Jan 25, 2022
As promised, here are the steps to the Hero's Journey.
1. Ordinary World, 2. Call to Adventure, 3. Refusal of the Call,4. Meeting the Mentor, 5. Crossing the first threshold.
6. Tests, allies, and enemies, 7. Approach to the inmost cave,8. The ordeal, 9. The reward.
10. The road back, 11. The resurrection, 12. Return with theelixir.
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, isavailable on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them onAmazon:
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The following is an imperfect transcript of thisepisode. I complete transcript can be found on the show’swebpage.
[00:00:00] Last week wecovered the three act structure, or at least we finished coveringthe three act structure of how to structure a novel of how tostructure a story. Just the different pattern. Generally speakingon how to do that. And this week, we are going to delve intosomething far more specific as we cover the hero's journey today onwriting in the tiny.
[00:00:27] Hello. Hello.Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to writing in the tinyhouse. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy in a tiny housewho is here to show you all of the ways that you can get that workof fiction out of your mind and into a word processor or whatever,despite how busy you may think that you are.
[00:01:12] Up until thispoint, we have been speaking very generally this year about thethree act structure of most stories. Just the introduction, therising action and the conclusion and delving into what each ofthose parts is. As we've gone through this whole, this whole littlelesson series, I guess. Today, we are going to go into the hero'sjourney, which is kind of a map on how to do that.
[00:01:40] At adventurenovel. It lays out all of the important steps and the importantbeats. So the important events, the important things that happen inthe story that is typical of most adventure stories. And it'sinteresting to see how all of it plays into the bigger picture, thehero's journey.
[00:02:03] Was first, Iguess, distilled out of the studies of a person named JosephCampbell who lived from 1904 to 1987. He was a big a student ofmythology. And he found in all of these very classic, very, veryold stories that each of them followed a pattern. And in hisstudies, he put together that pattern called the hero's journey andhis version of it has.
[00:02:31] Teen steps thatfall into three acts. It's a lot, 17 steps is a lot. Later muchlater, a person named Christopher Vogler Vogel. I don't know how tosay his last name, but he worked as a screenwriter for Disney andlikely for other people or other companies, he developed adifferent, or at least a more modern model of the hero's journeythat he published back in 2007.
[00:03:00] I appreciatelooking at this, but just because it is more modern. It applieseven more perfectly to the more current works of fiction that wesee coming out. And. It has 12 parts instead of 17. And so today onwriting in the tiny house, we are going to cover those 12parts.
[00:03:20] So these 12 partsare unique to Christopher Vogler, Vogler. But they have a lot incommon with the original person who came up with the hero'sjourney, Joseph Campbell. So this Chris Vogler the screenwriter hewrote a book about the hero's journey.
[00:03:36] There's a full onbook about it, and it covers each of these points in more detailthan we're going to cover in a 15 minute episodes. Here on thepodcast. And I need to give a full confession that I have not readthis book. That doesn't mean that you don't have to, or that youshouldn't. There are a lot of references and a lot of really goodmaterial on how to structure and properly execute a work offiction.
[00:04:02] And diving intothe hero's journey is not something that I have done. Also my worksof fiction. Don't 100% reflect the hero's journey. And so I havechosen to focus on some other things, but we're covering it todayon writing in the tiny house, just because. You will see as we gothrough these different points that these points are everywhere infiction, especially if the story revolves around calling ahero.
[00:04:34] From somewhere theanointing of a hero and having them leave their home to go on thisadventure and then come back with a solution. There are a lot ofstories that cover that there are a lot of stories that have thatas the main premise and the overall, you know, arching theme ofeither the trilogy or just the book or the many books.
[00:04:59] And so we're goingto go over that and you will find. As we go through these pointsthat a lot of them will apply to your work in progress as well.Even if you are not writing an adventure novel these things fallinto place, and many of them don't necessarily have to go in thisorder, but you will find that these little collections ofpoints.
[00:05:25] Very much need togo into either act one or all of them into act two or all of theminto act three, just because of the formula of this story theformula of this structure, this is all very general stuff. And thecool thing about general stuff is it can apply in many deliciousways to many different things.
[00:05:48] Diving right inthis entire thing is based in three acts. And I covered what thosethree acts are already. So let's see how they all just kind ofintermingle and what the 12 parts of this structure of writingfiction called the hero's journey is actually all about. act one.Is called the departure.
[00:06:14] This is where wesee the ordinary world, or we see the world as it is. it can be thefact that this is an ordinary day to day world or with somethinglike hunger games. We see the dystopia, we see the problem and howa problem has become. The ordinary world, we see Katniss and we seeher going through the day-to-day things and we see that it's.
[00:06:41] Not okay. It's notgood, but that is her reality. That is her day today. a picture ofthe ordinary world is the first step. Next, there is a call toadventure or a call to do something, a call to change. So this canbe. Harry receiving a letter from Hogwarts. This can be Frodogetting the ring of power.
