that's funny, man. i thought it was only the book, didn't realize it was a software also till you mentioned it.
Hero's journey: It ain't for everyone
- Thread starter texvanwinkle
- Start date
that's funny, man. i thought it was only the book, didn't realize it was a software also till you mentioned it.
texvanwinkle
Well-known member
Thanks for the reminder. I actually visited his site last year at some point but forgot to bookmark it, and thus promptly forgot it. Another for the writing tab.
wcmartell
Well-known member
All of these things are tools to write a screenplay. Some tools you'll use on almost every script, some tools have special uses and you may only pull them of the tool box once. But if you don't write some screenplays, you own a bunch of tools that aren't being used for anything. Might as well have a garage sale.
Like any tool, put it in the hands of a master and you get great work... but it in the hands of a monkey and you get broken tools (unless it's that monkey in those Clint Eastwood movies). How many people do you know who have top of the line digi cameras and make crappy films? Great cameras don't make great films... people do.
- Bill (my new TV show is THE LOVE GOAT)
Like any tool, put it in the hands of a master and you get great work... but it in the hands of a monkey and you get broken tools (unless it's that monkey in those Clint Eastwood movies). How many people do you know who have top of the line digi cameras and make crappy films? Great cameras don't make great films... people do.
- Bill (my new TV show is THE LOVE GOAT)
Randall_Oelerich
Veteran
Regarding writing organically, less structuring -- I just got back from a hike and listening to The Dialogue Series interview with screenwriter Ed Solomon (Men in Black); Solomon talks at length (starting at around 50 minutes into the interview) about this, favoring a more organic approach.
texvanwinkle
Well-known member
I think we have to define some terms here. I take "writing organically" to mean writing initially without a roadmap, seeing first where the characters take you, rather than outlining first. But I don't take that to mean that in the end, such a script, if executed well, isn't as carefully structured as one that was outlined from the start. In one, you work forward from the structure; in the other, you work backward to determine the best structure from what you have. That's the way I take it, at least.
"Regarding writing organically, less structuring" Yes no reason you can't bang out a script in a few days or weeks using a looser approach and figure out if that works for you. It may not work but it may be a better use of your time than listening to an endless parade of writing gurus.
Blaine
Mr. Hollywood
I agree. At some point it's time to write and quit using books and tapes as a delaying tactic. Everyone has a method and they may or may not work for the individual writer. The only way to find out what works for you is to write and see what works and what doesn't.
Ravenskull
New member
I'm chiming in on the discussion of the hero's journey structure as one author responsible for publicizing the thing, in my book THE WRITER'S JOURNEY. Yes, I am the Chris Vogler who wrote that book. It was my attempt to open a discussion (exactly like this one) about Joseph Campbell's concept of the hero's journey in mythology, and how it could be adapted for movie story-telling. I'm glad some people find it useful in their writing and unbothered if some people don't. There are plenty of ways to think about writing and you can get on very well without ever considering the hero's journey idea for a second. In fact, in my own writing and consulting I use many other templates and languages, like the lingo, philosophy and structure of vaudeville, the military, engineering, animal behavior, fairy tales, pop songs, architecture, dance and psychology, without ever mentioning the hero's journey model.
It's an interesting game to ask is this or that movie a hero's journey, and look, I've been playing it since I first opened my mouth to talk about it. From day one people came up to me and said "But what about Movie X or Y?" that seemed to defy the model, challenging me to find a hero's journey in it. Not hard -- IF you are not taking "the hero's journey" literally as all twelve elements of my highly arbitrary outline in precisely the order I give them in the book. I never claimed that every movie has, or should have, every element of my outline in exactly that order, in fact I STRONGLY WARN AGAINST IT. Such a movie would be predictable and boring, since the audience knows the outline very well. It's the variations on the theme that they come to see, the surprising departures from the familiar model that make them think about it and experience it all over again.
