The Hero’s Journey

Hello, everyone!

Who hasn’t seen the 2011 Academy Award nominations? Some really interesting picks this year – is there ever a year when there aren’t some lusty protestations about this or that movie or actor left out? Not since I’ve been watching the awards, that’s for sure.

Today I taught a class at Warner Bros., my favorite place to teach. The students are always so passionate and interactive and we had a FULL house! We talked about structure – you know, the three acts, plot points and all of that. But we also talked about structure vis a vis the Hero’s Journey, which labels things like the inciting incident the “call to adventure”. We compared regular three act structure with the hero’s journey for the purpose of looking at our own lives through the lens of the hero’s journey.

We have calls to adventure all the time. Do you say “yes” more often than you say “no”? If you have refused the call, what were you clinging to in the known quantities of your life that made change so frightening? Of course, in stories, we force our main characters to cross the threshold into the second act, and indeed, into the meat of the story. But in our lives, we have the choice to accept or not accept the call to adventure, which usually looks something like a problem, a challenge or even a hardship. But a call to adventure is really an opportunity to expand who you are.

So in the class, we talked about our own personal calls to adventure and whether we heeded them or not and if not – why? It’s important to really become a self-centered writer – to know thyself and to think about why you cling to stasis, avoid change and how you cope with unexpected change. Because you are writing three-dimensional characters who, in your story, will experience fear of change too.

The other point in the hero’s journey we talked about was the “abyss” or the “dark night of the soul” and how in our own lives, that stage can feel so hopeless and despairing. It seems as if there is no way out. If you think back to one of your “abyss” moments in life (and if you’ve been around the block even a little, you’ve had a few and they’ll keep on coming) it’s helpful to recall what little change gave you the glimmer of hope needed to get unstuck. And it’s helpful to remember how empowered and positive you felt when you found your way out of the darkness. Your characters will go through the same thing – only in one story that will be resolved in two hours.

In our own lives, the call to adventure comes every day – can we show up again and again despite our fear of change, inconvenience or challenges? Can we say “yes” more often than we say “no” to our own learning and growth? It is imperative for writers to embrace saying “yes” to new experiences, people and opportunities. Writers are only second to actors in terms of creatives who get to – notice I didn’t say have to – who GET to really be present in their emotions in order to create.

If YOU don’t examine your own hero’s journey and how it keeps unfolding and how that feels – how can you expect to write a character who could walk off the pages of your script? How can you write about a character in pain if you haven’t examined your own pain? How can you be empathetic to your villain if you have never truly felt RAGE yourself?

Self-centered writing is something that writers need to incorporate as they seek to develop their voice. It’s one thing to have an academic understanding of structure, to have an intellectual grasp of fear, pain, loss, joy, redemption and grace – but in order to write it well, you have to have lived it yourself.

As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

So what’s your call to adventure? Why be so fearful of being in the abyss when you can also remember how great it feels to get out of it? This living of life thing includes a huge spectrum of emotions and experiences that are sometimes not easy to deal with. Nobody said living was easy, and nobody said writing was easy either.

Here’s a well kept secret: even heroes get the blues sometimes, and even heroes get confused, frightened and despairing. But they find the courage and the will to go on. BE the hero in your own journey – make conscious, brave choices. Say “yes” more often than you say “no” and watch your connection with your writing and with your life become stronger than it’s ever been.