By K. M. Weiland

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Story Theory and the Quest for Meaning

Story has been our constant companion throughout the journey of human existence. Why is that?

Modern audiences are inundated and entranced by advanced storytelling. But stories have been with us from as far back as we can remember. Is it because they entertain us? Is it because they inform us? Because they distract us? Yes, of course. But the very universality of, not just story itself, but our passionate connection to story would seem to indicate the human experience finds great resonance in the act of storytelling.

I do not think it too simplistic or idealistic a statement to say that storytelling is a quest for meaning. As creators and consumers of story (and, indeed, art as a whole), we all have personal connections to this. We often interact with stories, whether intellectually or emotionally, as a search for understanding. We turn to stories for catharsis, comfort, and catalytic challenge.

As Madeleine L’Engle put it in her Walking on Water (which is really a treatise on the whole concept of story as a quest for meaning):

This questioning of the meaning of being, and dying and being, is behind the telling of stories around tribal fires at night; behind the drawing of animals on the walls of caves; the singing of melodies of love in spring, and of the death of green in autumn.

As writers, we gradually become more cognizant of this than even the average viewer or reader. As we study the craft and technique of writing, we eventually encounter humanity’s collective ideas of story theory. These theories posit that there are certain patterns—which we generally identify by such terms as story structure and character arc—that repeat themselves over and over again to create the very definition (however loose) of what we consider a story at all.

When writers begin learning story-theory principles, we often tend to identify them merely as “rules for success.” But in recognizing that story itself is archetypal, these tools and techniques of the craft emerge as a fascinating meta commentary on the deeper questions of life itself.

Chaos vs. Cosmos

This post is an introduction to the introduction to the introduction (!) of a new craft series I will be sharing this year about foundational archetypal characters and character arcs (including but going far beyond the prevalent Hero’s Journey). Before diving into the nitty-gritty of this one specific set of archetypes and how you can use them to powerfully undergird the character arcs in your stories, I wanted to step back to the broader context. Next week, we’ll be talking more specifically about actual archetypes in fiction. But today, I wanted to talk about story itself as archetype.

Several years ago at a time when I was particularly needing, searching for, and redefining meaning in my own life, I read Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful ode to the synthesis of art and spirit, Walking on Water. I resonated deeply with her notion of why it is that humans are driven to create and to tell stories. She said:

…the artist is someone who is full of questions, who cries them out in great angst, who discovers rainbow answers in the darkness and then rushes to canvas or paper. An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in this world. Along with Plato’s divine madness there is also divine discontent, a longing to the find the melody in the discords of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophony, the surprised smile in the time of stress or strain.

It is not that what is is not enough, for it is; it is that what is has been disarranged and is crying out to be put in place.

She recognized art as an ordering principle by which humankind strives to understand its own existence:

[Composer] Leonard Bernstein tells me more than the dictionary when he says that for him music is cosmos in chaos…. all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos…. There’s some modern art, in all disciplines, which is not; some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in music, in words.

The Cosmology of Story Theory

The more I study story theory, the more I have come to recognize it as something of a cosmology all its own—a microcosmic commentary on existence. In short: an archetype.

As such, what we write (sometimes consciously, usually very unconsciously) is often surprisingly explicit in its ability to offer us answers and meaning in our questions about life.

For example, modern writers often tend to think of story structure as a format we apply to our stories. But, in fact, story structure is an emergent. It exists and it works—and we recognize it as such and try to apply it to our own stories—because it reflects truthful patterns about life itself.

The same is true—perhaps even more poignantly—for character arcs. For me, researching and writing my book Creating Character Arcs was a personally life-changing experience that provided insights far beyond writing. The character arcs we recognize as archetypal resonate with us as readers and viewers for the simple reason that they are patterns within our own lives.

And so it goes for even more “mythic” archetypal journeys, such as the Hero’s Journey made so famous and ubiquitous by Joseph Campbell and George Lucas. These mythic story structures are endlessly repeatable because they do endlessly repeat in every single one of our lives. (Don’t particularly identify as a Hero? Doesn’t mean you haven’t, or won’t, take the Hero’s Journey in your life, among many others.)

This is why L’Engle can say, about writing and reading, that:

Story was in no way an evasion of life, but a way of living life creatively instead of fearfully. The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort toward wholeness.

