In a modern world with so many comforts, it's easy to see why so many storytellers today overlook the importance of the Hero's Journey. But the Hero's Journey is in our DNA as it's the story of all humans. We voyage out from our comfortable homes to settle and tame new lands. That's why the Hero's Journey will always resonate with audiences.
It's important to have structure, and be aware of a variety of approaches that have been used previously. You can create your own structure for your own stuff. The problem comes in when writers have no awareness of any structure. And they get hired to fan fiction up something within very specific parameters. And the results have been terrible because of it. Then again, it isn't about being a gifted or skilled writer anymore. Good discussion. Thanks for posting these!
Structure isn't formula. Everything has a structure. Beginning middle end is a structure, 1st act, 2nd act, 3rd act is a structure. You can't write WITHOUT some form of structure because even the individual words have structure, the individual moments have structure. The heros journey is no different it just lays out more options and potential directions for a story to go. The more structural elements you have the more you have to draw from if you hit writers block. I could use the 6 plot point structure or 15 plot points or 24 emotional beats structure and if you place each one of these on 3X5 cards then you can shift them around or even remove an emotional beat if it's not necessary. Not every story is going to have every emotional beat and they might not always be in the same order but when you have a name or LABEL for every POTENTIAL emotional beat and an order that they usually go in it make it easier to visualize the whole story at a glance. The story might have more than one of any emotional beat also, there might be two different inciting incidents in the story or two different ticking time bombs (time constraint) or two different "lock ins" (where you're now locked into the story). Like in Back To The Future - as soon as he goes past 88 miles per hour: Lock In. Or "point of no return" as some might call it. And he's locked in because he forgot to bring extra plutonium but he's double locked in when he runs into his dad, raising the stakes. Each emotional beat is like a different spice or ingredient you can add - or not add, but it's there. You can bake a cake without using a formula but if you haven't already done it several times nobody's gonna want to eat your cake and if your first cake tasted like rubber nobody's interested in your second cake. That's exactly why it's good to bake as many as you can, using a recipe that works until you can do it by feel - THEN share your cake. Nobody builds a car without referring to previous designs and studying mechanical engineering. Nobody writes a song without first being confined to the parameters of a scale; practicing scales all day for months but once you know the scales inside and out you can improvise inside of that scale. The scales of music provide a structure which confines your creativity but it's within that structure that the musician is freed. We only learn the "rules" so that we'll know when it's appropriate to break them. Can't break the rules if you don't know what the rules are. Can't violate the laws of the road if your car won't even start because you didn't bother to study mechanical engineering.
Then there’s the Heroine’s Journey- Maureen Murdock created it at the behest of Joseph Campbell. Masculine journey is out and back. Feminine journey is down and in. Men have to go out, but women don’t, because women are already it. When she showed The Heroine’s Journey to Campbell in 1983, Campbell reportedly said, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.”
With all due respect, I think there’s a better way of viewing it. The framework is like the mannequin that a fashion designer hangs clothes on, the stone that the sculptor carves a statue from, the mold that a baker makes a cake in. In that sense, it’s a medium, a format. It tells you how to tell a story, but what that story is, is completely up to you. If you leave out steps, it will be unsatisfactory to the audience on some level. And if that’s what you want to do, go for it, but be aware of it. Game Of Thrones, which is notorious for very intentionally and self-consciously “subverting expectations”, could never be anything but ultimately unsatisfying. And that’s what happened. It was not bad writing, it was inevitable. Which is why George R.R. Martin can’t finish it, and why the audience hated the ending of the series. A contrary example of how to do it right, which follows the framework while being unpredictable, and thus both satisfying and original, is the original Raiders Of The Lost Ark. That movie is a masterpiece of storytelling, for those who study it from this viewpoint. Indiana Jones thinks he’s on a quest to achieve greatness in his field. The audience thinks he’s on a quest to save the world from the Germans. In the end, he doesn’t get credit for finding the Ark, and he isn’t responsible for defeating the enemy. It turns out that the story was really about Indiana Jones becoming a better man, with the intervention of God and a good woman. At the climax, all he does is close his eyes - which is his symbolic turning away from the greed and lust for “fortune and glory” that drove him. And in closing, he walks off arm in arm with Marion, who he had mistreated and neglected, as the Ark goes into storage, in secret, no doubt sworn to confidentiality by the government. No one will ever know he found it, and he wasn’t the hero in the end. But he got what he needed, which was more valuable. He became a better man, and got the real reward he needed, which was Marion. It may not sound like “the hero’s journey”, but it follows it to a T, on numerous levels.
