The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

A bit of a review and some exercises based on

The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters by Christopher Vogler

ISBN 0-941188-13-2

Enjoy!

Comments

Re: Writer's Journey (Part Two)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Dramatic Functions

Audience Identification

(P. 40) "The dramatic purpose of the hero is to give the audience a window into the story. Each person hearing a tale or watching a play or movie is invited, in the early stages of the story, to identify with the hero, to merge with him and see the world of the story through his eyes. Storytellers do this by giving their heroes a combination of qualities, a mix of universal and unique characteristics."

Growth

"Another story function of the hero is learning or growth. In evaluating a script sometimes it's hard to tell who is the main character, or who should be. Often the best answer is: the one who learns or grows the most in the course of the story. Heroes overcome obstacles and achieve goals, but they also gain new knowledge and wisdom. The heart of many stories is the learning that goes on between a hero and a mentor; or a hero and a lover, or even between a hero and a villain. We are all each other's teachers."

Action

"Another heroic function is acting or doing. The hero is usually the most active person in the script. His will and desire is what drives most stories forward. A frequent flaw in screenplays is that the hero is fairly active throughout the story, but at the most critical moment becomes passive and is rescued by the timely arrival of some outside force. At this moment above all, a hero should be fully active, in control of his fate. The hero should perform the decisive action of the story, the action that requires taking the most risk or responsibility."

Sacrifice

"People commonly think of heroes as strong or brave, but these qualities are secondary to sacrifice -- the true mark of a hero. Sacrifice is the hero's willingness to give up something of value, perhaps even her own life, on behalf of an ideal or a group...."

Dealing with Death

"At the heart of every story is a confrontation with death. If the hero doesn't face actual death, then there is the threat of death or symbolic death..."

Heroism in Other Archetypes

Unheroic characters can grow to be heroic; occasional heroism can overtake anyone.

Character Flaws

(P. 43) "Interesting flaws humanize a character. We can recognize bits of ourselves in a hero who is challenged to overcome inner doubts, errors in thinking, guilt or trauma from the past, or fear of the future. Weaknesses, imperfections, quirks, and vices immediately make a hero or any character more real and appealing..."

"Flaws also give a character somewhere to go -- the so-called 'character arc' in which a character develops from condition A to condition Z through a series of steps. Flaws are a starting point of imperfection or incompleteness from which a character can grow...."

Varieties of Hero [Mayo, mustard, pickles, lettuce... have it your...:-]

I will let you read the book for details, but there are willing and unwilling heroes, the antihero (an outsider, rejected by society, and yet...one of us), group oriented and loner heroes, and catalyst heroes.

That's probably more than enough from the book for today.

Re: Writer's Journey (Part Two)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

I would like to suggest a rather simple exercise based on this. Take one of the submissions from the list and look for the hero. Do a little analysis: how does this hero serve for audience identification, what growth do they achieve, how about their action, do they exemplify sacrifice, and what is the death that they deal with -- and how do they deal with it?

Don't forget to look for the character flaws...

So this exercise is simply to analyze the use of the hero in a submission.

Another exercise, slightly more difficult, is to consider a character that you may be working on. Could they be a hero? If they were, how would you provide for audience identification? What kind of growth would they be likely to achieve? What kind of actions would they take? What sort of situation would make them sacrifice themselves -- and for what or whom? What kind of death do they need to experience?

Perhaps one more exercise? Pick a number from 1 to 6...

1. "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." F. Scott FitzGerald (1945)

2. "The greatest obstacle to being heroic, is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt, and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and went to be obeyed." Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)

3. "Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes." Victor Hugo (1862)

4. "No hero to me is the man who, by easy shedding of his blood, purchases fame: my hero is he who, without death, can win praise." Martial, Epigrams (A.D. 86)

5. "We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod." Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1766)

6. "A hero is a man who does what he can." Romain Rolland (1904)

[Quotations taken from The International Thesaurus of Quotations by Rhoda Thomas Tripp ISBN 0-06-091382-7]

Okay, you have a quotation. Now consider what light this may shed on the hero. What does this quote say about the psychological ego of the hero, the desire for identity, the search for distinctiveness and self expression? What does it say about the dramatic functions of the hero:

- audience identification
- growth
- action
- sacrifice
- dealing with death (symbolic or actual)
- character flaws

(Having considered this quote and a hero, you may want to put them in a situation, a scene, a boiling cauldron that will test what your hero is made of and show us the results...could be a story, a poem, or something else:-)

"Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy."
Ruthless Rhymes [1901]. Tender-Heartedness
Harry Graham