For the first time in history, we’re getting a glimpse of a heroine-centric world view in our cultural stories. In the long history of humanity, the vast majority of literary storytellers and historians have been men. But I believe there is a historic shift occurring and the art of storytelling, itself, may be changing.
When I sat down to write a novel about Byzantine Empress Theodora, I followed the prevailing model for story structure and character development known as the Hero’s Journey. For decades now, the Hero’s Journey has been one of the most dominant models for storytelling out there and for good reason. It works. However, the Hero’s Journey has been criticized at times for being a little, well, male-centric. I never understood the criticism until recently. While writing my historical fiction novel, which features a strong heroine, I realized that I didn’t understand heroines as much as I thought. At times, I veered away from the Hero’s Journey and found myself following my heroine’s unique journey.
But I needed help.
What I really needed were the insights and perspectives of other women. With a genuine desire to get my lead heroine right, I opened myself up in full, and I listened to the feedback of multiple women beta readers. I knew about Theodora from the history books but I never knew Theodora as a woman. There were small things. For example, some of the most common questions from beta readers were:
“What’s she wearing?”
“What’s she eating?”
I didn’t realize that so many women readers really liked knowing about Theodora’s clothing and delicious Byzantine cuisines. Oddly, answering those simple questions brought Theodora just a little more to life.
But then there were big things. More intense questions were:
“But what about her daughter? You never mention her.”
“Isn’t she nervous in this situation?”
And when Theodora had conversations in certain scenes, the most common question of all: “How does Theodora feel when that person said that? I want to know how she took that.”
I blew by certain moments that the beta readers didn’t. By simply answering the questions thrown at me, I began to see my heroine in ways I never before imagined. I felt as though I was picking up a special frequency that I never paid attention to previously. I dare say that my attitudes toward women in real life also changed. Unexpectedly, I started to see my heroine’s problems in a woman at the grocery store. I wondered “how she felt” during my own conversations. I noticed my heroine’s social frustrations sprouting up even with my wife.
As a writer, I began to recognize the same problems and themes our heroines face in movies and literature. I now watched films with an added focus and a new set of eyes. A pattern emerged that I never noticed before, even when watching movies I’d seen a hundred times. With so many heroines to watch now, from Game of Thrones to Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, I saw something more pronounced, more vivid, more powerful than mere fictional characters.
A heroine.
Her storyline differs from my boyhood heroes. She faces different threats. She’s brave in different ways, goes to different places, and often solves different problems. And surprisingly, I noticed that our heroines face villains who are not far away but close by—members of her own native culture. She encounters what I have labeled a “cult of deception,” which is a systematic way of being misled or misdirected, even by those she trusts. Unlike my male-oriented heroes, she’s not trying to embrace the cultural traditions of her father’s (or mother’s) past but instead trying to break away from them. The past is the problem.
Folks, these themes are not the Hero’s Journey. When I thought about my lead character, my wife, my mother, my female friends and acquaintances, and now these cultural heroines, I realized that I had changed. Some big questions hit me.
What if the Hero’s Journey is the result of an aggregate world view that has been mostly male up until now. What if the aggregate world view of our heroines is creating a different monomyth? What if the very nature of the conflicts that heroines face, the villains they defeat, and the way they save the world all bear notable distinctions? What if the woman as the cultural figurehead of civilization has powerful messages that society has never experienced before on this scale?
That’s cultural change.
If our stories reflect recurrent themes about the male or female experiences in life, then perhaps stories are a starting point. Maybe we can better hear each other more clearly through our stories.
I’m going to write a series of blogs introducing the principles of heroine-centric storytelling. I hope you’re excited to read and discuss it. To see a brief overview of the core concepts of a heroine-centric story model, click here or you can follow me on Facebook to stay updated.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think that heroines, in general, might have some distinctive qualities that have gone unrecognized? Do you think there is such a thing as a heroine-centric story structure?
Beautiful. I’m writing a brown woman superhero story and her journey is atypical the hero’s. Thanks for articulating ways in which she differs significantly from cookie-cutter heroes.
You’ll have to let me know when you get an excerpt and I can post it!
As a woman, a psychotherapist, and a writer I have been thinking along these lines for a while now and also considering the different form of the heroine’s journey. I actually submitted my current WIP, a story for children, to an agent yesterday. In my covering letter, I mentioned that my main character’s story arc followed the still evolving heroine’s journey. My sense, is that unlike the tried and tested hero’s journey format, we may not yet know where the heroine’s journey will end. Reading your thoughts was very timely for me. A friend sent me the link, knowing it would be of interest to me. I had just finished telling my husband that I was concerned I might have written a limp ending. My heroine ends up defending and speaking out for mankind, instead of carrying out the daring rescue which the hero’s journey might have led readers to expect!
Hi Jessica!
Thanks so much for reaching out. I’d love to discuss this topic with you. I have so much more outlined to support my theory–various recurrent themes and patterns–I’d love your input. I think it’s a topic worth exploring as much as possible!
