This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 539th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode, Arcotypeal Character Arks

Part 6, The Crown Arc.

Within the saga of the six archetypal character

arcs representing the cycle of the human life,

the two elder arcs that comprise the third act of life are perhaps the least

dramatized. These arcs are those of the crone and the mage. In studying

these arcs it becomes evident that the third act of story

structure is in fact rather more mysterious than we give it credit for.

In our modern storytelling, the climax is meant not only to be the point, but also the most exciting moment in the story.

But many views of story structure, not least the classic heroes

journey, instead emphasized the midpoint as the most significant moment in the

plot with the third act acting as more of a resolution or summation.

Although that is a discussion for another time, it is interesting to acknowledge the parallels

in this view of structure with that of human life itself.

In many ways, a person's third act is the quote unquote quietest time of life.

What happens within it is massively influenced by the choices

that have come before in the previous two acts. Now we have only to see how

everything pans out. But this is in many ways only a surface view

of the final act of life. If the elders are no longer so embroiled in the challenges of survival and power that marked the earlier

acts, they are no less involved in the final and in many ways the greatest challenge,

the conundrum of a life that must end in death. In our deeply death

averse Western culture we have largely avoided stories about the third

...