The Heroine’s Labyrinth
Welcome to Douglas A. Burton’s overview of the Heroine’s Labyrinth! This humble corner of the website is not meant to be comprehensive or detailed, but it is meant to provide a base summary of the heroine’s labyrinth for curious writers. Just hover over each tarot card to see a brief summary of each archetypal design. Like the hero’s journey, these patterns form a meaningful story arc that recurs in multiple stories and multiple genres. To explore the dynamism of the heroine’s labyrinth in-depth, purchase your own copy here (available March 26).
Act I (Orientation)
The heroine’s labyrinth makes a distinction between an outward and inward journey. For the inward journey, storytellers must orient the reader or audience to the special world surrounding the protagonist for worldbuilding and narrative purposes.
The Labyrinth
“Culture. Confinement. Wonder.” The labyrinth is a narrative construction that symbolizes the heroine’s native culture. The labyrinth encompasses a system of social rules and pressures that define expectations within the native culture. Unlike the hero’s journey, the ordinary and “special world” share a unique link as side-by-side or parallel realities.
The Masked Minotaur
“Duplicity. Power. Tyranny.” The Masked Minotaur is a specific and distinctive villain in heroine-centric stories. Like the mythical minotaur, which is a fusion of two beings—the animal savagery of the bull and the social cunning of a human being—this villain is outwardly benevolent and secretly tyrannical. Often portrayed as a social apex character, the Masked Minotaur is a homegrown villain who usually seeks to possess the heroine.
The Sacred Fire
“Passion. Creativity. Continuity.” One of the most unique and dynamic archetypal designs in storytelling, the Sacred Fire is both an attractive force and a creative power. The story’s many conflicts usually stem from competing claims upon the heroine’s Sacred Fire. The native culture seeks some form of social or cultural continuity, while the Masked Minotaur aims to possess the heroine’s Sacred Fire.
Captivity Bargain
“Compromise. Conformity. Isolation.” Due to the competing claims upon the heroine’s Sacred Fire, the heroine usually makes a Captivity Bargain. The heroine often voluntarily agrees to surrender or suppress their desires and agency in exchange for social harmony. The Captivity Bargain is an unsustainable and temporary condition from which the heroine will eventually break free.
The Black Swan
“Destabilization. Randomness. Chaos.” The Black Swan visits many heroine-centric stories at some point. This archetypal design represents a sudden, temporary, and severe destabilization of the home culture. Natural disasters, warfare, or systemic collapse reveal the dangers of unpredictability upon human designs. Heroines are sometimes associated with apocalyptic imagery. Randomness and chaotic patterns may help or hinder the heroine.
Call To Adventure
“Opportunity. Curiosity. Nonconformity.” Most stories or narrative structures will include an “inciting moment” or Call to Adventure, and the heroine’s labyrinth is no different. However, the heroine in the labyrinth model will usually skip the Refusal of the Call due to the restrictive nature of the labyrinth. The Call to Adventure offers the heroine an opportunity for nonconformity, which secretly undermines the Captivity Bargain.
Act II (Exploration)
The second act of the heroine’s labyrinth finds the heroine in a unique special world. Though the heroine is still within the native culture, they are now often unsupervised. The restrictions on participation and access within the native culture have been removed. This unfiltered experience of the native culture can range from fantastical to simply more dangerous.
Cult of Deception
“Illusion. Intuition. Identity” Whereas the labyrinth represents the cultural system that restricts the heroine, the Cult of Deception is the human expression. For a variety of reasons, the characters of the story often behave in a bizarre or secretive way to slow or prevent the heroine’s progress. Ulterior motives cloud the truth, and the special world reveals a darker side.
Chambers of Knowledge
“Information. Secrecy. Truth.” The Chambers of Knowledge are deep interior spaces within the native culture. Act 2 often features a series of explorations into these interior spaces, where the heroine may visit and even revisit. Chambers of Knowledge may be dreamlike or adorned with a pattern of images and symbols that echo a cultural specialization. Many secrets or objects important to the story or the heroine may be buried within these inner chambers.
