hero's journey trials

Hero’s Journey Trials: How to Fill the Middle of Your Story with Conflict

by David Safford | 0 comments

Free Book Planning Course! Sign up for our 3-part book planning course and make your book writing easy . It expires soon, though, so don’t wait. Sign up here before the deadline!

If you've ever written a book, you know that writing the middle of your story is tough. There's a reason the saying “muddle through the middle” is common language in a writer's conversation. Your protagonist must face the Hero's Journey Trials and make Allies and Enemies in these moments. Let's look at how it's done.

When you master the Hero's Journey's twelve steps , an age-old story structure theorized by Joseph Campbell, constructing the middle of your story—full of tests and trials—gets easier.

In this article, you'll learn writing strategies to help you raise the stakes and successfully develop one of twelve important steps in the Hero's Journey—and the longest one at that.

Here's what to do.

The Hero's Journey: How We Got Here

Professor of mythology Joseph Campbell originally published his “monomyth” about stories in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. For those who want the condensed version, they need look no further than the work of Christopher Vogler, who summarized much of Campbell's theory into a twelve-step journey, known commonly as The Hero's Journey.

One of the greatest aspects of this monomyth is that it applies to ancient as well as modern stories. It teaches writers about common archetypes and characters who tend to appear over and over again, representing humanity's changelessness in time. These archetypes are derived from much of Carl Jung's work.

To reach the middle of the story, the hero must take several journey steps. First, they must depart their Ordinary World , after a Call to Adventure , and Initiation stage, wherein the hero will meet a Mentor who prepares the way. Readied by the mentor's teaching, the hero ventures of the ordinary world into the new, special world, often in a scene that pits them against a threshold guardian, like a monster or representative of the story's enemy.

All of these work as a previous step that drives the hero to this next important stage.

Once the hero has succeeded in leaving home, it is time for the next stage in the Hero's Journey: The series of Trials, Allies, and Enemies .

Learn how to write the middle of your story by applying an important Hero's Journey step: Trials, Allies, and Enemies. Tweet this

David Safford

You deserve a great book. That's why David Safford writes adventure stories that you won't be able to put down. Read his latest story at his website. David is a Language Arts teacher, novelist, blogger, hiker, Legend of Zelda fanatic, puzzle-doer, husband, and father of two awesome children.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Submit Comment

Join over 450,000 readers who are saying YES to practice. You’ll also get a free copy of our eBook 14 Prompts :

Popular Resources

Book Writing Tips & Guides Creativity & Inspiration Tips Writing Prompts Grammar & Vocab Resources Best Book Writing Software ProWritingAid Review Writing Teacher Resources Publisher Rocket Review Scrivener Review Gifts for Writers

Books By Our Writers

You've got it! Just us where to send your guide.

Enter your email to get our free 10-step guide to becoming a writer.

You've got it! Just us where to send your book.

Enter your first name and email to get our free book, 14 Prompts.

Want to Get Published?

Enter your email to get our free interactive checklist to writing and publishing a book.

Shortform Books

The World's Best Book Summaries

Road of Trials: The Hero’s Journey, Stage 6 (Explained)

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .

What is stage 6 of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey? What is the “road of trials”?

The road of trials is the stage of a hero’s journey during which the hero undergoes a series of trials and tests . The road of trails is stage 6 of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces .

Will cover what the road of trials may look like and explore two examples of a hero on the road of trials.

The Road of Trials

Now we move into the main action of the myth, wherein the hero undergoes a series of trials and tests, with the aid of their supernatural helper. The hero might also discover the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent power guiding all things in the universe. The road of trials in the hero’s journey is the first stage of the second of three larger stages: Initiation.

Connection with Our Subconscious

Removed from the confines of their safe and familiar world, the mythological hero now confronts a land of symbolic and allegorical figures—according to the psychoanalysts, the same imagery we see in our dreams. These are the elements of the road of trials. Just as the images are instrumental in helping the hero achieve their transformation, they are also puzzles that each of us must unlock in order to understand what our subconscious is trying to tell us.

Unlike the ancients, we do not have the benefit of allegory and mythology to help us make sense of the bubbling up of our subconscious. As a secular, rational society, we increasingly lack the language to process this—psychoanalysis may be the closest thing, but it’s not a substitute for the power of mythology and religion. Indeed, we have rationalized and argued our gods away . It is only through studying these ancient soothsayers and shamans and the dead gods they once worshipped that we can truly grasp our fullest humanity.

Descent into the Underworld

In mythology, the road of trials of the hero’s journey often requires entering the underworld or the land of the dead .

Psyche and Her Tasks

In the ancient Roman novel Metamorphoses , Psyche pleads with the goddess Venus to release her lover Cupid (the goddess’ son) so that the two can be married. Venus beats Psyche and orders her to conduct a series of tasks on the “road of trials”:

In her final and most fearsome task on the road of trials, Psyche is told to descend into the underworld and bring back a box full of supernatural beauty. Her last supernatural helper, a high tower, instructs her how to safely go down into the underworld and gives her charms and amulets to ward off the demons and hell-hounds she will encounter there. In doing so, she earns the elixir of mortality, which will enable her to live with Cupid forever in Paradise.

The oldest story of descent into the world of death and the road of trials comes from the world’s first civilization—the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. The goddess Inanna goes down to the underworld, guarded by her sister (and enemy) Ereshkigal. At each of the seven gates of this hell, Inanna is ordered by the gatekeeper to remove a part of her clothing—in due course, she removes her crown, rod, necklace, stones, breastplate, ring, and garments, finally presenting herself naked before the judges of the underworld.

The dual image of the two sisters, Inanna and Ereshkigal, is important. Indeed, duality is a common theme in mythology. The hero often finds the monster to be an aspect of themselves . This is because all journeys are ultimately about identifying and conquering a new aspect of the self . As we’ve seen, this is often done through the act of swallowing or being swallowed.

———End of Preview———

Like what you just read read the rest of the world's best summary of "the hero with a thousand faces" at shortform . learn the book's critical concepts in 20 minutes or less ..

Here's what you'll find in our full The Hero with a Thousand Faces summary :

Amanda Penn

Amanda Penn is a writer and reading specialist. She’s published dozens of articles and book reviews spanning a wide range of topics, including health, relationships, psychology, science, and much more. Amanda was a Fulbright Scholar and has taught in schools in the US and South Africa. Amanda received her Master's Degree in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.

Peace in Society Without Policing: A Pipe Dream?

What Is Wuwei? Confucianism’s Concept of Inaction

How Segregation Facilitated The Racial Wealth Gap

The Racial Wealth Gap: A Direct Result of Segregation

What Is Antiracism? The Answer From Ibram X. Kendi

Efficient Government: Is the US Made for Efficiency?

Is There Proof That Jesus is The Son of God?

Holiday Savings

cui:common.components.upgradeModal.offerHeader_undefined

The hero's journey: a story structure as old as time, the hero's journey offers a powerful framework for creating quest-based stories emphasizing self-transformation..

Nicholas Cage as Benjamin Gates in Disney's National Treasure, next to a portrait of mythologist, Joseph Campbell.

Holding out for a hero to take your story to the next level?

The Hero’s Journey might be just what you’ve been looking for. Created by Joseph Campbell, this narrative framework packs mythic storytelling into a series of steps across three acts, each representing a crucial phase in a character's transformative journey.

Challenge . Growth . Triumph .

Whether you're penning a novel, screenplay, or video game, The Hero’s Journey is a tried-and-tested blueprint for crafting epic stories that transcend time and culture. Let’s explore the steps together and kickstart your next masterpiece.

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey is a famous template for storytelling, mapping a hero's adventurous quest through trials and tribulations to ultimate transformation.

What are the Origins of the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey was invented by Campbell in his seminal 1949 work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces , where he introduces the concept of the "monomyth."

A comparative mythologist by trade, Campbell studied myths from cultures around the world and identified a common pattern in their narratives. He proposed that all mythic narratives are variations of a single, universal story, structured around a hero's adventure, trials, and eventual triumph.

His work unveiled the archetypal hero’s path as a mirror to humanity’s commonly shared experiences and aspirations. It was subsequently named one of the All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books by TIME in 2011.

How are the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys Different?

While both the Hero's and Heroine's Journeys share the theme of transformation, they diverge in their focus and execution.

The Hero’s Journey, as outlined by Campbell, emphasizes external challenges and a quest for physical or metaphorical treasures. In contrast, Murdock's Heroine’s Journey, explores internal landscapes, focusing on personal reconciliation, emotional growth, and the path to self-actualization.

In short, heroes seek to conquer the world, while heroines seek to transform their own lives; but…

Twelve Steps of the Hero’s Journey

So influential was Campbell’s monomyth theory that it's been used as the basis for some of the largest franchises of our generation: The Lord of the Rings , Harry Potter ...and George Lucas even cited it as a direct influence on Star Wars .

There are, in fact, several variations of the Hero's Journey, which we discuss further below. But for this breakdown, we'll use the twelve-step version outlined by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Writer's Journey (seemingly now out of print, unfortunately).

You probably already know the above stories pretty well so we’ll unpack the twelve steps of the Hero's Journey using Ben Gates’ journey in National Treasure as a case study—because what is more heroic than saving the Declaration of Independence from a bunch of goons?

Ye be warned: Spoilers ahead!

Act One: Departure

Step 1. the ordinary world.

The journey begins with the status quo—business as usual. We meet the hero and are introduced to the Known World they live in. In other words, this is your exposition, the starting stuff that establishes the story to come.

National Treasure begins in media res (preceded only by a short prologue), where we are given key information that introduces us to Ben Gates' world, who he is (a historian from a notorious family), what he does (treasure hunts), and why he's doing it (restoring his family's name).

With the help of his main ally, Riley, and a crew of other treasure hunters backed by a wealthy patron, he finds an 18th-century American ship in the Canadian Arctic, the Charlotte . Here, they find a ship-shaped pipe that presents a new riddle and later doubles as a key—for now, it's just another clue in the search for the lost treasure of the Templars, one that leads them to the Declaration of Independence.

Step 2. The Call to Adventure

The inciting incident takes place and the hero is called to act upon it. While they're still firmly in the Known World, the story kicks off and leaves the hero feeling out of balance. In other words, they are placed at a crossroads.

Ian (the wealthy patron of the Charlotte operation) steals the pipe from Ben and Riley and leaves them stranded. This is a key moment: Ian becomes the villain, Ben has now sufficiently lost his funding for this expedition, and if he decides to pursue the chase, he'll be up against extreme odds.

Step 3. Refusal of the Call

The hero hesitates and instead refuses their call to action. Following the call would mean making a conscious decision to break away from the status quo. Ahead lies danger, risk, and the unknown; but here and now, the hero is still in the safety and comfort of what they know.

Ben debates continuing the hunt for the Templar treasure. Before taking any action, he decides to try and warn the authorities: the FBI, Homeland Security, and the staff of the National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence is housed and monitored. Nobody will listen to him, and his family's notoriety doesn't help matters.

Step 4. Meeting the Mentor

The protagonist receives knowledge or motivation from a powerful or influential figure. This is a tactical move on the hero's part—remember that it was only the previous step in which they debated whether or not to jump headfirst into the unknown. By Meeting the Mentor, they can gain new information or insight, and better equip themselves for the journey they might to embark on.

Abigail, an archivist at the National Archives, brushes Ben and Riley off as being crazy, but Ben uses the interaction to his advantage in other ways—to seek out information about how the Declaration of Independence is stored and cared for, as well as what (and more importantly, who) else he might be up against in his own attempt to steal it.

In a key scene, we see him contemplate the entire operation while standing over the glass-encased Declaration of Independence. Finally, he firmly decides to pursue the treasure and stop Ian, uttering the famous line, "I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence."

Act Two: Initiation

Step 5. crossing the threshold.

The hero leaves the Known World to face the Unknown World. They are fully committed to the journey, with no way to turn back now. There may be a confrontation of some sort, and the stakes will be raised.

Ben and Riley infiltrate the National Archives during a gala and successfully steal the Declaration of Independence. But wait—it's not so easy. While stealing the Declaration of Independence, Abigail suspects something is up and Ben faces off against Ian.

Then, when trying to escape the building, Ben exits through the gift shop, where an attendant spots the document peeking out of his jacket. He is forced to pay for it, feigning that it's a replica—and because he doesn't have enough cash, he has to use his credit card, so there goes keeping his identity anonymous.

The game is afoot.

Step 6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

The hero explores the Unknown World. Now that they have firmly crossed the threshold from the Known World, the hero will face new challenges and possibly meet new enemies. They'll have to call upon their allies, new and old, in order to keep moving forward.

Abigail reluctantly joins the team under the agreement that she'll help handle the Declaration of Independence, given her background in document archiving and restoration. Ben and co. seek the aid of Ben's father, Patrick Gates, whom Ben has a strained relationship with thanks to years of failed treasure hunting that has created a rift between grandfather, father, and son. Finally, they travel around Philadelphia deciphering clues while avoiding both Ian and the FBI.

Step 7. Approach the Innermost Cave

The hero nears the goal of their quest, the reason they crossed the threshold in the first place. Here, they could be making plans, having new revelations, or gaining new skills. To put it in other familiar terms, this step would mark the moment just before the story's climax.

Ben uncovers a pivotal clue—or rather, he finds an essential item—a pair of bifocals with interchangeable lenses made by Benjamin Franklin. It is revealed that by switching through the various lenses, different messages will be revealed on the back of the Declaration of Independence. He's forced to split from Abigail and Riley, but Ben has never been closer to the treasure.

Step 8. The Ordeal

The hero faces a dire situation that changes how they view the world. All threads of the story come together at this pinnacle, the central crisis from which the hero will emerge unscathed or otherwise. The stakes will be at their absolute highest here.

Vogler details that in this stage, the hero will experience a "death," though it need not be literal. In your story, this could signify the end of something and the beginning of another, which could itself be figurative or literal. For example, a certain relationship could come to an end, or it could mean someone "stuck in their ways" opens up to a new perspective.

In National Treasure , The FBI captures Ben and Ian makes off with the Declaration of Independence—all hope feels lost. To add to it, Ian reveals that he's kidnapped Ben's father and threatens to take further action if Ben doesn't help solve the final clues and lead Ian to the treasure.

Ben escapes the FBI with Ian's help, reunites with Abigail and Riley, and leads everyone to an underground structure built below Trinity Church in New York City. Here, they manage to split from Ian once more, sending him on a goose chase to Boston with a false clue, and proceed further into the underground structure.

Though they haven't found the treasure just yet, being this far into the hunt proves to Ben's father, Patrick, that it's real enough. The two men share an emotional moment that validates what their family has been trying to do for generations.

Step 9. Reward

This is it, the moment the hero has been waiting for. They've survived "death," weathered the crisis of The Ordeal, and earned the Reward for which they went on this journey.

Now, free of Ian's clutches and with some light clue-solving, Ben, Abigail, Riley, and Patrick keep progressing through the underground structure and eventually find the Templar's treasure—it's real and more massive than they could have imagined. Everyone revels in their discovery while simultaneously looking for a way back out.

Act Three: Return

Step 10. the road back.

It's time for the journey to head towards its conclusion. The hero begins their return to the Known World and may face unexpected challenges. Whatever happens, the "why" remains paramount here (i.e. why the hero ultimately chose to embark on their journey).

This step marks a final turning point where they'll have to take action or make a decision to keep moving forward and be "reborn" back into the Known World.

Act Three of National Treasure is admittedly quite short. After finding the treasure, Ben and co. emerge from underground to face the FBI once more. Not much of a road to travel back here so much as a tunnel to scale in a crypt.

Step 11. Resurrection

The hero faces their ultimate challenge and emerges victorious, but forever changed. This step often requires a sacrifice of some sort, and having stepped into the role of The Hero™, they must answer to this.

Ben is given an ultimatum— somebody has to go to jail (on account of the whole stealing-the-Declaration-of-Independence thing). But, Ben also found a treasure worth millions of dollars and that has great value to several nations around the world, so that counts for something.

Ultimately, Ben sells Ian out, makes a deal to exonerate his friends and family, and willingly hands the treasure over to the authorities. Remember: he wanted to find the treasure, but his "why" was to restore the Gates family name, so he won regardless.

Step 12. Return With the Elixir

Finally, the hero returns home as a new version of themself, the elixir is shared amongst the people, and the journey is completed full circle.

The elixir, like many other elements of the hero's journey, can be literal or figurative. It can be a tangible thing, such as an actual elixir meant for some specific purpose, or it could be represented by an abstract concept such as hope, wisdom, or love.

Vogler notes that if the Hero's Journey results in a tragedy, the elixir can instead have an effect external to the story—meaning that it could be something meant to affect the audience and/or increase their awareness of the world.

In the final scene of National Treasure , we see Ben and Abigail walking the grounds of a massive estate. Riley pulls up in a fancy sports car and comments on how they could have gotten more money. They all chat about attending a museum exhibit in Cairo (Egypt).

In one scene, we're given a lot of closure: Ben and co. received a hefty payout for finding the treasure, Ben and Abigail are a couple now, and the treasure was rightfully spread to those it benefitted most—in this case, countries who were able to reunite with significant pieces of their history. Everyone's happy, none of them went to jail despite the serious crimes committed, and they're all a whole lot wealthier. Oh, Hollywood.

Variations of the Hero's Journey

Plot structure is important, but you don't need to follow it exactly; and, in fact, your story probably won't. Your version of the Hero's Journey might require more or fewer steps, or you might simply go off the beaten path for a few steps—and that's okay!

What follows are three additional versions of the Hero's Journey, which you may be more familiar with than Vogler's version presented above.

Dan Harmon's Story Circle (or, The Eight-Step Hero's Journey)

Screenwriter Dan Harmon has riffed on the Hero's Journey by creating a more compact version, the Story Circle —and it works especially well for shorter-format stories such as television episodes, which happens to be what Harmon writes.

The Story Circle comprises eight simple steps with a heavy emphasis on the hero's character arc:

You may have noticed, but there is a sort of rhythm here. The eight steps work well in four pairs, simplifying the core of the Hero's Journey even further:

If you're writing shorter fiction, such as a short story or novella, definitely check out the Story Circle. It's the Hero's Journey minus all the extraneous bells & whistles.

Ten-Step Hero's Journey

The ten-step Hero's Journey is similar to the twelve-step version we presented above. It includes most of the same steps except for Refusal of the Call and Meeting the Mentor, arguing that these steps aren't as essential to include; and, it moves Crossing the Threshold to the end of Act One and Reward to the end of Act Two.

We've previously written about the ten-step hero's journey in a series of essays separated by act: Act One (with a prologue), Act Two , and Act Three .

Twelve-Step Hero's Journey: Version Two

Again, the second version of the twelve-step hero's journey is very similar to the one above, save for a few changes, including in which story act certain steps appear.

This version skips The Ordinary World exposition and starts right at The Call to Adventure; then, the story ends with two new steps in place of Return With Elixir: The Return and The Freedom to Live.

In the final act of this version, there is more of a focus on an internal transformation for the hero. They experience a metamorphosis on their journey back to the Known World, return home changed, and go on to live a new life, uninhibited.

Seventeen-Step Hero's Journey

Finally, the granddaddy of heroic journeys: the seventeen-step Hero's Journey. This version includes a slew of extra steps your hero might face out in the expanse.

Again, we skip the Ordinary World opening here. Additionally, Acts Two and Three look pretty different from what we've seen so far, although, the bones of the Hero's Journey structure remain.

The Eight Hero’s Journey Archetypes

The Hero is, understandably, the cornerstone of the Hero’s Journey, but they’re just one of eight key archetypes that make up this narrative framework.

In The Writer's Journey , Vogler outlined seven of these archetypes, only excluding the Ally, which we've included below. Here’s a breakdown of all eight with examples:

1. The Hero

As outlined, the Hero is the protagonist who embarks on a transformative quest or journey. The challenges they overcome represent universal human struggles and triumphs.

Vogler assigned a "primary function" to each archetype—helpful for establishing their role in a story. The Hero's primary function is "to service and sacrifice."

Example: Neo from The Matrix , who evolves from a regular individual into the prophesied savior of humanity.

2. The Mentor

A wise guide offering knowledge, tools, and advice, Mentors help the Hero navigate the journey and discover their potential. Their primary function is "to guide."

Example: Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid imparts not only martial arts skills but invaluable life lessons to Daniel.

3. The Ally

Companions who support the Hero, Allies provide assistance, friendship, and moral support throughout the journey. They may also become a friends-to-lovers romantic partner.

Not included in Vogler's list is the Ally, though we'd argue they are essential nonetheless. Let's say their primary function is "to aid and support."

Example: Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings , a loyal friend and steadfast supporter of Frodo.

4. The Herald

The Herald acts as a catalyst to initiate the Hero's Journey, often presenting a challenge or calling the hero to adventure. Their primary function is "to warn or challenge."

Example: Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games , whose selection at the Reaping sets Katniss’s journey into motion.

5. The Trickster

A character who brings humor and unpredictability, challenges conventions, and offers alternative perspectives or solutions. Their primary function is "to disrupt."

Example: Loki from Norse mythology exemplifies the trickster, with his cunning and chaotic influence.

6. The Shapeshifter

Ambiguous figures whose allegiance and intentions are uncertain. They may be a friend one moment and a foe the next. Their primary function is "to question and deceive."

Example: Catwoman from the Batman universe often blurs the line between ally and adversary, slinking between both roles with glee.

7. The Guardian

Protectors of important thresholds, Guardians challenge or test the Hero, serving as obstacles to overcome or lessons to be learned. Their primary function is "to test."

Example: The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail literally bellows “None shall pass!”—a quintessential ( but not very effective ) Guardian.

8. The Shadow

Represents the Hero's inner conflict or an antagonist, often embodying the darker aspects of the hero or their opposition. Their primary function is "to destroy."

Example: Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender; initially an adversary, his journey parallels the Hero’s path of transformation.

While your story does not have to use all of the archetypes, they can help you develop your characters and visualize how they interact with one another—especially the Hero.

For example, take your hero and place them in the center of a blank worksheet, then write down your other major characters in a circle around them and determine who best fits into which archetype. Who challenges your hero? Who tricks them? Who guides them? And so on...

Stories that Use the Hero’s Journey

Not a fan of saving the Declaration of Independence? Check out these alternative examples of the Hero’s Journey to get inspired:

The Hero's Journey is so generalized that it's ubiquitous. You can plop the plot of just about any quest-style narrative into its framework and say that the story follows the Hero's Journey. Try it out for yourself as an exercise in getting familiar with the method.

Will the Hero's Journey Work For You?

As renowned as it is, the Hero's Journey works best for the kinds of tales that inspired it: mythic stories.

Writers of speculative fiction may gravitate towards this method over others, especially those writing epic fantasy and science fiction (big, bold fantasy quests and grand space operas come to mind).

The stories we tell today are vast and varied, and they stretch far beyond the dealings of deities, saving kingdoms, or acquiring some fabled "elixir." While that may have worked for Gilgamesh a few thousand years ago, it's not always representative of our lived experiences here and now.

If you decide to give the Hero's Journey a go, we encourage you to make it your own! The pieces of your plot don't have to neatly fit into the structure, but you can certainly make a strong start on mapping out your story.

Hero's Journey Campfire Template

The Timeline Module in Campfire offers a versatile canvas to plot out each basic component of your story while featuring nested "notebooks."

Simply double-click on each event card in your timeline to open up a canvas specific to that card. This allows you to look at your plot at the highest level, while also adding as much detail for each plot element as needed!

If you're just hearing about Campfire for the first time, it's free to sign up—forever! Let's plot the most epic of hero's journeys 👇

Lessons From the Hero’s Journey

The Hero's Journey offers a powerful framework for creating stories centered around growth, adventure, and transformation.

If you want to develop compelling characters, spin out engaging plots, and write books that express themes of valor and courage, consider The Hero’s Journey your blueprint. So stop holding out for a hero, and start writing!

Does your story mirror the Hero's Journey? Let us know in the comments below.

Exploring the 12 Stages of the Hero’s Journey Part 6: Tests, Allies, and Enemies

Read on to learn what celebrated writers have shared - particularly Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey and Christopher Vogler's interpreted twelve stages of that journey within his book, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.

Welcome to Part 6 of our 12-part series ScreenCraft’s Exploring the 12 Stages of the Hero’s Journey , where we go into depth about each of the twelve stages and how your screenplays could benefit from them. Before we dive in, be sure to grab the free download here:

The first stage — The Ordinary World — happens to be one of the most essential elements of any story, even ones that don't follow the twelve-stage structure to a tee.

Showing your protagonist within their Ordinary World at the beginning of your story offers you the ability to showcase how much the core conflict they face rocks their world. And it allows you to foreshadow and create the necessary elements of empathy and catharsis that your story needs.

The next stage is the Call to Adventure. Giving your story's protagonist a Call to Adventure introduces the core concept of your story, dictates the genre your story is being told in and helps to begin the process of character development that every great story needs.

When your character refuses the Call to Adventure, it allows you to create instant tension and conflict within the opening pages and first act of your story. It also gives you the chance to amp-up the risks and stakes involved, which, in turn, engages the reader or audience even more. And it also manages to help you develop a protagonist with more depth that can help to create empathy for them.

Along the way, your protagonist — and screenplay — may need a mentor. Meeting the Mentor offers the protagonist someone that can guide them through their journey with wisdom, support, and even physical items. Beyond that, they help you to offer empathetic relationships within your story, as well as ways to introduce themes, story elements, and exposition to the reader and audience.

At some point at the end of the first act, your story may showcase a moment where your protagonist needs to cross the threshold between their Ordinary World and the Special World they will be experiencing as their inner or outer journey begins. Such a moment shifts everything from the first act to the second, allowing the reader and audience to feel that shift so they can prepare for the journey to come.

It showcases the difference between the protagonist's Ordinary World and the Special World to come. And, even more important, we're introduced to the first shift in the character arc of the protagonist as they decide to venture out into the unknown.

And it's within this unknown that the protagonist faces many tests and meets their allies and enemies.

Within the Hero's Journey structure, this stage is a vital part of your protagonist's journey.

Conflict is everything. Without conflict, there's no story, no story arc , and no character exploration. So while this is a stage represented in every Hero's Journey structure application, it's also a necessary component to any story that you tell — using the Hero's Journey structure or not.

Your story doesn't merely entail a character dealing with a single conflict.

In Jaws , we learn that the core concept of the film centers around a killer shark that unleashes chaos on a beach community as a local Chief of Police, marine biologist, and old seafarer hunt the beast down before it kills again.

But the movie is so much more than that. Brody, the Chief of Police, has to deal with multiple conflicts within that story.

He has to ascertain what exactly is threatening the island community.

He's forced to go up against the local mayor and town board, all of whom don't want their precious tourism profits to be affected.

When the shark kills a young boy after Brody is pressured to tone down the response to the possible threat, he faces the scorn of the boy's mother and the guilt of not doing as much as he could have to prevent the tragedy.

When he's on the boat, ready to hunt down the shark, he's put through multiple tests to achieve his ultimate goal and face the core conflict of the story.

Your protagonist must face multiple and evolving conflicts (tests) throughout the second act to engage the reader and audience — to keep them invested in the journey. And these tests are what define your protagonist's character arc as they deal with everything that is thrown at them within the narrative.

