Workshop: Challenging the Hero’s Journey: Taking a U-turn from a classic narrative pathway, with Kevin Chong

Part of the Elephant Mountain Literary Festival

For decades, the Hero’s Journey story structure, as exemplified in classic literature like Beowulf and Homer’s The Odyssey, and seen more recently in the Star Wars movies and the Harry Potter series, has been taught as the template for successful storytelling. In this workshop, we will look at who is left out when a story focuses on a single protagonist responsible for saving the day, and the stories that don’t follow this model. Using examples from classic and contemporary fiction, and learning from writing exercises, we will look at how passive and collective protagonists and kishōtenketsu (a four-act storytelling structure seen in East Asian narratives) all diverge from the Hero’s Journey.