Vogler's Writer's Journey

On Vogler's Writer's Journey

Marcus Thomas

Dec 22, 2024

This week in Storytelling, we were tasked with reading from Book One of Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey. In particular, we were meant to read a chapter that explained "The Hero's Journey" but used with a framework branched from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces called, "The Writer's Journey".

Reflections

If you're going to show a fish out of his customary element, you first have to show him in that Ordinary World to create a vivid contrast with the strange new world he is about to enter.

This particular quote resonated with me greatly, as contrast is something that is something that people evolved to recognize on a lizard-brain level. As designers, contrast is one of the core principles used to make successful designs; and with storytelling, contrast shows us what makes a hero, a hero. I agree that this should be established early on in a story, as even though a hero can be just an Average Joe in the beginning, contrast must be utilized to separate their everyday life from the wonderful journey they are about to embark on.


On The Ordeal -

This is a critical moment in any story, an Ordeal in which the hero must die or appear to die so that she can be born again...The designers of amusement park thrill rides know how to use this principle. Roller coasters make their passengers feel as if they're going to die, and there's a great thrill that comes from brushing up against death and surviving it. You're never more alive than when you're looking death in the face.

I found this example of The Ordeal super exciting, as I'm a big fan of theme parks and experience design. Growing up, I used to love playing Roller Coaster Tycoon, and when I was able to ride the roller coasters that I designed, I would get really amped up to virtually experience how the thrills would feel. Little did I know, what I was trying to recreate was a form of storytelling! The build-up of the first big drop, the loops giving a feeling of floating, the intense spiraling of a corkscrew...all leading to the relief of easing back onto the platform, heart pumping, while thinking to yourself, "what a ride." It's all storytelling. With that correlation in mind, The Ordeal is something that I'll make sure to pay special attention to when crafting products meant to tell a story.

The Hero's Journey is a skeletal framework that should be fleshed out with the details 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 given here is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power. The values of the Hero's Journey are what's important.

This quote is what I feel is the heart of this chapter. The Hero's Journey, although as old as human storytelling, is not a static thing. It is a living thing that is meant to be tweaked according to the storyteller, but functions as the skeleton to hold that story together. As a designer, and as a storyteller, frameworks are meant to be used as tools, so we need to be cognizant of their use, while also not being shackled to their original intent & dogma.

Vogler's Writer's Journey

On Vogler's Writer's Journey

Marcus Thomas

Dec 22, 2024

This week in Storytelling, we were tasked with reading from Book One of Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey. In particular, we were meant to read a chapter that explained "The Hero's Journey" but used with a framework branched from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces called, "The Writer's Journey".

Reflections

If you're going to show a fish out of his customary element, you first have to show him in that Ordinary World to create a vivid contrast with the strange new world he is about to enter.

This particular quote resonated with me greatly, as contrast is something that is something that people evolved to recognize on a lizard-brain level. As designers, contrast is one of the core principles used to make successful designs; and with storytelling, contrast shows us what makes a hero, a hero. I agree that this should be established early on in a story, as even though a hero can be just an Average Joe in the beginning, contrast must be utilized to separate their everyday life from the wonderful journey they are about to embark on.


On The Ordeal -

This is a critical moment in any story, an Ordeal in which the hero must die or appear to die so that she can be born again...The designers of amusement park thrill rides know how to use this principle. Roller coasters make their passengers feel as if they're going to die, and there's a great thrill that comes from brushing up against death and surviving it. You're never more alive than when you're looking death in the face.

I found this example of The Ordeal super exciting, as I'm a big fan of theme parks and experience design. Growing up, I used to love playing Roller Coaster Tycoon, and when I was able to ride the roller coasters that I designed, I would get really amped up to virtually experience how the thrills would feel. Little did I know, what I was trying to recreate was a form of storytelling! The build-up of the first big drop, the loops giving a feeling of floating, the intense spiraling of a corkscrew...all leading to the relief of easing back onto the platform, heart pumping, while thinking to yourself, "what a ride." It's all storytelling. With that correlation in mind, The Ordeal is something that I'll make sure to pay special attention to when crafting products meant to tell a story.

The Hero's Journey is a skeletal framework that should be fleshed out with the details 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 given here is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power. The values of the Hero's Journey are what's important.

