Where I share thoughts on writing and the writing life.
There and Back Again: The Hero’s Journey
Vercingetorix is a national hero in France, but his life was more Freytag’s Pyramid than Hero’s Journey.
I my last post I discussed Gustave Freytag’s famous pyramid, which is often used and mis-used by screenwriters even now, over 150 Years since its invention (or I prefer discovery). In this post I will discuss another very popular trope called the Hero’s Journey. Which is also often used and mis-used by writers of all stripes.
Like Freytag’s pyramid, the Hero’s Journey is best applied to certain stories, in particular the single-hero adventure tale that generally has a happy ending: The hero returns home victorious (think Luke Skywalker.)
The Hero’s journey was developed by Joseph Campbell (1984-1987) and laid out in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, First published as an academic treatise by the Boddington Foundation in 1949.
Campbell was a professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College and as a young man travelled to India and became fascinated by the mythology there. He recognized that the Indian myths, though apparently isolated from Western stories, held many themes in common with them. On graduating college with a degree in Medieval Literature he spent five years in his family’s cabin reading and studying stories from all over the world. He discovered that stories, especially mythology had several common tropes across many cultures. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was his attempt to explain his theories. It might have ended at that, with Campbell living out a quiet academic life, except that over 20 years after it was published a little movie called Star Wars (you may have heard of it) hit screens across the world. Its creator, George Lucas, mentioned that he used the principles in Campbell’s book as a template for his story. Campbell was immediately launched into prominence as a story guru, and neither he nor Lucas ever looked back.
Campbell’s book is not an easy read, and his idea of the hero’s Journey, which he calls The Adventure. Or the Monomyth, Is complicated. Luckily, John Yorke (1962—) simplified it into 12 steps in his book Into the Woods (Overbrook Press, 2015) and it was further simplified by Dan Harmon (1973—) in his Story Circle, which we will discuss in a later post.
The Yorke version consists of twelve plot points and is usually pictured in a circle. The story advances in a clockwise fashion around the circle (though in Campbell’s version the path is reversed.)
I will lay out the plot points below, and as a way of showing the universality of the trope, I will apply it to the Bible story of the Exodus.
Plot Point One: The Ordinary World
This is where we find our hero living his normal everyday life. He is an orphan working on is uncle’s water farm, a hobbit enjoying his life in Hobbiton. Often something is bothering him; he wants more out of life than his dull hum drum existence, or he feels he is destined for greatness, Often, he has a problem that he is running away from.
In the Book of Exodus: We see Moses on the lamb. Literally, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, but it wasn’t always this way. He was once an up-and-comer in Egyptian society until he killed a slave driver for mistreating a slave. He is hiding out from his accusers.
Plot Point Two: The Call to Adventure: Something happens to disrupt the hero’s life: It may be a visitation from a Wizard, a hologram projected from a newly acquired robot, or some other event that requires the hero to leave his home and face a challenge of some sort.
The Exodus: Moses is out tending sheep one day and sees a bush that is on fire, but not being consumed. He approaches the bush and the voice of YHWH emerges from the conflagration and tells him to go back to Egypt and free the Israelites from the Pharoah.
Plot Point Three: Refusal of the Call: The hero tries to avoid the challenge. She’s too weak, too scared, too young, etc.
The Exodus: Moses tell YHWH that he can’t go. He is inarticulate and a stutterer, and the Egyptians will laugh at him.
Plot Point Four: Meeting the Mentor: Just when the Hero feels he is over his head and can’t do the job, someone appears who will assist him on his journey. He may be given special knowledge, A talisman, or a magic device like an invisibility ring, or a Laser sword that will help him on his way.
The Exodus: YHWH tells Moses that Aaron will go with him and speak for him if necessary. He is given a magic staff that he can use to perform miracles before the Pharoah to show that YHWH means business.
