Brooke Green
11/09/08

CO 122: Analytic and Persuasive Writing
Annotated Bibliography # 10
Prof. Kathleen Robinson
Fall 2008


Vogler, Christopher. “Epilogue: Looking back on the journey. The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007. 231-290.

Summary:

In this section Vogler chose four movies, which were Titanic, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, and The Full Monty, which used the hero’s journey in a creative way, and made them very entertaining to watch. Vogler wants the reader to be very aware that the writer’s journey is merely a guideline to be followed loosely. This means that not every story has to posses every aspect of the journey, nor does it have to go in order. There are millions of combinations that the hero’s journey could be shaped into, and this is why we have so many different ways of telling similar stories. He also talks about how “form follows order.” This means that all of the context that you have for your story will shape the structure of the story you are trying to tell. You need to choose a metaphor to represent your story because this can help to understand, and explain the story better. You can even use the hero’s journey as an outline if you are having trouble with some aspect of your story. Vogler then goes through the four movies that he chose and looks at the patterns and combinations through the films. He shows all the different archetypes, and the order of the different stages. Looking at the different films you can see how differently a story can be put together, and not all of them posses all of the pieces of the writers journey.

Reaction:

I like that this section actually went through a couple different films and showed exactly how they broke down, and how they used the writers journey in them. It made understanding the writers journey easier, and showed the fact of how loosely this structure can be used, or how strictly it can be followed.


Questions:

1. Vogler said it would be good to pick your own movie that could help you better understand all the stages. Which movie would you pick, and why would this be a good example?

2. Do you like a story that follows the writer’s journey more strictly, or one that is more loosely based off of the journey?

3. Which film that Vogler picked do you think explained the process the best? Do you think these films were a good choice?