Don't forget to give your Hero flaws. There's no room for MarySue in a real story, and perfect people are boring to read about. Your Hero's flaws are what the reader identifies with and the potential for overcoming those flaws is what the reader is rooting for. This is what's at stake if the quest fails and in order for the reader to care, the stakes have to be high. (Not necessarily death, just something the Hero is very committed to, something he's passionate about.)

That means considering the pace of your story...where you add physical action, where it's appropriate to slow down the derring-do and add some more introspective bits and pieces, when the big scenes should come and how many of them the story needs and a host of other things.

From the beginning of the story/Quest (the "Call to Action") through the "Supreme Ordeal" to the "Climax" there is an accepted (and very successful) structure to create "a story that will be dramatic, entertaining, and psychologically true."

Write a one-word synopsis for your story. Greed. Lust. Trust. Betrayal. Ambition. Friendship. What is the essence of your story? This is your theme, and it should be stated from page one of the story. (Do try to be subtle.)

The key is to establish the background, needs, and desires of the Hero and suggest what problems he's going to have to overcome in order to complete his Quest successfully. These are the questions that your story will answer about the hero by the end of the Quest. This emotional grounding should be established early in the story.

Anyhow…you've established your Hero (or Hero-Presumptive) and laid out who he is, and isn't. Something has happened. A message is received, something happens, and the Hero is reluctantly persuaded to rise to the challenge.

Now what?

This is where the Threshold Guardians come in. The Hero faces a series of challenges, maybe gathering Allies along the way. Some of these challenges can be physical action and some should deal with the Hero's internal problem, either his inability to trust, his tendency to trust too much too quickly, his desire for love or whatever else.

Ideally these challenges should be progressively more...more...challenging, as the story goes along. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Hero making a decision about accepting love, or rejecting material wealth isn't a challenge. It is, and it can be as interesting for the reader as a physical action scene.

After a sufficiency of these challenges (The number depends upon the length of your story.) where the risks and the rewards grow with each step, it's time for what Vogler calls the "Central Ordeal" of the story. (In spite of the name, he also suggests, and I agree, that this Central Ordeal can come approximately 2/3 of the way through the story.) If the Hero has been seeking a Magic Sword, he must face a final, powerful monster and overcome it. If the Hero is seeking treasure, he must slay the dragon. If the detective is seeking a murderer, he finds the murderer, etc.

The Hero triumphs, and begins on the Road Home. This is where you get the comfort after the battle, where the Hero gets the girl, where wounds get patched up and everyone cheers around the campfire.

But you can't stop there. Now that the physical challenges have been overcome, the Hero must come face-to-face with his emotional problems.

If he can't express love, he'll be in danger of losing the woman he loves because of his silence.

If his problem is greed, he might alienate his Allies by trying to grab more than his share of the treasure and have to face that problem.

Leftover Allies of the Shadow are probably prowling around and the Hero and his Allies probably have retaliation to fear. (Great opportunity for a chase scene, here.) The Hero and his Allies thought they'd won, and they've let down their guard, then they realize they're in more danger than ever before....how many movies have you seen this in? The Indiana Jones movies are an excellent example of this. After the temporary easing of tension that follows the Central Ordeal, introducing a new threat at this point will have a surprising impact on the reader.

This is the Hero's final lesson and proof of the sincerity of the lessons he's learned during the Quest. The Hero must abandon his reluctance and tell the woman he loves her, to keep her from going off into danger and leaving him alone. He must share the treasure equally, or make the decision to abandon it, learning to overcome greed in favor of friendship and survival. This is the emotional climax of the story, so make sure the scope and the subject matter are the right ones for the story you've chosen.

Any subplots you've included in your story might require separate climaxes, so it's not necessary to cram everything into one scene.

And, finally, the Hero must look at what he's learned during the Quest and decide what lessons he's learned that he intends to take back to the ordinary world with him. He might not need to fight dragons every day, but confidence in his physical courage will help him in the ordinary world. Having had and abandoned treasure, he might be ready to look around him to see what items of value he overlooked when he was focused on gold. Love, friendship, or any of a number of different things might be his real reward.

The return to normalcy at the end of the story allows you to "wrap up" loose ends and gives the reader a sense of closure, so don't skip it. The Hero should return to the beginning and demonstrate for himself, and the reader, that he has, indeed, learned from his quest.