Plot Point Five: Crossing the Threshold: Our hero finally sets off on her quest, often after a period of preparation proceeding the journey. He may go off to a nearby town to hitch a ride to another planet, or set off with his crew to destroy a magic ring. He crosses from the Ordinary World to the Special World, where things are often topsy-turvy.
The Exodus: Moses sets off with his family for Egypt to face the Pharoah.
Plot Point six: Tests, Allies, Enemies: The hero is confronted with ever more difficult tests, but also may gain some new allies; a renegade space-ship captain and his fuzzy buddy, or a motley crew of dwarves, elves and mercenaries.
The Exodus: Moses engages in a battle of wills with the Pharoah and his wizards. He finally gets the Pharoah to relent and release the Israelites, but the fickle Pharoah quickly has a change of heart and sends the army after them.
Plot Point Seven: Approaching the Innermost Cave Our Hero faces a threat to his being, either physical, mental or both. He must face up to the danger. He may have a period of preparation before entering. He may have to fight the urge to keep the magic ring and all its power, or he may enter an actual cave and face his enemy, only to find out it is himself.
The Exodus: Moses climbs up the mountain to meet with YHWH, even though he knows if he looks on His face he will die.
Plot Point Eight: Ordeal: A metaphorical “death” the hero must endure in order to be resurrected. It may be physical, emotional, or psychological.
The Exodus: Moses battles with YHWH for forty days, and finally returns to his tribe with the Ten Commandments only to find his people have turned from the LORD. In a fit of rage, he smashes the Ten commandments. (for those of you keeping score, this signifies the death of civilization).
Plot Point Nine: Seizing the Sword (the Reward) Our hero survives death and is transformed into a new state of being. Her reward may be a valuable physical object, new idea, a secret, or insight. She may finally understand the evil power of the ring, or may be accepted into a secret society of mystical warriors.
The Exodus: Moses returns to the mountain and is given a new set of the Commandments for his people.
Plot Point Ten: The Road Back The hero prepares for the trip home. He must decide between self-preservation and a higher cause.
The Exodus: Moses leads his people to their new home in the Promised Land (this scene is out of place from the Hero’s Journey)
Plot Point Eleven: Resurrection: Our hero faces their final challenge and emerge a changed person.
The Exodus: Moses faces off with YHWH to save his people from YHWH’s wrath
Plot Point Twelve: Return with Elixir Our hero returns from her journey a changed person. He may bring new hope, new Knowledge, or salvation to those left behind.
The Exodus: Moses returns from his ordeal with YHWH with the new tablet of the Ten Commandments. The people notice that his face is glowing from being in His presence. He has struggled with the Lord and come out victorious. His people have been spared and given a new chance at becoming a civilized people.
Writing the Monomyth
The Journey is just a guideline. You do not have to include all the steps, nor complete them in the same order.
A given story may have more than one journey. There may be successive journeys, or parallel journeys by different characters.
Some steps may be repeated.
This may seem formulaic. it is important not to try to fit your story to the template. Go ahead and write your story and then compare it to the template to see if your tale can be enhanced by adding or deleting certain plot points.
This is a recipe, not a formula. Like all recipe’s you may feel free to add or delete ingredients, make substitutions, or change quantities of ingredients to make it your own.
I my last post I discussed Gustave Freytag’s famous pyramid, which is often used and mis-used by screenwriters even now, over 150 Years since its invention or I prefer discovery). In this post I will discuss another very popular trope called the Hero’s Journey. Which is also often used and mis-used by writers of all stripes.
Like Freytag’s pyramid, the Hero’s Journey is best applied to certain stories, in particular the single-hero adventure tale that generally has a happy ending: The hero returns home victorious (think Luke Skywalker.)
The Hero’s journey was developed by Joseph Campbell (1984-1987) and laid out in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, First published as an academic treatise by the Boddington Foundation in 1949.