[00:07:07] It can be a vast,many different things. It can be a vision, it can be a dream. Itcan be simply the challenge of this is a problem and I want to fixit. So just the invitation to step up and make things different.The third thing is the refusal of the call. if you look at all ofthese stories, I've mentioned Harry Potter, I've mentioned the Lordof the rings.
[00:07:33] I've mentionedhunger games. There comes a moment very early in the story inalmost all of them where the hero of the story doesn't want to bethe hero. And that can actually be a running theme throughout thestory and throughout the book itself. But. There comes a time justin this structure where the hero refuses, the call, where forwhatever reason they're not going to do it, it can be forpride.
[00:07:59] It can be for selfdoubt. It can be because they feel there is someone more qualified.And then there is me. The mentor. So who are the most popularmentors in fiction? In fantasy, at least we have Gandalf and wehave Dumbledore. However, there are other mentors, sometimes thecharacters can play the role of a mentor and another role.
[00:08:26] And so if we lookat the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis Mr. Toughnessis in a way a mentor. He is the guy who first introduces the worldof Narnia to the reader and to the main characters. Also as LAN isa mentor. And there is the white witch, the ice queen of Narniabecause one of the children falls under her protection. As a way togroom him. There is an amount of tutoring or amount of mentoring ofintroducing him to the world of introducing him to things andconditioning him to, to be a specific thing.
[00:09:12] So sometimes thementor can come across as many different things, but generally thementor is the person who. teaches the hero about the journey,teaches the hero about the world. If they are stepping out into anew world, teaches them about the magic and sometimes provides themgifts.
[00:09:34] So if you haveread the broken earth trilogy by NK Jemisin, which is one of myfavorites in the whole wide world. The character alabaster is themain, character's mentor. And he does just that he teaches hermagic and he teaches her how to find her own type of magic. It'san, it's an amazing thing.
[00:09:54] The next step inact one is crossing the first threshold. So it is that decision togo out on your journey. It is. Stepping out of Hobbiton and goingonto the road to go onto your adventure and to go off into thisstrange new world. So that is what wraps up. Act two, there aremore points act two is called the initiation.
[00:10:21] So the first thingis you get your tests, your allies, and your enemies on all ofthese adventure novels. I have read and I have read a lot of them.There are a lot of characters to be met along the way that do notcome in. Act one, you meet them in a Tavern, you meet them at astore or on the road or something, or you get jumped by bandits andthen these people come swinging in from the trees and save you andto become your ally.
[00:10:54] Or your enemy orwhatever. And these tests are all of these challenges that comealong the way. That happens a lot in act two. That's kind of thebig part of act two, which is a huge act anyway, but at the end ofact two the point is number seven is to approach the inmostcave.
[00:11:16] So if you thinkback on like the classic. Mythology and stuff. It seems like afinal test was always in like this cave or at the top of amountain, just that final place to go and to reach out and to getthere. And there were a lot of problems along the way, but here weare, and it is the end boss of a video game.
[00:11:41] And they're in theinmost cave. The main character faces an ordeal, which is often acrowning test or sometimes defeating the big end boss. So it can bedefeating a bad guy. It can be defeating. A really big henchman ofthe bad guy as a way to prove worth. It can be a lot of differentthings like that.
[00:12:11] And then they aregiven a reward. So either it is a magical item, maybe sometimes Itis a way to defeat the scourge that has plagued the land, or it is,you know, the magical spell that can cure whatever illness hasbefallen your sister, different things like that.
[00:12:32] And then enactthree. It is the return. It is going back to their hometown. Thefirst step is the road back or to the ultimate destination. Thismeans that on the way back, sometimes they go to And even higherplace or a more special place to learn and receive more counsel andthis is called the resurrection.
[00:12:58] So resurrection ispoint number 11 on this list of 12. So this is where in classicmythology, the hero is killed and then reborn and is presented asnew and pure So it's a form of rebirth or a coming back to life orin the event of Harry Potter, he actually did die and then did comeback to life.
[00:13:23] That is theultimate resurrection of that entire story. And then they go backto their city returning with the elixir. So the elixir is whateverkey ingredient. That is required to get rid of the problem. Sosometimes returning with the elixir is winning the prize money.Sometimes it's coming back with the spell or a way to eradicatewhatever, you know, strange, magical diseases across the land ormaybe it's just a potion to heal a loved one or whatever. There area lot of different applications to that, but that in a nutshell isthe hero's journey. And as you saw, it follows that three actstructure. So I will include these 12 points in the show notes, andwe will see you next time when we discuss some of the archetypes orsome of the character types.
[00:14:25] If you want to usemore common language that also come into the hero's journey nexttime on writing in the tiny house.
[00:14:33]
[00:14:33] And that is it fortoday. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Talesfrom Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible andApple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copiesof these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become apatron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse tosupport both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure tofollow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and myTwitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending sometime with me today and have fun writing. We will see you nexttime.
