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The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture by [Gail Carriger]

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Gail Carriger

The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture Kindle Edition

by Gail Carriger (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Tired of the hero's journey?
Frustrated that funny, romantic, and comforting stories aren't taken seriously?
Sad that the books and movies you love never seem to be critically acclaimed, even when they sell like crazy?

The heroine's journey is here to help.

Multiple New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger presents a clear concise analysis of the heroine's journey, how it differs from the hero's journey, and how you can use it to improve your writing and your life.

In this book you'll learn:

* How to spot the heroine's journey in popular books, movies, and the world around you.
* The source myths and basic characters, tropes, and archetypes of this narrative.
* A step-by-step break down of how to successfully write this journey.

What do Agatha Christie, JK Rowling, and Nora Roberts all have in common?
They all write the heroine's journey. Read this book to learn all about it.

From Harry Potter to Twilight, from Wonder Woman to Star Wars, you'll never look at pop culture the same way again.

With over a dozen NYT and USA Today bestsellers, and over a million books in print, popular genre author and former archaeologist Gail Carriger brings her cheeky comedic tone and over a decade of making her living as a fiction author to this fascinating look at one of the most popular yet neglected narratives of our time. The presentation she does on this subject sells for hundreds of dollars.

"I'm not sure how you can just rewire my brain to see the heroine's journey like this and then expect me to make coherent, thought-out comments about the text when all I want to do is hold it in my twisted little grip while I shove it at people screaming like a madman and pointing at passages."
~ Author Beta Reader

Gail Carriger uses the heroine's journey to produce bestselling, critically-acclaimed books that genre blend science fiction, cozy mystery, young adult, urban fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and alternate history. In this non-fiction book she uses her academic background and creative writing skills to bring to life the archetypes, tropes, story beats, themes, and messages inherent in the heroine's journey. Part treatise on authorship, part feminist literary criticism, part how to write guide, Carriger uses mythology, legend, and Gothic victorian 19th century literature to explore movies, screenwriting, books, and audience desires.

This is an excellent reference guide for genre fiction authors seeking to improve their craft or for readers and pop culture enthusiasts interested in understanding their own taste. It is the perfect counterpoint to The Hero with a Thousand Faces not to mention Save the Cat, Women Who Run With The Wolves, and The Breakout Novelist.

Print length

324 pages
Language

English
Publication date

October 1, 2020
File size

1820 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The first book on writing structure that's ever truly resonated for me and made sense of the way my favorite stories work. I've thought back to this book so many times since reading it, and I know I'll be reading it again!"
~ Stephanie Burgis, Author of The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart

"I'm not sure how you can just rewire my brain to see the heroine's journey like this and then expect me to make coherent, thought-out comments about the text when all I want to do is hold it in my twisted little grip while I shove it at people screaming like a madman and pointing at passages."
~ Author Beta Reader

"Wow! This was incredible. I am in awe of the information, structure, detail, and format. It clearly lays out the bones and framework of a good book, with generous tips and guidance."
~ Lisa R, Beta Reader

"Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series beautifully blends together alternate history, steampunk and paranormal romance into stories that are witty, engaging and fun."
~ Kirkus (on Soulless by Gail Carriger)

"Behind the delightful whimsy and snarky observations, there is a great deal of heart and soul..."
~ RT Book Reviews (Prudence by Gail Carriger)

"Gail Carriger has the deft storytelling of Jones and the whimsy of Jasper Fforde. It's fun, fresh, witty, exciting, and is full of dastardly doings and an easy absurdity that leaves a smile on your face."
~ Publishers Weekly Galley Talk (Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger)

From the Author

Writers, have you ever come across that moment when your characters just won't act in the way you want them to? Your story is fighting you? Your plot feels stymied? The pacing seems off? It may be that you think you have scribbled your way along one journey, only you're actually writing the other.

Readers, have you ever felt betrayed by a book, then jumped online to read reviews only to discover, so does everyone else? Had this happen with a TV show or a movie? It may be that everyone hates the ending of that one book, because the author led readers to believe it was one journey and then swapped it at the last minute for another.

It's these kinds of pitfalls I'm hoping to help you avoid. This book should give creators the tools needed to spot the Heroine's Journey in modern pop culture wherever and whenever it appears and analyze its success (or failure).

What interests me particularly is theming and messaging. What can we learn from the heroine's journey about how to best tell a story? How can that knowledge allow us to better influence reader expectations and engender emotional responses in our audience? I'm hoping that this book answers these questions and more, read on.

