A hero is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory and honor. Post-classical and modern heroes, on the other hand, perform great deeds or selfless acts for the common good instead of the classical goal of wealth, pride, and fame. The antonym of hero is villain. Other terms associated with the concept of hero may include good guy or white hat.
Joseph John Campbell was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.
The concept of an archetype appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis.
Tom Bombadil is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He first appeared in print in a 1934 poem called "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", which also included The Lord of the Rings characters Goldberry, Old Man Willow and the barrow-wight, from whom he rescues the hobbits. They were not then explicitly part of the older legends that became The Silmarillion, and are not mentioned in The Hobbit.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myths.
A story arc is the chronological construction of a plot in a novel or story. It can also mean an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, board games, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. In television, the use of the story arc is common in sitcoms, and even more so in soap operas. In a traditional Hollywood film, the story arc usually follows a three-act structure. Webcomics are more likely to use story arcs than newspaper comics, as most webcomics have readable archives online that a newcomer to the strip can read in order to understand what is going on. Although story arcs have existed for decades, one of the first appearances of the term was in 1973 by Time Magazine for a synopsis of the movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle: "He accomplishes this with no sacrifice to the pacing of his action sequences or the suspenseful development of his story's arc."
Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and often specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: the narrative series of events. In a play or work of theatre especially, this can be called dramatic structure, which is presented in audiovisual form. The following overviews how story structure works in a cross-cultural and general sense.
Mutants & Masterminds is a superhero role-playing game written by Steve Kenson and published by Green Ronin Publishing based on a variant of the d20 System by Wizards of the Coast. The game system is designed to allow players to create virtually any type of hero or villain desired.
In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, also known as the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Screenwriting or scriptwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is often a freelance profession.
Kevin Grevioux is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and comic book writer. He is best known for his role as Raze in the Underworld film series, which he co-created, as well as his voicework in the cartoon Young Justice as the villain Black Beetle.
Michael Hauge is an American story consultant, author, and lecturer who works with writers and filmmakers on their screenplays, novels, movies, and television projects. He is on the board of directors of the American Screenwriters Association and the Advisory Board for Scriptwriter Magazine in London.
Archetypal literary criticism is a type of analytical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in literary works. As an acknowledged form of literary criticism, it dates back to 1934 when Classical scholar Maud Bodkin published Archetypal Patterns in Poetry.
Daniel James "Dan" Harmon is an American screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the creator and producer of the NBC sitcom Community (2009–2015), creator and host of the comedy podcast Harmontown (2012–2019), co-creator of the Adult Swim animated sitcom Rick and Morty (2013–present) and its subsequent franchise along with Justin Roiland, and co-founder of the alternative television network and website Channel 101 along with Rob Schrab.
Christopher Vogler is a Hollywood development executive, screenwriter, author and educator, best known for working with Disney and his screenwriting guide, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, from 2007.
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The action takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth. The book was first published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom. The volume consists of a foreword, in which the author discusses his writing of The Lord of the Rings, a prologue titled "Concerning Hobbits, and other matters", and the main narrative in Book I and Book II.
Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles is a 1990 novel by Gerald Vizenor; it is a revised version of his 1978 debut novel Darkness in Saint Louis: Bearheart. The novel is a part of the Native American Renaissance and is considered one of the first Native American novels to introduce a trickster figure into a contemporary setting. Vizenor drew from trickster traditions from various Native American tribes, such as Nanabozho (Anishinaabe) and Kachina (Pueblo).
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories is a 2004 book by Christopher Booker containing a Jung-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning. Booker worked on the book for 34 years.
In narratology and comparative mythology, the Rank–Raglan mythotype is a set of narrative patterns proposed by psychoanalyst Otto Rank and later on amateur anthropologist Lord Raglan that lists different cross-cultural traits often found in the accounts of heroes, including mythical heroes.
Scholars, including psychoanalysts, have commented that J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories about both Bilbo Baggins, protagonist of The Hobbit, and Frodo Baggins, protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, constitute psychological journeys. Bilbo returns from his journey to help recover the Dwarves' treasure from Smaug the dragon's lair in the Lonely Mountain changed, but wiser and more experienced. Frodo returns from his journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom scarred by multiple weapons, and is unable to settle back into the normal life of his home, the Shire.
