Into the Woods: A practical guide to the Hero's Journey

What practical use is "The Hero's Journey" to story tellers and game developers?

Why The Hero’s Journey Is Important What makes the hero’s journey so important? Why should we bother with it? It’s important because myths are important. Myths convey the values of society. Myths are how we teach each other who we are and how we should behave.

Myths make possible our sense of community. We are thinking mythically when we show loyalty to our town our nation or our team. Loyalties to our friends or community are the result of strong myths that reinforce social bonding.

Myths give us a sense of personal identity, answering the question, "Who am I?"

Myths are what lie underneath our moral values.

Carl Jung argued that mythical motifs are structural elements of the psyche and says these patterns are in fact present in our brains, he calls them "The collective unconscious". He says we wait for a particular belief system to become implanted in our brain by the culture we grow up in.

This story telling is then set in our brains like a bird is wired to make a nest or a spider making a web, we have the same for story telling. We need these myths or stories to guide our lives they teach us new things and without them we would be lost. Rollo May says that to remain sane we must bring order and coherence into the stream of sensations and emotions entering his consciousness. Meaning we must have some sort of control over our thoughts and emotions.

Take away a mans myth then in result he will become mentally ill, depressed and he will lose the will to live. We need the belief that we matter, that we have meaning and we find our meaning in the myths we create. The best way to reinforce these myths is through storytelling and literature.

Raphael Patai wrote:

“Literature has the power to move us profoundly precisely because of its mythical quality… because of the mystery in the face of which we feel an awed delight or terror. The real function of literature in human affairs is to continue myth’s endeavour to create a meaningful place for man in a world oblivious of his presence.”

It seems that literature proves there is order in the universe, it says the in life, moral choices lead to outcomes. In fiction, there is meaning to human events because myths help us create meaning in our lives. The myths in our stories reaffirm the values our culture and teach us "the way we should be"

Why is this important to games? Rollo May has postulated that narcotics are myth-substitutes because they allow people to assert control over their environment, even if only for a short period of time. I contend that games are another example of myth-substitutes.

He says the her thinks games are essentially myth-reinforcing activities and that the player chooses the kind of games that reaffirm his/her personal myths.

What is the Hero's Journey?

During Joseph Campbell's research of thousands of myths he found common elements which kept appearing in these myths. Not all of them are found in one but many are found in different ones. After he categorizes these he says that the more of these elements a narrative has the more likely it is to strike a deep mythological chord with the audience. Campbell sumarises these elements which became known as the Hero's Journey, in these words:

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.

• Establishing the hero’s world.
• The call to adventure.
• Entering the mythological woods.
• Trail of trials.
• Encountering the evil on.
• Gaining the hero’s prize.
• Returning that prize to the community.

The Hero and his prize
Step 1: Pick Your Premise
First, pick your premise – your theme, your myth.Myths and stories consciously or subconsciously influence behavior. So you must decide what you think is important and make your game about that. You must decide how you want people to behave or think differently after playing your game than before. This is not a license for preaching. It’s the emotional connection you will create with the gameplayer, built up through time as he experiences the different facets of the issue that you have built into the game


Step 2: Create your hero
Next, create a hero who can embody that premise. Match the hero to your premise.  A hero is a myth in action. Heroes are how the myths are brought to life, the hero usually possesses many of the following qualities:

• The hero has courage (or finds it in the course of the story).
• The hero is clever and resourceful.
• The hero has a “special” talent.
• The hero is an “outlaw,” living by his or her own rules.
• The hero is good at what he or she does for a living.
• The hero is a protagonist (takes the lead in the action at some point in the story).
•  The hero has been “wounded” (maimed, disgraced, grieving for a lost loved one, etc.) or becomes wounded in the course of the story.
• The hero is motivated by idealism (at least at some point in the story).
• The hero is sexually potent.

