Christopher Vogler: The Heroes Journey. Workshop

     His arms tightened. 'God, I love you,' he said, and kissed her, pressing her back into the pillow.
     And what started with restraint ended in wildfire intensity, in untamed, exquisite fulfilment.
The above extract is from The Paternity Affair, a Mills and Boon bestseller, by New Zealand author Robyn Donald. What is it doing here? Well, the New Zealand Romance Writers Association hosted a one-day workshop in Auckland on Friday August 20th, with Christopher Vogler, Hollywood script guru and author of The Heroe's Journey.

     Christopher developed his theories of components of story from the earlier work of Joseph Campbell. His theories state that all good stories -  from mythology  through Victorian novels to contemporary screenplays -  contain the same elements. He expresses these in terms of narrative arc and archetypal characters.

     Narrative arc (or circle, in Vogler's theory) has a hero go through stages. He or she starts in the ordinary world, hears a call to adventure, refuses the call, meets a mentor then crosses the threshold into the special world. There are tests and an approach, followed by ordeal, death/rebirth. Then the hero gets rewarded and takes the road back to the ordinary world, where there is a resurrection and a return with the elixir(or whatever it was the hero was searching for).

     The archetypes, or characters in successful stories, according to Vogler, are the hero, his/her shadows, mentors and heralds. There are threshold guardians who guard the entrance to the special world, shapeshifters, tricksters and allies.

     During the workshop, Vogler expounded at amusing length about all these stages in the heroe's journey and each of these archetypal characters. At each stage he explained how the roots came from ancient mythology and the collective story-telling conscience of humankind. He illustrated each aspect with examples from mythology and also from current and classical cinema. Interestingly he explained how his theories were closely allied to those of psychologist Carl Jung, and used a lot of Jungian theoretical concepts.

     Many writers are familiar with these theories, but it was instructive and reinforcing to hear them in greater detail from the author himself. Vogler's professional background has been as a "script doctor" and he explained how when a story wasn't working, it missed out on an important stage or an important archetype. Conversely, he analysed some popular and successful scripts in terms of his theories and demonstrated effectively how they were incorporated. Vogler will be repeating this workshop in Wellington next week and it is a recommended day for aspiring writers. Or you could just take the book out of the library.