I looked over the list of films that was put forward as a challenge to the ubiquity of the hero's journey. Seems like a tedious exercise to compare them point by point to a rigid, literal version of the outline, and where do you draw your line about when a story qualifies as an Official Hero's Journey Movie or is disqualified? How many departures from the precise outline are allowed before the buzzer sounds? If you say three strikes and you're out, then I would expect most or all of them would strike out, because an umpire could say "Aha! I don't see a Refusal of the Call there, a Mentor shows up in Act Three instead of Act One, and where's the big Ordeal in the middle of Act Two?" But that doesn't get us very far, because the hero's journey is so subjective. I could make the case that all we have shown is how flexible the hero's journey can be -- you can purposely omit or rearrange its steps and yet someone in the hero's journey frame of mind will still perceive it as a story with all the energy and feeling of a hero's journey. And someone who isn't in that frame of mind will not see a hero's journey there no matter how long they gaze at it. You're either on the bus or not.
Who cares anyway? The point (about writing) is utility. If it's useful, use it. If it's not useful, if it gets in your way, makes you feel handcuffed, confuses you, or just seems bogus to you, don't. There are plenty of other approaches. The rule of "What happens next?" is perfectly adequate for all screenwriting situations, as are the variations on "Get the hero up a tree, shake the tree, get him down again" cited by various contributors.
The hero's journey idea is a metaphor, and not, I hope, a cookbook recipe, a mathematical equation or a chemical formula. It's not the answer to every screenwriting problem. It's just another tool - a very versatile and useful one, I think -- in the story-teller's tool box.
It's an interesting game to ask is this or that movie a hero's journey, and look, I've been playing it since I first opened my mouth to talk about it. From day one people came up to me and said "But what about Movie X or Y?" that seemed to defy the model, challenging me to find a hero's journey in it. Not hard -- IF you are not taking "the hero's journey" literally as all twelve elements of my highly arbitrary outline in precisely the order I give them in the book. I never claimed that every movie has, or should have, every element of my outline in exactly that order, in fact I STRONGLY WARN AGAINST IT. Such a movie would be predictable and boring, since the audience knows the outline very well. It's the variations on the theme that they come to see, the surprising departures from the familiar model that make them think about it and experience it all over again.
I looked over the list of films that was put forward as a challenge to the ubiquity of the hero's journey. Seems like a tedious exercise to compare them point by point to a rigid, literal version of the outline, and where do you draw your line about when a story qualifies as an Official Hero's Journey Movie or is disqualified? How many departures from the precise outline are allowed before the buzzer sounds? If you say three strikes and you're out, then I would expect most or all of them would strike out, because an umpire could say "Aha! I don't see a Refusal of the Call there, a Mentor shows up in Act Three instead of Act One, and where's the big Ordeal in the middle of Act Two?" But that doesn't get us very far, because the hero's journey is so subjective. I could make the case that all we have shown is how flexible the hero's journey can be -- you can purposely omit or rearrange its steps and yet someone in the hero's journey frame of mind will still perceive it as a story with all the energy and feeling of a hero's journey. And someone who isn't in that frame of mind will not see a hero's journey there no matter how long they gaze at it. You're either on the bus or not.
Who cares anyway? The point (about writing) is utility. If it's useful, use it. If it's not useful, if it gets in your way, makes you feel handcuffed, confuses you, or just seems bogus to you, don't. There are plenty of other approaches. The rule of "What happens next?" is perfectly adequate for all screenwriting situations, as are the variations on "Get the hero up a tree, shake the tree, get him down again" cited by various contributors.
The hero's journey idea is a metaphor, and not, I hope, a cookbook recipe, a mathematical equation or a chemical formula. It's not the answer to every screenwriting problem. It's just another tool - a very versatile and useful one, I think -- in the story-teller's tool box.
Ravenskull
New member
By the way, I talk about The Lion King in the 3rd edition of THE WRITER'S JOURNEY, and point out there some of the ways in which it departs from my comfort zone about the hero's journey, which only goes to prove that you can enjoy IMMENSE financial success and please a lot of people without following the hero's journey as a rigid template. That said, I'd still have no hesitation in calling The Lion King a hero's journey movie. I grant myself a very free interpretation of the model, and don't find it stops being a hero's journey because one, two, three or all twelve elements are not present or appear in some "unorthodox" arrangement.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
The book, The Virgin's Promise: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual and Sexual Awakening , does give an alternate 'story plan/template'. The author, Kim Hudson, give the "Hero's Journey" as a sort of counterpoint to the development of her idea of the Virgin's Template.
