Gail Carriger - The Heroines Journey

I have been truly blessed over my lifetime with some wonderful teachers, but Thomas Van Nortwick of the Oberlin Classics Department was one of the very best. So this book is dedicated to the man who got me started on my journey.

Thank you for showing me how to rip off my crown and descend from Mount Olympus okay, that didnt come out quite right.

How about this?

In a typical withdrawal and return pattern, I have come back around to your teaching, twenty-odd years later, never realizing that I was making use of it all along.

Mr V I did not turn out to be the classical archaeologist professor that perhaps we all expected. To be fair, I was never going to pass Latin with flying colors. Nevertheless, words cannot express my profound gratitude for the four years of education you gave me.

Do teachers know they change peoples lives and start them on new adventures? I hope so.

Thank you for being the mentor-who-is-friend on my Heroines Journey.

The Heroines Journey is a separate narrative structure from the Heros Journey. It exists. It has always existed. It is not derivative of, nor sourced in, the Heros Journey. I thought, for a really long time, that everyone knew this.

I was wrong.

Which is how I (a fiction writer) have ended up writing this nonfiction book.

They say that the oldest trick for nonfiction is threefold:

1. Tell them what youre doing.
2. Do it.
3. Tell them what you did.

Truth? Exactly the same thing works for dirty talk, if youre writing a sex scene... or just in life. (See what I did there? Now you know what kind of book this is.)

So I shall tell you, right up front, the basics of the Heroines Journey and how it compares to the Heros Journey. Then Ill provide evidence for those basics using ancient myth and modern pop culture. Then Ill break them all down so you can use them yourself. Finally, Ill remind you of what I told you from the get-go. Knowledge: the best kind of dirty talk.

To get us started on the right path, so to speak:

Increasingly isolated protagonist stomps around prodding evil with pointy bits, eventually fatally prods baddie, gains glory and honor.

Increasingly networked protagonist strides around with good friends, prodding them and others on to victory, together.

Dont worry, more (considerably less flippant) definitions of both of these are yet to come.

However, I have been told not to be coy and to just lay it out there for you from the beginning.

Consider it laid.

Essentially the Heroines Journey is different from the Heros Journey in five significant storytelling ways (also known as the Five Key Ingredients):

The goal or focus of the journey is different. A hero is usually concerned with defeating an enemy or retrieving a boon of great import think classic video game quests.

A heroine is looking for reunification with someone who was taken from her. She is concerned with networking, connecting with others, and finding family.

A hero acts on the offensive most of the time. He is active in his pursuit of his goal and will kill or (in the case of Odysseus) trick his way to victory. His enemy is stasis.

A heroine goes about achieving her goals through communication and information gathering. She is not a conqueror. She is a builder and a general she sees the skills and strengths in others and knows how best to apply them. She is a delegator, which is great for storytellers because its easy to build vibrant, supportive, extremely appealing side characters. Also, this humanizes the protagonist, who is self-aware enough to know what she is good at and when someone else can do it better.

Her enemy is loneliness or isolation.

A heroines definition of strength is materially different from that of the hero. A hero must eventually go it alone; the journey usually climaxes with a one-on-one defeat of his enemy. For him, asking for help is a sign of weakness. He must shed the restrictions of civilization and family in order to succeed on his own.

A heroine is the opposite. Requesting aid is a sign of strength. It does not diminish a heroine to seek and receive assistance on her journey. In fact, the more companions she has, the stronger she is.

(And if that concept makes you wince, perhaps you might consider your own personal definition of what strength means and how the narratives around you have influenced that.)

As a result of all the above, when a heroine has her most powerful narrative and iconic moments, these will occur with others. They are usually characterized by intense communication and unity in the context of sex, romance, friendship, or familial relationships.

When the hero is at his most powerful, he is alone, because his quest is one of self-reliance and solitary achievement against overwhelming odds. His iconic moments will be ones of intellectual or physical superiority over someone else.

A hero, because of his need to self-isolate, has sacrificed too much for his goal, so the end of his journey is bittersweet. Iconography often depicts him alone, with the slow pan-out sequence and a sense of profound pathos. He has either grown too powerful to fit back into the world he has saved, or he has changed too much into a solo version of himself and can no longer exist in a group.

Poignancy typifies the end of a heroic narrative lonely death, hard drinking, a hermits existence.

The heroine is more likely to get a happy ending, surrounded by friends and family, with an implication of continued safety.

The above are some broad brush strokes, but Im giving you the essentials before we tunnel into specifics. In other words, these are the five explanations I trot out at cocktail parties. (Yes, I go to the type of gatherings where we chat about the Heroines Journey.)

One important note:

Biological sex characteristics are irrelevant to whether a main character is a hero or a heroine.

In other words, women, female-identified, and nonbinary characters can be heroes. Men, male-identified, and nonbinary characters can be heroines.

And one note of caution:

We humans have a tendency (once we know the two different journeys) to want to pigeonhole and fit every story we encounter into one model or the other. We like the binary; its simple and fun. Things are rarely that black and white for readers or creators.