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The story circle in 8 steps with tons of examples.

May 9, 2023

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Dan Harmon’s Story Circle Is a Modern Take on the Hero’s Journey

Article by Colette Nichol, Story Strategist, SEO Expert, and Solo Filmmaker

What Is Dan Harmon’s Story Circle with Examples?

The story circle is a story structure guide created by Dan Harmon based on Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the Hero’s Journey.

The story circle consists of the eight main plot points that create a story’s foundational structure, which Dan Harmon has labelled: you, need, go, search, find, take, return, changed.

• You – A character with a problem.
• Need – Has a need.
• Go – And crosses the threshold in the world of adventure.
• Search – To find the answer to their problem.
• Find – They find that things are not what they seem.
• Take – They get what they want but it was not as they expected.
• Return – They return to the ordinary world.
• Changed – And they are transformed by their journey.

For a ton of extensive examples with videos, read through this entire post where I cover each important turning point in a story in details with examples. But first, some background!

Who Is Dan Harmon?

Dan Harmon is a TV writer known for writing and creating Community.

He also co-created Rick and Morty and is credited with writing 61 episodes.

To get the juices flowing in the writer’s room and guide the writing of new episodes, he simplified the hero’s journey into eight key concepts that make it easy to assess or build a story idea quickly.

It’s brilliant. It’s simple. And dammit, it’s delicious!

I got obsessed with Dan Harmon’s story circle a few years ago, hunting down every time Harmon wrote about or spoke about his method of breaking down stories. If he talked about it on the internet, I found it and ate it up.

It’s not that Harmon is saying anything new.

But the way he’s broken down the Hero’s Journey is so practical and, frankly, beautiful that it’s worth knowing and using. If you’re a writer, storyteller, director, producer, or even business owner, you need to know how to pull apart and put together a story.

So let’s discuss and dissect this beautiful tool. Onward!

Table of Contents

• How Dan Harmon’s Story Circle Works
• Part 1: The 8 Stages of Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

YOU, NEED: A Protagonist Needs Something

Go: the hero crosses the threshold into the world of adventure, search: the hero is on the road of trials, find: reckonings, meeting the goddess, vulnerability, bliss, take: the face off, meet your maker, facing the father, return: the flight home, change: the hero is transformed and shares their wisdom, the universal structure of storytelling, top and bottom half of the story circle, part 2: the world of adventure vs. the regular world, crossing the threshold, part 3: starting value or idea and ending value or idea, watch: the dan harmon story circle explained by dan harmon.

• Common Story Circle Questions

How Dan Harmon’s Story Circle Works

First, let me be clear that I’m explaining the story circle in the way that I use it.

I’m not Dan Harmon, and I’m not trying to explain this concept verbatim. So take what you want from this analysis, and don’t hold it against me if I don’t explain this exactly the way Dan Harmon does.

That said, I’m probably the only person on the internet who has hunted down every single thing Mr. Harmon has written about the story circle, put it in a Google doc, printed it, highlighted it, and then practiced it…over and over again!

Anyway, at the end of the day, what matters is HOW you use this information, not whether it was delivered to you in some perfect authoritative package. Now, let’s get to it!

There are three main parts to the story circle:

• The 8 Stages
• The World of Adventure vs. The Regular World
• The Starting Value/Idea vs. The Ending Value/Idea

Part 1: The 8 Stages of Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

There are eight basic stages in the structure of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

It’s no different from the eight stages in the Hero’s Journey. But the way he describes these stages, with a punchy one-word descriptor, makes this tool easy to use.

• Stage 1: YOU
• Stage 2: NEED
• Stage 3: GO
• Stage 4: SEARCH
• Stage 5: FIND
• Stage 6: TAKE
• Stage 7: RETURN
• Stage 8: CHANGE

Before I describe how to interpret and use these stages, look at that list yourself. What do you think each stage means?

Think of a story in your life, and run it through those stages.

You: The Main Character Is in the Comfort Zone

Before anything crazy happens, it’s just you and your regular everyday life.

Things aren’t great. You’re dissatisfied. But you’re not willing to make massive changes. You’re just living life in a quasi-apathetic state, aka normal.

Every story needs a hero—ideally, one, not ten. Even multi-character dramas or action movies like Oceans 11 have one main character who drives the story forward.

Need: The Character Wants Something, Desire Blooms

You want something. You’re not satisfied with just the status quo. Either this desire comes internally and is there before the inciting incident. Or something or someone comes along and awakens the desire within you.

Story Circle Examples

Wizard of oz story structure example:.

Dorothy is in the black-and-white world, moaning and groaning (in song) about how she’d like to be somewhere over the rainbow rather than hanging in Kansas. She needs something to happen so she can escape from her humdrum lands.

Beauty and the Beast Story Structure Example:

Belle reads her fantasy adventure book and longs to be in the middle of a great adventure.

STAGE 1 & 2 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLE

Go: The Hero Takes Action, Crosses the Threshold and Enters an Unfamiliar World

Your bags are packed, and you’re not just ready to go; you’re going !

This is the part of the story where you exit the ordinary world and enter the world of adventure.

If you’re writing a fish-out-of-water tale about an entitled starlet whose private plane crashes in the Ecuadorian paramo and has to find her way home against all odds, then THIS is the moment her plane crashes, and she’s in the paramo.

Before, she was in her cozy privileged life of plush seats, white leather, and multi-million-dollar movie deals. And now, she’s in an alien landscape where nobody speaks English, and nobody knows who she is.

Dorothy’s little house gets dumped in a colourful town square. She’s no longer in the black-and-white world. She’s now entered a land of technicolour.

Watch the video below and pay attention to how the sound design indicates that she’s entered a world of adventure.

STAGE 3 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLE

Search: The Hero Begins the Journey and Must Adapt to the Unfamiliar World

You land in a new country without any language skills or understanding of the culture, and now it’s time to fake it ‘til you make it.

Will you survive?

Or will you fall apart?

According to Dan Harmon, “the point of this part of the circle is, our protagonist has been thrown into the water, and now it’s sink or swim.”

Joseph Campbell, the original story circle creator, i.e. the man behind the hero’s journey analysis, calls this phase in a story the Road of Trials. (+)

This is the phase in a story where your main character tries to get the lay of the land. They may meet new friends and mentors. They may be given a helpful aid critical to their future. They may learn new skills.

But most of all, they get beaten up emotionally—and sometimes physically too.

Yellow bricks are everywhere, and adorable human beings with odd singing voices greet her! Hurrah, she’s in the Land of Oz! But wait, now she has to figure out how to get back home. She needs to follow the yellow brick road. Just her and Toto on a road towards the great unknown. Dorothy begins her adventure.

STAGE 4 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLE

Find: The Hero Gets What They Wanted, But It’s Not How They Expected

Mother, womb, emergence, transcendence, bliss, reckonings, vulnerability, bliss.

For months, maybe years, you’ve wanted something, and finally, you have a taste.

Let’s say you’ve always wanted to be rich. You’ve been scraping by for years. You graduate from university, and boom! Suddenly, you get a job that pays you 10x what you’ve been earning.

You’re working on Wall Street, making so much money you don’t know what to do with it.

But it doesn’t feel the way you thought it would. Instead of floating through life in blissful happiness, you’re grinding your teeth while you sleep and waking up with headaches. This is not what you bargained for, and you’re not sure what to do about it.

In this part of the story, the hero finds part of what they were looking for, but it’s not how they expected it to be.

This part of the story, as per the hero’s journey, is also the transcendent or “meeting the mother” stage. There is feminine energy at the bottom of the story circle.

In a romantic comedy, this is where the two lovers finally really fall in love or realize what love is all about.

In an action-packed drama, the hero would likely have a moment of rest and romance with a woman who represents his deepest desires.

According to Mr. Harmon, this part of the story circle is where our character is the most vulnerable. The following six concepts are all potentially part of the mix when you reach the bottom of the story circle.

• MEETING WITH THE GODDESS
• CONFESSIONS
• VULNERABILITY
• INTO THE PSYCHE

This part of the story is a major turning point.

It’s another threshold that the character must cross— as they do, the story takes an entirely new turn. The hero is now on the road HOME. They have come this far, and now they have to “screw their courage to the sticking place” and do everything within their power to fight their way home.

Fun fact: this stage in the story circle often involves water.

Pay attention to the next few movies you watch and see if there’s water involved in Stage 5! In the example below, it’s frozen water that’s used to create the moment of bliss.

Dorothy and her friends are near the end of their journey. The Emerald City is finally in sight. But the Wicked Witch of the West has placed a field of magical sleep-inducing poppies on the outskirts of the city, and Dorothy and Toto fall into a deep slumber. This heroine reference hints at the darkness that creeps within us all, particularly as we’re about to make our dreams come true.

This scene is a beautiful example of the fifth stage of the story circle.

As Glenda enchants the field with snow and the white flurries fall upon the field, Dorothy and Toto are revived.

STAGE 5 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLE

Take: Meet Your Maker, Facing the Father, the Vader Face Off

The hero battles to the next stage, paying a price for what they have won.

It’s time to meet your metaphorical (or real) maker.

This is the moment in the story where you face off with the villain and come close to real or metaphorical death. This climax is the culmination of everything the hero has been fighting for throughout the story.

If they make it through this face-off, they’ll be transformed.

Story Structure Examples:

• Luke Skywalker faces Darth Vader.
• Peter faces Hook as he frees Wendy and the boys.
• The Titanic is sinking— Jack and Rose face a wall of water that could eat them alive.
• Dorothy faces the Wicked Witch of the West.

STAGE 6 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLES

Return: The Flight Home

You’ve gotten what you needed, defeated the villain, learned something about yourself, and now you’re ready to return home with your new knowledge. But not so fast!

This is the part in a romantic comedy where the hero chases after the one he (or she) loves. He races to the airport to make sure his soul mate doesn’t get on that flight.

In an action movie, the hero has just defeated the villain and must head home, sometimes chased by more attacking gremlins.

Dorothy discovers the wizard is a fake. But luckily, it turns out there’s still a way to get home. It turns out that the pathway to getting home had been on Dorothy’s feet the entire time. She clicks her heels three times and repeats, “There’s no place like home.”

Titanic Story Structure Example:

Rose lies on the wooden board, the night is cold, and she’s nearly frozen. Then flashlights pierce the darkness. A boat has arrived. She and Jack can go home. She turns to Jack to wake him up, but he’s cold to the touch. Jack has died. But Rose can still go home. Broken-hearted, she nearly gives up. But at the last minute, as the boat is gliding away, Rose calls out. She leaves her raft and swims towards the boat and the possibility of going home.

STAGE 7 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLES

Change: The Hero Has Transformed and Brings New Gifts to their World

You’re home now after your 300-day trip around the world.

You’re no longer the same. You’ve learned things about yourself and the world you can never unlearn. You’ve tested your strength and courage. You have wisdom to share and are happy to be back in the ordinary world. This transformation you’ve undergone in your journey into the unknown and back is irreversible.

Dorothy finally realizes that her home and family are the most valuable treasures on earth. She’s no longer the dreamy girl who wishes to be far away. She’s grateful for what she has and sees treasure in the simple things. She is transformed.

STEP 8 – STORY CIRCLE MOVIE EXAMPLE

There is a basic universal structure to a good story.

The hero starts out in their regular world. Things are normal. Perhaps they are unfulfilled.

Early in the story, the hero develops a burning need.

They want something, but there are obstacles in the way. To get into the meat of the story, the hero has to answer the call and race across the threshold into the World of Adventure.

There are two slices to the story circle.

You can cut your story circle in half vertically and horizontally. On the top is the regular world, and on the bottom is the world of adventure.

Meanwhile, when you cut your story circle in half vertically, the left side is the starting idea or value, and the right side is the ending idea or value i.e. the transformation.

Can you see how if you use the story circle, you can quickly test your story and see if it works?

The horizontal slice represents the moment the hero crosses the threshold into a new world, out of her comfort zone, and into the mud.

And near the end of the story, it represents her return to the familiar world again. The top half of the story circle is the Regular World. The bottom half of the story circle represents the World of Adventure.

It wouldn’t be a story if you didn’t end up in The World of Adventure.

The reason we love stories so much is that they transport us. They take us out of the everyday grind. They show us who we can become if we take a leap of faith and follow our dreams, passions, and inner guidance.

When you split your story circle in half horizontally, you see how the hero must cross the threshold, passing from the regular world into the world of adventure.

For the story to get going, the hero must enter a quagmire of challenges.

The character enters an unfamiliar situation.

They are now in the World of Adventure. They are no longer stuck or stagnant. They are NOT in their comfort zone any longer. They’ve stepped out onto the rickety bridge and are moving forward, one foot in front of the next, creeping over the abyss.

They adapt to the situation.

This is the part in the story where the hero meets friends and foes and gains tools and tricks that they can use to defeat their enemy in the future.

You could think of this as the training stage.

In your own life, when you embark on a new adventure, there’s a stage where you’ve landed in the new world, and you have to learn the ropes.

You start a new job, and you have no idea what the hell you’re doing.

You meet new co-workers, figure out who the crazy people are, and learn how to use the weird 1980s coffee maker they inexplicably have in the break room.

Joseph Campbell called this stage of the Hero’s Journey the Road of Trials.

The final part of the story circle is the vertical cut.

On the left, you have the idea or value that drives the character and the story from the beginning. On the right, you have the idea or value that takes over after the character lives through the moment of reckoning or meeting with the goddess.

If you begin the love story guarded, unwilling to trust your heart with anyone, after you experience a true-love kiss, you change.

You begin to act out of love instead of fear.

You’re no longer guarded; you’re driven by a desire to love and be loved.

