I feel like form vs function works well here, actually? A trite hero's journey story is more likely a story that was written to fit to the form of a hero's journey. A well-written one is one that's aware of the hero's journey, but is using it to generate the overall function or goal of the work. The hero's journey is more a tool than it is an end goal in and of itself.
but form is very important; where is the function in a text? it's nowhere to be found, unless you treat certain aspects of the form as indicative of function
but that's also a simplification of course
i'm sorry, i'm kind of not sure how much sense i'm making or if i'm talking nonsense, so maybe i shouldn't have spoken, but i find this subject very unsettling at the moment
I didn't take it as snapping, no worries. It's an interesting conversation to have, actually.
Form is definitely important - however, I think there's a line between writing to *fit* a form you're familiar with (i.e., writing with the intent to specifically create a hero's journey) and writing in a way that happens to fit a form (writing a story that can borrow from and use the hero's journey as a sort of inspiration and guide if it wants to).
I guess my point can be summed up as: bad = writing with the express intent to adhere to a given plot guideline like the hero's journey. good = writing with the story itself as a goal in mind and using things like the hero's journey to tell it.
Honestly I'm not totally sure I'm making all that much sense either. I'm low on sleep and other important things like that ^^;
no, it's an interesting subject and i didn't mean to dump cold water on it
i think you're probably right - what you're describing seems similar to how you'd use a poetic form like the sonnet to convey an idea, you can't just churn out sonnets for the sake of having sonnets, they'd sound insincere
there's no reason the same rule shouldn't apply to prose writing or screenplay
Yeah, that's basically what I'm trying to get at. A form should be used to convey an idea - to create a function. The end goal shouldn't be the form itself.
The Hero's Journey in the hands of a bad writer feels like all it has are those bones. And they're too obvious because there's no flesh there. Nothing BUT that basic structure.
Modern media criticism is basically critics talking about how smart they are, with the work being at most the canvas upon which they paint their criticisms.
But I think that following the steps of a generic story outline in a rote fashion is not good.
Modern media criticism is basically critics talking about how smart they are, with the work being at most the canvas upon which they paint their criticisms.
Hardly. But there is definitely a fixation on pushing a wider story instead of reviewing or otherwise commentating upon the work in question.
That's not even always a bad thing, but it's extremely pervasive.
Well, it depends what kind of criticism you're talking about: academic or popular. But I think in both cases, it tends to be less about the work than about the thesis, the wider story you're talking about.
Take, for example, this. For the record, I just thumbed over to RockPaperShotgun to see if I could find a good example, and lo and behold.
Let's take the entire first main paragraph:
I’m several years too late to the party here (it is too late to visit Dwarf Fortress?) but increasingly I’m drawn towards games that decline to tell me much about how they work. So much more pleasure comes from discovery – oh, so that’s what that thing’s for – than simply following an objective and getting an action or cutscene pay-off. There’s this cold war right now between proponents of formalist games and leftfield games (for lack of a better term), but I think this is a conflict of equal import: games that must be learned versus games that will reward you regardless.
This paragraph tells us about several things:
a couple details about the writer's life, they've never played Dwarf Fortress for instance
their specific reasons for liking roguelikes, which the game in question sort of is, but that's not said here
an imagined and completely arbitrary conflict set up in the last paragraph that cleanly divides video games into two mutually exclusive and ill-defined category
note that at this point you have no idea what the game itself is about.
This whole school of criticism isn't always bad, but this is an example of it done poorly. What does what you think of cutscene-heavy games have to do with 868hack, which isn't one?
Furthermore there's the talk-down language which implies that anyone who likes games with a "objective and getting an action or cutscene pay-off" structure are not so bright.
It's just bizarre and totally tangential to the actual game itself, which is not reviewed until the following paragraph. It's annoying.
also an entire paragraph is devoted to a random jab at Cardinal Quest
There’s a parallel dimension wherein 868-HACK stars a smiling cartoon elf firing arrows at cheeky goblins in silly hats, it’s called something like MAGIC DUNGEON ESCAPE QUEST, and it was a huge hit. What is in here has, once you’ve cracked its faintly hostile shell, is as fearsomely absorbing as the most wildly successful roguelites or even match-3 games. I’m glad I’m not in that alternate dimension though. I like 868-HACK just as strange and creepy as it is.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I just want people to play with the form more. I want everyone to play with the form more.
Tell a goddamn meandering story where the characters move from thing to thing to thing because that's the story you want to tell. Tell a story where all the "heroes" die grand or ignoble deaths or are written out of relevance and some shmuck takes their place and are generally unsatisfying. Do things.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
This move has a lot of integrity and I respect it, but I'm surprised anyone was surprised Heidegger was a racist.
I mean
"Let not propositions and 'ideas' be the rules of your being (Sein). The Führer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: that from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler!"
The biggest deviation from the Hero's Journey I've seen had the original heroine get her memory wiped, forcing her plucky sidekick to take her place and work with a prophecy that's only half right.
A bit overly on-the-nose about how different it is from the typical plot, but it does have the sidekick cutting through a week and a half worth of prophecy nonsense to get to the part where the questing results in something important, which was so excellent.
The biggest deviation from the Hero's Journey I've seen had the original heroine get her memory wiped, forcing her plucky sidekick to take her place and work with a prophecy that's only half right.
A bit overly on-the-nose about how different it is from the typical plot, but it does have the sidekick cutting through a week and a half worth of prophecy nonsense to get to the part where the questing results in something important, which was so excellent.
