INTRODUCTION: PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY "This is the tale I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, goddess, at whatever point you will." —The Odyssey of Homer 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. My own Writer's Journey begins with the peculiar power storytelling has always had over me. I got hooked on the fairy tales and Little Golden Books read out loud by my mother and grandmother. I devoured the cartoons and movies pouring out of TV in the 1950s, the thrilling adventures on the drive-in screens, the lurid comic books and mind-stretching science fiction of the day. When I was laid up with a sprained ankle, my father went to the local library and brought back wonder stories of Norse and Celtic mythology that made me forget the pain. A trail of stories eventually led me to reading for a living as a story analyst for Hollywood studios. Though I evaluated thousands of novels and screenplays, I never got tired of exploring the labyrinth of story with its stunningly repeated patterns, bewildering variants, and puzzling questions. Where do stories come from? How do they work? What do they tell us about ourselves? What do they mean? Why do we need them? How can we use them to improve the world? THE WRITER'S JOURNEYVVogler INTRODUCTION Above all, how do storytellers manage to make the story mean something? Good.stories make you feel you've been through a satisfying, complete experience. "You've cried or laughed or both. You finish the story feeling you've learned something about life or about yourself. Perhaps you've picked up a new awareness, a new character or attitude to model your life on. How do storytellers manage to pull that off? What are the secrets of this ancient trade? What are its rules and design principles? Over the years I began to notice some common elements in adventure stories and myths, certain intriguingly familiar characters, props, locations, and situations. I became vaguely aware there was a pattern or a template of some sort guiding the design of stories. I had some pieces of the puzzle but the overall plan eluded me. Then at the USC film school I was fortunate enough to cross paths with the work of the mythologist Joseph Campbell. The encounter with Campbell was, for me and many other people, a life-changing experience. A few days of exploring the labyrinth of his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces produced an electrifying reorganization of my life and thinking. Here, fully explored, was the pattern I had been sensing. Campbell had broken the secret code of story. His work was like a flare suddenly illuminating a deeply shadowed landscape. I worked with Campbell's idea of the Hero's Journey to understand the phenomenal repeat business of movies such as Star Wars and Close Encounters. People were going back to see these films as if seeking some kind of religious experience. It seemed to me these films drew people in this special way because they reflected the universally satisfying patterns Campbell found in myths. They had something people needed. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was a lifesaver when I began to work as a story analyst for major movie studios. In my first jobs I was deeply grateful for Campbell's work, which became a reliable set of tools for diagnosing story problems and prescribing solutions. Without the guidance of Campbell and mythology, I would have been lost. It seemed to me the Hero's Journey was exciting, useful story technology which could help filmmakers and executives eliminate some of the guesswork and expense of developing stories for film. Over the years, I ran into quite a few people who had been affected by encounters with Joe Campbell. We were like a secret society of true believers, commonly putting our faith in "the power of myth." Shortly after going to work as a story analyst for the Walt Disney Company, I wrote a seven-page memo called 'A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces" in which I described the idea of the Hero's Journey, with examples from classic and current movies. I gave the memo to friends, colleagues, and several Disney executives to test and refine the ideas through their feedback. Gradually I expanded the "Practical Guide" into a longer essay and began teaching the material through a story analysis class at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. At writers' conferences around the country I tested the ideas in seminars with screenwriters, romance novelists, children's writers, and all kinds of storytellers. I found many others were exploring the intertwined pathways of myth, story, and psychology. The Hero's Journey, I discovered, is more than just a description of the hidden patterns of mythology. It is a useful guide to life, especially the writer's life. In the perilous adventure of my own writing, I found the stages of the Hero's Journey showing up just as reliably and usefully as they did in books, myths, and movies. In my personal life, I was thankful to have this map to guide my quest and help me anticipate what was around the next bend. The usefulness of the Hero's Journey as a guide to life was brought home forcefully when I first prepared to speak publicly about it in a large seminar at UCLA. A couple of weeks before the seminar two articles appeared in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, in which a film critic attacked filmmaker George Lucas and his movie Willow. Somehow the critic had got hold of the "Practical Guide" and claimed it had deeply influenced and corrupted Hollywood THE WRITER'S JOURNEY/YogUr INTRODUCTION storytellers. The critic blamed the "Practical Guide" for every flop from Isktarto Howard the Duck, as well as