Like many screenwriters I have been influenced by and used the precepts in Chris Vogler’s classic The Writer’s Journey, where he lays out the structure beats and archetypes that are common in hero’s journey scripts. Adapting what Joseph Campbell had discussed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

It’s great stuff. Some of these elements overlap with or agree in parts with other story paradigms, like the later Save the Cat, while some are totally unique.

So how do you know if you’re writing a hero’s journey script and whether these principles really apply to you?

The way I see it, a hero’s journey story features the following elements. Note how The Matrix, Star Wars and Harry Potter, all hero’s journeys, follow this:

1. The main character is special in some way but doesn’t know it at the beginning.

They have some innate power or legacy. Maybe they are “the one.” But they have a humble life to start. While they might dream of some larger adventure or calling, it’s not happening now and seems like it never will. They might even be seen as “less than” by most, and have a life of deprivation or even abuse. Later they will travel far from the life they’re used to and prove their specialness before returning home.

Now you could say that these things are somewhat true with every great main character in so many kinds of movies, and I wouldn’t completely fight you. Stories tend to elevate underdogs into finding their specialness and putting them through a gauntlet of some kind where that will happen, where they rise into better versions of themselves, often. True. But in hero’s journey scripts it’s more literal and extreme.

And what they also have that many other kinds of stories don’t is:

2. An adventure to go on where they will confront powerful evil villainy, with life and death stakes. If you’re familiar with Save the Cat’s 10 Genres, or my own 8 Types of Story Problems and the 6 traditional core genres I talk about in my course The Idea, you might see that this instantly eliminates most of them. You don’t generally see adventuring against evil villains with life and death stakes in Save the Cat’s Buddy Love, Rite of Passage, Institutionalized, Fool Triumphant or Out of the Bottle. In these genres you often don’t even have an evil villain or specific antagonist, let alone life and death stakes. And in terms of the traditional use of the word genre, this also tends to rules out comedies and dramas. And since hero’s journey scripts tend to put the hero’s own life in danger as they literally fight the evil, it also means most mysteries (Save the Cat’s Whydunit) aren’t really hero’s journeys, either.

3. A heroic mission to protect, rescue and/or save innocents who the villain threatens or is already harming. This narrows things down further. In thrillers or horror films (and in Save the Cat’s Monster in the House or Dude with a Problem), there is often a lot of action and plenty of life and death stakes, but it’s generally not heroic. The person or people trying to survive the onslaught are mostly just playing defense and trying to protect themselves or a small close group.

So hero’s journeys don’t really match 8 of the 10 Save the Cat genres and 5 of what I call the 6 core genres: Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Thriller and Horror. That leaves only one: Action-Adventure.

A hero’s journey is generally an action-adventure story.

In the world of Save the Cat, it might sometimes be a Golden Fleece (that’s where Blake Snyder put Star Wars). But it’s more likely to better fit what he calls a Superhero story. Where the main character is not only heroic but has some special quality that makes them uniquely suited to be the central one fighting the evil. Star Wars doesn’t overemphasize Luke’s special chosenness or powers (although those things are arguably there) and leans more into the Golden Fleece “team” dynamic. But in The Matrix and Harry Potter, although there are still teams, I’d say the focus is more on the differentness of the hero and the cultivation of their special power. But really there’s a lot of overlap here. I would just say that in many Golden Fleeces, the mission isn’t as heroic and the hero isn’t as special as you typically see in a Superhero or Hero’s Journey script.

Why is all this important?

This is my third and most important point:

To succeed as a writer, one needs to know one genre and its core elements, and write to those, while also being fresh and original in some way. 

While you could make the argument that even great romcoms or horror films could be said to include certain structure steps from The Writer’s Journey like “Refusal of the Call” and “Approach to the Innermost Cave,” I have also seen writers go off track by trying to make sure they include all of these plus the archetypal characters such stories are famous for (Mentor, Shapeshifter, Trickster, etc.), even though they’re writing a script that definitely does not have the three elements I listed above, in the way a true hero’s journey script would. And they might be better served by foregoing archetypes to write more complex characters, or being a bit looser about trying to fulfill all of those structure beats, which maybe don’t apply across genres perfectly.

Having said that, I’m a big fan of The Writer’s Journey. And I’m not someone who pooh poohs the wisdom in any theory or paradigm of storytelling. I think virtually all of them have some great wisdom and utility in a writer’s toolbox. I’ve used many of them myself.

My main point is that knowing and understanding one’s genre — and choosing to write within a specific type of story that has certain common elements — is a crucial thing worth doing. And is definitely one step in a writer’s (possibly heroic) journey.