Yours,

Gail Carriger

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08D5ZSNRB
Publisher ‏ : ‎ GAIL CARRIGER LLC; 1st edition (October 1, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1820 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 324 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #104,836 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #11 in Mythology & Folk Tales Literary Criticism
- #36 in Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology Literary Criticism
- #54 in Authorship

Customer Reviews:
475 ratings

About the author

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Gail Carriger

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Gail Carriger writes comedies of manners mixed with paranormal romance (and sexy urban fantasy as G. L. Carriger). Her steampunk books include the Parasol Protectorate, Custard Protocol, Supernatural Society, and Delightfully Deadly series for adults, and the Finishing School series for young adults. She is published in many languages and has over a dozen NYT bestsellers. She was once an archaeologist and is overly fond of shoes, octopuses, and tea. gailcarriger.com

Subscribe to Gail's newsletter ~ The Chirrup! http://gailcarriger.com/chirrup

Customer reviews

5 star		82%
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2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Susan Quinn

This book is blowing my mind

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2020

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It's not that I hadn't heard of the Heroine's Journey before--I had. I'm a writer who's penned 50+ novels, many of them romance, the rest some flavor of SF, and I'm very familiar with the Hero's Journey (have taken workshops focused on it in addition to self study). I'm also a feminist, so I was always somewhat uncomfortable with it and loved the IDEA of the Heroine's Journey, but never found a satisfying explanation for how it worked.

This is that satisfying explanation. More, this brings both Hero and Heroine into balance.

It helps that I've been exploring hopepunk as well, looking for a new way of storytelling that was less violence-based, more cooperatively focused. Hopepunk is that ethos--it's weaponized compassion, consciously choosing gentleness, audacious hope. But that's themes, characters, and aesthetic. The Heroine's Journey is the plot (and characters as well). So it's a beautiful marriage of ideas that not only gives a more complete toolkit for the Heroine's Journey, this book also shows by compare-and-contrast how the Hero and Heroine's journeys are in tension, but ultimately complementary.

Highly recommend this for any writer, no matter your genre, because understanding these fundamentals will unlock your ability to understand the very stories you are telling.

41 people found this helpful

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Jack Donley

Misreads the Hero's Journey

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2021

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The writer clearly hates the hero's journey, which is a problem, since there's no difference between her conception of the "heroine's journey" and the hero's. She views the hero's journey as being about isolation and withdrawal from community (ignoring the "return" phase of the journey) whereas the heroine's journey is about developing connections with a community.
The most frustrating part of the book is the selective reading of the myths and stories examined in the book. The writer argues that a major difference between the two journeys is that a hero voluntarily leaves ("abandons the community," in the book's description) whereas the heroine is involuntarily severed from her community. The writer bases a lot of this argument on the story of Demeter, where Persephone is kidnaped, kickstarting Demeter's journey, but she completely ignores the implications of Demeter's abdication of her throne so she can go look for Persephone (voluntarily "abandoning" her community). In fact, the two events are respectively the Call to Adventure and Crossing the Threshold of the story, both parts of the conventional Hero's Journey. The writer does the same thing with Harry Potter, arguing that he's a heroine because of the books emphasis on community (as if "gathering allies" wasn't a major step on the Hero's Journey) and ignores that all of Harry's triumphs (particularly in the first and seventh books, which she points to as the best example of the heroine's journey) occur alone, something she says is exclusively a characteristic of the Hero's Journey.
I've read other descriptions of a heroine's journey that is legitimately new and innovative, and this is not one. This book badly misreads the hero's journey to imagine two patterns where there is only one. I appreciate the concept of the book, it's mix of literary analysis and writing advice, and the conversational style it's written in, but none of that can overcome the fundamental flaws in the book's thesis.

25 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

I love the heroine's journey and The Heroine's Journey

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2020

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This book is a delight to read, and I say that as an avid reader and moderate consumer of pop culture - the book is slightly more targeted at writers and provides advice on story structure, but I didn't mind at all and just enjoyed being along for the ride.

I loved finding out about the heroine's journey. In the hero's journey, a single protagonist goes it alone and defeats his enemies. In the heroine's journey, the heroine makes connections and builds a network to restore or build community through compromise. It's very much an idea of self-reliance vs cooperation.

Yes, Gail Carriger is very clear in noting that the Hero and Heroine archetypes have nothing to do with the sex or gender of the character themselves. And she sets out great examples by showing how the Wonder Woman movie is a hero's journey while the Harry Potter series is a heroine's.

These ideas are fascinating, but crucially they are also delivered in an easy to read, well-structured, and entertaining way, making this book a pleasure to read. I think it provides some great food for thought and I look forward to keeping an eye out for these elements in all my media. I really think anyone who loves stories should read this book because it will deepen your enjoyment when you see something done well - you'll know WHY you're so happy when the story ends like that.

Side note -- for those who are really interested in this idea of self over community or community over self (I don't know about you, but these ideas really stand out to me these days with e.g. mask-wearing arguments), x + y by Eugenia Cheng has similar ideas of classifying people by behavior rather than gender binary, and takes a similar approach of being very accessible

23 people found this helpful

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Dragonslayer

I couldn't get past the tone.

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2021

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The tone of this book really set my teeth on edge. The author herself calls it "coy" and "flippant", but I would describe it as "patronizing" and "immensely pleased with itself".

This is a reaction I've had to only a few authors, and the others have all been male television personalities.

I skimmed the book for any interesting info and I found a few things but it wasn't really worth the slog.

