Quoted from Colkurtz8 Ah, it’s very heartening to read the 11 responses to the OP's brash "statement". Questioning artistic norms and convention is always an encouraging thing to see. Long may this site be a breeding ground for individual minds and voices.

It's not a case of thinking outside the box, or anything.  The OP essentially said, "It must be done this way!"

It's like saying, "Never use fat characters!  They must always be thin!"


Phil

I do think there's something to be said for the OP's point of view.

Mastering the heroes journey template is hardly going to hurt...big, high concept genre movies are almost exclusively built around the template and these are the stories that seem to sell...so in many ways, you ARE making it difficult if you adamantly refuse to follow it.

Obviously I respect everyone's position and their choice to write as they want. However I would say that I don't necessarily share MC's position that following a certain structure will kill your voice. To me the choice of theme, the dialogue, the characters, the situation and setting express voice more than structure.

Also, the power of the Heroes Journey is not that it's a beat structure to follow, it's more that it imbues a story with an epic feel..the lone hero overcoming his weakness, the spiritual aspect alongside the material world etc. It's the underlying structure of most of the world's famous stories.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films However I would say that I don't necessarily share MC's position that following a certain structure will kill your voice. To me the choice of theme, the dialogue, the characters, the situation and setting express voice more than structure.

I didn't say it would kill your voice.  I said not to try using someone else's formula until you've found your own.  If you haven't found your voice yet, it isn't going to come through if you're following someone else's structure. Learn how to use dialog and characters and situations your own way and then you can put it in any structure you desire.   But I'm betting that once you learn those things you will naturally fall into your own structure with your writing and you will lose interest in following other formulas - unless you have to in order to sell a script.    

Quoted from mcornetto I didn't say it would kill your voice.  I said not to try using someone else's formula until you've found your own.  If you haven't found your voice yet, it isn't going to come through if you're following someone else's structure. Learn how to use dialog and characters and situations your own way and then you can put it in any structure you desire.   But I'm betting that once you learn those things you will naturally fall into your own structure with your writing and you will lose interest in following other formulas - unless you have to in order to sell a script.

Fair enough.

If I was teaching screenwriting, or writing in general, personally I'd suggest people learn to write the "standard" structure perfectly, so they understand why it's so popular and what makes it work and then experiment with it to achieve intentional results.

To paraphrase Alexander Mckendrick "Even if you want to be Avant-Garde, you still need to learn traditional structure, so that you know what it is you want to be "avant" of".

It's the same as saying if you want to learn to think outside of the box, you need to know what the box actually is.

The reason I say that is that more often than not most scripts I see are loosely structured. They are too slow to get going, sag badly in the middle, never really build tension..and these are genre scripts I'm talking about. It's obvious that the majority of learning writers (I'm not referring to SS here, btw) can't actually write a traditional story well...and to me if you can't do that you'll never be able to consistently write in a more difficult structure because it takes more skill.

But as ever...it's all about opinions.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films If I was teaching screenwriting, or writing in general, personally I'd suggest people learn to write the "standard" structure perfectly, so they understand why it's so popular and what makes it work and then experiment with it to achieve intentional results.

If you were to check out this book

http://www.amazon.com/Screenwriting-Tricks-Trade-William-Froug/dp/1879505134

then you would notice that Mr. Froug who was both a successful screenwriter and screenwriting professor at UCLA explicitly states that he would never recommend teaching formula.  As a matter of fact he tried it and said it failed miserably.  The reason, people were unable to realise their artistic potential painting by numbers.  

He says the craft is easy to learn, it's the art of screenwriting that can't be taught. He says if you haven't gotten the art innately in you then it makes no sense to learn the craft and you might as well do something else.  In other words, you should be able to tell a story with dazzling dialogue and characters - your own way because if you can't  then you might as well forget screenwriting as a career because no structure is going to save you.      

Quoted from mcornetto If you were to check out this book http://www.amazon.com/Screenwriting-Tricks-Trade-William-Froug/dp/1879505134 then you would notice that Mr. Froug who was both a successful screenwriter and screenwriting professor at UCLA explicitly states that he would never recommend teaching formula.  As a matter of fact he tried it and said it failed miserably.  The reason, people were unable to realise their artistic potential painting by numbers.   He says the craft is easy to learn, it's the art of screenwriting that can't be taught. He says if you haven't gotten the art innately in you then it makes no sense to learn the craft and you might as well do something else.  In other words, you should be able to tell a story with dazzling dialogue and characters - your own way because if you can't  then you might as well forget screenwriting as a career because no structure is going to save you.

The first thing I'll say is that the second part of the post is the operative part. You can't teach the "art" of screenwriting. Now, imagine those writers who can't come up with interesting ideas, characters or dialogue and then imagine them writing without structure as well.....boring, monotonous mess. That's 95% of the screenplays I see.

30 pages of people chattering about nothing. Another 20 of exposition.