If you begin a coming of age story as a selfish, bratty, spineless child, you will cross the threshold at the bottom of the story circle and move into adulthood. You are no longer in it for yourself alone; you fight for others and give of yourself selflessly.

If your story can’t be split into two opposing values, it will lack tension.

Common Story Circle Questions:

When you’re writing a story or coming up with the plot points for a screenplay or video, it’s common to get lost or stuck.

Although storytelling is a natural part of how we share the moments in our lives with friends and family, when doing it formally, things can go sideways fast.

So, let’s answer some of your pressing story circle questions!

When should you use Dan Harmon’s story circle?

You should use Dan Harmon’s story circle and the Hero’s Journey structure whenever you’re crafting a story.

Before you start writing a story or script, create an outline of the structure and use Dan Harmon’s story circle to test your idea. Make sure that you have all the basic structural elements before you start writing.

What is a story circle?

A story circle is a way of breaking down your story’s structure to identify if your story works.

The story circle is based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. It is Dan Harmon’s simplified version of the hero’s journey and is a simple structural analysis tool for storytellers.

What is the concept of the story circle?

The basic concept of the story circle is that every story follows a universal pattern.

Every story starts with a main character that has a need, goes on a journey into a world of adventure and is changed through facing challenges.

How many steps are in a story circle? And what are the steps?

There are eight steps in the story circle.

• You – A main character in the ordinary world
• Need – Has a need and a desire to take action
• Go – They leave their ordinary world and take decisive action
• Search – The hero searches for what they need, facing obstacles
• Find – They find what they were looking for, but it’s not what they expected
• Take – They pay the price and face their mortality as they take what they need
• Return – Finally, the hero can return home
• Change – Transformed and ready to share their wisdom

Where did the story circle come from?

The story circle came from Dan Harmon’s obsession with storytelling and his need for a simple story structure tool that could help him while writing hundreds of television episodes.

Did Dan Harmon create the story circle?

Dan Harmon created the story circle based on Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the hero’s journey.

Become a Confident Storyteller

Hi, I’m Colette Nichol! I’m a video producer, story strategist, and solo filmmaker based out of Vancouver, Canada.

If you’re interested in becoming a confident storyteller, check out my online storytelling course Story Guru .

Or read more of the storytelling articles on the blog:

📖 Top 10 Elements of a Story

📖 How to Tell a Captivating Story

📖 What Story Should I Write?

📖 How to Write a Logline for a Movie

About the Author

Hi! I’m Colette Nichol . I’m a solo filmmaker and story strategist based out of rainy Vancouver, Canada. I’ve been making videos and micro films for small businesses and global brands since 2014.

Plus, I LOVE to help aspiring filmmakers pursue their dreams and start making films. This blog is designed to help you gain the knowledge you need to become a filmmaker.

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Storytelling 101: The Dan Harmon Story Circle

The Story Circle by Dan Harmon is a basic narrative structure that writers can use to structure and test their story ideas. Telling stories is an inherently human thing, but how we structure the narrative separates a good story from a truly great one.

Because of Dan Harmon’s background in screenwriting, the Story Circle is popular among filmmakers and writers on TV shows and TV series, but any storyteller can benefit from using it. Let’s look at this narrative structure more closely, examine the eight steps, and discuss its use in story and character development!

What is the Dan Harmon Story Circle?

The Dan Harmon Story Circle describes the structure of a story in three acts and with eight plot points, which are called steps. When you have a protagonist who will progress through these, you have a basic character arc and the bare minimum of a story—the story embryo or plot embryo, if you will.

The Story Circle as a narrative structure is descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning it doesn’t tell you what to write, but how to tell the story. The steps outline when the plot points occur and the order in which your hero completes their character development. These eight steps are:

1. You A character in their zone of comfort

2. Need wants something

3. Go! so they enter an unfamiliar situation

4. Struggle to which they have to adapt

5. Find in order to get what they want

6. Suffer yet they have to make a sacrifice

7. Return before they return to their familiar situation

8. Change having changed fundamentally

The hero completes these steps in a circle in a clockwise direction, going from noon to midnight. The top half of the circle and its two-quarters of the whole make up act one and act three, while the bottom half comprises the longer second act. In their consecutive order, the Story Circle describes the three acts:

Working with the Story Circle enables you to think about your main character and to plot from their emotional state. The steps will automatically make your hero proactive as you focus on their motivation, their actions and the respective consequences.

The Shortcut to Effective Storyboards.

Boords is an easy-to-use storyboarding tool to plan creative projects.

The Story Circle in story structure theory

Why is this narrative structure a circle? A classic graph of the three-act structure charts the rising and falling action with its plot points as a line with peaks, so why can't your hero complete the eight steps in a linear fashion from the beginning to the end?

The Hero’s Journey

Dan Harmon hardly invented the circular narrative structure or traced the cyclical nature of stories in the three-act structure. He merely simplified the Hero’s Journey and adapted it to his own screenwriting needs. The hero’s journey is a template of stories that describes the stages of a hero embarking on a quest or adventure, who has to go through crisis before victory to emerge transformed. Though the hero often brings back an “elixir”, the solution to their initial “problem”, it’s their inner change that enables them to prevail in the “new order” at home.

The monomyth

The return as expressed in the circle is essential to the monomyth , which is a concept of mythology described by the American writer Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . The monomyth sees common narrative structures in all great myths. Campbell names the three acts Departure , Initiation , and Return , and charts the Hero's Journey over 17 stages. Hollywood executive and Disney screenwriter, Christopher Vogler, reduced the number to 12 steps in The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers .

Simplification of steps in the circle

Interestingly, American philologist David Adams Leeming in 1981 and American screenwriter and filmmaker Phil Cousineau in 1990 both used only eight steps for their adaptation of the Hero’s Journey. Dan Harmon developed his Story Circle in the late 1990s when he was stuck on a project. He cites Christopher Vogler and the screenwriting author Syd Field as influences.

The Hero’s Journey in screenwriting

The Hero's Journey, the monomyth and Joseph Campbell are popular in Hollywood filmmaking. George Lucas used the template for Star Wars , you can read The Matrix trilogy by the Wachowskis as an extensive study in mythological storytelling, and Pixar movies such as Finding Nemo exhibit monomyth story structure.

Save the Cat

Screenwriter and author Blake Snyder omitted the circular structure in his work, but his book Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need also takes the Hero’s Journey and breaks it down into 15 essential story beats or plot points.

What else is Dan Harmon known for?

Daniel James Harmon (born 1973) is an American writer, producer , and actor known for the sitcom Community and the animated series, Rick and Morty . In episode S4E6 “Never Ricking Morty” the two characters find themselves aboard the circular Story Train and the episode pokes meta-fictional fun at the narrative structure. Dan Harmon also created and hosted the comedy podcast Harmontown . In 2013, Harmon published the book, You'll Be Perfect When You're Dead .

The 8 steps of the story circle

You. Need. Go. Struggle. Find. Take. Return. Change. The way the story circle works is that your main character, much like Campbell’s hero, moves from a zone of comfort towards a want, and with that, into the chaos of the second act, from where they’ll return changed. The top half of the circle represents order and the bottom half chaos. The right side of the circle represents the hero resisting their transformation, the left side represents the hero moving towards their transformation.

In this cyclical nature of storytelling, you can see the main character gain and lose: they gain their want, but lose stability; they lose in the struggle, but ultimately find what they want; they pay a heavy price for it, but can bring it back home; the old order cannot be again, but they have changed to exist in the new order.

1. A zone of comfort

The first step establishes the hero of your story in their familiar surroundings. Think of it as a 'before' picture. Note that "zone of comfort" doesn't mean things are perfect. Your main character exists in a status quo in which they have arranged for themselves to fit into their current conditions.

The 'before' picture is important for the character arc so that viewers can recognize the significance of the change later. Interesting main characters are not perfect, either, but exhibit human flaws the audience can understand and sympathize with.

For the second step, you dangle something in front of your main character: desire is something they want as a thing to obtain or a problem they want to go away.

The desire becomes the main goal of the protagonist, but their next actions are decided in a "push" or "pull" fashion: if the desire is pulling them out of the status quo, then they might prepare for the journey (think: Harry Potter getting his supplies). If they're being pulled out of their comfort zone and would rather stay where it's nice and warm, then they debate how they can avoid having to go.

"Desire" can take the form of a problem or an adversary in the sense that the hero would very much like for the antagonist to disappear so they could return to the status quo right away.

3. Entering an unfamiliar situation

In step three, you kick off the action: green means go! Your hero is proactive: even when they've been debating and their desire is of a "pull" nature, they still make a conscious decision and take the first step themselves. This step also signifies the crossing of the threshold from order into chaos, from the first into the second act.

Their new surroundings are unknown and they find themselves in an unfamiliar situation, which can be hostile, or simply something they’ve never experienced before: it’s the figurative (or, with Stranger Things , literal) upside-down of their initial surroundings.

4. Adaptation

Your hero may or may not like the chaos in their new world, but the only way out is through. As a storyteller you throw increasingly bigger obstacles in their way and put them through many trials and tribulations, forcing them to adapt as they struggle to overcome the hurdles.

What's important: the way back is barred, because the old home is so much worse (up to where return signifies death), or because there is another insurmountable concrete or abstract obstacle.

5. Attaining the object of desire

At the halfway point, you let your hero have what they desire. Reading the Story Circle like a clock, it's now 6 PM and high time to return home. Step five, as the crucial finding step, raises the stakes of the story.

Your main character has completed the search, found what they wanted, and is holding the (metaphorical) key in their hands — but the lock which it turns is half a world away! Can they make it back, and in time? To increase tension, many stories introduce time constraints here, such as a countdown of any sort, a sick or wounded companion, or the environment turning on the main character.

6. A heavy price to pay

Your hero takes what they want, but something is taken from them. Before they can go on, they must leave something behind. This loss can take many forms: a temporary, albeit despairing setback which leaves the hero stranded; the death or sacrifice of a companion character; losing "innocence"; having to give up any integral part of themselves, from limb to memories.

This step marks the absolute low point in the journey of your hero. The heavy price is so hefty that they seriously doubt if carrying on is even worth it. There are many names to describe this moment, from figurative death (of the old hero) to the “dark night of the soul” or the darkest hour.

7. Return to the familiar situation

Your hero finds it within themselves to complete the journey and return home to their familiar situation. However, within themselves is key here! Note that with step seven, your main character crosses back into the upper half of the circle, leaving the chaos of the second act behind. Yet this threshold doesn’t come without a trial of its own.

In ancient myths, when the protagonist returns, they often face a gatekeeper, a riddle to solve, or proof that they are who they say they are. Although they surely have changed externally, it’s their internal transformation that allows them to pass this test. Even when the magic “key” is a concrete object, such as an “elixir”, only they can wield or apply it.

The familiar situation is often only seemingly familiar and externally changed as well, because the hero has been presumed dead, their old surroundings have been transformed or old friends have moved on with their lives.

8. Fundamental change

The application of the “solution” by your hero to establish the “new order” brings with it the realization that they are not the same person anymore: they have changed from the beginning. This is where you do a second snapshot and show the ‘after’ picture.

Change can be for the good and your main character is now wiser, better, more mature, no longer alone, or richer in some sense; but the ending can also be tragic, and though they have brought better circumstances for someone else, they are now morally corrupt, filled with despair, utterly alone, or at the end of their life.

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How to use Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

In conclusion, let’s note again that Dan Harmon’s Story Circle, like all story structures, is best understood as primarily descriptive; approaching screenwriting with such a ‘template’ seems formulaic, but the structure doesn’t prescribe to you as a writer the story to tell, only how. You can take Snyder’s beats or the Dan Harmon Story Circle and overlay the structure over any existing film (with a story in the traditional sense): from Harry Potter to anime movies to early cinema, you’ll be able to match the steps to the action or the script.

As a screenwriter working on a feature film, TV series or TV show, you can begin plotting the character arc of your hero with the eight steps we’ve outlined above. Gather your ideas and see what sticks, or test an existing story idea with the eight steps: are your stages ‘strong’ enough? Pay attention to the three quarters, or noon, 3 pm, 6 pm, and 9 pm, when you read the Story Circle like a clock. They’re essential to moving your story forward in a believable way.

If your story doesn’t seem to pick up any momentum and you struggle to progress your main character through the steps, you might need to work on your hero more. Are they proactive enough? Is their desire big enough? Are the upper and lower half of the circle opposites, and are the left and right half contrasting enough?

For more theoretical background, you can read up on the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell, and for a fun, practical exercise, watch a favorite movie and plot the steps of Dan Harmon’s Story Circle for it!

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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.

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Cops Surprise Lonely Man Who Called 911 on His Birthday

Most of us know that if you’re ever in an emergency situation, you can call 911 for immediate help. Well for one man, having no one there to help him celebrate his birthday was an emergency. So he called the help line just to hear some well wishes. What he didn't expect was for two police officers to show up.

Making the Call

White and pink covered cake with lightened candle

According to WHDH News in Boston, a local man called 911 on May 2, just after midnight. It was his birthday, and he just wanted someone to wish him a happy birthday.

Initially, the responders thought the call was a joke. Officer Israel Bracho told the outlet he and his partner believed the man was pulling their leg, but then they verified he was telling the truth.

Different states have different penalties for misusing the emergency line. But this time, the police officers took another approach and decided to make the man's day memorable.

“Everyone has one birthday, so everyone deserves to feel special on that day,” Bracho said.

A Big Surprise

On their way to see the man, Chris, Bracho and his partner made a stop to pick up a muffin and candles.

“On our way there, we decided we can’t show up to someone’s house empty-handed. My mother raised me right — she would’ve killed me if I didn’t,” Bracho explained.