Randall_Oelerich
Veteran
I just finished that book, it even has a nice chapter on the Hero's Journey, summarizing the HJ twelve steps. Her discussion of the Virgin's Journey (VJ) is closely paralleled to the HJ, minor but significant tweaks. I also like how the author discusses how stories can be a mix of VJ and HJ, or seamlessly move between VJ and HJ as the story progresses.
texvanwinkle
Well-known member
Chris,
How great to have you as part of the conversation. Thanks for chiming in.
Since you haven't been here from the start, which was actually a few months ago in a different thread, I should point out that I'm actually a big fan of a well-told hero's journey. I'm a big fan of mythology in general, and Campbell in particular. It was through that interest I found Hero with a Thousand Faces back in 1991. It coincided with my first serious focus on writing as an avocation, and before anybody was really talking about it within the screenwriting world. (Back when the screenwriting world consisted of one Field book and a couple by Seger.) I remember the power it exerted on my imagination as I considered the kinds of stories it had generated over time, and what that could mean for my own stories. There's no doubt it's a potent template for connecting with and affecting an audience, and I actually have thought yours, while still too diluted from Campbell's for my taste, is a quite good summation of the essential journey.
That's why I'm surprised to find you advocating such a flexible notion of the hero's journey proper, at least as drawn from Campbell. Of course it demands hard questions, but I think there has to be a limit to what one can properly call a hero's journey, if the term is to have any meaningful connection to the mythological construct from which it's derived. You essentially ask the question yourself: How far do you have to unbend a paper clip before it's a paper clip in name only? Indeed, how far can you unbend the hero's journey structure that Campbell finds in mythology before you have a hero's journey in name only? What does it mean to take a hero's journey, and what makes it so?
What Campbell describes in Hero with a Thousand Faces is a unique journey that an individual can take, with specific components, the presence and general order of which lead to—crucially important—unique destination. It's not a simple self-realization or self-fulfillment story. It is not, more to the point, a mere frame of mind. It's a specific kind of story found in mythology—a journey of transformation and purification, first for the individual taking it and finally for his society—that is comprised of specific elements and generally found in a familiar order. Its structure is one which has arisen unconsciously out of the human experience, and thus has resonated literally for millennia on an unconscious level with those who have read and heard stories which use it. Thus it has become a mythological motif *because* of those particular features, told in that particular way.
Now it's certainly true that not all the components which comprise it are as definitive as the rest. But in the end, if you take enough of them out, or even a few of the most definitive aspects, or rearrange them enough, you will get away from the mythological structure that (1) came to be called "the hero's journey" by the man who identified it and (2) gives those stories their special mythological import. In which case, I have to ask: What's the point of calling it the same thing, much less trying to use it for the same purpose?
Presumably a writer chooses the hero's journey template because he wants to tell a story like that, one that uses those same universal notes in that order to strike that same universal chord in his audience. You're absolutely right: It's not the answer to every screenwriting problem. It is just another tool. But it is a specific tool, with a specific purpose. A writer can choose to use it for that purpose or not, but playing slightly to very different notes, in a slightly to very different order, will not resonate with an audience in nearly the same fashion. Change it enough, in fact, and you have a different chord altogether. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that different chord—it can resonate perhaps just as much with an audience in its own way—but we don't confuse a C major with a D major.
Which is why comparing the list of the top thirty films in terms of ticket sales to either Campbell's or even your less strict HJ template was hardly a tedious exercise. That was in fact the point of using your list as the baseline, because your structure isn't as specific as Campbell's, and even by your standard, if we call it a C, most of the films on that list are a D major. We're not talking mere elemental differences; we're talking about an enormous gap between the journey and point of the mythical hero's journey and the film story being considered. Again, mere elements don't an HJ make. In fact, frankly, if someone's definition of the HJ can be so flexible as to fit more than half a dozen of those most popular films, I find it of no meaning or value, because it serves none. If it can describe almost everything, it can have no real definition.
Who cares, you ask? Perhaps no one. Probably only those people who are interested in writing a story which mirrors, and thus draws on the power of, the unique hero's journey Campbell identified in Hero with a Thousand Faces. For those people, the degree to which their structure and narrative matches that which has powered some of the profoundest stories in history, matters very much.