The characterization within your story relies on these tests because the actions, reactions, and inactions of your protagonist will show us what kind of character you want to portray. And this stage also sets the rules of this Special World that they're forced to exist within as they take on the conflict.

So within your stories, whether you follow all twelve stages that we've defined as The Hero's Journey above or not, the tests that you make your protagonist face need to be aplenty and present on multiple narrative levels — big and small. That's the core of any great story. And it's what keeps people invested, engaged, and compelled.

Along with the tests that your protagonist faces, they're going to need some help along the way. That's where introducing allies comes into play.

In Jaws , as Brody struggles to deal with all of these conflicts that he must face, he has to reach out for help from allies.

This introduces two key allies in Hooper and Quint — the two men with varying degrees of experience, wisdom, and knowledge that will help Brody take on the core threat of the story.

This stage of The Hero's Journey expands the cast of characters. While some novels or films focus solely on a single character, most great stories build an exciting cast of characters around the central protagonist.

Imagine Jaws without Hooper and Quint. Having Brody jump on a boat to hunt for a shark on his own doesn't pack the narrative punch that we get with him having to learn from and deal with these two pivotal characters. The characterization would be drastically reduced without them.

We also see him interact with secondary characters like Brody's wife and his two sons. They are established as allies as well within his journey.

Pairing your protagonist with allies expands your cast of characters and offers you an opportunity to explore characterization on multiple levels.

With the mention of enemies, we come full circle within this Hero's Journey stage. Enemies are there to test the protagonist. They offer the necessary conflict that should be present within all stories.

While allies give us — and the protagonist — hope, enemies challenge that hope and create a more enthralling plot.

Brody isn't just dealing with a killer shark. He's dealing with a money-hungry mayor.

And standing behind that mayor is the town board. Without them challenging Brody, the story wouldn't really go anywhere. Brody would shut down the beach, and no one would be in danger. But because they pressure him into keeping it open, more conflict and characterization ensues.

Having additional "enemies" within your story isn't just about more bad guys trying to thwart the hero. It's about creating more and more conflict throughout the story.

It doesn't matter what genre you're writing in. Horror stories need enemies. Dramas need enemies. Comedies need enemies. We need to see your protagonist go up against others.

And enemies don't always have to be human characters, either. They can be represented as forces of nature, reversals of fortune, and unfortunate events.

Conflict is everything. It starts with the tests your protagonist must face and comes full circle with the enemies putting them through those tests.

The tests, allies, and enemies that your protagonist comes across defines the meat of your story. Without them, there is no story. They introduce the conflict, expand the cast of characters, and offer a more engaging and compelling narrative. If there's a single stage of The Hero's Journey that writers should utilize, the Tests, Allies, and Enemies stage is the most vital to any great story.

And remember...

"The Hero's Journey is a skeleton framework that should be fleshed out with the details of and surprises of the individual story. The structure should not call attention to itself, nor should it be followed too precisely. The order of the stages is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power." — Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

Joseph Campbell's 17-stage Monomyth was conceptualized over the course of Campbell's own text, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and then later in the 1980s through two documentaries, one of which introduced the term The Hero's Journey .

The first documentary, 1987's The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell , was released with an accompanying book entitled The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work .

The second documentary was released in 1988 and consisted of Bill Moyers' series of interviews with Campbell, accompanied by the companion book The Power of Myth .

Christopher Vogler was a Hollywood development executive and screenwriter working for Disney when he took his passion for Joseph Campbell's story monolith and developed it into a seven-page company memo for the company's development department and incoming screenwriters.

The memo, entitled A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces , was later developed by Vogler into The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters in 1992. He then elaborated on those concepts for the book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers .

Christopher Vogler's approach to Campbell's structure broke the mythical story structure into twelve stages. We define the stages in our own simplified interpretations:

Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and then as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.

He has many studio meetings under his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development deal with Lionsgate, as well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseries Blackout , starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner. Follow Ken on Twitter @KenMovies

For all the latest ScreenCraft news and updates, follow us on Twitter, Facebook , and Instagram .

Get Our Screenwriting Newsletter!

Get weekly writing inspiration delivered to your inbox - including industry news, popular articles, and more!

Facebook Comments

Free download.

Screenwriting Resources:

$ 15.00 Original price was: $15.00. $ 12.00 Current price is: $12.00. Add to cart

Next Related Post

Get Our Newsletter!

Developing your own script.

We'll send you a list of our free eCourses when you subscribe to our newsletter. No strings attached.

Connect With Us

Writing competitions, success stories.

Wait! Subscribe to get our free Newsletter

Join our community of over 100,000 screenwriters and get weekly inspiration delivered to your inbox.

Screenwriting Newsletter

Join our community of over 100,000 screenwriters and get weekly inspiration delivered to your inbox:

" * " indicates required fields

TRY OUR FREE APP

Write your book in Reedsy Studio. Try the beloved writing app for free today.

Craft your masterpiece in Reedsy Studio

Plan, write, edit, and format your book in our free app made for authors.

Last updated on Aug 10, 2023

The Hero's Journey: 12 Steps to a Classic Story Structure

The Hero's Journey is a timeless story structure which follows a protagonist on an unforeseen quest, where they face challenges, gain insights, and return home transformed. From Theseus and the Minotaur to The Lion King , so many narratives follow this pattern that it’s become ingrained into our cultural DNA.

In this post, we'll show you how to make this classic plot structure work for you — and if you’re pressed for time, download our cheat sheet below for everything you need to know.

FREE RESOURCE

Hero's Journey Template

Plot your character's journey with our step-by-step template.

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero's Journey, also known as the monomyth, is a story structure where a hero goes on a quest or adventure to achieve a goal, and has to overcome obstacles and fears, before ultimately returning home transformed.

This narrative arc has been present in various forms across cultures for centuries, if not longer, but gained popularity through Joseph Campbell's mythology book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces . While Campbell identified 17 story beats in his monomyth definition, this post will concentrate on a 12-step framework popularized in 2007 by screenwriter Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey .

The 12 Steps of the Hero’s Journey

The Hero's Journey is a model for both plot points and character development : as the Hero traverses the world, they'll undergo inner and outer transformation at each stage of the journey. The 12 steps of the hero's journey are:

Believe it or not, this story structure also applies across mediums and genres (and also works when your protagonist is an anti-hero! ). Let's dive into it.

1. Ordinary World

In which we meet our Hero.

The journey has yet to start. Before our Hero discovers a strange new world, we must first understand the status quo: their ordinary, mundane reality.

It’s up to this opening leg to set the stage, introducing the Hero to readers. Importantly, it lets readers identify with the Hero as a “normal” person in a “normal” setting, before the journey begins.

2. Call to Adventure

In which an adventure starts.

The call to adventure is all about booting the Hero out of their comfort zone. In this stage, they are generally confronted with a problem or challenge they can't ignore. This catalyst can take many forms, as Campbell points out in Hero with a Thousand Faces . The Hero can, for instance:

The stakes of the adventure and the Hero's goals become clear. The only question: will he rise to the challenge?

3. Refusal of the Call

In which the Hero digs in their feet.

Great, so the Hero’s received their summons. Now they’re all set to be whisked off to defeat evil, right?

Not so fast. The Hero might first refuse the call to action. It’s risky and there are perils — like spiders, trolls, or perhaps a creepy uncle waiting back at Pride Rock . It’s enough to give anyone pause.

In Star Wars , for instance, Luke Skywalker initially refuses to join Obi-Wan on his mission to rescue the princess. It’s only when he discovers that his aunt and uncle have been killed by stormtroopers that he changes his mind.

4. Meeting the Mentor

In which the Hero acquires a personal trainer.

The Hero's decided to go on the adventure — but they’re not ready to spread their wings yet. They're much too inexperienced at this point and we don't want them to do a fabulous belly-flop off the cliff.

Enter the mentor: someone who helps the Hero, so that they don't make a total fool of themselves (or get themselves killed). The mentor provides practical training, profound wisdom, a kick up the posterior, or something abstract like grit and self-confidence.

Harry holding the Marauder's Map with the twins

Wise old wizards seem to like being mentors. But mentors take many forms, from witches to hermits and suburban karate instructors. They might literally give weapons to prepare for the trials ahead, like Q in the James Bond series. Or perhaps the mentor is an object, such as a map. In all cases, they prepare the Hero for the next step.

GET ACCOUNTABILITY

Meet writing coaches on Reedsy

Industry insiders can help you hone your craft, finish your draft, and get published.

5. Crossing the First Threshold

In which the Hero enters the other world in earnest.

Now the Hero is ready — and committed — to the journey. This marks the end of the Departure stage and is when the adventure really kicks into the next gear. As Vogler writes: “This is the moment that the balloon goes up, the ship sails, the romance begins, the wagon gets rolling.”

From this point on, there’s no turning back.

Like our Hero, you should think of this stage as a checkpoint for your story. Pause and re-assess your bearings before you continue into unfamiliar territory. Have you:

Reedsy’s Character Profile Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

In which the Hero faces new challenges and gets a squad.

When we step into the Special World, we notice a definite shift. The Hero might be discombobulated by this unfamiliar reality and its new rules. This is generally one of the longest stages in the story , as our protagonist gets to grips with this new world.

This makes a prime hunting ground for the series of tests to pass! Luckily, there are many ways for the Hero to get into trouble:

The shark scares Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo

This stage often expands the cast of characters. Once the protagonist is in the Special World, he will meet allies and enemies — or foes that turn out to be friends and vice versa. He will learn a new set of rules from them. Saloons and seedy bars are popular places for these transactions, as Vogler points out (so long as the Hero survives them).

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

In which the Hero gets closer to his goal.

This isn’t a physical cave. Instead, the “inmost cave” refers to the most dangerous spot in the other realm — whether that’s the villain’s chambers, the lair of the fearsome dragon, or the Death Star. Almost always, it is where the ultimate goal of the quest is located.

Note that the protagonist hasn’t entered the Inmost Cave just yet. This stage is all about the approach to it. It covers all the prep work that's needed in order to defeat the villain.

In which the Hero faces his biggest test of all thus far.

Of all the tests the Hero has faced, none have made them hit rock bottom — until now. Vogler describes this phase as a “black moment.” Campbell refers to it as the “belly of the whale.” Both indicate some grim news for the Hero.

The protagonist must now confront their greatest fear. If they survive it, they will emerge transformed. This is a critical moment in the story, as Vogler explains that it will “inform every decision that the Hero makes from this point forward.”

The Ordeal is sometimes not the climax of the story. There’s more to come. But you can think of it as the main event of the second act — the one in which the Hero actually earns the title of “Hero.”

9. Reward (Seizing the Sword)

In which the Hero sees light at the end of the tunnel.

Our Hero’s been through a lot. However, the fruits of their labor are now at hand — if they can just reach out and grab them! The “reward” is the object or knowledge the Hero has fought throughout the entire journey to hold.

Once the protagonist has it in their possession, it generally has greater ramifications for the story. Vogler offers a few examples of it in action:

10. The Road Back

In which the light at the end of the tunnel might be a little further than the Hero thought.

The story's not over just yet, as this phase marks the beginning of Act Three. Now that he's seized the reward, the Hero tries to return to the Ordinary World, but more dangers (inconveniently) arise on the road back from the Inmost Cave.

More precisely, the Hero must deal with the consequences and aftermath of the previous act: the dragon, enraged by the Hero who’s just stolen a treasure from under his nose, starts the hunt. Or perhaps the opposing army gathers to pursue the Hero across a crowded battlefield. All further obstacles for the Hero, who must face them down before they can return home.

11. Resurrection

In which the last test is met.

Here is the true climax of the story. Everything that happened prior to this stage culminates in a crowning test for the Hero, as the Dark Side gets one last chance to triumph over the Hero.

Vogler refers to this as a “final exam” for the Hero — they must be “tested once more to see if they have really learned the lessons of the Ordeal.” It’s in this Final Battle that the protagonist goes through one more “resurrection.” As a result, this is where you’ll get most of your miraculous near-death escapes, à la James Bond's dashing deliverances. If the Hero survives, they can start looking forward to a sweet ending.

12. Return with the Elixir

In which our Hero has a triumphant homecoming.

Finally, the Hero gets to return home. However, they go back a different person than when they started out: they’ve grown and matured as a result of the journey they’ve taken.

But we’ve got to see them bring home the bacon, right? That’s why the protagonist must return with the “Elixir,” or the prize won during the journey, whether that’s an object or knowledge and insight gained.

Of course, it’s possible for a story to end on an Elixir-less note — but then the Hero would be doomed to repeat the entire adventure.

Examples of The Hero’s Journey in Action

To better understand this story template beyond the typical sword-and-sorcery genre, let's analyze three examples, from both screenplay and literature, and examine how they implement each of the twelve steps.

The 1976 film Rocky is acclaimed as one of the most iconic sports films because of Stallone’s performance and the heroic journey his character embarks on.

Moving outside of the ring, let’s see how this story structure holds on a completely different planet and with a character in complete isolation.

The Martian

In Andy Weir’s self-published bestseller (better known for its big screen adaptation) we follow astronaut Mark Watney as he endures the challenges of surviving on Mars and working out a way to get back home.

Coming back to Earth, let’s now examine a heroine’s journey through the wilderness of the Pacific Crest Trail and her… humanity.

The memoir Wild narrates the three-month-long hiking adventure of Cheryl Strayed across the Pacific coast, as she grapples with her turbulent past and rediscovers her inner strength.

There are countless other stories that could align with this template, but it's not always the perfect fit. So, let's look into when authors should consider it or not.

When should writers use The Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey is just one way to outline a novel and dissect a plot. For more longstanding theories on the topic, you can go this way to read about the ever-popular Three-Act Structure or here to discover Dan Harmon's Story Circle and three more prevalent structures .

So when is it best to use the Hero’s Journey? There are a couple of circumstances which might make this a good choice.

When you need more specific story guidance than simple structures can offer

Simply put, the Hero’s Journey structure is far more detailed and closely defined than other story structure theories. If you want a fairly specific framework for your work than a thee-act structure, the Hero’s Journey can be a great place to start.

Of course, rules are made to be broken . There’s plenty of room to play within the confines of the Hero’s Journey, despite it appearing fairly prescriptive at first glance. Do you want to experiment with an abbreviated “Resurrection” stage, as J.K. Rowling did in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Are you more interested in exploring the journey of an anti-hero? It’s all possible.

Once you understand the basics of this universal story structure, you can use and bend it in ways that disrupt reader expectations.

Need more help developing your book? Try this template on for size:

Get our Book Development Template

Use this template to go from a vague idea to a solid plan for a first draft.

When your focus is on a single protagonist

No matter how sprawling or epic the world you’re writing is, if your story is, at its core, focused on a single character’s journey, then this is a good story structure for you. It’s kind of in the name! If you’re dealing with an entire ensemble, the Hero’s Journey may not give you the scope to explore all of your characters’ plots and subplot — a broader three-act structure may give you more freedom to weave a greater number story threads.

Which story structure is right for you?

Take this quiz and we'll match your story to a structure in minutes!

Whether you're a reader or writer, we hope our guide has helped you understand this universal story arc. Want to know more about story structure? We explain 6 more in our guide — read on!

6 responses

PJ Reece says:

25/07/2018 – 19:41

Nice vid, good intro to story structure. Typically, though, the 'hero's journey' misses the all-important point of the Act II crisis. There, where the hero faces his/her/its existential crisis, they must DIE. The old character is largely destroyed -- which is the absolute pre-condition to 'waking up' to what must be done. It's not more clever thinking; it's not thinking at all. Its SEEING. So many writing texts miss this point. It's tantamount to a religions experience, and nobody grows up without it. STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR examines this dramatic necessity.

↪️ C.T. Cheek replied:

13/11/2019 – 21:01

Okay, but wouldn't the Act II crisis find itself in the Ordeal? The Hero is tested and arguably looses his/her/its past-self for the new one. Typically, the Hero is not fully "reborn" until the Resurrection, in which they defeat the hypothetical dragon and overcome the conflict of the story. It's kind of this process of rebirth beginning in the earlier sections of the Hero's Journey and ending in the Resurrection and affirmed in the Return with the Elixir.

Lexi Mize says:

25/07/2018 – 22:33

Great article. Odd how one can take nearly every story and somewhat plug it into such a pattern.

Bailey Koch says:

11/06/2019 – 02:16

This was totally lit fam!!!!

↪️ Bailey Koch replied:

Great article, thanks! :) But Vogler didn't expand Campbell's theory. Campbell had seventeen stages, not twelve.

Comments are currently closed.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Bring your stories to life

Our free writing app lets you set writing goals and track your progress, so you can finally write that book!

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

The Art of Narrative

Learn to write.

A Complete Guide to The Hero’s Journey (or The Monomyth)

Learn how to use the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey to structure plot, develop characters, and write riveting stories that will keep readers engaged!

Before I start this post I would like to acknowledged the tragedy that occurred in my country this past month. George Floyd, an innocent man, was murdered by a police officer while three other officers witnessed that murder and remained silent.

To remain silent, in the face of injustice, violen ce, and murder is to be complicit . I acknowledge that as a white man I have benefited from a centuries old system of privilege and abuse against black people, women, American Indians, immigrants, and many, many more.

This systemic abuse is what lead to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice and many more. Too many.

Whether I like it or not I’ve been complicit in this injustice. We can’t afford to be silent anymore. If you’re disturbed by the violence we’ve wit nessed over, and over again please vote this November, hold your local governments accountable, peacefully protest, and listen. Hopefully, together we can bring positive change. And, together, we can heal .

In this post, we’ll go over the stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, also known as the Monomyth. We’ll talk about how to use it to structure your story. You’ll also find some guided questions for each section of the Hero’s Journey. These questions are designed to help guide your thinking during the writing process. Finally, we’ll go through an example of the Hero’s Journey from 1997’s Men In Black.

Down at the bottom, we’ll go over reasons you shouldn’t rely on the Monomyth. And we’ll talk about a few alternatives for you to consider if the Hero’s Journey isn’t right for your story.

But, before we do all that let’s answer the obvious question-

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey was first described by Joseph Campbell. Campbell was an American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College. He wrote about the Hero’s Journey in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces . More than a guide, this book was a study on the fundamental structure of myths throughout history.

Through his study, Campbell identified seventeen stages that make up what he called the Monomyth or Hero’s Journey. We’ll go over these stages in the next section. Here’s how Campbell describes the Monomyth in his book:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Something important to note is that the Monomyth was not conceived as a tool for writers to develop a plot. Rather, Campbell identified it as a narrative pattern that was common in mythology.

George Lucas used Campbell’s Monomyth to structure his original Star Wars film. Thanks to Star Wars ’ success, filmmakers have adopted the Hero’s Journey as a common plot structure in movies.

We see it in films like The Matrix , Spider-man , The Lion King , and many more. But, keep in mind, this is not the only way to structure a story. We’ll talk about some alternatives at the end of this post.

With that out of the way, let’s go over the twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey, or Monomyth. We’ll use the original Men In Black film as an example (because why not?). And, we’ll look at some questions to help guide your thinking, as a writer, at each stage.

Quick note – The original Hero’s Journey is seventeen stages. But, Christopher Vogler, an executive working for Disney, condensed Campbell’s work. Vogler’s version has twelve stages, and it’s the version we’re talking about today. Vogler wrote a guide to use the Monomyth and I’ll link to it at the bottom.)

The 12 Stages of The Hero’s Journey

The ordinary world .

This is where the hero’s story begins. We meet our hero in a down-to-earth, or humble setting. We establish the hero as an ordinary citizen in this world, not necessarily “special” in any way.

Think exposition .

We get to know our hero at this stage of the story. We learn about the hero’s life, struggles, inner or outer demons. This an opportunity for readers to identify with the hero. A good idea since the story will be told from the hero’s perspective.

In Men In Black, we meet our hero, James, who will become Agent J, chasing someone down the streets of a large city. The story reveals some important details through the action of the plo t. Let’s go over these details and how they’re shown through action.

Agent J’s job: He’s a cop. We know this because he’s chasing a criminal. He waves a badge and yells, “NYPD! Stop!”

The setting: The line “NYPD!” tells us that J is a New York City cop. The chase sequence also culminates on the roof of the Guggenheim Museum. Another clue to the setting.

J’s Personality: J is a dedicated cop. We know this because of his relentless pursuit of the suspect he’s chasing. J is also brave. He jumps off a bridge onto a moving bus. He also chases a man after witnessing him climb vertically, several stories, up a wall. This is an inhuman feat that would have most people noping out of there. J continues his pursuit, though.

Guided Questions

The Call of Adventure

The Call of Adventure is an event in the story that forces the hero to take action. The hero will move out of their comfort zone, aka the ordinary world. Does this sound familiar? It should, because, in practice, The Call of Adventure is an Inciting Event.

Refusal of the Call

This is an important stage in the Monomyth. It communicates with the audience the risks that come with Call to Adventure. Every Hero’s Journey should include risks to the main characters and a conflict. This is the stage where your hero contemplates those risks. They will be tempted to remain in the safety of the ordinary world.

In Men in Black, the Refusal of the Call is subtle. It consists of a single scene. Agent K offers J membership to the Men In Black. With that comes a life of secret knowledge and adventure. But, J will sever all ties to his former life. No one anywhere will ever know that J existed. Agent K tells J that he has until sunrise to make his decision.

J does not immediately say, “I’m in,” or “When’s our first mission.” Instead, he sits on the park bench all night contemplating his decision. In this scene, the audience understands that this is not an easy choice for him. Again, this is an excellent use of action to demonstrate a plot point.

It’s also important to note that J only asks K one question before he makes his decision, “is it worth it?” K responds that it is, but only, “if you’re strong enough.” This line of dialogue becomes one of two dramatic questions in the movie. Is J strong enough to be a man in black?

Meeting the Mentor

At this point in the story, the hero is seeking wisdom after initially refusing the call of adventure. The mentor fulfills this need for your hero.

The mentor is usually a character who has been to the special world and knows how to navigate it. Mentor’s provides your hero with tools and resources to aid them in their journey. It’s important to note that the mentor doesn’t always have to be a character. The mentor could be a guide, map, or sacred texts.

If you’ve seen Men In Black then you can guess who acts as J’s mentor. Agent K, who recruited J, steps into the mentor role once J accepts the call to adventure.

Agent K gives J a tour of the MIB headquarters. He introduces him to key characters and explains to him how the special world of the MIB works. Agent K also gives J his signature weapon, the Noisy Cricket.

Crossing the Threshold

This is the point where your hero finally crosses over from the ordinary world into the special one. At this point, there is no turning back for your hero.

Your hero may not cross into the special world on their own. Or, they may need a dramatic event that forces them to act.

At this point, you’ll want to establish the dramatic question of your story. This is the question will your reader wants to answer by the end of your story. A dramatic question is what will keep your audience reading.

Once J decides to commit to the MIB Agent K starts the process of deleting J’s identity. The filmmakers do a great job communicating the drastic nature of J’s decision. This is done through, again, action and an effective voice-over. J’s social security number is deleted, and his fingerprints are burned off. He dons a nondescript black suit, sunglasses, and a sick-ass Hamilton watch .

This scene is immediately followed by a threatening message sent by aliens called the Arquillians. They tell the MIB they will destroy the Earth unless J and K can deliver a galaxy. The only problem is no one knows what the galaxy is. So, we get our story question. Can J and K find and deliver the MacGuffin before the Earth is destroyed?

Tests, Allies, Enemies

This is stage is exactly what it sounds like. Once they’ve entered the special world, your hero will be tested. They will learn the rules of this new world. Your hero’s mentor may have to further teach your hero.

The hero will also begin collecting allies. Characters whose goals align with those of your hero’s. People who will help your hero achieve their goal. These characters may even join your hero on their quest.

And this is also the point where your hero’s enemy will reveal themselves. Now, you’ve may have hinted at, or even introduced the villain in the earlier stages. But, this is where the audience discovers how much of a threat this villain is to your hero.

Approach to the Inmost Cave

The inmost cave is the path towards the central conflict of your story. In this section, your hero is preparing for battle. They may be regrouping with allies, going over important information, or taking a needed rest. This is also a part of the story where you may want to inject some humor.

The approach is also a moment for your audience to regroup. This is an important aspect of pacing. A fast-paced story can be very exciting for the audience, but at some point, the writer needs to tap the breaks.

This approach section gives your audience time to process the plot and consider the stakes of your conflict. This is also a good time to introduce a ticking clock, and it’s perfect for character development.

In Men, In Black the Approach the Inmost Cave involves an interview with a character called Frank the Pug. Frank is a Pug breed of dog. He’s an alien in disguise.

Frank knows important details about the conflict between the Arquillians and Edgar. This is one of the funnier scenes in an overall funny film.

Read more about alliteration here… jk.

Frank also gives J a vital clue to determine the location of the Arquillian’s galaxy. They also discover that the galaxy is an energy source and not an actual galaxy.

Finally, we have the arrival of the Arquillian battleship come to destroy Earth. They give the MIB a warning. If the galaxy is not returned in one hour the will fire on the planet. So, we have a literal ticking clock.

The Ordeal

The Ordeal is about one thing, and that’s death. Your hero must go through a life-altering challenge. This will be a conflict where the hero faces their greatest fears.

It’s essential that your audience feels as if the hero is really in danger. Make the audience question whether the hero will make it out alive. But, your story’s stakes may not be life or death, such as in a comedy or romance.

In that case the death your character experiences will be symbolic. And, your audience will believe that there’s a chance the hero won’t achieve their goal.

Through the ordeal, your hero will experience death whether that be real or symbolic. With this death, the hero will be reborn with greater powers or insight. Overall, the ordeal should be the point in which your character hits rock bottom.

The Ordeal in Men In Black comes the moment when J and K confront Edgar at the site of the World’s Fair. In the confrontation with Edgar, K is eaten alive by Edgar. At this moment J is left alone to confront death. The audience is left to wonder if J can defeat Edgar on his own.

Guided Questions

Reward or Seizing the Sword

At this point in the story, your hero will earn some tangible treasure for all their trouble. This can be a physical treasure. In the context of the monomyth, this is often referred to as the elixir or sword.

However, the reward can be inwardly focused. Your hero might discover hidden knowledge or insight that helps them vanquish their foe. Or, your hero can find their confidence or some self-actualization. This reward, whatever it is, is the thing that they will take with them. It is what they earn from all their hard-fought struggles.

Once K is eaten J seems to be on his own with a massive alien cockroach. This is a pretty bad spot for the rookie agent. What’s worse is the Arquillian clock is still ticking. Edgar, the cockroach, is about to escape Earth, with the galaxy, sealing the planet’s fate.

All seems lost until J claims his reward. In this case, that reward comes in the form of an insight J has about Edgar. Being a giant cockroach, J realizes that Edgar may have a weakness for his Earth-bound counterparts. So, J kicks out a dumpster and starts to smash all the scurrying bugs under his foot.

J guesses correctly, and Edgar is momentarily distracted by J’s actions. Edgar climbs down from his ship to confront J. Agent K, who is still alive in Edgar’s stomach, can activate a gun, and blow Edgar in two. J’s reward is the knowledge that he is no longer a rookie, and he is strong enough for this job. J also captures a physical treasure. After Edgar has exploded, J finds the galaxy which Edgar had swallowed earlier in the film. In this scene, both dramatic questions are answered. The MIB can save the world. And, J is strong enough for the MIB.

