Hero's journey: It ain't for everyone

I think one would be hard pressed to list five recent profitable blockbuster films not based on the hero's journey. I doubt there are many successful stories that are not based on the hero's journey, because the HJ mimics our own lives. We expect, and thus prefer, HJ stories. I know I do. It's a Jungian thing.

texvanwinkle said:
Here's someone else making the same point I cautioned about here. The takeaway: Don't try to make your story something it's not, no matter how popular the "not" might be. Not every story is a hero's journey, and the hero's journey is a very specific kind of story.
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The point is that a story should be organic and follow its own logic rather than it being hammered into a mold that makes it awkward. There's been a recent Hollywood shift in dramatic films away from the archetypical and towards multi-plotted, parallel and interweaving story forms. The Hero's Journey will always have its place, but it definetely ain't for everyone or every story.

My personal opinion is that I find the story beats of the Hero's Journey predictable and boring/annoying if its not heavily tweaked in some way. It's even tough for me to write in that mode because I can't help but cringe my way through it.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
I think one would be hard pressed to list five recent profitable blockbuster films not based on the hero's journey. I doubt there are many successful stories that are not based on the hero's journey, because the HJ mimics our own lives. We expect, and thus prefer, HJ stories. I know I do. It's a Jungian thing.
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Well, you and I have been over this ground before, in the very post of mine to which I linked. In sum, I think you'd be hard-pressed to list five recent profitable blockbuster films that are actually based on the hero's journey. Once more for the road, the hero's journey is a very specific, rather unorthodox story. It's the rare few whose lives actually follow the hero's journey, properly understood. The rare few like Jesus, the Buddha, or Prometheus, for example. If you're not writing about someone like that, with a life roughly like that, it's probably not a hero's journey.

But I'll leave the specifics of the journey--what actually makes a character arc a hero's journey--to my linked post.
 
texvanwinkle said:
Well, you and I have been over this ground before, in the very post of mine to which I linked. In sum, I think you'd be hard-pressed to list five recent profitable blockbuster films that are actually based on the hero's journey....
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I could list a hundred, certainly five. I challenge anybody to list five that are NOT hero's journeys. So here are my five that ARE hero's journeys-- for no particular reason than that I recall these films as films I liked:
Eagle Eye
A Knight's Tale
V for Vendetta
Liar Liar
The Sixth Sense
​
Now where are the five blockbuster films that are NOT hero's journeys? Anybody care to post the list?
 
For me the point is that the story should entice a studio (reader), get made into a film. And that means playing their game, which I suspect involves writing scripts using the HJ because it is the cookie cutter formula that when combined with a high concept sells tickets (and one might ask why that is, viz why do movie lovers tend to buy into such movies-- they certainly have other options on the Indie shelf at the rental store or Netflix) and makes the studio a profit back on their 100 million dollar investment. The studios rarely risk investing in scripts that are NOT hero's journeys-- and I know this just by looking at what ends up at the box office. One can write and indie produce films that are NOT HJs, but then most of those crap out financially. So I put the challenge again to anybody-- list five blockbuster films that were profitable and that do NOT use the HJ.

vcassel said:
The point is that a story should be organic and follow its own logic rather than it being hammered into a mold that makes it awkward. There's been a recent Hollywood shift in dramatic films away from the archetypical and towards multi-plotted, parallel and interweaving story forms. The Hero's Journey will always have its place, but it definetely ain't for everyone or every story.

My personal opinion is that I find the story beats of the Hero's Journey predictable and boring/annoying if its not heavily tweaked in some way. It's even tough for me to write in that mode because I can't help but cringe my way through it.
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The author of that article seems to jab away at the monomyth structure as it relates to short fiction, which I would entirely agree with. I do agree with something I think the author said about being careful not to adhere too rigidly to the structures-- they are tools, but their basic elements I fear are necessary to write a marketable screenplay.

