Storytelling: Structure and Hero's Journey

Storytelling and Reality

• Stories mirror life but possess a different structure than lived experiences.
• Stories usually follow a structured path, in contrast to the often chaotic nature of reality.
• Story events and characters have a defined purpose, while real-life experiences often feel random.
• Story heroes undergo transformative journeys, which is unlike real-life paths.

The Hero's Journey

• Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" details the archetypal hero's journey.
• The hero's journey involves leaving their ordinary world for a transformative experience in a new one.
• The hero encounters different characters, faces a crisis, and returns changed.
• Common narrative elements include the ordinary world, call to adventure, and supernatural aid.
• The hero adapts to the unfamiliar world, faces trials, and ultimately transforms.
• A moment of darkness occurs before the hero has a realization and is saved from disaster.
• The hero returns to their ordinary world but now with renewed balance and peace.
• Romantic comedies often follow the structure of the hero's journey.
• A mysterious stranger typically portrays the call to adventure, and starts the hero on a romantic journey.
• After falling in love, the hero faces conflict, which leads to a realization and a final effort in love.

Tragedy

• Tragedies deviate from the typical hero's journey structure.
• Traditional hero's journey comes to a victorious return but tragedy has and unexpected ending.
• Tragedies maintain structure but invert the hero's journey.
• A hero's character flaw, despite good intentions, leads to their downfall.

Cosmic Purpose

• The sense of purpose often separates stories from reality, where heroes are destined for their journeys.
• Heroes were meant for extraordinary feats before their adventures began.
• Destiny is a recurring theme in stories.
• Some heroes do not have an explicit destiny but become destined during their journey.

Stories vs. Reality

• Stories are told with the ending in mind.
• The ending influences from the start, with the journey containing meaningful elements.
• Heroes are never shown doing mundane, ordinary things.
• Every element in a story has a purpose, also known as Checkov's Gun.
• People seek patterns even in random narratives.
• It's comforting to think that our lives have meaning and order.
• Retelling our lives in a narrative is a fictionalized version of reality, and creates an illusion of predestination.
• People do not know the ultimate purpose of their actions as they happen in their life.
• Actions are taken with specific goals, but success is not always guaranteed.
• The meaning and the result of actions only becomes clear in retrospect.
• There is a growing trend of wanting heroic adventures, not just in stories but in personal expectations.
• People desire memorable, meaningful, and exciting lives, with a sense of coherence.
• People tend to frame experiences as significant steps toward a greater purpose, and consider themselves heroes.
• Storytelling is intertwined with personal identities.
• A future video will explore monomyth in storytelling, and its relationship to personal lives.
• The history of heroic adventures will be examined and its impact on stories and personal identities.

Further Learning

• Understanding the hero’s journey can be improved by reading Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces".
• Other books by Joseph Campbell provide useful information for understanding connecting stories, for example "Myths to Live By" and "Goddesses".

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