The pair showed up just before 1 a.m. with the treat. In the bodycam footage , which was later shared on social media , Chris’ face lit up when he realized the officers were there to celebrate him.

“Oh my God,” he said as the officers sang “Happy Birthday.”

“You guys are awesome,” the now 25-year-old said. “This is more than I could ask for.”

“Don’t eat it all in one sitting,” Bracho joked. “Take it easy, brother; God bless you.”

Spreading Kindness

It’s always heartwarming to hear stories of police officers taking to their communities and spreading kindness like the officers in this story did. We often hear about bad or scary situations, so moments like these are a great reminder that police are there to serve the community in various ways.

This story also reminds us that sometimes it’s easy to be kind and help someone when they need it most. Not everyone has someone to spend a birthday or special occasion with, but by taking the time to remember them — even with a small token — you can make a huge difference in their day.

Everyone deserves to feel special once in a while, and that’s within all of our power to do. All it takes is a smile, a kind gesture, or some nice words to turn another person’s day around. And in a pinch, a muffin will do.

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Plus-size Passenger Refuses to Give Up Extra Seat To Toddler

Flying may be the quickest way to travel but it isn't always the most comfortable. The seats are small, legroom is almost non-existent, and there's always that one annoying passenger in front of you who seems to find extreme enjoyment in testing the limits of just how far back that reclining seat can go.

Airlines are notorious for cramming in as many people as possible in the smallest spaces possible, which can be especially difficult for plus-sized passengers.

One woman decided to combat this by purchasing an extra seat.

But instead of sitting back and enjoying her flight, she found herself at the center of attention after refusing to give up the extra seat she had rightfully paid for to accommodate a toddler on the crowded flight.

Obese Woman Refuses to Give Up Extra Seat

Taking to the Reddit forum, Am I The A**hole , a 34-year-old woman explains that she is "actively working toward losing weight" but is still obese.

After having a bad experience on a previous flight, she opted to book an additional seat.

"...because I’m fat, I booked an extra seat so everyone can be more comfortable. I know it sucks having to pay for an extra seat but it is what it is."

At first, everything goes smoothly. She checks in, makes it through security, and boards the plane.

But just as she is settling into her seat, her trip takes a nosedive.

"This woman comes to my row with a boy who appeared to be about a year old," she writes. "She told me to squeeze in to one seat so her son could sit in the other."

Not only does the mother disparagingly tell her to "squeeze in" but she doesn't even bother to ASK her to move, she TELLS her to.

Understandably, the woman refuses to budge. "I told her no and that I paid for this seat for the extra space," she writes.

Despite the fact that the woman has every right to deny the order, and she has the ticket to prove it, the mother digs in. Her "huge fuss" attracts the attention of a nearby flight attendant.

"She told the flight attendant I was stealing the seat from her son, then I showed my boarding passes, proving that I, in fact paid for the extra seat."

And here's where things really take off. The flight attendant sides with the mother and asks the plus-sized passenger if she "could try to squeeze in."

She again refuses. "The boy, who the mom said is 18 months old was supposed to sit in her lap so he could do just that," she explains.

Eventually, the flight attendant tells the mom to put her son on her lap.

But the flight is already ruined. The Redditor shares that the unhappy mom wouldn't let it go, giving her dirty looks and passive-aggressive remarks for the entire flight.

She ends her post begging the question, "I do feel a little bad because the boy looked hard to control so AITA?"

The Internet Weighs In

The plus-sized woman's refusal to give in to the mom's demand has sparked a whole lot of feelings. The post has gone viral on Reddit with over 18,000 upvotes and nearly 5,000 commenters "weighing in."

The comments are overwhelmingly in support of the OP (original poster). In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a comment that supported the "entitled mother."

"She’s TA for not buying a seat for her son and assuming someone else would give up a seat they paid for. Odds are she was hoping there’d be extra seats on the flight so she didn’t have to pay and used the lap thing as a loophole."

"NTA. Look, at the base level, you paid for the seat regardless of the reason. You're entitled to use it, not the mom with a wriggly toddler. Not your kid, not your problem."

Commenters praised the OP for selflessly dishing out for an extra seat to accommodate her size in an attempt to make others flight comfortable too.

"NTA, and I hope it doesn't sound condescending to say, but good for you buying the extra seat. You being the sort of conscientious person who will spend the extra money to avoid encroaching on others is probably why you are having (needless) self-doubt about the encounter. The mom was entitled and fully in the wrong, and if the flight attendant gave you attitude then they are in the wrong, too."

And this brings up a valid point about the flight attendant's response. Should she have tried to force the issue?

"What's even the point of the extra seat if the flight attendants are going to let entitled people bully others into giving up the extra seat?"

"The cabin crew should have stopped this straight away once they saw you had booked both seats, it should have been obvious why. They should not have asked you to squeeze in to 1 seat."

Standing Up For Your Rights

While it is possible to have empathy and compassion for the mother (flying with little ones is challenging at best) she did, essentially, try to commandeer a stranger's seat.

A seat she had no right to and didn't pay for. Now there's no telling if she tried to purchase a seat for her toddler and there were no more tickets available or if she was banking on a stranger to accommodate her child.

Either way, the plus-size woman specifically paid for an extra seat so she wouldn't have to deal with the uncomfortable and frankly dehumanizing experience of trying to "squeeze in" to a seat made for bodies that conform to ridiculously narrow societal standards.

While it can be difficult to stand up for your rights in the face of opposition, it is important to advocate for yourself.

What do you think? Did she do the right thing?

*Featured image contains photos by George Zografidis and Gustavo Fring

Copyright © 2024 Goalcast

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Last updated on Sep 07, 2022

Dan Harmon Story Circle: The 8-Step Storytelling Shortcut

The Dan Harmon Story Circle, also known as “The Embryo”, is an approach to plotting developed by TV writer Dan Harmon. It follows a protagonist through eight stages, beginning with the character being in their comfort zone, then venturing out into the unknown to seek something they want. The character achieves their desire, but at a great cost, and ultimately returns transformed by what they’ve experienced.

This narrative framework is applicable to a wide range of genres and forms, and is a great way to structure any story that focuses on character development. This post contains a breakdown of the individual steps, gives examples of the Story Circle in action, and explains why it’s such an invaluable template for writers.

What is the Dan Harmon Story Circle?

This particular story structure is adapted from The Hero’s Journey — which itself derives from the work of academic Joseph Campbell. The Story Circle lays out a kind of narrative arc that's commonly used by myths from all over the world and emphasises how almost all forms of storytelling have a cyclical nature. In broad strokes, they always involve:

• Characters venturing out to get what they need, and
• Returning, having changed.

The Story Circle functions similarly — so, you may ask, why not just use the original? In short, Campbell’s system is more complex (11-steps), and alludes to a particular type of story, namely high fantasy (think knights, wizards, potions, and swords in stones). What Harmon did was streamline this process to just eight steps, and broaden them out to be less genre specific. The benefit of Harmon’s version over Vogler’s is that it focuses more specifically on character and is much easier to apply to a wider range of stories.​​

 You might be asking why Harmon doesn’t just lay this structure out in a flat line. When asked about this, he points to the rhythms of biology, psychology, and culture as his inspiration: how we all move cyclically through phases of life and death, conscious and unconscious, order and chaos.

The fascinating thing he points out is that cycles like these are, in part, what have allowed humans to evolve .

“Behind (and beneath) your culture creating forebrain, there is an older, simpler monkey brain with a lot less to say and a much louder voice. One of the few things it's telling you, over and over again, is that you need to go search, find, take and return with change. Why? Because that is how the human animal has kept from going extinct, it's how human societies keep from collapsing and how you keep from walking into McDonald's with a machine gun.”

“We need [to] search — We need [to] get fire, we need [to find a] good woman, we need [to] land [on the] moon — but most importantly, we need RETURN and we need CHANGE, because we are a community, and if our heroes just climbed beanstalks and never came down, we wouldn't have survived our first ice age.”

What Harmon's getting at is that stories are a basic, universal part of human culture because of their millennia-long history as both a teaching and a learning tool. This idea of questing, changing, and returning is not a hack concept concocted by lazy writers, but an ingrained part of our collective psyche. That’s why stories from one culture are able to resonate with people across the world.

In Harmon’s philosophy, when a book, film, show, or song doesn’t meet the criteria above, it’s not necessarily bad writing: it’s simply not a story.

The 8 steps of Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

Now that we’ve got the background, it’s time to get into the meat: what are the steps of the Story Circle, and what do they entail.

Here are the Story Circle’s 8 steps:

• A character is in a zone of comfort. Everyday life is mundane and unchallenging.
• But they want something. The protagonist’s desire compels them to take action.
• They enter an unfamiliar situation. The character crosses the threshold to pursue what they want.
• Adapt to it. They acquire skills and learn how to survive in this new world.
• Get what they wanted. The character achieves their goal, but at a cost.
• Pay a heavy price for it. New and unexpected losses follow the victory.
• Then return to their familiar situation. The character goes back to where they started.
• Having changed. The story’s resolution; the lessons they’ve learned stay with them, and the character has grown.

In the video below, Harmon applies the story circle to an episode of Rick and Morty entitled “Mortynight Run.” For enough context to understand the clip, here’s some background info:

Rick is a mad, drunk, egomaniacal scientist who has invented a portal gun that allows him to have debauched adventures across time and space. He almost always drags his sensitive, anxious grandson Morty along for the ride. In this episode, they also bring along Morty’s father, Jerry, for whom Rick only has disdain.

Let's take another look at how the episode’s “A” story — which centers on Morty's journey — fits into the story circle.

1. A character is in a zone of comfort

The first beat of the story sees Rick and Morty on what seems like just another one of their adventures, flying through space with Jerry in tow. Things take a turn when Rick takes a call to organize a shady deal, and unceremoniously dumps Jeff from their spaceship. 

It becomes apparent that Rick is carrying out an arms deal, selling weapons to an assassin to pay for an afternoon at the arcade — much to Morty’s dismay.

2. But they want something

As Harmon points out, “This is an ethical quandary for Morty.” The boy is put in a situation of guilt that compels him to “go across a threshold and search for a way to undo the ethical damage that he perceives Rick as doing.” Putting things right is Morty’s “want”, which takes us to the next stage.

3. They enter an unfamiliar situation

Even though he rarely defies his grandfather’s instructions, Morty takes Rick’s car keys and chases after the assassin, accidentally killing him in the process. He’s now trapped in an Intergalactic Federation outpost.

4. Adapt to it

Morty discovers an alien gas entity named ‘Fart’ — who was the assassin’s target. Going against Rick’s instructions once more (and making what he believes to be the ethical choice), Morty liberates Fart from space jail and they make their escape.

5. Get what they wanted

Morty has achieved his goal: he’s saved a life, and stopped a prolific assassin — and can now rest assured that he’s done the right thing.

6. Pay a heavy price for it

“In the second half of the story, we start finding out that the act of saving that life is going to cost a lot of other people their lives,” Harmon explains. Bounty hunters and law enforcement are seeking the group, and Fart slaughters many space cops and innocent bystanders while Rick and Morty make their escape.

7. Then return to their familiar situation

After the escape, the gang returns to a place resembling ‘normal life’, a phase Harmon refers to as “crossing the threshold” (here metaphorical, rather than a literal return home). At this point, Morty realizes that Fart is a truly malevolent creature and means to return with his people to destroy all carbon-based life.

Note: On the Circle diagram, Step 7 (the return) is directly opposite to Step 3, where Morty first crossed the threshold into the unfamiliar situation. Balance and harmony are a big part of Harmon's approach to storytelling. 

8. Having changed

“So Morty makes the decision to change into someone who kills.” Realizing that his belief that all lives must be saved is not an absolute truth — some are simply malevolent — he terminates Fart, thereby saving the universe and becoming someone different from the person he started as. As Harmon points out, this is not a show for kids: not all protagonists need to learn universally positive messages for a story to ring true.

Harmon has laid out his process for using the story circle in a fascinating set of posts (warning: contains swears) where he also talks about the nature of storytelling, answering questions like…

Why use the Story Circle?

According to Harmon, the beauty of the Story Circle is that it can be applied to any type of story — and, conversely, be used to build any type of story, too.

“Start thinking of as many of your favorite movies as you can, and see if they apply to this pattern. Now think of your favorite party anecdotes, your most vivid dreams, fairy tales, and listen to a popular song (the music, not necessarily the lyrics).”

So let’s put that theory to the test. Let’s pick an example that’s far removed from Harmon’s own work see if it applies: Dickens’s Great Expectations .

• Zone of Comfort : Pip, a young orphan, lives a modest life on the moors.
• But they want something : He becomes obsessed with Estella, a wealthy girl of his age.
• They enter an unfamiliar situation : A mysterious benefactor plucks Pip from obscurity and throws him — a fish out of water — into London society.
• Adapt to it : He learns to live the high life and spends his money frivolously
• Get what they wanted : Pip is finally a gentleman, which he believes will entitle him/make him worthy of Estella.
• Pay a heavy price for it : Pip discovers that his money came from a convict, he drowns in debt, he regrets alienating his Uncle, he realizes that his pursuit of Estella is futile.
• Then return to their familiar situation : Pip makes peace with his Uncle Joe (who nurses him back to health). Pip disappears to Egypt for years, and once again returns home…
• Changed : Back once again where the story started, a now-humbled Pip reunites with Estella who, due to some plot, is ready to open her heart to him.

Although Great Expectation was a serial, written week-by-week, Dickens must have consciously or unconsciously been aware of this cycle, or something like it. He sent his characters on a journey towards something they wanted —  only for them to pay the price and return home, changed.