Chamber Guardians
“Misdirection. Challenge. Exchange.” Chamber Guardians are inner gatekeepers to information, secret truths, and magical objects. There is usually a social test, puzzle, or challenge that the protagonist must resolve for an exchange to occur. Whereas a Threshold Guardian is a belligerent sentry blocking the hero’s outward trajectory, the Chamber Guardian is an administrative trickster withholding inner truths from the heroine.
Beast as Ally
“Menace. Conflict. Cooperation.” One of the most flexible and enduring archetypes, the Beast as Ally often becomes the heroic partner of the heroine. This character provides a pathway to a potential relationship, professional, familiar, or romantic, in which a common cause and mutual interest overcome the obstacles of inexperience, judgment, and selfish ambitions. The Beast as Ally is often a doppelganger of the Masked Minotaur, who distinguished themselves through the rejection of possessive love.
The Fragile Power
“Compassion. Faith. Leadership.” The Fragile Power is often a small or childlike character who’s overlooked or underestimated by experienced characters in the story. However, due to their experiences within the labyrinth, the heroine sees an opportunity to “flip the script” on dismissive attitudes. By entrusting or defending the Fragile Power, the heroine demonstrates leadership while befriending a character who usually plays a vital role in the story’s climax.
The Broken Truce
“Danger. Defiance. Pursuit.” By the end of Act 2, the heroine irrevocably breaks the Captivity Bargain. The Masked Minotaur usually musters social forces against the heroine, and a great chase ensures. The heroine is entirely at odds with the native culture, and law enforcement agents or “villagers” often lead the pursuit.
Act III (Permutation)
The final act of the heroine’s labyrinth moves into the most dangerous expression of the conflict between the heroine, the native culture, and the Masked Minotaur. The heroine is no longer motivated by compromise. She claims her Sacred Fire and refuses all other claims. The focus shifts squarely to following her cause and escaping the labyrinth.
The Poisoned Apple
“Deception. Betrayal. Free Will.” The story often moves to an infamous and ancient archetype—the attack upon the heroine’s free will. The Poisoned Apple is a disguised weapon that usually enters the heroine by ingestion, injection, implantation, or inhalation. Either way, something internal bypasses the heroine’s ability to defend her Sacred Fire. We often see a restrained heroine in a “total possessorship” scenario with the Masked Minotaur.
The Unmasking
“Risk. Belief. Persistence.” Simply defeating the villain in the labyrinth isn’t a combat feat due to the disguise. Therefore, in the heroine’s labyrinth, the story’s emphasis shifts to Unmasking the villain. For the core deception to break, the benevolent outer face of the Masked Minotaur must be exposed without the heroine compromising her alternative values. Combat is not a requirement in this structural event.
Home as Battleground
“Invasion. Violation. Destruction.” A primal and terrifying archetypal design, the home invasion conjures the stuff of nightmares. These inner sanctums are also known as “sacred places” within the native culture, which are now blocked or compromised by the Masked Minotaur. Creative expression, healing, and freedom are all suppressed, and the animal tyranny of the minotaur is at its most destructive.
The Shieldmaiden
“Action. Courage. Confrontation.” Perhaps the most heroic event in all storytelling, the Shieldmaiden usually waxes radiant during a confrontation with the Masked Minotaur. The heroine physically interposes herself between the minotaur and a defenseless person, typically only a few feet away. Her action represents a primal, ethical red line of which the heroine is the first responder and sole enforcer.
The Broken Spell
“Revelation. Liberation. Independence.” The resolution of the story arc in the heroine’s labyrinth usually stems from the fall of the Cult of Deception. The core deception of the story world is that the Masked Minotaur is “good.” After the heroine endures the minotaur’s immoral and often brutal force, the truth is revealed—that the Masked Minotaur is “evil.” The native culture usually expresses a rapid rearrangement from darkness to light.
Atonement
“Validation. Reconciliation. Growth.” The primary conflicts of the heroine’s labyrinth story model usually revolve around the three claims to the heroine’s Sacred Fire. Who won out? Most endings feature the triumph of the heroine and a reconciliation or resolution between the heroine and the native culture. The “unchangeable” Masked Minotaur is either destroyed, imprisoned, or reformed.