Campbell was a professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College and as a young man travelled to India and became fascinated by the mythology there. He recognized that the Indian myths, though apparently isolated from Western stories, held many themes in common with them. On graduating college with a degree in Medieval Literature he spent five years in his family’s cabin reading and studying stories from all over the world. He discovered that stories, especially mythology had several common tropes across many cultures. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was his attempt to explain his theories. It might have ended at that, with Campbell living out a quiet academic life, except that over 20 years after it was published a little movie called Star Wars (you may have heard of it) hit screens across the world. Its creator, George Lucas, mentioned that he used the principles in Campbell’s book as a template for his story. Campbell was immediately launched into prominence as a story guru, and neither he nor Lucas ever looked back.
Campbell’s book is not an easy read, and his idea of the hero’s Journey, which he calls The Adventure. Or the Monomyth, Is complicated. Luckily, John Yorke (1962—) simplified it into 12 steps in his book Into the Woods (Overbrook Press, 2015) and it was further simplified by Dan Harmon (1973—) in his Story Circle, which we will discuss in a later post.
The Yorke version consists of twelve plot points and is usually pictured in a circle. The story advances in a clockwise fashion around the circle (though in Campbell’s version the path is reversed.)
I will lay out the plot points below, and as a way of showing the universality of the trope, I will apply it to the Bible story of the Exodus.
Plot Point One: The Ordinary World
This is where we find our hero living his normal everyday life. He is an orphan working on is uncle’s water farm, a hobbit enjoying his life in Hobbiton. Often something is bothering him; he wants more out of life than his dull hum drum existence, or he feels he is destined for greatness, Often, he has a problem that he is running away from.
In the Book of Exodus: We see Moses on the lamb. Literally, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, but it wasn’t always this way. He was once an up-and-comer in Egyptian society until he killed a slave driver for mistreating a slave. He is hiding out from his accusers.
Plot Point Two: The Call to Adventure: Something happens to disrupt the hero’s life: It may be a visitation from a Wizard, a hologram projected from a newly acquired robot, or some other event that requires the hero to leave his home and face a challenge of some sort.
The Exodus: Moses is out tending sheep one day and sees a bush that is on fire, but not being consumed. He approaches the bush and the voice of YHWH emerges from the conflagration and tells him to go back to Egypt and free the Israelites from the Pharoah.
Plot Point Three: Refusal of the Call: The hero tries to avoid the challenge. She’s too weak, too scared, too young, etc.
The Exodus: Moses tell YHWH that he can’t go. He is inarticulate and a stutterer, and the Egyptians will laugh at him.
Plot Point Four: Meeting the Mentor: Just when the Hero feels he is over his head and can’t do the job, someone appears who will assist him on his journey. He may be given special knowledge, A talisman, or a magic device like an invisibility ring, or a Laser sword that will help him on his way.
The Exodus: YHWH tells Moses that Aaron will go with him and speak for him if necessary. He is given a magic staff that he can use to perform miracles before the Pharoah to show that YHWH means business.
Plot Point Five: Crossing the Threshold: Our hero finally sets off on her quest, often after a period of preparation proceeding the journey. He may go off to a nearby town to hitch a ride to another planet, or set off with his crew to destroy a magic ring. He crosses from the Ordinary World to the Special World, where things are often topsy-turvy.
The Exodus: Moses sets off with his family for Egypt to face the Pharoah.
Plot Point six: Tests, Allies, Enemies: The hero is confronted with ever more difficult tests, but also may gain some new allies; a renegade space-ship captain and his fuzzy buddy, or a motley crew of dwarves, elves and mercenaries.
The Exodus: Moses engages in a battle of wills with the Pharoah and his wizards. He finally gets the Pharoah to relent and release the Israelites, but the fickle Pharoah quickly has a change of heart and sends the army after them.
Plot Point Seven: Approaching the Innermost Cave Our Hero faces a threat to his being, either physical, mental or both. He must face up to the danger. He may have a period of preparation before entering. He may have to fight the urge to keep the magic ring and all its power, or he may enter an actual cave and face his enemy, only to find out it is himself.