12 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

FictionLover

Theory and practice: a major step forward in telling women’s stories, and fun to read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 9, 2021

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This book is a much needed riposte to Joseph Campbell’s 1949 Hero’s Journey/Hero of a Thousand Faces that claimed a male-centred monomyth as the über story plan for all people. When asked ‘what of the female?’ Campbell said, can you believe, that women should see themselves as the end point, the goal of the hero’s journey, and be satisfied with that. The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger takes a radical diametrically opposed stance. She has produced one of the most important theoretical discussions in fiction today and trumps in aces and hearts the attempt by Maureen Murdock (Heroine’s Journey Arc) to ‘fit in’ the female narrative to the great windbag’s model (she was a pupil of Campbell’s).

The author has laid out the fundamental differences between How Heros Make Their Journeys versus the Heroine’s path, and you’ll have to *buy the book* to find out, it’s that important – but I can tell you here and now, whereas the Hero goes it alone and often ends up killing someone vengefully to reach his goal, a Heroine on her Journey is collaborative and builds a supportive entourage to help; and at the finale does not exact fearful fatal revenge on anyone. The collaboration approach and disinterest in revenge are powerful feminine traits; they describe two fundamental ways the Heroine diverges from the Hero (adherents of J Campbell please note).

The author has chosen three female-centred myths to support her case: Demeter (Greek + other areas) who loses her daughter Persephone to the dark god of the underworld, Hades (abducted, probably raped) causing mummy to get very angry when she’s given the fisheye by other gods; to get her baby back she stops all the crops growing. Finally a deal is struck and darling dorter Percy spends a bit of time each year underground (winter) and emerges in spring etc to get the crops going.

Demeter provides a convincing model for the Heroine’s Journey (which always begins with loss of some sort of family connection, which having your gal grabbed off the meadow by some guy in a chariot and taken underground certainly qualifies). There follow two more female centred myths: Isis (Egyptian) and Ishtar (Sumerian). Personally I found these two mythical legends less convincing.

As illustration the author refers often to contemporary fiction to show where the Heroine’s Journey is alive and well and flourishing. In fact, The Heroine’s Journey is a terrific tutorial for writers, from an author who has done very well as a fiction writer. She also tests the reader by suggesting very early on that a male can undertake the Heroine’s Journey (and vice versa) using Harry Potter stories as her model (= he loses a family connection at the very start > seeks collaborative help from others to complete his quest/journey/cycle). She certainly convinced me.

Gail Carriger has been in her time a serious academic, an archaeologist where, as she points out, a great deal of learning comes your way on the myths as that’s often what you dig up. She’s also been a successful author of fantasy, steam punk and for this old white male writer, wildly wacky off-the-scale stories – and made a good living at it. She carries the feminist torch (as do I) and has produced a serious work here, hiding its seriousness under an often quirky prose style.

I have some criticisms of the book, however. It feels repetitious at times; it jumps around; the diversion into the Gothic novel and its lasting negative effect on the reputation and importance of books written by women I might have done without; overall it could have been shorter; sometimes the language jars. But she writes as she speaks (I heard about The Heroine’s Journey from her appearance on a writing podcast) and that makes for authenticity. She’s also a very snappy dresser.

And finally, a personal reason for my strong approval: I wrote a novel which, though men are present, the vast majority of the running, the action, the jeopardy and the outcomes are female-centred. I found that I met Gail Carriger’s Heroine’s Journey criteria in pretty much all respects. Luck or instinct? Bit of both.

Buy her book.

4 people found this helpful

Justyna Tenel

What a well... journey

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2021

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GC puts into words some things I was partially aware of, but the pattern of which hasn't really been revealed to me before. So thank you lovely author beast, for helping me figure out, why I like the things I like in fiction, a little bit better. And why I'm still bitter about Tony Stark's ending in Endgame.

Definitely a lot of good food for thought, whether you're an author, creator, tracer of patterns, or a consumer of all fiction lovely and cosy ( or all of the above rolled into one).

I did enjoy as well, that GC divorces hero and heroine as characters, from their sex and cultural gender, and concentrates on the story beats and patterns, and not the expectations of heroine being female,and hero being make necessarily. I found that refreshing step away from the usually mundanely binary classifications.

And the end? The last few words of how to go forward with this knowledge? Made me tear up a little but in the best if ways. Can recommend with abandon.

One person found this helpful

writerchris

At last, an alternative to the Hero's Journey

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2021

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What a great idea for the heroine's journey. Gail has come up with a well thought out idea of the kind of journey a heroine (not necessarily a female) could endure during the course of a novel length story. She draws on the myths of Demeter, Isis and Inanna to support her idea and then applies it to Harry Potter and Twilight. And it makes a lot of sense.
At last we have an alternative, or addition, to the Hero's Journey. This theory is apposite for my wip so I will be learning it and applying it. Thanks Gail.

List-y, not analytical

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2020

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Gail Carriger might write heroines' journeys well and exuberantly, but this attempt to analyse... er... exuberantly does not come off. Sorry.

Hayley Robinson

Fascinating insight into the heroine’s journey

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

As a new writer I’ve read so much about the hero’s journey, but this alternate path has been a revelation! I would recommend it to authors looking to craft satisfying stories about love and connection.

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