The Road Back

At this point, your hero has had some success in their quest and is close to returning to the ordinary world. Your hero has experienced a change from their time in the special world. This change might make your hero’s return difficult. Similar to when your hero crossed the threshold, your hero may need an event that forces them to return.

The road back must be a dramatic turning point that heightens stakes and changes the direction of your story. This event will also re-establish the dramatic question of your story. This act may present a final challenge for your hero before they can return home.

In Men In Black, the road backstage gets a little tricky. The film establishes that when J crosses the threshold he is not able to go back to the ordinary world. His entire identity is erased. Having J go back to his life as a detective would also undo his character growth and leave the audience feeling cheated. Luckily, the filmmakers work around this by having K return to the ordinary world rather than J.

After Edgar is defeated, K tells J that he is retiring from the MIB and that J will step in as K’s replacement. The movie establishes early that agents can retire, but only after having their memory wiped. So, K asks J to wipe his memory so that he can return to a normal life. Once again, J has to grapple with the question of whether he is strong enough for this job. Can he bring himself to wipe K’s memory and lose his mentor forever? Can he fill K’s shoes as an MIB agent?

Resurrection

This is the final act of your story. The hero will have one last glorious encounter with the forces that are set against them. This is the culminating event for your hero. Everything that has happened to your hero has prepared them for this moment.

This can also be thought of as a rebirth for your hero. A moment when they shed all the things that have held them back throughout the story. The resurrection is when your hero applies all the things they’ve learned through their journey.

The final moment can be a physical battle, or again, it can be metaphorical. This is also a moment when allies return to lend a last-minute hand. But, as with any ending of a story, you need to make sure your hero is the one who saves the day.

So, here’s where things start to get a little clumsy. There are a couple of moments that could be a resurrection for our hero J. It could be the moment he faces off with Edgar. This is right before Edgar is killed. But, it’s K that pulls the trigger and kills Edgar. Based on our explanation J needs to be the one who saves the day. Maybe by stalling for time J is the one responsible for saving the day? It’s hard to say what the filmmakers’ intention was here.

The second moment that could represent a resurrection for J might be when he wipes K’s memory. It is the final dramatic hurdle that J faces before he can become a true Man in Black. But, this moment doesn’t resolve the conflict of the film.

Notice that the Hero’s Journey framework isn’t always followed to the letter by all storytellers. We’ll get back to this point at the end of the article.

Return with the Elixir

The ending of your story. Your hero returns to the ordinary world, but this time they carry with them the rewards earned during their journey. They may share these rewards with others who inhabit the ordinary world. But most important, is that you show that your hero has changed for the better.

The elixir represents whatever your hero gained on their journey. Remember, the elixir can be an actual physical reward like a treasure. But, the elixir can also be a metaphorical prize like knowledge or a feeling of fulfillment. This is a moment where your hero will return some sort of balance to the ordinary world.

Be sure to show that the journey has had a permanent effect on your hero.

In the final scene of the movie, we see that J has taken on a mentor role for Dr. Weaver, an MIB recruit now. He has physically changed- his clothes are more representative of his personality. This physical transformation is meant to show that J has fully embraced his new life and journey. No longer a rookie, J has stepped into his mentor, K’s, role.

Should I Use the Hero’s Journey for My Story?

This is a question you should ask yourself before embarking on your journey. The Monomyth works well as a framework. This is pretty obvious when you realize how many films have used it as a plotting device.

But there’s a downside to the popularity of the Monomyth. And that’s that audiences are very familiar with the beats of this kind of story. Sure, they may not be able to describe each of the twelve sections in detail. But, audiences know, intuitively, what is going to happen in these stories. At the very least, audiences, or readers, know how these stories are going to end.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If your story is exciting, well-paced, and the stakes are high, people aren’t going to mind some predictability. But, if you want to shock your readers-

(And if you’re interested in how to shock readers with a plot twist, click here. )

this might not be the best story structure. And, despite how popular it is, the hero’s journey ain’t the only game in town when it comes to story structure. And, you can always take artistic liberty with the Hero’s Journey. The fact that audiences are expecting certain beats means you have an opportunity to subvert expectations.

You can skip parts of the hero’s journey if they don’t fit your plot. With my example, Men In Black it was difficult to fit the story neatly into the hero’s journey framework. This is because aspects of the movie, like the fact that it’s a buddy comedy, don’t always jive with a hero’s journey. Agent K has an important character arch, and so he ends up killing the villain rather than J. But, K’s arch isn’t at all a hero’s journey.

The point is, don’t feel locked in by any single structure. Allow yourself some freedom to tell your story. If there’s no purpose to a resurrection stage in your story then skip it! No one is going to deduct your points.

With that said, here are a few resources on the Hero’s Journey, and some alternate plot structures you’ll want to check out!

This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links

Further Reading on Plot Structure and the Hero’s Journey

The Hero With 1000 Faces by Joseph Campbell

If you’d like to learn more about the Hero’s Journey, or Monomyth, why not go straight to the source? The Hero With 1000 Faces is a collection of work written by Joseph Campbell. His version of the hero’s journey has 17 stages. This is less of a writing manual and more of an exploration of the evolution of myth and storytelling through the ages.

The Seven Basic Plots , by Christopher Booker, is another academic study of storytelling by Christopher Booker. Booker identifies seven basic plots that all stories fit into. They are:

How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method

The Snowflake Method is a teaching tool designed by Randy Ingermanson that will take you through a step-by-step process of writing a novel. The Snowflake Method boils down the novel-writing process six-step process. You will start with a single sentence and with each step you build on that sentence until you have a full-fledged novel! If you’re love processes then pick up a copy of this book today.

In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Hollywood consultant, Christopher Vogler teaches writers how to use the Hero’s Journey to write riveting stories.

Resources:

Wikipedia- Joseph Campbell

Wikipedia- Hero With 1000 Faces

Published by John

View all posts by John

6 comments on “A Complete Guide to The Hero’s Journey (or The Monomyth)”

I don’t understand the use of all those pictures/graphics you threw in as I was reading. They were extremely distracting and seriously detracted from whatever message you were trying to convey.

Discover more from The Art of Narrative

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Improve your writing in one of the largest and most successful writing groups online

Join our writing group!

The Hero’s Journey Ultimate Writing Guide with Examples

by Alex Cabal

What do Star Wars , The Hobbit , and Harry Potter have in common? They’re all examples of a story archetype as old as time. You’ll see this universal narrative structure in books, films, and even video games.

This ultimate Hero’s Journey writing guide will define and explore all quintessential elements of the Hero’s Journey—character archetypes, themes, symbolism, the three act structure, as well as 12 stages of the Hero’s Journey. We’ll even provide a downloadable plot template, tips for writing the Hero’s Journey, and writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing.

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey is a universal story structure that follows the personal metamorphosis and psychological development of a protagonist on a heroic adventure. The protagonist goes through a series of stages to overcome adversity and complete a quest to attain an ultimate reward—whether that’s something tangible, like the holy grail, or something internal, like self confidence.

In the process of self-discovery, the archetypal Hero’s Journey is typically cyclical; it begins and ends in the same place (Think Frodo leaving and then returning to the Shire). After the epic quest or adventure has been completed by overcoming adversity and conflict—both physical and mental—the hero arrives where they once began, changed in some as they rose to meet the ultimate conflict or ordeal of the quest.

Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler

The Hero’s Journey has a long history of conversation around the form and its uses, with notable contributors including Joseph Campbell and the screenwriter Christopher Vogler , who later revised the steps of the Hero’s Journey.

Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” framework is the traditional story structure of the Hero’s Journey archetype. Campbell developed it through analysis of ancient myths, folktales, and religious stories. It generally follows three acts in a cyclical, rather than a linear, way: a hero embarks on a journey, faces a crisis, and then returns home transformed and victorious.

Campbell’s ideation of the monomyth in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces was influenced by Carl Jung’s perspective of psychology and models of self-transformation , where the Hero’s Journey is a path of transformation to a higher self, psychological healing, and spiritual growth.

While Campbell’s original take on the monomyth included 17 steps within the three acts, Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer’s Journey , refined those 17 steps into 12 stages—the common formula for the modern structure many writers use today.

It’s also worth checking out Maureen Murdock’s work on the archetype, “The Heroine’s Journey.” This takes a look at the female Hero’s Journey, which examines the traditionally masculine journey through a feminist lens.

Hero’s Journey diagram: acts, steps, and stages

Below, you can see the way Volger’s Hero’s Journey is broken into twelve story beats across three acts.

A diagram representing the Hero’s Journey. The 12 steps of the journey surround a circle, which goes in a direction from act 1 to the final act.

Why is the Hero’s Journey so popular?

The structure of the Hero’s Journey appears in many of our most beloved classic stories, and it continues to resonate over time because it explores the concept of personal transformation and growth through both physical and mental trials and tribulations. In some sense, every individual in this mythic structure experiences rites of passage, the search for home and the true authentic self, which is mirrored in a protagonist’s journey of overcoming obstacles while seeking to fulfill a goal.

Additionally, the Hero’s Journey typically includes commonly shared symbols and aspects of the human psyche—the trickster, the mother, the child, etc. These archetypes play a role in creating a story that the reader can recognize from similar dynamics in their own relationships, experiences, and familiar world. Archetypes allow the writer to use these “metaphorical truths”—a playful deceiver, a maternal bond, a person of innocence and purity—to deeply and empathetically connect with the reader through symbolism. That’s why they continue to appear in countless stories all around the world.

Hero’s Journey character archetypes

Character archetypes are literary devices based on a set of qualities that are easy for a reader to identify, empathize with, and understand, as these qualities and traits are common to the human experience.

It should be noted that character archetypes are not stereotypes . While stereotypes are oversimplifications of demographics or personality traits, an archetype is a symbol of a universal type of character that can be recognized either in one’s self or in others in real life.

The following archetypes are commonly used in a Hero’s Journey:

The hero is typically the protagonist or principal point-of-view character within a story. The hero transforms—internally, externally, often both—while on their journey as they experience tests and trials and are aided or hindered by the other archetypes they encounter. In general, the hero must rise to the challenge and at some point make an act of sacrifice for the ultimate greater good. In this way, the Hero’s Journey represents the reader’s own everyday battles and their power to overcome them.

Heroes may be willing or unwilling. Some can be downright unheroic to begin with. Antiheroes are notably flawed characters that must grow significantly before they achieve the status of true hero.

The mentor often possesses divine wisdom or direct experience with the special world, and has faith in the hero. They often give the hero a gift or supernatural aid, which is usually something important for the quest: either a weapon to destroy a monster, or a talisman to enlighten the hero. The mentor may also directly aid the hero or present challenges to them that force internal or external growth. After their meeting, the hero leaves stronger and better prepared for the road ahead.

The herald is the “call to adventure.” They announce the coming of significant change and become the reason the hero ventures out onto a mysterious adventure. The herald is a catalyst that enters the story and makes it impossible for the hero to remain in status quo. Existing in the form of a person or an event, or sometimes just as information, they shift the hero’s balance and change their world.

The Threshold Guardian

This archetype guards the first threshold—the major turning point of the story where the hero must make the true commitment of the journey and embark on their quest to achieve their destiny. Threshold guardians spice up the story by providing obstacles the hero must overcome, but they’re usually not the main antagonist.

The role of the threshold guardian is to help round out the hero along their journey. The threshold guardian will test the hero’s determination and commitment and will drive them forward as the hero enters the next stage of their journey, assisting the development of the hero’s character arc within the plot. The threshold guardian can be a friend who doesn’t believe in the hero’s quest, or a foe that makes the hero question themselves, their desires, or motives in an attempt to deter the hero from their journey. Ultimately, the role of the threshold guardian is to test the hero’s resolve on their quest.

The Shape Shifter

The shape shifter adds dramatic tension to the story and provides the hero with a puzzle to solve. They can seem to be one thing, but in fact be something else. They bring doubt and suspense to the story and test the hero’s ability to discern their path. The shape shifter may be a lover, friend, ally, or enemy that somehow reveals their true self from the hero’s preconceived notion. This often causes the hero internal turmoil, or creates additional challenges and tests to overcome.

The shadow is the “monster under the bed,” and could be repressed feelings, deep trauma, or festering guilt. These all possess the dark energy of the shadow. It is the dark force of the unexpressed, unrealized, rejected, feared aspects of the hero and is often, but not necessarily, represented by the main antagonist or villain.

However, other characters may take the form of the shadow at different stages of the story as “foil characters” that contrast against the hero. They might also represent what could happen if the hero fails to learn, transform, and grow to complete their quest. At times, a hero may even succumb to the shadow, from which they will need to make sacrifices to be redeemed to continue on their overall quest.

The Trickster

The trickster is the jester or fool of the story that not only provides comic relief, but may also act as a commentator as the events of the plot unfold. Tricksters are typically witty, clever, spontaneous, and sometimes even ridiculous. The trickster within a story can bring a light-hearted element to a challenge, or find a clever way to overcome an obstacle.

The Hero’s Journey can be found all across comparative mythology

Hero’s Journey themes and symbols

Alongside character archetypes, there are also archetypes for settings, situations, and symbolic items that can offer meaning to the world within the story or support your story’s theme.

Archetypes of themes, symbols, and situations represent shared patterns of human existence. This familiarity can provide the reader insight into the deeper meaning of a story without the writer needing to explicitly tell them. There are a great number of archetypes and symbols that can be used to reinforce a theme. Some that are common to the Hero’s Journey include:

Situational archetypes

Light vs. dark and the battle of good vs. evil

Death, rebirth, and transformation in the cycle of life

Nature vs. technology, and the evolution of humanity

Rags to riches or vice versa, as commentary on the material world and social status

Wisdom vs. knowledge and innocence vs. experience, in the understanding of intuition and learned experience

Setting archetypes

Gardens may represent the taming of nature, or living in harmony with nature.

Forests may represent reconnection with nature or wildness, or the fear of the unknown.

Cities or small towns may represent humanity at its best and at its worst. A small town may offer comfort and rest, while simultaneously offering judgment; a city may represent danger while simultaneously championing diversity of ideas, beings, and cultures.

Water and fire within a landscape may represent danger, change, purification, and cleansing.

Symbolic items

Items of the past self. These items are generally tokens from home that remind the hero of where they came from and who or what they’re fighting for.

Gifts to the hero. These items may be given to the hero from a mentor, ally, or even a minor character they meet along the way. These items are typically hero talismans, and may or may not be magical, but will aid the hero on their journey.

Found items. These items are typically found along the journey and represent some sort of growth or change within the hero. After all, the hero would never have found the item had they not left their everyday life behind. These items may immediately seem unimportant, but often carry great significance.

Earned rewards. These items are generally earned by overcoming a test or trial, and often represent growth, or give aid in future trials, tests, and conflicts.

The three act structure of the Hero’s Journey

The structure of the Hero’s Journey, including all 12 steps, can be grouped into three stages that encompass each phase of the journey. These acts follow the the external and internal arc of the hero—the beginning, the initiation and transformation, and the return home.

Act One: Departure (Steps 1—5)

The first act introduces the hero within the ordinary world, as they are—original and untransformed. The first act will typically include the first five steps of the Hero’s Journey.

This section allows the writer to set the stage with details that show who the hero is before their metamorphosis—what is the environment of the ordinary world? What’s important to the hero? Why do they first refuse the call, and then, why do they ultimately accept and embark on the journey to meet with the conflict?

This stage introduces the first major plot point of the story, explores the conflict the hero confronts, and provides the opportunity for characterization for the hero and their companions.

The end of the first act generally occurs when the hero has fully committed to the journey and crossed the threshold of the ordinary world—where there is no turning back.

Act Two: Initiation (Steps 6—9)

Once the hero begins their journey, the second act marks the beginning of their true initiation into the unfamiliar world—they have crossed the threshold, and through this choice, have undergone their first transformation.

The second act is generally the longest of the three and includes steps six through nine.

In this act, the hero meets most of the characters that will be pivotal to the plot, including friends, enemies, and allies. It offers the rising action and other minor plot points related to the overarching conflict. The hero will overcome various trials, grow and transform, and navigate subplots—the additional and unforeseen complexity of the conflict.

This act generally ends when the hero has risen to the challenge to overcome the ordeal and receives their reward. At the end of this act, it’s common for the theme and moral of the story to be fully unveiled.

Act Three: Return (Steps 10—12)

The final stage typically includes steps 10—12, generally beginning with the road back—the point in the story where the hero must recommit to the journey and use all of the growth, transformation, gifts and tools acquired along the journey to bring a decisive victory against their final conflict.

From this event, the hero will also be “reborn,” either literally or metaphorically, and then beginning anew as a self-actualized being, equipped with internal knowledge about themselves, external knowledge about the world, and experience.

At the end of the third act, the hero returns home to the ordinary world, bringing back the gifts they earned on their journey. In the final passages, both the hero and their perception of the ordinary world are compared with what they once were.

The 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey

The following guide outlines the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey and represents a framework for the creation of a Hero’s Journey story template. You don’t necessarily need to follow the explicit cadence of these steps in your own writing, but they should act as checkpoints to the overall story.

We’ll also use JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit as a literary example for each of these steps. The Hobbit does an exemplary job of following the Hero’s Journey, and it’s also an example of how checkpoints can exist in more than one place in a story, or how they may deviate from the typical 12-step process of the Hero’s Journey.

1. The Ordinary World

This stage in the Hero’s Journey is all about exposition. This introduces the hero’s backstory—who the hero is, where they come from, their worldview, culture, and so on. This offers the reader a chance to relate to the character in their untransformed form.

As the story and character arc develop, the reader is brought along the journey of transformation. By starting at the beginning, a reader has a basic understanding of what drives the hero, so they can understand why the hero makes the choices they do. The ordinary world shows the protagonist in their comfort zone, with their worldview being limited to the perspective of their everyday life.

Characters in the ordinary world may or may not be fully comfortable or satisfied, but they don’t have a point of reference to compare—they have yet to leave the ordinary world to gain the knowledge to do so.

Step One example

The Hobbit begins by introducing Bilbo in the Shire as a respectable and well-to-do member of the community. His ordinary world is utopian and comfortable. Yet, even within a village that is largely uninterested in the concerns of the world outside, the reader is provided a backstory: even though Bilbo buys into the comforts and normalcy of the Shire, he still yearns for adventure—something his neighbors frown upon. This ordinary world of the Shire is disrupted with the introduction of Gandalf—the “mentor”—who is somewhat uncomfortably invited to tea.

2. Call to Adventure

The call to adventure in the Hero’s Journey structure is the initial internal conflict that the protagonist hero faces, that drives them to the true conflict that they must overcome by the end of their journey.

The call occurs within the known world of the character. Here the writer can build on the characterization of the protagonist by detailing how they respond to the initial call. Are they hesitant, eager, excited, refusing, or willing to take a risk?

Step Two example

Bilbo’s call to adventure takes place at tea as the dwarves leisurely enter his home, followed by Gandalf, who identifies Bilbo as the group’s missing element—the burglar, and the lucky 14th member.

Bilbo and his ordinary world are emphasized by his discomfort with his rambunctious and careless guests. Yet as the dwarves sing stories of old adventures, caverns, and lineages, which introduce and foreshadow the conflict to come, a yearning for adventure is stirred. Though he still clings to his ordinary world and his life in the Shire, he’s conflicted. Should he leave the shire and experience the world, or stay in his comfortable home? Bilbo continues to refuse the call, but with mixed feelings.

3. Refusal of the Call

The refusal of the call in the Hero’s Journey showcases a “clinging” to one’s original self or world view. The initial refusal of the call represents a fear of change, as well as a resistance to the internal transformation that will occur after the adventure has begun.

The refusal reveals the risks that the protagonist faces if they were to answer the call, and shows what they’ll leave behind in the ordinary world once they accept.

The refusal of the call creates tension in the story, and should show the personal reasons why the hero is refusing—inner conflict, fear of change, hesitation, insecurity, etc. This helps make their character clearer for the reader.

These are all emotions a reader can relate to, and in presenting them through the hero, the writer deepens the reader’s relationship with them and helps the reader sympathize with the hero’s internal plight as they take the first step of transformation.

Step Three example

Bilbo refuses the call in his first encounter with Gandalf, and in his reaction to the dwarves during tea. Even though Bilbo’s “Tookish” tendencies make him yearn for adventure, he goes to bed that night still refusing the call. The next morning, as Bilbo awakes to an empty and almost fully clean hobbit home, he feels a slight disappointment for not joining the party, but quickly soothes his concerns by enjoying the comfort of his home—i.e. the ordinary world. Bilbo explores his hesitation to disembark from the ordinary world, questioning why a hobbit would become mixed up in the adventures of others, and choosing not to meet the dwarves at the designated location.

4. Meeting the Mentor

Meeting the mentor in the Hero’s Journey is the stage that provides the hero protagonist with a guide, relationship, and/or informational asset that has experience outside the ordinary world. The mentor offers confidence, advice, wisdom, training, insight, tools, items, or gifts of supernatural wonder that the hero will use along the journey and in overcoming the ultimate conflict.

The mentor often represents someone who has attempted to overcome, or actually has overcome, an obstacle, and encourages the hero to pursue their calling, regardless of the hero’s weaknesses or insecurities. The mentor may also explicitly point out the hero’s weaknesses, forcing them to reckon with and accept them, which is the first step to their personal transformation.

Note that not all mentors need to be a character . They can also be objects or knowledge that has been instilled in the hero somehow—cultural ethics, spiritual guidance, training of a particular skill, a map, book, diary, or object that illuminates the path forward, etc. In essence, the mentor character or object has a role in offering the protagonist outside help and guidance along the Hero’s Journey, and plays a key role in the protagonist’s transition from normalcy to heroism.

The mentor figure also offers the writer the opportunity to incorporate new information by expanding upon the story, plot, or backstory in unique ways. They do this by giving the hero information that would otherwise be difficult for the writer to convey naturally.

The mentor may accompany the hero throughout most of the story, or they may only periodically be included to facilitate changes and transformation within them.

Step Four example

The mentor, Gandalf, is introduced almost immediately. Gandalf is shown to be the mentor, firstly through his arrival from—and wisdom of—the outside world; and secondly, through his selection of Bilbo for the dwarven party by identifying the unique characteristics Bilbo has that are essential to overcoming the challenges in the journey. Gandalf doesn’t accompany Bilbo and the company through all of the trials and tribulations of the plot, but he does play a key role in offering guidance and assistance, and saves the group in times of dire peril.

5. Crossing the Threshold

As the hero crosses the first threshold, they begin their personal quest toward self-transformation. Crossing the threshold means that the character has committed to the journey, and has stepped outside of the ordinary world in the pursuit of their goal. This typically marks the conclusion of the first act.

The threshold lies between the ordinary world and the special world, and marks the point of the story where the hero fully commits to the road ahead. It’s a crucial stage in the Hero’s Journey, as the hero wouldn’t be able to grow and transform by staying in the ordinary world where they’re comfortable and their world view can’t change.

The threshold isn’t necessarily a specific place within the world of the story, though a place can symbolize the threshold—for example a border, gateway, or crossroads that separate what is safe and “known” from what is potentially dangerous. It can also be a moment or experience that causes the hero to recognize that the comforts and routine of their world no longer apply—like the loss of someone or something close to the hero, for example. The purpose of the threshold is to take the hero out of their element and force them, and the reader, to adapt from the known to the unknown.

This moment is crucial to the story’s tension. It marks the first true shift in the character arc and the moment the adventure has truly begun. The threshold commonly forces the hero into a situation where there’s no turning back. This is sometimes called the initiation stage or the departure stage.

Step Five example

The threshold moment in The Hobbit occurs when the party experiences true danger as a group for the first time. Bilbo, voted as scout by the party and eager to prove his burglar abilities, sneaks upon a lone fire in the forest where he finds three large trolls. Rather than turn back empty-handed—as he initially wants to—Bilbo chooses to prove himself, plucking up the courage to pickpocket the trolls—but is caught in the process. The dwarves are also captured and fortunately, Gandalf, the mentor, comes to save the party.

Bilbo’s character arc is solidified in this threshold moment. He experiences his first transformation when he casts aside fear and seeks to prove himself as a burglar, and as an official member of the party. This moment also provides further characterization of the party as a whole, proving the loyalty of the group in seeking out their captured member.

Gandalf’s position as the mentor is also firmly established as he returns to ultimately save all of the members of the party from being eaten by trolls. The chapter ends with Bilbo taking ownership of his first hero talisman—the sword that will accompany him through the rest of the adventure.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

Once the hero has crossed the threshold, they must now encounter tests of courage, make allies, and inevitably confront enemies. All these elements force the hero to learn the new ways of the special world and how it differs from the hero’s ordinary world—i.e. how the rules have changed, the conditions of the special world vs. the ordinary world, and the various beings and places within it.

All these elements spark stages of transformation within the hero—learning who they can trust and who they can’t, learning new skills, seeking training from the mentor, and overcoming challenges that force and drive them to grow and transform.

The hero may both succeed and fail at various points of this stage, which will test their commitment to the journey. The writer can create tension by making it clear that the hero may or may not succeed at the critical moment of crisis. These crises can be external or internal.

External conflicts are issues that the character must face and overcome within the plot—e.g. the enemy has a sword drawn and the hero must fight to survive.

Internal conflicts occur inside the hero. For example, the hero has reached safety, but their ally is in peril; will they step outside their comfort zone and rise to the occasion and save their friend? Or will they return home to their old life and the safety of the ordinary world?

Tests are conflicts and threats that the hero must face before they reach the true conflict, or ordeal, of the story. These tests set the stage and prime the hero to meet and achieve the ultimate goal. They provide the writer the opportunity to further the character development of the hero through their actions, inactions, and reactions to what they encounter. The various challenges they face will teach them valuable lessons, as well as keep the story compelling and the reader engaged.

Allies represent the characters that offer support to the protagonist along the journey. Some allies may be introduced from the beginning, while others may be gained along the journey. Secondary characters and allies provide additional nuance for the hero, through interactions, events, and relationships that further show who the hero is at heart, what they believe in, and what they’re willing to fight for. The role of the allies is to bring hope, inspiration, and further drive the hero to do what needs to be done.

Enemies represent a foil to the allies. While allies bring hope and inspiration, enemies will provide challenges, conflicts, tests, and challenges. Both allies and enemies may instigate transformative growth, but enemies do so in a way that fosters conflict and struggle.

Characterization of enemies can also enhance the development of the hero through how they interact and the lessons learned through those interactions. Is the hero easily duped, forgiving, empathetic, merciful? Do they hold a grudge and seek revenge? Who is the hero now that they have been harmed, faced an enemy, and lost pieces of their innocent worldview? To answer that, the hero is still transforming and gestating with every lesson, test, and enemy faced along the way.

Step Six example

As the plot of The Hobbit carries on, Bilbo encounters many tests, allies, and enemies that all drive complexity in the story. A few examples include:

The first major obstacle that Bilbo faces occurs within the dark and damp cave hidden in the goblin town. All alone, Bilbo must pluck up the wit and courage to outriddle a creature named Gollum. In doing so, Bilbo discovers the secret power of a golden ring (another hero talisman) that will aid him and the party through the rest of the journey.

