The Blackening Phase

The first phase of the Maiden's Method, the Blackening Phase, is fraught with insecurity and the desperate attempts to feel secure. Here's a quick overview of what can be expected at this stage. What does it mean to be abandoned? What do I mean by feminine? And who is doing the hiding? Explore what it means to be in the Blackening Phase and stay tuned for more videos about what it is to be a Hag stuck in the Black.

If you’re only just now familiarizing yourself with The Maiden’s Method, this is the best place to start. 

The Maiden’s story begins in the Black when everything seems to be going wrong. As much as conflict has always been the catalyst to tell a story, it appears that these old fairy tales just have no time to waste. 

When it comes to creating a good character, we want to give them flaws, right? You could give them a limp, a bad temper, or they talk too much. Just those little quirks of humanity that allow for a mostly good person to become a more interesting character. But it’s not enough to have a surface-y problem. As a writer you want to address, if only in your own head, why are any of these things a flaw? I’m not talking about a philosophical discussion about what’s actually good or bad. I’m talking about insecurity. 

There’s nothing wrong with having a limp… but have that conversation with your character and you’re going to drum up fear of loss, past trauma from the injury, overcompensation, or even just embarrassment. Maybe that’s why they have an anger problem. Maybe they were born with a limp, felt they were never truly seen, so they talk too much when anyone does take notice of them. 

For character development, you need to be willing to lay your creations down on the couch. To figure out who they are and why they tick, one of the best things you can do is turn to their insecurities. 

They will have begun here in the Blackening. 

A real person doesn’t ask, “Why was I abandoned?” Even if they were to receive an answer from the person who abandoned them, it wouldn’t be enough to know their motives. A real person wonders, “Why wasn’t I good enough for them to hold on to?” And since few people ever actually pose that question aloud, they rarely get all the way through to the end of it. Most of us just walk around with this echo in our brains that we’ve had since childhood, asking, “Why wasn’t I good enough?”

If you’re writing a villain, you might even want to let them reformulate the question a little to ask themselves, “Am I good?” “Am I enough?”

The word abandon literally means “to let go”. And as far as this first step is concerned, sub-par care presupposes care. So when a mother bird presses a reluctant chick to leave the nest, that baby bird was just Abandoned to Sub-par Care. From Mom-Care to Self-Care is definitely sub-par. But it doesn’t mean that our baby-bird protagonist was maliciously cast aside by someone who didn’t care for them any longer. Still, there is an opportunity for insecurity if Baby Bird didn’t feel ready to leave. 

The Feminine Threat

Before moving any further -- I have to define what I mean by “Feminine”. This section is not necessarily concerned with a female threat. It’s just that most females tend to be mostly feminine. And when we’re talking about archetypes, we’re not getting hung up on the literal, we need to see through to the grander representation. If you’ve ever worked with sound equipment, you know the grander archetypal assertion of using a term like male or female: Which is internal, which is external?

A Feminine Threat, whether male or female, is going to have internal motivations. The three categories of Feminine Threat in The Maiden’s Method are just three manifestations of self-preservation. 

By contrast, masculine threats have external or, rather, extant motivations. 

As a writer, you’ll need to play around with how these traits interlock in your story. 

For example: The surface threat of The Iliad is the masculine threat of the Trojan War. But the internal, read: feminine, motivations of the war were up on Mount Olympus. And I’m not just talking about Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. I’m talking about Zeus’ desperate attempts not to be usurped by his child the way he overthrew his father. After hearing such a prophecy, he acts like a Snow Queen, fighting tooth and nail to freeze the world as he wants it. What’s the problem with orchestrating a betrothal plan here and there in order to cover up your sexual conquests? Why not publicly scorn the goddess of discord? 

If you can trace the character motivations back far enough, therein you will find your Feminine Threat. 

This isn’t precisely the same as external and internal conflict. We’re asking ourselves, “Is this character’s motivation for self or for others?” It doesn’t mean that we’re developing selfish characters, it just means that the focal point of our stories will change. The simplest of examples I can give is in the difference between the Hero and the Maiden. 

