I love Joseph Campbell’s monomythic round.  This is a wonderful piece of animation illustrating it.  Watch it.

I’m currently working on a novella with a hero’s journey.  The Night Market’s main character Cory has to leave his comfortable life and travel to a strange place with art and song and things you’ll never see anywhere else, hoping to find a lead to his missing sister.  His journey only takes a night, but it changes him and he’s a different person by morning.

I think as humans, we resist change but often find ourselves in a better place because of it.  At the end of our own hero’s journey we have learned and experienced and grown despite ourselves.  I think that’s why we need heroes–to show us that we can all be heroes and slay a monster, or face our death, or come back changed and different and still be just as human.

I’m gonna go look for my Call to Adventure.  It’s probably hiding in the Cave I Fear To Enter.