How great to have you as part of the conversation. Thanks for chiming in.
Since you haven't been here from the start, which was actually a few months ago in a different thread, I should point out that I'm actually a big fan of a well-told hero's journey. I'm a big fan of mythology in general, and Campbell in particular. It was through that interest I found Hero with a Thousand Faces back in 1991. It coincided with my first serious focus on writing as an avocation, and before anybody was really talking about it within the screenwriting world. (Back when the screenwriting world consisted of one Field book and a couple by Seger.) I remember the power it exerted on my imagination as I considered the kinds of stories it had generated over time, and what that could mean for my own stories. There's no doubt it's a potent template for connecting with and affecting an audience, and I actually have thought yours, while still too diluted from Campbell's for my taste, is a quite good summation of the essential journey.
That's why I'm surprised to find you advocating such a flexible notion of the hero's journey proper, at least as drawn from Campbell. Of course it demands hard questions, but I think there has to be a limit to what one can properly call a hero's journey, if the term is to have any meaningful connection to the mythological construct from which it's derived. You essentially ask the question yourself: How far do you have to unbend a paper clip before it's a paper clip in name only? Indeed, how far can you unbend the hero's journey structure that Campbell finds in mythology before you have a hero's journey in name only? What does it mean to take a hero's journey, and what makes it so?
What Campbell describes in Hero with a Thousand Faces is a unique journey that an individual can take, with specific components, the presence and general order of which lead to—crucially important—unique destination. It's not a simple self-realization or self-fulfillment story. It is not, more to the point, a mere frame of mind. It's a specific kind of story found in mythology—a journey of transformation and purification, first for the individual taking it and finally for his society—that is comprised of specific elements and generally found in a familiar order. Its structure is one which has arisen unconsciously out of the human experience, and thus has resonated literally for millennia on an unconscious level with those who have read and heard stories which use it. Thus it has become a mythological motif *because* of those particular features, told in that particular way.
Now it's certainly true that not all the components which comprise it are as definitive as the rest. But in the end, if you take enough of them out, or even a few of the most definitive aspects, or rearrange them enough, you will get away from the mythological structure that (1) came to be called "the hero's journey" by the man who identified it and (2) gives those stories their special mythological import. In which case, I have to ask: What's the point of calling it the same thing, much less trying to use it for the same purpose?
Presumably a writer chooses the hero's journey template because he wants to tell a story like that, one that uses those same universal notes in that order to strike that same universal chord in his audience. You're absolutely right: It's not the answer to every screenwriting problem. It is just another tool. But it is a specific tool, with a specific purpose. A writer can choose to use it for that purpose or not, but playing slightly to very different notes, in a slightly to very different order, will not resonate with an audience in nearly the same fashion. Change it enough, in fact, and you have a different chord altogether. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that different chord—it can resonate perhaps just as much with an audience in its own way—but we don't confuse a C major with a D major.
Which is why comparing the list of the top thirty films in terms of ticket sales to either Campbell's or even your less strict HJ template was hardly a tedious exercise. That was in fact the point of using your list as the baseline, because your structure isn't as specific as Campbell's, and even by your standard, if we call it a C, most of the films on that list are a D major. We're not talking mere elemental differences; we're talking about an enormous gap between the journey and point of the mythical hero's journey and the film story being considered. Again, mere elements don't an HJ make. In fact, frankly, if someone's definition of the HJ can be so flexible as to fit more than half a dozen of those most popular films, I find it of no meaning or value, because it serves none. If it can describe almost everything, it can have no real definition.
Who cares, you ask? Perhaps no one. Probably only those people who are interested in writing a story which mirrors, and thus draws on the power of, the unique hero's journey Campbell identified in Hero with a Thousand Faces. For those people, the degree to which their structure and narrative matches that which has powered some of the profoundest stories in history, matters very much.
The Hero's Journey isn't about a special few. Everyone has a their own Hero's Journey. We meet antagonists, heralds etc. who also are on their own Hero's Journey meeting their own antagonists etc.
texvanwinkle
Well-known member
If you haven't already, read the post of mine immediately above yours. If you have and that's still your response, there's nothing more I can say to you to persuade you that your interpretation is incorrect.