The elves encountered after Bilbo “crosses the threshold” are presented as allies in the story. The hero receives gifts of food, a safe place to rest, and insight and guidance that allows the party to continue on their journey. While the party doesn’t dwell long with the elves, the elves also provide further character development for the party at large: the serious dwarf personalities are juxtaposed against the playful elvish ones, and the elves offer valuable historical insight with backstory to the weapons the party gathered from the troll encounter.

Goblins are a recurring enemy within the story that the hero and party must continue to face, fight, and run from. The goblins present consistent challenges that force Bilbo to face fear and learn and adapt, not only to survive but to save his friends.

Step Seven: “Approach to the Inmost Cave”

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

The approach to the inmost cave of the Hero’s Journey is the tense quiet before the storm; it’s the part of the story right before the hero faces their greatest fear, and it can be positioned in a few different ways. By now, the hero has overcome obstacles, setbacks, and tests, gained and lost allies and enemies, and has transformed in some way from the original protagonist first introduced in the ordinary world.

The moment when the hero approaches the inmost cave can be a moment of reflection, reorganization, and rekindling of morale. It presents an opportunity for the main characters of the story to come together in a moment of empathy for losses along the journey; a moment of planning and plotting next steps; an opportunity for the mentor to teach a final lesson to the hero; or a moment for the hero to sit quietly and reflect upon surmounting the challenge they have been journeying toward for the length of their adventure.

The “cave” may or may not be a physical place where the ultimate ordeal and conflict will occur. The approach represents the momentary period where the hero assumes their final preparation for the overall challenge that must be overcome. It’s a time for the hero and their allies, as well as the reader, to pause and reflect on the events of the story that have already occurred, and to consider the internal and external growth and transformation of the hero.

Having gained physical and/or emotional strength and fortitude through their trials and tests, learned more rules about the special world, found and lost allies and friends, is the hero prepared to face danger and their ultimate foe? Reflection, tension, and anticipation are the key elements of crafting the approach to the cave.

Step Seven example

The approach to the cave in The Hobbit occurs as the party enters the tunnel of the Lonely Mountain. The tunnel is the access point to the ultimate goal—Thorin’s familial treasure, as well as the ultimate test—the formidable dragon Smaug. During this part of the story, the party must hide, plot, and plan their approach to the final conflict. It’s at this time that Bilbo realizes he must go alone to scout out and face the dragon.

8. The Ordeal

The ordeal is the foreshadowed conflict that the hero must face, and represents the midpoint of the story. While the ordeal is the ultimate conflict that the hero knows they must overcome, it’s a false climax to the complete story—there’s still much ground to cover in the journey, and the hero will still be tested after completing this, the greatest challenge. In writing the ordeal phase of the Hero’s Journey, the writer should craft this as if it actually were the climax to the tale, even though it isn’t.

The first act, and the beginning of the second act, have built up to the ordeal with characterization and the transformation of the hero through their overcoming tests and trials. This growth—both internal and external—has all occurred to set the hero up to handle this major ordeal.

As this stage commences, the hero is typically faced with fresh challenges to make the ordeal even more difficult than they previously conceived. This may include additional setbacks for the hero, the hero’s realization that they were misinformed about the gravity of the situation, or additional conflicts that make the ordeal seem insurmountable.

These setbacks cause the hero to confront their greatest fears and build tension for both the hero and the reader, as they both question if the hero will ultimately succeed or fail. In an epic fantasy tale, this may mean a life-or-death moment for the hero, or experiencing death through the loss of an important ally or the mentor. In a romance, it may be the moment of crisis where a relationship ends or a partner reveals their dark side or true self, causing the hero great strife.

This is the rock-bottom moment for the hero, where they lose hope, courage, and faith. At this point, even though the hero has already crossed the threshold, this part of the story shows how the hero has changed in such a way that they can never return to their original self: even if they return to the ordinary world, they’ll never be the same; their perception of the world has been modified forever.

Choosing to endure against all odds and costs to face the ordeal represents the loss of the hero’s original self from the ordinary world, and a huge internal transformation occurs within the hero as they must rise and continue forth to complete their journey and do what they set out to do from the beginning.

The ordeal may also be positioned as an introduction to the greater villain through a trial with a shadow villain, where the hero realizes that the greatest conflict is unveiled as something else, still yet to come. In these instances, the hero may fail, or barely succeed, but must learn a crucial lesson and be metaphorically resurrected through their failure to rise again and overcome the greater challenge.

Step Eight example

Bilbo must now face his ultimate challenge: burgle the treasure from the dragon. This is the challenge that was set forth from the beginning, as it’s his purpose as the party’s 14th member, the burglar, anointed by Gandalf, the mentor. Additional conflicts arise as Bilbo realizes that he must face the dragon alone, and in doing so, must rely on all of the skills and gifts in the form of talismans and tokens he has gained throughout the adventure.

During the ordeal, Bilbo uses the courage he has gained by surmounting the story’s previous trials; he’s bolstered by his loyalty to the group and relies upon the skills and tools he has earned in previous trials. Much as he outwitted Gollum in the cave, Bilbo now uses his wit as well as his magical ring to defeat Smaug in a game of riddles, which ultimately leads Smaug out of the lair so that Bilbo can complete what he was set out to do—steal the treasure.

The reward of the Hero’s Journey is a moment of triumph, celebration, or change as the hero achieves their first major victory. This is a moment of reflection for both the reader and the hero, to take a breath to contemplate and acknowledge the growth, development, and transformation that has occurred so far.

The reward is the boon that the hero learns, is granted, or steals, that will be crucial to facing the true climax of the story that is yet to come. The reward may be a physical object, special knowledge, or reconciliation of some sort, but it’s always a thing that allows for some form of celebration or replenishment and provides the drive to succeed before the journey continues.

Note that the reward may not always be overtly positive—it may also be a double-edged sword that could harm them physically or spiritually. This type of reward typically triggers yet another internal transformation within the hero, one that grants them the knowledge and personal drive to complete the journey and face their remaining challenges.

From the reward, the hero is no longer externally driven to complete the journey, but has evolved to take on the onus of doing so.

Examples of rewards may include:

A weapon, elixir, or object that will be necessary to complete the quest.

Special knowledge, or a personal transformation to use against a foe.

An eye-opening experience that provides deep insight and fundamentally changes the hero and their position within the story and world.

Reconciliation with another character, or with themselves.

No matter what the reward is, the hero should experience some emotional or spiritual revelation and a semblance of inner peace or personal resolve to continue the journey. Even if the reward is not overtly positive, the hero and the reader deserve a moment of celebration for facing the great challenge they set out to overcome.

Step Nine example

Bilbo defeats the dragon at a battle of wits and riddles, and now receives his reward. He keeps the gifts he has earned, both the dagger and the gold ring. He is also granted his slice of the treasure, and the Lonely Mountain is returned to Thorin. The party at large is rewarded for completing the quest and challenge they set out to do.

However, Tolkien writes the reward to be more complex than it first appears. The party remains trapped and hungry within the Mountain as events unfold outside of it. Laketown has been attacked by Smaug, and the defenders will want compensation for the damage to their homes and for their having to kill the dragon. Bilbo discovers, and then hides, the Arkenstone (a symbolic double edged reward) to protect it from Thorin’s selfishness and greed.

10. The Road Back

The road back in the Hero’s Journey is the beginning of the third act, and represents a turning point within the story. The hero must recommit to the journey, alongside the new stakes and challenges that have arisen from the completion of the original goal.

The road back presents roadblocks—new and unforeseen challenges to the hero that they must now face on their journey back to the ordinary world. The trials aren’t over yet, and the stakes are raised just enough to keep the story compelling before the final and ultimate conflict—the hero’s resurrection—is revealed in the middle of the third act.

The hero has overcome their greatest challenge in the Ordeal and they aren’t the same person they were when they started. This stage of the story often sees the hero making a choice, or reflecting on their transformed state compared to their state at the start of the journey.

The writer’s purpose in the third act is not to eclipse the upcoming and final conflict, but to up the stakes, show the true risk of the final climax, and to reflect on what it will take for the hero to ultimately prevail. The road back should offer a glimmer of hope—the light at the end of the tunnel—and should let the reader know the dramatic finale is about to arrive.

Step Ten example

What was once a journey to steal treasure and slay a dragon has developed new complications. Our hero, Bilbo, must now use all of the powers granted in his personal transformation, as well as the gifts and rewards he earned on the quest, to complete the final stages of the journey.

This is the crisis moment of The Hobbit ; the armies of Laketown are prepared for battle to claim their reward for killing Smaug; the fearless leader of their party, Thorin, has lost reason and succumbed to greed; and Bilbo makes a crucial choice based his personal growth: he gives the Arkenstone to the king as a bargaining chip for peace. Bilbo also briefly reconnects with the mentor, Gandalf, who warns him of the unpleasant times ahead, but comforts Bilbo by saying that things may yet turn out for the best. Bilbo then loyally returns to his friends, the party of dwarves, to stand alongside them in the final battle.

11. Resurrection

The resurrection stage of the Hero’s Journey is the final climax of the story, and the heart of the third act. By now the hero has experienced internal and external transformation and a loss of innocence, coming out with newfound knowledge. They’re fully rooted in the special world, know its rules, and have made choices that underline this new understanding.

The hero must now overcome the final crisis of their external quest. In an epic fantasy tale, this may be the last battle of light versus darkness, good versus evil, a cumulation of fabulous forces. In a thriller, the hero might ultimately face their own morality as they approach the killer. In a drama or romance, the final and pivotal encounter in a relationship occurs and the hero puts their morality ahead of their immediate desires.

The stakes are the highest they’ve ever been, and the hero must often choose to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice may occur as a metaphoric or symbolic death of the self in some way; letting go of a relationship, title, or mental/emotional image of the self that a hero once used as a critical aspect of their identity, or perhaps even a metaphoric physical death—getting knocked out or incapacitated, losing a limb, etc.

Through whatever the great sacrifice is, be it loss or a metaphoric death, the hero will experience a form of resurrection, purification, or internal cleansing that is their final internal transformation.

In this stage, the hero’s character arc comes to an end, and balance is restored to the world. The theme of the story is fully fleshed out and the hero, having reached some form of self-actualization, is forever changed. Both the reader and the hero experience catharsis—the relief, insight, peace, closure, and purging of fear that had once held the hero back from their final transformation.

Step Eleven example

All the armies have gathered, and the final battle takes place. Just before the battle commences, Bilbo tells Thorin that it was he who gave the Arkenstone to the city of men and offers to sacrifice his reward of gold for taking the stone. Gandalf, the mentor, arrives, standing beside Bilbo and his decision. Bilbo is shunned by Thorin and is asked to leave the party for his betrayal.

Bilbo experiences a symbolic death when he’s knocked out by a stone. Upon awakening, Bilbo is brought to a dying Thorin, who forgives him of his betrayal, and acknowledges that Bilbo’s actions were truly the right thing to do. The theme of the story is fully unveiled: that bravery and courage comes in all sizes and forms, and that greed and gold are less worthy than a life rich in experiences and relationships.

12. Return with the Elixir

The elixir in the Hero’s Journey is the final reward the hero brings with them on their return, bridging their two worlds. It’s a reward hard earned through the various relationships, tests, and growth the hero has experienced along their journey. The “elixir” can be a magical potion, treasure, or object, but it can also be intangible—love, wisdom, knowledge, or experience.

The return is key to the circular nature of the Hero’s Journey. It offers a resolution to both the reader and the hero, and a comparison of their growth from when the journey began.

Without the return, the story would have a linear nature, a beginning and an end. In bringing the self-actualized hero home to the ordinary world, the character arc is completed, and the changes they’ve undergone through the journey are solidified. They’ve overcome the unknown, and though they’re returning home, they can no longer resume their old life because of their new insight and experiences.

Step Twelve example

The small yet mighty hero Bilbo is accompanied on his journey home by his mentor Gandalf, as well as the allies he gathered along his journey. He returns with many rewards—his dagger, his golden ring, and his 1/14th split of the treasure—yet his greatest rewards are his experience and the friends he has made along the way. Upon entering the Shire Bilbo sings a song of adventure, and the mentor Gandalf remarks, “My dear Bilbo! Something is the matter with you, you are not the hobbit you were.”

The final pages of The Hobbit explore Bilbo’s new self in the Shire, and how the community now sees him as a changed hobbit—no longer quite as respectable as he once was, with odd guests who visit from time to time. Bilbo also composes his story “There and Back Again,” a tale of his experiences, underlining his greatest reward—stepping outside of the Shire and into the unknown, then returning home, a changed hobbit.

Books that follow the Hero’s Journey

One of the best ways to become familiar with the plot structure of the Hero’s Journey is to read stories and books that successfully use it to tell a powerful tale. Maybe they’ll inspire you to use the hero’s journey in your own writing!

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

The Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin.

The Odyssey by Homer.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Writing tips for the Hero’s Journey

Writing a Hero’s Journey story often requires planning beforehand to organize the plot, structure, and events of the story. Here are some tips to use the hero’s journey archetype in a story:

Use a template or note cards to organize and store your ideas. This can assist in ensuring that you tie up any loose ends in the plot, and that the cadence of your story is already outlined before you begin writing.

Use word count goals for writing different sections of your story. This can help you keep pace while you plan and write the first draft. You can always revise, edit, and add in detail at later stages of development, but getting the ideas written without bogging them down with details can assist in preparing your outline, and may perhaps provide additional inspiration and guidance along the way.

Lean into creativity and be flexible with the 12 steps. They don’t need to occur in the exact order we’ve listed above, but that ordering can offer great checkpoint moments for your story.

Invest in characterization and ensure that your main character is balanced with credible strengths and weaknesses. A perfect, pure hero has no room to grow. A one-dimensional villain who relies on the trope of “pure evil” without any motivations for their actions is boring and predictable.

Ensure tension and urgency is woven into the story. An epic tale to the grocery store for baby formula may still be fraught with danger, and the price of failure is a hungry child. Without urgency, tension, and risk, a Hero’s Journey will fall flat.

Be hard on your characters. Give them deep conflicts that truly test their nature, and their mental, physical, and spiritual selves. An easy journey isn’t a memorable one.

Have a balance of scenes that play on both positive and negative emotions and outcomes for the hero to create a compelling plot line that continues to engage your reader. A story that’s relentlessly positive doesn’t provide a pathway for the hero to transform. Likewise, a story that’s nothing but doom, strife, and turmoil, without a light at the end of the tunnel or an opportunity for growth, can make a story feel stagnant and unengaging.

Reward your characters and your reader. Personal transformation and the road to the authentic self may be grueling, but there’s peace or joy at the end of the tunnel. Even if your character doesn’t fully saved the world, they—and the reader—should be rewarded with catharsis, a new perspective, or personal insight at the end of the tale.

Hero’s Journey templates

Download these free templates to help you plan out your Hero’s Journey:

Download the Hero’s Journey template template (docx) Download the Hero’s Journey template template (pdf)

Prompts and practices to help you write your own Hero’s Journey

Use the downloadable template listed below for the following exercises:

Read a book or watch a movie that follows the Hero’s Journey. Use the template to fill in when each step occurs or is completed. Make note of themes and symbols, character arcs, the main plot, and the subplots that drive complexity in the story.

When writing, use a timer set to 2—5 minutes per section to facilitate bursts of creativity. Brainstorm ideas for cadence, plot, and characters within the story. The outline you create can always be modified, but the timer ensures you can get ideas on paper without a commitment; you’re simply jotting down ideas as quickly as you can.

Use the downloadable template above to generate outlines based on the following prompts.

A woman’s estranged mother has died. A friend of the mother arrives at the woman’s home to tell her that her mother has left all her belongings to her daughter, and hands her a letter. The letter details the mother’s life, and the daughter must visit certain places and people to find her mother’s house and all the belongings in it—learning more about her mother’s life, and herself, along the way.

The last tree on earth has fallen, and technology can no longer sustain human life on Earth. An engineer, having long ago received alien radio signals from a tower in their backyard, has dedicated their life to building a spaceship in their garage. The time has come to launch, and the engineer must select a group of allies to bring with them to the stars, on a search for a new life, a new home, and “the others” out there in the universe.

A detective is given a new case: to find a much-talked-about murderer. The twist is, the murderer has sent a letter to the detective agency, quietly outing a homicidal politician who is up for re-election and is a major financial contributor to the police. In the letter, the murderer states that if the politician doesn’t come clean about their crimes, the murderer will kill the politician on the night of the election. The detective must solve the case before the election, and come to terms with their own feelings of justice and morality.

Get feedback on your writing today!

Scribophile is a community of hundreds of thousands of writers from all over the world. Meet beta readers, get feedback on your writing, and become a better writer!

Join now for free

Story Archetypes: 50+ Plot Archetypes to Craft Your Narrative

What are the Elements of a Story? 12 Central Story Elements

What You Need to Know as a Writer About Narrative Tenses

How to Write a Book Outline for a Nonfiction Book

What is a Static Character? Definition and Examples

The Five-Act Structure: The Foundation of an Engaging Story

A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey

OVERVIEW: What are the hero’s journey steps? That is, what’s the psychological process we go through that can lead to inner transformation? This guide answers these questions.

______________

Treasure, love, reward, approval, honor, status, freedom, and survival … these are some of the many things associated with the hero’s journey.

However, we don’t find the meaning of the hero’s journey in slaying the dragon or saving the princess.

These are but colorful metaphors and symbols for a more significant purpose.

Battling inner and outer demons, confronting bullies, and courting your ideal mate symbolize a passage through the often treacherous path of self-discovery toward adulthood.

If you complete one of these “adventures,” you’re different. Sometimes visually, but always internally.

Here, we’ll explore the meaning of the hero’s journey steps and see how it applies to psychological development and our ability to actualize our potential.

Let’s dive in …

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The hero’s journey refers to a common motif, or set of patterns, found in many ancient mythologies around the world.

The hero’s journey steps are said to be universal and found throughout recorded history.

The popularization of the hero’s journey is attributed to the late mythologist Joseph Campbell.

These stages lead an individual (the would-be hero) through a challenging process of change that often includes great hardships.

This well-known story structure is used in many modern films and storytelling. However, the true meaning of the hero’s journey motif is psychological in origin.

What is the Monomyth?

Joseph Campbell was a curious mythologist. In the field of comparative mythology, most scholars examine how one culture’s myths are different than another.

Instead of focusing on the many differences between cultural myths and religious stories, however, Campbell did the opposite: He looked for the similarities.

His studies resulted in what’s called the monomyth . The monomyth is a universal story structure.

Essentially, it’s a story template that takes a character through a sequence of stages. Campbell began identifying the patterns of this monomyth (the hero’s journey steps).

Over and over again, he was amazed to find this structure in the cultures he studied. He also observed the same sequence in many religions including the stories of Gautama Buddha, Moses, and Jesus Christ.

Campbell outlined the stages of the monomyth in his classic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).

What is the Hero?

The main character in the monomyth is the hero .

The hero isn’t a person, but an archetype —a set of universal images combined with specific patterns of behavior.

Think of a protagonist from your favorite film. He or she represents the hero.

The storyline of the film enacts the hero’s journey.

The Hero archetype resides in the psyche of every individual, which is one of the primary reasons we love hearing and watching stories.

What is a Myth?

We might ask, why explore the hero’s journey steps?

Sure, Hollywood uses it as their dominant story structure for its films (more on that later). But what relevance does it have for us as individuals?

Today, when we speak of “myth,” we refer to something that’s commonly believed, but untrue.

Myth, for minds like Campbell and Carl Jung however, had a much deeper meaning. Myths, for them, represent dreams of the collective psyche .

That is, in understanding the symbolic meaning of a myth, you come to know the psychological undercurrent—including hidden motivations , tensions, and desires—of the people and culture.

What is the Power of Myth?

Campbell explains to Bill Moyer in The Power of Myth : 1 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth , 1991, 193.

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

As Campbell eloquently puts it in The Hero with a Thousand Faces ,

Mythology is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology.

Because the hero’s journey steps represent a monomyth that we can observe in most, if not all, cultures, it represents a process that is relevant to the entire human family .

hero's journey steps joseph campbell quote

What is this Process Within the Hero’s Journey?

It’s the process of personal transformation from an innocent child into a mature adult.

The child is born into a set of rules and beliefs of a group of people.

Through the child’s heroic efforts, he must break free from these conventions (transcend them) to discover himself.

In the process, the individual returns to his soul.

If we think of the hero’s journey as a roadmap for self-development, it can hold a lot of value for us.

A Quick Note About Gender: Masculine vs Feminine

This psychological decoding is based on a “Jungian” understanding of the psyche.

The hero is ultimately a masculine archetype. The female counterpart would be the heroine. While the hero and the heroine certainly share many attributes, they are not the same.

Similarly, the hero’s journey is predominantly a process of development for the masculine psyche. The hero archetype is associated with autonomy, building structure, and learning about limitations, which are qualities associated with masculine energy.

However, note that “masculine” and “feminine” are not the same as “man” and “woman.” The psyche of a man has a feminine counterpart—what Jung called the anima . The psyche of a woman has a masculine archetype called the animus . For this reason, the hero’s journey does have universal relevance.

While Western culture seems riddled with gender confusion, there are distinct differences between the masculine and the feminine psyche.

Okay, now back to our story …

The 3 Main Stages of the Hero’s Journey

Okay, so now let’s begin to break down the structure and sequence of the hero’s journey.

As Campbell explains:

The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.

This cycle of coming and returning has 3 clear stages:

Stage 1: Departure

Campbell called the initial stage departure or the call to adventure . The hero departs from the world he knows.

Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet to join Obi-Wan to save the princess. Neo gets unplugged from The Matrix with the help of Morpheus and his crew.

In the Departure stage, you leave the safety of the world you know and enter the unknown.

Campbell writes of this stage in The Hero with a Thousand Faces :

This first step of the mythological journey—which we have designated the “call to adventure”—signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.

That is, the hero must leave the known “conventional world” and enter a “special world” that is foreign.

Stage 2: Initiation

Now the hero must face a series of trials and tribulations. The hero’s journey isn’t safe.

The hero is tested in battle, skill, and conflict. He may not succeed in each action but must press on.

The protagonist will meet allies, enemies, and mentors with supernatural aid throughout the initiation stage.

Stage 3: Return

Having endured the trials and hardships of the adventure, the hero returns home.

But the hero is no longer the same. An internal transformation has taken place through the maturation process of the experience.

Luke is now a Jedi and has come to peace with his past. Neo embraces his destiny and liberates himself from the conventions of The Matrix.

The Hero’s Journey in Drama

In Three Uses of a Knife , famed playwright David Mamet suggests a similar three-act structure for plays and dramas: 2 David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama , 2000.

Act 1: Thesis . The drama presents life as it is for the protagonist. The ordinary world.

Act 2: Antithesis . The protagonist faces opposing forces that send him into an upheaval (disharmony).

Act 3: Synthesis . The protagonist attempts to integrate the old life with the new one.

We note that problems, challenges, and upheavals are the defining characteristic of this journey.

Without problems, the path toward growth is usually left behind. (More on this topic below.)

Assessing Your Place in the Hero’s Journey

Before we explore the stages of the monomyth more closely, let’s look at what these three phases reveal about self-mastery and psychological development.

Stage 1 represents our comfort zone. We feel safe here because it is known to us.

Stages 2 and 3, however, represent the unknown . Embracing the unknown means letting go of safety.

Abraham Maslow points out that we are confronted with an ongoing series of choices throughout life between safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity.

Maslow writes in Toward a Psychology of Being : 3 Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being , 2014.

We grow forward when the delights of growth and anxieties of safety are greater than the anxieties of growth and the delights of safety.

Is it now clear why so many of us refuse the call to adventure?

We cling to the safety of the known instead of embracing the “delight of growth” that only comes from the unknown.

Campbell’s 17 Stages of the Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell didn’t just outline three stages of the monomyth. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces , he deconstructs every step along the journey.

The stages of the hero’s journey are the common sequence of events that occurred in the monomyth motif.

Technically speaking, Campbell outlined 17 stages in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

1: The Call to Adventure
2: Refusal of the Call
3: Supernatural Aid
4: The Crossing of the First Threshold
5: Belly of the Whale
6: The Road of Trials
7: The Meeting with the Goddess
8: Woman as the Temptress
9: Atonement with the Father
10: Apotheosis
11: The Ultimate Boon
12: Refusal of the Return
13: The Magic Flight
14: Rescue from Without
15: The Crossing of the Return Threshold
16: Master of the Two Worlds
17: Freedom to Live

These 17 stages or hero’s journey steps can be found globally in the myths and legends throughout recorded history.

The Modified 12 Hero’s Journey Steps

Now, let’s review these stages of the hero’s journey in more detail.

I’m going to outline these steps below using a slightly simplified version from Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers .

Vogler’s model, which is used throughout Hollywood, only has 12 steps (compared to 17), and I think it does a solid job of keeping the essence of Campbell’s monomyth structure intact.

As you read these hero’s journey steps, see if you can determine how they apply to your development.

Step 1: The Ordinary World

Before a would-be hero can enter the special world, he must first live in the ordinary world.

The ordinary world is different for each of us—it represents our norms, customs, conditioned beliefs, and behaviors. The ordinary world is sometimes referred to as the “conventional world.”

In The Hobbit , the ordinary world is the Shire where Bilbo Baggins lives with all the other Hobbits—gardening, eating and celebrating—living a simple life.

Novelist J.R.R. Tolkien contrasts this life in the Shire with the special world of wizards, warriors, men, elves, dwarfs, and evil forces on the brink of world war.

Step 2: The Call to Adventure

The first hero’s journey step is the call to adventure.

The call to adventure marks a transition from the ordinary world to the special world. The hero is introduced to his quest of great consequence.

Obi-Wan said to Luke, “You must come with me to Alderaan.” That is, Luke is invited to leave the ordinary world of his aunt and uncle’s farm life and go on an adventure with a Jedi knight.

Joseph Campbell explains: 4 Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell On His Life And Work , 1990.

The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of this society to a zone unknown.

Step 3: Refusal of the Call

Fear of change as well as death, however, often leads the hero to refuse the call to adventure .

The ordinary world represents our comfort zone; the special world signifies the unknown.

Luke Skywalker immediately responds to Obi-Wan, “I can’t go with you,” citing his chores and responsibilities at home.

Step 4: Meeting the Mentor

Campbell called this archetype the “mentor with supernatural aid.”

Generally, at an early stage of the adventure, the hero is graced by the presence of a wise sage . Personified in stories as a magical counselor , a reclusive hermit, or a wise leader, the mentor’s role is to help guide the hero.

Think Obi-Wan, Yoda, Gandalf, Morpheus, or Dumbledore. Sometimes cloaked in mystery and secret language, a mentor manifests when the hero is ready.

Sadly, our modern world is depleted of wise elders or shamans who can effectively bless the younger generation. (A topic for a different day.) For most of us, it is best to seek wise counsel from your inner guide , the Self within.

Step 5: Cross the First Threshold

The hero resists change initially but is ultimately forced to make a critical decision: embark on the adventure or forever remain in the ordinary world with its illusion of security.

Although Luke refuses the call to adventure initially, when he returns home to see his aunt and uncle dead, he immediately agrees to go with Obi-Wan. He crossed the first threshold.

In one sense, the first threshold is the point of no return. Once the hero shoots across the unstable suspension bridge, it bursts into flames.

