The Writer's Journey

by Christopher Vogler

  Studios have to use design principles and apply some kind of standards to evaluating and developing stories, if only because they produce so many of them. The average studio or division in Hollywood has bought and is developing one hundred fifty to two hundred stories at a time. They must spend more resources evaluating thousands of potential projects submitted by agents each year. To handle the large number of stories, some of the techniques of mass production, such as standardization, have to be employed. But they should be employed sparingly and with great sensitivity for the needs of the particular story.

  STANDARD LANGUAGE

  A most important tool is a standardized language that makes possible the thousands of communications necessary to tell so many stories. No one dictates this language, but it becomes part of everyone's education in the unwritten rules of the business. Newcomers quickly learn the lingo, concepts, and assumptions that have been passed down by generations of storytellers and filmmakers. This provides everyone with a shorthand for the rapid communication of story ideas.

  Meanwhile new terms and concepts are always being created to reflect changing conditions. Junior studio executives listen carefully for signs of insight, philosophy, or ordering principle from their bosses. People take their lead from the leader. Any terms of art, any aphorisms or rules of thumb are seized upon and passed down, becoming part of the corporate culture of that studio and the general knowledge of the industry. It's especially true when those bits of received wisdom lead to successful, popular entertainments.

  The Hero's Journey language is clearly becoming part of the storytelling common knowledge and its principles have been used consciously to create hugely popular films. But there is danger in this self-awareness. Overreliance on traditional language or the latest buzzwords can lead to thoughtless, cookie-cutter products. Lazy, superficial use of Hero's Journey terms, taking this metaphorical system too literally, or arbitrarily imposing its forms on every story can be stultifying. It should be used as a form, not a formula, a reference point and a source of inspiration, not a dictatorial mandate.

  CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

  Another of the dangers of standardized language and methods is that local differences, the very things that add zest and spice to journeys to faraway places, will get hammered into blandness by the machinery of mass production. Artists around the world are on guard against "cultural imperialism," the aggressive export of Hollywood storytelling techniques and the squeezing out of local accents. American values and the cultural assumptions of Western society threaten to smother the unique flavors of other cultures. Many observers have remarked that American culture is becoming world culture, and what a loss it would be if the only flavorings available were sugar, salt, mustard, and ketchup.

  This problem is much on the minds of European storytellers as many countries with distinct cultures are drawn into a union. They are striving to create stories that are somewhat universal, that can travel beyond their national borders, for local audiences may not be numerous enough to support the always-growing cost of production. They are up against intensely competitive American companies that aggressively courts the world market. Many are studying and applying American techniques, but they also worry that their unique regional traditions will be lost.

  Is the Hero's Journey an instrument of cultural imperialism? It could be, if naively interpreted, blindly copied, or unquestioningly adopted. But it can also be a useful tool for the storyteller in any culture, if adapted thoughtfully to reflect the unique, inimitable qualities of the local geography, climate, and people.

  I found that artists in Australia were acutely conscious of cultural imperialism, perhaps because that country's people have had to struggle to create their own society. They have forged something distinct from England, independent of America and Asia, influenced by all of them but uniquely Australian, and humming with the mysterious energy of the land and the Aboriginal people. They pointed out to me hidden cultural assumptions in my understanding of the Hero's Journey. While it is universal and timeless, and its workings can be found in every culture on earth, a Western or American reading of it may carry subtle biases. One instance is the Hollywood preference for happy endings and tidy resolutions, the tendency to show admirable, virtuous heroes overcoming evil by individual effort. My Australian teachers helped me see that such elements might make good stories for the world market but may not reflect the views of all cultures. They made me aware of what assumptions were being carried by Hollywood-style films, and of what was not being expressed.

  In my travels I learned that Australia, Canada, and many countries in Europe subsidize their local filmmakers, in part to help preserve and celebrate local differences. Each region, department, or state operates as a small-scale movie studio, developing scripts, putting artists to work, and producing feature films and television shows. For America, I like to imagine a version of a decentralized Hollywood in which every state in the Union functions like a movie studio, evaluating the stories of its citizens and advancing money to produce regional films that represent and enhance the culture of the locality while supporting the local artists.

  HEROPHOBIC CULTURES

  Here and there in my travels I learned that some cultures are not entirely comfortable with the term "hero" to begin with. Australia and Germany are two cultures that seem slightly "herophobic."

  The Australians distrust appeals to heroic virtue because such concepts have been used to lure generations of young Australian males into fighting Britain's battles. Australians have their heroes, of course, but they tend to be unassuming and self-effacing, and will remain reluctant for much longer than heroes in other cultures. Like most heroes, they resist calls to adventure but continue demurring and may never be comfortable with the hero mantle. In Australian culture it's unseemly to seek out leadership or the limelight, and anyone who does is a "tall poppy," quickly cut down. The most admirable hero is one who denies his heroic role as long as possible and who, like Mad Max, avoids accepting responsibility for anyone but himself.

