This is why you use index cards rather than writing the stages on a single sheet of paper. You can move the cards around to situate scenes as needed, and you can add more cards in case a movement like Call and Refusal needs to be repeated a number of times (as was the case with Titanic).
You may find that as you visualize your story, you will think of some scenes that don't seem to match any particular stage of the journey. You may have to invent your own terminology or metaphors to cover this category of scenes, as well as tailoring the Hero's Journey terminology to suit your own picture of the universe.
DEMONSTRATION OF THE IDEA
Now let's look at four very different films to demonstrate how the motifs of the Hero's Journey keep being re-created with new combinations of the old patterns.
When the great ocean liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York, scraped against an iceberg and sank on the evening of April 14, 1912, a story of extraordinary emotional impact began to form. Stunned news reports flashed around the world, telling of over fifteen hundred people lost, more than half the souls aboard the supposedly unsinkable luxury liner. Then came the individual stories of cowardice and courage, arrogant selfishness and noble self-sacrifice. The threads were bound together into one great epic which, with its powerful elements of terror, tragedy, and death, was retold for succeeding generations in the form of books, articles, documentaries, feature films, stage plays, and even a musical or two. The Titanic disaster became part of Western popular culture, a subject of abiding fascination like the Pyramids, UFOs, or Arthurian romance.
Then, after eighty-five years of Titanic stories, an unusual coalition of two Hollywood studios, Paramount and 20th Century Fox, offered the public yet another version — James Cameron's Titanic. Not only did this one top all the other Titanic-related movies in its production values and opulence, it was also the most expensive movie ever made, costing more than two hundred million dollars to produce and many millions more to advertise and distribute. Director and writer James Cameron's vision, requiring the pooled financial resources of two studios, was so colossal that many observers predicted the same fate for the movie as the ship. This new movie was sure to sink, possibly taking the studios and their top executives down with it. No matter how popular it would be, no matter how fantastically well-executed were the special effects, such an arrogantly enormous production could not possibly recoup its costs.
After all, said the critics who specialize in reviewing movies before they are made, it had so many strikes against it. First, everyone knows how the story turns out. They dance, they hit the iceberg, they die. That vital element of surprise, of not knowing what happens next, would be lacking.
Second, it was a period piece, set in the obscure time before World War I, and everyone knows period pieces are expensive and often unpopular because they are not "relevant" to modern audiences. Third, the structure of the script was considered as flawed as the design of the Titanic, forcing audiences to endure an hour and half of melodrama, the length of a normal movie, before delivering the iceberg and the action. It had a tragic ending, which is usually death at the box office. At over three hours long, it was almost twice the ideal picture length from the point of view of theatre owners, who could schedule fewer screenings per day. And finally, its featured players were not considered big stars at that time.
Twentieth Century Fox executives, who had put up most of the money in return for the international distribution rights, had particular cause to worry. The Titanic story was familiar in the U.S. and the U.K., but not in Asia and other foreign markets. Would the vital international audiences turn out for a costume drama about a long-ago shipwreck?
Well, they did, in unprecedented numbers, and repeatedly. To the amazement of everyone, including the filmmakers, audiences around the world embraced Titanic on a scale as huge as the ship itself. Its fantastic costs were recouped within two months, ensuring that Fox and Paramount would reap immense profits. It remained number one at the box office around the world for more than 16 weeks. A sweep of the Academy Awards, with the film pulling down fourteen nominations and eleven Oscars, including best picture and best director, provided another boost in revenue. The soundtrack hit number one on the charts and perched there for four months.
Titanic fever extended far beyond attending the movie or listening to the music. We live in a collecting society, where the ancient urge to own little pieces of a story can be indulged on a fantastic scale. In the same impulse that caused Neolithic people to carve bone models of their favorite goddess or totem animal, the contemporary movie audience wanted to own a piece of the Titanic experience.
They bought models of the ship, books about the movie, movies about the movie, and movie props such as lifeboats, deck chairs, and china offered in luxury catalogs. Some even went so far as to sign up for an expensive ride to the bottom of the sea in a high-tech submarine, to actually visit the wreck of the great ship and the somber graveyard of its passengers.
As the film continued to be the number-one box office attraction for four months, people began to wonder what was going on. What was fueling this unusual response to a mere movie?
QUANTUM MOVIE EVENTS
Certain films, because of surprising box office success or memorable content, become permanent monuments on the cultural landscape. Titanic, like Star Wars, Easy Rider, Close Encounters, and Independence Day, has become such a monument. Movies of this type are quantum events, breaking through old shells and boundaries, flinging the idea of a movie to a whole new level. These quantum-event films capture something that resonates in many, many people. They must express some nearly universal emotion or satisfy a widely shared wish. What was the universal wish that Titanic granted?
Naturally, I'm inclined to think the movie succeeded because it satisfies the universal wish for meaning, and that it does so through extensive use of Hero's Journey motifs and concepts. As James Cameron said, in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1998, Titanic "intentionally incorporates universals of human experience and emotion that are timeless — and familiar because they reflect our basic emotional fabric. By dealing in archetypes, the film touches people in all cultures and of all ages."
These archetypal patterns turn a chaotic event like the sinking of an ocean liner into a coherent design that asks questions and provides opinions about how life should be lived.
As a story on an epic scale, Titanic indulges the luxury of a leisurely storytelling pace, taking its time to set up an elaborate framing device which has a complete Hero's Journey structure of its own. In this plotline, parallel to the central story of the Titanic's passengers, at least two Hero's Journeys are unfolded: one of a scientist-adventurer seeking a physical treasure, the other of an old woman returning to the scene of a great disaster to relive a grand passion. A possible third Hero's Journey is that of the audience, traveling into the Titanic world to learn the dead ship's lessons.
Like many movies, Titanic is "bookended" by an outer tale, set in modern day, that serves several important story functions. First, by using actual documentary footage of the Titanic wreck on the bottom of the sea, it reminds us that this is more than a made-up story — it's a dramatization of a real event. The wreck of the ship and the mournful, homely relics of its human passengers bring out one of the most powerful elements in the production — that this could happen, this did happen, and it happened to people like us.