As with any sensible advice about structure, the takeaway here is not that you must slavishly adhere to a set formula or risk ruining your story. This story circle, along with other popular story structures like the three-act structure , are simply tools based on observations of stories that have managed to resonate with readers over the centuries. They can also be a great tool to know what should come next, and to pace yourself within your story — if you’re halfway through and still in the comfort zone, you know you need to make some changes.

There are, of course, plenty of other options for story structure, which you can learn about by reading the rest of this guide — or trying the quiz below!

Which story structure is right for you?

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

Just know this: if you find yourself at an impasse with any story you’re writing — you could do a lot worse than crack out the story wheel, identify where you are, and see what comes next in the cycle.

3 responses

2deuces says:

25/07/2018 – 19:48

This is great. One difficulty about using the Hero's Journey and other Plot Structures is that the main character needs to end up in a different place than at the beginning. That is fine for a movie or a stand-alone book, book but what about episodic series such as Perry Mason, Poirot, or just about any TV series. The Story Circle solves this problem by bringing the MC (actually the entire cast) back to the beginning waiting for the next case, next mission, next customer to enter the bar etc. Even if the series has a long arc (Breaking Bad) over time we see Walter slowly evolving due to the impact of each episode.

↪️ Martin Pitt replied:

26/07/2018 – 20:33

The location does not need to differ, the change here explained was to the character themselves. After all with the given example, Morty usually always ends up back home. Whether they realised some truth, became more humble, or worse; On that note: If the character is worse off that could be fixed in a future story or you could have a really great villain on your hands to play with! Regardless, change could be anything I think or to someone else.

↪️ 2deuces replied:

27/07/2018 – 17:14

Sorry I didn't mean a different location but a different psychological place. Scrooge woke up in his bedroom but he was a different person on his return.

Comments are currently closed.

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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..

Table of Contents

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:

• The hero is in a zone of comfort...
• But they want something.
• They enter an unfamiliar situation...
• And adapt to it by facing trials.
• They get what they want...
• But they pay a heavy price for it.
• They return to their familiar situation...
• Having changed.

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:

• The hero is in a zone of comfort, but they want something.
• They enter an unfamiliar situation and have to adapt via new trials.
• They get what they want, but they pay a price for it.
• They return to their zone of comfort, forever changed.

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.

• The Ordinary World
• The Call to Adventure
• Crossing the Threshold
• Tests, Allies, Enemies
• Approach the Innermost Cave
• The Road Back
• Resurrection
• Return with Elixir

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.

• The Refusal of the Call
• Meeting the Mentor
• Test, Allies, Enemies
• Approaching the Innermost Cave
• The Resurrection
• The Return*
• 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.

• Refusal of the Call
• Supernatural Aid (aka Meeting the Mentor)
• Belly of the Whale*: This added stage marks the hero's immediate descent into danger once they've crossed the threshold.
• Road of Trials (...with Allies, Tests, and Enemies)
• Meeting with the Goddess/God*: In this stage, the hero meets with a new advisor or powerful figure, who equips them with the knowledge or insight needed to keep progressing forward.
• Woman as Temptress (or simply, Temptation)*: Here, the hero is tempted, against their better judgment, to question themselves and their reason for being on the journey. They may feel insecure about something specific or have an exposed weakness that momentarily holds them back.
• Atonement with the Father (or, Catharthis)*: The hero faces their Temptation and moves beyond it, shedding free from all that holds them back.
• Apotheosis (aka The Ordeal)
• The Ultimate Boon (aka the Reward)
• Refusal of the Return*: The hero wonders if they even want to go back to their old life now that they've been forever changed.
• The Magic Flight*: Having decided to return to the Known World, the hero needs to actually find a way back.
• Rescue From Without*: Allies may come to the hero's rescue, helping them escape this bold, new world and return home.
• Crossing of the Return Threshold (aka The Return)
• Master of Two Worlds*: Very closely resembling The Resurrection stage in other variations, this stage signifies that the hero is quite literally a master of two worlds—The Known World and the Unknown World—having conquered each.
• Freedom to Live

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: 

• Epic of Gilgamesh : An ancient Mesopotamian epic poem thought to be one of the earliest examples of the Hero’s Journey (and one of the oldest recorded stories).
• The Lion King (1994): Simba's exile and return depict a tale of growth, responsibility, and reclaiming his rightful place as king.
• The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo: Santiago's quest for treasure transforms into a journey of self-discovery and personal enlightenment.
• Coraline by Neil Gaiman: A young girl's adventure in a parallel world teaches her about courage, family, and appreciating her own reality.
• Kung Fu Panda (2008): Po's transformation from a clumsy panda to a skilled warrior perfectly exemplifies the Hero's Journey. Skadoosh!

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.

• 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”.)

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

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Using the Dan Harmon Story Circle to Structure Your Narrative

by Yen Cabag

When writing a story, it’s always helpful to have some structure in place. Some writers believe that nearly all stories follow the same pattern, and many have come up with story structures to help other aspiring authors finish their projects. 

One of the most popular story structures is Joseph Campbell’s “ The Hero’s Journey ,” which Campbell believes is the structure of nearly all mythology from around the world and in fact, most storytelling. 

Dan Harmon, who created TV’s Community and the science fiction comedy series Rick and Morty , is also known as an evangelist for story structure. He adapted “The Hero’s Journey” into what he calls “The Dan Harmon Story Circle,” “The Story Circle,” or “The Embryo.” 

What Is the Dan Harmon Story Circle? 

The Story Circle basically believes that most stories, if not all, move in a circle. It lays out the following elements: 

• The character is in his comfort zone.
• He wants something.
• He goes into unfamiliar situation(s) to get what he wants. 
• He adapts to the situation(s). 
• He gets what he wanted. 
• He pays a heavy price.
• He returns to the familiar situation…
• …but comes back a changed person. 

How Does The Story Circle Compare to The Hero’s Journey? 

In reality, The Story Circle is very much similar to The Hero’s Journey. To illustrate, check out the main stages of The Hero’s Journey: 

• The call to adventure 
• Hero’s refusal
• Consultation with the mentor
• Starting the journey
• Facing challenges and enemies
• Nearing the peak of the battle
• Hero experiences his weakness
• He reenergizes and fights
• He heads back home…
• … as a new person 

As you can see, in The Hero’s Journey, the main focus is the journey or adventure that the main character sets out on. It adds several details, such as the appearance of a mentor, the hero’s hesitation, and the potential defeat toward the climax of the story. 

But in essence, it still follows the hero’s journey to an actual “place,” from which he eventually comes back home. 

Perhaps the main difference between The Story Circle and The Hero’s Journey is that instead of showing it as a linear set of events, Dan Harmon shows how the journey actually comes full circle. In both cases, the hero will definitely come back changed from what he was before. 

In addition, the Story Circle may be more focused on the character development instead of the plot. 

Why Is This Story Structure a Circle? 

If The Hero’s Journey and The Story Circle are actually very similar, why doesn’t Harmon just follow The Hero’s Journey laid out in a linear way? Perhaps his own convictions about rhythms of life factored into it. 

In fact, he believes that these life cycles, such as life and death or order and chaos, are part of human evolution. 

“You need to go search, find, take, and return with change. Why? Because this is how… human societies keep from collapsing,” Harmon says. 

To take it further, he believes that all stories follow the Story Circle. 

Examples of Stories That Follow The Story Circle 

Let’s try to dissect a couple of familiar stories to see how they fit into the Story Circle: 

As you can see, it’s quite possible that many stories follow The Story Circle. Of course, not all stories have the characters return to an actual place, but perhaps it can refer to a state of comfort that the characters settle into, but with changed dispositions. 

Using a Story Structure 

Using a story structure is a great way to ensure that your story follows a logical flow. In addition, it also helps assure you that you are writing along a tested and proven process that has engaged audiences across the centuries and across all cultures. 

However, just having a story structure is not a guarantee of a successful story. You still need to learn all the other elements of a story and practice telling it in a way that draws your readers in. Just like in many other skills, practice makes perfect, so we encourage you to keep writing and see yourself improving over time! 

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:

• Story Structure: Building Your Narrative
• How to Write a Scene: Tips for Structure, Timing, and Revision
• Exploring the Monomyth: 6 Lessons from Joseph Campbell’s Theory of “The Hero’s Journey”
• Understanding Plot: Key Elements and Examples

Yen Cabag is the Blog Writer of TCK Publishing. She is also a homeschooling mom, family coach, and speaker for the Charlotte Mason method, an educational philosophy that places great emphasis on classic literature and the masterpieces in art and music. She has also written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion is to see the next generation of children become lovers of reading and learning in the midst of short attention spans.

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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.

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How to Use Dan Harmon's Story Circle to Plot Your Novel

Krystal N. Craiker

There are many plot structures you can use to help plot your novel, like the Three-Act Structure, Save the Cat , or the Snowflake Method. One of the most famous plot structures was created by Joseph Campbell after identifying that most myths across time and space follow the same general structure. The Hero’s Journey can apply to all sorts of stories.

But the Hero’s Journey is complicated. If you go by Campbell’s structure , there are 17 stages. It was simplified by Christopher Vogler into 11 stages. You might also find that your story really doesn’t fit this pattern.

Dan Harmon, the creator of the show Rick and Morty , simplified the Hero’s Journey even further. His Story Circle, or Story Embryo, can also fit more types of stories that aren’t necessarily about a hero going on a journey and returning to the mundane world.

One of the advantages of the Story Circle is that the narrative structure is so universal, it can apply to books, short stories, TV shows, plays, and movies. It’s a great place to start building the plot of your story. If you’re not much of a plotter, you can identify the main eight pieces and then start writing. Or you can take your story circle and flesh it out into a more detailed outline.

The Story Circle Structure

A working example: the story of cinderella, how to use the story circle.

Draw a circle. Divide it into quarters. Then divide each of those quarters in half. This gives you eight points for your story.

Here are how those eight points work together to build a story:

• A character is in a zone of comfort,
• But they want something.
• They enter an unfamiliar situation,
• Adapt to it,
• Get what they wanted,
• Pay a heavy price for it,
• Then return to their familiar situation,
• Having changed.

Or you can simplify this even further:

Watch Dan Harmon explain the structure himself, using two episodes of Rick and Morty to explain it, here .

Now, let’s dive into each of these steps in more detail, using a familiar fairy tale: Cinderella.

A character is in a zone of comfort. You can equate this to the mundane world in the Hero’s Journey. This is where we meet our character and see what normal is. In a novel, you would use this to establish the setting and introduce all important characters.

In Cinderella , we find out that Cinderella is used for slave labor by her stepmother and stepsisters. She has animal friends, and she is very unhappy with her life although she has a positive attitude.

Step two is that your character wants something. This is where the conflict is introduced, as well as the stakes and your characters’ motivations. For more traditional plot language, inciting incidents are included in this step.

Cinderella finds out about the ball, and she wants to go. Her stepmother agrees to let her if she can get all her chores done.

The character enters an unfamiliar situation. This is the equivalent of “crossing the threshold” in the Hero’s Journey. The character must make a change, go on an adventure, or otherwise work toward their goal. In a three-act structure, this would be where act one ends and act two begins. It’s the beginning of the rising action.

Cinderella works hard to finish all her chores, and she makes a dress. Her stepmother and stepsisters destroy her dress and don’t allow her to go to the ball.

The character adapts to the new situation. You establish the new normal for your character. All rising action that leads to the turning point or climax goes in this step.

Cinderella meets her Fairy Godmother, who gets her ready for the ball with a fancy dress, carriage, and glass slippers. She must leave before midnight when the spell ends.

The character finally gets what they wanted! But the story doesn’t end here. This is often the turning point or the climax depending on the story.

Cinderella goes to the ball, dances and falls in love with the prince, and loses her glass slipper as she leaves when the clock strikes midnight.

The character got what they wanted, but now they must pay a heavy price for it. This is the “all is lost” stage of your story. Often the climax fits right around here.

Cinderella got her one night of freedom, but now she’s lost her one true love.

The character returns to the familiar situation or mundane world. This is the falling action of a story.

Cinderella is locked away by her stepmother while the prince searches for the girl who fits in the glass slipper.

The character has changed. This is the conclusion or resolution of the story.

Cinderella has tasted love and freedom, so she breaks out and reunites with the prince who saves her. She has changed because she is willing to fight for her right to a happily ever after.

Now it’s your turn. See how many stories you know that can fit into this structure to practice. They can be fairy tales, novels, or even movies. Then build your own story circle for your story.

What plotting methods have you used? Let us know in the comments.

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Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Home / Book Writing / The Hero’s Journey: The 12 Steps of Mythic Structure

The Hero’s Journey: The 12 Steps of Mythic Structure

The Hero’s Journey plot structure is a common template for writing a compelling story. It also has a built-in character arc for the hero or heroine. Whether you write detailed outlines before getting into any prose, or you think writing is best done without an outline, the Hero’s Journey can help. Many writers fall somewhere in between, keeping in mind the broad strokes of a plot structure like the Hero’s Journey as they write. 

Now, before you roll up your sleeves and get started with plotting your brand new idea, make sure it's viable to become a bestseller. Take just a few minutes to use book idea validation – without it, your book risks obscurity after it's published. If you have already written your book with a structure like the Hero's Journey and are looking to increase your sales, read how to make your book #1 on Amazon so you don't miss out on new readers.

One thing’s for sure: learning the twelve steps of the Hero’s Journey can only help your writing. This is why I recommend Plottr as an excellent tool to strengthen your writing. They have the Hero’s Journey and other well-known story archetypes to choose from so you can find one that best fits your particular story. 

More on Plottr later. For now, let’s go on an adventure through the Hero’s Journey!

