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Why the hero's journey?

I've always thought the point of the Journey was more to show common threads in most classic stories. No story fits it exactly, and it doesn't really insist on an exact set and order anyway, just that stories using some of these elements can and have tapped into a lot of what people want in a tale.

Can a journeying hero refuse to refuse the call, or rescue the princess early, or be the princess? Of course, and most of those may only put the story a little more different from the most average types than others.

It's an average of tales and appeals, to use as much as you want, no more.

Edit: as for the guy who disputed Star Wars, you know what it means when a purist calls something inadequate: it means his lips are moving. :)
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Guy must not have understood The Hero's Journey. It's one of the movies most cited as an example of it, and if I remember correctly, Lucas actually consciously used it.
I believe Lucas actually studied the works of Joseph Campbell precisely so he got that Hero's Journey right in Star Wars.
 

Amanita

Maester
I think this is quite interesting. When I'm going through the basci setup of my story, it's actually following the hero's journey in most important aspects. Especially the part with the call, accepting it reluctantly, facing trials and having trouble returning to the world left behind but finally succeeding in doing just that. I have to admit that those elements do appeal to me but many of the finer points don't seem to work, some of them purey based on the fact that I have a female protagonist. The entire "woman as a temptress"-part won't really work and I find it horribly sexist on top of that.
I think some aspects will be almost automatically part of a certain story set-up which does feature a hero of more epic proportions but not necessarily for any possible fantasy story.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
You don't have to have a woman as a temptress for the monomyth. I don't think you really need to be pushing a moral either, for that matter.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
It seems like a guy looked at a bunch of popular stories and concluded that they have a similar structure. He basically said, "Wow, if you structure your story this way, it tends to speak to people."

That's fantastic information, and I'm glad he did that research.

If you choose not to use that information, that's your choice as an author. Maybe you'll create something new that wows everyone. Maybe you'll fall flat on your face and get criticized for not following the Hero's Journey. Truthfully, you risk falling flat on your face even if you do follow it.

As for me, I tend to like having information even if I subsequently choose not to use it.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
What I find most frustrating about the standard Hero's Journey is its presumption that all stories need to center on character change, or more specifically how they have to be about a character's psychological maturation. It's like we're only allowed to write stories with some obvious moral message (or Aesop as the TV Tropes people would call it). Now I can appreciate a story with a moral, don't get me wrong, but I resent having to force in a moral fable into everything I write.

On the whole, I find stories that feature character growth more engaging than stories that don't. That's my personal preference. You, apparently, don't feel the same way, and you don't have to.

I, again on the whole, dislike present tense. I have made decisions not to buy books based solely on the discovery that they were written in present tense. If someone told me that, in order to sell my book, I had to write it in present tense, I would refuse, reasoning that I probably wouldn't create a good product trying a method that I dislike.

I would also accept full responsibility for my decision. I'd research the market to the best of my ability to determine why present tense sold so well in contrast to past tense. I'd do whatever I could to make my book stand out despite the fact that it isn't written in present tense.

I'm not saying that you have to write Hero's Journey in order to sell. I think the important thing is to figure out who your audience is and what they want. How to that, however, I'm not exactly sure.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
It seems like a guy looked at a bunch of popular stories and concluded that they have a similar structure. He basically said, "Wow, if you structure your story this way, it tends to speak to people."

No, it came from work on comparative mythology, and identifying the themes and elements that seem to consistently popup in mythology, whether you're talking about Egyptians, Greeks, Indian, or New World cultures. Because the elements were so universal, people started applying them to fiction with the idea that these sorts of stories would resonate the most with people.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
So, a myth isn't a story?

It's a story, but it's a certain type of story. Not all stories are myths. What Campbell and others did was to see that among widely varying cultures, even those that didn't have contact with one another, you saw this same general arc among many of their myths, particularly their most important ones. It's pretty interesting stuff. But the idea that all fiction writers should adopt it for all stories just doesn't make sense.

Some people claim that every story is a monomyth, but I don't think that's true, and I don't think Campbell would have claimed it either. He was talking about myth in particular, and while all myths are stories not all stories are myths.
 
On the whole, I find stories that feature character growth more engaging than stories that don't.

Just to be clear I fully intend to include character growth in my books, I just don't know how I'm going to manage it if I have to have my main character passed some emotional milestone in every single one, and my current impression is that I have to do that if I want to make the story of any quality.

I'm not one of those people who favours action and spectacle over storytelling, in fact I recently saw Pacific Rim and disliked how shallow, two-dimensional and generic the lead characters were.

The only way out of this situation I can see is two, in the first book, load my character with dozens of emotional problems, bad childhood, commitment issues, fear of heights, spiders etc... and in each book, put him through a journey that specifically targets and fixes one of these issues. Frankly I do not want to do it like that.

As for character growth, here's what I have so far...
My book is going to be the first in a series of adventure novels with a steampunk/fantasy setting. My lead character, Balthazar, a sort of Victorian Indiana Jones, grew up loving adventure stories about treasure hunters. In the first book he gets an opportunity to leave his childhood dream which he immediately seizes upon, he forms a team of adventurers and goes out in search of some lost ancient secret. But soon after ventures into a world of gunplay and booby traps, he realises how dangerous it is. He hits a low point where feels naive and stupid for chasing after a childhood dream and also a little hard because his dream has turned on him, this may or may not be the ordeal I don't know the journey well enough to tell.
Also, during his adventure meets a woman from a fantasy kingdom who has had a lot of combat experience. She tells him that he was not a fool for following this dream and he can have his dream but only if he accepts the fact that danger comes with adventuring and is willing to learn how to deal with it.