The Exodus: Moses climbs up the mountain to meet with YHWH, even though he knows if he looks on His face he will die.
Plot Point Eight: Ordeal: A metaphorical “death” the hero must endure in order to be resurrected. It may be physical, emotional, or psychological.
The Exodus: Moses battles with YHWH for forty days, and finally returns to his tribe with the Ten Commandments only to find his people have turned from the LORD. In a fit of rage, he smashes the Ten commandments. (for those of you keeping score, this signifies the death of civilization).
Plot Point Nine: Seizing the Sword (the Reward) Our hero survives death and is transformed into a new state of being. Her reward may be a valuable physical object, new idea, a secret, or insight. She may finally understand the evil power of the ring, or may be accepted into a secret society of mystical warriors.
The Exodus: Moses returns to the mountain and is given a new set of the Commandments for his people.
Plot Point Ten: The Road Back The hero prepares for the trip home. He must decide between self-preservation and a higher cause.
The Exodus: Moses leads his people to their new home in the Promised Land (this scene is out of place from the Hero’s Journey)
Plot Point Eleven: Resurrection: Our hero faces their final challenge and emerge a changed person.
The Exodus: Moses faces off with YHWH to save his people from YHWH’s wrath
Plot Point Twelve: Return with Elixir Our hero returns from her journey a changed person. He may bring new hope, new Knowledge, or salvation to those left behind.
The Exodus: Moses returns from his ordeal with YHWH with the new tablet of the Ten Commandments. The people notice that his face is glowing from being in His presence. He has struggled with the Lord and come out victorious. His people have been spared and given a new chance at becoming a civilized people.
Writing the Monomyth
The Journey is just a guideline. You do not have to include all the steps, nor complete them in the same order.
A given story may have more than one journey. There may be successive journeys, or parallel journeys by different characters.
Some steps may be repeated.
This may seem formulaic. it is important not to try to fit your story to the template. Go ahead and write your story and then compare it to the template to see if your tale can be enhanced by adding or deleting certain plot points.
This is a recipe, not a formula. Like all recipe’s you may feel free to add or delete ingredients, make substitutions, or change quantities of ingredients to make it your own.
And the Grand Prize is…This Beeyootiful Goat!
The ancient Greeks looked forward to a semi-annual festival (spring and fall) in honor of the god Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of fertility, wine, and harvest. His symbol was a goat. I imagine that a celebration of wine, fertility, and harvest was not exactly like our modern county fair. It was more likely akin to Woodstock. There is some speculation that at least some of them drank wine laced with LSD.
One of the more civilized activities at these festivals was a poetry contest. This was not like our modern- day poetry slam, but a presentation of stage plays (written as poetry) put on by a group of writers. Each writer was sponsored by a local big wig. The poet had to present three tragedies and one “satyr play,” sort of like vaudeville, I guess to lighten the atmosphere after five or six hours of pain and grief. The plays were observed by a panel of judges and the winner (not the writer, but the sponsor—even back then writers never got any respect—would be given the prize of goat. The word tragedy in Greek means “goat story.”
Aristotle was a big fan of these contests and probably participated in the judging.
No one is sure why he wrote Poetics. It may have been a textbook for his Lyceum, a precursor to the modern university. It may have been a guide for judges for the festival, or he may have just been pissed that his home boy Sophocles only came in second for his play Oedipus.
At any rate Poetics, over two thousand years after it was written, is one of the most referenced works on the idea of story structure. It is the reason many modern stories are broken up into three acts, though that is a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s theory. What follows is an outline of Aristotle’s ideas, based on his book Poetics, and how it related to Aristotle’s favorite play, the aforementioned Oedipus. There will be blood (and spoilers).
Aristotle believed tragedy should be an imitation of real life. It must contain a plot i.e., a cause-and -effect trajectory. He believed the purpose of story was to create emotional release in the experiencer, what he called catharsis. He said that the plot must have a beginning, middle and end. He did NOT call this three acts. This was a later interpretation by a Frenchman in the 19th century.
