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".

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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.

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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.

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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.