Also, this woman later becomes Balthazar's love interest. It starts out with a mutual fascination with each other's worlds, later he admires her strength and courage and begins to even feel attracted to her. But at the same time is extremely shy in confessing his feelings because he has never been infatuated with anyone before now. I'm saving this for maybe the second or third book because I hate the way the applicable where romance is often rushed in movies and as a result seems cheesy and nonsensical. (Pacific Rim again)
 
Have you previously read and liked a lengthy series of books with a single protagonist? If so, how did the protagonist develop over the course of those books? (I think you're missing something here, but I'm having a hard time finding a relevant example, since I rarely read lengthy series.)

Edit: Actually, I might as well bring this up. I see two alternate tacks:

1): You want the protagonist to be tested. Does this mean he needs to be changed, or is it enough for him to consider and reject change?

2): If you want the protagonist to change, is it necessary that the change be for the better?
 
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1): You want the protagonist to be tested. Does this mean he needs to be changed, or is it enough for him to consider and reject change?

2): If you want the protagonist to change, is it necessary that the change be for the better?

I don't like the sound of either of those.
 

Jamber

Sage
Joseph Campbell talked of the rise of the hero's journey mythology being tied to the notion of an individual warrior effecting change. This mythological strain replaced an earlier Vedic culture that saw human beings as tools of the gods. Another mythological strain (Greek) was 'the girl's tragedy', hardly seen in modern western culture.

As a woman I've never felt the hero's journey speaks to everyone everywhere. It's a template that dovetails most seamlessly with male adolescent rites of passage. (Hello, Hollywood.) It's the perfect democratic consumer myth: one person (every person) can be a hero and effect change. There are lots of reasons to like it (who wants to live in a world where individuals have no power?) but it's quite possible to think of other templates, and indeed no reason to feel you have to use any template. You could always try to be interesting instead.

Sorry, that's more theory than what you're talking about right now -- still, some loose thinking about what the myths mean can't hurt.

cheers
Jennie
 

Rullenzar

Troubadour
Every story has a protaganist/Antagonist in some shape or form that have conflict. Therefor, it can be argued that your protaganist always goes through some type of heroes journey even if it's loosely applied. It's just a universal way of telling a story. Comedy, fantasy, romantic, sci-fi, documentary, biography, mystery, doesn't matter. The difference that sets apart unique and great stories is in the details and how it's portrayed.
 
As a writer who prides himself on being original, I did write a story which lampoons the hero's journey (frequently references - and bags - TLOTR). It hasn't sold very well. Indeed, the only book of mine that has sold at all well is a classic hero's journey.

The irony is bitter.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
One thing that Joseph Campbell seemed to lament about western culture was that our traditions tended toward more literal interpretations of things, and he was against literal interpretations (or at least that's my reading of him). I think some of the commentary on the Hero's Journey is a overly literal. I also people are conflating what they may have read on a writing web site about The Hero's Journey, or what looks to be some Hollywood take on it, with the underlying thing itself. I think that comes, in part, from attempts to force fiction into the Hero's Journey, or at least attempts to set the Hero's Journey up as some sort of standard for 'good' or 'effective' fiction. If you're going to do that, it is easier if you take a fairly literal approach to it. But I think it is a mistake, and again, at its core, the Hero's Journey is simply an attempt to find commonalities in stories of human myth, which where important parts of knowing about the world and even about socialization in oral cultures. The idea that there are universal strands that ties myth together is interesting, and if you go in for Jungian psychology then I suppose you have some interesting discussions about that as well. But to make of it more than it is, and to try to turn it into some kind of tool for all fiction is a mistake. And the latter probably accounts for some of the hipsterism you see on writing sites any time the topic comes up.
 

SineNomine

Minstrel
As a writer who prides himself on being original, I did write a story which lampoons the hero's journey (frequently references - and bags - TLOTR). It hasn't sold very well. Indeed, the only book of mine that has sold at all well is a classic hero's journey.

The irony is bitter.

I think Sanderson got it right with his observation of stories like that: They are hard to make work because they people that love the hero's journey will find it disappointing because it is subverted and those that don't like it will find it disappointing because...well, it LOOKS like a hero's journey. The audience ends up kinda small.
 
I'm feeling a little confused now, I've been told that every story uses the hero's journey and now you're telling me that not every story is a hero's journey.

When I was first told about it by my writing teacher I was actually upset and angry. Angry because I felt like he was telling me how to write my story is and upset because humanity seemed trapped by it, doomed to repeat the same old story over and over.
My teacher assured me that it was a flexible paradigm, with some elements repeated, rearranged or removed altogether.
Now I'm feeling confused because he told me that it is a universal structure of every story and you're telling me it's not, so now I don't know what it is.

Can you tell me exactly what the hero's journey is? Is it a template used for all stories or just certain kinds of stories? Are there other templates that you could name?

Also I'm feeling all, on one hand I want to be original and break away from the traditional hero's journey, on the other I am terrified that if I do it won't sell.
 
I think Sanderson got it right with his observation of stories like that: They are hard to make work because they people that love the hero's journey will find it disappointing because it is subverted and those that don't like it will find it disappointing because...well, it LOOKS like a hero's journey. The audience ends up kinda small.

Indeed, one of the slightly disappointed online reviews said exactly that. She was expecting a particular type of story and she didn't get it. Mind you, as it turned out, it was a pretty good antihero's journey. It has had a few good reviews but it is a challenge.
 
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