• The origins of the Hero’s Journey
• The 12 Steps of the Journey
• Examples of the Hero’s Journey
• How to incorporate this story structure into your writing

Table of contents

• What is the Hero’s Journey?
• The Hero’s Journey: An Overview
• 1. The Ordinary World
• 2. The Call to Adventure
• 3. Refusing the Call to Adventure
• 4. Meeting the Mentor
• 5. Crossing the Threshold
• 6. Test, Allies, and Enemies
• 7. Approach to the Inmost Cave
• 8. The Ordeal
• 9. The Reward
• 10. The Road Back
• 11. Resurrection
• 12. Return With the Elixir
• Star Wars: A New Hope
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Hunger Games
• Bonus Option: Use the Hero's Journey in a Series
• What Stories Work With the Hero’s Journey?

Get it for FREE here: Get the PDF Here

Popularized by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces , the Hero’s Journey is a story structure that has been used to tell exciting and captivating stories for centuries. Campbell, a literature professor, found that this was a common mythic structure. It’s widely known by the moniker the Hero’s Journey, but this name didn’t come around until well after Campbell’s 1949 book.

Campbell’s name for it was the monomyth. 

Other scholars and storytellers have made tweaks to Campbell’s original monomyth structure, which has seventeen steps instead of the twelve I’ll be discussing today. The version of the Hero’s Journey widely used by screenwriters, authors, and playwrights today was popularized by screenwriter and producer Christopher Vogler .

You can apply this story structure to mythology, films, books, and even short stories.

There are three overall stages to the Hero’s Journey, each with individual story beats. These are 1) Departure, 2) Initiation, and 3) Return.

• The Ordinary World
• The Call to Adventure
• Refusing the Call to Adventure
• Meeting the Mentor
• Crossing the Threshold
• Test, Allies, and Enemies
• Approach to the Inmost Cave
• The Road Back
• Resurrection
• Return With the Elixir

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The Twelve Stages of the Hero’s Journey

Each of the twelve steps has its own story beats that happen. As we finish each stage, we’ll reflect on each story beat with an example from a famous movie. 

The first step in the Hero’s Journey is your chance to familiarize the reader with the known world in which your story happens. This means giving the reader what they need to know to make sense of the world (otherwise known as exposition ). If your story takes place in a reality much like our own, you won’t have a lot to do. But if magic and mythical beasts are normal, or it’s far into the future and interstellar travel is possible, you’ll have a bit more work to do here.  If you're having trouble picking which type of world is best for your book, research popular keywords in your genre to reveal settings that readers find interesting.

While you introduce the world, you’ll want to introduce the main character(s) as well. And in doing so, it’s important to give the reader a reason to like him, her, or them . While the protagonist is in their normal, ordinary world, they should want something more or different. And this want or need should dovetail nicely with the primary conflict of the story. 

• Introduce the world and the character in an interesting way. Readers will give you some leeway at the beginning of the book, but if it reads like a textbook, you’ll lose them pretty quickly!
• Give the character personality and dimension . Needs, wants, flaws, and characteristics don’t all have to come out right away, but there should be enough for the reader to want to follow the hero through the story. 

Tip: This first step should take the first 10-12% of the story. 

Step two, the call to adventure, is also called the inciting incident. This is something disruptive that pulls the hero out of their ordinary world and toward a journey that will ultimately change their life . . . if they survive. 

This call propels the rest of the story forward , so it should be exciting enough for the reader to want to continue with the story. This will change from genre to genre, so it’s important to know the tropes of whatever genre you’re writing in.  On Amazon, there are thousands of genre categories to choose from, so research potential category options to better understand your market.

• Most heroes will resist this initial call to action. The stakes should be very real and clear to the reader at this point. In many stories, the stakes will be life or death.
• Remember that your story needs to grow in intensity until it peaks at the climax. So the call to action should be dramatic, but things will get worse for the protagonist from here.

Tip: The Call To Adventure should happen around the 12% mark.  

Not every protagonist will refuse the call. Some may be ready to go. But if you pay attention to some of your favorite stories, you’ll likely see that most heroes ‌resist initially until ‌they have no choice. 

Something should happen to make a refusing hero realize that they have no choice but to take on the challenge presented to them. For every refusal, some incident or information should come out that will raise the stakes and make the hero realize they must face the challenge . The hero ventures forth at the end of this section.

• It’s good to have the character refuse the call for a reason that ties in with the need or want established in the first step of the Hero’s Journey. 
• Give them a good reason to refuse — and an even better reason to finally heed the call to adventure. 

Tip: The refusal section starts around the 15% mark of the story.  

At this point in the story, the protagonist has responded to the call to adventure. But their initial unease is still there. They don’t yet have the skills, items, or knowledge to succeed against such a challenge. This is where the mentor comes in. 

The mentor helps the protagonist gain the confidence needed to continue on the journey. This is usually done in a multifaceted manner, with both physical and mental help. Much of the time, the mentor provides tough love, kicking the protagonist’s butt into action, so to speak. While mentors are often people, they can also take the form of information, like a map, a magic scepter, or any other number of things that help the hero along. 

• Make it clear that, without the mentor, the protagonist would likely fall flat were they to continue on unaided. 
• The hero’s time with the mentor should ultimately result in a revelation , giving the hero exactly what they need (or at least what they think they need) to face the antagonist or challenge. 

Tip: Have this section start around the 20% mark of the story.

Step five of the Hero’s Journey is often called the point of no return. While the protagonist has learned from the mentor and gained confidence, this story beat forces them to engage fully with the challenge. Usually, this dramatic turning point is orchestrated by the antagonist, giving both the reader and the protagonist an idea of how powerful the villain really is.

One common tactic is to have the mentor killed in this section. Whatever you choose to do, make it pivotal and have it reinforce the central theme and conflict of the story . This is also the end of the Departure section, otherwise known as the first act. 

• Until this point, the hero has had one foot in their ordinary world. Now, there’s no choice but to go forward into unknown territory, otherwise called the special world. 
• The hero’s reaction to this pivotal story beat should be in line with what the reader knows about them. They need to work for any major changes that come about in this section. 

Tip: Crossing the Threshold usually starts around the 25% mark. 

This section marks the beginning of the second act. Building on everything that has come before, the protagonist should be challenged, putting their new abilities and knowledge to the test. It will become clear that the hero still needs help to resolve the main conflict of the story. This is where allies come into play. By teaming up with allies, the hero should continue to grow, playing off the other characters and working to overcome the tests or setbacks in the Special World. 

Enemies are those that put the tests in their place, working actively against the hero and allies. The reader should learn to care about the allies, which ‌means making them multifaceted characters. By the time this section is done, not all allies will have made it. Some may have even betrayed the hero. Likewise, enemies can also transform in this section, turning into allies. 

• While the allies may want the same thing as the hero, they may have conflicting views on how to get it. Everyone in agreement all the time makes for a boring story. 
• The hero’s abilities should be in doubt — both by the hero and the reader. 

Tip: This section occurs around the 30% mark. 

The approach to the inmost cave section gives the characters (and reader) a chance to reflect on the challenges of the previous section. Remember that the stakes and tension need to continue rising, so the previous section should have been the hardest challenge yet. The hero and allies are beaten and bruised — maybe one or more has died along the way — but the protagonist is still alive. The journey continues. 

The group is closer to the goal — and to the place or time of ultimate danger. They’re regrouping and gathering their wits as they prepare to face the antagonist or some of the villain’s formidable forces.

• This is a good place for the characters to formulate a plan of attack, clarifying the price of failure and the prize for success. 
• At this point, the hero has redoubled his effort and believes he is ready to face the challenge, despite his setbacks. The ordinary world is now far behind and impossible to get back to. The only way out is through. 

Tip: This section happens around the 40% mark. 

The ordeal is the biggest test yet and a transformative event that affects how the hero goes forward on their journey. This confrontation has the highest stakes so far, and it’s part of the central conflict. It brings the hero to their darkest point yet, and results in a metamorphosis of sorts that allows them to push through to the other side. 

Campbell spoke of the ordeal in terms of death and rebirth for the protagonist. The hero uses all they have learned up to this point to push through the ordeal. A character close to the hero is often killed in this section, whether it be the mentor, a close ally, or a loved one. However, it’s not always a death. It could involve facing fears, going up against the biggest foe, or breaking through some seemingly insurmountable mental barrier. Whatever form the ordeal takes, the hero is broken down and comes out the other side stronger than before . 

• This section is a long one, taking nearly a fifth of the story. It should be dramatic, compelling, and speak directly to the heart of both the external and internal conflicts of the story.
• Don’t be afraid to make things hard on your characters in this section. Even though the reader knows the hero will prevail, they should be left wondering in this section. 

Tip: The Ordeal takes place from around the 50% mark. 

Also called seizing the sword, this is the section in which the hero gets whatever they were searching for during the story. They’ve made it through the ordeal, and this is the reward. It can be an object, clarity, knowledge, or new skills/abilities. Whatever the reward is, it needs to be important in defeating the antagonist at the coming climax . 

After the action and emotion of the ordeal, this section is a place for the reader and characters to regroup and catch their breath again. It can be a good place for a celebration of sorts, something to show for the sacrifices made so far. The hero may even reflect on all it took to get here. 

• It should be clear to the reader how the reward will help the hero to finish the journey.
• This is a major milestone in the journey and should be treated as such. It also marks the end of act two.  

Tip: The Reward section takes place around the 70% mark of the story. 

Reward firmly in hand, the hero starts the journey back to the ordinary world. But every action has consequences, and those of claiming the reward block the hero’s road back. It becomes clear that things aren’t so simple, and the hero’s tribulations aren’t yet over. 

The unforeseen consequences of claiming the reward make the hero realize they’re in more danger than ever before, and they must face the antagonist head-on before returning to the ordinary world. The hero prepares for the ultimate battle — the climax. 

• It should be clear to the reader why the hero must face the antagonist once and for all. There should be no choice, given who the hero has become and the stakes they now face. 
• This is a good place to re-establish the central conflict of the story and make clear the results of failure. 

Tip: This section happens around the 75% mark. 

This is the climax of the story — the ultimate showdown between hero and villain . The tension and the stakes are higher than they’ve been throughout the story. If the hero fails, the world as they know it will be forever changed for the worst. The hero uses all they have learned on the journey to defeat the antagonist. 

The hero comes out of the confrontation changed, transformed into a true hero. This should be a dramatic transformation, completing the resurrection started earlier in the story. 

• Like every other challenge, the hero needs to earn this victory by sacrificing something for it. In some stories, the hero may even sacrifice him or herself.
• By vanquishing the antagonist, the hero should find the strength or gain the knowledge to address their internal conflict in a satisfactory manner. 

Tip: This section happens around the 85% mark .  

The last section of the story details the hero’s return from the special world to the ordinary world. Sometimes called the magic flight, the hero now has changed for the better. Show what new skills, items, knowledge, or understanding of the world the hero brings with them (the elixir). This “elixir” can often be used to help those the hero left behind in the ordinary world. 

In most stories, the hero will return to celebration. They’ve risked it all, saved lives, and learned important lessons. The people in the ordinary world are happy to have them back. The hero may decide to settle back into this world to use their newfound abilities. Or they may find they’ve outgrown it and have a taste for adventure.

• Re-establish the hero’s internal conflict and show how solving it has changed their view and life, completing the character arc . 
• If you’re writing a series, provide a hook for the next story here by hinting at another conflict the hero will need to deal with. 

Tip: This section happens around the 95% mark and finishes out the story! 

Examples of the Hero’s Journey from Famous Works

In George Lucas's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope , we can see the Hero's Journey in action. We also see it in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hunger Games . Let’s take a look now.