I took Carey Grant’s character in Notorious as being completely in love with Bergman’s character, but trying his best to deny that he had real feelings for her-which made the ending that much more poignant and powerful❤️💔
I am writing a screenplays for fun so I am no expert but I found a few different ideas very helpful in defining the structure and plotting of my story. I use a four act structure in which I imagine each act goes from orphan to wanderer to soldier to martyr. These give me a helpful guide for the feeling of conviction my character has. I plot all the major story beats by using 24 plot points, 6 in each act and every 2 plot points is one of the steps in the hero's journey (sometimes I combine them into one plot if the plot point is strong enough to give the idea). For each act I figure out the answer to "What is the main question being asked by the audience in this act?" then make sure my plots answer it. All of this is just an overlay I can adjust as I see fit but all these ideas help lay the ground work giving me direction as I process the possibilities with my characters. Each of these structures is not making me feel restrained it helps me to keep in line with the emotions, ideas and continutiy I want. I set out wanting to achieve the emotions and moments these structures emphasize so I find it a help and not a hinderance to my writing. Before I start writing any story or thinking of any world building I ask the main question "What is this story about in one sentence?" The concept should be something universal in the human experience and not determined by the possible worlds or stories I have in mind. What is the part of the human condition this story will explore as it's focus? No matter if I write a war movie or a high school drama if the core of that story is about a part of the human condition then it will resonate within myself and my audience better than any story focused on this cool character or world I have in mind. My characters then are simple types built around all the different answers to that central question or idea. The main character is the point of view or point I want to get across, the supporting characters may be variations or similar takes on the central question and the villian is the opposite answer to the hero's. With all of these things in place I have the core of my story, I have the personalities of my characters and their general place in the story figured out, I have the major moves of how I am going to draw out the ideas of my story laid out and now all I need to do is enjoy the process of thinking of new worlds or what if scenarios and seeing which one moves me the most to where things flow naturally when plotting. I'm just some business guy writing in his limited free time but these tools have helped me focus on the things that make better stories and given me good guides on when I am going "off script" and ruining the story with new ideas. I enjoy this process greatly, if it can help you who is reading this then I am glad.
I love the idea of leaving certain pieces out intentionally. That frees me up from doing too much research, character analysis, and world building, which can cause total blockage on the writing process. Not to mention, being able to fill in the details ourselves as the audience, draws us in so that a piece of the story is always with/in us. 🤓
Bruce Adolphe highlights the surprise element in classical music. Discussing sonata from, he says it is So Not A Form because its success depends on surprise. If one merely follows rules, the results will be boring. Geniuses alter the form every time. I cited these ideas when analyzing Greta Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN.
The concern with “breaking the form” is that Hollywood is “risk averse” and new writers put themselves at a disadvantage if they depart from the form and try to break in.
You have to know the rules to break the rules. When intentionally leaving out a certain part of a recognized structure, I often weave it back into sub-text. In essence I make up for the "mistake." In his example of Amore removing the easily identified mentor from the story, it created a psychological horrror, according to him. That is a fascinating take and undertsanding of the writer's intention. Or, maybe the writer never intended that particular effect. In either case, I submit the mentor was present. The main character became his own mentor through the absence of solid adivce. Going under the old saying, you are a teacher to everyone you meet, whether they can learn from you or not. Meaning, the lack of overt adivce in the story was the correct adivce from mentors. The protaginist learned what not to do. To me, it was a clever way to weave in the mentor to the story. It makes an otherwise mudane story, a thriller. Simply from creating a spare environment for the audeince to explore. Maybe I am over thinking it, who knows. Art is subjective, and the rules do not apply, once you learn them.