There’s no turning back, at least, not how he came.

The first threshold can mark a major decision in our personal lives:

“I’m going to travel around the globe.”
“I’m going to transform my physical health.”
“I am going to write a book.”
“I’m going to master the flute.”
“I’m going to realize my true nature.”

This first breakthrough is a feat within itself; however, it is only the first of many turning points.

Step 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies

Along the hero’s journey, the main character encounters many obstacles and allies.

Luke meets Obiwan (mentor), Han Solo, Princess Leia, and the rebel alliance while fighting many foes. Neo meets Morpheus (mentor), Trinity, and the rest of the Nebuchadnezzar crew while having to fight Agents in a strange world.

Some people may try to stop you along your quest—possibly saying you’re unreasonable or unrealistic. These “dream-stoppers” are often cleverly masked as friends and family who appear to have positive intentions but hinder your development nonetheless.

Your ability to identify obstructions on your path and align with support along your adventure is critical to your adventure.

Unfortunately, because few complete their hero’s journey to mature adulthood, most people will unconsciously attempt to sabotage yours.

Step 7: Approach to the Inmost Cave

The next significant threshold is often more treacherous than the first.

Entering the villain’s castle or the evil billionaire’s mansion, this second major decision usually puts the hero at significant physical and psychological risks.

Neo decides to go save Morpheus who’s being held in a building filled with Agents.

Within the walls of the innermost cave lies the cornerstone of the special world where the hero closes in on his objective.

For a man, the innermost cave represents the Mother Complex, a regressive part of him that seeks to return to the safety of the mother. 5 Robert Johnson, He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, 1989. When a man seeks safety and comfort—when he demands pampering—it means he’s engulfed within the innermost cave.

For a woman, the innermost cave often represents learning how to surrender to the healing power of nurturance—to heal the handless maiden. 6 Robert Johnson, The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden: Understanding the Wounded Feeling Function in Masculine and Feminine Psychology , 1995.

Step 8: Ordeal

No worthwhile adventure is easy. There are many perils on the path to growth, self-discovery , and self-realization.

A major obstacle confronts the hero, and the future begins to look dim: a trap, a mental imprisonment, or imminent defeat on the battlefield.

It seems like the adventure will come to a sad conclusion, as all hope appears lost. But hope remains and it is in these moments of despair when the hero must access a hidden part of himself—one more micron of energy, strength, faith, or creativity to find his way out of the belly of the beast.

Neo confronts Agent Smith in the subway station—something that was never done before. The hero must call on an inner power he doesn’t know he possesses.

Step 9: Reward

Having defeated the enemy and slain the dragon, the hero receives the prize. Pulling the metaphorical sword from the stone, the hero achieves the objective he set out to complete.

Whether the reward is monetary, physical, romantic, or spiritual, the hero transforms. Usually, the initial prize sought by the hero is physical—the sword in the stone or a physical treasure of some kind.

Step 10: The Road Back

Alas, the adventure isn’t over yet. There usually needs to be one last push to return home. Now the hero must return to the world from which he came with the sacred elixir.

Challenges still lie ahead in the form of villains, roadblocks, and inner demons. The hero must deal with whatever issues were left unresolved at this stage of the journey.

Taking moral inventory, examining the Shadow , and performing constant self-inquiry help the hero identify weaknesses and blindspots that will later play against him.

Step 11: Resurrection

Before returning home—before the adventure is over—there’s often one more unsuspected, unforeseen ordeal.

This final threshold, which may be more difficult than the prior moment of despair, provides one last test to solidify the growth of the hero. This threshold represents the final climax.

Neo is shot and killed by Agent Smith. And, he literally resurrects to confront the enemy one last time following his transformation.

The uncertain Luke Skywalker takes that “one in a million” shot from his X-Wing to destroy the Death Star.

Step 12: Return with the Elixir

Often, the prize the hero initially sought (in Step 9) becomes secondary as a result of the personal transformation he undergoes.

Perhaps the original quest was financially driven , but now the hero takes greater satisfaction in serving others in need. The real change is always internal .

In this final stage, the hero can become the master of both worlds , with the freedom to live and grow, impacting all of humanity.

Returning with the prize, the hero’s experience of reality is different. The person is no longer an innocent child or adolescent seeking excitement or adventure.

Comfortable in his own skin, he has evolved and is now capable of handling the demands and challenges of everyday life.

The Hero’s Journey in Films

Are you now more aware of how these hero’s journey steps play out in popular films and television series?

George Lucas was friends with Joseph Campbell. Lucas used these hero’s journey steps from Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces to produce the original Star Wars film. 7 https://billmoyers.com/content/mythology-of-star-wars-george-lucas/

It’s difficult to appreciate the impact Star Wars still has on American culture and around the world. It’s even more difficult to articulate how much of that impact is attributed to Campbell’s insights.

However, one challenge our culture faces is that many popular film franchises produce movies that, most often, never complete the hero’s journey.

Many popular characters in action films like Marvel and DC Comics superheroes, James Bond, Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible), Indiana Jones, etc. never actually transform.

These characters stay in the adolescent stage of development (and we tend to celebrate that reality).

These heroes don’t evolve into the warm, vulnerable, generative adults who no longer seek adventure and excitement.

That said, since I originally published this guide in early 2018, this has begun to change.

For example, in the final Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), James Bond did demonstrate some generative growth.

The same goes for Tony Stark’s character (Ironman) in Avengers: Endgame (2019).

Where Are You On Your Hero’s Journey?

More importantly, do you see how these hero’s journey steps are unfolding in your life?

Although each of our stories is unique, they have common threads—elements of this universal structure we all share.

Returning from the moment of despair—from inside the dragon’s lair—without the reward (or lesson), you are presented with a similar adventure repeated ad infinitum —until you either learn the lesson or give up.

In the beginning, the hero’s journey is about achievement.

Whether you’re trying to build a successful business, raise a family, write a screenplay, travel to a distant land, or become a skilled artist, these all represent external achievements that often launch us into our hero’s journey.

But through this external quest—if we become more conscious—the journey transitions to an emphasis on internal growth that leads to transformation.

The Hero isn’t an expression of mature adulthood. This archetype is a by-product of adolescence. The archetypes of adulthood are different, but to access them, we must complete the hero’s journey first .

The Primary Ingredient in Every Hero’s Journey

Compelling stories and real life comes down to one thing: problems .

The protagonist faces a problem and tries to overcome it. Problems represent the essence of drama and the key to good storytelling. Without problems, there’s no story. Problems engage us, tantalizing the human mind.

The hero must face his problems, surmount his fears, resolve his tensions, or fail.

The same is true for our development: without problems and tensions, there can be no growth.

Psychological development is the process of overcoming setbacks, limitations, and conditioned behavior to reach maturity.

Refusing the Call to Adventure

Few people ever fully embrace the Hero’s Journey, a psychological odyssey that leads the individual to wholeness .

Because of our fear of the unknown, many refuse the call to adventure. We delay our journey in many ways:

Put important things aside.
Procrastinate.
Distract ourselves with TV, social media, and other people’s lives.
Make excuses.
Stay stuck in the lazy part .
Focus on competing with others.

But something brews inside of us. An internal tension builds. The tension may be small at first, but it grows stronger in the darkness. Tensions are those opposing forces at play within us. This internal conflict creates disharmony.

Humans don’t like disharmony when it bubbles into consciousness, and so these internal tensions can catapult us out of the familiar. The feeling of discord can lead to action and ultimately, some resolution.

Maybe you’re currently embracing your hero’s journey. Or perhaps you’ve been refusing the call. It matters not. What matters is what you do today— right now .

How to Embrace Your Hero’s Journey, Step by Step

The main thing you need to do to embrace your hero’s journey is stay present.

Remember, as Campbell explained, “You are the hero of your own story.”

Psychological development is supposed to be a natural process. But we aren’t currently in a world that supports healthy development.

As such, it’s vital to listen within .

Here are a few guides that may serve you:

Access Your Inner Guide
How to Ground Yourself
How to Stay in Your Center
How to Overcome Internal Resistance

Ultimately, be mindful of your fears and aspirations.

Left unchecked, your fears can subconsciously lead you to endlessly refuse the call to adventure.

In contrast, your aspirations can help you embrace your adventure.

As Joseph Campbell often said,

Follow your bliss!

Videos Related to the Hero’s Journey Steps

Book related to the hero’s journey steps.

The hero’s journey steps are outlined in the books referenced throughout this guide:

joseph campbell the hero with a thousand faces

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell’s Mythos Lecture Series (DVD)

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

How to Be an Adult by David Richo

What Do You Think?

Are you going through the hero’s journey steps?

About the Author

Scott Jeffrey is the founder of CEOsage, a self-leadership resource publishing in-depth guides read by millions of self-actualizing individuals. He writes about self-development, practical psychology, Eastern philosophy, and integrated practices. For 25 years, Scott was a business coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and best-selling authors. He's the author of four books including Creativity Revealed .

Learn more >

I would like to understand the Hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell describes it as something that has been taken/lost or life giving. How do I know if my hero’s journey has been done?

If you’re examining the hero’s journey from the perspective of individuation — that is, the journey to mature adulthood — it takes many years to come to wholeness within oneself.

Psychologically speaking, the hero’s journey is inward. The characters you meet (like the Mentor) are within yourself. So it involves active imagination in bringing the archetype into some form of harmony within yourself.

You have mentioned a choice to stay in the comfort of safety or the unknow for growth. I am wondering if this is done in a Psychological manner where your life’s circumstances stay as they are or you physically live in a different environment, leaving your surroundings, people and material responsibilities etc.. Hope you can answer this for me.

If you’re a young adult, there’s often an external aspect to the hero’s journey — for example, leaving home and separating from one’s parents. But what Campbell was highlighting with the monomyth is ultimately a psychological process akin to Jungian individuation: https://scottjeffrey.com/individuation-process/

I want to share my thoughts on the heroes journey. After reading the twelve steps, and what you said- I quote “Step 12: Return with the Elixir Often, the prize the hero initially sought (in Step 9) becomes secondary as a result of the personal transformation he undergoes.

Perhaps the original quest was financially driven, but now the hero takes greater satisfaction in serving others in need.

The real change is always internal.

In this final stage, the hero can become the master of both worlds, with the freedom to live and grow, impacting all of humanity.”

My favorite movie for a while now has been The Peaceful Warrior, I have just watched Coach Carter. They seem to tell the same story and I think the story of The Heroes Journey. You have mentioned Star Wars, James Bond and the Matrix.

In the movies The Peaceful Warrior, and Coach Carter, the achievement earned is an inward spiritualism that is, I quote” impacting all of humanity.” Thank-you.

If The Peaceful Warrior is your favorite movie, read Dan Millman’s “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior” — the book the film is based on. Much deeper insights. It’s a magical book — especially when you’re just setting out on your self-discovery journey.

I have read about 25% so far, I am not a good reader. I give myself three pages each day, yet often I’m reading more. It is as if the movie is replaying and I’m able to go with it, imaging the main characters. There is more information from reading than watching the movie, though I am thinking there is a lot of fiction, as it has been described on the net. Though I just need to adhere to the believable parts. I don’t know if it is possible to remember the day’s events that happened during college. For example, what people said, what they were doing throughout the day. My college day’s I can only remember situations that happened all dispersed from one another, with only a few minutes recalled. Does someone like yourself able to recall conversations and put them as dialogs for a book? Or is it a writer’s privilege to invent these for the book?

“The Peaceful Warrior” is a work of fiction. The genre is technically called “visionary fiction.”

There is a passage in the book where Socrates say’s “Mind is an illusory reflection of cerebral fidgeting. It comprises all the random uncontrolled thoughts that bubble into awareness from the subconscious. Consciousness is not the mind; awareness is not mind; attention is not mind. Mind is an obstruction, an aggravation, a primal weakness in the human experiment. It is a kind of evolutionary mistake in the human being. I have no use for the mind.” I don’t think think this way because what we have as humans is natural and so it has a purpose. I am interested if you would give an opinion on this statement Socrates said.

For the most part, I agree with Millman’s statements. They are also consistent with much of the Eastern traditions. An essential aspect of the meditative traditions is to “pacify the mind”. They sometimes even use stronger longer of “killing the mind.” But at other times, they make the distinction between the “aware mind” versus the “monkey mind” or the “shining mind” versus the “stirring mind.” But in terms of the untrained mind (which is the mind of over 99% of people), I agree with Millman. I just wouldn’t call it “evolutionary.”

Millman would have already made ethical judgment towards any begger, so, he should not have thought twice about ignoring him. But because his story, is going through a transformation, he had these menacing mind talks. Do you think if you were in the same situation as him, would you give the begger money or use your self-consciousness to clear negative mind noise? I am wondering if a second time in the same situation would make one change their reaction…

This is quoted from the book; “A scrawny young teenager came up to me. “Spare some change, can’t you?” “No, sorry,” I said, not feeling sorry at all. As I walked away I thought, “Get a job.” Then vague guilts came into my mind; I’d said no to a penniless beggar. Angry thoughts arose. “He shouldn’t walk up to people like that!” I was halfway down the block before I realized all the mental noise i had tuned in to, and the tension it was causing – just because some guy had asked me for money and I’d said no. In that instant I let it go.”

I finished the peaceful warrior and found it enjoyable. The preview of Dan’s second book (Sacred Journey of the peaceful warrior) sums up what he was expressing through his life.

There was one part I have heard before where the dialog between Dan and Soc was flat, with no meaning. Thank-you.

I would like to balance the four functions Jung describes (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition) in your Individuation Process page. How do I know when feeling and sensation are active in everyday events? Could you give me an example? Thank-you.

Brett, please use the related guide page to address your questions.

The Individuation process page has not got a comments section.

I was walking in the bush on a moonlit windy night. The moving branches displayed a moving shadow, I was startled at first thought someone was behind me. Then I put the moonlight and the moving branches together and summed up what had happened without turning around. Was my thinking a Feeling, thinking, intuition or sensation? Thank-you.

I didn’t realize the comment sections weren’t open on that other guide. The psychological types represent our dominant orientations for processing information. When you were startled, was your attention on your body or the fear itself? Was your mind focused on “what could that be”? No need to answer here.

But the main thing about psychological types, from a Jungian perspective, is to understand what your dominant and inferior types are so you can develop your weakest side. Taking an Enneagram assessment test can help you determine your dominant type. In that system, it’s either thinking, feeling, or sensing.

Thank-you for your reply. You gave me an example of what I believe would be my dominant (being the first impression of the event) type. The second instance you described, is that too my dominant type? I do already know what it was that brings me fear. Can you follow up with this scenario? I have done enneagram questions before, and I am hopeless in giving a true response as all multiple question apply to equally.

“I have done enneagram questions before, and I am hopeless in giving a true response as all multiple question apply to equally.”

In my experience, when people say things like this, it’s often because they are “out of center” and analyzing things in their heads. If, for example, you read detailed descriptions of each Type, there’s no way you’re going to relate equally to all of them. Only one (sometimes a few) will strike a deep cord within you. It may leave you feeling “raw” and exposed.

Using the example you provided isn’t really going to help in this context. Do you mostly live in your head (mind/thoughts/analysis), your body (gut/sensations/sensory perception), or feelings? We all use all of them, but one tends to be more dominant than the others.

Thank-you. I agree with you Quote “If, for example, you read detailed descriptions of each Type, there’s no way you’re going to relate equally to all of them”. You might think I’m procrastinating as I want to work this out. Quote” Superior Function versus Inferior Function We like to do things we’re good at and avoid doing things in which we feel inadequate. Thus, we develop specific skills while undeveloped capacities remain in the unconscious. Jung grouped these four functions into pairs: thinking and feeling, sensing and intuiting”. Follow me for a sec, I have determined my superior function is Thinking, that would leave my inferior function to feeling. I assume sensing and intuition would be in the middle. I’m going to give the answer that you will give to my question, how do I bring the four functions to the middle? Answer ; center yourself. Do you agree or tell me what I should be doing?

Brett, I can’t really speak to what you should be doing. From a Jungian perspective (as well as transpersonal psychology), you would develop your inferior function and grow in that line of intelligence. I borrow the concept of the Center from the Taoist tradition. Western psychology mainly seeks to build a healthy ego while Eastern traditions mainly focus on transcending the ego.

Is the answer to “center yourself”? Sure. But most likely you’ll only be able to do this temporarily (representing a “state” of consciousness), while if you develop via various practices, you establish different structural changes that become more stable.

How to Center Yourself.

I like this article and want to learn more. I’m sending you my questions in this article as there isn’t a comments section.

I have so many questions, do I really need these answered to be comfortable with learning? Or should I take a calming with acceptance approach, that will eventually find the answers I seek? Should I go ahead and ask… ok I will ask. In the four centers, take in information via the physical center, interpret experience via the emotional center, evaluate the world via the mental center. Could all be take in information? Thank-you.

Brett, I just opened the comment section on that centering guide. Please post your question there and then I’ll reply.

Is it always a Heroes journey to take on what seems an insurmountable task? I see this at the beginning of inspirational films. Thank-you.

Always be careful with the term “always.”

Remember that what Campbell was ultimately highlighting with his monomyth structure was a psychological process of development. So it’s best to keep that in context.

Insurmountable tasks can sometimes be a catalyst for one’s journey, but this is not always the case.

In films and storytelling, you need major a problem for the hero/protagonist to face. Otherwise, there’s no story.

With what you said in keeping the psychological process in context. I was thinking of the film where a football coach leaves a successful career in the city, to coach no-hoper orphans in the country. My first impression was that the coach is on a hero’s journey with much to lose but great inward comfort to gain. Now I think it is the orphan footballers who are on a hero’s journey, (by leading as an example of being an orphan and becoming successful to inspire them to do the same) to stand up with confidence to be equal to the rest of the world. The movie is twelve mighty orphans. Is this reasonable thinking and do you see different interpretation? Thank-you

I can’t really comment as I haven’t seen the film. In any decent film, multiple characters have “arcs.” In many cases, the coach in sports films plays the mentor/sage role but then has his own transformation as well. This is the case with Gandalf the Gray who has to “die” and be resurrected, transforming into Gandalf the White.

Merry Christmas Scott digital guide. Type to you soon:)

Does the hero’s journey have the same thoughts and feelings for a woman as a man?

From a Jungian perspective, the process would be different.

As Jungian Robert A. Johnson highlights in many of his books, the myths related to the feminine psyche are different than the myths related to the masculine. As such, they follow a different structure and aim.

That said, because there’s an anima in each male psyche and an animus in each female psyche, a part of us can relate to the hero’s journey in its totality. Hence, a heroine can go on a similar hero’s journey as a man.

What an excellent and thorough treatment. Thanks for these invaluable insights for my writing class.

Thank you for the feedback, Craig!

I love this observation about modern cinematic heroes: “Many popular characters in action films like Marvel and DC Comics superheroes, James Bond, Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible), Indiana Jones, etc. never actually transform.”

Have you written elsewhere at greater length on this topic? I thought I read an article on this topic a few years back but don’t remember where! Certainly the weightiness of the observation was such a lightbulb moment.

Thanks and kind regards M.

You can find a more detailed archetypal decoding of the hero here:

https://scottjeffrey.com/hero-archetype/

Session expired

Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.

Story Writing Guides

12 Hero’s Journey Stages Explained (+ Free Templates)

From zero to hero, the hero’s journey is a popular character development arc used in many stories. In today’s post, we will explain the 12 hero’s journey stages, along with the simple example of Cinderella.

The Hero’s Journey was originally formulated by American writer Joseph Campbell to describe the typical character arc of many classic stories, particularly in the context of mythology and folklore. The original hero’s journey contained 17 steps. Although the hero’s journey has been adapted since then for use in modern fiction, the concept is not limited to literature. It can be applied to any story, video game, film or even music that features an archetypal hero who undergoes a transformation. Common examples of the hero’s journey in popular works include Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

What is the hero's journey?

Stage 1: The Ordinary World

Stage 2: call of adventure, stage 3: refusal of the call, stage 4: meeting the mentor, stage 5: crossing the threshold, stage 6: tests, allies, enemies, stage 7: the approach, stage 8: the ordeal, stage 9: reward, stage 10: the road back, stage 11: resurrection, stage 12: return with the elixir, cinderella example, campbell’s 17-step journey, leeming’s 8-step journey, cousineau’s 8-step journey.

Free Hero's Journey Templates

What is the hero’s journey?

The hero’s journey, also known as the monomyth, is a character arc used in many stories. The idea behind it is that heroes undergo a journey that leads them to find their true selves. This is often represented in a series of stages. There are typically 12 stages to the hero’s journey. Each stage represents a change in the hero’s mindset or attitude, which is triggered by an external or internal event. These events cause the hero to overcome a challenge, reach a threshold, and then return to a normal life.

The hero’s journey is a powerful tool for understanding your characters. It can help you decide who they are, what they want, where they came from, and how they will change over time. It can be used to

Understand the challenges your characters will face
Understand how your characters react to those challenges
Help develop your characters’ traits and relationships

In this post, we will explain each stage of the hero’s journey, using the example of Cinderella.

You might also be interested in our post on the story mountain or this guide on how to outline a book .

12 Hero’s Journey Stages

The archetypal hero’s journey contains 12 stages and was created by Christopher Vogler. These steps take your main character through an epic struggle that leads to their ultimate triumph or demise. While these steps may seem formulaic at first glance, they actually form a very flexible structure. The hero’s journey is about transformation, not perfection.

Your hero starts out in the ordinary world. He or she is just like every other person in their environment, doing things that are normal for them and experiencing the same struggles and challenges as everyone else. In the ordinary world, the hero feels stuck and confused, so he or she goes on a quest to find a way out of this predicament.

Example: Cinderella’s father passes away and she is now stuck doing chores and taking abuse from her stepsisters and stepmother.

The hero gets his or her first taste of adventure when the call comes. This could be in the form of an encounter with a stranger or someone they know who encourages them to take a leap of faith. This encounter is typically an accident, a series of coincidences that put the hero in the right place at the right time.

Example: An invite arrives inviting the family to a royal ball where the Prince will choose a wife.

Some people will refuse to leave their safe surroundings and live by their own rules. The hero has to overcome the negative influences in order to hear the call again. They also have to deal with any personal doubts that arise from thinking too much about the potential dangers involved in the quest. It is common for the hero to deny their own abilities in this stage and to lack confidence in themselves.

Example: Cinderella accepts the call by making her own dress for the ball. However, her stepmother refuses the call for her by not letting her go to the ball. And her step-sisters ruin her dress, so she can not go.

After hearing the call, the hero begins a relationship with a mentor who helps them learn about themselves and the world. In some cases, the mentor may be someone the hero already knows. The mentor is usually someone who is well-versed in the knowledge that the hero needs to acquire, but who does not judge the hero for their lack of experience.

Example: Cinderella meets her fairy godmother who equips her with everything she needs for the ball, including a dress and a carriage.

The hero leaves their old life behind and enters the unfamiliar new world. The crossing of the threshold symbolises leaving their old self behind and becoming a new person. Sometimes this can include learning a new skill or changing their physical appearance. It can also include a time of wandering, which is an essential part of the hero’s journey.

Example: Cinderella hops into the carriage and heads off to the ball. She has transformed from a servant into an elegant young lady.

As the hero goes on this journey, they will meet both allies (people who help the hero) and enemies (people who try to stop the hero). There will also be tests, where the hero is tempted to quit, turn back, or become discouraged. The hero must be persistent and resilient to overcome challenges.

Example: At the ball, Cinderella meets the prince, and even see’s her stepmother and stepsister. She dances with Prince all night long making her step-sisters extremely jealous.

The hero now reaches the destination of their journey, in some cases, this is a literal location, such as a cave or castle. It could also be metaphorical, such as the hero having an internal conflict or having to make a difficult decision. In either case, the hero has to confront their deepest fears in this stage with bravery. In some ways, this stage can mark the end of the hero’s journey because the hero must now face their darkest fears and bring them under control. If they do not do this, the hero could be defeated in the final battle and will fail the story.

Example: Cinderella is having a great time at the ball and nearly forgets about the midnight rule. As she runs away in a hurry, her glass slipper falls off outside the palace.

The hero has made it to the final challenge of their journey and now must face all odds and defeat their greatest adversary. Consider this the climax of the story. This could be in the form of a physical battle, a moral dilemma or even an emotional challenge. The hero will look to their allies or mentor for further support and guidance in this ordeal. Whatever happens in this stage could change the rest of the story, either for good or bad.

Example: Prince Charming looks all over the kingdom for the mysterious girl he met at the ball. He finally visits Cinderella’s house and tries the slippers on the step-sisters. The prince is about to leave and then he sees Cinderella in the corner cleaning.

When the hero has defeated the most powerful and dangerous of adversaries, they will receive their reward. This reward could be an object, a new relationship or even a new piece of knowledge. The reward, which typically comes as a result of the hero’s perseverance and hard work, signifies the end of their journey. Given that the hero has accomplished their goal and served their purpose, it is a time of great success and accomplishment.

Example: The prince tries the glass slipper on Cinderella. The glass slipper fits Cinderella perfectly, and they fall in love.

The journey is now complete, and the hero is now heading back home. As the hero considers their journey and reflects on the lessons they learned along the way, the road back is sometimes marked by a sense of nostalgia or even regret. As they must find their way back to the normal world and reintegrate into their former life, the hero may encounter additional difficulties or tests along the way. It is common for the hero to run into previous adversaries or challenges they believed they had overcome.

Example: Cinderella and Prince Charming head back to the Prince’s castle to get married.

The hero has one final battle to face. At this stage, the hero might have to fight to the death against a much more powerful foe. The hero might even be confronted with their own mortality or their greatest fear. This is usually when the hero’s true personality emerges. This stage is normally symbolised by the hero rising from the dark place and fighting back. This dark place could again be a physical location, such as the underground or a dark cave. It might even be a dark, mental state, such as depression. As the hero rises again, they might change physically or even experience an emotional transformation.

Example: Cinderella is reborn as a princess. She once again feels the love and happiness that she felt when she was a little girl living with her father.

At the end of the story, the hero returns to the ordinary world and shares the knowledge gained in their journey with their fellow man. This can be done by imparting some form of wisdom, an object of great value or by bringing about a social revolution. In all cases, the hero returns changed and often wiser.

Example: Cinderella and Prince Charming live happily ever after. She uses her new role to punish her stepmother and stepsisters and to revitalise the kingdom.

We have used the example of Cinderella in Vogler’s hero’s journey model below:

Below we have briefly explained the other variations of the hero’s journey arc.