Fahad said:
here's an interesting read:
http://www.authorslawyer.com/savage/storystructure.shtml
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texvanwinkle said:
Once more for the road, the hero's journey is a very specific, rather unorthodox story.
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If you really believe that, you have an extremely limited understanding of the Hero's Journey.

Yes, very few stories have magic swords, or have the hero experience an actual resurrection, or have the hero return home with a magical elixir.

But the themes behind those plot-points are universal.

The Hero's Journey is designed to echo the basic emotional growth that all normal humans go through over the course of their lives. It is universal.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
For me the point is that the story should entice a studio (reader), get made into a film. And that means playing their game, which I suspect involves writing scripts using the HJ because it is the cookie cutter formula that when combined with a high concept sells tickets (and one might ask why that is, viz why do movie lovers tend to buy into such movies-- they certainly have other options on the Indie shelf at the rental store or Netflix) and makes the studio a profit back on their 100 million dollar investment. The studios rarely risk investing in scripts that are NOT hero's journeys-- and I know this just by looking at what ends up at the box office. One can write and indie produce films that are NOT HJs, but then most of those crap out financially. So I put the challenge again to anybody-- list five blockbuster films that were profitable and that do NOT use the HJ.
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I'd leave abstract generalizations such as 'movie lovers' out of the discussion.

If the point of writing a movie to you is just to entice a studio reader, well, good luck with that. It certainly doesn't sound like an enjoyable experience, nor does it seem like it would be enticing or truthful to the self.

"Story structure exists to carry the message, not inform it."
 
although i'm not sure that every blockbuster follows HJ or not, following only that particular structure greatly limits creativity. but if you want to sell to hollywood, maybe that's the way to go.
 
Fahad said:
although i'm not sure that every blockbuster follows HJ or not, following only that particular structure greatly limits creativity. but if you want to sell to hollywood, maybe that's the way to go.
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Hollywood funds non archetypical films all the time. Are they always blockbusters? No. But that's not and shouldn't always be the point of making a film, even for the major studios.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
I think one would be hard pressed to list five recent profitable blockbuster films not based on the hero's journey. I doubt there are many successful stories that are not based on the hero's journey, because the HJ mimics our own lives. We expect, and thus prefer, HJ stories. I know I do. It's a Jungian thing.
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This is sort of circular... since the 'Hero's Journey' has become a staple of structure... it would more likely to be seen.

The article points to two things... 1) is the 'effect' that every movie is now 'interpreted' as a 'hero's journey', 2) because of the use of this particular structure... it is becoming 'cliche'ed' and the resulting movies, becoming increasingly 'formulaic'.

But here is the 'thing'... Campbell wrote his 'theory', 'monotheory', in an attempt to reduce what appears to a whirl of complexity in 'stories', to a few basic principles...

In Math there is a similar thing... 2 body gravitational interactions... nice, clean, formulaic reductions... add a 3rd body... unclean, unnice, only iteratively 'formulaic'...

The point of the article, in some sense, is, "isn't time to use some other 'structuring' model' in writing.

Alternatively, because of the human mind's propensity to 'impose' structure on chaos... the fact that the Hero's Journey can be 'seen' everywhere, in no way means that it is in fact 'the structure' that was used to create the story.

The same thing happened with Syd Field 'enunciated' his 'law' about 3 act transitions. Every one could get out their stopwatch and 'time' when the turn would occur... until they started putting out 2 hour movies... instead of 90 minute movies...

Then there's Bollywood 5 hour extravaganzas...

There are any number of 'models', Jungian, Freudian, Eniagram, whatever, that can be used to 'plot' certain elements of human behavior, or 'stories'.

But that does not mean those are the only ones, or even, the ones that one should be 'studying' now for future stories...

Personally I'm pretty much fed up with the "hero's journey", as I am with "Jung"...

Well, "jung" and "campbell" as 'interpreted'... I think reading primary writings of these people are a better investment, than reading the 'what does it all mean' by later writers who use Jung, Freud, et al... heck I'll toss in Campbell, Bettelheim and Gimbutas... just for the hell of it...
 