She quotes her professor Dr. Caroline Gordon as saying:

We do not judge great art. It judges us.

Meanings, Patterns, Symbols, and Archetypes

Story theory is eminently practicable in supplying writers with techniques they can apply to improve the resonant power, and therefore success, of their stories. But this is really just a byproduct of the theory itself, which focuses on recognizing emergent patterns within our ever-growing body of stories. These patterns then contribute to our ability to recognize those particular symbols and archetypes that appear over and over again, almost universally, rising far above time, place, genre, or even thematic intention.

Laurens Va Der Post pointed out:

…without a story you have not got a nation, or a culture, or a civilization. Without a story of your own to live you haven’t got a life of your own.

At their loftiest level, the emergent patterns of human stories tell us something about all of existence. But for most of us, these patterns are most poignant when they help us tell our own stories—not just those we put on paper, but those we are living every moment of every day.

We may think of stories as something separate and apart from life itself—particularly in this day and age when stories are more accessible and abundant than ever and we most commonly interact with them with the intention of entertainment or distraction. But inevitably story is not separate. Indeed, perhaps the modern era has seen the line between story and reality grow more blurred and meta than ever.

Regardless, when we understand the symbiosis of art and life, we are able to simultaneously bring the patterns of life to the page and the patterns of the page to our lives.

L’Engle one more time:

…when the words mean even more than the writer knew they meant, then the writer has been listening. And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand…. one does not have to understand to be obedient. Instead of understanding—that intellectual understanding which we are so fond of—there is a feeling of rightness, of knowing, knowing things which we are not yet able to understand.

Humans interact with stories for many reasons, all of them valid. But deeper than the entertainment, the distraction, or the titillation—deeper than the characters, the character arcs, and the plot structure—deeper even than the themes of Willa Cather’s “two or three human stories”—there is the resonance of story itself as a foundational archetypal reflection.

https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/story-theory-and-the-quest-for-meaning/

An Introduction to Archetypal Stories

All art is necessarily both reflective and generative of the human experience. And in that way, all art both reflects and generates archetype. Some stories do this more simply and obviously than others. Those stories that we recognize as myth or fable are most blatantly archetypal. But even hyper-realistic stories—when they are well done—offer up to us the archetypal truths of humanity. Or as chef Mario Batali says:

If it works, it is true.

Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water comments that:

…all true art has an iconic quality…. All artists reflect the time in which they live, but whether or not their work also has that universality which lives in any generation or culture is nothing we will know for many years…. If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive.

What is an archetype? My dictionary offers three definitions:

1. A typical specimen.

2. An original model.

3. A universal or recurring symbol.

As we discussed last week, the very shape of story itself is archetypal. Its structure, by whatever system you prefer to codify it, is a blueprint for life itself, both as a whole and in its many smaller integers. In future weeks, we’re going to be talking about some specific archetypal models (of which there are many) that you can use to discover, guide, and amplify the archetypes within your own stories. But today, let’s examine the intermediary ground—why it should be that story and archetype are so intertwined and what this means for you as a writer attempting to channel these deep patterns of human existence.

Story as Revelation

Many writers can speak to the experience of “receiving” a story. Much as Stephen King has famously described his own process, we don’t so much create our stories as we discover them. It is as if the bones, at least, are always there, and all we have to do is figure out how to dig them up. When the creation process is at its most powerful, we are “in the zone,” writing madly away, just hoping our fingers can move fast enough to get it all down before the inspiration fades.

Dr. Friedrich Dessauer, an atomic physicist at the turn of the 20th Century, mused that:

Man is a creature who depends entirely on revelation. In all his intellectual endeavor, he should always listen, always be intent to hear and see. He should not strive to superimpose the structure of his own mind, his systems of thought upon reality.

I think Dessauer would agree with Jonathan Lehrer in Proust Was a Neuroscientist when Lehrer says:

Physics is useful for describing quarks and galaxies, neuroscience is useful for describing the brain, and art is useful for describing our actual experience.

Writers can easily attest to the delicate balance of uncovering life’s patterns as recorded in our collective story theories so that we may better tap into them, but not so that we may superimpose them where our deeper wisdom and creativity knows they do not belong.