Step 3: Create a Great Villain 

Great villains are memorable characters, Often much more memorable than the heroes themselves.   The greatest myth-based stories are those of the self-sacrificing hero pitted against the self-centred Evil One. Here are some characteristics of the Evil One that Frey outlines in his book  The greatest myth-based stories are those of the self-sacrificing hero pitted against the self-centred Evil One. Here are some characteristics of the Evil One that Frey outlines in his book

• Traits similar to hero.
• May be full of hubris.
• May be an outlaw.
• Clever and resourceful.
• May be wounded.
•  May have a special talent.
• May have great sex appeal.
• Traits dissimilar to the hero.
• Motivated by greed, avarice, lust for power, vanity, narcissism, and so on.
•  Never acts out of idealism, although he may have an evil cause he believes in.
•  Is often cruel.
• May win by luck, which the hero never does.
• Is not forgiving.
• Might quit – but only at the very end.
•  May whine and grovel, which the hero isn’t allowed to do.
• May not be stoical like the hero. May not be loyal.
• Usually not physically superior – though his or her sidekick may be.
• No special birth or special destiny, though he may falsely claim one.

Step 4: Show the Hero's Regular World

The point is that the player must see the hero’s world that he is trying to save. Near the beginning of the game, you should show the player an example of how the hero is flawed, so that at the end of the game, he can see how the hero has been transformed.

Step 5: Disrupt the Hero's World

This is Campbell’s Call to Adventure. When the disruption shows up in the form of a person,Campbell calls the person the Herald. Campbellalso says that the hero may refuse the call, but that doesn't really apply in the game world.

Step 6: Enter the Mythological Woods

These mythological woods can be either a physical or a psychological place. It is the place where the hero must endure his inner and outer struggle. The outer struggle is to achieve some victory. The inner struggle is to discover himself and transform his character. As we progress through levels, we have to see the hero changing. Giving him betters toys at the end of each level is a good idea, but it just isn't enough.

Step 7: Confront the Evil One

What is important is that your hero confronts evil in whatever form you have chosen to present it, and defeats it. Ideally the hero should overcome his inner struggle in order to be victorious in the outer struggle.

Step 8: Acquire the Prize

Remember your premise? That’s the prize. This is the thing that was worth fighting to acquire. This is what makes the journey worthwhile for the hero, and for the player.  Whatever the idea was that kept you up all those late nights through all those months of development, that is the Hero’s prize, and you have to let the hero, and the gameplayer acquire it. That’s the whole point of doing a story in the first place.

Step 9: The Hero's Return

In a way, this is optional, but in a way it’s not. If the hero acquires the prize, you've done your job of delivering it to the community Whether or not your hero survives to deliver it to his community depends on the kind of story you want to tell. By the end of your story, Egri says you will have moved the character “from pole to pole.”

The Three Act Structure

This is Aristotle's Three Act Structure which is used to break down a story into three simple acts.

• In the First Act, you get the hero up a tree
• the Second Act, you throw stones at him (in other words, you make things harder for him)
• The Third Act, you get him down out of the tree.

This is a great use for the plot of the story but is in fact no use to use for character development or growth. Identification is this mysterious ability people have to live inside the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. It’s what allows people to dream the fictive dream. This identification with the hero somehow unites the gameplayer with the hero, and they somehow become one. the other surprising thing is how endlessly satisfying these stories are to us.

The more familiar the hero is, the more often we have watched him overcome ever-increasing dangers and challenges, the more we know what to expect of him the more we identify with him. The hero gains immeasurably from repetition.” A myth confirms and reconfirms our most deeply held cultural beliefs.

The Hero’s Journey isn’t a box of tools you can use to fix every story problems. But it’s somewhat similar to a circuit tester. You can clamp the leads around a problem spot in your story and check to see if there’s enough mythical current flowing. And if you don’t have enough juice, it can help point out the source of the problem.

Personal Comments

I actually found this article to be really helpful and well written. It was easy to understand and get my head around it. I made a lot more notes on this than I thought I would and the structures which have been shown in this article will come in very handy when it comes to character development and growth as well as developing a plot for my story.