for the hit Back to theFuture. According to him, lazy, illiterate studio executives, eager to find a quick-bucks formula, had seized upon the "Practical Guide" as a , cure-all and were busily stuffing it down the throats of writers, stifling their creativity with a technology the executives hadn't bothered to understand. While flattered that someone thought I had such a sweeping influence on the collective mind of Hollywood, I was also devastated. Here, on the threshold of a new phase of working with these ideas, I was shot down before I even started. Or so it seemed. Friends who were more seasoned veterans in this war of ideas pointed out that in being challenged I was merely encountering an archetype, one of the familiar characters who people the landscape of the Hero's Journey namely a Threshold Guardian. That information instantly gave me my bearings and showed me how to handle the situation. Campbell had described how heroes often encounter these "unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten" them. The Guardians seem to pop up at the various thresholds of the journey, the narrow and dangerous passages from one stage of life to the next. Campbell snowed the many ways in which heroes can deal with Threshold Guardians. Instead of attacking these seemingly hostile powers head-on, journeyers learn to outwit them or join forces with them, absorbing their energy rather than being destroyed by it. I realized that this Threshold Guardian's apparent attack was potentially a blessing, not a curse. I had thought of challenging the critic to a duel (laptops at twenty paces) but now reconsidered. With a slight change in attitude I could turn his hostility to my benefit. I contacted the critic and invited him to talk over our differences of opinion at the seminar. He accepted and joined a panel discussion which turned into a lively and entertaining debate, illuminating corners of the story world that I had never glimpsed before. The seminar was better and my ideas were stronger for being challenged. Instead of fighting my Threshold Guardian, I had absorbed him into my adventure. What had seemed like a lethal blow had turned into something useful and healthy. The mythological approach had proven its worth in life as well as story. Around this time I realized the "Practical Guide" and Campbell's ideas did have an influence on Hollywood. I began to get requests from studio story departments for copies of the "Practical Guide". I heard that executives at other studios were giving the pamphlet to writers, directors, and producers as guides to universal, commercial story patterns. Apparently Hollywood was finding the Hero's Journey useful. Meanwhile Joseph Campbell's ideas exploded into a wider sphere of awareness with the Bill Moyers interview show on PBS, "The Power of Myth." The show was a hit, cutting across lines of age, politics, and religion to speak directly to people's spirits. The book version, a transcript of the interviews, was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's venerable warhorse of a textbook, suddenly became a hot bestseller after forty years of slow but steady backlist sales. The PBS show brought Campbell's ideas to millions and illuminated the impact of his work on filmmakers such as George Lucas, John Boorman, Steven Spielberg, and George Miller. Suddenly I found a sharp increase in awareness and acceptance of Campbell's ideas in Hollywood. More executives and writers were versed in these concepts and interested in learning how to apply them to moviemaking and screenwriting. The Hero's Journey model continued to serve me well. It got me through reading and evaluating over ten thousand screenplays for half a dozen studios. It was my atlas, a book of maps for my own writing journeys. It guided me to a new role in the Disney company, as a story consultant for the Feature Animation division at the time The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beastwere being conceived. Campbell's ideas were of tremendous value as I researched and THE WRITER'S JOURNEYVVogler INTRODUCTION developed stories based on fairy tales, mythology, science fiction, comic books, and historical adventure. Joseph Campbell died in 1987.1 met him briefly a couple of times at seminars. He was still a striking man in his eighties, tall, vigorous, eloquent, funny, full of energy and enthusiasm, and utterly charming. Just before his passing, he told me, "Stick with this stuff. It'll take you a long wayT I recentiy discovered that for some time the "Practical Guide" has been required reading for Disney development executives. Daily requests for it, as well as coundess letters and calls from novelists, screenwriters, producers, writers, and actors, indicate that the Hero's Journey ideas are being used and developed more than ever. And so I come to the writing of this book, the descendant of the "Practical Guide." The book is designed somewhat on the model of the / Ching, with an introductory overview followed by commentaries that expand on the typical stages of the Hero's Journey. Book One, Mapping the Journey, is a quick survey of the territory Chapter 1 is a revision of the "Practical Guide" and a concentrated presentation of the twelve-stage Hero's Journey. You might think of this as the map of ajourney we are about to take together through the special world of story. Chapter 2 is an introduction to the archetypes, the dramatis personae of myth and story. It describes seven common character types or psychological functions found in all stories. Book Two, Stages of the Journey, is a more detailed examination of the twelve elements of the Hero's Journey. Each chapter is followed by suggestions for your further exploration, Questioning the Journey. An