The very first hero’s journey arc was created by Joseph Campbell in 1949. It contained the following 17 steps:

The Call to Adventure: The hero receives a call or a reason to go on a journey.
Refusal of the Call: The hero does not accept the quest. They worry about their own abilities or fear the journey itself.
Supernatural Aid: Someone (the mentor) comes to help the hero and they have supernatural powers, which are usually magical.
The Crossing of the First Threshold: A symbolic boundary is crossed by the hero, often after a test.
Belly of the Whale: The point where the hero has the most difficulty making it through.
The Road of Trials: In this step, the hero will be tempted and tested by the outside world, with a number of negative experiences.
The Meeting with the Goddess: The hero meets someone who can give them the knowledge, power or even items for the journey ahead.
Woman as the Temptress: The hero is tempted to go back home or return to their old ways.
Atonement with the Father: The hero has to make amends for any wrongdoings they may have done in the past. They need to confront whatever holds them back.
Apotheosis: The hero gains some powerful knowledge or grows to a higher level.
The Ultimate Boon: The ultimate boon is the reward for completing all the trials of the quest. The hero achieves their ultimate goal and feels powerful.
Refusal of the Return: After collecting their reward, the hero refuses to return to normal life. They want to continue living like gods.
The Magic Flight: The hero escapes with the reward in hand.
Rescue from Without: The hero has been hurt and needs help from their allies or guides.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold: The hero must come back and learn to integrate with the ordinary world once again.
Master of the Two Worlds: The hero shares their wisdom or gifts with the ordinary world. Learning to live in both worlds.
Freedom to Live: The hero accepts the new version of themselves and lives happily without fear.

David Adams Leeming later adapted the hero’s journey based on his research of legendary heroes found in mythology. He noted the following steps as a pattern that all heroes in stories follow:

Miraculous conception and birth: This is the first trauma that the hero has to deal with. The Hero is often an orphan or abandoned child and therefore faces many hardships early on in life.
Initiation of the hero-child: The child faces their first major challenge. At this point, the challenge is normally won with assistance from someone else.
Withdrawal from family or community: The hero runs away and is tempted by negative forces.
Trial and quest: A quest finds the hero giving them an opportunity to prove themselves.
Death: The hero fails and is left near death or actually does die.
Descent into the underworld: The hero rises again from death or their near-death experience.
Resurrection and rebirth: The hero learns from the errors of their way and is reborn into a better, wiser being.
Ascension, apotheosis, and atonement: The hero gains some powerful knowledge or grows to a higher level (sometimes a god-like level).

In 1990, Phil Cousineau further adapted the hero’s journey by simplifying the steps from Campbell’s model and rearranging them slightly to suit his own findings of heroes in literature. Again Cousineau’s hero’s journey included 8 steps:

The call to adventure: The hero must have a reason to go on an adventure.
The road of trials: The hero undergoes a number of tests that help them to transform.
The vision quest: Through the quest, the hero learns the errors of their ways and has a realisation of something.
The meeting with the goddess: To help the hero someone helps them by giving them some knowledge, power or even items for the journey ahead.
The boon: This is the reward for completing the journey.
The magic flight: The hero must escape, as the reward is attached to something terrible.
The return threshold: The hero must learn to live back in the ordinary world.
The master of two worlds: The hero shares their knowledge with the ordinary world and learns to live in both worlds.

As you can see, every version of the hero’s journey is about the main character showing great levels of transformation. Their journey may start and end at the same location, but they have personally evolved as a character in your story. Once a weakling, they now possess the knowledge and skill set to protect their world if needed.

Free Hero’s Journey Templates

Use the free Hero’s journey templates below to practice the skills you learned in this guide! You can either draw or write notes in each of the scene boxes. Once the template is complete, you will have a better idea of how your main character or the hero of your story develops over time:

The storyboard template below is a great way to develop your main character and organise your story:

Did you find this guide on the hero’s journey stages useful? Let us know in the comments below.

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

Comments loading...

Features for Creative Writers
Features for Work
Features for Higher Education
Features for Teachers
Features for Non-Native Speakers
Learn Blog Grammar Guide Community Events FAQ
Grammar Guide

Hero's Journey 101: How to Use the Hero's Journey to Plot Your Story

Dan Schriever

How many times have you heard this story? A protagonist is suddenly whisked away from their ordinary life and embarks on a grand adventure. Along the way they make new friends, confront perils, and face tests of character. In the end, evil is defeated, and the hero returns home a changed person.

That’s the Hero’s Journey in a nutshell. It probably sounds very familiar—and rightly so: the Hero’s Journey aspires to be the universal story, or monomyth, a narrative pattern deeply ingrained in literature and culture. Whether in books, movies, television, or folklore, chances are you’ve encountered many examples of the Hero’s Journey in the wild.

In this post, we’ll walk through the elements of the Hero’s Journey step by step. We’ll also study an archetypal example from the movie The Matrix (1999). Once you have mastered the beats of this narrative template, you’ll be ready to put your very own spin on it.

Sound good? Then let’s cross the threshold and let the journey begin.

What Is the Hero’s Journey?

The 12 stages of the hero’s journey, writing your own hero’s journey.

The Hero’s Journey is a common story structure for modeling both plot points and character development. A protagonist embarks on an adventure into the unknown. They learn lessons, overcome adversity, defeat evil, and return home transformed.

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

Joseph Campbell , a scholar of literature, popularized the monomyth in his influential work The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949). Looking for common patterns in mythological narratives, Campbell described a character arc with 17 total stages, overlaid on a more traditional three-act structure. Not all need be present in every myth or in the same order.

The three stages, or acts, of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey are as follows:

1. Departure. The hero leaves the ordinary world behind.

2. Initiation. The hero ventures into the unknown ("the Special World") and overcomes various obstacles and challenges.

3. Return. The hero returns in triumph to the familiar world.

Hollywood has embraced Campbell’s structure, most famously in George Lucas’s Star Wars movies. There are countless examples in books, music, and video games, from fantasy epics and Disney films to sports movies.

In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (1992), screenwriter Christopher Vogler adapted Campbell’s three phases into the "12 Stages of the Hero’s Journey." This is the version we’ll analyze in the next section.

The three stages of Campbell's Hero's Journey

For writers, the purpose of the Hero’s Journey is to act as a template and guide. It’s not a rigid formula that your plot must follow beat by beat. Indeed, there are good reasons to deviate—not least of which is that this structure has become so ubiquitous.

Still, it’s helpful to master the rules before deciding when and how to break them. The 12 steps of the Hero's Journey are as follows :

The Ordinary World
The Call of Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Meeting the Mentor
Crossing the First Threshold
Tests, Allies, and Enemies
Approach to the Inmost Cave
Reward (Seizing the Sword)
The Road Back
Resurrection
Return with the Elixir

Let’s take a look at each stage in more detail. To show you how the Hero’s Journey works in practice, we’ll also consider an example from the movie The Matrix (1999). After all, what blog has not been improved by a little Keanu Reeves?

#1: The Ordinary World

This is where we meet our hero, although the journey has not yet begun: first, we need to establish the status quo by showing the hero living their ordinary, mundane life.

It’s important to lay the groundwork in this opening stage, before the journey begins. It lets readers identify with the hero as just a regular person, “normal” like the rest of us. Yes, there may be a big problem somewhere out there, but the hero at this stage has very limited awareness of it.

The Ordinary World in The Matrix :

We are introduced to Thomas A. Anderson, aka Neo, programmer by day, hacker by night. While Neo runs a side operation selling illicit software, Thomas Anderson lives the most mundane life imaginable: he works at his cubicle, pays his taxes, and helps the landlady carry out her garbage.

#2: The Call to Adventure

The journey proper begins with a call to adventure—something that disrupts the hero’s ordinary life and confronts them with a problem or challenge they can’t ignore. This can take many different forms.

While readers may already understand the stakes, the hero is realizing them for the first time. They must make a choice: will they shrink from the call, or rise to the challenge?

The Call to Adventure in The Matrix :

A mysterious message arrives in Neo’s computer, warning him that things are not as they seem. He is urged to “follow the white rabbit.” At a nightclub, he meets Trinity, who tells him to seek Morpheus.

#3: Refusal of the Call

Oops! The hero chooses option A and attempts to refuse the call to adventure. This could be for any number of reasons: fear, disbelief, a sense of inadequacy, or plain unwillingness to make the sacrifices that are required.

A little reluctance here is understandable. If you were asked to trade the comforts of home for a life-and-death journey fraught with peril, wouldn’t you give pause?

Refusal of the Call in The Matrix :

Agents arrive at Neo’s office to arrest him. Morpheus urges Neo to escape by climbing out a skyscraper window. “I can’t do this… This is crazy!” Neo protests as he backs off the ledge.

#4: Meeting the Mentor

Okay, so the hero got cold feet. Nothing a little pep talk can’t fix! The mentor figure appears at this point to give the hero some much needed counsel, coaching, and perhaps a kick out the door.

After all, the hero is very inexperienced at this point. They’re going to need help to avoid disaster or, worse, death. The mentor’s role is to overcome the hero’s reluctance and prepare them for what lies ahead.

Meeting the Mentor in The Matrix :

Neo meets with Morpheus, who reveals a terrifying truth: that the ordinary world as we know it is a computer simulation designed to enslave humanity to machines.

#5: Crossing the First Threshold

At this juncture, the hero is ready to leave their ordinary world for the first time. With the mentor’s help, they are committed to the journey and ready to step across the threshold into the special world . This marks the end of the departure act and the beginning of the adventure in earnest.

This may seem inevitable, but for the hero it represents an important choice. Once the threshold is crossed, there’s no going back. Bilbo Baggins put it nicely: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Crossing the First Threshold in The Matrix :

Neo is offered a stark choice: take the blue pill and return to his ordinary life none the wiser, or take the red pill and “see how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo takes the red pill and is extracted from the Matrix, entering the real world .

#6: Tests, Allies, and Enemies

Now we are getting into the meat of the adventure. The hero steps into the special world and must learn the new rules of an unfamiliar setting while navigating trials, tribulations, and tests of will. New characters are often introduced here, and the hero must navigate their relationships with them. Will they be friend, foe, or something in between?

Broadly speaking, this is a time of experimentation and growth. It is also one of the longest stages of the journey, as the hero learns the lay of the land and defines their relationship to other characters.

Wondering how to create captivating characters? Read our guide , which explains how to shape characters that readers will love—or hate.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies in The Matrix :

Neo is introduced to the vagabond crew of the Nebuchadnezzar . Morpheus informs Neo that he is The One , a savior destined to liberate humanity. He learns jiu jitsu and other useful skills.

#7: Approach to the Inmost Cave

Time to get a little metaphorical. The inmost cave isn’t a physical cave, but rather a place of great danger—indeed, the most dangerous place in the special world . It could be a villain’s lair, an impending battle, or even a mental barrier. No spelunking required.

Broadly speaking, the approach is marked by a setback in the quest. It becomes a lesson in persistence, where the hero must reckon with failure, change their mindset, or try new ideas.

Note that the hero hasn’t entered the cave just yet. This stage is about the approach itself, which the hero must navigate to get closer to their ultimate goal. The stakes are rising, and failure is no longer an option.

Approach to the Inmost Cave in The Matrix :

Neo pays a visit to The Oracle. She challenges Neo to “know thyself”—does he believe, deep down, that he is The One ? Or does he fear that he is “just another guy”? She warns him that the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

#8: The Ordeal

The ordeal marks the hero’s greatest test thus far. This is a dark time for them: indeed, Campbell refers to it as the “belly of the whale.” The hero experiences a major hurdle or obstacle, which causes them to hit rock bottom.

This is a pivotal moment in the story, the main event of the second act. It is time for the hero to come face to face with their greatest fear. It will take all their skills to survive this life-or-death crisis. Should they succeed, they will emerge from the ordeal transformed.

Keep in mind: the story isn’t over yet! Rather, the ordeal is the moment when the protagonist overcomes their weaknesses and truly steps into the title of hero .

The Ordeal in The Matrix :

When Cipher betrays the crew to the agents, Morpheus sacrifices himself to protect Neo. In turn, Neo makes his own choice: to risk his life in a daring rescue attempt.

#9: Reward (Seizing the Sword)

The ordeal was a major level-up moment for the hero. Now that it's been overcome, the hero can reap the reward of success. This reward could be an object, a skill, or knowledge—whatever it is that the hero has been struggling toward. At last, the sword is within their grasp.

From this moment on, the hero is a changed person. They are now equipped for the final conflict, even if they don’t fully realize it yet.

Reward (Seizing the Sword) in The Matrix :

Neo’s reward is helpfully narrated by Morpheus during the rescue effort: “He is beginning to believe.” Neo has gained confidence that he can fight the machines, and he won’t back down from his destiny.

#10: The Road Back

We’re now at the beginning of act three, the return . With the reward in hand, it’s time to exit the inmost cave and head home. But the story isn’t over yet.

In this stage, the hero reckons with the consequences of act two. The ordeal was a success, but things have changed now. Perhaps the dragon, robbed of his treasure, sets off for revenge. Perhaps there are more enemies to fight. Whatever the obstacle, the hero must face them before their journey is complete.

The Road Back in The Matrix :

The rescue of Morpheus has enraged Agent Smith, who intercepts Neo before he can return to the Nebuchadnezzar . The two foes battle in a subway station, where Neo’s skills are pushed to their limit.

#11: Resurrection

Now comes the true climax of the story. This is the hero’s final test, when everything is at stake: the battle for the soul of Gotham, the final chance for evil to triumph. The hero is also at the peak of their powers. A happy ending is within sight, should they succeed.

Vogler calls the resurrection stage the hero’s “final exam.” They must draw on everything they have learned and prove again that they have really internalized the lessons of the ordeal . Near-death escapes are not uncommon here, or even literal deaths and resurrections.

Resurrection in The Matrix :

Despite fighting valiantly, Neo is defeated by Agent Smith and killed. But with Trinity’s help, he is resurrected, activating his full powers as The One . Isn’t it wonderful how literal The Matrix can be?

#12: Return with the Elixir

Hooray! Evil has been defeated and the hero is transformed. It’s time for the protagonist to return home in triumph, and share their hard-won prize with the ordinary world . This prize is the elixir —the object, skill, or insight that was the hero’s true reward for their journey and transformation.

Return with the Elixir in The Matrix :

Neo has defeated the agents and embraced his destiny. He returns to the simulated world of the Matrix, this time armed with god-like powers and a resolve to open humanity’s eyes to the truth.

If you’re writing your own adventure, you may be wondering: should I follow the Hero’s Journey structure?

The good news is, it’s totally up to you. Joseph Campbell conceived of the monomyth as a way to understand universal story structure, but there are many ways to outline a novel. Feel free to play around within its confines, adapt it across different media, and disrupt reader expectations. It’s like Morpheus says: “Some of these rules can be bent. Others can be broken.”

Think of the Hero’s Journey as a tool. If you’re not sure where your story should go next, it can help to refer back to the basics. From there, you’re free to choose your own adventure.

Are you prepared to write your novel? Download this free book now:

The Novel-Writing Training Plan

So you are ready to write your novel. excellent. but are you prepared the last thing you want when you sit down to write your first draft is to lose momentum., this guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world..

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Dan holds a PhD from Yale University and CEO of FaithlessMTG

Get started with ProWritingAid

Drop us a line or let's stay in touch via :

My Storyboards

The Hero’s Journey

What is the Hero's Journey in Literature?

Crafting a heroic character is a crucial aspect of storytelling, and it involves much more than simply sketching out a brave and virtuous figure. The hero's journey definition is not the typical linear narrative but rather a cyclical pattern that encompasses the hero's transformation, trials, and ultimate return, reflecting the profound and timeless aspects of human experience. The writer's journey in this endeavor goes beyond the external actions of the hero and delves into the character's inner world. The hero arc is the heart of the narrative, depicting the character's evolution from an ordinary person to a true hero.

Narratology and Writing Instructions for Heroic Characters

Related to both plot diagram and types of literary conflict , the ”Hero’s Journey” structure is a recurring pattern of stages many heroes undergo over the course of their stories. Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer, and lecturer, articulated this cycle after researching and reviewing numerous myths and stories from a variety of time periods and regions of the world. He found that different writers take us on different journeys, however, they all share fundamental principles. Through the hero's trials, growth, and ultimate triumph, the narrative comes full circle, embodying the timeless pattern of the hero cycle. Literature abounds with examples of the hero cycle, illustrating how this narrative structure transcends cultural boundaries and remains a fundamental element of storytelling. This hero cycle in literature is also known as the Monomyth, archetype . The most basic version of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth has 12 steps, while more detailed versions can have up to 17 steps. His type of hero's journey diagram provides a visual roadmap for understanding the various stages and archetypal elements that protagonists typically encounter in their transformative quests. The wheel to the right is an excellent visual to share with students of how these steps occur. Hero's journey diagram examples provide a visual roadmap for understanding the various stages and archetypal elements that protagonists typically encounter in their transformative quests. Exploring the monomyth steps outlined by Joseph Campbell, we can see how these universal narrative elements have shaped countless stories across cultures and time periods.

Which Story Structure is Right for You?

The choice of story structure depends on various factors, including the type of story you want to tell, your intended audience, and your personal creative style. Here are some popular story structures and when they might be suitable:

The Hero's Journey: Use this structure when you want to tell a story of personal growth, transformation, and adventure. It works well for epic tales, fantasy, and science fiction, but it can be adapted to other genres as well.
Three-Act Structure: This is a versatile structure suitable for a wide range of genres, from drama to comedy to action. It's ideal for stories that have a clear beginning, middle, and end, with well-defined turning points.
Episodic or Serial Structure: If you're creating a long-running series or a story with multiple interconnected arcs, this structure is a good choice. It allows for flexibility in storytelling and can keep audiences engaged over the long term.
Nonlinear Structure: Experiment with this structure if you want to challenge traditional narrative conventions. It's suitable for stories where timelines are fragmented, revealing information gradually to build intrigue and suspense.
Circular or Cyclical Structure: This structure is great for stories with recurring themes or for tales that come full circle. It can be particularly effective in literary fiction and philosophical narratives.

Ultimately, the right story structure for you depends on your creative vision, the genre you're working in, and the narrative you want to convey. You may also choose to blend or adapt different structures to suit your story's unique needs. The key is to select a structure that serves your storytelling goals and engages your target audience effectively.

What is a Common Theme in the Hero's Journey?

A common theme in the hero's journey is the concept of personal transformation and growth. Throughout the hero's journey, the protagonist typically undergoes significant change, evolving from an ordinary or flawed individual into a more heroic, self-realized, or enlightened character. This theme of transformation is often accompanied by challenges, trials, and self-discovery, making it a central and universal element of hero's journey narratives.

Structure of the Monomyth: The Hero's Journey Summary

This summary of the different elements of the archetypal hero's journey outlines the main four parts along with the different stages within each part. This can be shared with students and used as a reference along with the hero's journey wheel to analyze literature.

Part One - Call to Adventure

During the exposition, the hero is in the ordinary world , usually the hero’s home or natural habitat. Conflict arises in their everyday life, which calls the hero to adventure , where they are beckoned to leave their familiar world in search of something. They may refuse the call at first, but eventually leave, knowing that something important hangs in the balance and refusal of the call is simply not an option.

Part Two - Supreme Ordeal or Initiation

Once the hero makes the decision to leave the normal world, venture into the unfamiliar world, and has officially begun their mysterious adventure, they will meet a mentor figure (a sidekick in some genres) and together these two will cross the first threshold . This is the point where turning back is not an option, and where the hero must encounter tests, allies and enemies . Obstacles like tests and enemies must be overcome to continue. Helpers aid the hero in their journey.

Part Three - Unification or Transformation

Having overcome initial obstacles, in this part of the heroic cycle, the hero and their allies reach the approach . Here they will prepare for the major challenge in this new or special world. During the approach, the hero undergoes an ordeal , testing them to point near death. Their greatest fear is sometimes exposed, and from the ordeal comes a new life or revival for the hero. This transformation is the final separation from their old life to their new life. For their efforts in overcoming the ordeal, the hero reaches the reward . The hero receives the reward for facing death. There may be a celebration, but there is also danger of losing the reward.

Part Four - Road Back or Hero's Return

Once the hero achieves their goal and the reward is won, the hero and companions start on the road back . The hero wants to complete the adventure and return to their ordinary world with their treasure. This stage is often referred to as either the resurrections or atonement . Hero's journey examples that showcase the atonement stage often highlight the protagonist's inner turmoil and the difficult decisions they must make to reconcile with their past and fully embrace their heroic destiny. The hero becomes "at one" with themselves. As the hero crosses the threshold (returning from the unknown to their ordinary world), the reader arrives at the climax of the story. Here, the hero is severely tested one last time. This test is an attempt to undo their previous achievements. At this point, the hero has come full circle, and the major conflict at the beginning of the journey is finally resolved. In the return home, the hero has now resumed life in his/her original world, and things are restored to ordinary.

Popular Hero's Journey Examples

Monomyth example: homer's odyssey.

Monomyth examples typically involve a hero who embarks on an adventure, faces trials and challenges, undergoes personal transformation, and returns home or to society with newfound wisdom or a significant achievement, making this storytelling structure a powerful and timeless tool for crafting compelling narratives.

The hero's journey chart below for Homer’s Odyssey uses the abridged ninth grade version of the epic. The Heroic Journey in the original story of the Odyssey is not linear, beginning in media res , Latin for “in the middle of things”.)

The Odyssey Heroic Journey - Examples of hero's journey

To Kill a Mockingbird Heroic Journey

Did you know that many popular movies have heroes that follow this type of journey? It is true! In the "Star Wars" movies, Hollywood film producer George Lucas creates a journey for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. In "The Lion King", Simba goes on quite the adventure that ends in a final battle with his uncle Scar, a major turning point in the film before the hero returns to save his land. In "The Wizard of Oz", Dorothy takes on the role of the epic hero as she teeters between the two worlds of Kansas and Oz. These are just a few of the many examples of Campbell's theory in the cinematic realm.

Classroom Applications and Uses

Example exercises.

Create your own hero's journey examples using the Storyboard That Creator! Customize the level of detail and number of cells required for projects based on available class time and resources.

Students identify the stages of the heroic journey in a piece of literature by creating one cell depicting each of the twelve steps.
Students create storyboards that show and explain each stage found in the work of literature, using specific quotes from the text which highlight each part of the journey.
Students create an outline of their own original story that follows the monomyth stages.

Common Core

ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.3 : Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme
ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.7 : Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus)
ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6 : Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically
ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.2 : Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source
ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3 : Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed)
ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.7 : Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)
ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.6 : Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information
ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.2 : Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data

Related Resources

Plot Diagram and Narrative Arc
Types of Conflict In Literature
What is an Archetype?
The Odyssey Teacher Guide
Types of Heroes in Literature

How Teachers Can Use The Concept of The Heroic Journey To Help Students Better Understand Character Development In Literature

Introduce the concept of the heroic journey.

Teachers can introduce the concept of the heroic journey to students and explain the different stages involved in the journey. This will provide a framework for students to better understand how characters develop throughout the story.

Analyze Characters Using the Heroic Journey

Teachers can guide students through the stages of the heroic journey and ask them to identify where the character is in the journey. This will help students to understand the character's development and how their actions and decisions are influenced by the different stages of the journey.

Compare and Contrast Character Journeys

Teachers can ask students to compare and contrast the journeys of different characters within a story or across multiple stories. This will help students to gain a deeper understanding of how the heroic journey is used to develop characters in literature and how it can be applied across different genres and cultures.

Discuss the Role of Character Motivation

Teachers can encourage students to think critically about the motivations of characters at each stage of the journey. This will help students to understand why characters make certain decisions and how their motivations contribute to their development.

Apply the Concept to Real-Life Situations

Teachers can encourage students to apply the concept of the heroic journey to real-life situations. This will help students to see how the journey applies not only to literature, but also to their own lives and experiences.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Hero's Journey

What is a "monomyth" or the "hero's journey" in literature.

In comparative mythology, the monomyth, or the hero's journey, is the series of stages that can be applied to a variety of stories from all genres. It involves a hero who is called to pursue an adventure, undergoes an ordeal, achieves their goal and returns home transformed.

What are the 12 Stages of the Hero's Journey in literature?

Ordinary World
Call to Adventure
Meeting the Mentor / Helper
Crossing the Threshold
Test / Allies / Enemies

What is a common theme in the hero's journey?

The Hero's Journey usually follows the path of the main character from childhood or young adulthood through maturity. It is about the common human experiences of growth, challenges and change that are relatable to us all.

Why should students learn about the hero's journey?

The hero's journey is relevant for students in that it demonstrates the possibility of overcoming adversity and the potential for growth and change that is within us all. It is a common theme of literature and movies that once students understand, they will be able to identify over and over again. It is helpful for students to make the text-to-self connection and apply this thinking to their own life as a "growth mindset" . They can see that they are on their own hero's journey and that everyone has the ability to overcome obstacles to achieve their goals and affect positive change in their lives and the lives of others.

What are some of the best examples of the hero's journey?

The hero's journey stages appear in more books than students may realize! Here are just a few examples of popular books that contain the monomyth structure:

The Graveyard Book
The Hunger Games
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Odyssey
The Lions of Little Rock
Wednesday Wars
One Crazy Summer
Out of My Mind
Brown Girl Dreaming
The Lightning Thief
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
The Stars Beneath Our Feet
Fish in a Tree

Try 1 Month For

30 Day Money Back Guarantee New Customers Only Full Price After Introductory Offer

Learn more about our Department, School, and District packages

30 Day Money Back Guarantee
New Customers Only
Full Price After Introductory Offer

Translators
Graphic Designers

Please enter the email address you used for your account. Your sign in information will be sent to your email address after it has been verified.

The Hero's Journey: Stages, Steps, and Examples

Remember when you were younger, probably around middle school age, and your teacher introduced the Greek mythology lesson? It was such an exciting time of reading books like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief . Maybe you fell in love with Percy, a lovable and relatable young boy struggling with his identity. Or maybe you were a part of the dystopian crave and fell in love with Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games . Either way, this may have been your first introduction to the hero's journey (we're sure you've seen the templates). After all, the hero's journey is all around us!

If you fell in love with reading a hero's journey archetype and want to try to create your own modern hero, then you've come to the perfect place. We're going to explore the crucial steps of a hero's journey and what they entail, so you can have a template through which to write your own story. Your questions act as our call to action (you'll understand what we mean by that shortly). But first, let's define a hero's journey. After all, how can we possibly evaluate the steps of a hero's journey if we don't even have a solid definition?

The hero's journey

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The hero's journey is the story of a hero who leaves the ordinary world to go on an adventure full of peril. On it, the hero will gain both adversaries and allies, and will face a great evil. The hero will also face his shadow self, which is perhaps the most frightening antagonist of all.

Campbell references 17 total steps in the hero's journey. Wait a minute, 17 steps? That seems like a lot. Don't worry! Depending on who you ask, the number of steps and what those steps look like will differ, though they all follow a similar template. The hero's journey is commonly accepted to have 12 main steps. To make it even simpler on you, these steps can actually be broken down into three stages: the departure, the initiation, and the return.

Stage 1: the departure

The departure is just as you might expect. This is the stage where the protagonist is introduced, typically in a modern, realistic setting, and we are introduced to some struggles the protagonist may be experiencing or questions they may have about their own identity. This stage can be broken into our first four steps.