Does stories like Slaghterhouse 5, Ghost of Chance, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Cannery Row, to name a few famous ones, follow "heros journey" in any meaningfull way? They are clearly stories, and I might be missing something, but I think there seems to be other ways stories can be build, heros journey is just the way Hollywood tells at story over 99% of the time.
The Hero’s Journey is something that a lot of Hollywood screenwriters today seem to over look or just ignore altogether. Which is why a vast majority of the content being released whether it’s TV or film? Is mostly garbage at this point.
Like the lawmaker once said I know it when I see it. Basically if you have seen it before, you see it again and you can pick out the beats of the story and know when they are coming. That in of itself does not make a story bad. The Belgariad is fairly formulaic in the fantasy genre, but still is a classic.
Storytelling becomes formulaic when novel elements of a story becomes such "tried and true" storytelling elements that they become trite. One example I've noticed lately is the image of a ghastly woman coming out of a tub. For me the original tub terror was in Psycho. Stephen King made that image brand new in The Shining. Now I see King's image of a horrific feminine ghost in a lot of horror movies. It's stale now.
Spot on. Use knowledge of the heroes journey to play with audiences expectations. No mentor= rug swept out from under feet. But you can't just skip vital parts like the hero growing from adversity....why Adam Sandler golden boy always winning stuff comes across as self centered daydreaming and not like real stories
One of the reasons I look forward to having my story out in the world, is that I then have a REAL EXAMPLE of why «3-act structure formulas» don’t have to be adhered to to create an emotionally compelling story. There’s a lot I have to say about it. But for now, I’m just a nobody who hasn’t even gotten his story out yet. ... By the way, I reached out to Chris Gore last year to ask his advice on how to ensure Modern-day Hollywood doesn’t reduce my fantasy story, with great potential for philosophical and emotional drama, to a typical Marvel movie that is all about action and showing off budget. Upon having received his response, I realize I should first deliver my story through a different medium before trying to get a movie out of it. I don’t even know if I’ll try to make a movie of my script at this point...
algorithms as i have been taught to understand them sort preexisting things into collections of similar stuff. they don't create or provide structure for creation of new things.
[11:52] By coincidence: I watched the Ensign Ro episode from season 5 of Star Trek TNG this week. The screened version is one in which the disgraced, and reassigned by Admiral Kennelly, Ensign Ro, steps off the transporter pad and a furious Commander Riker demands that she removes her earring, to conform to "strict dress code". My version would have had her keep her earring in place, and take Riker out -- like Michael Caine does with Brumby, from Get Carter [1] -- walk off and say, to a Riker set on his butt: "You're out of shape big man. . . " :-) 1. ua-cam.com/video/Tb2-ZKm0oE4/v-deo.html
In a modern world with so many comforts, it's easy to see why so many storytellers today overlook the importance of the Hero's Journey. But the Hero's Journey is in our DNA as it's the story of all humans. We voyage out from our comfortable homes to settle and tame new lands. That's why the Hero's Journey will always resonate with audiences.
My god, this is Mr. Vogler himself. Thank you Film Courage for interviewing the legendary Mr.Vogler.
Kindly direct me to some of his work. I want to know more.
This guy knows what he's talking about.
It's important to have structure, and be aware of a variety of approaches that have been used previously. You can create your own structure for your own stuff. The problem comes in when writers have no awareness of any structure. And they get hired to fan fiction up something within very specific parameters. And the results have been terrible because of it. Then again, it isn't about being a gifted or skilled writer anymore. Good discussion. Thanks for posting these!
Christopher Vogler breaks down the 12 stages of the Hero's Journey - ua-cam.com/video/oNNaMuBOxv4/v-deo.html
listening closely to Mr Vogler, there's some real gems in here....Thanks for all your videos! They're super useful...
