BSA 104 (Scriptwriting) Week 1 : The Hero's Journey
The Hero's Journey
This week in class we looked at Star Wars and why it is a good story, a large reason for it's success is that it adopted the age old "Hero's Journey" structure, we were asked to look this up as homework.
In 1949 Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he describes a narrative pattern that is used again and again in myth and fiction, he calls this The Hero's Journey. It's a cyclical set of 12 events that begins and ends in the hero's ordinary world, but his quest takes him to and back from the supernatural.
A good video explaining these steps:
Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell believed that The Hero's Journey's prominence in different cultures myths and legends is a result of the collective unconscious. Where we have individual unconsciousness, determined by our own personal experiences, we also have a collective unconscious, which is made up of elements and cognitive structures that we all share. The way we learn and improve, for example, is something all humans share. How we experience life and approach its challenges is also the theory behind why the Hero's Journey is such a universal concept.
The 12 steps are the same steps we take when we take on a new challenge or when we set out to learn or achieve something new. While there may not be monsters or a rebirth in our real lives, the idea of challenges and learning from failure is constantly present.
The hero's journey is not set in stone, while the general structure is the same across the board, there are many versions with slight variations. As you can see in the image below where the Hero's refusal of the offer is a key part of the journey. The Journey can be distilled to three main phases:
Departure: the Hero leaves the familiar world behind.
Initiation: the Hero learns to navigate the unfamiliar world of adventure.
Return: the Hero returns to the familiar world.
This week in class we looked at Star Wars and why it is a good story, a large reason for it's success is that it adopted the age old "Hero's Journey" structure, we were asked to look this up as homework.
In 1949 Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he describes a narrative pattern that is used again and again in myth and fiction, he calls this The Hero's Journey. It's a cyclical set of 12 events that begins and ends in the hero's ordinary world, but his quest takes him to and back from the supernatural.
A good video explaining these steps:
Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell believed that The Hero's Journey's prominence in different cultures myths and legends is a result of the collective unconscious. Where we have individual unconsciousness, determined by our own personal experiences, we also have a collective unconscious, which is made up of elements and cognitive structures that we all share. The way we learn and improve, for example, is something all humans share. How we experience life and approach its challenges is also the theory behind why the Hero's Journey is such a universal concept.
The 12 steps are the same steps we take when we take on a new challenge or when we set out to learn or achieve something new. While there may not be monsters or a rebirth in our real lives, the idea of challenges and learning from failure is constantly present.
The hero's journey is not set in stone, while the general structure is the same across the board, there are many versions with slight variations. As you can see in the image below where the Hero's refusal of the offer is a key part of the journey. The Journey can be distilled to three main phases:
Departure: the Hero leaves the familiar world behind.
Initiation: the Hero learns to navigate the unfamiliar world of adventure.
Return: the Hero returns to the familiar world.
(Retrieved from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHerosJourney)
This leads into three act structure which we'll probably learn about later down the line.
Great - thanks, Bo!
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