The ordinary world : As we said, we are first introduced to our protagonist and soon-to-be hero in the reality we know. It is just as the first step is listed: the ordinary world. There is no magic, mayhem, or supernatural creatures evident in this ordinary world. It is the world the protagonist has known all their life.
Call to adventure : This is one of the steps you may be most familiar with, as it's one of the most commonly known phrases in literature. Regardless of what genre you are writing, your hero has a call to action. After all, there must be a reason why the protagonist leaves the mundane, comfortable lifestyle they've lived up until now. This is the moment where the journey or quest is initiated: a problem, challenge, or quest is presented to the protagonist, and they must decide to leave behind their ordinary lives to face new challenges. Whether the protagonist is immediately threatened, a family member is threatened, or they see something they shouldn't have, it is up to the protagonist to respond to the call.
Refusal of the call : Wow, isn't it so cool that the hero was discovered by some other world (or they discovered it!) and now they get to embark on this awesome journey? Yes, well, sometimes. Despite how amazing it may seem to be called to accept a quest (hence the reason why this archetype is so popular in literature), the protagonist may not be feeling that excitement. In fact, it's likely that the protagonist is feeling nervous, anxious, scared, hesitant, and thus, resistant to the call at first (don't worry, they'll give in eventually).
Meeting the mentor/supernatural aid : Okay, so the protagonist is done refusing the call. Maybe they've gotten over their fears, or maybe something happened that makes it impossible for them to continue to deny their inevitable quest. Yay! Now it's time for our protagonist to meet their mentor. The mentor can be supernatural or not, but they act as a teacher, trainer, and instructor for the protagonist. After all, the protagonist is going to need some serious guidance once they've been booted out of their ordinary world. This step involves a lot of trust, though, as the protagonist may barely know their mentor. This step also involves the passing on of certain tools and equipment the protagonist may need to succeed on their journey. These can be special powers or physical instruments.

Stage 2: the initiation

figure standing beneath the light coming in from a save hole

Now that you've spent a decent chunk of time introducing your protagonist (and hero!) and their conflict, it's time to head into the second stage of the hero's journey: the initiation. Before you do this, though, ensure you've checked off the first four items on the previous list. It is crucial that you meet these criteria for a successful hero's journey. After all, the hero can't be truly initiated into their new world if you have not established their old world, their main conflict, and the introduction of their next steps.

This next stage will take up the largest portion of your story. You should fill it with lots of new characters, settings, and trials and tests for your protagonist to endure. This is also a stage where you should focus a lot on character development for your protagonist. No person is going to go through a massive journey and end up the same person they once were when everything is said and done. Take this time to think about how you want your protagonist to change and what it's going to take to accomplish that change.

Crossing the first threshold : This is the point at which the hero decides to embark on the adventure and cross over into the unknown, leaving his or her ordinary world behind. This is called the threshold because there is something or someone acting as a literal barrier between the protagonist's ordinary world and their new world. Beyond the threshold lies trials and tribulations and potential risks and dangers. Once the protagonist takes that first step beyond this threshold, there is no returning to the life they once knew. This is where the hero's actual journey truly begins.
Introduction to tests, friends, and foe : This is the step of the story where the cast of characters expands and a new setting, the new world, is introduced. The protagonist may be lost in their new world, so they must evaluate the new people around them to identify potential allies, enemies, or morally ambiguous characters. Trust is established or denied. Just like anyone would struggle with encountering anew environment, the protagonist will endure some struggles of their own, but this is how they'll determine who is friend and who is foe, establishing other character roles in the process. The rules of the ordinary world do not apply to this new world, so hopefully the protagonist meets some good people who will teach him the new ways of life.
Approaching the innermost cave : At this point on the hero's journey, they have left all semblance of the ordinary world behind. This step marks the preparation for the main event of the journey. The protagonist may gather materials and even other characters, if they're trustworthy enough, to take on the rest of the steps of the quest with them. The cave acts as a metaphor for what the protagonist is about to endure: risk, danger, darkness, and even potential loss. This step also includes some of the tests leading up to the large test yet, which happens to be the next step in the hero's journey.
The ordeal : Buckle up, this is about to be a wild ride! That's right, your hero has finally made it to one of the biggest challenges of all. The protagonist is no longer approaching the innermost cave. Rather, the protagonist is now fully in the belly of the beast, and what a beast it is! The ordeal is usually not the climax of the story, but this is the moment where the protagonist truly transforms from an ordinary character into a true hero. It may involve their greatest fear or a physically or mentally demanding task.
The reward : If your protagonist, now hero, succeeds in their greatest challenge, then they will be given a reward that makes the journey worth so much time, effort, and challenge. If they can succeed, then there is hope for them, that bright light that shines through the top of a dark cave and promises fulfillment and a future. This is what the hero has been fighting for this whole time. As for the reward itself, you should make sure it makes sense in the context of your story. It can be an object, a piece of knowledge, or even something entirely different, so long as its value matches the degree of the journey.

Stage 3: the return

a man stands at the top of a hill with his fist raised and a reflection of his face overlaying the figure

Wahoo, your hero has endured so much and has finally gotten their reward! It's over, right? They can return to their ordinary life and reap the benefits of all their hard work? Wrong! Things are never as easy as they seem, especially in a hero's journey, so why would the road back to the ordinary world be any different for your hero?

On the road again : This is the turning point, literally. The hero turns back around, hoping to return to their normal life after receiving their reward. But thing's are never that simple, so be sure to make sure that road is blocked. Traffic cones, stoplights, maybe a supernatural villain or catastrophic natural disaster! That should do the trick. If the road back home was easy, we'd be bored, so maintain the stakes with challenges for the hero to face as they make their way back home.
The resurrection : Congratulations, you've finally reached the climax of your story. Remember how we said the ordeal was the moment where your protagonist transformed from an ordinary character into an actual hero, this is the moment where they can prove to us that they deserve the hero title, after all. The stakes become extremely high, as the hero does not want to fail after having endured so much already. This is the final test for the hero and the final opportunity for the villain or opposing forces to defeat the hero. If the hero comes out on top, then they will finally be able to reach that light at the end of the tunnel.
Return with the elixir : The hero has finally completed all their challenges and is able to return home with their reward. Their transformation is complete, and they've most likely become a better person because of the journey. Or, if you want to add a twist to this step, you can always have the hero fail to return without they set out to receive, but you better be prepared to write a sequel and a whole other journey!

Following the template

Since we mentioned The Hunger Games at the very beginning, let's use Katniss Everdeen and her hero's journey as a model for this template.

The ordinary world : Katniss Everdeen is introduced as a citizen on District 12, a poor mining district. She spends her days hunting in the woods to provide food for her family.
The call to action : Every year, a reaping takes place where a male and female tribute from each district is randomly chosen to take place in the Hunger Games, a fight to the death. During the reaping, Katniss' sister Primrose is selected, so Katniss volunteers to take her place as the female tribute from District 12.
Refusal of the call : As we mentioned, you may not include all 12 steps of the hero's journey in your own story. Katniss does not actually refuse the call, as she volunteered herself to save her sister. A refusal of the call is slightly seen in Peeta, Katniss' fellow tribute, as he is visibly nervous and shaken up. The nature of this story makes it so that a refusal is impossible.
Meeting the mentor : Katniss meets Haymitch Abernathy, a previous Hunger Games victor from her District. He is her literal mentor and is meant to teach her how to make allies, get sponsors, and survive in the arena. She also finds a mentor in Cinna, the person in charge of her appearance for promotions.
Crossing the threshold : Katniss is whisked out of District 12 and on the train to the gaudy, wealthy Capitol.
Introduction to tests, friends, and foe : Katniss must attempt to learn who to trust while also earning sponsors and impressing the Game Makers. Katniss makes a reluctant alliance with Peeta and admires Rue from District 11. During training, it is evident that the Careers (tributes from the wealthier districts) are enemies.
Approaching the innermost cave : Katniss enters the physical arena.
The ordeal : The arena is full of challenges: tracker jackers, mutant wolves, poisonous berries, and other tributes trying to survive. The games themselves are the whole ordeal.
The reward : Katniss and Peeta are the last tributes standing.
On the road again : Although Katniss and Peeta have survived, there can only be one winner, and the Capitol wants to force them to select who lives and who dies.
The resurrection : Katniss' bold attempt at a mutual suicide leads to both of them being allowed to live as victors, lest they become martyrs in front of the whole country.
Return with the elixir : Katniss and Peeta return to District 12 as victors, allowing them to live lives of wealth and luxury. If you've read the books, you'll know this is nowhere near the end of Katniss' journey.

Reaping the rewards

If you've managed to check off all 12 steps on our hero's journey checklist, then you've got yourself an awesome hero's journey. If you're just starting out on your own journey of writing for a hero, then be sure to follow this template for maximum results. Be the hero in your own journey and remember to never give up as you face those roadblocks and challenges while buckling down and writing a story of your own!

Header photo by Zoltan Tasi .

Fusing Low Life With High Tech Within Your Cyberpunk Story

Fantastical Mundanity: How to Write a Magical Realism Story

Book Writing Advice
All Blog Posts
Writing Advice
Academic Writing Advice
Admissions Writing Advice
Short Story Advice
Employment Writing Advice
Business Writing Advice
Web Content Advice
Article Writing Advice
Magazine Writing Advice
Grammar Advice
Dialect Advice
Editing Advice
Freelance Advice
Legal Writing Advice
Poetry Advice
Graphic Design Advice
Logo Design Advice
Translation Advice
Blog Reviews
Short Story Award Winners
Scholarship Winners

Professional book editing services you can trust

Passion doesn’t always come easily. Discover your inner drive and find your true purpose in life.

From learning how to be your best self to navigating life’s everyday challenges.

Discover peace within today’s chaos. Take a moment to notice what’s happening now.

Gain inspiration from the lives of celebrities. Explore their stories for motivation and insight into achieving your dreams.

Where ordinary people become extraordinary, inspiring us all to make a difference.

Take a break with the most inspirational movies, TV shows, and books we have come across.

From being a better partner to interacting with a coworker, learn how to deepen your connections.

Take a look at the latest diet and exercise trends coming out. So while you're working hard, you're also working smart.

Sleep may be the most powerful tool in our well-being arsenal. So why is it so difficult?

Challenges can stem from distractions, lack of focus, or unclear goals. These strategies can help overcome daily obstacles.

Unlocking your creativity can help every aspect of your life, from innovation to problem-solving to personal growth.

How do you view wealth? Learn new insights, tools and strategies for a better relationship with your money.

Hero's Journey: A Guide to Becoming The Hero Of Your Story

What will your story be.

Be the hero of your story . It’s common advice from motivational speakers and life coaches, a call to arms to take centre stage and tackle life’s challenges head-on, to emerge victorious in the face of adversity, to transform through hardship.

As humans, hardwired to view the world and share experiences through the medium of stories, myths often act as powerful motivators of change. From ancient cave paintings to the Star Wars and its Death Star to Harry Potter and his battle against evil, the hero’s journey structure is a familiar one. It’s also one you need to know if you want to know how to write a book , but I digress.

This article will outline the stages, and psychological meaning, of the 12 steps of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. So, are you ready to become the hero of your story? Then let the adventure begin...

Who is Joseph Campbell?

Joseph Campbell was an American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College, and an expert of mythology that once spent five years in a rented shack, buried in books for nine hours each day. His greatest contribution is the hero’s journey, outlined in his book The Hero with A Thousand Faces . Campbell was able to synthesise huge volumes of heroic stories, distilling a common structure amongst them.

Near the end of his life, Campbell was interviewed by Bill Moyers in a documentary series exploring his work, The Power of Myth .

Throughout their discussion, Campbell highlighted the importance of myth not just in stories, but in our lives, as symbols to inspire us to flourish and grow to our full potential.

How is the hero’s journey connected to self development?

You might be wondering what storytelling has to do with self-development. Before we dive into the hero’s journey (whether that is a male or a female hero’s journey), context will be useful. Joseph Cambell was heavily inspired by the work of Carl Jung, the groundbreaking psychologist who throughout his life worked on theories such as the shadow, collective unconscious, archetypes, and synchronicity.

Jung’s greatest insight was that the unconscious is a vast, vibrant landscape, yet out sight from the ordinary conscious experience. Jung didn’t only theorize about the unconscious; he provided a huge body of work explaining the language of the unconscious, and the way in which it communicates with the conscious mind.

The nature of the unconscious

Due to its vast nature, the unconscious doesn’t operate like the conscious mind, which is based in language, logic, and rationality. The unconscious instead operates in the imaginal realm — using symbols and meaning that take time to be deciphered and understood consciously. Such symbols surface in dreams, visualizations, daydreams, or fantasies.

For Jung, the creative process is one in which contents of the unconscious mind are brought to light. Enter storytelling and character development — a process of myth-making that somehow captures the truth of deep psychological processes.

Campbell saw the power of myth in igniting the unconscious will to grow and live a meaningful life. With that in mind, his structure offers a tool of transformation and a way to inspire the unconscious to work towards your own hero’s journey.

The 12 steps of the hero’s journey

The hero’s journey ends where it begins, back at the beginning after a quest of epic proportions. The 12 steps are separated into three acts:

departure (1-5)
initiation (5-10)
return (10-1)

The hero journeys through the 12 steps in a clockwise fashion. As Campbell explains:

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.”

Let’s take a closer look at each of the steps below. Plus, under each is a psychological symbol that describes how the hero’s journey unfolds, and how when the hero ventures forth, he undergoes an inner process of awakening and transformation.

1. The ordinary world

The calm before the storm. The hero is living a standard, mundane life, going about their business unaware of the impending call to adventure. At this point, the hero is portrayed as very, very human. There could be glimpses of their potential, but these circumstances restrict the hero from fulfilling them. Although well within the hero’s comfort zone, at this stage, it’s clear something significant is lacking from their life.

Psychological symbol

This is represented as a stage of ignorance, pre-awakening. Living life by the status quo, on other people’s terms, or simply without questioning if this is what you want. At this point life is lived, but not deeply satisfying.

2. Call to adventure

Next is a disruption, a significant event that threatens the ways things were. This is a challenge that the hero knows deep down will lead to transformation and change, and that the days of normality, “the way things are,” are numbered. The hero confronts the question of being asked to step into their deeper potential, to awaken the power within, and to enter a new, special world.

Many of us embark on inner-journeys following hardship in life — the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, physical or mental illness. This stage occurs when it becomes apparent that, to move through suffering, one has to look within, to adventure into the soul.

3. Refusal of the call

No compelling story would be complete without friction. The hero often resists this call to adventure, as fear and self-doubt surface at full force, and the purpose of this new life direction is questioned. Can the reluctant hero journey forth? Do they have the courage?

The only way to grow and live a deeply fulfilling life is to face the discomfort of suffering. Campbell himself once said: “ The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek .” At this stage, fears, and anxieties about delving deep into the psyche arise. The temptation is to remain blissfully ignorant, to avoid discomfort, and to stay in your familiar world.

4. Meeting a mentor

As the hero faces a crisis of confidence, a wise mentor figure appears.

This character offers inspiration, guidance, or understanding that encourages the hero to have the self-belief to start this new adventure. In many stories, a mentor is someone else who has embarked on the hero’s journey, or someone who attempted, and failed. This person reflects the importance of this mission, reminding the hero their calling far exceeds their fear.

When the journey of exploration has to begin, people or situations enter your life at just the right time, guiding you in the right direction. This could be a close friend, a peer, a professional, such as a coach or therapist, or even a fictional character in a film or book. In most cases, these are chance encounters that contain a sense of knowing before the hero leaves on his or her adventure.

5. Crossing the threshold

This is a pivotal moment in the hero’s journey, as the initiation begins. This occurs when the hero fully commits to their quest, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. This is the point of no return, where the reluctant hero embarks on their adventure, and has accepted that the way things were must change. The hero enters a new zone, one in which the call to adventure must be accepted. The hero’s resolve is hardened, and they understand they have a responsibility to confront what is ahead of them.

Whatever your life was before the call to action, this is a crossroads which is accepted, knowing your life may never be the same. This is a point of empowerment, where you realize that journeying within will lead you to greater self-understanding, even if those insights will dramatically change your life direction.

6. Test, allies, enemies

Now the hero has ventured outside of their comfort zone, the true test begins. This is a stage of acclimatizing to unknown lands. Unknown forces work against them, as they form bonds with allies who join them along the way, or face formidable enemies or encounters that have to be conquered. Throughout this testing time, the hero will be shaped and molded through adversity, finding deeper meaning in their life and mission.

Once the journey of self-discovery is underway, the initial burst of inspiration might be tested by the difficulty of the task. You might meet people who are able to offer advice or guide you, or those who reflect areas of yourself you have to work on.

Often, these are inner experiences, in the forms of memories, emotions, or outward tests, such as difficult circumstances that challenge your resolve and commitment to your new life direction.

7. Approach to the inmost cave

Having already crossed the threshold into the unknown and the uncertain, having faced obstacles and enemies, and having begun to utilize their qualities along the way, the next stage is another threshold.

This is the beating heart of the hero’s challenge, where again self-doubt and fear can arise, as another threshold has to be crossed. This is often a period of respite, giving the hero time to pause and reflect. Will the hero make the leap?

The hero’s journey has ups and downs. There may be quick wins in the beginning — your new life direction may go well, or inner-work may lead you to a new place of calm or confidence. But then, out of nowhere, comes an even bigger challenge, surfacing as a question mark to the person you’ve become. Life often has a way of presenting the right challenges at the right time…

This is the life-or-death moment. This can be a meeting with an ultimate enemy or facing the hero’s deepest fear. There is an awareness that if the hero fails, their new world, or their life, could be destroyed.

Everything the hero has fought for up to this point, all the lessons learned along the journey, all the hidden potentials actualized, will have to be utilized to survive this supreme ordeal, for the hero to be victorious. Either way, the hero will undergo a form of death, and leave the ordeal forever changed.

There are inner challenges that have to be confronted on the journey of self-discovery. This might be in the form of trauma that has to be confronted and healed, people with whom you have to have difficult conversations, or fears you have to face, actions that in the past you never thought you’d be capable of. But, with the skills you’ve learned along the way, this time you’ll be ready. But it won’t be easy.

9. Reward (seizing the sword)

Through great adversity comes triumph. Having confronted their greatest fear, and survived annihilation, the hero learns a valuable lesson, and is now fully transformed and reborn — with a prize as a reward.

This object is often symbolized as a treasure, a token, secret knowledge, or reconciliation, such as the return of an old friend or lover. This prize can assist in the return to the ordinary world — but there are still a few steps to come.

When confronting deep inner fears or challenges, you are rewarded with deep insights or breakthroughs. That might be in the form of achieving a significant goal or inwardly having a sense of peace or reconciliation with your past, or moments that have previously felt unresolved. As a spiritual process, this may also be the realization that behind suffering and pain lies freedom or inner peace.

10. The road back

Having traveled into distant, foreign lands and slain the dragon, now it’s time for the hero to make their return journey. This stage mirrors the original call to adventure and represents another threshold.

The hero may be understanding their new responsibility and the consequences of their actions, and require a catalyst to make the journey back to the ordinary world with their prize.

The hard work has been done, the ultimate fear confronted, new knowledge found. Now, what’s the next step? For many, the initial stages of growth come with a period of renunciation or are symbolized by an outward journey away from home, or away from familiarity.

Then comes the stage of returning to familiarity, or the things left behind — be it family, friends, locations, or even behaviors that were once loved and sacrificed during the journey.

11. Resurrection

When it appears the hero is out of the woods, there comes a final confrontation — an encounter with death itself. Transformed inwardly and with a personal victory complete, the hero faces a battle that transcends their individual quest, with its consequences far-reaching, for entire communities or even humanity itself.

This purification solidifies the hero’s rebirth, as their new identity fully emerges just in time to return to the ordinary world.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is secondary to self-transcendence. In other words, once inner battles have been faced, and the alchemy of psychological transformation is underway, the next stage is to apply the newfound insights and knowledge to a bigger cause — supporting others, or standing up a mission that will benefit the wider world.

12. Return with the elixir

Following the final battle, the hero finally returns home. By now, personal transformation is complete, they’re returning home a different person. Having faced indescribable hardship, the hero returns with added wisdom and maturity. The elixir is the treasure they’ve returned with, ready to share with the ordinary world. This could be a sense of hope, freedom, or even a new perspective to assist those originally left behind.

The hero has a new level of self-awareness, seeing the ordinary world through fresh eyes. They’ve left internal conflict behind. There’s an understanding that things will never be the same, but that the hero’s journey was part of their destiny.

Then comes the ultimate prize: a final reconciliation, acceptance from the community, celebration, redemption. Whatever the prize, there are three elements: change , success , and proof of the journey .

Following a transformative psychic process, there’s an understanding of what is within your control. The “ordinary world” may have many elements that remain the same, but this is accompanied by a realization that when you change, so does your reality. Previously modes of thinking may be replaced, as bridges are built with your past, giving opportunity for a renewed approach to life.

What can we learn from the hero's journey?

At the time of writing this article, I’m in the UK visiting my family for the first time in 18 months. As I walked down paths I’d walked throughout my childhood, I was struck by how much I’ve changed over the years. A passage from T.S Eliot’s poem Little Gidding came to mind:

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.”

I reflected on the notion of coming full circle — to begin a journey, outwardly or inwardly, before finding yourself back at the beginning, transformed. In spiritual traditions, the circle is a powerful symbol of timelessness, death and rebirth, totality, and wholeness. Aptly, the 12 steps of the hero’s journey are depicted as a circle. It’s not a coincidence.

What can we learn from the hero’s journey? In a way, it is similar to the writer’s journey. Above all else, it’s a reminder that we each within us have a purpose, a quest and a mission in this life that can and will invoke our truest potential. The path isn’t easy — there are many, many challenges along the way. But at the right time, people and situations will come to our aid.

If you’re able to confront the mission head-on and take bold steps along the way — just like all the heroes of fiction before you, from Shakespeare’s characters to Luke Skywalker and Rey from the universe brought to us by George Lucas — then you will be transformed, and then you can return to where you started, reborn, ready to share your gifts and your lessons with the world.

Hot Stories

Professor opens an unclaimed cardboard box - he finds a former student has sent $180,000 in cash for this reason, husband's controversial video on his wife wanting alone time goes viral, fortnite player calls mom and makes shocking announcement on livestream, mom begs for help after daughter calls her best friend "the fat girl", little girl with autism tries to blow out strangers birthday candles his reaction goes viral, stranger insults middle school teacher online — but her clapback was a+, 16-year-old sentenced to 100 years in prison heads to law school.

Teen Sentenced to 100 Years In Prison Heads to Law School

On June 24, 2001, 23-year-old Abdo Serna-Ibarra was on his way to play soccer with some friends. He never made it. Instead, he got into a fight with a gang of teenagers in a nearby Chicago park.

Mistaking him for a rival gang member, the last words he heard came from the lips of a 15-year-old ordering his friend to “Shoot him!”

A Teenager Receives a 100-Year Sentence Without Parole

Benard McKinley, 16 years old at the time, was arrested for Abdo’s murder. Three years later a jury found him guilty and the presiding judge sentenced him to a staggering 100 years in prison. Without parole .

At just 19 years old, Benard’s life of freedom was over. As far as he knew, he would spend the rest of his time behind bars.

On his way to the maximum security Stateville Prison, he made himself a vow. Despite his grim circumstances and a century-long sentence, he swore he wouldn’t let his new reality define him.

“I promised myself before I got out of that bus that no matter what the outcome was that, you know, I was just going to try to do better for myself.” Benard McKinley via ABC NEWS

He was true to his word. For the next 20 years, Benard was the epitome of a model inmate in one of the most “violent” and “inhumane” prisons in the country.

He obtained his GED and a paralegal diploma, was one of 40 inmates selected out of 400 to enroll in Northwestern University's Bachelor's degree program (via Northwestern's Prison Education Program, PEP), held several jobs in prison, AND stayed out of trouble.

Along the way, he became interested in the law and spent hours poring over law books. As he became more familiar with the law, he repeatedly petitioned the courts to have his sentence appealed.

He received denial after denial. Benard kept fighting.

From Thug Life and Prison to Law School

Benard McKinley walking through the Arch of Northwestern University

Francesco Thorik-Saboia/The Daily Northwestern

Finally, in 2020, Benard found his redemption. In a rare case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit threw out his original 100-year sentence. Deeming it unconstitutional to hand out life sentences to juveniles, it reduced his sentence to 25 years.

In the fall of 2023, Benard, along with 15 other prisoners, graduated university with a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Sciences. But he wasn't done yet. Benard had big dreams. He became the first incarcerated person in Illinois history to take the Law School Admission Test. He passed.

In December 2023, after serving 22.5 years, Benard walked out of the prison gates and marched through the arch of Northwestern University. Literally the SAME DAY as per The Daily Northwestern .

Benard partook in the age-old tradition, "March Through the Arch" — a symbolic gesture of the beginning and the end of their university experience for incoming freshmen and graduating seniors.

For Benard, however, marching through The Arch symbolized more than just his academic journey — it symbolized his freedom. Dozens of his classmates and professors showed up and cheered him on.

"Five years ago, I would have never thought that right now, I’d be walking down the Evanston community coming from Northwestern University, as a Northwestern graduate on my way to law school. It’s a hell of a feeling.”

Making Amends and Giving Back to the Community He Hurt as a Teenager

Bernard McKinley during his commencement as part of the Northwestern Prison Education Program at Stateville correctional center

Monika Wnuk/Northwestern Prison Education Program

Officially accepted into Northwestern's prestigious Pritzker School of Law on March 15, Benard starts law school in the Fall. Until then, he is working as a paralegal and a researcher at Northwestern University and living in transitional housing.

After graduation in 2027, he plans to become a civil rights attorney and wants to open a nonprofit legal clinic to support marginalized communities.

He believes that education saved his life and hopes his story inspires others to make positive changes in their own lives.

"Not only do I want to help at-risk youth understand their potential, but I also want to help educate those who don’t believe that people who commit horrible acts can change their lives in a positive way,” he told the Washington Post .

Benard is proof that everyone deserves a second chance. Even those that society first deems irredeemable. Against nearly impossible odds and a whopping 100-year sentence, Benard refused to let his worst mistake define who he was or who he could eventually become.

He is a powerful reminder that no matter how dire the circumstances may seem, it is never too late to turn one's life around.

“From the day after I committed that horrible act, I was focused on bettering myself because I wasn’t my worst mistake.”

Surprised Mom Finds Random Note at Kmart - Then, Strangers Find the Mystery Author

Boy with deadly heart condition has one dream - little did he know it would come true, 85-year-old outguns violent home intruder - saves herself and her disabled son, military dad defends his 4 little daughters when strangers make this rude remark, lamar odom regrets choosing khloe kardashian over taraji p henson, the kardashian redemption - an uncensored documentary, how did betrayal connect jennifer aniston and selena gomez, how tiffany haddish finally found the love she deserved, subscribe to our newsletter, the great takedown of nickelodeon’s dan schneider - how even small voices have the power for impact, chris gardner beyond the pursuit of happyness: the work begins, 100 powerful motivational quotes to help you rise above, wim hof: the iceman’s heroic journey to warming the hearts of millions, 9-year-old has to steal food to feed her brothers - but one police officer changes her life.

Girl Rescued by Police Officer Grows Up to Become a Cop

In the bustling streets of Kansas City, a tale of resilience and unwavering kindness unfolds, touching hearts across the nation.

Meet Klynn Scales, a young girl whose childhood was marred by adversity and hardship. At just nine years old, she found herself thrust into the role of caretaker for her two younger brothers, stealing food from 7-Eleven to feed them and navigating a tumultuous home life overshadowed by neglect and her mother's battle with addiction.

The troubled childhood a little girl was going through

In the midst of this chaos, a beacon of hope emerged in the form of an unnamed police officer who became Klynn's everyday hero . Despite the darkness that surrounded her, Klynn found solace in the reassuring presence of this kind-hearted officer, Officer Jeffrey Colvin.