• Luke Skywalker — an archetypal hero — in his Ordinary World, living with his aunt and uncle, hoping for adventure. 
• Luke’s Call to Adventure comes when he activates a hidden message from Princess Leia that R2D2 is carrying for Obi-Wan Kenobi. 
• Luke initially Refuses the Call — until he returns home to discover his aunt and uncle have been killed by Imperial forces.
• While Luke has already met his Mentor (Obi-Wan), the active mentoring really starts after Luke's home has been destroyed and the only family he's ever known killed.
• When Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids step into the dangerous Mos Eisley Spaceport, it signifies the beginning of Luke's heroic journey and the Crossing of the Threshold. 
• Luke and Obi-Wan hire a couple of Allies, Han Solo and Chewbacca, to transport them off the planet. Once on the Millennium Falcon, Luke's Tests begin. 
• The Approach to the Inmost Cave happens when the Death Star captures the Falcon in a tractor beam and pulls them in. 
• The Ordeal happens while Obi-Wan goes off to try and disengage the tractor beam. Luke, Han, and the others rescue Princess Leia. Obi-Wan confronts Darth Vader and sacrifices himself so the others can get away. 
• With the Rewards (the Death Star plans and the princess), Luke thinks he should be able to defeat the Empire. And while Obi-Wan's death weighs on him, he can see success ahead.
• The Road Back is interrupted as the Falcon is attacked. They have no choice but to go to the Rebel base to deliver the Death Star plans, even though they’re being tracked.
• As the Rebels are attacking the Death Star, Obi-Wan's voice speaks to Luke, telling him to use the Force. Luke does, using all that he's learned and finally “sacrificing” his old self, embracing the Force and “Resurrecting” as a true hero. He fires and blows up the Death Star.  
• Luke Returns to the Rebel base triumphant. Both he and Han Solo receive medals and accolades for delivering the (temporary) blow to the evil Empire.
• We get to see Frodo’s idyllic Ordinary World in the Shire. The idea of adventure is attractive to him, but not overly so.  
• Frodo’s Call to Adventure begins after Bilbo disappears, leaving behind the Ring, which Gandalf entrusts to young Frodo. 
• Frodo Refuses the Call not just once, but repeatedly throughout the story. He feels he is not the one to be entrusted with such a job of carrying and disposing of the Ring. 
• Gandalf acts as Frodo’s Mentor, instructing him on what he must do to protect the Ring and, in so doing, protecting the Shire. 
• Frodo and Sam quite literally Cross the Threshold as they leave the Shire after splitting from Gandalf. 
• Frodo and Sam run into Allies Merry and Pippin on their way toward Bree. They are also Tested by Enemies as they’re pursued by the Nazgûl. These tests continue until the group gets to Rivendell. 
• The Approach to the Inmost Cave is the group’s approach to the Mines of Moria — literal caves. 
• The Ordeal happens inside the Mines of Moria as the group is attacked by orcs and then Balrog, which Gandalf fights off, falling down into the depths and presumed dead. 
• The Reward is sparse in The Fellowship of the Rings. Gandalf is gone, and the group escapes with their lives. 
• The Road Back isn’t signified in this story by a turn back to the Ordinary World. Instead, it’s Frodo’s stay in Lothlórien, where he sees the stakes of his failure in a vision. 
• The Resurrection is the climax of the story, where the Uruk-hai catch up with the group and Boromir betrays Frodo, trying to take the ring from him. Frodo realizes he must travel alone to Mordor. 
• The Return with the Elixir portion is Sam’s refusal to let Frodo journey alone. Frodo pulls him into the boat and they cross the river together. Meanwhile, the rest of the Fellowship are determined to save Merry and Pippin. To be continued . . . 
• We see Katniss Everdeen living in her Ordinary World (District 12) with her mother and sister. It’s a bleak, depressing world, but it’s her Ordinary World nonetheless.
• After Prim, Katniss’s sister is called for Tribute, Katniss volunteers in her stead. This is the Call to Adventure. 
• This is one example of a story with no real Refusal of the Call. She may not want to take part in the Hunger Games, but she makes the decision and sticks with it to save her sister. 
• Katniss meets Haymitch, her Mentor. Though a drunk, he guides her on the politics and gives her tips on surviving the Games. 
• Katniss Crosses the Threshold when she’s put on the train to the capital, leaving her Ordinary World behind.
• The Tests, Enemies, and Allies section starts when she has to navigate the preparation for the Games. She meets Rue and has Peeta as an ally, as well. The Careers are clearly enemies to contend with later. 
• Katniss Approaches the Inmost Cave when the Hunger Games begin. 
• The Ordeal is plain to see as the Games commence, and Katniss struggles to stay alive amid the chaos. 
• The Reward comes when only Katniss and Peeta are left alive in the arena. They don’t have to fight, thanks to a rule change; they can both claim victory. 
• It looks good for Katniss and Peeta until the Capital changes the rules again, putting an obstacle in the path of the Road Back. Suddenly, they’re forced to decide which of them gets to live. 
• The Resurrection portion of the story plays out as Katniss and Peeta threaten to kill themselves, leaving no winner and possibly sowing the seeds of revolution. The Capital changes the rules again, allowing both of them to claim victory. 
• Katniss gets to live, Returning from the Games as a hero. One who just may be able to make some real change to her Ordinary World.  

Let's say you want to think big. Like a 12 book series big. One little fun way that I use the Hero's Journey is to use each of the 12 steps to represent an entire book as a whole. You could also condense this into 6 books, 3 books, etc.

For example, the original Star Wars trilogy does a fantastic job of fitting the hero's journey not only into the first movie (A New Hope) but also into the trilogy as a whole. The first movie could easily represent the first four steps of the hero's journey from a macro-perspective (as well as covering all 12 within its self-contained plot), with The Empire Strikes Back covering steps 5-8, and Return of the Jedi covering steps 9-12.

Seriously though, the OG Star Wars trilogy is a masterclass in plotting, you guys.

In other words, the Hero's Journey doesn't have to be used just for a single novel, it can be a great way to progress your character from a more zoomed out perspective through an entire series.

Now that you know what to look for, think about some of your favorite stories. See if you can see the beats of the Hero's Journey in them. From Harry Potter and Toy Story to the Lion King and The Hunger Games , you'll find evidence of this story structure.

Its uses aren't just for adventure stories, though. With a little tweaking, a sweet romance story could also follow this template pretty closely. The point of the Hero’s Journey plot template isn’t to lock you into a formula that you can’t deviate from. Instead, it’s a tool that can guide you along. When you know the tropes of your genre, you can marry them with the major beats of the Hero’s Journey to come up with a novel readers will love . Remember, however, that writing an incredible novel is only part of the battle to find loyal readers- it's also important to have a strong marketing strategy so people can actually discover your book, as outlined in my free e-book on how to become an Amazon bestseller.

To make story beats easier, I recommend giving Plottr a try. It’s a great storytelling tool for writers that can help keep you on track using structures like the Hero’s Journey, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle , the Three Act Structure , and more. 

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

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• Scriptwriting

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: A Better Screenplay in 17 Steps

• What is a Scene
• What is The Three Act Structure
• What is Story Structure
• What is a Story Beat
• What Is a Plot
• Plot vs Story
• What is a Non-Linear Plot
• What is a Plot Device
• What is Freytag’s Pyramid
• Screenplay Structure Examples
• What is a Story Mountain
• Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey
• What is Save the Cat
• Dan Harmon’s Story Circle
• What is Aristotle’s Poetics
• What is Exposition
• What is an Inciting Incident
• What is Rising Action
• What is the Climax of a Story
• What is the Falling Action
• What is Denouement
• How to Write the First Ten Pages of a Screenplay
• Plot Structure Tools
• The Ultimate Film Beat Sheet
• Secrets to Great Exposition in Screenwriting
• Writing Exposition in Film
• Best Inciting Incident Examples
• Examples of Midpoint In Movies
• Write Your Script For Free

dds are that if you’ve had any interest in writing a script within the past fifty years you’ve heard of the Hero’s Journey. A writer you got drinks with swore by it, a film professor suggested you read about it.  Or you overheard the barista at your local coffee shop talking about how Die Hard is a picture-perfect template for it. But… what is it? I’ll explain all of the Hero’s Journey’s 17 steps and provide examples in the modern canon. Then you can kick writer’s block and get a strong script into the hands of agents and producers.

Watch: The Hero's Journey Explained

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• Call to Action
• Refusal of Call
• Supernatural Aid
• Crossing The Threshold
• Belly of the Whale
• The Road of Trials
• Meeting the Goddess
• Atonement With the Father
• The Ultimate Boon
• Refusal of Return
• Magic Flight
• Rescue from Without
• Crossing the Return Threshold
• Master of Two Worlds
• Freedom to Live

Hero’s Journey Examples

The monomyth featuring three of your favorite franchises!

The hero's journey begins, 1. call to action.

Adventure is calling. Will your hero pick up?

The initial step in the first act of the Hero’s Journey - known as the departure - is the “call to action." The Hero is beckoned to go on a journey. Think Frodo Baggins meeting Gandalf. Or the Owl inviting Harry Potter to Hogwarts. 

If having a tall wizard extend a hand may be a little too on the nose for you, don't worry. This comes in all forms. In   Citizen Kane , the mystery surrounding Charles Foster Kane’s final words is the call to action for the reporter, Jerry Thompson, to get to work.

The Hero Hesitates

2. refusal of call.

Next is the Hero’s “refusal of call.” The Hero initially balks at the idea of leaving their lives. The Shire is beautiful, after all, who wants to embark on a dangerous journey across the world? 

This refusal is typically because of a duty or obligation they have at home. Be it family, or work, it’s something our Hero cares deeply about. But, as pressure mounts, they eventually succumb and decide to leave with the help of “supernatural aid.”

The Hero Receives Assistance

3. supernatural aid.

Once the Hero has committed themselves to embarking on whatever that quest may be (keep in mind, a Hero’s Journey can apply to a modern, emotional story, as well), they receive “supernatural aid.”

Individuals give the Hero information or tools at the start of their journey to help their chances of completing the task. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it definitely wasn’t built alone. Every hero has a set of allies helping them get the job done. From Luke, Han, and Chewie to Harry, Ron, and Hermoine, these teams are iconic and nearly inseparable.

The tools provided come in handy as the Hero begins…

The Hero Commits

4. crossing the threshold.

Now the hero ventures into a new, unfamiliar world where the rules and dangers are unknown. They’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, and that becomes evidently clear when monkeys start flying. 

This stage often requires a few examples to crystalize the change in environment from familiar to dangerous. The contrast is key to play up how ill-prepared they initially are.

The Hero is Challenged

5. belly of the whale.

Next thing you know, we're in “the belly of the whale.” The first point of real danger in the Hero’s Journey. Taken from the Biblical story of Jonah entering a literal whale’s belly, it’s here that the dangers we’ve been warned about are manifested into tangible characters. Like hungry Orcs with swords.

This is Jonah moments before actually being in the belly of the whale.

Now our Hero must make a decision to continue and, in turn, undergo a personal metamorphosis in the process. 

They will not be the same individual at the end of this tale as they were in the beginning.  This must be made clear while in the belly of the whale, as we enter Initiation, or act two. Which is the longest slice of the Hero’s Journey pie.

This part is filled with the most failure and risk, and ends with the climax. But first, it starts with... 

The Hero is Tested

6. the road of trials.

“Road of trials” is a set of three tests that the Hero must take. Usually they will fail at least one of these tests. This could be a montage. It could also be a series of obstacles leading to a smaller goal in the journey. 

Here is where the Hero learns to use his or her tools and allies while on their way to a...

The Great Advisor

7. meeting the goddess.

At this point in the monomyth, our Hero needs a break to adjust perspective and digest the ways they've changed. It’s here that they meet with an advisor, or a trusted individual, who will help them gain a better insight into the next steps of the journey. Frodo met with Galadriel, an elf who enlightened him with visions of potential futures.

This is Frodo meeting with the goddess

Luke met Leia, and the two formed of a bond of kinship, motivating them to commit more to their cause. This individual doesn’t have to be a woman, but whoever it is our hero will gain something from the wisdom they impart.

But no good deed goes unpunished, and as we reward our Heroes in storytelling, we must also tempt them to failure.

The Hero is Torn

8. temptation.

Much like “road of trials,” “temptation” is a test in the Hero’s Journey. It presents a set of, well… temptations... that our Hero must either overcome or avoid. These temptations pick and pull at the insecurities of the Hero. A microcosm can be found in our own everyday lives with the simple act of getting out of bed.

The temptation to stay in the cozy confines of our comforters (and comfort zones) can be strong and sometimes overwhelming. This must be manifested in our story with some type of a cheap way out. Or an opportunity to throw in the towel. Our Hero must decline and press forward, nobly facing danger.

A Moment of Catharsis

9. atonement with the father.

Once they’ve thrown away their temptations, the Hero enters the “atonement with the father.” This is always an emotional part of the Hero’s Journey. It's a point in the monomyth where our protagonist must confront an aspect of their character from act one that has been slowing them down.

Something that could be fatal to their journey in the coming climactic stages. While this is actuated as a confrontation with a male entity, it doesn’t have to be.

The point here is that the Hero finds within themselves a change from who they were into someone more capable. Harry has to reconcile with the loss of his father figure, Dumbledore. Now take on Voldemort alone, using the lessons he’s learned on the way. Just like Luke...and every other hero ever. This is the emotional climax of the story.

"Tell your sister... you were riiiiiiiiiight..."

Death of the hero, 10. apotheosis.

With a new sense of confidence and clarity we must then make our Hero deal with “apotheosis.” This is the stage of the Hero’s Journey where a greater perspective is achieved. Often embodied by a death of the Hero’s former self; where the old Frodo has died and the new one is born.  

But this is sometimes interpreted as a more “a-ha!” moment — a breakthrough that leads to the narrative’s climax. This, too, can be tied to the death of Dumbledore and Harry’s reconciliation with the loss. This step is usually the final motivator for the Hero, driving the story into...

THe Hero Victorious

11. the ultimate boon.

This monomyth step is the physical climax of the story. This is often considered the MacGuffin of a film — the physical object that drives our Hero’s motivation. But it's a MacGuffin, to use Hitchcock's famous term, because ultimately... it doesn't matter.

In  Pulp Fiction , we never find out what’s in the briefcase, but it’s the briefcase that led them on the wild journey. When we find out what “Rosebud” actually means, it simply forms a lynchpin to help us understand who Charles Foster Kane was. The mission is accomplished and the world can rest easy knowing that it is safe from evil.

The Hero's Journey Home

12. refusal of return.

Upon a successful completion of the Hero’s Journey, and a transformation into a different person, the Hero has a “refusal to return.” The Shire seems so boring now and the last thing Harry wants is to go back to that drawer under the stairs. 

And, oftentimes, the return can be just as dangerous. This is the beginning of the third act of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (known as the Return) and, while shorter, should still contain conflict. Our next step is an opportunity for that...

The Hero Transported

13. magic flight.

This is the point in the Hero’s Journey where they must get out alive, often requiring the help of individuals they met along the way. Dorothy still has to get back to Kansas, the solution to which may seem like a leap of faith.  

The eagles rescue from without with a magic flight to Frodo and friends

The hero's rescue, 14. rescue from without.

Bringing us to the “rescuers from without” point in the monomyth. Just because Frodo destroyed the one ring to rule them all doesn’t mean he gets a free ride back to the Shire. Remember those giant eagles we met a while back in act two? Well their back just in time!

Homeward Bound

15. crossing the return threshold.

Once the Hero is back home, it’s time to acknowledge their change in character. “Crossing the return threshold” is the stage in the monomyth where the hero has left the chaos of the outer world and return home.

But it's hard to adjust to the old world. Remember that scene where Frodo tried to enjoy a beer back at the shire? Hard to go back to normal when you essentially live with Dark Lord PTSD.

