The Hero's Journey

Next week I'm presenting a workshop at my RWA chapter meeting. We have an odd mix in our little group. We have a few authors who are multi-published and some writers who are working on their first book. Trying to find a workshop which will appeal to all is tough. When I was at OCC/RWA the published authors had their own workshop while the unpublished attended a bigger meeting. We don't have those kind of numbers. We generally have about 7 people although we've peaked around 15. Hopefully the numbers will increase, as I understand it, new chapters struggle pretty hard the first year.

Anyway, I decided the hero's journey would be a good, general topic. Hopefully new writer's can use the ideas to form basic plot lines for their stories while experienced authors may see it as another plotting tool for their books. I use it in one form or another. And yes, I do know about The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers and will probably use it some what.

I'm hoping to break it down to a more basic level. Our goal in our chapter is to get writers published. They don't need to theorize on their writing. We are blatant in our focus. We are a genre-writing group. Not everyone is a romance writer in our group, but we are all genre writers. We don't focus on literary fiction or poetry. So I don't want to drag my workshop into the deepest details of the hero's journey. I'd like to make it more participatory.

This is a great site for the hero's journey. It is pretty extensive and explains what and where it formulated. It has the whole enchilada with all of the elements of the journey, most of which I think are interesting but not relevant to what I'm planning on talking about.

For you writers, do you see the hero's journey in your own writing? Are you conscious of it?