Structure isn't formula. Everything has a structure. Beginning middle end is a structure, 1st act, 2nd act, 3rd act is a structure. You can't write WITHOUT some form of structure because even the individual words have structure, the individual moments have structure. The heros journey is no different it just lays out more options and potential directions for a story to go. The more structural elements you have the more you have to draw from if you hit writers block. I could use the 6 plot point structure or 15 plot points or 24 emotional beats structure and if you place each one of these on 3X5 cards then you can shift them around or even remove an emotional beat if it's not necessary.
Not every story is going to have every emotional beat and they might not always be in the same order but when you have a name or LABEL for every POTENTIAL emotional beat and an order that they usually go in it make it easier to visualize the whole story at a glance. The story might have more than one of any emotional beat also, there might be two different inciting incidents in the story or two different ticking time bombs (time constraint) or two different "lock ins" (where you're now locked into the story). Like in Back To The Future - as soon as he goes past 88 miles per hour: Lock In. Or "point of no return" as some might call it. And he's locked in because he forgot to bring extra plutonium but he's double locked in when he runs into his dad, raising the stakes. Each emotional beat is like a different spice or ingredient you can add - or not add, but it's there.
You can bake a cake without using a formula but if you haven't already done it several times nobody's gonna want to eat your cake and if your first cake tasted like rubber nobody's interested in your second cake. That's exactly why it's good to bake as many as you can, using a recipe that works until you can do it by feel - THEN share your cake. Nobody builds a car without referring to previous designs and studying mechanical engineering. Nobody writes a song without first being confined to the parameters of a scale; practicing scales all day for months but once you know the scales inside and out you can improvise inside of that scale. The scales of music provide a structure which confines your creativity but it's within that structure that the musician is freed. We only learn the "rules" so that we'll know when it's appropriate to break them. Can't break the rules if you don't know what the rules are. Can't violate the laws of the road if your car won't even start because you didn't bother to study mechanical engineering.
Get off the sauce
“Structure isn’t formula” but “a structure” can be a “formula”.
Then there’s the Heroine’s Journey- Maureen Murdock created it at the behest of Joseph Campbell. Masculine journey is out and back. Feminine journey is down and in. Men have to go out, but women don’t, because women are already it. When she showed The Heroine’s Journey to Campbell in 1983, Campbell reportedly said, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.”
With all due respect, I think there’s a better way of viewing it. The framework is like the mannequin that a fashion designer hangs clothes on, the stone that the sculptor carves a statue from, the mold that a baker makes a cake in. In that sense, it’s a medium, a format. It tells you how to tell a story, but what that story is, is completely up to you. If you leave out steps, it will be unsatisfactory to the audience on some level. And if that’s what you want to do, go for it, but be aware of it.
Game Of Thrones, which is notorious for very intentionally and self-consciously “subverting expectations”, could never be anything but ultimately unsatisfying. And that’s what happened. It was not bad writing, it was inevitable. Which is why George R.R. Martin can’t finish it, and why the audience hated the ending of the series.
A contrary example of how to do it right, which follows the framework while being unpredictable, and thus both satisfying and original, is the original Raiders Of The Lost Ark. That movie is a masterpiece of storytelling, for those who study it from this viewpoint. Indiana Jones thinks he’s on a quest to achieve greatness in his field. The audience thinks he’s on a quest to save the world from the Germans. In the end, he doesn’t get credit for finding the Ark, and he isn’t responsible for defeating the enemy. It turns out that the story was really about Indiana Jones becoming a better man, with the intervention of God and a good woman. At the climax, all he does is close his eyes - which is his symbolic turning away from the greed and lust for “fortune and glory” that drove him. And in closing, he walks off arm in arm with Marion, who he had mistreated and neglected, as the Ark goes into storage, in secret, no doubt sworn to confidentiality by the government. No one will ever know he found it, and he wasn’t the hero in the end. But he got what he needed, which was more valuable. He became a better man, and got the real reward he needed, which was Marion.
