--Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey
*For a good overview of the Hero's Journey as laid out by both Campbell and Vogler, see pp. 6-9 of The Writer's Journey, 3rd ed.
ORDINARY WORLD
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder”
--J. Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
BEFORE the beginning—What’s the first thing your audience will experience?
The title?
1st line of dialogue?
First image?
Where in the lives of your characters will the story begin?
Do you need a prologue or intro or can you just jump right in?
What do the OPENING MOMENTS have the potential to do?
Set the tone
Create an impression
Conjure up a mood or metaphor that will give the audience a frame of reference to better experience your work
EX: Movies at the El Capitan
The mythological approach to story boils down to using metaphors or comparisons to get across your feelings about life.
TODAY—What ELEMENTS go into making a first impression before a movie is even out?
Publicity
Advertising
Posters
Trailers
Billboards/giant posters on buses/bus stops
All of these things help to put the audience in the right frame of mind for the journey.
When is this NOT successful?
When ads don’t accurately convey what the movie really is.
What are the things the audience might see before they are even introduced to the ordinary world?
TITLE: An important clue to the nature of the story & the writer’s attitude. Can become a multi-leveled metaphor for the condition of the hero or his world.
EX: The Godfather
OPENING IMAGE: Create a mood, suggest where the story will go.
The opening image can be: A visual metaphor that conjures up the special world of act 2
It can suggest a theme, alerting the audience to the issues your characters will face.
EX: Unforgiven, Citizen Kane
PROLOGUE:
- Give essential piece of backstory
- Cue the audience to what kind of movie/story this will be
- Start things off with a bang
- Cue the audience that the balance of a society has been disturbed, a chain of events has been set in motion & the forward drive of the story cannot cease until the wrong has been righted and the balance restored
EX: Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars (Vader kidnapping Leia)
Note: Disorientation leads to suggestibility
THE ORDINARY WORLD
- Establishes a baseline for comparison
- The special world is only special if we can see it in contrast to a mundane world of every day affairs from which the hero issues forth
- Is the context, home base & background of the hero
- *The place you came from last. In life, we pass through a succession of special worlds which become “ordinary” as we get used to them.
EX: The Little Mermaid, Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind
CONTRAST
It’s a good idea to make the ordinary world as different as possible from the special world.
EX: The Little Mermaid
EX: The Little Mermaid
FORESHADOWING
- Writers often use the Ordinary World to create a small model of the special world, foreshadowing its battles and moral dilemmas
- *Can help unify a story into a rhythmic or poetic design
EX: Romancing the Stone (fantasy sequence), Wizard of Oz
RAISING THE DRAMATIC QUESTION
Every good story poses a series of questions about the hero:
- Will she achieve her goal? Overcome her flaw?
- Learn lessons she needs to learn?
Some questions are integral to the action of the plot:
- Will Dorothy get home from Oz?
- Will ET get home?
- Will Scarlett O’Hara be able to rebuild Tara?
Some questions are dramatic:
- Will Patrick Swayze’s character in Ghost learn to express love?
- Will Edward in Pretty Woman learn to relax and enjoy life?
Action questions propel the plot, but dramatic questions hook the audience and involve them with the emotions of the characters.
INNER & OUTER PROBLEMS
Every hero needs both an inner and an outer problem
- Characters without inner challenges seem flat & uninvolving, they need an inner problem, a personality flaw or a moral dilemma to work out.
- They need to learn something in the course of the story.
EX: Good Will Hunting, The Town
MAKING AN ENTRANCE
- When we first meet our hero, what are they doing?
- What is he wearing?
- Who is around him?
- What is his attitude?
- Alone or in a group?
- Does he narrate the story? Or is the story told through the eyes of another character?
MOST IMPORTANT: What is the hero doing at the moment of entrance?
The first action should be a model of the hero’s characteristic attitude & the future problems or solutions that will result.
- The first action would define and reveal character, unless your intent is to mislead or conceal the character’s true nature.
INTRODUCING THE HERO TO THE AUDIENCE
You must establish a strong bond of sympathy or common interest between the hero and the audience.
