonist begins to recognize what the conflict

is really about and what antagonist he is really confronting.

Thematically this is represented by a moment of truth in which the protagonist grasps the central truth of his story

while not yet fully releasing or overcoming his lie.

In our examination of the six life arcs, the middle two arcs of the cycle

comprising the second act are the Queen, which we discussed last week, and the King.

The Queen arc ends with the

protagonist essentially having become the king. Although not necessarily

glimpsed within the queen arc itself, this signifies a total shift within the overall archetypal story.

Up to this point, the Arks have represented the first half of life's concerns, with exterior world, with relationship to self, others, love, and power,

from both positions of subordination and authority. Obviously anyone inhabiting the King archetype

has reached the apex of temporal life. As Carolyn Mace puts it in sacred

...