Impulse

I like to learn by doing rather than by tak­ing classes. I made an excep­tion, though, for Brian McDonald’s story struc­ture class at the Richard Hugo House. In our last class, Brian pointed out that all sto­ries have the same seven parts: “Once upon a time… and every day… until one day… Because of this… and because of this… until finally… and ever since…” Even with the blanks empty — thus cre­at­ing a story about noth­ing at all — it’s still a sat­is­fy­ing story. After class, I wan­dered over to a local Tully’s after class to catch up on some read­ing and hap­pened across Pop Occulture’s sum­mary of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Campbell’s arche­type fol­lows Brian’s struc­ture exactly. From Pop Occulture: [my bits in brackets]

‘

That at the begin­ning of the jour­ney, [once upon a time] the hero’s world is sta­ble, if incom­plete. [and every day] Their exist­ing life is their story-system. [until one day] Some new con­tent presents itself which can­not be suc­cess­fully inte­grated into the exist­ing story-system. ie, it is seen as an enemy or as a threat. In order to com­bat this threat [because of this], the indi­vid­ual is taken out­side the realm of his story-system. That is, he goes on the hero’s jour­ney. In so doing, he leaves his nor­mal realm, and [because of this] encoun­ters var­i­ous psy­chic tri­als and aids which serve to trans­form his thinking-emotional processes enough so that he may inte­grate the new con­tent. At the con­clu­sion of his quest, when [until finally] he “van­quishes the mon­ster” it means that he releases it from its form. By releas­ing it from its form, that of an enemy, it then becomes absorbed into his sys­tem of knowl­edge as a whole. The boon which he then gains is a trans­formed ver­sion of the mon­ster itself. It has been trans­formed from a mon­ster, which has only a destruc­tive role in his story-system to that of a trea­sure, which has ben­e­fi­cial results for the world he exists in. He can then return to his story-system, but [and ever since] it will have been changed by his indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences, and his final inte­gra­tion with the out­side content.

I snorted my hot choco­late when I read how per­fectly the two story sys­tems match. As I cleaned my drink off the table, I began to pon­der: Joseph Campbell asserted that the hero’s jour­ney is the one true story — all the other sto­ries you’ve heard are just riffs on this theme. There’s a whole lot of debate about this, some agree­ing with Campbell, some say­ing that there are sev­eral other arche­types. Though I haven’t researched it, I sus­pect the heroine’s jour­ney is dif­fer­ent. Still, maybe there is a lit­tle truth in Campbell’s asser­tion, but it’s not the story that is uni­ver­sal, it’s the struc­ture of the story that’s uni­ver­sal. Perhaps we’re all just hard-wired to respond to that form as English speak­ers are hard-wired for iambs and Japanese really works in 5s & 7s. It’s the pat­tern not the con­tent. Stick any char­ac­ters, heroic jour­ney or no, on top of that same struc­ture, and we’ll enjoy it just the same.

Related posts:

1. What makes a story?
2. Invisible Ink blog
3. The per­fect story
4. Story time!
5. I am pow­ered by Chocolate Chip Cookies