Epilogue, Looking Back on the Journey, deals with the special adventure of the Writer's Journey and some pitfalls to avoid on the road. It includes Hero's Journey analyses of some influential films including Titanic, PulpFiction, The Lion King, TheFull Monty, and Star Wars. In one case, The Lion King, I had the opportunity to apply the Hero's Journey ideas as a story consultant during the development process, and saw firsthand how useful these principles can be. Throughout the book I make reference to movies, both classic and current. You might want to view some of these films to see how the Hero's Journey works in practice. A representative list of films appears in Appendix 1. You might also select a single movie or story of your choice and keep it in mind as you take the Writer's Journey. Get to know the story of your choice by reading or viewing it several times, taking brief notes on what happens in each scene and how it functions in the drama. Running a movie on a VCR is ideal, because you can stop to write down the content of each scene while you grasp its meaning and relation to the rest of the story. I suggest you go through this process with a story or movie and use it to test out the ideas in this book. See if your story reflects the stages and archetypes of the Hero's Journey. (A sample worksheet for the Hero's Journey can be found in Appendix 3.) Observe how the stages are adapted to meet the needs of the story or the particular culture for which the story was written. Challenge these ideas, test them in practice, adapt them to your needs, and make them yours. Use these concepts to challenge and inspire your own stories. The Hero's Journey has served storytellers and their listeners since the very first stories were told, and it shows no signs of wearing out. Let's begin the Writer's Journey together to explore these ideas. I hope you find them useful as magic keys to the world of story and the labyrinth of life. A PRACTICAL GUIDE "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." —Willa Cather, in O Pioneers! In the long run, one of the most influential books of the 20th century may turn out to be Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The ideas expressed in Campbell's book are having a major impact on storytelling. Writers are becoming more aware of the ageless patterns which Campbell identifies, and are enriching their work with them. Inevitably Hollywood has caught on to the usefulness of Campbell's work. Filmmakers like George Lucas and George Miller acknowledge their debt to Campbell and his influence can be seen in the films of Steven Spielberg, John Boorman, Francis Coppola, and others. It's little wonder that Hollywood is beginning to embrace the ideas Campbell presents in his books. For the writer, producer, director, or designer his concepts are a welcome tool kit, stocked with sturdy instruments ideal for the craft of storytelling. With these tools you can construct a story to meet almost any situation, a story that will be dramatic, entertaining, and psychologically true. With this equipment you can diagnose the problems of almost any ailing plotHne, and make the corrections to bring it to its peak of performance. These tools have stood the test of time. They are older than the Pyramids, older than Stonehenge, older than the earliest cave paintings. THE WRITER'SJOURNEY/Vogler A PRACTICAL GUIDE Joseph Campbell's contribution to the tool kit was to gather the ideas together, recognize them, articulate them, name them, organize them. He exposed for the first time the pattern that lies behind every story ever told. The Hero with a ThousandFaces is his statement of the most persistent theme in oral tradition and recorded literature: the myth of the hero. Ip. his study of world hero myths Campbell discovered that they are all basically the same story, retold endlessly in infinite variation. He found that all storytelling, consciously or not, follows the ancient patterns of myth and that all stories, from the crudest jokes to the highest flights of literature, can be understood in terms of the Hero's Journey: the "monomyth" whose principles he lays out in the book. The pattern of the Hero's Journey is universal, occurring in every culture, in every time. It is as infinitely varied as the human race itself and yet its basic form remains constant. The Hero's Journey is an incredibly tenacious set of elements that springs endlessly from the deepest reaches of the human mind; different in its details for every culture, but fundamentally the same. Campbell's thinking runs parallel to that of the Swiss psychologist Carl G.Jung, who wrote about the archetypes: constantly repeating characters or energies which occur in the dreams of all people and the myths of all cultures. Jung suggested that these archetypes reflect different aspects of the human mind — that our personalities divide themselves into these characters to play out the drama of our lives. He noticed a strong correspondence between his patients' dream figures and the common archetypes of mythology. He suggested that both were coming from a deeper source, in the collective unconscious of the human race. The repeating characters of world myth such as the young hero, the wise old man or woman, the shapeshifter, and the shadowy antagonist are the same as the figures who appear repeatedly in our dreams and fantasies. That's whv mvths and most stories constructed on the mythological model have the ring of psychological truth. Such stories are accurate models of the workings of the human mind, true maps of the psyche. They are psychologically valid and emotionally realistic even when they portray fantastic, impossible, or unreal events. This accounts for the universal power of