The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Write on the World

The Hero’s Journey story framework was first described by Joseph Campbell, a scholar of mythology and comparative religion. Campbell’s influential book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published in 1949, examines the patterns and themes that recur in myths and stories from cultures around the world. (I highly recommend watching the below interview of Campbell with Bill Moyers to learn more.)

In the book, Campbell outlines the monomyth, a narrative structure that he argues is present in many of these stories. Campbell’s idea was that the Hero’s Journey is a universal pattern that reflects the human experience of transformation and growth. He believed that the monomyth could be found in many different cultures and historical periods, and that it offered a powerful framework for understanding the ways in which stories shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

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Cover of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces ... — For this week, I tracked my heroine’s journey using Campbell’s 17 phases of the hero’s journey adapted from The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Last night was the second meeting of my Monday evening Advanced Novel Writing course at Mount Mary College. Our homework for last night was to complete two writing exercises designed to get us thinking about our stories and where we are going with them.

The first exercise was a “Building the Novel” exercise that our professor adapted from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. (I haven’t read this text yet, but it sounds like I may need to.) We were to review Campbell’s 17 Phases of the Hero’s Journey and then type up one paragraph for each of the phases, describing how the characters in our own novels would deal with each of the phases.

Even though I felt like I had much of my story figured out already, I found this exercise to be very helpful in getting me to the next step in writing my story. I worked out a lot of new details and answered a couple of old questions as well. I also wrote my first chapter last week, and the story now seems to be seeping out of my very pores, drenching the pages with word sweat. Continue reading “Novel Writing: The Next Step” →