The Hero has constant outward motivation. To leave. To be tried and tested in order to prove himself within the world. He confronts history and heritage, learning something about who he is. In the end, he’ll know even more about the world and he’ll use that knowledge to go back and influence his home realm. 

The Maiden is deeply internalized from the very beginning. Through broken and fake relationships, she spends the first half of her story alone. Her major obstacles require her to acknowledge others, care for others, and to eventually care for herself in a way no one else will care for her. 

The Hero confronts the world in order to better himself. The Maiden confronts herself in order to the better the world. 

And before you start thinking that one of those is a better fate than the other, remember that these aren’t fates, these are motivations. And that a single character can simultaneously follow both of these archetypal patterns, it’s just up to you to decide the story focus. 

Internal versus External

Feminine and Masculine as descriptors will make so much more sense as long as we keep coming back to this sense of internal vs external. 

Order is masculine. Why? Because it’s external. It’s outward. It’s not subversive or hidden. Order can’t be esoteric or it wouldn’t be order because no one would follow it. It’s clear, obvious, forthright. And it’s simply not about being categorically male. 

Chaos is feminine. It shares a root with the word yawn, in the sense of a chasm or abyss. It is the opposite of order. It is unknown, unfathomable and untraversable. It’s mysterious, but searchable. 

Life is filled with contiguous, continuous, cyclical pockets of interlocking order and chaos. The more we can be realistic about the duality and balance of apparent opposites, the more beautiful artwork we’ll be able to create.  

Hidden Away

If you know anything about the steps of The Maiden’s Method, you might have already guessed where this is going. Step number three is Hidden Away. So what is it about the Maiden or the Feminine Threat of the story that is unknown? What are their mysteries?

The Maiden is being Hidden Away and the Feminine Threat is doing the Hiding. Be sure to address whether the Maiden is hiding herself -- is she her own Feminine Threat?

Sometimes the Maiden is Hidden Away for her own good. She is sheltered. Then again, she might be sheltered from the real world while a Feminine Threat is telling her it’s for her own good. Or the Maiden might be Hiding herself, saying to herself that it’s for her good; that this is better than the alternative. 

Again, in character development, we need to be less concerned with the motivations of others to hide the Maiden. We need to know what she’s thinking. How does she feel when she’s hidden? And why would she ever do that to herself?

The answer to both of these questions is security. You might not think so right off the bat, so let’s dive in. There’s a reason that the Feminine Threat usually manifests as a step-mom. Like a kid screaming, “You’re not my real mom!” it seems like this is a carefully orchestrated disconnect. We could talk about how in ancient systems, especially royal lineages, “step-mom” was actually “second wife”. And there were all kinds of life-threatening consequences associated with what should be done about the children. 

It’s very much about finding a false sense of security. Even for those who mean well, it certainly doesn’t feel good to be Abandoned and Hidden Away. Even less so when you thought life was one way… until wasn't anymore.

So again - parents who mean well are trying to keep the Maiden secure, at the moment when she really needs it. Threats who hide her away are trying to lure her into a false sense of security, at the moment when she really wants it. So the number one teen movie threat you’re going to see from the young Maiden who’s feeling insecure: she Hides herself away.

And without making this out to sound like a Maiden’s motives always come from weakness, think of it in the context of some of our favorite strong ladies. Mulan, for one, has her insecurities about what is expected of her. But there’s a war coming that will lead to sure destruction for her father and family. She hides herself away as a man in the army, seeking to gain security by taking matters into her own hands. 

It's really just about acknowledging that some opportunities afford more options for lasting security. The sad thing, and hard thing for characters to overcome is whether they should feel secure in a given situation. And just because a Maiden hides herself doesn't necessarily make her into her own threat. But if she is her own threat, hiding herself is just one more obstacle she's laying in her own path.

Let's recap: The Maiden is made to feel insecure by real or perceived abandonment. She is Threatened by the unknown. Mysteries threaten to overtake her. And the line between truth and lies has become so blurred that she chooses to lean into the abyss. She goes where even less is known, where less is seen, where truth is choked out. All for the sake of a false sense of security.