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What are The Wayfarer's Seven Stages?
The Wayfarer's Seven Stages is a model that reads the journey of change in a story through seven steps: Call, Guide, Threshold, Trial, Awakening, Reward and Return. Its centre is not outward success but the inner need that sets a person on the road.
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What is the model based on?
Ali Osman Akçaoğlu developed the model from the stories of Dede Korkut, Attar's Conference of the Birds and the Sufi understanding of the path and of change. It shares stages with the narrative model known as the Hero's Journey, and reads the road through the concepts of Turkish and Sufi literature.
The wayfarer sets out with an inner need, passes through seven stages and returns home changed.
What are the seven stages?
- 01
Call
What is missing, and how does the wayfarer answer the call?
Something in the order of things begins to ache. The wayfarer notices what is missing, may resist, then answers. The first form of the inner need appears here.
- 02
Guide
Who shows the way, and what is being prepared?
Someone or something shows the way: a master, a mentor, a companion, sometimes a book or a voice. Having no guide is a choice too.
- 03
Threshold
What is left behind, and why is there no way back?
A step is taken that makes going back hard. The wayfarer breaks from the known world and binds themselves to a new order.
- 04
Trial
How does the road test them, and what is the rule of the new world?
Obstacles, desire, love and learning follow one another. The wayfarer learns the rule of the new world, often at a cost.
- 05
Awakening
What burned away, and what did they wake to?
The greatest confrontation happens here. Something burns away inside the wayfarer, and a new way of seeing takes its place.
- 06
Reward
What was the price, and who have they become?
What is won is rarely an object. It is a name, a truth or a new identity, and it comes with its price.
- 07
Return
What do they bring home, and has home changed?
The wayfarer brings what was won back home, to serve and to share. Neither home nor wayfarer is what it was.
How is a stage assessed?
Each stage is marked with one of four states: clear, implicit, absent or not yet written. If a book has several wayfarers, each one can be followed separately.
Download the guide as a PDF
A free 5-page guide to the model, the four states and how to apply it to your own book.
How can I see this map for my own book?
Publishify Masthead reads your book and shows where it stands in the seven stages on a single ring. It also gives evidence-based editorial notes, continuity checks and simulated reader responses. It never touches your text, and the decisions stay yours. Masthead is in early access.