2. the hero's journey is a tool, not a rule. use it but don't feel you have to be bound by it. equally so, don't feel you're bound to deviate from it. as with everything in writing, you've just got to go with whatever suits the story, which will almost certainly be neither strict adherence nor a radical departure
i didnt mean to dunk on the hero's journey i meant to dunk on the people who are like "wow star wars has the heros journey that shit is so cash what a great movie"
the issue with star wars is that yeah it's well paced and it has nice cinematography but it's all in service of a story i dont care about in a world im not interested in
I am annoyed at the people who see Star Wars as an unbeatable value in and of itself nowadays. They completely miss that Star Wars was mostly regarded as a building block towards better (and to be fair, worse) things within a then-moribund industry.
Also it bugs me because I think, with a few small tweaks to characterization it could have been a much, much better movie.
Like, imagine if Luke was a bit more angry and impetuous. Not to the degree of Anakin, but closer the more grrrrr end of the "moody young man" scale. Like he's basically an ok guy at heart but he gets mad easily and doesn't think things through. Then move the aspects of his Force training regarding getting a hold of himself come more to the fore. Imagine like he starts doing like vaguely sith-y things when he gets angry like the dark lightening thing (imagine him almost doing the lightening thing when he's at Jabba's palace and then catching hold of himself), so then when Palpatine and Vader make their offers to the dark side there is an inkling (just an inkling mind) of "will he do it? will he end up making the mistakes his father made?" and his resounding rejection of them becomes a very strong completion of his character arc and a metaphor for his finally becoming an adult person who is in control of his emotions and impulses.
also a more fiery Vader would have been nice, a Vader that Palpatine needs to keep a short leash on, as a sort of concrete example of how rage fuels the dark side and how Luke needs to avoid that.
Granted, there is definitely some of this in the films, but I don't think Lucas did it very effectively and I really think a stronger focus on that area would have made the series much more compelling to me personally.
I do think that A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are pretty much perfectly paced and written, but Return of the Jedi is pretty scattershot in its pacing and plotting. The consequences of that are what you've mentioned.
It doesn't quite ruin the trilogy for me since Return was so perfectly set up by the first two films that it was impossible to truly screw it up, but I can understand why it would for you.
I cannot view the original trilogy with any degree of objectivity, especially Return of the Jedi. IT was one of the first movies I ever saw, it was the first movie I ever had on video, and I watched it so much..
Any of my old old videos from when I was four are things that I cannot have an unbiased opinion of.
I mean, the whole Jabba's Palace sequence. The robots, the aliens, so much to look at and listen to. The different sounds of all the strange things, was quite enthralling for toddler Rozzy. And Jabba himself is jaw-dropping. For tiny me, nearly-naked Leia was the least interesting part of that sequence, because meh, I see people every day, but an orange three-eyed guy who says, "glooba glooba"? Brilliant.
I should hate the e-woks, but I was four years old once and I loved them then.
I can watch Star Wars (the original trilogy) for its technical aspects - cinematography, visual effects, sound effects - and the music.
The story is just ok.
Also, oddly enough, I think that reading Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is actually a lot more interesting than watching any of the 29,000 films that tried to use that scheme.
Comments
this is a difficult thing that makes me incredibly anxious, you can't flatten it out like that, it's not simple, it's complicated and difficult
but that's also a simplification of course
i'm sorry, i'm kind of not sure how much sense i'm making or if i'm talking nonsense, so maybe i shouldn't have spoken, but i find this subject very unsettling at the moment
sorry for snapping like that
i think you're probably right - what you're describing seems similar to how you'd use a poetic form like the sonnet to convey an idea, you can't just churn out sonnets for the sake of having sonnets, they'd sound insincere
there's no reason the same rule shouldn't apply to prose writing or screenplay
This paragraph tells us about several things:
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Thanks Kotaku
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
i dont get scared of shit
but those fucking giraffes
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
2. the hero's journey is a tool, not a rule. use it but don't feel you have to be bound by it. equally so, don't feel you're bound to deviate from it. as with everything in writing, you've just got to go with whatever suits the story, which will almost certainly be neither strict adherence nor a radical departure
sorry for the confusion
Like, imagine if Luke was a bit more angry and impetuous. Not to the degree of Anakin, but closer the more grrrrr end of the "moody young man" scale. Like he's basically an ok guy at heart but he gets mad easily and doesn't think things through. Then move the aspects of his Force training regarding getting a hold of himself come more to the fore. Imagine like he starts doing like vaguely sith-y things when he gets angry like the dark lightening thing (imagine him almost doing the lightening thing when he's at Jabba's palace and then catching hold of himself), so then when Palpatine and Vader make their offers to the dark side there is an inkling (just an inkling mind) of "will he do it? will he end up making the mistakes his father made?" and his resounding rejection of them becomes a very strong completion of his character arc and a metaphor for his finally becoming an adult person who is in control of his emotions and impulses.
also a more fiery Vader would have been nice, a Vader that Palpatine needs to keep a short leash on, as a sort of concrete example of how rage fuels the dark side and how Luke needs to avoid that.
Granted, there is definitely some of this in the films, but I don't think Lucas did it very effectively and I really think a stronger focus on that area would have made the series much more compelling to me personally.
Any of my old old videos from when I was four are things that I cannot have an unbiased opinion of.
I mean, the whole Jabba's Palace sequence. The robots, the aliens, so much to look at and listen to. The different sounds of all the strange things, was quite enthralling for toddler Rozzy. And Jabba himself is jaw-dropping. For tiny me, nearly-naked Leia was the least interesting part of that sequence, because meh, I see people every day, but an orange three-eyed guy who says, "glooba glooba"? Brilliant.
I should hate the e-woks, but I was four years old once and I loved them then.
The story is just ok.
Also, oddly enough, I think that reading Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is actually a lot more interesting than watching any of the 29,000 films that tried to use that scheme.
(and 'CA' makes me think of California)