If you’ve studied story telling at all, you’ve undoubtedly run across the Hero’s Journey. You may even be under the impression it is the ONLY story model and that ALL stories are actually just retellings of the Hero’s Journey. To his credit, Joseph Campbell did a fairly decent job convincing the literary community that the Hero’s Journey was the only story out there, (It’s not. In fact, I contend there are at least three outlines on which a good story can be modeled) and that furthermore, all stories must follow the formula, as if the outline itself were some kind of magic bullet to good story telling. (It isn’t.)
Many authors treat Campbell like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai and the Hero’s Journey might as well be Commandments carved in stone. They follow his outline with near religious fervor. And to be honest, the Hero’s Journey is a great story. That’s why we keep telling it to each other. Most of the movies Hollyweird pumps out every year are based on Campbell’s outline and a large portion of all novels written are penned with the Hero’s Journey in mind, whether the author consciously did it or not. (Campbell makes a pretty convincing case that most people have so thoroughly internalized the Hero’s Journey, they recreate it subconsciously. I suspect that’s true for most of the successful pantsers.)
Let’s get one thing straight; I’m not saying the Hero’s Journey is bad. Not by a long shot. I actually think it’s pretty darn good and a new author could do much worse than study the Hero’s Journey and use it to plot novels.
What I am saying is that the Hero’s Journey, for all its utilitarian universality (say that three times fast), comes with a built in flaw.
What flaw you might ask?
I’m talking about sequels.
Ever wondered why so many big budget Hollywood franchises like the Matrix crash and burn so quickly? The fault lies in the Hero’s Journey.
If you want to make a living as an author, you are going to need to write more than one book and the Hero’s Journey doesn’t leave much room for sequels. The Hero’s Journey is all about character growth and personal development. By the end of the story, the main character needs to mature into a hero. In the Hero outline, the main character under goes a trial and gains the elixir in order to re-emerge as a quasi-Christ like figure who will basically save mankind.
I used The Matrix as an example for good reason. If you’ve seen the movie you are probably even now recognizing that Neo, the film’s main character, is a perfect example of the Hero’s Journey. He starts out completely unaware of the “secret world”. He refuses the call to adventure before being thrust into a new and dangerous landscape. He meets new friends and makes enemies. He finds a mentor, becomes the hero and, after literally dying, he emerges as a savior of mankind. By the end of the film, Neo is basically a god in his own right. He’s bullet proof and he can fly.
What’s the problem? I hear you say.
Let me ask you a question: What do you do with an invincible character?
If your hero has become a god in human form by the end of book one, where do you go in book two? The answer is nowhere interesting. That’s why the sequels to the Matrix made me want to gouge my eyes out. Neo could dodge bullets and fly. He could, and did, single-handedly take out scores of enemies. There is no tension in movies two and three because Neo has no equal as far as enemies are concerned and nothing left to learn. He has already become everything he can be ( to borrow a phrase from the army ).
And before you start thinking this is an isolated example, most film franchises suffer from this same problem. Some of them succumb more slowly, while others (like the Matrix) have basically shot themselves in the foot after the first film.
Star Wars has the same problem, only George Lucas was smart enough to spread out Luke Skywalker’s character growth over three films. Never the less, by the end of Return of the Jedi, let’s face it, Luke has nowhere else to go and nothing left to learn. He has become complete. A fourth film with the same characters would have just been redundant. The audience already knows Luke is going to solve any problems he runs up against. He restored balance to the Force for cripes sake. I’m pretty sure he could easily handle a few Imperial holdouts or galactic outlaws.
There is a reason Tolkien stopped writing after The Return of the King and Back to the Future 4 never got made. The heroes of these stories had no more room to grow. They had nothing left to learn.
If you examine most of the franchises built on the Hero’s Journey, you’ll find this same problem again and again. A hero can only grow and mature so much before, like Neo, they reach mythical status.
And here is the worse part: the fatal flaw of the Hero’s Journey is baked into the cake.
If you are using the Hero’s Journey correctly, your story world has an expiration date. You can’t avoid it. The best you can do, like George Lucas, is grow your characters slowly over the course of several books.
Harry Potter is a great example of the Hero’s Journey done well. JK Rowling realized that her hero needed to star in six more books and she only allowed him to grow his powers so much in each story. By the end of book one, Harry is still basically a fish out of water and struggling to understand his strange new powers. Could you imagine if he had been an all powerful wizard by the end of the Sorcerer’s Stone (Philosopher’s Stone for our European readers)? The next six books would have been incredibly dull since we would already know Harry can easily deal with anything Voldemort throws his way. Instead, readers wonder how Harry will overcome each new obstacle because he’s still just a kid and not even a very good wizard. But even Harry Potter reached his inevitable end. By book seven, (I’d argue book 6) Harry pretty much had the wizarding business sorted out.
All this character growth is a bit of a sticky wicket for authors who need to produce a book a year if they want to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on.
One obvious solution is to write three books in a series before moving on to a new story world, or at the very least, new characters. Another, I’d argue better, solution is to use the Adventure Outline as the model for your stories. You’ll get a lot more milage from it without writing yourself into a corner.
Be sure to check out my blog post on the Adventure Story coming next week.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Hero’s Journey. Do you agree it has inherent flaws? Or is it the ultimate story vehicle. Let me know what you think.
So, I realize I’m late to the game here, but I don’t thin that there are only two plots. David Farland taught three (The Hero’s Journey, the cyclic, and the onion skin, but spoke of more). Orson Scott Card coined the M.I.C.E. Quotient in “How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy,” and I think that is a more brilliant way to look at story.
