Before you can begin developing your hero’s Inner Journey, you must focus on his or her Outer Journey.
One of the biggest weaknesses of stories from any arena - business, fiction or film - is the lack of clear visible goals their heroes strive to accomplish.
Simply creating characters and situations, or jumping right into the psychological issues and emotional arc of your story’s hero, leaves your audiences with nothing specific to root for, and no tangible reward for your hero’s ultimate courage.
A powerful Inner Journey can only occur when the visible desires for your hero are clear; when we can envision exactly what achieving that goal would look like if it were the climactic scene of the movie.
In the above passage from Sylvester Stallone’s screenplay for ROCKY, the hero’s confession to Adrian occurs the night before the big fight. It perfectly illustrates the transformation Rocky has experienced.
He has given everything he can, and found all the courage he can muster, to let go of his old identity, that of a washed up fighter barely getting by breaking thumbs for a mobster. Only now will he be able to live in his essence, and achieve his destiny.
But Rocky’s speech also reveals a vivid picture of the visible goal he’s been pursuing throughout the movie: to go the distance against Apollo Creed.
It’s almost impossible to imagine the movie without the fight itself. If it were only about a man who just talks about gaining his self-respect it would have none of its emotional impact - and achieve none of its commercial success.
This shows how critical it was to combine both the outer and inner journeys for the hero.
Most Hollywood movies and series, and most bestselling novels as well, are about heroes whose circumstances and their inner character transform. Their courage grows out of the goals they’re desperate to achieve, and the obstacles they must overcome in order to do that.
Whether it’s winning a fight, stopping a villain, finding true love or leading a team to victory, without having a finish line for the hero to cross, the story is simply about the character’s thoughts and feelings, with little for us to witness or imagine.
The same is true in great business stories and speeches.
Audiences, readers and potential clients are moved to action when they can “see” the struggles your stories’ heroes are able to overcome in order to cross the finish line.
As we experience your hero’s ultimate triumphs, we’re inspired to courageously pursue our own visible desires.
To introduce the Inner Journey into your stories, you must ask what your heroes long for. What is the desire your hero pays lip service to, but is afraid to really pursue?
Rocky Balboa has always wanted respect – to be more than just “a bum from the neighborhood.”
But until he’s given the opportunity to fight Apollo Creed, that’s at best been just a pipe dream for him. He’s given up on what he longs for, afraid to truly put everything on the line, and to leave the comfort zone of the existence he tolerates.
One very common, real life version of longing for a desire but not acting on it is when we declare how much we want to change. We repeatedly declare how determined we are to be - or how much we wish we could be - more courageous, assertive, organized, committed, loving, forgiving, or you-name-it.
The thing all of these desires have in common is that they're basically bullshit.
Because the fact is, none of us really wants to change. We simply want our circumstances to change.
Of course we’d like to magically have all those qualities we admire and long for, just like we’d love to keep all our New Year resolutions. But we don’t want to actually do the work involved.
And that’s because, like every hero, living or imagined, we all have one more, deeply held desire:
We want to be safe.
Which is what we’ll explore in my next newsletter, The Inner Journey #3: What Is Your Hero Afraid Of?
- Michael
