It’s Time to Leave the Hero’s Journey Behind
The audience has evolved, so should your stories
Popularized by Joseph Campbell almost a century ago, the concept of the Hero’s Journey has become arguably the most influential scientific framework for storytelling to date. From literature, films, video games and other creative industries, to the business world and academic research, there seems to be no place that the legacy of the Hero’s Journey has not reached. Over the years, it has grown into an ultimate framework for storytelling that plays a central role in many scholars’ studies and countless media products in pop culture.
Perhaps the prime example of such a role is George Lucas’ original Star Wars movies trilogy. The critically-acclaimed three-part epic, widely acknowledged to be directly influenced by Campbell’s work, also known as the “monomyth theory”, has initiated one of the most revolutionary, valuable and influential entertainment entities in modern history. The reason? It narrates the story of Luke Skywalker’s journey in a strictly “monomythical” way. The result? The Star Wars franchise still remains one of the “biggest successes” at the box office even now, over two decades since the first movie was released.
However, the Hero’s Journey seems to be losing its relevance over the last decade. On TV, Game of Thrones dominated with more blood, sex, abruptness and tyranny than transformation and atonement. At the box office, in the wake of superheroes’ invasion of the pop culture, the most anticipated characters were Thanos, Loki, and the Joker, who can hardly be called Heroes, and whose journeys are rather secondary than primary where they appear. Even worse, when looking at literature, the sexually explicit three-volume Fifty Shades of Grey books were the 3 best-selling books of the decade despite the overall negative consensus among readers and critics alike. Finally, coming back to the real life, the rise of fake news has proven that you do not need such a complex method as the Hero’s Journey to empower others and create impact (though for all the wrong reasons).
All those examples are not to claim that the Hero’s Journey is no longer valuable. It may still be, but digitalization and the new media have transformed storytelling techniques as well as the ways in which stories are consumed by their audience. They have made the audience evolve and using the Hero’s Journey in its original form is no longer sufficient. Modern stories must evolve — above and beyond the century-old framework. In this article, I will present a set of well-known yet underused concepts that, when combined with the Hero’s Journey, could supplement its weaknesses and turn your stories into their more relevant and empowering selves.
The Story — The simple idea behind what makes a good story
When I first encountered the Hero’s Journey, my initial thought was “Why does it have to be so complicated?”. I mean no disrespect — I myself has been introducing over-complicated reports, presentations and publications at work all the time. What I am implying is that maybe the audience prefer simpler stories that follow simpler frameworks.
Campbell’s work is known to feature 17 steps in the full cycle of a monomyth, which are then categorized into 3 major phases: Departure, Initiation and Return. In addition, it has also been adopted and adapted into various variations by others, most notably Disney’s Christopher Vogler, a widely used variation in pop culture. While some may enjoy making and consuming complex stories coming out of complex frameworks as such, the majority may not: the main audience nowadays are frequently described as “lazy” and “impatient”, and will not afford the time and efforts for such complexity.
How do we make stories simpler yet still good? When exploring the patterns among good stories, StoryBranding author and Story-Lab founder Jim Signorelli observed that a good story can be described in one 14-word sentence:
A narrative about a character dealing with an obstacle to achieve some important goal.
All you need is to develop a character, make them face an obstacle, find the meaning or purpose of facing such obstacle, and narrate it. In a way, this logic encaptures and summarizes the Hero’s Journey for what it stands for. The hero is but a character, the journey only makes sense if the hero faces and overcomes his ultimate challenge, and his purpose makes him return to the ordinary world. The difference here, though, is that it is essentially less complicated.
The Characters — More than just the Hero
As outlined above, the character is the first component of a good story. However, not any kind of character would do — good stories are built with archetypes. Most popularly associated with Carl Jung’s work on the “collective unconscious”, archetypes are commonly referred to as the ultimate, universally recognized forms or dimensions of personality. They serve as the ideal-typical (and not dehumanized stereotypical) characters regularly depicted in stories. Their storytelling power lies in the ability to connect with the audience because they can easily identify and “feel” the characters and, thus, the stories.
As you may have already noticed, Jung’s 12 archetypes include the Hero. More importantly, it is one of the most used archetypes in stories and storytelling. This explains partly why the Hero’s Journey is so popular (and not the Regular Guy’s Journey). However, sticking to the Hero alone is not diverse enough. Again, the Hero is but one of many archetypes. In Jung’s view, he is one of 12. In Hartwell’s view, he is one of 60. In Scott Jeffrey’s view, he is one of 325 different archetypes. In the future, they could even transform into hundreds if not thousands more editions without us noticing.
More importantly, such a diversification pattern seems to resonate very well with the modern audience. People want more characters of diverse backgrounds and unique characteristics to be introduced into the stories told in media, cultural and entertainment products. They want more disabled, ethnic minority, LGBTQ+, (super)villains and other alternative types of story characters. In shorts, a story does not have to revolve around a Hero to succeed — there is so much more. By focusing on the “Others’ Journeys”, such as a Villain’s Journey for Thanos fans, your stories could tap into immeasurable new potentials.
Journey — The boring principles that make stories exciting
Good stories start with the characters but end with the journeys. Using archetypes to develop great characters is just half of the work — the characters cannot stand still, they need to deal with an obstacle to achieve some important goal. More importantly, certain ways in which such interaction is played out make some stories more engaging than the others.
For one, the journeys in good stories have a specific structure or sequence: a beginning, a middle and an end. Such a structure helps the audience orientate throughout your stories with a better sense of direction. More specifically, the beginning provides an introduction and context for the story, while the middle narrates the main events of the story, and the end recounts the climax of the story and its aftermath. As simple as it sounds, this structure outlines the entire frame that great stories have in common.
For another, good stories are those with memorable journeys — or memorable details of the journeys. Forgetful stories are often correlated to their inability to engage with the audience. Either due to excessive complexity, ambiguity or insipidity, unmemorable journeys (or events, places, sounds, etc.) usually fail to leave any remarks among the audience as the story goes on. Eventually, they will stop engaging with your stories, regardless of how advanced the employed storytelling techniques may be. Avoid this by constructing a journey that is memorable in every part of the story.
Lastly, throughout every great story is an emotional journey — or journeys. Every once in a while, you will see a list of movies that make viewers cry, or epic moments in video games, or hilarious scenes in TV shows. Not only do they make great remarks (and memorability), they also bond with the audience in the most human yet powerful way — through emotions. Once the audience can “feel” the journey, they will become more intrigued and driven to hear more about the story, all without much explanation. Next time you make a story, try to ask yourself how easy it would be for the future audience to feel all journeys it will be following.
The Hero’s Journey and the power of stories have played a crucial role in my life, my studies, my career and my writing hobby. Seeing storytelling techniques and technologies evolve, as well as the rise of the new story “consumers”, I once hoped the very forms of stories would demonstrate the same evolution. They never have. By outlining what modern stories could and should be, based on and elevated beyond the Hero’s Journey, I hope to inspire storytellers to create a new kind of impactful stories. Their evolution lies in your hands.
