For storytelling, Liminal Space is a powerful setting. It is the “space” between two different destinations, but it’s secretly also a place between two different realities for your characters. The most common usage of Liminal Space is when the Heroic Figure leaves the safety and protection of their home, and travels toward the dangerous and bizarre Otherworld. As a storyteller, you must recognize the significance of Liminal Space and use it to add power and punch to your world and story. Change begins in Liminal Space.
Psychologist Carl Jung states, “Individuation begins with a withdrawal from normal modes of socialization, epitomized by the breakdown of the persona.” He calls this withdrawal a “movement through liminal space and time, from disorientation to integration.”
The Heroic Figure has left their home behind, and yet they are nowhere, in limbo somewhere. Here are three common occurrences regarding Liminal Space:
- Often begins with fainting, sleeping, dreaming, or unconsciousness.
- A setting that is “in transit,” through a vast and empty environment or tunnel-like passageway
- Contains a person or object that symbolizes home, like a security blanket.
The Heroic Figure, like you and me, inwardly wants to avoid danger. Therefore, our heroes and heroines often “faint” as a defense mechanism when it’s time to leave home and face the dangerous, uncertain world. The overtone of disorientations and unconsciousness appear often as our characters enter Liminal Space. They are infants about to be born. Recognize that meaning. Know that we are looking at our innocent, untested Heroic Figure and pushing him or her out toward the dangerous world. And they aren’t ready for it.
Whenever Liminal Space is portrayed as a vast and empty expanse, like a desert or ocean, it’s to underscore the uncertainty and smallness of your Heroic Figure. Whenever Liminal Space is instead represented by a tunnel-like passageway, it’s to represent a birth canal, the movement away from the safe womb and out into the dangerous world.
Liminal Space cues your readers that change has come…is happening now. The heroine or hero is disoriented. They faint, travel through a strange environment, and cling desperately to something that reminds them of home.
Examples of Liminal Space:
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy falls into a dream-like state when she hits her head. The tunnel-like tornado lifts her actual home into the sky and away from familiar Kansas. Out her window, she sees familiar objects and people from Kansas whizzing about, but soon the window reveals the dangerous sight of the Wicked Witch, who tyrannizes the Otherworld ahead. Toto, who also represents home, comes with Dorothy.
In the Matrix, Morpheus, which is the name for the Greek god of dreams, says to the Heroic Figure, Neo, “How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?” He then shows him an empty white space called, the Construct, the place in between the neural-interactive simulation of the Matrix and the “desert” of the real world. His “residual self-image” comes with him. After Morpheus shows him the Matrix, Neo, faints again. “He’s gonna pop.”
In Wonder Woman, Diana boards a boat that must cross a vast and empty sea when she leaves home. She brings her Heroic items, her gauntlets, shield, and sword with her and yes, she sleeps.
In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker leaves home and passes out immediately upon encountering the dangerous Sand People. He soon enters the bizarre and unpredictable world of Mos Eisley Spaceport, a place of transit. When he travels aboard the Millennium Falcon, they enter the tunnel of hyper space.
Avatar features Liminal Space both in hyper sleep en route to Pandora, which floats through the vastness of space. Jake Sully’s wheelchair, a symbol of his weaker, dependent earthly life comes with him to the distant planet. Jake must also “faint” each time he enters his Avatar body by sleeping in a link pod. Each time, his consciousness travels through a tunnel.
In the movie Coraline, our young Heroic Figure must first fall to sleep and dream before she can cross into the Otherworld. Once asleep, Coraline opens a secret door and must crawl through a mysterious tunnel of cobwebs and dust. All the objects of her home surround her but offer the illusion of a better home.
In Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, it is the mother of the aristocratic Jen Yu who falls unconscious when the bandits attack. Jen then pursues a bandit to retrieve her ivory comb, which is the object that symbolizes her aristocratic home life. Rather quickly, Jen finds herself surrounded by a vast and empty desert.
In Fight Club, the narrator faints all the time due to narcolepsy. He states, “If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” He then comes home to discover that someone blew up his home condo unit. He cannot go home anymore, but keeps his briefcase. He then wanders off to the empty “toxic waste part of town” to squat in an abandoned house on Paper Street.
Like any step in the Heroic Transfiguration, Liminal Space, too, can be expanded upon in amazing ways. The movie Gravity features a Heroic Figure who is trapped in Liminal Space, haunted by ghosts of familiar astronauts and listening to folksy transmissions from earth, far below. She’s even filmed floating fetal-like in zero gravity at one point, an image that evokes feelings of infancy and smallness when faced with the dangerous world just beyond.
Be creative. Design a Liminal Space that echoes your unique world.