such stories. Stories built on the model of the Hero's Journey have an appeal that can be felt by everyone, because they well up from a universal source in the shared unconscious and reflect universal concerns. They deal with the childlike universal questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go when I die? What is good and what -is evil? What must I do about it? What will tomorrow be like? Where did yesterday go? Is there anybody else out there? The ideas embedded in mythology and identified by Campbell in The Hero with a ThousandFaces can be applied to understanding almost any human problem. They are a great key to life as well as a major instrumentfor dealing more effectively with a mass audience. If you want to understand the ideas behind the Hero's Journey, there's no substitute for actually reading Campbell's work. It's an experience that has away of changing people. It's also a good idea to read a lot of myths, but reading Campbell's work amounts to the same thing since Campbell is a master storyteller who delights in illustrating his points with examples from the rich storehouse of mythology. Campbell gives an outline of the Hero's Journey in Chapter W, "The Keys," of The Hero with a ThousandFaces. I've taken the liberty of amending the outline slightly, trying to reflect some of the common themes in movies with illustrations drawn from contemporary films and a few classics. You can compare the two outlines and terminology by examining Table One. THE WRITERS JOURNEY/Vogler A PRACTICAL GUIDE TABLE ONE Comparison of Outlines and Terminology The Writer's Journey The Hero with a Thousand Faces Act One Departure, Separation Ordinary World World of Common Day Call to Adventure Call to Adventure Refusal of the Call Refusal of the Call Meeting with the Mentor Supernatural Aid Crossing the First Threshold Crossing the First Threshold Belly of the Whale Act Two Descent, Initiation, Penetration. Tests, Allies, Enemies Road of Trials Approach to the Inmost Cave Ordeal Meeting with the Goddess Woman as Temptress Atonement with the Father Apotheosis Reward The Ultimate Boon Act Three Return The Road Back Refusal of the Return The Magic Flight Rescue from Within Crossing the Threshold Return Resurrection Master of the Two Worlds Return with the Elixir Freedom to Live I'm retelling the hero myth in my own way, and you should feel free to do the same. Every storyteller bends the mythic pattern to his or her own purpose or the needs of a particular culture That's why the hero has a thousand faces. A note about the term "hero": As used here, the word, like "doctor" or "poet," may refer to a woman or a man. THE HERO'S JOURNEY \ At heart, despite its infinite variety, the hero's story is always a Ijourney. A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar worldj,It may be an outward -journey to an actual place: a labyrinth, forest or cave, a strange city or country, a new locale that becomes the arena for her conflict with antagonistic, challenging forces. But there are as many stories that take the hero on an inward journey, one of the mind, the heart, the spirit. In any good story the hero grows and changes, making a journey from one way of being to the next: from despair to hope, weakness to strength, folly to wisdom, love to hate, and back again. It's these emotional journeys that hook an audience and make a story worth watching. The stages of the Hero's Journey can be traced in all kinds of stories, not just those that feature "heroic" physical action and adventure. The protagonist of every story is the hero of ajourney, even if the path leads only into his own mind or into the realm of relationships. The way stations of the Hero's Journey emerge naturally even when the writer is unaware of them, but some knowledge of this most ancient guide to storytelling is useful in identifying problems and telling better stories. Consider these twelve stages as a map of the Hero's Journey, one of many ways to get from here to there, but one of the most flexible, durable and dependable. THE WRITER'SJOURNEY/Vogler A PRACTICAL GUIDE THE STAGES OF THE HERO'S JOURNEY 1. Ordinary World 2. Gall to Adventure 3. Refusal of the Call 4. Meeting with the Mentor 5. Grossing the First Threshold 6. Tests, Allies, Enemies 7. Approach to the Inmost Cave 8. Ordeal 9. Reward (Seizing the Sword) 10. The Road Back 11. Resurrection 12. Return with the Elixir Crisis Climax 4T •/w, SAr% /A// os & -f # w < at this ooint. as the THE WRITER'SJOURNEY/Vogler A PRACTICAL GUIDE hero is pursued on The Road Back by the vengeful forces she has disturbed by Seizing the sword, the elixir, or the treasure. Thus Luke and Leia are furiously pursued by Darth Vader as they escape the Death Star. The Road Back in E.T. is the moonlight bicycle flight of Elliott and E. T. as they escape from "Keys" (Peter Coyote), who represents repressive governmental authority. This stage marks the decision to return to the Ordinary World. The hero realizes that the Special World must eventually be left behind, and there are still dangers, temptations, and tests ahead. 