Hero's Journey?

Classes began last week, so mercifully I don’t have much time to get long winded as I’m back in the old teaching saddle. Things have gone along smoothly. On the first day of classes, however, someone asked if I intended to discuss the monomyth, the hero’s journey!  Joseph Campbell had so gone out of my thinking that I wasn’t even understanding what was being asked at first. Then it all came flooding back in like one of those crazy rip tides going up the Amazon. Yes, Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s Journey! Joseph Campbell first brought up the concept in The Hero with a Thousand Faces back in 1949. I can’t quite remember now where I first encountered it now because I’m getting old, I guess. 

I don’t often talk about it as a writing tool. Somebody’s probably going to disagree here, but I’ve never known a good story to come out of somebody using the old HJ as a story template. How did writers create stories before 1949 anyway? His generalized list of story parts, it’s worth pointing out, came after the fact of an awful lot of story creation, and it is a general list with parts that can be interpreted lots of different ways. I don’t think Campbell intended it as a writer’s guide. A writer who sets out to create from this shopping list of parts can expect disappointment. I’ve heard Campbell spoken of by teachers who never quite clarify what a writer is supposed to do with this information. For some reason it is deemed important to know, and often cited, learn this and it will help, but the specific end to be achieved by knowing it is murky.

The writer who feels the need to fall back on the HJ for inspiration is going to create a story filled with parts that don’t mesh. I’ve seen beginning writers trying to shoehorn something in that doesn’t quite work or seems to come out of nowhere because Campbell mentioned it. I think that writers who have a latent desire for Homeric fame, for the taste of epic tales, imagine that inserting a goddess or a threshold to be crossed or the “granting of a boon,” fixes things, leads to epic proportions. More often, it just makes everything a mess. At least, that’s what I’ve seen happen to people. The only way to get good is to forget about being good. As a writer, don’t enter into a story with a shopping list, an axe to grind, or a set of expectations. (I’d suggest that life is lived best without expectations as well.) 

There are patterns that many stories fall into, of course. Blake Snyder’s “beat sheet,” for instance, I’d consider a modern day, stripped down, revved up, and simplified version of the Hero’s Journey. I highly recommend that those considering writing stories, especially three act stories, read a copy of Save the Cat. The beat sheet, found in his book, supplies a template for three act stories, though it has unfortunately become a grist mill whereupon lots of stories that begin as nutritious whole grain come out as finely ground meal, all the same. What’s missing with most story templates is the sense of why the writer is telling the story in the first place. Just going along and filling in the blanks with boons and goddesses often kills whatever active germ the story once had. 

If you want to write, write. Writing shouldn’t begin with a “paint by numbers” template. Start by imagining characters who want something or are bothered by something. (The messed up world we all inhabit has never been more filled with story possibilities or reasons to tell them.) Then consider how to best make other people follow along and feel what your characters are feeling, avoiding false notes as much as possible. When you get done with all that, and you want to see if there’s something that you can construe as meeting the goddess, or crossing the threshold, then please go back and analyze yourself, but never assume that anybody else is going to do that. Attempting to include all the things that Campbell is talking about is a big mistake.

If a writer has a good idea, but gets stuck, or feels that something is missing, Campbell’s rather complicated list of things might be worth considering as inspiration, a thing to get the brain moving. Avoid fill-in-the-blank writing at all cost. That’s my thought for the day. Peace be with you.

Mark