We have Hollywood screenwriter and executive Christopher Vogler to thank for our condensed version of the Hero's Journey. Let's take a look at the beginning: The Ordinary World. Today, I'd like to take you even further into the first of those steps.
You can learn all about the twelve steps that make up the universal structure of great stories in this article. It is a storytelling structure that anyone can study and utilize to tell a story that readers will love. The Hero's Journey is a timeless combination of characters, events, and symbols frequently structured as a sequence of twelve steps. This successful record is so long, in fact, that we don't know when it started.Īnd it all begins with a person living an ordinary life. Thankfully this structure has a proven track record of success. Decades ago, these two storytelling experts identified several common trends that appear in great works from every generation and every culture.
In storytelling, the hero's journey has to do with the stages of the hero as researched by Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler. How can you leverage this world and the hero's journey in your own writing? But before any hero can embark on their journey, they must start in the ordinary world. From The Odyssey to Star Wars to Toy Story, the Hero's Journey is the foundation of millennia of storytelling.