- The hero does not have to be all good or wholly sympathetic or even likeable. He MUST be relatable.
- We can understand his plight and imagine ourselves behaving in much the same way, given the same background, circumstances & motivation.
IDENTIFICATION
Opening scenes should create an identification between the audience and the hero—a sense that they are equals in some way.
How do you achieve identification?
By giving heroes UNIVERSAL GOALS, drives, desires, or needs.
Quote, J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed—“The action that Luke finally takes to defeat the enemy and ultimately become the hero that he does was amazing. Star Wars gives everyone a sense of ultimate purpose. It’s a wonderful message to send, and an incredibly uplifting one. We all want to believe that we could be the one that made the difference.”
THE HERO’S LACK
Fairy tales are about searching for completeness & striving for wholeness & often it’s a substraction from the family unit that sets the story in motion.
- The need to fill in the missing piece drives the story toward the final perfection of “They lived happily ever after…”
- Many movies begin by showing an incomplete hero or family. These missing elements help to create sympathy for the hero and draw the audiences into desiring her eventual wholeness.
- You can also have a ‘complete’ hero, until a loved one is kidnapped or killed, setting into motion a story of rescue or revenge
- Hero’s family can be complete, but something is missing from his personality.
TRAGIC FLAWS (Aristotle, Greek Tragedies)
In Greek tragedies the tragic flaw (usually hubris) ultimately leads to the hero’s destruction.
Every hero has a trace of a tragic flaw. Some weakness or fault that makes them thoroughly human and real (and I would argue, relatable.)
WOUNDED HEROES
- Deep psychic wound
- These wounds of rejection, betrayal or disappointment are personal echoes of a universal pain that everyone has suffered from: the pain of the child’s physical and emotional separation from its mother.
- To humanize any character, give them a wound.
- The hero’s wounds and scars mark the areas in which he is guarded, defensive, weak and vulnerable.
- A wound helps to give the hero a sense of personal history & realism. We all bear some scars from past humiliations, rejections, disappointments, abandonments, and failures.
- Many stories are about the journey to heal a wound & to restore a missing piece to a broken psyche.
ESTABLISHING WHAT’S AT STAKE
For the audience to be involved, they have to know what is at stake.
What are the consequences for the hero/society/the world if the hero succeeds or fails?
Stakes should be HIGH.
EX: Beauty and the Beast (Belle’s father is in danger)
BACKSTORY & EXPOSITION
BACKSTORY: All the relevant information about a character’s history & background. (What got her into the situation at the beginning of the story?) p. 95
EXPOSITION: The art of gracefully revealing the backstory and any other pertinent information about the plot.
- The hero’s social class
- Upbringing
- Habits
- Experiences
- Prevailing social conditions that may affect the hero
In short: EVERYTHING the audience needs to know to understand the hero and the story.
THEME
What is the story really about?
- Derived from the Greek, and close in meaning to the Latin-based “premise”. Both words mean “something set before.” P. 96
- Something laid out in advance that helps to determine a future course.
The theme of a story is: An underlying statement or assumption about an aspect of life.
CALL TO ADVENTURE
The call to adventure is A.K.A. the inciting or initiating incident, catalyst, or trigger
p. 99—The O.W. of most heroes is a static but unstable condition. The seeds of change and growth are planted and it takes only a little new energy to germinate them.
Call to Adventure can come in many forms: message, messenger, new event (i.e. declaration of war), telegram reporting that outlaws have been released from prison.
SYNCHRONICITY
C.G. Jung: The coincidental occurrence of words, ideas, or events can take on meaning and draw attention to the need for action and change. p. 100
TEMPTATION
A call to adventure may summon a hero with temptation—exotic travel poster, sight of potential lover, glint of gold, rumor of treasure, siren song of ambition.
EX. Goonies
HERALDS OF CHANGE
Can be positive, negative, or neutral, but will always serve to get the story rolling by presenting the hero with an invitation or challenge to face the unknown.