11. RESURRECTION In ancient times, hunters and warriors had to be purified before they returned to their communities, because they had blood on their hands. The hero who has been to the realm of the dead must be reborn and cleansed in one last Ordeal of death and Resurrection before returning to the Ordinary World of the living. This is often a second life-and-death moment, almost a replay of the death and rebirth of the Ordeal. Death and darkness get in one last, desperate shot before being finally defeated. It's a kind of final exam for the hero, who must be tested once more to see if he has really learned the lessons of the Ordeal. The hero is transformed by these moments of death-and-rebirth, and is able to return to ordinary life reborn as a new being with newinsights. The Star Wars films play with this element constantly. AH three of the films to date feature a final battle scene in which Luke is almost killed, appears to be dead for a moment, and then miraculously survives. Each Ordeal wins him new knowledge and command over the Force. He is transformed into a new being by his experience. Axel Foley in the climactic sequence of Beverly Hills Cop once again faces death at the hands of the villain, but is rescued bv the intervention of the Beverly Hills police force. He emerges from the experience with a greater respect for cooperation, and is a more complete human being. An Officer and a Gentleman offers a more complex series of final ordeals, as the hero faces death in a number of ways. Zack's selfishness dies as he gives up the chance for a personal athletic trophy in favor of helping another cadet over an obstacle. His relationship with his girlfriend seems to be dead, and he must survive the crushing blow of his best friend's suicide. As if that weren't enough, he also endures a final hand-to-hand, life-or-death battle with his drill instructor, but survives it all and is transformed into the gallant "officer and gentieman" of the title. 12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR The hero Returns to the Ordinary World, but the journey is meaningless unless she brings back some Elixir, treasure, or lesson from the Special World. The Elixir is a magic potion with the power to heal. It may be a great treasure like the Grail that magically heals the wounded land, or it simply might be knowledge or experience that could be useful to the community someday. Dorothy returns to Kansas with the knowledge that she is loved, and that "There's no place like home." E.T. returns home with the experience of friendship with humans. Luke Skywalker defeats Darth^--Vader (for the time being) and restores peace and order to the galaxy Zack Mayo wins his commission and leaves the Special World of $i| training base with a new perspective. In the sparkling new unifor'm of an officer (with a new attitude to match) he literally sweeps his \ t/g f girlfriend off her feet and carries her away. Sometimes the Elixir is treasure won on the quest, but it may be love, freedom, wisdom, or the knowledge that the Special World exists and can be survived. Sometimes it's just coming home with a good story to tell. THE WRITER'S JO URNE Y/Vogler A PRACTICAL GUIDE Unless something is brought back from the Ordeal in the Inmost Cave, the hero is doomed to repeat the adventure. Many comedies use this ending, as a foolish character refuses to learn his lesson and embarks on the same folly that got him in trouble in the first place. To recap the Hero's Journey: .j 1. Heroes are introduced in the ORDINARY WORLD, where 2. they receive the CALL TO ADVENTURE. a They are RELUCTANT at first or REFUSE THE CALL, but 4. are encouraged by a MENTOR to 5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD and enter the Special World, where 6. they encounter TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES. 7. They APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE, crossing a second threshold 8. where they endure the ORDEAL. 9. They take'possession of their REWARD and 10. are pursued on THE ROAD BACK to the Ordinary World. 11. They cross the third threshold, experience a RESURRECTION, and are transformed by the experience. 12. They RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR, a boon or treasure to benefit the Ordinary World. The Hero's Journey is a skeletal framework that should be fleshed out with the details and surprises of the individual story. The structure should not call attention to itself, nor should it be followed too precisely. The order of the stages given here is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power. The values of the Hero's Journey are what's important. The images of the basic version — young heroes seeking magic swords from old wizards, maidens risking death to save loved ones, knights riding off to fiffht evil draorms in Heen ravps anH sn nn — aw ii-iet e^mVinlc nf universal life experiences. The symbols can be changed infinitely to suit the story at hand and the needs of the society. The Hero's Journey is easily translated to contemporary dramas, comedies, romances, or action-adventures by substituting modern equivalents for the symbolic figures and props of the hero's story. The wise old man or woman may be a real shaman or wizard, but may also be any kind of Mentor or teacher, doctor or therapist, "crusty but benign" boss, tough but fair top sergeant, parent, grandparent, or guiding, helping figure. Modern heroes may not be going into caves and labyrinths to fight mythical beasts, but they do enter a Special World and an Inmost Cave by venturing into space, to the bottom of the sea, into the depths of a modern city, or into their own hearts. The patterns of myth can be used to tell the simplest comic book story or the most sophisticated drama. The Hero's Journey grows and matures as new experiments are tried within its framework. Changing the traditional sex and relative ages of the archetypes only makes it more interesting, and allows ever more complex webs of understanding to be spun among them. The basic figures can be combined, or each can be divided into several characters to show different aspects of the same idea. The Hero's Journey is infinitely flexible, capable of endless variation without sacrificing any of its magic, and it will outlive us ail. Now that we've looked over the map, let's meet the characters who populate the landscape of storytelling: the Archetypes.