Hi Karel,

As I continued to try to grasp the hero’s journey, I was flipping through ‘The writer’s journey’ by Chris Vogler, 2007, with the maze on the front. I got to page 19, and this is what it says:
TO RECAP THE HERO’S JOURNEY:
1. Heroes are introduced to The ORDINARY WORLD where…
then it does 2-10
11. they cross the third threshold,
experience a RESURRECTION, and are transformed by the experience

p.197- Chapter on the Resurrection
Heroes have to undergo a final purging and purification before reentering the Ordinary World. Once more, they must change.

p.207-
The resurrection is the hero’s final attempt to make major change in attitude or behaviour.

I’m still chewing over it, but it is certainly food for thought.

Yes, thanks, that does make sense. Act three consolidates and perhaps internalises that change.

I think it was Lapaglia. Or A similar looking Australian actor.

Who are you quoting again, Josh?

Does this make sense?

Karel..we will simply continue to disagree that’s for sure, and that’s is totally fine, all creativity needs an element of healthy debate. I’m definitely not a genius writer, just another filmmaker trying to carve a path forward like millions of others. Having spent the last ten years focusing on writing and having read all the books, analyzed them and attended countless seminars I have simply come full circle and see the merit in some of it but feel a great deal of this repetitive “cookie cutting we have the blueprint to narrative success” has become so predictable to the point you could set a watch to it as it plays out on the screen or read it on the page.

But when I read this:

BTW: Corey’s metaphors are flawed. When thousands of successful movies share aspects that seem to be lacking in failed ones, it is only common sense to learn from this.

I just feel justified in what I’m saying, you’re flogging an approach that works for you and that’s fine…I’d like to see a list of these thousands of films..because I’d also say that there are thousands of others that follow the same model and fail miserably. Audiences are becoming increasingly cinema savvy, when you arrive at a technique and wheel it out repeatedly, they begin to see the pattern. I’m glad there are filmmakers like David Michod and hundreds of others out there willing to make films that challenge the audience to think.

I suppose you would take issue with this

“Whenever I bring in an agent, manager or producer to speak to one of my classes, they always say they can immediately spot a script written to one of the this-must-happen-by-this-page, paint-by-the-numbers structure formulas, and these scripts never succeed.”

-Corey Mandell https://coreymandell.net/skillsets.htm

Now that I’m spending a lot of time reading screenplays for a private company, the ones that I find the most boring are the ones that are written to a formula, they read fine, everything happens when IT SHOULD..the hero struggles and hits his mark on this page and that..YAWWNN…Producers are looking for the crazy idea..not the formula.

all the best

It was the Corey Mandell article that inspired me to (re)write my last post “The Structure of Character”.

We’ll continue to disagree Tom, and that’s fine. After all, I’m working with a few successful writers who see value in my approach. It works for them and for their audience.

The genius writer can ignore everything. Are you one of them? Like in any other part of culture or life in general, it pays to understand the ruling principles in addition to relying on your gut.

In screenwriting, at the end it all comes down to anticipation. To paraphrase E.M.Forster: “make sure your reader/audience always wants to know what’s happening next”. There are proven techniques to achieve this.

BTW: Corey’s metaphors are flawed. When thousands of successful movies share aspects that seem to be lacking in failed ones, it is only common sense to learn from this.

Then again, of course you don’t have to.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/feb/19/animal-kingdom-david-michod