An overview of The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey is a go-to template for character-driven stories. Most notably defined by Joseph Campbell, it follows a 17-step framework a hero must embark on in order to create a memorable story for your readers. Disney is the most noteworthy of using this framework in their plots. Think of characters like Simba, Woody, Moana, or Ariel.

The Hero’s journey can be broken down into three overarching chapters:

• The Departure/Separation: where the hero is presented with a problem and call to action
• The Initiation: when the hero must leave their comfort zone in order to tackle their problem
• The Return: when the hero returns to a new reality

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The 17 micro-chapters to The Hero's Journey

• In fiction: authors put the lead character as the hero in the journey and the reader experiences this
• In business: companies put the customer on the hero’s journey and build lifecycle flows that address each micro-chapter so that a customer returns to their new reality with the business’s product or offering underwing

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Reading material to complete before the next class

• Where the Crawdads Sing (pages 1-100)