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Consider Donald Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz. This hero’s journey is what the book is about. Yes, all books, whether fiction or nonfiction, should have some type of hero. Hurray! Can A Nonfiction Book Have A Hero’s Journey? The new world no longer poses a threat, and they have conquered the threat of defeat. Now that the hero has mastered both the challenging, new world and the old world they came from, they have the freedom to live. Our hero is now master of the normal world and the new world. Sometimes, the journey back is a struggle unto itself, and sometimes it’s smooth sailing–this is our transition into the resolution. This is the end of act two, and from here, we transition into act three. Everything in the novel culminates here, and everything afterward is resolution. This is the hero doing what they set out to do, or the climax of the piece. Your character is making friends, enemies, facing trials, and adapting to the new world on their quest to achieve their goal. Tests, Allies, EnemiesĪlso known as ‘the road of trials,’ this is the bulk of your novel, or that big middle chunk that authors like to complain about. This is the start of the second act, or the initiation. This is the point of no return! The hero has entered the unknown world, and there’s no going back to the way things were before. This new guide is a mentor character, and they’ll often have something to help our hero out along the journey. The hero has either gone off on an adventure or has been thrust into one–now, they get some sort of guide to take them through this new world. Doing this means that the character must be thrust into the action against their will. This doesn’t always happen, but sometimes, the hero will refuse the call at first. Maybe someone shows up at their door and asks them to go on an adventure, or they run into the love of their life–whatever it is, this is the part of the story where the character is asked to leave their state of normalcy and embark on an adventure. The characters aren’t being challenged yet, themselves, but this is where we learn about the world’s premise. We get a shot of the characters, the setting, what the characters want and need, and maybe a little bit of what tensions and challenges exist in this world. This is our picture of the regular world, before anything comes along to muck it up. Let’s take a look at the whole thing, piece by piece. This is your classic three-act structure, and if you don’t like a detailed outline, this might be enough.īut we can go a little deeper. We can break the hero’s journey into three big chunks: the departure, the initiation, and the return. In a lot of ways, these plot points and the order they’re in are what we know and understand as storytelling. These beats are familiar, and audiences have grown to expect them. However, the hero’s journey examples, and therefore structure, reliy heavily on setup and payoff.
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While it does apply to many, this isn’t a universal structure–not every TV show, movie, or book will fall into this, and yours doesn’t have to, either. The hero’s journey doesn’t necessarily apply to every story.
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Instead of creating a new story structure, Campbell identified common beats and pieces seen in stories across genre and type. Campbell was inspired in part by Carl Jung, who believed in overarching archetypes–the mother, the father, etc. The hero’s journey is a narrative structure popularized by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
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What is the hero’s journey? And how can we learn to identify it in the stories we watch? Learning how the hero’s journey works is the first step in learning how to use it yourself, so let’s break down what the hero’s journey is and walk through a few examples of how it works in practice. A solid outline can really make or break a draft, and the hero’s journey can be as detailed or flexible as you need for your story.īut let’s slow down. If you’re an author, you’re probably also familiar with using the hero’s journey to outline. You may not even know it, but most of your favorite stories probably follow the hero’s journey. Some of the best hero’s journey examples make up the tried-and-true storytelling structure that makes up the bones of our favorite movies, books, and TV shows.
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