ABSTRACT
If your goal is to maintain a narrative for the duration of an entire show, then it is probably a good idea to study narrative theory and tools for writing scenarios. Of course, you can cross your fingers and hope that your story will hold together and engage the audience. But there is no substitute to having a bit of narrative know-how to assist your performance skills. When it comes to narrative structure the most famous schema is that of the Hero’s Journey. Largely developed by Joseph Campbell and more recently revisited by Christopher Vogler, the Hero’s Journey provides a wealth of information for exploring how stories work and why they interest us. This chapter explains how the author extracted from the Hero’s Journey the information he felt was relevant to improvised performance. He presents this information in the form of “Narrative waypoints.” He explains the theory behind the narrative waypoints and how they should be approached. This sets up the practical work that will be covered in the following chapters.
