The Heroine's Journey
Hello writers, I want to introduce you all to The Heroineβs Journey.
I've pulled this together from an old series of posts I've written for a project at @the-wip-project. There will be homework!
Through general media consumption most of us know about or have at least unknowingly absorbed The Heroβs Journey. I spare you the details, theyβre easy to look up, but in the most general sense, lots of very successful stories are set up like this:
- The Ordinary World
- The Call of Adventure
- Refusal of the Call
- Meeting the Mentor
- Starting the Quest
- Tests, Allies, Enemies
- Approach the Underworld
- The Ordeal
- Reward
- The Road Back
- Recognition
- Glory, Reward, and Isolation
If you look at that and think βStar Wars: A New Hopeβ you got it exactly right. A lot of successful stories are written with these steps in mind. It usually follows a hero, who has to overcome internal and external conflicts to reach their goal.
The lesser known Heroineβs Journey is the equivalent to this but with a focus on connections and relationships. Where the Heroβs Journey is about a lone hero, the Heroineβs Journey is about finding community.
The concept of the Heroineβs Journey is not new but there wasnβt a lot of easy to read literature written about it. But recently, Gail Carriger has written a delightful and educational non-fiction book for writers and readers, called, not surprisingly, The Heroineβs Journey.
The terms Hero and Heroine are gender neutral, for instance the movie Wonder Woman is a Heroβs Journey while a buddy comedy like Man In Black is a Heroineβs Journey (generalizing here).
I like to think about it in terms of found family and friends. These stories are Heroine's journeys, they tell of community building and how we are stronger together. If you think about your WIP and how it can be applied to it, it might just blow your mind. Let me just says those tropes, βfound familyβ, βthe gang gets togetherβ, βme and my friends gonna kick your assβ that we all love? Those are all elements of The Heroineβs Journey π. Doesn't that sound great?
Just to compare it to the list I made at the beginning of the post, The Heroine's Journey has the following points:
- A broken familial network
- Heroine's pleas are ignored
- Abdication of power
- Family offers aid
- Subversion and disguise
- Find surrogate family
- Visit the Underworld, search aided by companions
- Information gathering, delegation, networking
- Negotiation for reunification
- Revenge and Glory are irrelevant
- Network established or rebuilt
Let me just put in a graphic here that Gail Carriger provided on her website.
Homework:
The Heroineβs Journey begins with the protagonist having broken with their familial network, their pleas being ignored, turning away / being pushed out from their position, and finding help from family/friends. Think how this beginning could apply to your WIP.
I'm pretty sure, a few of you had the kind of βomg why did I not see that?β epiphany with The Heroineβs Journey π. Same thing happened to me and I realized why one story just wasnβt working. It couldnβt work because I was trying to cram a Heroine story into a Heroβs Journey. If you want to hear the author Sasha Black have that kind of epiphany live on air (so to speak), listen to this [podcast], where she interviews Gail Carriger about The Heroineβs Journey. Just be warned, that epiphany involves a lot of swearing π.
We talked about the beginning of the Heroineβs Journey. In this first part, the Heroine is involuntarily kicked out of their familial network. This is one of the main differences to the Heroβs Journey, where the Hero refuses and turns away voluntarily. The first part of the Heroineβs Journey is about involuntary isolation.
The Hero refuses the quest, for whatever reason, the Heroine is getting kicked into the quest.
The next part is the Search.
The Heroineβs Journey follows a pattern of connections, reunification, finding family. Mentally, physically, or emotionally. A successful journey ends with new connections, new community.
The Heroine searches for new connections, new companions, to solve the problem the story gives them. Often they employ disguise/subversion and alter their identity in this part. They form a new network, a found family. With the network, they go on a quest into βthe Underworldβ to gather information and build more connections.
Homework:
Applying the Heroineβs Journey to your WIP, what connection does your protagonist make? What kind of community do they form? And if you have a problem with your WIP, maybe try giving your protagonist more friends?
As humans, we easily think in binary concepts, things are either this way or that way. But in reality, things overlap, mix and match, and the same can be said for the Heroineβs Journey and the Heroβs Journey.
Stories can have a Hero and a Heroine working together. Think about your basic buddy comedy, the one stoic character who wants to work alone and the fun character, who has many friends and connections. Thatβs a Hero with a Heroine in the same story and one possible arc could be that the Hero changes into a Heroine.
In romance, you often have the bad boy, a rogue character, who wants to stay on a Heroβs Journey, but the love of the one good person in their life changes them and pulls them into their Heroineβs Journey.
Stories with multiple characters may have each character on a different journey, with different focal points on what is important for their journey.
I also think that fanfiction often has a way of turning a Heroβs Journey into a Heroineβs Journey. When the source material says βand they won the fight but now theyβre all aloneβ, fanfic takes a stick and whacks that on the head with βbut what if they had friends /whack/β, βand they all lived together in a house /whack/β, βand they raised tomatoes, kids, and chickens together /whack whack whack/β.
Homework:
Think of your favorite characters (from your WIP or from an interesting source material) and identify who leans more towards Hero and who leans more towards Heroine. Sketch out how they influence each other and what direction their stories could go.
This has been a short overview of the Heroineβs Journey, if youβre interested in this structure, I very much recommend the book [https://gailcarriger.com/books/the-heroines-journey-for-authors-book/]. Itβs really a fun read, Gail Carriger did not switch to some weird academic tone for this book. She has lots of popular examples in the book, to illustrate how these concepts apply to stories we know and love.
