Every great journey begins with a single blog.

Okay so i'm starting on book one of Vogler's journey. His book is split into two parts. He starts with a 12 step program that outlines what he calls the 'heroes journey.' It was only a matter of time before I found myself involved with some sort of 12 step program so why not this one. I once read a critical article of AA that accused it's 12 step system as being cult like. Have I joined a cult, a writers cult? Is Vogler my guru? Does that mean that i'm expected to have sex with him at some point? Looking at the blurb on his books back cover he looks a little like Cheech Marin dressed as a born again preacher. Maybe at some point i'll need deprogramming from what it's doing to me.

I'm not sure of the legalities of discussing a persons work in an open public forum but I remember once hearing something on television about how you can reproduce peoples work if it's meant as some sort of critical analysis of media. Now i'll probably never have more than half a dozen people read this blog but seeing as I plan on talking a whole bunch about this guys book and probably a few other peoples as well let me just say now that this thing is meant as some sort of critical analysis of Voglers work. Word.

Vogler by way of introducing his 12 steps to writing a story says that a lot of his theory is influenced by Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero With A Thousand faces,' which is another book I hope to 'critically analyse' on this blog at some point. So Vogler says that he wrote an essay of sorts based on Campbell's ideas, which then became an industry bible for executives at Disney. The beginning of book one is a revision of that initial essay embraced by those godless monsters at Disney (I don't have enough time to go into that right now.)

Here are the 12 steps;

1.   Ordinary world
2.   Call to adventure
3.   Refusal of the call
4.   Meeting with the mentor
5.   Crossing the first threshold
6.   Tests, allies, enemies
7.   Approach to the inmost cave
8.   Ordeal
9.   Reward (seizing the sword)
10. The road back
11. Resurrection
12. Return with the elixir.

Points 1 to 8 on some level instinctively make sense to me, but for now 9 to 12 still seem really vague and confusing. This will be a journey of learning.