I think we can take almost any film and prove that it fits every structure ever invented. We all have our own perception of reality. We see what we want to see based on our beliefs. If you believe in Truby then everything fits with Truby. If you believe in Hero's Journey then everything is Hero's Journey. If you believe in all of them then evey film fits into all of them. I think it is a great education to study all of the gurus to help us shape our films. I would never tell anyone to use these as hard-core-must-use rules. I know I have posted this article from my website mutiple times and I'm posting it again. It gives us 6 of the top screenwriting gurus and their own structure. Use it to help generate ideas when you get stuck. Writer's block doesn't stand a chance if you use these when you get stuck. They are great idea generators. Print them out...cut and paste it into Word...blow it up and tape it to the ceiling above your bed...whatever. Keep it handy in times of need. Enjoy.

http://filmschoolnow.com/gurus.html

...and I'm not promoting any of the people in this article.
 
I think any hard rules on structure are dangerous to the natural and organic feel to an inspired story. Though interesting and filled with some good points, Save the Cat! is the most dangerous of these new heavy-handed structure books written for people looking for quick fixes. Certain story beats have to land on certain pages? Really??? :shocked: Warping a story and its characters to a strict predescribed structure seems like a terrible idea to me. And yet that's what everyone seems to focus on these days, structure. What about writing from character? Or mastering the form and balancing the two?
 
agcohn said:
If you really believe that, you have an extremely limited understanding of the Hero's Journey.

Yes, very few stories have magic swords, or have the hero experience an actual resurrection, or have the hero return home with a magical elixir.

But the themes behind those plot-points are universal.

The Hero's Journey is designed to echo the basic emotional growth that all normal humans go through over the course of their lives. It is universal.
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My understanding is based on my reading of The Hero with a Thousand Faces and a few other of Campbell's books, and based on that understanding, no, actually, it's not. It's a journey that all humans *can* take, but it's not a journey that all humans *do* make. That's why it's called the hero's journey, not the everyman's journey. What you're describing is such an oversimplification of what Campbell describes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces that it loses practically all meaning as a unique concept.

And it is a unique concept in that it describes a unique mythological construct with highly specified, necessary parts that give it its explanatory and mythological/psychological power. Do the details of those parts, of those steps in the journey, change from story to story? Of course they do. But the steps themselves are necessary for the overall meaning of the construct. Thus if you have a story that doesn't involve the greater measure of those steps, especially those that are essential to its meaning, a hero's journey you ain't got. Sure, one can dilute it down to fit more stories than to which it actually applies, but that doesn't mean it's still a hero's journey in any meaningful sense of the phrase or concept. You may have a rousing adventure story, but you won't have Campbell's hero's journey. (And yes, while I've only lightly scanned his book, I think Vogler has oversimplified what Campbell describes in Hero with a Thousand Faces and elsewhere.)

It's really very simple: The hero's journey, according to Campbell--he and the theory itself have a number of critics--is a ubiquitous but highly specific mythological story template that's been around for millennia. If your story happens to match that template, boo-yah, you've got a hero's journey. If it doesn't, you've got something else, and trying to fit that square peg to that round hole isn't going to help your story.
 
Kess said:
I think we can take almost any film and prove that it fits every structure ever invented. We all have our own perception of reality. We see what we want to see based on our beliefs. If you believe in Truby then everything fits with Truby. If you believe in Hero's Journey then everything is Hero's Journey. If you believe in all of them then evey film fits into all of them. I think it is a great education to study all of the gurus to help us shape our films. I would never tell anyone to use these as hard-core-must-use rules. I know I have posted this article from my website mutiple times and I'm posting it again. It gives us 6 of the top screenwriting gurus and their own structure. Use it to help generate ideas when you get stuck. Writer's block doesn't stand a chance if you use these when you get stuck. They are great idea generators. Print them out...cut and paste it into Word...blow it up and tape it to the ceiling above your bed...whatever. Keep it handy in times of need. Enjoy.

http://filmschoolnow.com/gurus.html

...and I'm not promoting any of the people in this article.
Click to expand...

