The hero's journey is a story pattern in which a hero leaves the ordinary world, meets a decisive trial in an unfamiliar one and returns changed, a pattern described by Joseph Campbell.
Where the term comes from
The Joseph Campbell Foundation explains that Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) proposes a "monomyth", a word he borrowed from James Joyce, meaning a pattern common to heroic tales in every culture. In Campbell's summary, a hero ventures out from the world of common day into a region of wonder, wins a decisive victory there and comes back with the power to bestow boons on others. The Foundation names three essential stages: separation, initiation and return. It also notes that the phrase "the hero's journey" does not appear in the original text, and that much criticism goes wrong by reading Campbell's common elements as rigid steps every myth must follow.
Wikipedia adds that Campbell lists 17 stages, that not every story contains all of them, and that some folklorists have criticised the monomyth for source-selection bias. Writers have borrowed the pattern freely, which is the safest way to read it: as a map of common turns, not a law.
An example
Ottoline Fenn is a lamplighter's apprentice in the harbour town of Sallow Quay. The night every lamp on the seafront goes dark, a courier hands her her master's key and tells her the oil is gone. She leaves town (separation). On the salt marsh she loses the key to a heron that bargains in riddles, learns to light a wick with nothing but breath and a spark struck from two stones, and finds that the missing oil was never hidden, only forgotten. That trial costs her the comfort of being someone's apprentice (initiation). She walks back along the seawall carrying a clay jar of marsh fire, and the harbour sees a woman who no longer asks permission to light the first lamp (return).
Common mistakes
- Treating the journey as a checklist and ticking off stages in order, even when the story does not need them.
- Skipping the return, so the hero finishes the adventure and nothing comes back to the ordinary world.
- Giving the hero a trial but no change. The pattern is about someone who comes home different.
- Using it for every plot. A story about two rivals sharing a flat may not have a threshold to cross.
- Confusing it with a three-act outline. The two overlap in places but divide the story differently.
How to check your manuscript
Write three short answers: what does your hero leave behind, what trial in the unfamiliar place changes them, and what do they carry home? If you cannot answer the third question, the ending probably needs a stronger return. Then read the first scene and the last scene side by side and see whether the person in the last one could not have done what the person in the first one did. For related ideas, see character arc, archetype and inciting incident.
Musael includes a hero's journey template that you can use as a starting outline for your plan.