  German culture seems ambivalent about the term "hero." The hero has a long tradition of veneration in Germany, but two World Wars and the legacy of Hitler and the Nazis have tainted the concept. Nazism and German militarism manipulated and distorted the powerful symbols of the hero myth, invoking its passions to enslave, dehumanize, and destroy. Like any archetypal system, like any philosophy or creed, the heroic form can be warped and used with great effect for ill intention.

  In the post-Hitler period the idea of hero has been given a rest as the culture re-evaluates itself. Dispassionate, cold-blooded anti-heroes are more in keeping with the current German spirit. A tone of unsentimental realism is more popular at present, although there will always be a strain of romanticism and love of fantasy. Germans can enjoy imaginative hero tales from other cultures but don't seem comfortable with home-grown romantic heroes for the time being.

  THE HERO AS WARRIOR

  More generally, the Hero's Journey has been criticized as an embodiment of a male-dominated warrior culture. Critics say it is a propaganda device invented to encourage young males to enlist in armies, a myth that glorifies death and foolish self-sacrifice. There is some truth in this charge, for many heroes of legend and story are warriors and the patterns of the Hero's Journey have certainly been used for propaganda and recruitment. However, to condemn and dismiss these patterns because they can be put to military use is shortsighted and narrow-minded. The warrior is only one of the faces of the hero, who can also be pacifist, mother, pilgrim, fool, wanderer, hermit, inventor, nurse, savior, artist, lunatic, lover, clown, king, victim, slave, worker, rebel, adventurer, tragic failure, coward, saint, monster, etc. The many creative possibilities of the form far outweigh its potential for abuse.

  GENDER PROBLEMS

  The Hero's Journey is sometimes critiqued as a masculine theory, cooked up by men to enforce their dominance, and with little relevance to the unique and quite different journey of womanhood. There may be some
masculine bias built into the description of the hero cycle since many of its theoreticians have been male, and I freely admit it: I'm a man and can't help seeing the world through the filter of my gender. Yet I have tried to acknowledge and explore the ways in which the woman's journey is different from the man's.

  I believe that much of the journey is the same for all humans, since we share many realities of birth, growth, and decay, but clearly being a woman imposes distinct cycles, rhythms, pressures, and needs. There may be a real difference in the form of men's and women's journeys. Men's journeys may be in some sense more linear, proceeding from one outward goal to the next, while women's journeys may spin or spiral inward and outward. The spiral may be a more accurate analogue for the woman's journey than a straight line or a simple circle. Another possible model might be a series of concentric rings, with the woman making a journey inward towards the center and then expanding out again. The masculine need to go out and overcome obstacles, to achieve, conquer, and possess, may be replaced in the woman's journey by the drives to preserve the family and the species, make a home, grapple with emotions, come to accord, or cultivate beauty.

  Good work has been done by women to articulate these differences, and I recommend books such as Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman, Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves, Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman, Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey, and The Woman's Dictionary of Myth and Symbols as starting points for a more balanced understanding of the male and female aspects of the Hero's Journey. (Note to men: If in doubt on this point, consult the nearest woman.)

  THE COMPUTER CHALLENGE

  Shortly after the first edition of this book came out, a few people (threshold guardians) jumped up to say the technology of the Hero's Journey is already obsolete, thanks to the advent of the computer and its possibilities of interactivity and nonlinear narrative. According to this batch of critics, the ancient ideas of the Journey are hopelessly mired in the conventions of beginning, middle, and end, of cause and effect, of one event after another. The new wave, they said, would dethrone the old linear storyteller, empowering people to tell their own stories in any sequence they chose, leaping from point to point, weaving stories more like spider webs than linear strings of events.

  It's true that exciting new possibilities are created by computers and the nonlinear thinking they encourage. However, there will always be pleasure in "Tell me a story." People will always enjoy going into a story trance and allowing themselves to be led through a tale by a masterful story weaver. It's fun to drive a car, but it can also be fun to be driven, and as passengers we might see more sights than if we were forced to concentrate on choosing what happens next.

  Interactivity has always been with us — we all make many nonlinear hypertext links in our own minds even as we listen to a linear story. In fact, the Hero's Journey lends itself extremely well to the world of computer games and interactive experiences. The thousands of variations on the paradigm, worked out over the centuries, offer endless branches from which infinite webs of story can be built.

