Storytelling Structures Beyond the Hero’s Journey with Alicia King Anderson, Ph.D., begins April 10
Ten week class taught online via zoom
Thursdays, April 10 - June 12, 2025
7:30 - 9:00 pm ET (NYC Time)
$175 Paid Patreon Members/ $195 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: All classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
If you have watched any American film made after the 1977 release of George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope then you are probably familiar with the structure and feeling of the Hero’s Journey.
Codified by American mythologist Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, the Hero’s Journey has become the go-to storytelling structure for filmmakers, authors, and even marketers. Much of this is due to the work of author Christopher Vogler, who, in his influential book The Writer’s Journey, popularized the term “Hero’s Journey” for the filmmaking world.
The “Hero’s Journey”—which Campbell also dubbed “the Monomyth”—has been largely decried by scholars of folklore, myth, and storytelling alike, and Campbell’s scholarship is a controversial and divisive topic. The Monomyth has been criticized for its whitewashing, myopia, and cherry-picking. It has also been challenged through the lens of the heroine by women including Campbell’s student, Maureen Murdock in The Heroine’s Journey and renowned folklorist Maria Tatar in The Heroine with 1,001 Faces.
Despite its shortcomings and limitations, The Hero’s Journey continues to be an extremely useful writers’s tool.
In this course, Alicia King Anderson offers writers, creators, filmmakers, and storytellers alternatives to the Hero’s Journey to use when structuring their own stories. Each session will also include workshopping and brainstorming time, with the final three sessions will be dedicated to workshopping and troubleshooting students’ outlines and story structures together.
Over the course of this ten week class, we will look at the how’s, why’s and pitfalls of storytelling structures, including Campbells Hero’s Journey. We will also examine different common story forms, including genre beats and comedy vs. tragedy, alternative storytelling structures such as Native American “Spiderweb” and Harmon’s story circle; The Heroine’s journey, especially when a journey is inward; and Eastern versus Western typologies, including Kishōtenketsu, frame tales, and epics.
Alicia King Anderson has a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. Her dissertation on The Storyteller Archetype explores the responsibilities of storytellers. She is a mythologist, coach, and instructor based in New Mexico. Alicia’s fictional works and fairy tale retellings have been published in seven anthologies.
Images: Flowers and Flames,Kay Nielsen, 1921; Spirit of renegade monk Seigen and Princess Sakura in the joruri "Sono Omokage Matsu ni Sakura, performed at the Nakamura Theater in 1783;
Ten week class taught online via zoom
Thursdays, April 10 - June 12, 2025
7:30 - 9:00 pm ET (NYC Time)
$175 Paid Patreon Members/ $195 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: All classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
If you have watched any American film made after the 1977 release of George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope then you are probably familiar with the structure and feeling of the Hero’s Journey.
Codified by American mythologist Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, the Hero’s Journey has become the go-to storytelling structure for filmmakers, authors, and even marketers. Much of this is due to the work of author Christopher Vogler, who, in his influential book The Writer’s Journey, popularized the term “Hero’s Journey” for the filmmaking world.
The “Hero’s Journey”—which Campbell also dubbed “the Monomyth”—has been largely decried by scholars of folklore, myth, and storytelling alike, and Campbell’s scholarship is a controversial and divisive topic. The Monomyth has been criticized for its whitewashing, myopia, and cherry-picking. It has also been challenged through the lens of the heroine by women including Campbell’s student, Maureen Murdock in The Heroine’s Journey and renowned folklorist Maria Tatar in The Heroine with 1,001 Faces.
Despite its shortcomings and limitations, The Hero’s Journey continues to be an extremely useful writers’s tool.
In this course, Alicia King Anderson offers writers, creators, filmmakers, and storytellers alternatives to the Hero’s Journey to use when structuring their own stories. Each session will also include workshopping and brainstorming time, with the final three sessions will be dedicated to workshopping and troubleshooting students’ outlines and story structures together.
Over the course of this ten week class, we will look at the how’s, why’s and pitfalls of storytelling structures, including Campbells Hero’s Journey. We will also examine different common story forms, including genre beats and comedy vs. tragedy, alternative storytelling structures such as Native American “Spiderweb” and Harmon’s story circle; The Heroine’s journey, especially when a journey is inward; and Eastern versus Western typologies, including Kishōtenketsu, frame tales, and epics.
Alicia King Anderson has a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. Her dissertation on The Storyteller Archetype explores the responsibilities of storytellers. She is a mythologist, coach, and instructor based in New Mexico. Alicia’s fictional works and fairy tale retellings have been published in seven anthologies.
Images: Flowers and Flames,Kay Nielsen, 1921; Spirit of renegade monk Seigen and Princess Sakura in the joruri "Sono Omokage Matsu ni Sakura, performed at the Nakamura Theater in 1783;
Ten week class taught online via zoom
Thursdays, April 10 - June 12, 2025
7:30 - 9:00 pm ET (NYC Time)
$175 Paid Patreon Members/ $195 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: All classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
If you have watched any American film made after the 1977 release of George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope then you are probably familiar with the structure and feeling of the Hero’s Journey.
Codified by American mythologist Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, the Hero’s Journey has become the go-to storytelling structure for filmmakers, authors, and even marketers. Much of this is due to the work of author Christopher Vogler, who, in his influential book The Writer’s Journey, popularized the term “Hero’s Journey” for the filmmaking world.
The “Hero’s Journey”—which Campbell also dubbed “the Monomyth”—has been largely decried by scholars of folklore, myth, and storytelling alike, and Campbell’s scholarship is a controversial and divisive topic. The Monomyth has been criticized for its whitewashing, myopia, and cherry-picking. It has also been challenged through the lens of the heroine by women including Campbell’s student, Maureen Murdock in The Heroine’s Journey and renowned folklorist Maria Tatar in The Heroine with 1,001 Faces.
Despite its shortcomings and limitations, The Hero’s Journey continues to be an extremely useful writers’s tool.
In this course, Alicia King Anderson offers writers, creators, filmmakers, and storytellers alternatives to the Hero’s Journey to use when structuring their own stories. Each session will also include workshopping and brainstorming time, with the final three sessions will be dedicated to workshopping and troubleshooting students’ outlines and story structures together.
Over the course of this ten week class, we will look at the how’s, why’s and pitfalls of storytelling structures, including Campbells Hero’s Journey. We will also examine different common story forms, including genre beats and comedy vs. tragedy, alternative storytelling structures such as Native American “Spiderweb” and Harmon’s story circle; The Heroine’s journey, especially when a journey is inward; and Eastern versus Western typologies, including Kishōtenketsu, frame tales, and epics.
Alicia King Anderson has a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. Her dissertation on The Storyteller Archetype explores the responsibilities of storytellers. She is a mythologist, coach, and instructor based in New Mexico. Alicia’s fictional works and fairy tale retellings have been published in seven anthologies.
Images: Flowers and Flames,Kay Nielsen, 1921; Spirit of renegade monk Seigen and Princess Sakura in the joruri "Sono Omokage Matsu ni Sakura, performed at the Nakamura Theater in 1783;