What kind of journey do you want your protagonist or audience have?

Journey mapping is a really useful tool both in design, for mapping the journey of your intended user, and in art, for contemplating the narrative arcs of your story. They often follow very similar patterns.

To make one, draw a straight horizontal line as your base-line. This is your ‘Time’ line and time progresses left to right. Then to the left, draw a vertical line equally above and below the horizontal line. This is your ‘Satisfaction’ line and the top being happy and the bottom being sad.

Then plot each event, obstacle, surprise, revelation, etc. chronologically along the Timeline and place them in terms of Satisfaction based on what users have reported to you, in the case of design, or what your characters experience, in the case of story.

There’s an interesting phenomenon in behavioural sciences called ‘The Peak-end Rule’ where the events at the end of an experience impact the overall memory of the experience far more than anything preceding it. However, that doesn’t mean you can make a bad or boring experience and then have a great ending, there needs to be engagement throughout and a sense of a hard but rewarding or impactful journey.