People say that "anyone can learn the craft"...and I would agree. But very few seem to bother....and it usually kills people's scripts before they even get going. 10 boring pages where they are just wibbling on and getting nowhere, followed by another 10 pages of nothing in particular and the script is in the bin.

I would also say that there's a major difference between formula and structure.

I'm not suggesting to follow a formula page by page. I've just suggested that many of the most successful films follow the Heroes Journey structural template as revealed by Christopher Vogler (not so much this other fellow who is doing it line by line). I spoke to Vogler not long ago and he said it was never intended that people had to follow the structure page by page, nor include all the elements. He was just pointing out that the stories that have found resonance in the world's people throughout history have certain aspects...in particular they tend to marry the spiritual aspects of humanity with the real world.

These aspects can often be found in huge Hollywood films: Star Wars, Tron Legacy, Lion King, Avatar etc etc ....you could continue writing indefinitely.

I think it's important people know what some of these structures are and then can make deliberate decisions to break them to achieve a specific effect. Otherwise people are going to be largely doomed to writing incoherent, unstructured bore-fests forever.

I think the essence of the hero's journey is something that is required for a film to have any impact.  What I think of as the essence of the hero's journey is the idea of transformation.  I do feel a lot of the time -- and a lot of scripts on this site are by no means innocent of this -- that there isn't enough effort put into what I consider to be the very core of a story: the transformation of the protagonist and how their choice/transformation/realization affects them and the world around them.  I won't start going on about fatal flaws and acts and turning points, but I do think that what Campbell found is that at the heart of storytelling, at the heart of conflict, is a need for transformation.  Why do we tell stories?  To change the world for the better.  I think people forget this a lot of the time.  If we do our jobs well we should consider ourselves as important as doctors and engineers.  What is "entertaining" is changing as people are increasingly willing to go through life sedated and spoon-fed, but what SHOULD be entertaining in my opinion is stories of human transformation and growth (or refused growth) that will inspire change in their viewers.  We should be entertained by the potential of our species.  We should be excited by it.

Should a writer use the monomyth as a 17-step structure outline?  I don't think so.  Who cares?  Campbell was only recognizing a pattern.  We shouldn't attempt to emulate structure.  We should figure out why that pattern exists in stories.  Change, transformation; we should be inspiring people not to be distressed by the inherent transience of the human condition but elated by its infinite possibility.  To grow and accept change.  I don't know if we should "use" the hero's journey but I think that our writing should be aware of it as a pattern and embrace it as an idea.

Heretic... further proof that you are one of our more intelligent contributors - you and bert. 100% agree with your post.

Quoted from dogglebe It's not a case of thinking outside the box, or anything.  The OP essentially said, "It must be done this way!"

That's exactly what I gathered from it too, which is why I'm glad people questioned him.

I bought Campbell's book a long time ago, and am just finally getting around to reading it.  So far, I like the Jungian collective unconscious aspects of the book.  As a screenwriter, I think that if you can tap into one of those universal themes that really resonates across cultures, then you will have a story with staying power.

Quoted from Heretic I won't start going on about fatal flaws and acts and turning points, but I do think that what Campbell found is that at the heart of storytelling, at the heart of conflict, is a need for transformation.

I agree with the need for transformation - to some extent. After all if the character stays the same it probably won't do much for the story.  

However, with that being said I think that in a lot scripts the change is not necessarily so obvious or the character changes briefly and then goes back to their ways.  As long as the change occurs to the context that it moves the story along I think is okay.  I would say that the change should still be visible enough to where the audience doesn't have wonder through a maze to find the change but I don't think it needs to be blatantly shoved up under somebody like being preached at.

For movies that preach at me, must be damn good for me to give them the light of day. Of course this is my view and belief.

With a script I wrote, the character to me embodies a realistic feel, but not to real - after all it is a movie/fim what-have-you.  I use the term "Cinematically Realistic" My characters change through the film, but some of them do revert back or keep some of their characteristics and traits after the transformation, depending on how long has passed between the length of the script.

i.e. most people don't change drastically overnight.  (Though as always there are exceptions)

As far as having to use the hero's journey - no it's not the only way... The only real "structure to follow" for me - is the formatting - though even that tends to be broken:

i.e. Tarantino is known for long specific and detailed action descriptions.
-Of course this Tarantino I'm talking about

I'd love to be able to write like that and not have my pages trashed, but I'm not Tarantino - well, at least last I checked

I'm in agreement that transformation is important. Generally, I try to have my characters change over the course of the story. I do think not having a character change can equally serve a purpose though. But the lack of change has to be just as thought out as a bonafide character arc. It has to have poignance. See American Psycho. "No catharsis." Chilling. I also think a story can end with a character on their way to change as opposed to a full evolution. I've done this once or twice before and it's worked out well.

I think films and stories can serve a number of different purposes and don't necessarily have to include a character arc but I think generally, change is part of most storytelling endeavors more often than not.

That said, character evolution is an idea. The "hero's journey" is a full blown step-by-step template. One inhibits original storytelling. The other doesn't.