M. is for Milieu. This is a story about someone who goes to a new and strange place, and it’s natural ending is when they decide to either stay or go. Think the movie Avatar or the book Gulliver’s Travels.
I. is for Idea. These are heists, missions, and some adventures. They start with a plan or gathering a team to execute a plan and end with the success of failure of the plan.
C. is your Character story. A Christmas Carol is the ultimate example, wherein the main character starts as unlikeable and changes throughout the story.
E. is for Event. This is your murder mystery, or catastrophe, and the other half of the adventure stories, in which some event happens at the beginning and the story doesn’t conclude until the mystery is solved, people learn to live in the aftermath of the disaster, or help each other survive through it. The movie 2012, Titanic, any Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie story, or adventures such as The Road Warrior/Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome/Fury Road, Night of the Comet, etc.
David Farland’s Onions Skin Plot is the Spy Thriller/Murder Mystery plot, where the truth is hidden behind many layers. His Cyclic plot is borrowed from Usrula K. Le Guin, who thought The Hero’s Journey was very masculine, and feminine plots followed more cycles. Where a child is orphaned and saved by a village apothecary, but falls in love and goes out into the world only to have her hopes destroyed, and upon returning finds her mentor dead and replaces her . . . that type of thing.
I think these are a handful of constructive other angles with which to look at plot.
I love this input. And by no means are there only two plots, but as with everything in modern culture we tend to boil things down to the most simple concepts possible. Maybe you should write an article on this. I’d gladly put it up on Literary Rebel!
My Thoughts on Plot the article?
That’s an interesting digression from my novel. 🙂 And I have lots of thoughts about plot, but maybe not enough for an article. The main thought is that it’s a literary “Sacred Cow.” I was always told plotting was hard, that it wasn’t just a list of events, that it was difficult to break down . . . I think that is “gatekeeper” talk. Like Hemingway giving bad advice because those asking should know better, or to cut down on the competition.
The problem with plotting is threefold:
1. Pantsers or Gardeners, or whatever you choice term for that type of writer is, think if they do any planning, it will ruin the story for them. I don’t think having an idea of where you’re going is going to hurt your imagination.
2. Architects or Plotters, or whatever you want to call them, think of plot as a recipe which they have to stick to. Plot can p=be as tight or loose as you’ve comfortable with. You can leave room to explore sidetracks if you want.
3. The Hero’s Journey. Because people think that this is THE recipe. It’s not. What most people miss about Campbell’s theory is that it’s comprised of a LOT of stories. It’s true you can pull four different stories which have the same elements when compared side-by-side, but you can also pull out four which don’t start with a farm boy, don’t have a call to arms, don’t have a mentor, and don’t lose that mentor. Campbell pointed out the commonalities, but whatever didn’t fit the mold, he either ignored, or found a way to jam it into one of his subsections. Well, yeah, if you create a vague enough subsection headings, you’re obviously going to be able to fit a vast arrays of events under it—but they’re *different* events, if you actually examine them.
I believe there are a few simple plots, like the notes on a guitar, but thousands of possible *shapes* and *modes* you can play them in. take the M.I.C.E. Quotient I mentioned in my first comment: They are the natural beginnings and endings for those story types (the core notes, if you will) the type of plot (Romance, Quest/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, Revenge, Mystery or Horror) are the modes with which you compose, and the lens through which you focus (Point of View characters with their experiences and ways of thinking built on their milieus) are the shapes from which the story grows.
I know that’s a lot to think about, but, in essence a story is about a person (human or not, we need to attach a personality/persona to follow them) with an objective, and their success or failure in getting it. So, when you come up with an interesting character with an interesting problem/objective/heart’s desire and decide whether or not they will solve/achieve/get it, THAT’s the true skeleton of your story. Simple, right?
Their goal/objective/heart’s desire determines the type of story it is (M.I.C.E. Quotient) and the genre, because that objective must revolve around a speculative element for it to be speculative fiction. And it’s true for most of the plot shapes, because the objective will make clear if it’s Romance, Quest/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, Revenge, Mystery, or Horror. Then you come up with a list of events—yes, there is an actual list of events for for outlining a plot—in keeping with the genre. The list doesn’t have to be extensive, but it can be, your choice. It is the roadmap you’ll follow to from the beginning of the story type until its natural end.
You can complicate plots, but that usually involves subplots for other characters—and each of those can conform to a different type—but you still have to have one overarching story plot to know where to begin and where to end. All in all, building a plot is simple, building a complicated plot is just playing with multiple plots within the perimeters of the main.
And that’s my brain seepage on plot. 🙂
Campbell forgot the sequels in myth. When the hero succumbs to hubris and is brought low by Nemesis.
If you go to Classical Mythology, you find that the Greeks did not believe in happy endings for their heroes
Jason brings back the Golden Fleece, and Medea kills his children
Agamemnon conquers Troy and is murdered by his wife
Hercules carries out the Twelve Tasks and dies burned by Neso’s tunic.
Bellerophon vanquishes the Chimera and after he falls off Pegasus wanders the wilderness, crippled.
Theseus kills the Minotaur and then causes the death of his father and of his son Hyppolitus
Oedipus kills the Sphynx and ends up a blind exile, after he discovers he killed his father and married his mother
Odysseus retunrs to Ithaca after much wandering, but then is killed by his son Telegonus (which he had with Circe)
There is no happy ending to the Hero’s Journey