Hear hear. They're all tools, to be used as such. Frankly I'm not sure how much any of them actually add to Aristotle. The basic shape of story form and its demands has been known for a very long time, and can be discerned from reading great stories, especially, in our case, great screenplays.

I think what would help writers far more isn't any particular story template, but a better understanding of structure. And I don't mean "This by page 30, that by page 60" structure. I mean being cognizant of the overall proportions of sections of the story to each other and the whole, as well as keeping in mind just the basic steps of traditional story.

That's why I like the approach of someone like Brian McDonald in his book Invisible Ink. It prompts you to consider your story in terms of the natural steps of any traditional, complete story, with each step logically prompting the next, ignoring what the act lengths or final page count might be. (I'd argue that's a step for pre-writing or rewriting rather than writing.)

The gurus seem to want to create a taxonomy of story templates to which writers should adhere. As a helpful guide for those who, like you mention, are stuck, sure. Whatever works—up to a point. I do think the too-many-chefs analogy begins to apply here. It's become far more complicated than it has to be. I think the multiplicity of templates can be confusing for new writers who really just need to pay attention to the basic structure of any successful story. And for that you can go to Aristotle, Brian, or any great script.
 
As Robert McKee points out in Story, if you want to write for the sake of art, go ahead, just do not expect to have very many people see your film if your script ever gets made into a film, because artsy truthful-to-self films are not what the studios are looking for. If you want your story (script) to get seen, well, then you have to play the game. That does not mean one's story lacks creativity, in fact many have argued that by structuring a story well it frees up creativity in writing scenes.

So yeah, go write a story without HJ structure, make it organic and non-traditional. But will it sell, will it get seen by millions, will it bring you a bucket of money so you can afford to keep writing more stories to emotionally move people and present important themes along with the entertainment? You have to define your goals. If writing an artsy non-traditional script to then make into an indie with no goal other than to lose money or maybe (and this is a big maybe based on statistics) break even (most indies lose money), then you can break the 'rules'.

Anyhow, I am tired of debating this issue, no point in my convincing those that have a different agenda and goals (I will stick with talking HJ structuring with those also so inclined, and I wish you others the best of luck, really, if you can write something non-traditional and get it seen by millions). I gotta go write my screenplay, today is the day I type FADE IN after months and months of careful structuring using the HJ, Save the Cat 15 beats, eight sequences, a narrative treatment. Now I get to type FADE IN.

vcassel said:
...If the point of writing a movie to you is just to entice a studio reader, well, good luck with that. It certainly doesn't sound like an enjoyable experience, nor does it seem like it would be enticing or truthful to the self.
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Randall_Oelerich said:
As Robert McKee points out in Story, if you want to write for the sake of art, go ahead, just do not expect to have very many people see your film if your script ever gets made into a film, because artsy truthful-to-self films are not what the studios are looking for. If you want your story (script) to get seen, well, then you have to play the game. That does not mean one's story lacks creativity, in fact many have argued that by structuring a story well it frees up creativity in writing scenes.

So yeah, go write a story without HJ structure, make it organic and non-traditional. But will it sell, will it get seen by millions, will it bring you a bucket of money so you can afford to keep writing more stories to emotionally move people and present important themes along with the entertainment? You have to define your goals. If writing an artsy non-traditional script to then make into an indie with no goal other than to lose money or maybe (and this is a big maybe based on statistics) break even (most indies lose money), then you can break the 'rules'.

Anyhow, I am tired of debating this issue, no point in my convincing those that have a different agenda and goals (I will stick with talking HJ structuring with those also so inclined, and I wish you others the best of luck, really, if you can write something non-traditional and get it seen by millions). I gotta go write my screenplay, today is the day I type FADE IN after months and months of careful structuring using the HJ, Save the Cat 15 beats, eight sequences, a narrative treatment. Now I get to type FADE IN.
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Good luck!
 
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