Quantum Storytelling
“As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief.” Plato, Timaeus
If we understand that the Hero’s journey (transformational) model in storytelling is actually collective consciousness in motion that is showing us a precisely defined order woven into our psyche, and since the psyche is governed by natural forces that cannot be seen, but are nevertheless real and also universal, maybe the principles of storytelling are not just universal but also connected to the principles that are woven into the universe of the unseen.
In other words, since the Intuitive Screenwriting Wheel is an archetypal model of the psyche and nowadays people are using physics, which describes nature at the smallest scale of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles, to better understand the human psyche, can we use a similar method to better understand storytelling?
Can we put the “chaos” of storytelling into some kind of “order”?
Is quantum storytelling actually real, if we believe that:
“Everything we call real is made of things which cannot be regarded as real.” Niels Bohr
Or to put it more simply: Can quantum mechanics describe storytelling?
Let me remind you what we understood about the wheel from the previous exploration and where those conclusions are pointing to next:
1. The same way an archetype is both a symbol and predisposition for transformation of a character – the journey itself – the Intuitive Screenwriting wheel is also not static, on the contrary, it is dynamic, live system.
2. The Intuitive Screenwriting wheel is a structural and genre system built on the relationship between opposing archetypes. Oppositions are therefore enormously important for understanding how this wheel works.
3. It is also a journey – a transformational wheel.
In the feature film structure, archetypes progress from one to another in a counterclockwise direction. One cycle finishes at the point of the new or “higher” beginning/ like in a spiral, which this wheel actually is, (and honestly, the proper name that would suggest the mechanics of it would actually be the Intuitive Screenwriting Spiral).
Therefore, the architecture of the wheel is not liner or circular, it is spiral, which actually tells me that it is also fractal (further explanation is coming soon).
4. Also, a very important part of the language of the wheel is that it seems that every step or transformational stage on the wheel is also dual/oppositional. One archetype exists only in communication with its opposing archetype.
For example: if I want to explain why the exposition of the movie is actually Warrior on the wheel, I would not be able to do it without considering the existence of the Fool archetype or consciousness at the same time/stage. It seems that not only does the Positive/Shadow duality work in opposition, but also oppositions on the wheel are embedded into the very nature of every archetype and it seems that this same notion works on many levels. (Many future posts are going to be based on this rule).
But to use this as a rule while explaining the whole wheel in depth, we need yet another piece of proof. Something that would explain WHY EXACTLY THOSE OPPOSITIONS? And if we can prove that, then we would be able to say that we know the language of the wheel.
Even though we already said that the wheel “works” because communicating archetypes are sextiles in astrology, for me that was not enough. I sensed it had to be something more than that. I started connecting the dots on the zodiacal wheel in 2D, like I would do when writing a story in 3D.
And this is what I got:
"Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world." – Johannes Kepler
What you are looking at here took my breath away.
You can see archetypes as planets on the zodiacal wheel and I am using the zodiac because this is how archetypes would appear in the real sky.
You can also see that archetypes belonging to the same element are connected by a
triangle.
We have four triangles, as we have four elements, as we have four acts:
FIRE TRIANGLE ACT 1: Warrior, Creator, Explorer
EARTH TRIANGLE ACT 2: Lover, Sage, Ruler
AIR TRIANGLE ACT 3: Fool, Orphan, Magician
WATER TRIANGLE ACT 4: Caregiver, Destroyer, Innocent
And remember the archetypal wheel progression? From Warrior you go to Creator and then to Explorer, then to Lover, and then to Sage, and Ruler, … Fool, Orphan, Magician, Caregiver, Destroyer, Innocent.
When you take this 12-pointed star that you see and when you stretch all four triangles, one by one and make one consecutive circle out of it you get the Intuitive Screenwriting Wheel,