Rating: 
Summary: Excellent tool for scriptwriters
Review: Christopher Vogler's monumental work is a systematic recipe for success. By following his 12 step path to greatness it will be difficult not to come up with a sure-fire hit that will captive its target audience. This single book has greatly improved my own production speed when working with the Talent Industries teleplay visionaries.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for all writers.
Review: As the sages say, "When the student is ready, the teacher will come." I was ready for this important book, after successfully writing for nearly 20 years, and learned more about the process than in all the courses and workshops I've attended. I highly recommend the book. I'm encouraging my writing students, colleagues and writing friends to get a copy. If you write, you need to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Writer's Journey 2nd Edit includes analysis of Star Wars
Review: The 2nd Edition of The Writer's Journey includes 33% new material including: 1) A New introduction which discusses the international reaction to the first edition 2) New Mythological Analysis of hit films such as Pulp Fiction, The Full Monty, Titantic, and Star Wars. With the phenomenal box office success of the entire Star Wars series, it is clear that George Lucas has tapped into an important mythological message which resonates with multiple generations of film fans.We are also pleased to announce that Christopher Vogler will soon be featured on a new documentary by the BBC on Mythology. The Writer's Journey's impact also continues to grow in the international community as Mr Vogler plans to expand his speaking engagements beyond Hollywood to Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Austria.
Rating: 
Summary: Good analysis of Story Structure
Review: DO NOT buy this book if you are starting out as a screenwriter or you will most likely be lost. However I highly recommend this to people who have written several screenplays and/or already have an understanding of Film and more importantly structure.
Rating:
Summary: Recent developments in the saga of The Writer's Journey
Review: Greetings, fellow travelers on the Road of Life. "The Writer's Journey" continues to lead me on interesting byways, most lately to Mainz, Germany where I conducted a seminar for TV producers at German TV network ZDF. The Second Edition of "The Writer's Journey" is out, with lots of new material including complete "Hero's Journey" analyses of TITANIC, PULP FICTION, THE LION KING, and THE FULL MONTY. It also has a new introduction discussing the world-wide reaction to the book, which has been translated into Portuguese, German, Italian, French, and Icelandic. Next up, I've written the introduction for a new book from Michael Wiese Productions, called "Myth Goes to the Movies" by Stuart Voytilla, which will provide dozens of great examples of the Hero's Journey in classic movies from all the major genres. This will be a great tool for students and writers who are trying to understand the applications of "The Writer's Journey", and will be available in a few months. It will be a busy summer for me. I have left my job as story consultant for Fox 2000 after four and a half years, climaxing with seven Academy Award nominations for THE THIN RED LINE, a project I loved. I am now going full-time into writing, publishing, lecturing and giving seminars around the world. I am consulting with Warner Brothers Feature Animation and will be going to Europe several times this summer for seminars. I am learning a lot about the ancient sacred sites and how drama and storytelling helped people make sense of their world. Something we need badly today!
Rating:
Summary: a great tool for many styles
Review: I was intrigued to find that the framework of the hero's journey worked just as well for the contemporary social comedy I wrote as it would for a more action-oriented work. Vogler is careful to extend his thesis beyond the male adventure genre and helped me see just how universal the archetypes are. I appreciated his including plenty of female heroes.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Resource
Review: I had the pleasure of hearing Chris speak on February 9 at Westside Pavillion. He speaks as well as he writes. He does a nice job weaving the threads of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell into a tapestry that extends the mythic structure to include film (primarily within the realm of US film making but encompassing a great deal of the world). Understanding mythic structure can also shed light onto our own lives. I have compiled an extensive list of resources available at HolisticNurse.com. If you don't want to search all day here at Amazon.com, visit our site. We have done the "leg work" for you. Select a book, and you will be returned to Amazon.com to finalise your purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the clearest vision down the writer's path.
Review: For my money, the most important and clearest book on storytelling in film. Chris' 12 points make it possible to always stay on the path and remind you why the hell you're doing it.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, inspiring description of screenplay writing.
Review: This is one of the most satisfying books I've ever read, and should be for you also, if you have an interest in writing movie scipts. Vogler describes all the main components of story-telling, and how those elements fit into a screen play. I understand that this book is a standard text for screenplay writers.
Rating:
Summary: Al
Review: A Review
A Writer's Journey
by
Christopher Vogler
I liked this book, let's get that understood at the outset. I liked it and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in writing, the written word, movies, television, musical theatre, opera or any art form.
