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38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An essential text for any aspiring writer., 6 Oct 1998
By A Customer
Telling a story relies on three levels of contract between writer and reader. One contract you learn on your own, one in school, and one is the subject of "The Writer's Journey". The fundamental contract when writing English is the meaning of words. I can convey the idea of a tree simply by writing "tree". Because we agree on the general meaning of words, my thoughts can travel through English into your mind. The second level of contract, which we learn intuitively and study in school, is grammar. Grammar is a loose set of rules that lets me write either "George chopped down the tree" or "George chopped the tree down" with equivalent meaning. I can even bend the rules, and write "Down chopped George the tree". But, if I abandon the rules of grammar entirely and write "Chopped tree down the George", communication falters. Grammar is a higher level of contract than the meaning of words, and oddly is the highest level of contract taught through most schools. "The Writer's Journey" explains the next level of contract, the rules that let a writer communicate a story to a reader. "The Writer's Journey" details the one primary pattern that makes a list of sentences feel like a story. Once you understand the pattern, you will begin to see it brought to life in story after story. Trying to write without understanding this basic pattern is as difficult as writing without understanding grammar. Like grammar, most readers learn the rules of storytelling intuitively. And, like grammar, the writer must learn these rules consciously to make the best use of them. Christopher Vogler elevates the intuitive understanding of story to a conscious level, and for that this book is indispensable. How you write your story within the rules is up to you, and is the difference between stories that are merely comprehensible and those that are great. You may even learn to transcend the rules, but understanding the rules of storytelling is fundamental to what makes words into a story. The basic pattern of a story is the starting point for writing fiction, and "The Writer's Journey" is an essential book for any aspiring writer.
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by Joseph Campbell
by Christopher Booker
by Linda Seger