A Triumphant Return

16. master of two worlds.

The hero survived an adventure in the chaos realm, and now survives in the normal order realm. This makes him or her the master of two worlds. Not many people come back and live to tell the tale.  

Frodo and Gandalf wandering off into the sunset post accomplishing their mission

Plus which, throughout the story, they’ve become someone much more capable and resilient than they were in act one. They've learned lessons, and brought what they learned home with them. 

Whatever issues they may have had before embarking on this chaotic tale (often the ones preventing from taking the call to action) now pale in comparison with what they’ve been through.

It’s easier to deal with your annoying cousin, Dudley, after you’ve defeated Voldemort. This, in turn, leads to...

The New Status Quo

17. freedom to live.

In many ways the Hero's Journey is about death and rebirth. The story may manifest as the death of an aspect of character, and the birth of some new way of life. But the metaphor behind any story is one about mortality.

Change is constant. Hero's living through the Hero's Journey are models for us. Models that we can travers the constant change of existence, face our mortality, and continue. In a religious sense, and religions are all part of the monomyth, this is about the eternal spirit. 

Look no farther than the prayer of St. Francis to understand this final step in the Hero's quest. "It is in dying that we are born to eternal life." 

The Hero’s Journey Concludes

Cinematic heroes.

The monomyth is practically ubiquitous in Hollywood. As you’ve read earlier, Harry Potter , Star Wars ,   Lord of the Rings ,  and   Citizen Kane all follow the Hero’s Journey. But, because this concept was built upon the foundations of major mythologies, it's truly a "tale as old as time." 

Because Campbell discovered the Hero's Journey. He didn't make it up. Neither did those older myths. He realized as an anthropologist, that every culture all around the globe had the same story beats in all their myths. 

Sure, some myths, and some movies, use 10 of the 17, or even just 5. But throughout human history, around the world, these story beats keep showing up. In cultures that had nothing to do with one another. 

The Hero's Journey is a concept innate to being human. 

And if remembering these 17 steps may seem a little daunting, fear not. Make sure to check out Dan Harmon's abridged 8-step variation of the Hero's Journey monomyth.  Same structure, just made more digestible.

Dan Harmon’s Story Circle 

Practically speaking, the Hero’s Journey is an excellent tool for structuring an outline in a clear and familiar way. It has the power to make your script much more powerful and emotionally resonant. 

It’s circular, allowing for repeat adventures (which works well if you're learning how to write a TV pilot ) and each aspect drives the hero to the next. From the Goddess, the Hero finds temptation. From reconciling with the father, the Hero is now prepared for the final boon.

Story Circle  •  8 Proven Steps to Better Stories

Using a Hero’s Journey worksheet can help you write a treatment or create a well-structured outline , which is a valuable tool for creating a strong first draft.

By putting in the 17 steps of the Hero’s Journey before building the outline, you can ensure that the writing process will flow smoothly and efficiently. Let us know in the comments how the monomyth has helped you craft a story that escalates with every beat to an exciting climax.  

Up Next: Dan Harmon's Story Circle →

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Summed up in a brilliant way. This proves once again that I was right to study English and then go where my passion lays: Film and Video, including on Instagram (@moritzxbauer) and Youtube. At University I wrote a term paper on “Archetypes of mythical heroism on the example of Aragorn in Lord of the Rings”. Campbell’s Journey of the Hero has been one of my main references. I have never seen the structure being adapted so well to film in general.

None of these include the hero's journey of Buffy Summers in BtVS. As a result, it's hard to take these essays as seriously as one might otherwise.

I love this!! It's going to help so much with writing my book, thank you!

Thank for for the brilliant template. It will help me as a catholic priest to examine the journey of disciples in the Bible for deeper understanding through the contemporary literary lens.

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Story Circles: The Hero's Journey

A story can take many shapes from a picture to a poem. They can be told in countless ways depending on the art form. In screenwriting, certain ideas and conceptions rose among others to form a general understanding of a story. The principal idea of screenwriting design evolved around structure with early screenwriting guru Syd Field who popularized the Three-Act structure in his book Screenplay (1979) (Price, 2013, p. 201). Field’s (1979) early conception of screenplay structure was linear. In fact, his structure only covered the most basic foundations of a screenplay (Chamberlain, 2016, p. 5). The bare minimum requirements to structure design came from Field’s (1979) work. Before Field, however, researchers like Vladimir Propp (1928) and Joseph Campbell (1949) studied story design beyond the realm of screenwriting. What they discovered were common beats or moments between most stories regardless of their genre (Propp, 1928; Campbell, 1949). Campbell (1949/2004) even claimed: “It will be always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find” (p. 3). Campbell (1949/2004) believed that there is only one story that has been told through time. He conceived a story like a circle rather than linear, as Field (1979) did. Campbell’s (1949/2004) monomyth or hero’s journey, was adapted by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (2007) and Dan Harmon, screenwriter and producer, in a series of educational articles on story structure (2003). While Vogler flattened the structure to a straight line (2007, p. 14), Harmon kept the circular design (2003).

Campbell’s circle was not the product of chance. He analyzed stories before creating the shape of a circle for the monomyth he observed (1949/2004, p. 3). Vogler (2007) explains that the Hero’s Journey stemmed from the observation of life:

The Hero’s Journey is not an invention, but an observation. It is a recognition of a beautiful design, a set of principles that govern the conduct of life and the world of storytelling the way physics and chemistry govern the physical world. (p. ix).

From this perspective, the Hero’s Journey was not created as a screenwriting template like Field’s (1979) method was (Snyder, 2005, p. 69). The Hero’s Journey is an observation of a design that already exists in the world. Campbell’s (1949/2004) work is inspired by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1959). Jung (1959) theorized the idea of the collective unconscious (Routledge, 2022). Essentially, the collective unconscious is the idea that a universal unconscious exists within every human’s mind (Routledge, 2022). Consequently, humans will all instinctively recognize a story based on patterns detected by their collective unconscious (Harmon, 2003). This pattern is a circle. Harmon (2003) explains the circular pattern by observing the circle of life, which continually repeats itself through life and death. Robert McKee (1997), a screenwriting author, further supports the idea that story and life are intrinsically linked: “Story is a metaphor for life” (p. 55). The hero’s journey, like Field’s (1979) structure, is built upon three main acts. They are departure, initiation, and return (Campbell, 1949/2004, p. 34). The structure is shown in the figure below (figure 2). The circle is to be read counter-clockwise, with “Call to Adventure” as the start and “Elixir” as the end.

In total, the hero’s journey, as theorized by Campbell in 1949, comprises 17 beats. Not every beat appears in every story. “Refusal of the Call”, “Supernatural Aid” and “Refusal to Return” are examples of beats that are commonly absent from stories (Harmon, 2003). The circle is built around two main worlds. The first is the conscious and the second is the unconscious (Campbell, 1949/2004, p. 8). In the story circle, the top represents a conscious and familiar zone, while the bottom is the unconscious, which is an unfamiliar and unknown area (Campbell, 1949/2004, p .8). A protagonist first leaves a familiar space (departure) (Campbell, 1949/2004, p. 47). Next, they experience an adventure (initiation) (Campbell, 1949/2004, p. 89). Finally, they come back to a familiar environment (return) (Campbell, 1949/2004, p. 201). Campbell (1949/2004) explains that this pattern reflects the rites of passage in primitive societies (p. 8). People recognize the circle as a story (Harmon, 2003).

Harmon (2003) adapts Campbell’s (1949/2004) ideas as a modern screenwriting understanding of the story. Harmon (2003) notes that the circle is essential because the ideas of initiation and return are key to recognizing a story. During the initiation, a character faces the unknown world of act two. They adapt and, having changed, return to a familiar world (Campbell, 1949/2004, p. 201). Like nearly all modern structure templates and theories, the hero has a desire or need that pushes them into the adventure (Chamberlain, 2016, p. 39; McKee, 1997, p. 136; Snyder, 2005, p. 48; Trottier, 2014, p. 13). Harmon’s (2003) version of the hero’s journey is broken down into eight beats instead of 17. He notes that beats can sometimes be skipped, especially in shorter forms of screenwriting (Harmon, 2003). The new beats are as follows: “You, need, go, search, find, take, return, change” (Harmon, 2003). These beats are quite straightforward. “You” simply presents a protagonist in their familiar environment (Harmon, 2003). “Need” is their desire for something (Harmon, 2003). “Go” is the protagonist’s departure from their comfortable Act 1 world in search of their object of desire (Harmon, 2003). In “Search” the character is fully immersed in act two and is searching for their object of desire (Harmon, 2003). In Vogler’s (2007) adaptation of Campbell’s (1949/2004) structure, this step is called “Tests, Allies, Enemies” (p. 14). “Find” is when the protagonist finds the object of their desire (Harmon, 2003). “Take” is when they take it. “Return” marks the character’s exit from act two and entrance into act three (Harmon, 2003). “Change” is the protagonist’s new familiar zone after they have changed from their journey (Harmon, 2003). The division into two distinct worlds, the familiar and unfamiliar, in addition to the need for a return, are the reasons why structures may be built in a circle instead of the traditional linear fashion (Campbell, 1949/2004, pp. 201-202).

Finally, story designs share many commonalities, which explains why Campbell’s work in The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949/2004) was adapted in both linear (Vogler, 2007) and circular (Harmon, 2003) patterns. Whether humans share a collective unconscious that allows them to recognize a story based on its pattern or not remains unknown. However, the Hero’s Journey is undoubtedly a valid method of story structure as both Hollywood executive Christopher Vogler and creator of the hit shows Community (2009-2015) and Rick and Morty (2013-present), Dan Harmon swear by it. Story structures may not need to be circles, but modern screenwriting wisdom requires some degree of character change throughout a film (Chamberlain, 2016, p. 10).

Bibliographical References

Campbell, J. (2004). The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1949).

Chamberlain, J. (2016). The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting . University of Texas Press.

Field, S. (2005). Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (revised edition). Delta. (Original work published 1979).

Harmon, D. (2003). Story Structure 101 . Channel 101.

Jung, C. (1969). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (M. Fordham & H. Read, eds.) (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1959).

McKee, R. (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting . HarperCollins.

Price, S. (2013). A History of the Screenplay . Palgrave Macmillan.

Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the Folktale (2nd ed.). University of Texas Press. (Original work published in 1928).

Routledge. (2022). What is Jungian Psychology. https://www.routledge.com/blog/article/what-is-jungian-psychology

Snyder, B. (2005). Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need . Michael Wiese Productions.

Trottier, D. (2014). The Screenwriter’s Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script. (6th ed.). Silman-James Press.

Vogler, C. (2007). The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (3rd. ed.). Michael Wiese Productions.

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Story Circle: Everything You Need to Know

The Story Circle involves characters who venture out to seek something they need and return to their familiar situations as changed persons. This approach was created by Dan Harmon and derived from “The Hero’s Journey,” which was adapted from the work of American professor Joseph Campbell. It uses a narrative arc that’s commonly found in mythological stories from around the world and emphasizes how almost every form of storytelling has a cyclical nature.

Scene from “Community”

Structure of the Story Circle

While The Hero’s Journey consists of 11 steps, the Story Circle has only eight steps, which include:

• A character is in a comfortable situation
• However, they seek something
• They venture into an unfamiliar place
• They get used to the new situation
• They get what they’re looking for
• They pay a high price for it
• They go back to their familiar situation
• Nevertheless, they have changed

The Importance of the Story Circle

Some experts think that Dan Harmon’s Story Circle is more useful than The Hero’s Journey because it encompasses every type of story, from romantic stories to comedies. Some of the components of The Hero’s Journey allude to a particular kind of story, such as tales of squires becoming knights and finding potions in hidden caves. Harmon refined the steps in this story structure to focus more on the character. As such, the Story Circle applies to a broader range of stories.

How the Story Circle Is Applied to “Rick and Morty”

To see the Story Circle in action in “ Rick and Morty ,” take a look at Morty’s journey in the “ Mortynight Run ” episode, which comprises the following steps:

• A character is in a comfortable situation : At the beginning of the story, it seems like Rick and Morty will be going on just another adventure. Morty is in his comfort zone until he realizes that Rick is involved in arms dealing.
• However, they seek something : Morty finds himself in an ethical dilemma. A feeling of guilt compels him to go beyond a threshold and look for a way to revert the ethical damage he thinks Rick is doing.
• They venture into an unfamiliar place : Although he seldom goes against his grandfather’s instructions, Morty drives Rick’s car to chase after the assassin but accidentally kills him.
• They get used to the new situation : Morty finds out that the assassin’s target was an alien gas entity called Fart. Defying Rick’s instructions again, he helps Fart escape from space jail.
• They get what they’re looking for : Morty achieved his goal by saving a life. Now, he feels good that he has done something right.
• They pay a high price for it : However, in the second half of the episode, Morty realizes that saving Fart is going to cause many people to lose their lives. The alien starts to kill many cops, while Rick and Morty try to make their escape.
• They go back to their familiar situation : Rick and Morty return to a familiar place that resembles “normal life.” Now, Morty knows that Fart is a truly evil creature who plans to return with his people to kill all carbon-based lifeforms.
• Nevertheless, they have changed : Morty decides to change into a killer. He eliminates Fart and saves the universe, but he has become someone totally different from who he used to be.

Scene from “Rick and Morty”

How the “The Dark Knight” Fits Into the Story Circle

Scene from “The Dark Knight”

You can watch the following video to find out how the rich and dense plot of this iconic superhero movie adheres to Harmon’s simple eight-step story structure:

Why Is the Story Circle a Circle?

