Know these two powerful story archetypes
The archetype you choose will change the meaning of the story
Inspire your audience to become their own Heroes
Although I know several great writers, I know very few great storytellers.
Because a story is a particular type of writing that emphasizes an emotional arc of challenge, personal growth, triumph or tragedy, writing a story is a different experience (for the writer) than journalism, or technical writing, or ad copy. To create an emotional arc for the characters, many writers must experience the negative emotions for themselves, and this is why great story-telling is so difficult — because it requires the storyteller to be vulnerable in ways that most writers are unwilling to experience.
Nonetheless, there’s lots of great advice for story writers and most of it you’ve heard already, whether it’s “good stories always have conflict,” or “torture your protagonist.” For example, one of the most successful group of storytellers is at the computer animation movie studio Pixar, and they’ve published ’22 Rules for Storytelling,’ in case you want to know how they do it. But none of Pixar’s rules describe the essential difference between the two most popular story archetypes:
The Hero’s Journey, and
The World The Way It Is, The World The Way It Could Be.
Hero’s Journey
One of the most famous and powerful story archetypes has been described by Joseph Campbell as The Hero’s Journey. There are already lots of good online resources that describe it, but for the sake of convenience, I’ll recap it briefly here.
There are two “worlds” in the Hero’s Journey: the familiar and the unfamiliar. The journey describes the Hero’s departure from the familiar world, into the unfamiliar, and back again.
In the archetype, the Hero is motivated to leave the familiar world by a Call to Adventure. At first, the Hero declines this Call and the effect is to increase the attachment between the audience and the characters, and increase the dramatic tension in the story. Nonetheless, circumstances beyond the Hero’s control thrust the Hero into the unfamliar world without a choice. There, they will meet a mentor who gives them the secret knowledge necessary to overcome their challenges. In doing so, the Hero is transformed. Finally, they return to the familiar world as a changed (presumably better) person.
For my students, the most popular example of the Hero’s Journey archetype is Star Wars, and in particular Episode 4 — the original Star Wars movie — in which Luke Skywalker must leave the familiar world of Tatooine in favor of the unfamiliar world offered by the Rebel Alliance. The mentor is Obi Wan Kenobi, the secret knowledge is the Force, and you know the rest.
However, for my generation, the better illustration of the Hero’s Journey archetype is The Wizard of Oz, originally released in 1939, but replayed with religious reverance once a year on every childhood television in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. If you recall, Dorothy Gale is an orphan (like Luke Skywalker) living with her elderly Aunt and Uncle in rural Kansas. Frustrated by feeling overlooked and threatened by the neighbor Miss Gulch, she is determined to run away from home.
In the the countryside, she meets Professor Marvel.
Although it seems that Dorothy has willingly accepted the call, and that Professor Marvel is the Mentor, the encounter changes Dorothy’s mind about running away. Here’s she refuses the call and rushes home.
But events beyond her control, a torndado, sweep her up and carry her unwilling into a new, unfamiliar, undiscovered world “over the rainbow.” In one of the most famous scenes of 20th century cinema, Dorothy takes tenative steps towards the front door of her windswept farmhouse until, with her back to the audience, she slowly opens the door to reveal the stark contrast between her black & white familiar world and the Technicolor world of Oz.
You probably know the rest of that story, too. Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, who all help her defeat the Wicked Witch. However, when she brings the witche’s broomstick to Wizard, he reneges on his promise to return her to familiar Kansas.
According to Steven Pressfield (Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh!t, 2016) all great Heroes reach what a moment in the story he call “All is lost.”
It is the emotional nadir, at which the Hero’s failure seems certain and death is imminent. In a great story, it is at that moment when the Mentor returns to inspire the Hero to overcome the final challenge.
In Star Wars, that moment comes for Luke when his computer-aided, first run at the Death Star fails to find its mark. Dejected, Luke must risk his life again at a second chance.
It is midway through his second attempt when Obi Wan Kenobi speaks to him from beyond the grave and delivers perhaps the most famous line in all of Hollywood cinema: “Use the Force, Luke.”
The key to the Hero’s Journey is to create a Hero who is likable and identifiable to the audience. When they identify with the Hero, they live the adventure vicariously thru him, and experience the same emotions and triumph that the Hero experiences — albeit without the possibility of existential threat.
Thus, the Hero’s Journey archetype gets its power by tempting the audience to consider that the possibility of personal growth may exist inside themselves, without actually challenging the audience to the risks that only a true Hero must take.
Autobiography and the Hero’s Journey
Steve Jobs was a great storyteller. In his famous commencement speech at Stanford University, he told three stories from his own life.
His first story describes his separation from his biological Mother who put him up for adoption, and his rejection by the first couple who had selected him. The adoption agency, in a rush to place newborn little Steve who had been rejected by his first set of adoptive parent, broke their promise to the biological Mother and placed infant Steve with a second couple who had no college education.
His Mother only signed the adoption papers after extracting a promise from the uneducated couple that they would send little Steve to college when he grew up.
