Revision, Rewriting and Applying The Hero's Journey

When you read back through your manuscript – and you might even get a sense of these parts while writing – you will find passages or sequences that don’t hit the right note. The first step in this revision is ensuring the manuscript works overall. Only then can you tighten up the specific scenes.

We understand stories because of rhythms we have heard since we were children. These structures work like musical keys, another element of art we have been exposed to since birth. A musician understands the keys, the way chords fit together and the way they progress.

To see where the notes of particular scenes or sequences are out of key, we return to The Hero’s Journey, or monomyth. Joseph Campbell’s master work is not a template or a colour by numbers. It is wisdom of storytelling for thousands of years. When something isn’t working then we can see where the theory might point out the problem. Then we can play with the concept, invert what is expected once we pinpoint those points in the story.

Each point marks a step on the journey that, if your manuscript is feeling flat, can be useful to revisit. It doesn’t need to be done in a way that rivals epics. The key point is that this rhythm is through stories that we all know, so the reader is somewhat expecting it.

At Point Four – meeting the mentor, we don’t need an old man in a long white beard, but we acknowledge the character is looking for a mentor.

In Conclave, at this point, Lawrence has been charged with leading the election of a new Pope and he is feeling lost. He feels out of his depth. He has lost a man who he loved and respected – the previous Pope – and doesn’t understand why he was the one the Pope had selected to lead the conclave. Instead of Obi-Wan or Gandalf entering, the moment is marked by Lawrence in prayer then falling asleep. He dreams of the old Pope in bed looking at him, saying nothing, then Lawrence wakes. In this way, that need of finding guidance is hit – there is none, it is up to him.

It works in non-fiction too. In Moneyball, after setting up Billy Beane’s huge promise as a young baseball player, his lacklustre career, and new goal of finding a new way of measuring a player’s worth, Chapter Four shifts to the origins of this new way of measuring. Sabermetrics, as it’s called, started in the 1970s when a fanatical baseball fan, Bill James, started writing his own analysis and looked for new statistics. The chapter follows those who picked up James’ insight and took it into professional applications. In this way, the origins of the philosophy are explained, hitting that rhythm of mentorship in the monomyth.

The next step – the crossing of the threshold – marks the definite step out of the comfort zone. The declaration that this journey is happening. The first battle against resistance and the forces that would otherwise be a fine excuse for the protagonist to return home. In Moneyball, the chapter marking the preseason and the failures the team has there would give Beane reason to return to the old methods. The book, after all, is an adaptation of how that baseball season turned out. It was the job of the author, Michael Lewis, to find a way to adapt what happened to that team in a way that made sense. Real life has coincidences. There are things that happen that aren’t wrong or right. It just happens. And it’s meaningless. We have trouble making sense of it because it doesn’t make sense. Stories make sense, and that’s why Lewis used this structure to tell the story of that baseball season.

This first appeared as part of the Dispatch newsletter. Join the wire for more insights. Or book a call on the Torchlight sessions and we can apply this to your manuscript as you head into revising your draft.