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My POV
Brian A. Wilson
BOOK REVIEW
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Second Edition
By Christopher Vogler
Available on amazon.com, at your bookstore or from www.mwp.com
If you haven't read, re-read, digested and integrated Writer's Journey into your life, then you're trying to write your screenplays with one eye shut and one hand tied behind your back.
Hollywood is hard enough without doing that to yourself. Get the book and read it.
This second edition doesn't add a tremendous amount of information to what the first delivered. Vogler does provide a thought-provoking preface, reflecting on the feedback, criticism and insight he has received since the book was first published. At the end, he applies the Hero's Journey model to a few popular films; he deals with Titanic and Pulp Fiction in extensive detail, then brushes over Full Monty and barely touches on Star Wars, the poster child for the hero's journey. Why he pulls up short on this particular film, which he even says hit him hard at the time he was just starting to examine myth and the movies, I can't say. Too bad, though.
The 95 percent of the book between prologue and epilogue remains essentially unchanged. And invaluable.
As Vogler notes, the terminology and psychology of this book have become a shorthand for talking about story ideas in Hollywood. The Writer's Journey has spawned many imitators, people who take essentially the same concepts and assign their own buzzwords to them, but the result is only a pale shadow of what's in this book.
Vogler observes that many people have approached him to say that this book helps them understand their own lives, or that they apply it in walks of life and pursuits that have nothing to do with Hollywood or the movies. I think this speaks to the validity of Vogler's (and by extension, Joseph Campbell's) observations about how myth shapes and is shaped by our very real lives.
This is also solid testimony that if you can read and heed this book, incorporate its principles into your life and your writing career, and use it as a tool it was intended to be, you can create work that is original, profound and enduring.
If that's not worth the $24.95 cover price, I can't imagine what in the world would be.
Get this book and read it. If you have it, re-read it again. It's the best.
Keep writing.
BW
LA
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