In her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, a poetic exploration of the feminine journey via archetypal stories, psychologist and oral storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estés speaks passionately to the storyteller’s (and indeed the human’s) responsibility to channel this archetypal inspiration:

Our work is to interpret this Life/Death/Life cycle, to live it as gracefully as we know how, to howl like a mad dog when we cannot—and to go on…. Although some use stories as entertainment alone, tales are, in their oldest sense, a healing art. Some are called to this healing art, and the best, to my lights, are those who have lain with the story and found all its matching parts inside themselves and at depth.

When writers first begin learning about archetypal story structure, they are often astonished (as I was) to examine their own stories and discover that these archetypes they’ve never heard of before are there already within their best stories—or waiting to be uncovered to help those stories find a truer voice.

How is it that even the most uneducated writers seem to have at least a glimmer of an understanding for these archetypes? Perhaps it is because these patterns are everywhere, and we necessarily absorb them by osmosis. Perhaps, as the depth psychologists would have it, it is because these archetypes reside in a collective unconscious. Or perhaps it is simply because as humans we resonate with the patterns of our existence and instinctively understand how to recreate them in our art.

Whatever the case, archetypal stories and characters have populated the greater archetypal mythologies of the human experience for as long as we can remember. As Willa Cather says in one of my favorite quotes ever:

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they never happened.

Mythological Character Archetypes

Most of what we specifically think of as character archetypes are found in the stories that have been mythologized, whether from history, religion, or folk and fairy tales. What we recognize as the origins for these stories and their characters are often simplistic, fantastical, and moralistic. They often repeat over and over again throughout the millennia, varied but always foundationally similar from culture to culture and era to era. Or as Estés put it:

That is the nature of archetypes… they leave an evidence, they wend their way into the stories, dreams, and ideas of mortals. There they become a universal theme, a set of instructions, dwelling who knows where, but crossing time and space to enwisen each new generation. There is a saying that stories have wings. They can fly over the Carpathian Mountains and lodge in the Urals. They then vault over to the Sierras and follow its spine over and hop to the Rockies, and so on.

In The Art of Fiction, writing instructor John Gardner distinguished “fables,” “yarns,” and “tales” as layers of story that move increasingly away from non-reality (i.e., fantasy) into the more nuanced and specific realms of realism. But even the hyper-realistic fiction of post-modernism rests upon the foundations of myth and its metaphors.

Psychologist James Hillman notes:

Mythology is a psychology of antiquity, psychology is a mythology of modernity.

When modern writers think about archetype, we are most likely to think of the now ubiquitous Hero’s Journey, made famous by Joseph Campbell’s mythological research in The Hero With a Thousand Faces and since codified by many writers (most notably Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey) as a profoundly powerful archetypal character arc. The Hero’s Journey is a deeply metaphoric structure that finds its most literal representation in fantasy—with its often black-and-white representations of good and evil, complete with dragons, resurrections, kingdoms, and wizards. But it is found over and over again in story after story, whether fantastical or realistic, proving its versatility. (However, it is not the only archetypal character arc, and not even the most important one—which is what we will be discussing in the upcoming series, featuring six primary and serial arcs, of which the Hero’s Journey is the second.)

Archetype as the Path to Powerful Stories

So why do archetypes matter? To a writer, they matter for the most obvious reason that they are stories. But more than that, they are stories that work. The very fact that these patterns have not only stuck around over the years, but in fact have proven themselves to still be meaningful should be enough to perk up the ears of any writer. After all, that’s what we’re all hoping for in our own stories, isn’t it?

Like the structure of plot and character itself, archetypes offer writers insights into modalities of deeper and more resonant fiction. The mere pattern of an archetype is not resonance in itself (as the many cookie-cutter productions of the Hero’s Journey, ad nauseum, have proved). But the archetypes offer the storyteller a glimpse into some of the deeper insights and truths of humanity.

Gardner points out:

Fiction seeks out truth. Granted, it seeks a poetic kind of truth, universals not easily translatable into moral codes. But part of our interest as we read is in learning how the world works; how the conflicts we share with the writer and all other human beings can be resolved, if at all; what values we can affirm and, in general, what the moral risks are. The writer who can’t distinguish truth from a peanut-butter sandwich can never write good fiction. What he affirms we deny, throwing away his book in indignation; or if he affirms nothing, not even our oneness in sad or comic helplessness, and insists that he’s perfectly right to do so, we confute him by closing his book.

