Thanks for visiting my new blog. This here is my very first post. Many more to come…

In many of my posts on Building Worlds Blog I will be reviewing parts of movies or books (well, audiobooks probably), and presenting my thoughts on how well those stories line up with the established path of the Hero’s Journey.

“What’s the Hero’s Journey?” you ask? Get thee to Google, my friend, and look it up. Better yet, go get a copy of The Writer’s Journey by Vogler and enjoy. No time for that? Well, okay, I’ll distill it for you. The Hero’s Journey is a twelve-step pattern that humans have used (quite unintentionally until the Journey was defined) to tell stories. Modern writers of all kinds use it as a guideline to structure their stories. It is a guide, not a requirement. Though, as we are all children of modern media, throughout which the Hero’s Journey is carefully used and hidden, I dare you to write a sensical, and enjoyable, piece of fiction that doesn’t include most of those twelve steps. 

I finished the first draft of my first novel before I ever learned about the Hero’s Journey. After taking a class on it and analyzing what I had written, I discovered I had used ten of the twelve steps without even trying, and mostly in the proper order as well. I had also included a number of established character archetypes as well (though we’ll get into those in future blog posts). Seeing the Hero’s Journey laid out in my own work confirmed for me how effective it is as a tool to help writers tell coherent — and entertaining — stories.

Study the Journey enough and you won’t be able to watch, listen to, or read another piece of fiction without analyzing it first, and enjoying it second. So, beware. But, if you really want to be an author, you gotta do it.

Why do it? Well, as an aspiring author, analyzing the structure and success of other stories helps me with crafting my own. With practice, it becomes second nature to identify the various milestones in a story and analyze how effective (or ineffective) they are at the implementation. While adherence to the Hero’s Journey isn’t a requirement to tell a great story, you will use some components of it — it’s impossible not to. And if you get stuck somewhere along your path, it’s a pretty good resource to use to analyze what’s not going right in your manuscript. Plus, it’s kinda fun to break down a movie at a deeper level on the drive home. At least I think it’s fun.

So to take part in the fun, check back often, and join in the discussion in the comments (be nice!). Don’t forget to sign up for the e-mail list to be notified of new posts!