It may not sound like “the hero’s journey”, but it follows it to a T, on numerous levels.
I could listen to this guy for hours!!!! I related to everything he said.
I really like him too, he's a great mix of proper (own!) critical thinking and enthusiasm
I took Carey Grant’s character in Notorious as being completely in love with Bergman’s character, but trying his best to deny that he had real feelings for her-which made the ending that much more poignant and powerful❤️💔
I am writing a screenplays for fun so I am no expert but I found a few different ideas very helpful in defining the structure and plotting of my story. I use a four act structure in which I imagine each act goes from orphan to wanderer to soldier to martyr. These give me a helpful guide for the feeling of conviction my character has. I plot all the major story beats by using 24 plot points, 6 in each act and every 2 plot points is one of the steps in the hero's journey (sometimes I combine them into one plot if the plot point is strong enough to give the idea). For each act I figure out the answer to "What is the main question being asked by the audience in this act?" then make sure my plots answer it. All of this is just an overlay I can adjust as I see fit but all these ideas help lay the ground work giving me direction as I process the possibilities with my characters. Each of these structures is not making me feel restrained it helps me to keep in line with the emotions, ideas and continutiy I want. I set out wanting to achieve the emotions and moments these structures emphasize so I find it a help and not a hinderance to my writing.
Before I start writing any story or thinking of any world building I ask the main question "What is this story about in one sentence?" The concept should be something universal in the human experience and not determined by the possible worlds or stories I have in mind. What is the part of the human condition this story will explore as it's focus? No matter if I write a war movie or a high school drama if the core of that story is about a part of the human condition then it will resonate within myself and my audience better than any story focused on this cool character or world I have in mind. My characters then are simple types built around all the different answers to that central question or idea. The main character is the point of view or point I want to get across, the supporting characters may be variations or similar takes on the central question and the villian is the opposite answer to the hero's. With all of these things in place I have the core of my story, I have the personalities of my characters and their general place in the story figured out, I have the major moves of how I am going to draw out the ideas of my story laid out and now all I need to do is enjoy the process of thinking of new worlds or what if scenarios and seeing which one moves me the most to where things flow naturally when plotting.
I'm just some business guy writing in his limited free time but these tools have helped me focus on the things that make better stories and given me good guides on when I am going "off script" and ruining the story with new ideas. I enjoy this process greatly, if it can help you who is reading this then I am glad.
I love the idea of leaving certain pieces out intentionally. That frees me up from doing too much research, character analysis, and world building, which can cause total blockage on the writing process. Not to mention, being able to fill in the details ourselves as the audience, draws us in so that a piece of the story is always with/in us. 🤓
Bruce Adolphe highlights the surprise element in classical music. Discussing sonata from, he says it is So Not A Form because its success depends on surprise. If one merely follows rules, the results will be boring. Geniuses alter the form every time. I cited these ideas when analyzing Greta Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this interview ❤
The concern with “breaking the form” is that Hollywood is “risk averse” and new writers put themselves at a disadvantage if they depart from the form and try to break in.
You have to know the rules to break the rules. When intentionally leaving out a certain part of a recognized structure, I often weave it back into sub-text. In essence I make up for the "mistake." In his example of Amore removing the easily identified mentor from the story, it created a psychological horrror, according to him. That is a fascinating take and undertsanding of the writer's intention. Or, maybe the writer never intended that particular effect. In either case, I submit the mentor was present. The main character became his own mentor through the absence of solid adivce. Going under the old saying, you are a teacher to everyone you meet, whether they can learn from you or not. Meaning, the lack of overt adivce in the story was the correct adivce from mentors. The protaginist learned what not to do. To me, it was a clever way to weave in the mentor to the story. It makes an otherwise mudane story, a thriller. Simply from creating a spare environment for the audeince to explore. Maybe I am over thinking it, who knows. Art is subjective, and the rules do not apply, once you learn them.