More than that, archetypes—particularly the specific archetypal character arcs that represent the human life—have the potential to offer writers and readers alike a subconscious road map to our own initiatory journeys through life.

That has been my own experience with these archetypal character arcs. Merely in coming to a recognition of them (and particularly that the Hero’s Journey is one of many and where it fits within the pattern—and therefore within my own life as well as my characters’), I have personally found just as many gifts as a person as I have as a writer.

Campbell says it as well as anyone:

The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individuals’ life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages. All participate in the ceremonial according to rank and function. The whole society becomes visible to itself as an imperishable living unit. Generations of individuals pass, like anonymous cells from a living body; but the sustaining, timeless form remains. By an enlargement of vision to embrace this super-individual, each discovers himself enhanced, enriched, supported, and magnified. His role, however unimpressive, is seen to be intrinsic to the beautiful festival-image of man—the image, potential yet necessarily inhibited within himself.

Whether we are writing about falling in love in a YA novel, fighting dragons in a fantasy, making peace with adult children in contemporary fiction, ruling a corrupt dynasty in a historical novel, or conversing with the moon in magical realism—we are all writing about our own experiences of the world and, by extension if we write well and truly enough, everyone else’s experiences as well.

In closing, here is one last quote, this one from Donald Maass’s wonderful Emotional Craft of Fiction:

You may think you are telling your characters’ stories, but actually you are telling us ours.

https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/an-introduction-to-archetypal-stories/

Archetypal Character Arcs, Pt. 1: A New Series

Archetypal stories are stories that transcend themselves. Archetypes speak to something larger. They are archetypal exactly because they are too large. They are larger than life. They are impossible—but ring with probability. They utilize a seeming representation of the finite as a mirror through which to glimpse infinitude.

Despite their almost numinous quality, archetypes are a very real force in our practical world. Think of it this way: all the things we imagine actually exist. Aliens. Vampires. Dragons. Fairies. All the memories of our actual reality also exist—in real time—in the same way. Regardless whether these things can be proven as corporeal, they still exist within the human experience and impact it. The deeper the shared belief, the deeper and more meaningful the archetype becomes.

Stories are one of our most powerful modes of exploring archetypes. This is true, as we’ve talked about elsewhere, in the very nature of story itself and more specifically in the patterns of plot and character arc structure that are revealed in the studies of story theory. But archetypes show up in a legion of increasingly smaller ways—from genres to iconic character types to symbolic imagery.

For a writer, one of the most exciting explorations of archetype can be found within specific character arcs—or journeys. These arcs have defined our literature throughout history, and they can be consciously used by any writer to strengthen plot, identify themes, explore life, and resonate with readers.

The Six Archetypal Character Arcs (or Journeys) of the Human Life

With today’s post, I will be beginning a lengthy series that will start by exploring six particular Positive-Change character arcs. They are:

1. The Maiden

2. The Hero

3. The Queen

4. The King

5. The Crone

6. The Mage

These archetypes are not random but sequential, marking out what we might see as the Three Acts of the human life. If we think of the average human life as lasting 90 years, then we can also think of that life in terms of Three Acts made up of 30 years each.

The First Act—or the first thirty years—is represented by the youthful arcs of the Maiden and the Hero and can be thought of thematically as a time of Individuation.

The Second Act—roughly years thirty to sixty—is represented by the mature arcs of the Queen and the King and can be thought of thematically as a time of Integration.

The Third Act—roughly years sixty to ninety—is represented by the elder arcs of the Crone and the Mage and can be thought of thematically as a time of Transcendence.

In her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., alludes to how these six archetypes (although she uses different names) are foundational to the human experience:

The gardener, the king, and the magician are three mature personifications of the archetypal masculine. They correspond to the sacred trinity of the feminine personified by the maiden, mother, and crone.

For the purpose of our study, it is important to note upfront that each of these six character arcs will build upon the previous ones to create the big picture of one single “life arc.” The partner arcs within the same act are not interchangeable but distinct (i.e., the Maiden and the Hero are not simply gendered names for the same arc) and can be undertaken by any person of any gender (or age). (See point #5 at the end of the article.)

Each of these archetypes represents a Positive Change Arc (such as I talk about in my book Creating Character Arcs). Later we will also be examining the Negative Change Arcs represented by the passive/aggressive archetypal poles for each type (e.g., the Bully and Coward as the negative aspects of the Hero), as well as the Flat Arc periods that exist between the Positive-Change Arcs (e.g., the Lover, the Parent, the Ruler, etc.).

