Jeffrey Alan Schechter, Author/Screenwriter/Founder of Writers Room Pro: I noticed that the main character moves through four of the six archetypes like clockwork.
Film Courage: What is the Jungian concept of the hero within and how does it work within storytelling?
Jeffrey: The whole Jungian approach for filmmakers feels like it’s a bit of a catch-all bucket where everybody likes to put into Jungian, and [Carl] Jung dealt with a lot of symbols and hidden meanings and things like that, but in the most concise and well constructed version of this came from the book The Hero Within by a person named Carol S. Pearson who I don’t think she’s alive anymore. This book’s fairly old, but Carol if you’re still with us, I apologize! I think she may have passed on but anyway she was a psychologist who wrote a book as a self-help book with that idea, and the hero within I think it’s the six archetypes we live by. Her idea was that if you can define yourself by one of these six archetypes which was the warrior, wanderer, orphan, martyr, innocent, magician (there we go, I actually got them all). If you can kind of define yourself by one of these archetypes, you could then say Well, I don’t want to be a martyr, I want to be a warrior. Then she was able to chart well based on classic literature, How did stories that had orphans who became or martyrs who became warriors, what was that journey like? She was sort of interestingly extrapolating from literature and self-help lessons which is interesting. I, like most people, get into writing kind of to define I want to be like Bruce Wayne when I grow up. I want to be like whatever, Harry in When Harry Met Sally. You start imagining yourself as these characters, she went the other way…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
After moving to Los Angeles, Jeffrey Alan Schechter quickly established himself as a versatile writer, able to work in all genres from action films to family comedies, from pre-school to adult drama, from live action to animation. His writing has earned him a Gemini Award as well as nominations for two Emmy awards, a Writers Guild of America award, a Writer’s Guild of Canada award, and a BAFTA award. Over the years Jeff has worked with dozens of studios and networks including Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, ABC, NBC, The Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon, The Hallmark Channel, the BBC, VH1 Films, RHI, and The Walt Disney Company. Jeff is the author of a book on story structure titled My Story Can Beat Up Your Story! and is a noted speaker and lecturer on screenwriting. Jeff is the founder/creator of WritersRoom Pro software, a digital writers’ room for secure, remote creativity and collaboration.
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