His ideal plot included a backstory where a problem was created for the protagonist, which Aristotle called “tying the knot.” An inciting Incident sets the story off on a cause-and-effect trajectory leading to a climax, then a resolution as the “knot” is unraveled.
Since this is a tragedy, there must be some kind of suffering going on at the beginning of the story. In Oedipus, there is a plague on the land and the story begins with the peasants begging the king to do something about it.
Aristotle says the hero must be a man of high moral character, and we learn this when Oedipus comes out of his castle and tells the peasants he is aware of the plague and is already on it. In fact, he has sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to the soothsayer to find out what to do. (Soothsayers were popular in Greek plays and did not interfere with the realism, because in ancient Greece, they were a thing.) His brother-in-law returns and says that the problem is that somebody killed king Laius, the previous king. When the murderer is found and brought to justice, the plague will be lifted.
This is the inciting incident that gets the plot underway. The knot has been tied in the form of the plague and the mystery. This leads to Oedipus’ first bad decision. Aristotle had a word for bad decisions: Hamartia It is an archery term meaning to miss the mark. This is one of the Aristotle’s plot conventions. Hamartia occurs when the character makes a decision that turns out to be the wrong decision resulting in bad consequences. This plot convention is still popular today and is the meat and potatoes of many horror stories.
Oedipus decides to get to the bottom of the murder to end the plague. There begins a series of revelations and reversals, which are also part of Aristotle’s theory. Oedipus summons the blind prophet, Tiresias to find out if he knows anything. Tiresias stuns Oedipus by telling him that he is the murderer(reversal). Oedipus says the man is crazy and sends him away, but before he leaves, the prophet hints at an incestuous marriage, future blindness, infamy and wandering (a little foreshadowing always helps keep the people in their seats).
Next Oedipus asks his wife Jocasta what he should do. She tells him to pay the soothsayer no mind. She points out that a prophet once told her that her son would kill his father. This couldn’t be true, because she left her baby to die in the woods, and Laius was killed by a bunch of robbers.
Oedipus becomes distressed because just before he came to Thebes, he killed a man who resembled Laius at a crossroads (more complications, and a revelation.) He commits another hamartia by deciding to send for the only witness to the murder, a shepherd. Oedipus reveals that while at his home in Corinth, an oracle once told him he would one day kill his father and marry his mother. This is why he left Corinth and came to Thebes. (more revelation). Once again, his wife tells him not to worry about it.
A messenger arrives with another revelation: His father, king of Corinth has died of old age. (reversal) Jocasta has a “see, I told you so” moment. This is obviously proof that the prophesy is false.
In a stunning reversal, the messenger, trying to cheer Oedipus up, says not to worry. The king and queen of Corinth were not his real parents. (A this point the orchestra, if there was one, would go “dum dum dum!”) He says he gave Oedipus to another couple when a shepherd found the baby Oedipus abandoned in the woods.
In another classic hamartia, Oedipus decides to track down the shepherd and get to the truth. Jocasta freaks and runs away into the palace overcome with fear and grief. (And Aristotle hopes the audience experiences fear and pity at this point.)
The shepherd arrives and must be threatened with death before revealing Oedipus is actually the son of —wait for it—Laius and Jocasta. The prophecy is true Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother (and he knot is unraveled).
Agonized, Oedipus runs into the castle to find is wife/mother has killed herself. He takes the pins from her gown and puts out his eyes. As the play ends, the once king awaits his banishment from the kingdom as the audience experience their catharsis, and one assumes the plague is lifted.
Aristotle also wrote a book on comedy that has been lost to history. Who knows how comedic stories would be different had it survived?
In our next installment we will look at probably the most misunderstood story trope, Feytag’s Pyramid.
Happy writing!
Working on a Building
A book writing project is similar to a large building project except that writing a book often takes many years longer than completing even the tallest building
“I’ve got to get the basement right before I build the house.”