The “Problem” With the Hero’s Journey

Although all of these archetypes are deeply familiar to us, only one—the Hero—is noted for having a prominently recorded archetypal journey. Most writers these days are steeped in the mythology (both ancient and modern) and the canonized beatsheets of the Hero’s Journey.

I can’t speak specifically to every writer’s relationship to the Hero’s Journey, but I can speak to mine—which I daresay may indeed be similar to many people’s. Basically, I grew up engulfed in the Hero’s Journey, and I loved it. I resonated with it, played it out in the backyard with great gusto, and recreated it in my own stories.

But then I started reading about it in writing tomes…. and somehow didn’t quite resonate with it. Even though its beats clearly lined up with classic structure, I couldn’t help but feel a little claustrophobic about the whole thing. Although many of the terms I now use in teaching story structure have been borrowed from the classic Hero’s Journey, I have never specifically taught the Hero’s Journey or even consciously tried to apply it to my own stories.

I always felt like something was missing. And then a few years ago, at the suggestion of a Wordplayer, I read Kim Hudson’s The Virgin’s Promise, which posits a feminine partner arc to the Hero’s Journey. In the book, she also reaffirmed Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s point, above, about the Maiden and the Hero being the youthful journeys, which should, in a mature life, be followed by the journeys of adulthood and elderhood.

In short, the Hero’s Journey is anything but all-encompassing. It may be universal in the sense that it represents an archetypal pattern that shows up in all our lives. But it is literally only one of multiple important life arcs.

Ka-pow. Mind blown. As psychiatrist and Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen puts it:

I had a sense of experiencing something beyond ordinary reality, something numinous—which is a characteristic of an archetypal experience.

Not long after, as I began researching this series, I read The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell’s famed master text for the Hero’s Journey, and I was delighted to realize that what he describes as the Hero’s Journey is in fact a microcosm of all six life arcs. He talks about the stages of the Journey like this, and you can see how they align with the six life arcs (as well as two bookending archetypes).

Transformations of the Hero:

1. The Primordial Hero and the Human [Child]

2. Childhood of the Human Hero [Maiden]

3. The Hero as Warrior [Hero]

4. The Hero as Lover [Queen]

5. The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant [King]

6. The Hero as World Redeemer [Crone]

7. The Hero as Saint [Mage]

8. Departure of the Hero [Saint]

Indeed, Carol S. Pearson notes in Awakening the Heroes Within that:

The three stages of the hero’s journey—preparation, journey, return—parallel exactly the stages of human psychological development….

Not only did these authors’ exemplary work completely change how I view and plot my own stories, it also changed the way I view my life. Recognizing and studying all of these archetypes (and identifying which journey I am personally working on in my own life) has proven to be a profound initiatory experience.

And, truly, that is the point of any good archetypal character arc.

What Is an Archetypal Character Arc?

Archetype changes us; if there is no change, there has been no real contact with the archetype.–Clarissa Pinkola Estés

If you have studied character arcs with me before, then you already know the essence of any character arc is change. Archetype, as noted in the quote above, adds the element of changing the reader—or at least, by its very nature, offering the opportunity to do so.

This is because all six of the archetypal arcs we will be discussing here are initiatory arcs. By that, I specifically mean they concern themselves on both a personal and a symbolic scale with Life, Death, and Resurrection.

In short, archetypal arcs are not just about change. They are about change taken to its ultimate endpoint: what was can no longer be. Although your story may or may not feature literal death, what is really meant here is that the arc of one archetype is fundamentally about its own death—and subsequent rebirth into the archetype that follows. In Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle puts it:

To be alive is to be vulnerable. To be born is to start the journey towards death…. We move—are moved—into death in order to be discovered…. But without this death, nothing is born. And if we die willingly, no matter how frightened we may be, we will be found and born anew into life, and life more abundant.

For instance, the Maiden Arc is about the death of the Maiden archetype within the protagonist—and her rebirth into the Hero. The arcs are not about becoming the central archetypes (i.e., the Hero Arc is not about becoming a Hero), but rather about reaching the apotheosis of that archetype and then transitioning out of the height of that power into Death/Rebirth (i.e., the Hero surrenders his heroism and is reborn into the Queen archetype).