They promised, and when the day came for Steve to enroll, he chose the most expensive college on the West coast — one he knew his adoptive parents could not afford.
They kept their promise, anyway.
But Steve never finished college. He dropped out before completing the degree his biological Mother wanted him to earn.
As he describes it, his decision to drop out of Reed College was the moment he left his familiar world, freeing him up to “drop in” on the unfamiliar classes that were unrelated to his graduation requirements. He emerged from his adventure in the unfamiliar world as a changed man, and as a consequence of his adventure, typesetting and word processing on computers were changed forever.
His second story describes the second most important rejection of his life, being fired from Apple Computer. He describes the experience as “devastating,” until “something slowly began to dawn on me.” He decided to start over, and “enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” Again, having been forced from his familiar world, he describes seeking mentorship from David Packard and Bob Noyce. Instead of running away, he finally accepts the new Call to Adventure and founded Next and Pixar. The challenges he faced there transformed him as a person. Having overcome the challenges there, he eventually returned to the familiar world of Apple Computer a changed man and he (again) changed the world of computing forever.
His third story has no such triumphant return. It is an example of the Hero’s Journey in tragedy, although he doesn’t tell the story in that way. At the time of his speech Jobs was living with pancreatic cancer. Although he was convinced that he had overcome his fatal diagnosis and returned to the familiar world a changed and healthy man, the cancer killed him six years later.
Although Jobs gives direct advice to his audience when he implores them “don’t waste (your limited time) living someone else’s life… follow your heart and intuition, they somehow know what you want to become…” there is little in Jobs’ speech that suggests a Call to Adventure specific to the graduates. The story is moving, not because we have experienced his rejection, his impoverishment, or his despair, but because we live his Hero’s Journey vicariously through him. And because we admire Jobs and we sense just enough of ourselves in him to identify with him, we experience the powerful emotions of his journey without having to accept his risks ourselves.
The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be
There is another powerful story archetype called The World the Way It Is/The World the Way it Could Be. It also creates two different worlds — one familiar by the fact that it is the current experience of the audience, and the other unfamiliar in that it springs from the imagination of the storyteller.
The most popular example of this story archetype may be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech I Have A Dream.
Listen to how Dr. King describes the current condition of the American Negro — “five score” years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves. He describes the current condition of the world in 1963.
“One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation… . He finds himself an exile in his own land” he says.
King contrasts The World The Way It Is with The World The Way it Could Be by toggling back and forth between them in his speech. For example, in his poetic verse, he contrast the “… the dark and desolate valley of segregation…” with “… the sunlit path of racial justice.”
And finally, he completes the transition to the unfamiliar World the Way It Could Be in the most famous phrases in his speech:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Who Is the Hero?
The principal difference between the two story archetypes is the position of the Hero.
The Hero’s Journey is effective when the audience identifies with the Hero. By contrast, The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be is effective when it challenges the audience to become the Hero themselves.
Notice that Dr. King prepares his audience for his Dream by acknowledging that his audience is, at the moment, already in the unfamiliar world of Washington DC. He tells his audience that he recognizes they are the “veterans of creative suffering.”
Thus, they have already accepted the Call to Adventure. They need only return to their familiar world as changed men and women to complete the Hero’s journey.
He challenges them to do just that when he says:
Go back to Mississippi.
Go back to Alabama.
Go back to South Carolina.
Go back to Georgia.
Go back to Louisiana.
Go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Contrast Steve Jobs “three stories from my life” with Dr. King’s “Dream.” The first is entertaining and may be inspiring towards some ambiguous Call to Action like “do what you love.”
But the second is specific and it imposes risks upon the audience.
Therein lies the difference in the two most popular and powerful story archetypes. At its best, the Hero’s Journey entertains us with another’s journey, while The World the Way It Is/The World the Way It Could Be inspires us to go on our own.
The iPhone As a Hero’s Journey?
It was this second story archetype that Jobs used to launch the iPhone in 2007.
He labored over his description of the World The Way It Is, describing all the failings of the existing phones that dominated the market at that time.
“The problem is,” he said, “that they’re not that easy to use and they’re not that smart.”
Jobs toggles back and forth between the two worlds, like King, by hinting at the details of the unfamiliar world represented by the new phone.
“What we’re going to do,” Jobs says at about 6:33 in the video, “is get rid of all these buttons and just make a giant screen.”
He eventually toggles back and forth between the two worlds, showing the competition, showing the iPhone, going back to the competition, and back to the iPhone.
Finally, at the end of his speech he announces that he his “dropping the ‘computer’ from our name.” The change symbolizes his commitment to the unfamiliar world. It is the allegorical equivalent of Dorothy Gale’s realization that she “has a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Jobs convinced his audience that the world had changed, that Apple was changing it.
Every single one of them wanted it — not just the vicarious experience of the emotions of Jobs journey, but to pass through the metaphorical farmhouse door into the unfamiliar world of color with him.