The Hero’s Journey is an Excellent Tool for Structuring the Story of Your Screenplay

For all those screenwriters struggling with story structure, I like to suggest using the Hero’s Journey as an outline and determining where your hero is in the story at each of the Journey’s twelve stages. Looking at a diagram of the Hero’s Journey, one can see how the stages break down on a per-act basis. Rather than thinking of a script in terms of 30 or up to 60 pages, one can look at the twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey; with each stage being 5-10 pages, writing a screenplay becomes much more palatable.

Act I

• Ordinary World: The Hero living her normal life. Something is wrong or out of balance, but no acknowledgment of that is made.
• Call to Adventure: An inciting incident leads the Hero to discover this lack of balance that must be corrected.
• Refusal: Believing the challenge is too great, the Hero turns down the opportunity to go on the adventure.
• Meeting the Mentor: This character may already have been introduced, but he helps push the hero towards going on the adventure, often by giving the hero something, whether it’s a physical gift or just advice and encouragement.
• Crossing the First Threshold: The Hero leaves the Ordinary World and enters the Special World, committing to the adventure.

Act IIA

• Tests, Allies & Enemies: The first tests the Hero faces on her adventure. These prepare her for bigger challenges ahead.
• Approach: The Hero prepares for what will be the biggest challenge yet.
• Supreme Ordeal: This challenge often raises the stakes for the hero, and sends the story in another direction. Consider Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is when Indiana Jones discovers the Ark of the Covenant, so the story shifts from looking for the Ark to preventing the Nazis from getting it.

Act IIB

• Reward: The Hero gets a break after surviving the Ordeal. This is often a love scene or a scene in a bar.
• The Road Back: Sometimes referred to as the “all is lost” moment, the hero, unable to overcome her inner flaw, appears to lose all hope of accomplishing her outer goal.

Act III

• Resurrection: The Hero overcomes her inner flaw, thus growing and learning as a person.
• Return with the Elixir: In the story’s climax, the hero wins the day (or doesn’t) and gains new knowledge to become a more complete person (or she dies).

This template can be valuable to screenwriters of all levels, but especially for beginning or novice screenwriters who are still learning the craft and finding their voices. Using this as a template and fitting your protagonist into each of these stages will not only help structure the screenplay properly, but it will also help build drama, develop character depth, and maximize the story’s pacing.