The foundational reason why these six arcs are so crucially central to the human experience is because they are all initiatory arcs. Particularly in our modern era when so many initiatory experiences (for the young, much less the adult and even less the elder) have been culturally lost or abandoned, these archetypal stories offer a deep resonant truth, and even subconscious guidance, that people crave.

Joseph Campbell:

The passage of the mythological hero may be overground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward—into the depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world. This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous, it becomes penetrated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love, and a knowledge of its own unconquered power. Something of the light that blazes invisible within the abysses of its normally opaque materiality breaks forth, with an increasing uproar.

5 Things to Know About Archetypal Character Arcs

Next week, we will begin studying the structural beats and thematic significance of each of the arcs—starting with my take on the Maiden Arc. Before we dive into the specifics of each individual arc, I want to take a brief moment to discuss a few basic principles that will apply to all the arcs.

1. Not All Stories Will Feature “Life Arc” Archetypes

Just as not every story features the Hero’s Journey, not every story will necessarily feature one of these specific archetypal arcs. In my experience and study so far, most stories do in fact fit into one of these categories. But just as these arcs are specific variations on the more general premise of the Positive Change Arc (and, later, the Negative Change and Flat Arcs), there may also be many variations on these archetypes. This is especially true for the beats and structures I will be presenting for each Positive-Change archetype.

2. These Archetypal Character Arcs Are Not the Only Archetypal Arcs

Archetypes are legion. Many systems exist for categorizing and naming character archetypes—everything from Jungian archetypes to the Enneagram. Almost all of them offer something of validity and are worth studying and implementing in their own right. What I am exploring via these six Positive-Change Arcs (and their related Negative and Flat archetypes) is simply one possible approach to character archetypes within your stories.

3. A Single Archetypal Character Arc Can Be Told Over the Course of Multiple Stories in a Series

Each of these character archetypes lends itself to a distinct and complete story structure, which can be used to plot a single book—and that is how we will be discussing them. But as all writers know, in agreement with what writing professor John Gardner says in his book The Art of Fiction

Somehow the fictional dream persuades us that it’s a clear, sharp, edited version of the dream all around us.

In reality, fiction itself isn’t always so clear and cooperative. This means none of these archetypes must be confined to a single book. A character’s journey through a single archetypal arc may, in fact, require multiple books or even an entire series to accomplish.

4. Multiple Archetypal Character Arcs Can Be Told in a Single Story

By the same token, it’s possible (although much trickier) to combine multiple archetypes into a single larger character arc for a single character within a single book.

Campbell himself speaks to this:

The changes run on the simple scale of the monomyth defy description. Many tales isolate and greatly enlarge upon one or two of the typical elements of the full cycle (test motif, flight motif, abduction of the bride), others string a number of independent cycles into a single series (as in the Odyssey). Differing characters or episodes can become fused, or a single element can reduplicate itself and reappear under many changes.

5. The Arcs Can Be Undertaken by Any Person of Any Age

And finally, as I mentioned earlier, these arcs can be undertaken by any person of any gender or age. Eudora Welty observed:

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order … the continuous thread of revelation.

For example, it is possible to see older characters undergoing a Hero’s Journey. It is even possible to see how these experiences can be repeated within a smaller spiral of experience in every chapter of a human life. Indeed, the entire span of the arcs (from Maiden through Mage) can be seen mirrored within the individual structure of any one story—something we’ll talk more about as we go.

Most importantly, don’t get hung up on the gendered titles of these arcs. I have retained these titles (Hero, Queen, etc.) precisely because they reflect the masculine and feminine aspects of the journey. But these titles do not indicate that the protagonist must correspondingly be male or female.

For example, as is often discussed these days, characters taking a Hero’s Journey need not be male. Carol Pearson notes in the preface to her book The Hero Within:

Women’s journeys often differ in style and sometimes in sequence from those of men, but the hero’s journey is essentially the same for both sexes.

More than that, every single one of these arcs is important, in its proper order, for every person, regardless of gender. Generally speaking, the feminine arcs begin in integration and move to individuation, while the masculine arcs begin in individuation and move back to integration. Both are necessary for wholeness and growth, each leading into the next.

https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/archetypal-character-arcs-pt-1-a-new-series/