The writer's journey
by Christopher Vogler · first published 1992
4mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2010–2019first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
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…describes pretty well the structure of most Hollywood successes, too. Not really; it's got a lot of genre and form specific but, though it's certainly not entirely useless outside of that focus. The Writer's Journey is better for describing the shape of Hollywood successes (Save the Cat does so even more precisely for recent ones, providing very close to a minute-by-minute breakdown.)
on “At the Blackboard: Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the shapes of stories (2005)” ↗The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler. A really interesting analysis of modern narrative structure rooted in mythology. It'll appeal to HN readers; it's an analytical way of breaking down every story ever told.
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. Yes, like The Writer's Journey was an explosion that ripped through hollywood, and Story and a bunch of other books. It's amusing and instructive to look at classics like the Iliad or Macbeth through this structural formule. Clearly,…
on “The 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood” ↗On that point, I seem to recall Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters (1992), which is more directly an adaptation and application of Campbell's monomyth, getting quite a bit of the same kind of "formula that's killing…
on “The 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood” ↗