His daily check-ins provided a sense of safety and stability in Klynn's turbulent world. She recalls the comfort she felt knowing that Officer Colvin was always there to offer support and protection during her darkest moments.

One pivotal day, when Klynn failed to appear at her usual spot, Officer Colvin's intuition led him to her doorstep. What he found inside was a scene of desperation – a frail and gravely ill young girl in urgent need of medical attention.

Without hesitation, Officer Colvin sprang into action, rushing Klynn to the hospital where she received life-saving treatment for malnutrition. His swift intervention not only saved her life but also left an indelible mark on her heart.

Over two decades passed, and Klynn, now living in another state, lost touch with Officer Colvin. Yet, his memory remained etched in her mind, a testament to the profound impact of his kindness.

Determined to express her gratitude, Klynn embarked on a mission to find her hero, enlisting the help of the Kansas City Police Department. Through their assistance, she finally discovered Officer Colvin's identity and arranged a heartfelt reunion.

How one police officer proved small acts can have big impacts

To her delight, she learned that Officer Colvin had never forgotten her. Their emotional reunion was a poignant reminder of the enduring bond forged through acts of compassion and selflessness.

Inspired by Officer Colvin's example, Klynn made the decision to pursue a career in law enforcement . As she prepared to graduate from the police academy, she had one special request – she wanted Officer Colvin to pin her badge at the ceremony.

Touched by her request, Officer Colvin traveled to Texas to fulfill her wish, witnessing firsthand the remarkable journey of the young girl he had once rescued. Proudly reflecting on Klynn's achievements, he remarked on her resilience and determination to defy the odds stacked against her.

In a touching tribute to her lifelong hero, Klynn presented Officer Colvin with a plaque bearing the words, "A promise made, a promise kept, walking in the footsteps of a true hero!"

It was a fitting homage to a man whose kindness had not only saved her life but also inspired her to pursue her dreams. Their story serves as a powerful reminder that heroes can be found in the most unexpected places and that even the smallest acts of kindness can leave a lasting impact on those in need.

Get stories worth sharing delivered to your inbox

Green Spaces in Urban Places
To Give is To Grow: Community Gardens Fight Food Insecurity
Are Words The New Weapon To Fight For Social Justice?
Europe has Changed: How I turned my Upset about Russia Invading Ukraine into Action
Dangerous Realities of Medical Misogyny
Student Success: Spotlight on ADHD

Love Letter to Uncertainty: A Photo Essay

Walter’s story: leaving nazi germany.

Joseph Campbell & The Hero’s Journey

In 1949, scholar joseph campbell published his 1st book, the hero with a thousand faces. in this book, campbell introduced us to his theory that myths from around the globe share a fundamental structure, the monomyth ..

C ampbell formulated this theory over 5 years, spending 9 hours a day reading mythology from around the world. The Monomyth structure is divided into 3 events with additional stages in between. The stories of Osiris, Prometheus, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and many other tales from history use this structure. It has inspired many artists and storytellers, such as, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Bob Dylan, creator of Star Wars George Lucas, Bob Weir, and Jerry Garcia of the band, The Grateful Dead. While countless stories follow this Monomyth structure, we will use the original Star Wars Trilogy as an example for exploring this process.

The Seventeen Stages of the Monomyth

The Cycle of Mythology

Stage 1: Separation

I n the first stage of the hero’s journey, we find our protangonist living life in a typically mundane situation. The Star Wars , Luke Skywalker lives as a talented yet lowly and pretty damn whiny moisture farmer on Tatooine.

Until…

1. Call to Adventure – By some chance the hero will become aware of information or actions that call for them to go on a quest. The lovable and recently acquired droid R2-D2 plays a holographic message of Princess Leia pleading for Luke’s soon to be mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s assistance.

2. Refusal of the Call – Overwhelmed by the information, the hero refuses the call and makes excuses as to why they cannot answer it. Luke refuses Obi-Wan’s request to join him on his mission, stating that he has responsibilities at home.

Luke’s Supernatural Aid is in the form of a Lightsaber and newfound Knowledge of the Force

3. Supernatural Aid – Once a commitment to the quest is made by the hero, they are provided with a special weapon or power that will assist them along the way. Obi-Wan gifts Luke his fathers lightsaber and explains some Force 101.

4. Crossing the Threshold – The moment when the hero actually embarks upon the journey. After Luke discovers that his family has been murdered and that nothing is left for him at home, he decides to join Obi-Wan on the quest to save Princess Leia, cause that sounds way cooler than hanging at the farm where your entire family was just massacred.

5. Belly of the Whale – The final separation between the hero and their home. Luke and Kenobi bail out from Tatooine with their new bros Han Solo and Chewbacca.

Stage 2: Initiation

The Empire Strikes Back is nothing but a road of trials for our hero, Luke.

6. The Road of Trials – A series of usually 3 trials and tests, the hero often fails one or more of these test. In Luke’s journey the destruction of the Death Star is his first test and one that he passes. His second and third tests do not end so well. While training with Yoda on Dagobah, Luke fails in his truly mastering himself and the force. Thirdly, in the duel between himself and his newly revealed father, Darth Vader, he is defeated, injured, and almost killed.

7. The Meeting with the Goddess – Our hero experiences a love that has the power and significance to that of a mother. Luke begins to have strong feelings for Leia, his unbeknownst sister.

8. Woman as Temptress – The temptation to abandon the journey for material or other gain. Luke is close to being seduced to the dark side as the Emperor feeds his rage against his father and especially with the prospect that if he will not turn, perhaps his sister will.

9. Atonement with the Father – In this stage, the hero must confront and be initiated by whoever holds the ultimate power in their life. Luke battles Darth Vader and once again is on the losing side of the fight. Nearing death from the Emperor’s attacks, Luke begs his father to help save him from certain death.

Star-Wars-Trivia-Original-Ending-Luke-Dark-Side

Anakin & Luke Meet for the 1st Time

10. Apotheosis – The spiritual death and rebirth of the hero. Darth Vader hears his son’s cries for help and returns to the light, deciding to destroy the Emperor in a self sacrificial action. By bringing his father back to the light, Luke has finally become a true jedi.

11. The Ultimate Boon – The stage of achievement of the goal. Luke is a jedi, has defeated the Empire, the dark side, saved his father, and all his friends and family are safe.

12. Refusal of the Return – The hero basking in their newly found bliss, may not want to return to their previous life and share this bliss with his fellow man. Luke does the opposite of this, upon his reunification with his friends, he shares with Leia that they are siblings. He then goes on to train her and new jedi in the ways of the force.

Stage 3: Return

13. The Magic Flight – The daring escape made after obtaining the boon. Luke carries his fathers body onto a transport and flees the Death Star before its complete destruction.

The Millennium Falcon in Magical Flight

14. Rescue from Without – When powerful guides or mentors help bring the hero back to normal life. When Anniken, Obi-Wan, and Yoda appear from the ether to acknowledge Luke and his newfound jedi knighthood.

15. Crossing the Return Threshold – Retaining, integrating, and sharing wisdom learned on the quest. Luke shares his knowledge of the force with future jedi.

16. Master of Two Worlds – The hero has achieved a balance between the material and spiritual world. Luke has sorted all of his family issues, become a man and a jedi.

17. Freedom to Live – By becoming a master of the two worlds, the hero is free from regrets of the past and worries of the future, this leaves them to live in the moment. Luke has resolved all the conflicts in his life, he is free to live at one with the force.

Each of Us are the Heroes in Our own Journey

The Monomyth is a method of story telling that is innate to humans. Cultures from around the world share it’s structure in their stories. Every human, whether they are aware of it or not, is on their own hero’s journey. By studying Joseph Campbell’s work we can better our own understanding of the tests, trials, and progress along our journey.

About Author

Tamlorn Chase

Tamlorn Chase hails from the coastal town of Santa Barbara, where he works as a wilderness guide, wildlife filmmaker, and environmental activist. Protecting the natural world is his profession and passion.

Father Figures

Comments are closed.

Competitions

The hero’s journey breakdown: ‘star wars’.

By Ken Miyamoto · October 11, 2019

How does Star Wars: A New Hope follow Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey breakdown?

Welcome to the inaugural installment of our new series A Hero’s Journey Breakdown where we explore Joseph Campbell’s mythological storytelling structure and how iconic films fit into that mold.

First up is Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope . Let’s break down the plot and structure of George Lucas’ 1977 space-opera, the first in what would become an epic franchise spanning nearly 40 years, and see how it fits within The Hero’s Journey. You can download the script below to follow along.

But before we do that, let’s make sure we have the basics down, including what the Hero’s Journey is, where it originated, and who created it.

The Hero’s Journey 101

The “hero’s journey” is a common narrative archetype that features the different stages of a protagonist’s journey in a story. It has been studied and analyzed by many scholars from a multitude of disciplines, but one interpretation has found its way into the minds of almost every writer studying the craft.

The Monomyth

In 1949, writer and professor of literature Joseph Campbell wrote one of the most influential works in storytelling, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he theorizes that stories often share a basic structure. Dubbed the “monomyth” or “the hero’s adventure,” Campbell lays out 17 stages of this narrative archetype, from but some have crafted their own interpretations and renditions that the writing community has used as guides in their own work.

Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth

Vogler: The Writer’s Journey

Christopher Vogler’s approach to Campbell’s structure broke the mythical story structure into 12 stages. For this series, we define the stages in simplified interpretations:

The Ordinary World : We see the hero’s normal life at the start of the story before the adventure begins.
Call to Adventure : The hero is faced with an event, conflict, problem, or challenge that makes them begin their adventure.
Refusal of the Call : The hero initially refuses the adventure because of hesitation, fears, insecurity, or any other number of issues.
Meeting the Mentor : The hero encounters a mentor that can give them advice, wisdom, information, or items that ready them for the journey ahead.
Crossing the Threshold : The hero leaves their ordinary world for the first time and crosses the threshold into adventure.
Tests, Allies, and Enemies : The hero learns the rules of the new world and endures tests, meets friends, and comes face-to-face with enemies.
The Approach : The initial plan to take on the central conflict begins, but setbacks occur that cause the hero to try a new approach or adopt new ideas.
The Ordeal: Things go wrong and added conflict is introduced. The hero experiences more difficult hurdles and obstacles, some of which may lead to a life crisis.
The Reward : After surviving The Ordeal, the hero seizes the sword — a reward that they’ve earned that allows them to take on the biggest conflict. It may be a physical item or piece of knowledge or wisdom that will help them persevere.
The Road Back : The hero sees the light at the end of the tunnel, but they are about to face even more tests and challenges.
The Resurrection : The climax. The hero faces a final test, using everything they have learned to take on the conflict once and for all.
The Return : The hero brings their knowledge or the “elixir” back to the ordinary world.

Breaking Down the Journey: A New Hope

Here we turn to George Lucas’s Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope .

Note: As with any application of story structure or formula, this is just a hindsight interpretation and implementation of The Hero’s Journey to this cinematic tale. There can and will be variances.

The Ordinary World

Luke Skywalker is living a normal and humble life as a farm boy on his home planet of Tatooine.

Call to Adventure

Luke is called to his adventure by two individuals — R2-D2 and Ben Kenobi. Luke triggers R2-D2’s message from Princess Leia and is intrigued by her and the message.

When R2-D2 escapes to find Ben Kenobi, Luke follows and is later saved by Kenobi, who goes on to tell Luke about his Jedi heritage. Kenobi suggests that he should come with him to Alderaan.

Refusal of the Call

Luke refuses Kenobi, telling him that he can take Kenobi and the droids as far as Mos Eisley Spaceport — but he can’t possibly leave his Aunt and Uncle behind for some space adventure.

Crossing the Threshold

When Luke discovers that the stormtroopers searching for the droids would track them to his farm, he rushes to warn his Aunt and Uncle, only to discover them dead by the hands of the Empire.

When Luke returns to Kenobi, he pledges to go with him to Alderaan and learn the ways of the Force like his father before him.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies

After Luke, Kenobi, and the droids hire Han Solo and Chewbacca to transport them off of Tatooine and onto Alderaan, Kenobi begins Luke’s training in the ways of the Force.

Wielding his father’s lightsaber, Kenobi challenges him to block the shots of a small training remote. At first, he can’t do it. But then Kenobi gives him a helmet to wear that has a blast shield that blocks his view of the remote. Kenobi teaches him to reach out and trust his feelings.

Luke blocks three shots from the remote — blind.

The Approach

The plan to defeat the Galactic Empire is to bring the Death Star plans to Alderaan so that Princess Leia’s father can take them to the Rebellion. However, when they arrive within the system, the planet is destroyed. They come across the Death Star and are pulled in by a tractor beam, now trapped within the metaphorical belly of the beast — The Galactic Empire.

As Kenobi goes off to deactivate the tractor beam so they can escape, Luke, Han, and Chewbacca discover that Princess Leia is being held on the Death Star with them. They rescue her and escape to the Millennium Falcon, hoping that Kenobi has successfully deactivated the tractor beam.

Kenobi later sacrifices himself as Luke watches Darth Vader strike him down. Luke must now avenge his fallen mentor and carry on his teachings.

Luke has saved the princess and retrieved the Death Star plans. They now have the knowledge to destroy the Galactic Empire’s greatest weapon once and for all.

The Road Back

Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and the droids are headed to the hidden Rebellion base with the Death Star plans. They are suddenly pursued by incoming TIE-Fighters, forcing Han and Luke to take action to defend the ship and escape with their lives — and the plans.

When they are triumphant, they realize that the Galactic Empire must be tracking them. But they have no choice but to race against time to take the plans to the Rebellion and prepare for battle.

The Resurrection

The Rebels — along with Luke as an X-Wing pilot — prepare to take on the Death Star.

The Rebellion and the Galactic Empire wage war in an epic space battle. Luke is the only X-Wing pilot that was able to get within the trenches of the Death Star. But Darth Vader and his wingmen are in hot pursuit. Just as Darth Vader is about to destroy Luke, Han returns and clears the way for Luke.

Luke uses the Force to guide his aiming as he fires upon the sole weak point of the deadly Death Star, destroying it for good.

Luke and Han return to the Rebellion base, triumphant, as they receive medals for the heroic journey. There is peace throughout the galaxy — at least for now.

Hopefully now you have a better idea of what the Hero’s Journey looks like in the wild. Be sure to check out our other Hero’s Journey Breakdowns for more examples from cinema’s greatest films.

Scripts from this Article

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope

Download free trending scripts.

Breaking Bad

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Inglourious Basterds

Stranger Things

Next related article.

The Script Lab Podcast: Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi — Writers of LUCY IN THE SKY

Shanee Edwards · October 4, 2019

Recent Articles

What are mumblecore movies 10 films that define the movement.

Ken Miyamoto · May 1, 2024

The Dark Side of Cinema: Uncover the Masterpieces of Film Noir

Ken Miyamoto from ScreenCraft · April 29, 2024

The 50 Greatest Screenwriters of All Time

Martin Keady · April 24, 2024

Shore Scripts Short Film Fund

Deadline: May 2nd, 2024

Roadmap Writers GPS Fellowship

Deadline: May 1st, 2024

The Art of Brooklyn Screenplay Contest

First Ten Pages: Breaking Bad Series Finale – “Felina”

Danielle Karagannis · October 11, 2019

The Script Lab Podcast: Kevin Smith — Writer/Director of JAY AND SILENT BOB REBOOT

Shanee Edwards · October 11, 2019

The Script Lab Podcast: Robyn Paris — Writer/Director of the Award-winning Web Series THE ROOM ACTORS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Sign up for the TSL Newsletter

and get $50 off Final Draft 12

Stay up to date on the latest scripts & screenwriting articles.

AFK Journey: Legend Trial Guide (& Best Teams)

Legend Trial is one of the longest multilevel missions in AFK Journey that only the most veteran players can complete.

Legend Trial is one of the intimidating battle modes in AFK Journey , inviting players on a long, 360-level mission to defeat all sorts of enemies with limited units. During this mode, players enter unique Towers that each allow one specific Hero type (whether it’s Maulers, Wilders, Lightbearers, or Graveborns). But how can AFK Journey beginners manage their troops strategically to conquer these Tower Floors?

AFK Journey: 10 Tips for Beginners

Legend trial battle mode explained.

In AFK Journey , Legend Trial is a tower climb battle mode. Participants must compete in four different towers—each representing one of the four main Factions. Each Tower comprises 90 levels that become gradually more challenging to defeat, but also more rewarding. This mode unlocks when the player reaches AFK Stage 160+.

The difference between Legend Trial and Arcane Labyrinth is that its progression won’t reset, and there are no ladderboards involved. Players could see this battle mode as a parallel progression system to AFK Stages with more autonomy over when to participate.

For context, AFK Arena introduced a similar mechanic under the title of King’s Tower. It included 1,000 Floors that the players had to ascend one by one. Although shorter in extent, Legend Trial in AFK Journey is a lot like this mode from the company’s previous turn-based RPG.

The following are all aspects and mechanics of this mode:

Legend Trial has four Towers: Light, Will, Nature, and Eternity. Each Tower represents one of the non-Celestial and non-Hypogean Factions, which are, in the same order, Lightbearers, Maulers, Wilders, and Graveborn.

Towers have specific schedules that are explained below:

Tower of Light is open on Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays.
Tower of Nature is open on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Tower of Eternity is open on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Tower of Will is open on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.

Tower titles indicate each zone’s special role: In each Tower, players must deploy only Heroes of the respective Faction. In the Tower of Light, only Lightbearers are allowed. In the Tower of Will, deployment is only exclusive to Maulers. In the Tower of Nature, only Wilders can compete. And in the Tower of Eternity, no one but Graveborns are allowed.

The primary rewards of Legend Trial are Acorns and Hero Essence . Conquerors receive a certain number of Acorns after defeating five enemies and some Hero Essence after beating ten. But in later stages, participants also receive Tidal and Temporal Essences, which are used in Exclusive Weapon upgrades.

The Best Team for Each Tower

Since players are restricted to one Faction per Tower, the logical approach would be employing the META Heroes of each Class in that clique. However, players could be more strategic about their teams in Legend Trials by trying out non-META creative synergies. Here are some examples for each Tower.

Tower of Light : Lucius, Vala, Rowan, Mirael, and Korin. Or, for more DEF, Lucius, Temesia, Rowan, and Walker (or Marilee).
Tower of Will : Brutus, Antandra, Smokey, Odie, and Seth. Or, for more agility, Koko, Kruger, Rhys, Antandra, and Seth.
Tower of Nature : Bryon, Damian, Granny Dahnie, Lyca, and Eironn. Or, for more DPS, Arden, Florabelle, Hewynn, Kafra, and Eironn.
Tower of Eternity : Cecia, Thoran, Niru, Igor, and Silvina. Or, as an alternative, Cecia, Thoran, Igor, Salazer, Viperian.

Tips for Completing Legend Trial Towers Faster

Before competing in Legend Trial, have these in mind:

Exploit Spells . In some cases, certain tech units might be missing. For example, in the Tower of Eternity, players have no reliable Healer options. In these scenarios, players must try to negate the effect by utilizing Battle Spells. Starshard Spell, for instance, increases the HP of the team, which might fill in the need for Support Heroes .
Play around with Comps . Compositions are crucial aspects of winning Legend Trial matches. Since the Arenas are much tighter, moving around troops has an even more significant impact on the RNG. Before giving up on a difficult Floor, try mixing different Comps and tweak positions to trigger better results.
Prioritize unlocking Heroes . Ascension carries over in Legend Trials. However, the base level of enemies is determined with respect to the participant's Resonance Level. So, instead of upgrading Heroes, it’s better to unlock more of them before going all in on Towers. This way, the participant will have more options for each battle, which helps defeat enemies faster.

AFK Journey

IMAGES

12 Hero's Journey Stages Explained (Free Templates)
12 Hero's Journey Stages Explained (Free Templates)
The Hero’s Journey Archetype: A Call to Adventure
Writing the Hero’s Journey: Steps, Examples & Archetypes
The Hero's Journey: How to Fill Your Story With Trials, Allies, and Enemies
Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey: A Better Screenplay in 17 Steps

VIDEO

Job's Journey: Trials and Greater blessings#Morethanbefore#abundance#Beofgoodcourage
A Hero's Journey! 🔱 #percyjackson #disneyplus #rickriordan #walkerscobell #leahjeffries #viral
The Hero's Journey
The Hero’s Journey and disintegration anxiety. #josephcampbell #herosjourney
The Righteous Journey
The Hero's Journey

COMMENTS

The Hero's Journey: How to Fill Your Story With Trials, Allies, and Enemies
The Hero's Journey: How to Write the Return With the Elixir and Master the Perfect Ending - Books, Literature & Writing - […] new world in order to begin their quest. The story then enters the sixth phase, the world of Trials, Allies,… The Perfect Hero's Journey Example: Star Wars - […] Trials, Allies, and Enemies: Luke begins the ...
Road of Trials: The Hero's Journey, Stage 6 (Explained)
The road of trials is the stage of a hero's journey during which the hero undergoes a series of trials and tests. The road of trails is stage 6 of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Will cover what the road of trials may look like and explore two examples of a hero on the road of trials.
The Hero's Journey: A Plot Structure Inspired by Mythology
The Hero's Journey is a famous template for storytelling, mapping a hero's adventurous quest through trials and tribulations to ultimate transformation. A portrait of Joseph Campbell (©Joseph Campbell Archives and Library); Christopher Vogler's model of the Hero's Journey from Myths and Movies (1999) by Stuart Voytilla.
PDF The Hero's Journey
The Hero's Journey 12. Status Quo/ Ordinary World 1. Call to Adventure 2. Assistance 3. Departure 4. Trials (tests, allies, enemies) 5. Approach to the Inmost Cave 6. Crisis 7. Treasure 8. Result 9. Return 10. New Life 11. Resolution 12.Status Quo/ Ordinary World An overview of the stages:
Exploring the 12 Stages of the Hero's Journey Part 6: Tests, Allies
And it's within this unknown that the protagonist faces many tests and meets their allies and enemies. 1. Tests. Within the Hero's Journey structure, this stage is a vital part of your protagonist's journey. Conflict is everything. Without conflict, there's no story, no story arc, and no character exploration.
Hero's Journey: Get a Strong Story Structure in 12 Steps
The Hero's Journey is a model for both plot points and character development: as the Hero traverses the world, they'll undergo inner and outer transformation at each stage of the journey. The 12 steps of the hero's journey are: ... They might literally give weapons to prepare for the trials ahead, like Q in the James Bond series. Or perhaps the ...
The Hero's Journey: An Eternal Tale of Trial and Transformation
One particular archetype that has resonated throughout the ages is that of the Hero's Journey, which at its heart, is a story about transformation through trial and tribulation. Joseph Campbell, a literature professor at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote extensively about the Hero's Journey, most notably in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces ...
A Complete Guide to The Hero's Journey (or The Monomyth)
The Hero's Journey was first described by Joseph Campbell. Campbell was an American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College. He wrote about the Hero's Journey in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. More than a guide, this book was a study on the fundamental structure of myths throughout history. ...
Writing the Hero's Journey: Steps, Examples & Archetypes
This Hero's Journey ultimate writing guide thoroughly explains the character archetypes and the 12 stages with examples, templates, tips, and prompts. ... The hero will overcome various trials, grow and transform, and navigate subplots—the additional and unforeseen complexity of the conflict.
Hero's journey
Illustration of the hero's journey. In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, also known as the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.. Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychoanalyst Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord ...
Hero's Journey Steps: Campbell's 12 Vital Stages Explained
Now the hero must face a series of trials and tribulations. The hero's journey isn't safe. The hero is tested in battle, skill, and conflict. He may not succeed in each action but must press on. The protagonist will meet allies, enemies, and mentors with supernatural aid throughout the initiation stage. Stage 3: Return
12 Hero's Journey Stages Explained (+ Free Templates)
The 12 hero's journey stages represent a change or transformation in your story's main character or hero. Get a free hero's journey template. ... The Road of Trials: In this step, the hero will be tempted and tested by the outside world, with a number of negative experiences.
The Hero's Journey: Step-By-Step Guide with Examples
The Hero's Journey is a common story structure for modeling both plot points and character development. A protagonist embarks on an adventure into the unknown. They learn lessons, overcome adversity, defeat evil, and return home transformed. Joseph Campbell, a scholar of literature, popularized the monomyth in his influential work The Hero ...
The Hero's Journey Examples
Popular Hero's Journey Examples Monomyth Example: Homer's Odyssey. Monomyth examples typically involve a hero who embarks on an adventure, faces trials and challenges, undergoes personal transformation, and returns home or to society with newfound wisdom or a significant achievement, making this storytelling structure a powerful and timeless tool for crafting compelling narratives.
5.2 The Monomyth: Understanding the Seventeen Stages of the Hero's Journey
The hero has been through the road of trials, been inspired and then tempted by the goddess, and in the moment of greatest weakness in the goddess's temptation the hero has been put back onto the journey by the father. Now the hero is fully actualized, and the hero's full potential has been reached. ... If the hero's journey involved a ...
The Hero's Journey: Stages, Steps, and Examples
The hero's journey is the story of a hero who leaves the ordinary world to go on an adventure full of peril. On it, the hero will gain both adversaries and allies, and will face a great evil. The hero will also face his shadow self, which is perhaps the most frightening antagonist of all. ... Beyond the threshold lies trials and tribulations ...
Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey
The hero's journey is a simple yet powerfully creative concept, found not just in myths and fairy tales but also novels, films, interactive video games, or anywhere stories are told. ... There is a feminine counterpart to the trials and the difficulties, but it c ertainly is in a different mode. I don't know the counterpart--the real ...
Hero's Journey: A Complete Guide to the Hero's Journey Steps
The hero's journey ends where it begins, back at the beginning after a quest of epic proportions. The 12 steps are separated into three acts: departure (1-5) initiation (5-10) return (10-1) The hero journeys through the 12 steps in a clockwise fashion. As Campbell explains:
Joseph Campbell & The Hero's Journey
Stage 1: Separation. In the first stage of the hero's journey, we find our protangonist living life in a typically mundane situation.The Star Wars, Luke Skywalker lives as a talented yet lowly and pretty damn whiny moisture farmer on Tatooine. Until… 1. Call to Adventure - By some chance the hero will become aware of information or actions that call for them to go on a quest.
Writing 101: What Is the Hero's Journey? 2 Hero's Journey Examples in
A sudden and unexpected journey, promising adventure and peril. A test of character, strength, and skill. An ultimate battle that tests the hero's resolve. A triumphant return home. If this sounds familiar, that's because this exact narrative template has inspired countless stories from ancient myths to modern television shows and movies ...
The Hero's Journey Breakdown: 'Star Wars'
The "hero's journey" is a common narrative archetype that features the different stages of a protagonist's journey in a story. It has been studied and analyzed by many scholars from a multitude of disciplines, but one interpretation has found its way into the minds of almost every writer studying the craft.
Walkthrough
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a spiritual successor to the cult classic Suikoden franchise. You'll recruit heroes as you explore vast lands. Our
AFK Journey: How to Beat Legend Trial Towers
Legend Trial is one of the intimidating battle modes in AFK Journey, inviting players on a long, 360-level mission to defeat all sorts of enemies with limited units.During this mode, players enter ...