The Hero's Journey

Try and apply this to your own life.

What happens from when Hero begins their adventure to when they end it (or when it ends them). In most cases, this is the entire story, but there might be some instances of Before It All Happened and 7 Years Later that tell stories in the past and future respectively, but those are usually separate from the core story.

Steps of The Hero's Journey
Once Upon A Time - We get introduced to The Hero, their allies, some secondary characters, and possibly The Villain but not off-the-bat like with everyone else. We're also shown the world, local areas, and recurring locations that will be important later on.

Call To Action - After our opening is over, it's time to have Hero and friends get into action and the journey officially begins. Something or someone gets them into traveling towards The Villain and their lair in hopes to end their reign of evil.

Threshold Crossover - This is when Hero and their party reach the boundaries of what they know and what they don't. This can lead into an actual new world or just a new area of their planet they've never seen before. We meet The Mentor here as well as the first baddie that gets in the way of the good guys. Note that this is the last of the familiar world we'll see until the end of the journey.

Path of Pain - The hardships Hero and Co. endure before meeting up with Villain or someone similar. This is a large chunk of The Story.

Preclimax - Finally, after all of the challenges Hero and friends have went through, they're at the entryway of Villain's Lair. Someone drops a Badass Line or Big Speech, then everybody moves forward inside. There are some final challenges while moving on, but they're pretty much nothing now since Hero has their Cool-Ass Weapon or Mentor's Power. When all that's done with, we reach what everything thus far has been about: the...

Climax - The Big Fight is just Mere Moment Away, but we have The Villain and The Hero have a bit of a talk first. Then we get into the fight. Since stories aren't all supposed to end the same, here is a list of possible endings.

If Hero Wins
If Hero is the one to be victorious after The Big Fight (by far the most common outcome), we get these endings:


 * Happy Ending
 * Alt Happy Ending
 * Sudden Corruption, Hero Malfunction
 * Great Going, Hero
 * All Just A Dream
 * All Just A Dream In A Dream
 * All Just A Dream In A Nightmare
 * All Just A Story

If Villain Wins
If Villain is the one to be victorious, we get these endings:


 * Unhappy Ending
 * Alt Unhappy Ending
 * Hero Gets Bus'd

Alternate Endings
These are different endings for when neither Hero nor Villain wins:


 * Everybody's A Loser
 * Everyone Dies Anyway
 * Third Guy Wins

Postclimax - When The Big Fight has been The Big Fought (if Hero wins and it's a good ending), Hero wins The Grand Prize, goes home, and celebrates.