I’ve been a student of the Hero’s Journey for some time now, and I’ve found it to be a unisex and universal storytelling structure – and to be clear, I use the phrase “Hero’s Journey” in a gender-neutral sense. My observation has been that the Hero’s Journey is as applicable to “The Wizard of Oz,” “Wonder Woman,” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” as it is to “Star Wars,” “Iron Man,” and “The Matrix.”
I agree that female protagonists often face different threats and conflicts that their male counterparts don’t worry about, and that female characters can (and often do) react differently than male characters to certain situations. I also agree that female characters may think and feel differently than male characters about what happens in their stories – but it’s all Hero’s Journey when you get right down to it. As such, I have to respectfully disagree that there is such a thing as a heroine-centric story structure, just as I respectfully disagree with the idea that the Hero’s Journey is somehow male-centric.
I realize it may seem that way sometimes, but I would argue that perception is due to the Hero’s Journey being applied to male characters much more often than female characters. For that, I blame the entertainment industry, which I would argue IS generally male-centric, and is more experienced with making a buck from male protagonists.
However, after the success of “Wonder Woman” and “Captain Marvel,” I think it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing more female-centric stories in the foreseeable future – “Black Widow” comes out next May, after all. But, the actual story structure of “Wonder Woman” and “Captain Marvel?” Textbook Hero’s Journey.
Based on the responses you mentioned getting from female readers, it seems to me that their reactions don’t indicate a gender bias in the Hero’s Journey, but rather a lack of experience in writing female characters for a female audience – that was, before you received that feedback. Clearly, their responses were crucial in your development as a storyteller, particularly for women. (And it’s pretty cool that you got the benefit of such a focus group – I’m envious.)
Hi Shane!
I actually agree with a lot of what you said. I do not think that the Hero’s Journey is an exclusively male storytelling model. Women can and have undertaken the Hero’s Journey. I’m calling the heroine-centric model the “Heroine’s Labyrinth,” and I also don’t think it’s exclusive to women. Men can and do follow this model as well. In future blogs, I outline my reasoning for the gender distinction, based mostly on certain historical realities. I also agree that as we move forward in time, these two models will become more and more infused. Some of the best stories actually borrow from both the Hero’s Journey and the Heroine’s Labyrinth. However, the Heroine’s Labyrinth taught me a lot and changed my point of view. I saw a parallel set of themes in heroines that I hadn’t seen before. There are some amazing distinctions worth outlining and that’s why I want to introduce the core concepts. All in all, great commentary! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions.
Is it possible this isn’t new, but rather a forgotten storytelling mode? I think the heroine myth has probably been around for as long as the hero myth. We just forgot how to tell it. The ones who have pulled it off may have done so recently by accident (the “Frozen” story arc and the changes made to the script as ideas about the character Elsa’s motives evolved, plus the movie’s resulting, unprecedented popularity come to mind), but it could just be our collective unconscious working together to revive it. I think it’s possible the heroine myth may just have been another thing that was taken from women as culture was “modernized” and we’re, together, reclaiming it.
As long as we continue to inhabit the notion that men and women are nearly irreconcilably different in nature and in personal pathways, such a dialectic as this will likely continue on the surface. My appearance alone as a tall, hulking man continues to misinform onlookers, who readily assume a masculine-leaning presence for me in the wide culture. Gender, appearance, sexual-orientation – are these not merely palette colors for a storyteller?
What protagonists must overcome is going to be particular to men or women, or men and women of particular physical, racial, sexual, religious, or ideological orientation, only if the world that a writer depicts is our familiar, long-standing one, or one parallel to it. What if one takes up the mantle – this may not aptly apply to strict historical fiction – of inventing not only people and places, but the very nature of a world culture most divergent from the traditional, superstitious, patriarchal one that seems to inspire dysphoric allegiance in most writers’ pens? If the intention of depicting new, heroic, female characters within the familiar ambits of male-dominated culture is to attempt to subvert male-dominance or, worse (in my opinion), to showcase familiar masculine streaks of violence and brusque indignation and ascribe them to women as feminine virtues, then I don’t think much progress is going to be made in the storytelling realm as it relates to favorable social change.
When writers decide to make fish-out-of-water of their audience, not just their characters, a new dialogue might emerge, that of reckoning deeper issues of universal human nobility and iniquity. What does the ‘Heroine’s Labyrinth’ audience want? By giving name to an alternate hero’s tale format, are we not limiting creative possibilities and robbing the world culture of a more substantial breakthrough than having the women (or the more sensitive male superheroes) don customary capes and brandish the same old swords and guns, all for the simple sake of perpetuating violence as a means of solving differences and entertaining the masses?
I’m assuming you’ve read Jane Alison’s Meader, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative? She addresses the ways storytelling (esp. the Hero’s Journey) is gendered and outlines ways women tell stories.
Great recommendation. I queued that book up already and will be reading this month. Thank you for sharing!
Just curious why you do not consider yourself to be a “feminist?” To me, any woman who believes that she deserves to be treated as an equal to a man is a feminist. Simply embracing a term that stands for equality could be a step towards social change.