Mr. Vogler put into words and clarified concepts and ideas that I had perhaps instinctively known but never really consciously applied to my stories. A number of times during my reading I could almost hear my mothers voice saying, "wow, I knew that!" a term she was known to exclaim when someone articulated an idea that was instinctively hers.
Now I am not a published author, unless you count the letters to the editor I have had printed in our local newspaper. Writing is not my sole means of support although I do produce detailed written instructions and drawings in my "ordinary world" as Mr. Vogler calls it. So where do I get the idea that I am qualified to criticize a critically acclaimed professional scribe? Is this a great country or what?
That said there are several things that bother me about The Writers Journey. Small things that taken together probably "don't amount to a hill of beans" in my ordinary world but taken together made this learning experience somewhat less joyous then it might have been.
Some here may find these complaints nitpicking or unimportant and I have to admit they may be right. Others may question why I felt the need to foist my opinion on the class. I'll only say that since this is part of my daily writing assignment why should I have to suffer my writing alone. Finally some will find one of my complaints sexist even though I add the caveat that while I endeavor to be a gentleman I am not a sexist. As a matter of fact two of my biggest heroes are my wife and my mother. My wife for having had the courage to bear two sons and put up with me for the past twenty-seven years and my mother who has "put up" with me more then twice as long. I simply offer my observations for you consideration. Accept or reject them as you will but please don't try to label me. In our fast food overnight delivery instant mail (e-mail) I want it now culture we are way to quick to stick labels on everything and everyone. Extend me the courtesy of not trying to label me, until you get to know me better, and I'll reciprocate. Otherwise I'll just figure you're a commie pinko ultra leftist liberal neo-con rightwing neo-nazi sexist homophobic fundamentalist pig. (Have I offended everyone now?)
If you intend to read The Writers Journey, and I strongly urge you to do so, and prefer not to take the chance to be influenced by my observations do not read any further in this review.
There are any number of ways to read a book. Some people enjoy reading the end first and then start at the beginning. Others start in the middle while some may jump around willy-nilly reading in no particular order. My first reading of any book starts with the front cover and finishes at the back cover, reading everything in between in the order it was manufactured.
Hence my first complaint happened before I even got to the Table of Contents. On the back of the Title Page where the copyright and publishing information are located was one tiny bit of information that probably should not have bothered me but that did. Why, I asked myself did the publisher or whomever find it necessary to let me know that they plant two trees for every tree used in the manufacture of this book? What useful purpose did that serve? Was it supposed to make me "feel good" about the publisher or the author and their concern for the environment? What it did accomplish was to make me wonder if this book or author didn't have some particular axe to grind that he would assail me with in the body of the work. As it turns out he didn't and on the page facing that sentence the dedication appeared. Hey, it can't be that bad, I thought, when the author honors his parents. I struggle but sometimes even the simplest things raise these questions.
Told you that you might think I nit-pick. You were warned.
My second complaint has to do with the authors seemingly over-concern regarding gender bias. This concern, primarily regarding his descriptions of the "hero" and the hero's actions and feelings, was quite apparent to me throughout his work. In attempting to be, in my opinion, politically correct. I thought he went overboard in describing the hero and the hero's actions as "she" and "her," especially when the majority of his examples were of the male gender. It was disconcerting to me to be reading about "she" and "her" and then read an example of "he". There were also times when the author would switch genders from one section to another that tended to make the sections somewhat disjointed.
In the preface Mr. Vogler takes great care in describing what he feels to be the differences between the female and the male journeys but then uses the examples he offers as seemingly interchangeable. This somewhat muddied the unique differences he earlier referred to. I was hoping for a clearer delineation of the different journeys.
Finally (about time eh?) I did a double-take while reading Mr. Vogler's "Refusal of the Call" section where he suddenly, while discussing the artist as hero, changes from writing in the third person to the first. There was something else about that section however and I had to read it and the ones preceding and following several times before deciding what it was, other then the change in voice, that bothered me. In the end I decided that that section was rather self-serving and out of tone with the rest of the book. In that section while using the "we" in discussing artists he seems to imply that to be a true artist one must suffer (my word) for his art. He also asserts that the true artist-hero must refuse the call of the "blandishments of the world". This whole section seemed, well, egotistical and out of place.
Other then these three complaints I liked the book. Better yet I learned from it. I don't believe I'll ever watch a movie or play or read a novel in quite the same way as I used to.
Buy this book. Read it. Make some or all of the information in it yours. Your writing will be the better for it.
Al
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