You may wonder why the Story Circle isn’t laid out in a flat line. Harmon talked about the rhythms of biology and psychology and the way things move cyclically through phases of the conscious and unconscious, order and chaos, and life and death. One fascinating thing he pointed out is that these cycles have enabled human beings to evolve.

Stories are a fundamental and universal part of human culture as a result of their long history as an educational tool. The idea of seeking, changing, and returning isn’t a concept created for lazy writers, but it’s an integral part of the human psyche. This is the reason why stories from a particular culture can resonate with people around the world. The cyclical structure of the Story Circle can be seen in almost every story, regardless of their origins.

Is the Story Circle Really Applicable to All Stories?

According to Dan Harmon , the answer is “yes.” To put the claim to the test, let’s take a look at an example that’s very different from a profane animated show like “Rick and Morty”: Charles Dickens’s “ Great Expectations .”

• A character is in a comfortable situation : A young orphan called Pip lives a simple life on the moors.
• However, they seek something : Later on, he becomes obsessed with a wealthy girl called Estella, who is of the same age as him.
• They venture into an unfamiliar place : A benefactor takes Pip out of obscurity and introduces him to the London society.
• They get used to the new situation : He learns how to live the high life, spending his money extravagantly.
• They get what they’re looking for : Now that he has finally become a gentleman, he believes he’s worthy of Estella.
• They pay a high price for it : Pip realizes that the person who gave him money is a convict. He falls into debt, regrets cutting off his relationship with his Uncle Joe, and finds that his endeavor to pursue Estella is futile.
• They go back to their familiar situation : He returns to his uncle, who helps him become healthy again. Then, he travels to Egypt and stays there for years.
• Nevertheless, they have changed : The story goes back to where it started. A now-humbled Pip reunites with his romantic interest Estella, who opens her heart to him.

Scene from “Great Expectations” (TV series)

“Great Expectations” was written and published on a weekly basis, but it seems that Dickens was consciously or unconsciously aware of this cyclical structure. He made his protagonist go on a journey to seek something, pay the price, and then return home a changed person.

If you want to learn more about the Story Circle or other writing or filmmaking techniques, consider signing up for the nine-month Cinema Production Diploma program at Nashville Film Institute. Contact us today to find out more about our courses.

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Dan Harmon, The Hero’s Journey, and the Circle Theory of Story

Scott Myers

Go Into The Story

“To this day, Harmon still studies each film and TV show he watches, searching for his algorithm underneath, checking to see if the theory is airtight.”

I suspect we have many fans of the TV series “Community” and “Rick and Morty,” so my guess is there will be a lot of interest in this Wired article featuring the show’s creator Dan Harmon. It’s a long piece so let me zero in on Harmon’s approach to the story-crafting process:

The circles are everywhere , if you know to look for them. They’re on the whiteboards around Dan Harmon’s office, on sheets tacked to his walls, on a notepad on the floor of his car. Each one is hand-drawn and divided into quadrants with scribbled notes and numbers sprouting along the edges. They look like little targets. Harmon, 38, is the creator of Community, a sitcom about a group of community-college study buddies and the most giddily experimental show on network TV. He began doodling the circles in the late ’90s, while stuck on a screenplay. He wanted to codify the storytelling process — to find the hidden structure powering the movies and TV shows, even songs, he’d been absorbing since he was a kid. “I was thinking, there must be some symmetry to this,” he says of how stories are told. “Some simplicity.” So he watched a lot of Die Hard , boiled down a lot of Joseph Campbell, and came up with the circle, an algorithm that distills a narrative into eight steps:

1. A character is in a zone of comfort 2. But they want something 3. They enter an unfamiliar situation 4. Adapt to it 5. Get what they wanted 6. Pay a heavy price for it 7. Then return to their familiar situation 8. Having changed Harmon calls his circles ‘embryos’ — they contain all the elements needed for a satisfying story — and he uses them to map out nearly every turn on Community, from throwaway gags to entire seasons. If a plot doesn’t follow these steps, the embryo is invalid, and he starts over. To this day, Harmon still studies each film and TV show he watches, searching for his algorithm underneath, checking to see if the theory is airtight. “I can’t not see that circle,” he says. “It’s tattooed on my brain.”

“Star Wars,” then sit-coms? That guy Joseph Campbell missed his calling! Should’ve been a Hollywood writer. Here are a few versions of Campbell’s ‘circles’. First, the 17 stages of The Hero’s Journey as laid out in Campbell’s book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”:

Here is another circle representation with a simplified 12-stage version:

And here is an even more basic version of The Hero’s Journey:

There’s value in each version and there are endless iterations, such as what Harmon has done with the show “Community.” From a screenwriting perspective, the goal is not to use The Hero’s Journey as a formula. That just results in formulaic scripts. Rather it is to use these ideas as tools to dig into your story and find its soul, then its structure. The plot should arise from the characters. Which sounds just like how Dan Harmon approaches his story-crafting process.

Here is a video which goes into detail explaining Harmon’s circle theory:

For more of the article, go here .

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Written by Scott Myers

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Joseph Campbell  & 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 men. 

The Hero With A Thousand Faces 23

Joseph Campbell’s first full-length solo book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series XVII: 1949), earned the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Contributions to Creative Literature. In this study of the myth of the archetypal hero, Campbell posits the existence of a “monomyth” (a word he borrows from James Joyce), a universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture. 

While outlining the basic stages of this mythic cycle, Campbell explores common variations in the hero's journey, which he observes is an operative metaphor not only for an individual, but for a culture as well. This widely recognized classic has exerted a major influence on generations of creative artists, from the Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s to contemporary filmmakers today.

THE ORIGINS OF HERO

The genesis of The Hero With A Thousand Faces served as Joseph Campbell’s own call to adventure. After the success of A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (with co-author Henry Morton Robinson), an editor from Simon & Schuster approached Campbell with a proposal to write a book on mythology––“a modern Bulfinch,” he called it, referring to the 19th century popularization of Greek myths. 

Campbell instead offered to write a book on “how to read a myth.” Though Simon & Schuster agreed, they ultimately declined the finished manuscript, which is how Bollingen ended up publishing it. Campbell traces the inspiration for his recognition of the hero’s journey to German ethnologist and archaeologist Leo Frobenius, whose 1904 Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes (The Age of the Sun God) pointed to a motif of descent into the underworld (“going into the belly of the whale and coming out again”) that appears in myths of many cultures. 

Campbell, following up with his own study of hero myths, quickly recognized that movements key to the hero cycle corresponded exactly with those described by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep as central to all initiation rites.

That was when I started teaching my course at Sarah Lawrence College in Comparative Mythology, using this as my core structuring theme, and studying and always looking for some refutation of this, some way to blow it up. I found I couldn’t blow it up. (Bruckner, D.J.R.: “Joseph Campbell: 70 Years of Making Connections,” New York Times Book Review, 12-18-83)

Interestingly, the phrase “the hero’s journey” appears nowhere in the original text, though the book often refers to the “hero-quest” and the “hero-deed,” and describes how “the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces.” Over time, Camp bell adopted the phrasing we’re familiar with today.

WHAT IS THE HERO'S JOURNEY?​

The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation — initiation — return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces 23 

Discussing the trajectory of the journey as depicted in the diagram above, Campbell summarizes the many possible variations within each stage as follows:

The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again — if the powers have remained unfriendly to him — his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).

The Hero With A Thousand Faces 211

We recognize this pattern in tales of Raven’s theft of fire from the House of the Sun, Isis’ search for Osiris, Ulysses’ long voyage home from the Trojan War, the sojourn of the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, and even the adventures of Luke Skywalker “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” 

UNPACKING THE JOURNEY

Campbell emphasizes three stages which he deems essential to the hero’s journey: separation (sometimes called departure), initiation, and return. Each of these stages must be present to make a hero’s journey, but the same doesn’t apply to all the possible variations within each stage.  Much critical analysis gets bogged down in mistaking Campbell’s discussion of the most common elements of these stages as setting forth rigid, sequential steps found in all hero myths, which is not what Campbell was suggesting in his work. 

Campbell highlights four possible climaxes to the adventure: the Sacred Marriage, Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, or the Elixir Theft, but which one arises depends on the story:

One finds different orders of story. For example, in fairy tales it’s usually the finding of the bride — or sometimes stealing the bride — and the sacred marriage motif. In the Roman Catholic tradition, it’s the atonement with the father motif — and there the woman becomes either the guide to the father in the form of Mary, or seductress in the form of Eve and her children. In the Christian tradition one is not to experience the apotheosis. You are not to think of yourself as the Christ, whereas in the Buddhist tradition that’s the way.

Archive audio L1184, Big Sur, CA, 11/8/83

A tale containing every possible alternative can become clumsy and bloated; rather than “steps,” it helps to think of these as variations that are either included, or omitted, depending on the choices the hero makes.

THE HERO'S JOURNEY TODAY

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. 

The influence of the hero’s journey in popular culture is especially apparent in film, as in George Lucas’ acknowledgment that Star Wars might never have become the phenomenon it has if it weren’t for Joseph Campbell:

I wrote many drafts of this work and then I stumbled across The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was the first time that I really began to focus . . . I went around in circles for a long time trying to come up with stories, and the script rambled all over and I ended up with hundreds of pages. It was The Hero with a Thousand Faces that just took what was about 500 pages and said, here is the story. Here’s the end; here’s the focus; here’s the way it’s all laid out. It was all there and had been there for thousands and thousands of years, as Mr. Campbell pointed out. And I said, “This is it.” After reading more of Joe’s books I began to understand how I could do this. 

George Lucas at the National Arts Club in 1985, cited in The Hero’s Journey 215

A ROADMAP FOR LIFE

But this mythological motif is more than just a plot device. There's an argument to be made that the hero's journey is germane to the human experience. Though the giants in the field who preceded Joseph Campbell studied myth to understand other cultures and add to human knowledge, he was one of the first to grasp that myt hology has relevance in the real world.

Campbell acknowledges the influence of his predecessors, but goes beyond them in asserting the motif of the hero’s journey can be understood metaphorically as a model for the living of life, which itself is a series of initiations. Campbell’s understanding of this aspect of the hero quest thus reflects what he terms the psychological (or pedagogical) function of mythology: “to carry the individual through the stages of one’s life.”

This is what Joyce called the monomyth: an archetypal story that springs from the collective unconscious. Its motifs can appear not only in myth and literature, but, if you are sensitive to it, in the working out of the plot of your own life. The basic story of the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life. 

Pathways to Bli ss 112

THE FEMALE HERO

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell looks at multiple myths, including what may be the earliest hero journey on record: the goddess Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld (the Sumerian version dates to c. 2112 BCE). Nevertheless, most examples in the book are of male heroes. As to why, Campbell observes that most of the world’s myths were recorded by men.

All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view. When I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales. These were told by women to children, you know, and you get a different perspective. 

Pathways to Bli ss 145

Asked during a workshop about how the hero’s journey can be adapted as a model for women today, Campbell acknowledges that it’s not up to him to say:

I don’t know what the counterpart would be in the woman’s case . . .  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 counterpart, not the woman pretending to be male, but the normal feminine archetypology of this experience. I wouldn’t know what that would be. 

Women will have to tell us the way a woman experiences the journey, if it is the same journey.

Many writers have already taken up this challenge as they explore heroine journeys and degendered mythic structures.

THE JOURNEY AND THE GOOD LIFE

Reflecting on the hero’s journey and its relationship to life, Campbell writes:

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco.

But there’s also the possibility of bliss.

Pathways to Bli ss    133  

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HERO'S JOURNEY

You can find more on the hero’s j ourney in the following books:

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Pathways to Bli ss

A Joseph Campbell Companion

The Hero’s Journey

You can also listen to Joseph Campbell discuss the hero’s journey in greater detail in the following audio lectures: I.2.2  The Inward Journey

II.2.3 Psychosis and the Hero’s Journey

II.6.1 Modern Myths of Quest

About Stephen Gerringer

Stephen Gerringer is the editor of Myth and Meaning by Joseph Campbell, and the author of Myth and Modern Living: A Joseph Campbell Compendium . He currently serves as Community Coordinator for the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

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Electronic Resources

The monomyth, or Hero’s Journey, was first recognized as a pattern in mythology by Joseph Campbell, who noticed that heroes in mythology typically go through the same 17 stages in their journey toward hero-dom.  

The Hero’s Journey follows a path which is represented by a circle in which the hero travels into the unknown and is faced with many trials only to come full circle, returning to the known world.  The path includes but is not limited to the following segments:

• Call to Adventure
• Supernatural Aid
• Cross the Threshold into the Unknown
• Mentors / Helpers
• Transformation
• Return from the Unknown
• Return to a Normal Life

A popular interpretation of the Hero’s Journey is Luke Skywalker’s journey toward Jedi Knighthood in the original Star Wars films.  George Lucas found tremendous inspiration in the monomyth when creating the original trilogy.  Fans will notice how closely the films mirror the monomyth pattern.  Luke’s call to the rebellion, his aid of the force, the assortment of guides and companions, the many trials he faces along the way, his confrontation with Vader, the temptations of power, the destruction of the Empire, and the freedom of the galaxy from the Emperor’s evil tyranny.  Several documentaries and books have been published on Campbell’s influence on the Star Wars films.

Model of the Monomyth

The Monomyth, or Hero's Journey, is a path commonly represented by a circle.  Along this path the hero encounters numerous stages which he must overcome in order to progress.

Library Print & Media

• The Mythology of Star Wars An interview with George Lucas about the influence of his mentor, Joseph Campbell and his explanation of the Hero’s Journey. Available through Films on Demand.
• Wikipedia - Monomyth
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• Last Updated: Jan 8, 2024 12:31 PM
• URL: https://guides.stlcc.edu/classical_mythology