Fable & The Verbivore

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Episode 101: The Heroine's Journey

Bethany Stedman

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Ep 101: The Heroine's Journey Fable & The Verbivore

This week, Fable and the Verbivore dig into the Heroine’s Journey story structure.

A couple weeks ago, we covered the Hero’s Journey story structure, its prevalence in fiction and movies, and its limitations. We also loosely contrasted it with the Heroine’s Journey story form and promised to revisit it more thoroughly in a separate episode. And that day is today. :-)

Neither of these structures are mutually exclusive, a story can reflect beats from both or one or none of these arcs and still be a great narrative. These are not the only story structures. The Heroine’s journey also tends to focus on defining things by the masculine (external, active) and the feminine (internal, reflective) as aspects, but that’s not the same thing as gender. These stories are not binary and make the assumption that as human beings we each have elements of both the masculine and the feminine within us all.

In this episode, we admit that we’re beginning learners ourselves in this less common story structure. But like anything, we learn best by just starting and doing. The Heroine’s Journey is not as well known, because we don’t see it as often in the stories that are told in our world today. But, we feel that just means we should more actively seek them out.

That said, we cover several stories that you might already be familiar with that use elements of this structure. Here are a few of the movies and books mentioned:

  • Mulan (Animated)

  • Brave (Animated)

  • The Hunger Games Trilogy

  • The Matrix Trilogy

  • The Divergent Trilogy (Book)

  • Six of Crows Duology

We hope you enjoy this episode. Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Here’s are some of the versions of the Heroine’s Journey that we looked at:

Here’s a good description on the Hero’s Journey from Reedsy:

The Verbivore reads a quote attributed to Joseph Campbell in reaction to Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey arc. Here is what is reported that he said:

  • When she showed it to Campbell in 1983, Campbell reportedly said, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.” - Taken from https://heroinejourneys.com/heroines-journey/

The Verbivore referenced the Fairytale Heroine’s journey that has different beats to it. Here is some information of that:

Fable referenced the Maiden’s journey and the Virgin’s promise story arcs. Here is some information no those:

The Verbivore quoted Pia Jones’ Ted Talk titled “The Heroine's Journey Through Transition”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cgaZElnp-4

Here is that full quote:

  • “We need heroic tools that can take us inside. By inside tools, I mean ones that can take us beneath the surface into a descent beneath what we think we know. Into our internal landscapes to give attention and attend to those mysterious, invisible yet natural processes of change that happen deep inside us. And the point of going here? To let go of the outdated, the outworn and come back with a gift - insight, hope, a dream, a new perspective, a new attitude, a stronger connection to our intuition.”

The Verbivore read a paraphrase of a quote from Abraham Maslow. Here is the actual quote and the article she’s reference:

  • “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

We consulted many resources while prepping for this episode, here are a few:

Books Mentioned:

Movies Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)