  THE CYNIC'S RESPONSE

  Another of my deep cultural assumptions that was challenged as I traveled is the idea that one person can make a difference, that heroes are needed to make change, and that change is generally a good thing. I encountered artists from Eastern Europe who pointed out that in their cultures, there is deep cynicism about heroic efforts to change the world. The world is as it is, any efforts to change it are a foolish waste of time, and any so-called heroes who try to change it are doomed to fail. This point of view is not necessarily an antithesis of the Hero's Journey — the pattern is flexible enough to embrace the cynical or pragmatic philosophies, and many of its principles are still operative in stories that reflect them. However, I must acknowledge that not every person or culture sees the model as optimistically as I do, and they might be right.

  BUT WHAT ABOUT ...

  It's exciting to see that there is no end to what can be learned from the Hero's Journey concepts. I find surprising and delightful turns of the path every time I pick up a new story, and life itself keeps teaching new angles.

  My understanding of the Shadow archetype, for example, continues to evolve. I have been impressed all over again by the power of this pattern, especially as it operates within the individual as a repository for unexpressed feelings and desires. It is a force that accumulates when you fail to honor your gifts, follow the call of your muses, or live up to your principles and ideals. It has great but subtle power, operating on deep levels to communicate with you, perhaps sabotaging your efforts, upsetting your balance until you realize the message these events bring — that you must express your creativity, your true nature, or die. A car accident a few years ago taught me the rebellious power of the Shadow, showed me that I was distracted, out of harmony, heading for even greater disasters if I didn't find a way to express my personal creative side.

  Occasional puzzled looks on the faces of students taught me that I hadn't completely thought through some aspects of the pattern. Some people were confused by the various turning points and ordeals of the model, particularly by the distinction between the midpoint, which I call the Ordeal, and the climax of the second act, which I call The Road Back. Trying to explain this led me to a new realization. Each act is like a movement of a symphony, with its own beginning, middle, and end, and with its own climax (the highest point of tension) coming just before the ending of the act. These act climaxes are the major turning points on the circular diagram:

  Lecturing in Rome, I came upon a further development of this idea, an alternate way of graphing the Hero's Journey: not as a circle, but as a diamond. I was explaining that each act sends the hero on a certain track with a specific aim or goal, and that the climaxes of each act change the hero's direction, assigning a new goal. The hero's first act goal, for instance, might be to seek treasure, but after meeting a potential lover at the first threshold crossing, the goal might change to pursuing that love. If the ordeal at the midpoint has the villain capturing the hero and lover, the goal in the next movement could become trying to escape. And if the villain kills the lover at The Road Back, the new goal of the final movement might be to get revenge. The original objective might be achieved as well, or there might be some overall goal (to learn self-reliance or come to terms with past failures, for example) that continues to be served in all movements as the hero pursues changing superficial goals.

  To illustrate this concept I drew the hero's goals in each movement as straight lines, vectors of intention, rather than curves. Straightening out the curves of the circle created sharp, 90-degree turns at the quarter points and revealed the drastic changes that may occur in the hero's objectives. Each straight line represents the hero's aim in that act — to escape the constraints of the ordinary world, to survive in a strange land, to win the boon and escape the strange land, to return home safely with something to share that revives the world.

  I was amused to realize I had just drawn a baseball diamond (in reverse.) I've often felt that the layout of game-playing fields produces patterns that overlap with the design of the Hero's Journey. Baseball can be read as another metaphor of life, with the base runner as the hero making his way around the stages of the journey.

  Perhaps the best way to explore the endless possibilities of the Hero's Journey is to apply it to a number of films or stories. To that end Michael Wiese Productions has prepared a book and CD-ROM entitled Myth in the Movies. These examine a large number of popular movies through the lens of the Hero's Journey. It's a way to test the idea and see for yourself if it's valid and useful. One can see how it operates in a general way and how it transforms in specific cases. And from the comparison of many examples and from the interesting exceptions, one can find more of the principles, values, and relationships that give the craftsperson command of the form.

  At the end of this second edition I have added a few new elements in a section called "Looking Back at the Journe
y." Here I have used the tools of mythology and the Hero's Journey to analyze some key films, including Titanic, The Lion King, Pulp Fiction, The Full Monty, and the Star Wars saga. I hope these will demonstrate some of the ways that the mythic principles continue to be explored in popular entertainment.

  Unlike the stories of heroes, which eventually come to an end, the journey to understand and articulate these ideas is truly endless. Although certain human conditions will never change, new situations are always arising, and the Hero's Journey will adapt to reflect them. New waves will roll out, and so it will go, on and on forever.

  I invite you to join me on a Writer's Journey, a mission of discovery to explore and map the elusive borderlands between myth and modern storytelling. We will be guided by a simple idea: All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero's Journey. Understanding these elements and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storyteller's craft still have tremendous power to heal our people and make the world a better place.