For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Learn About the Hero’s Journey

Source – The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.

Anyone that creates anything should read and study Joseph Campbell and the ideas of the universal myth and hero’s journey. Just be careful about it.

My personal opinion is that the use of the Hero’s Journey Monomyth as the only legitimate scaffold on which to build a plot is oversimplified and overused. If I have to see or read one more story where the protagonist has to (or appear to) “die” at the climax of the story only to be reborn as a great hero… well, I’m sure I will see it more than one more time. Everything – especially big budget films and young adult novels has to follow this same script or it won’t get made.

I think sometime I will work at scouring my dreams and fears and come up with my own monomyth. Maybe everybody should do that.