This quote is what I feel is the heart of this chapter. The Hero's Journey, although as old as human storytelling, is not a static thing. It is a living thing that is meant to be tweaked according to the storyteller, but functions as the skeleton to hold that story together. As a designer, and as a storyteller, frameworks are meant to be used as tools, so we need to be cognizant of their use, while also not being shackled to their original intent & dogma.

Early Draft

After sharing the first version of my Outlook redesign, I got some great feedback that’s helping me rethink a few key areas. One of the biggest notes was to cut back on overlapping panels—they were crowding the interface and taking away from the clean, focused experience I was aiming for. People also pointed out some redundant information popping up in multiple places, which added to the clutter instead of reducing it. The most exciting piece of feedback, though, was the push to reimagine how relationships between groups are displayed. There’s a real opportunity to move past the usual lists and folders and come up with something more visual and meaningful. It was all great fuel for the next round of design updates.

Final Version

Future Considerations//
Reflections

In the final round of feedback, a lot of the earlier critiques were addressed—I successfully reduced overlapping panels and cut out redundant information wherever it crept in. The new approach to showing groups was also really well received, and I think dropping the old-school ‘VIP’ concept helped make the whole system feel more inclusive and context-aware. One piece of feedback that really stuck with me, though, was a suggestion to reimagine the Focus Mode as something closer to a social media-style feed. The idea is to surface important emails from key groups or favorited contacts in a way that feels more natural and scrollable—something familiar, but tailored for productivity. It’s a direction I hadn’t fully considered before, but it opens up a lot of exciting possibilities for how users might intuitively engage with what matters most.

All things considered, this was a much more enjoyable process than I initially thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, the project interested me from the start, but it wasn't until the push to go further and unshackle myself a bit from UX conventions that I felt like this was something special. This project was a great reminder that even though us designers aren't often seen as people that consider self-expression first when creating, it's great exercise to give ourselves the opportunity to become the client. By just focusing on working out our creativity outside of what's trending, on 'this thing is so ubiquitus it's almost weird that we haven't revisited this', we're opening ourselves up to new ways of lateral thinking.

Vogler's Writer's Journey

On Vogler's Writer's Journey

Marcus Thomas

Dec 22, 2024

This week in Storytelling, we were tasked with reading from Book One of Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey. In particular, we were meant to read a chapter that explained "The Hero's Journey" but used with a framework branched from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces called, "The Writer's Journey".

Reflections

If you're going to show a fish out of his customary element, you first have to show him in that Ordinary World to create a vivid contrast with the strange new world he is about to enter.

This particular quote resonated with me greatly, as contrast is something that is something that people evolved to recognize on a lizard-brain level. As designers, contrast is one of the core principles used to make successful designs; and with storytelling, contrast shows us what makes a hero, a hero. I agree that this should be established early on in a story, as even though a hero can be just an Average Joe in the beginning, contrast must be utilized to separate their everyday life from the wonderful journey they are about to embark on.


On The Ordeal -

This is a critical moment in any story, an Ordeal in which the hero must die or appear to die so that she can be born again...The designers of amusement park thrill rides know how to use this principle. Roller coasters make their passengers feel as if they're going to die, and there's a great thrill that comes from brushing up against death and surviving it. You're never more alive than when you're looking death in the face.

I found this example of The Ordeal super exciting, as I'm a big fan of theme parks and experience design. Growing up, I used to love playing Roller Coaster Tycoon, and when I was able to ride the roller coasters that I designed, I would get really amped up to virtually experience how the thrills would feel. Little did I know, what I was trying to recreate was a form of storytelling! The build-up of the first big drop, the loops giving a feeling of floating, the intense spiraling of a corkscrew...all leading to the relief of easing back onto the platform, heart pumping, while thinking to yourself, "what a ride." It's all storytelling. With that correlation in mind, The Ordeal is something that I'll make sure to pay special attention to when crafting products meant to tell a story.

The Hero's Journey is a skeletal framework that should be fleshed out with the details 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 given here is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power. The values of the Hero's Journey are what's important.

This quote is what I feel is the heart of this chapter. The Hero's Journey, although as old as human storytelling, is not a static thing. It is a living thing that is meant to be tweaked according to the storyteller, but functions as the skeleton to hold that story together. As a designer, and as a storyteller, frameworks are meant to be used as tools, so we need to be cognizant of their use, while also not being shackled to their original intent & dogma.