- Can be an ally or an enemy
- Often heroes are unaware that there is anything wrong with their O.W. and don’t see a need for change. They have been barely getting by, using an arsenal of crutches, addictions, and defense mechanisms.
- The job of the HERALD is to kick away these supports, announcing that the world of the hero is unstable and must be put back into healthy balance by action, by taking risks, by undertaking the adventure.
RECONNAISSANCE (Russian fairy tale scholar Vladimir Propp)
Villain surveys the hero’s territory. This information gathering can be a call to adventure, alerting the audience and the hero that something is afoot and the struggle is about to begin.
DISORIENTATION AND DISCOMFORT
The call to adventure can be disorienting and unsettling for the hero, but is necessary for the hero’s growth.
EX: Cary Grant in Notorious
LACK OR NEED
A call to adventure may come in the form of a loss or subtraction from the hero’s life in the O.W.
- EX: Quest for fire
- or: kidnapping, loss of something precious, such as health, security, or love.
NO MORE OPTIONS
Call may be hero running out of options. Coping mechanisms no longer work, other people get fed up with the hero, or the hero is placed in increasingly dire straits until the only way left is to jump into adventure.
NOTE: Some heroes have no choice. They are conked on the head only to wake up out at sea, committed to an adventure whether they like it or not.
WARNING FOR TRAGIC HEROES
“Beware the Ides of March” (Julius Caesar)
Moby Dick
MORE THAN ONE CALL: CALL WAITING
i.e. a call to physical adventure & adventure of the heart.
REFUSAL OF THE CALL
Dramatic function: Signals that the adventure is a risky, danger-filled, high-stakes gamble in which the hero might lose fortune or life.
The pause to weight the consequences makes the commitment to the adventure a real choice in which the hero is willing to stake her life against the possibility of winning the goal.
AVOIDANCE
Many heroes try to dodge the adventure.
Common ground for refusal is past experience.
Refusal is then overcome, either by some stronger motivation (death/kidnap of friend or relative) which raises the stakes, OR by the hero’s inborn taste for adventure or sense of honor.
EXCUSES
Laundry list of weak excuses (we can all relate. We all make excuses.)
These are temporary roadblocks, usually overcome by the urgency of the quest.
EX: Luke Skywalker (I’ve got to stay and help on the farm…)
PERSISTENT REFUSAL LEADS TO TRAGEDY
Looking backward, dwelling in the past, denying reality are forms or refusal.
CONFLICTING CALLS
Call of the heart vs. call to adventure
- Refusal of the call is the time to articulate the hero’s difficult choices.
POSITIVE REFUSALS
Special cases in which refusing the call is a wise and positive move on the hero’s part.
EX: The Three Little Pigs, won’t open the door for the Big Bad Wolf
ARTIST AS HERO
Refusing the powerful call of the world, in order to follow the wider call of artistic expression.
WILLING HEROES
Some heroes are willing. In this case, other characters will express, fear, warning the hero and the audience of what may happen on the road ahead.
EX: Dances with Wolves
Danger of the adventure is acknowledged and dramatized through another character.
THRESHOLD GUARDIANS
Heroes may be tested by threshold guardians (powerful figures who raise the banner of fear and doubt, questioning the hero’s worthiness to be in the game.) They block the heroes before the adventure has even begun.
- Can raise important dramatic questions for the audience: Is this person truly heroic enough to face and survive the adventure?
- Such questions create emotional suspense for the audience.
THE SECRET DOOR
Symbols of human curiosity, the powerful drive to know all the hidden things, all the secrets.
EX: Belle in Beauty and the Beast. She is told not to go in the door.
THE WIZARD OF OZ
Once Dorothy (or any hero) has started on a journey (once things have been set in motion and the O.W. altered) she can never go back to the way things were. Ultimately, refusal is pointless.
Please note, the contents of this post are for educational purposes only, and rely heavily on text and ideas from Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey, 3rd ed.
Please note, the contents of this post are for educational purposes only, and rely heavily on text and ideas from Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey, 3rd ed.