Absolutely love this. In The Birds we have no idea why these birds are attacking and at the end we still don’t know.
So helpful, thank you💖
People made stories first, then described them with the heros journey.
Does stories like Slaghterhouse 5, Ghost of Chance, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Cannery Row, to name a few famous ones, follow "heros journey" in any meaningfull way?
They are clearly stories, and I might be missing something, but I think there seems to be other ways stories can be build, heros journey is just the way Hollywood tells at story over 99% of the time.
The Hero’s Journey is something that a lot of Hollywood screenwriters today seem to over look or just ignore altogether. Which is why a vast majority of the content being released whether it’s TV or film? Is mostly garbage at this point.
What makes a story formulaic?
Like the lawmaker once said I know it when I see it. Basically if you have seen it before, you see it again and you can pick out the beats of the story and know when they are coming. That in of itself does not make a story bad. The Belgariad is fairly formulaic in the fantasy genre, but still is a classic.
Storytelling becomes formulaic when novel elements of a story becomes such "tried and true" storytelling elements that they become trite. One example I've noticed lately is the image of a ghastly woman coming out of a tub. For me the original tub terror was in Psycho. Stephen King made that image brand new in The Shining. Now I see King's image of a horrific feminine ghost in a lot of horror movies. It's stale now.
When the storyteller is afraid to stray from the path.
KM Weiland's book Writing Archetypal Character Arcs, describes patterns other than the Hero's Journey.
Spot on. Use knowledge of the heroes journey to play with audiences expectations. No mentor= rug swept out from under feet. But you can't just skip vital parts like the hero growing from adversity....why Adam Sandler golden boy always winning stuff comes across as self centered daydreaming and not like real stories
I would change the title to “The Hero’s Journey is an algorithm.”
The last 2 and a half minutes are: 🤯
One of the reasons I look forward to having my story out in the world, is that I then have a REAL EXAMPLE of why «3-act structure formulas» don’t have to be adhered to to create an emotionally compelling story. There’s a lot I have to say about it. But for now, I’m just a nobody who hasn’t even gotten his story out yet.
... By the way, I reached out to Chris Gore last year to ask his advice on how to ensure Modern-day Hollywood doesn’t reduce my fantasy story, with great potential for philosophical and emotional drama, to a typical Marvel movie that is all about action and showing off budget.
Upon having received his response, I realize I should first deliver my story through a different medium before trying to get a movie out of it. I don’t even know if I’ll try to make a movie of my script at this point...
Get it out into the world my freind. We are all wanting the same thing, so I feel your pain. I just want to encourage you to send it. Let it fly.
Crazy to watch a literal writing god talk about his own system, thanks for posting this more valuable then tears of school.
algorithms as i have been taught to understand them sort preexisting things into collections of similar stuff. they don't create or provide structure for creation of new things.
😊❤🙏
[11:52] By coincidence: I watched the Ensign Ro episode from season 5 of Star Trek TNG this week. The screened version is one in which the disgraced, and reassigned by Admiral Kennelly, Ensign Ro, steps off the transporter pad and a furious Commander Riker demands that she removes her earring, to conform to "strict dress code". My version would have had her keep her earring in place, and take Riker out -- like Michael Caine does with Brumby, from Get Carter [1] -- walk off and say, to a Riker set on his butt: "You're out of shape big man. . . " :-)
1. ua-cam.com/video/Tb2-ZKm0oE4/v-deo.html
Your version would have been ridiculous. You'd be turning Ro into some obnoxious fool and Riker into a punk bitch. And for nothing.
Hollywood stars actresses and actors are very obsolete now ****
What if your story doesn’t have an obvious hero or protagonist?
I love the potential of Nolan's Joker, having been in Army Intelligence, so he's a trained tactician.
11:00
yeah, but that's called Headcanon. And it's not really the greatest thing imo.
We'll shoot, now they tell us to veer off the heroes journey path to make a great stoy.
It resonates because it's OUR journey. 🫀