A good foundation is important…
I once had the occasion to drive by a construction site once a month. The first month they started digging a hole. The second month the hole got bigger and deeper. The next month the hole got bigger and deeper still. Finally, just as I was beginning to think that instead of a building, maybe they were constructing a tunnel to China, a concrete column appeared. After that, the building zoomed skyward almost like a Chinese bottle rocket.
I often use this analogy with my students to point out the importance of a firm foundation to their stories. Writing a story is a little bit like a huge building project. Even some of the terms we use in story are also common to construction. We We talk of world building. structure, arc, and blue print. Even the term plot is common to both endeavors.
Writing, especially the novel, is similar to any other building project. There is the planning stage, (the blueprint), the writing stage, (the construction), the editing stage (the building inspector’s visit), the completion stage (the final draft) and the move in stage (moving the story into the world). One difference, however is that it often takes months or years longer to complete a novel than to build even the tallest building.
I’d like to focus on one part of the book writing process: structure. In my experience, until recently novel writing seminars and books gave only a passing glance at structure (John Gardener’s The Art of Fiction and Robert Roy’s The Weekend Novelist Being exceptions, though each of them devote a scant few paragraphs to the topic.
For screenwriters, the other variety of long form fiction, this is not the case, Screenwriting books are replete with diagrams, explanations, and discussions of story structure. Among the most popular are Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, John Yorke’s Into the Woods, and that doorstop of a book, Story, by Robert McKee. (For an insight into Robert Mckee’s book and and it’s popularity with screenwriters, watch the movie Adaptation.)
Why do screenwriters fret so much over structure (or as they often call it, story)? I think the reason is simple. A publishing company may spend a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars producing distributing the latest A-lister, and most first novelists are shocked to learn that the lion’s share of promoting their book falls on them.
…whether building a house or writing a book.
It’s not unusual for a production company to spend $100,000,000 or more getting an average movie onto the screen. A “blockbuster” may take many times that. (For an inside look at how a movie gets to the big screen, click Here) With all the money, time and personnel invested, the producers want to make damn sure the movie is a success. But even then, it’s more-or-less a crapshoot. The producer Samuel Goldwin of MGM once famously said, “If I had produced the scripts I rejected and rejected the scripts I produced, the result would probably have been about the same.”
In recent years, however, more attention has been given to structure by writing teachers and writing coaches. One recent example is Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel, wherein she adapts Blake Snyder’s work to narrative fiction.(If you’re curious about the name, keep reading.)Writers are also dusting off old tomes like Arisotle’s Poetics, Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Freytag’s The Technique of Drama, which is probably the most misunderstood of all story structure tropes. The work of K.M. Weiland and Ruthanne Reid et al is also of note.
In the next few installments I will be going over several of the most well-known story structure ideas with examples of how they relate actual works of fiction.
Why story structure? you can’t escape it. It has been around since The Epic of Gilgamesh. Understanding story structure will both help you become a better writer, and help when dissecting a classic work to learn how it is put together, which I highly recommend.
Is there one over-aching structure that all stories can fit into? I haven’t found one. Some work well for a single hero, others for a group. Some work with suspense or tragedy, others with comedy. I have seen attempts by writing teachers to shoehorn all stories into a single trope, but often they have to be modified or hybridized. But you will find that some structures are more versatile than others.
I’ll start our (hero’s?) journey with my next post, going back to the beginning, with Aristotle’s Poetics.
Happy Writing!
The term “Save the Cat” comes from Blake Snyder’s book, wherein he says that if you have a bad protagonist and want him to get the audience’s, sympathy, have them do something like save a cat at the beginning of the movie. This actually happened in the movie Alien, when Sigourney weaver’s character, Ripley, literally saves a cat. This was turned on its head in the beginning of the series, House of Cards, When Kevin Spacey’s Character, Frances Underwood, kills a dog. Sympathy, anyone?