The hero’s journey is one of the most useful storytelling tools a travel writer can learn. It explains why stories about leaving home, facing trials and coming back changed have worked for thousands of years, and how you can use that shape for your own travel writing. It is one of the narrative structures we work with in the Master in Travel Journalism.
Paul Theroux, in The Great Railway Bazaar, describes every journey as circular: however far you go, the grand tour is really a way of going home. A character sets out, faces their biggest challenges, is transformed and returns. We have heard that story many times, so why does it keep working?
This is for you if you have a travel story to tell but don’t know where to begin.
What is the hero’s journey?
The hero’s journey is a narrative structure in which a protagonist leaves their ordinary world, crosses into the unknown, faces trials with the help of mentors and allies, wins something of value and returns home transformed. Joseph Campbell described it in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) as the “monomyth”, the pattern behind myths from many cultures.
Narrative structure: the map of any travel story
A narrative structure is a way of telling a story based on a pattern of events that, in theory, repeats itself in life. It works like a map that tells you the order of events, and it works mainly because readers can identify with the character or with the adventure.
W. H. Auden once observed that it is almost impossible to board a train or a plane without imagining yourself as the hero of a quest. Travel writing taps directly into that fantasy.
In the story, the character starts at one point, decides to turn their life around and ends up back where they began. What happens along the way is the odyssey that transforms them and gives their life a new order.
Where all stories come from
The most popular structure describing this sequence is the hero’s journey, developed by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He called it the “monomyth” to describe how, since the beginnings of literature, myths have been built on the same repeating narrative structure.
The idea of narrative structure is ancient. It goes back to Aristotle, who argued that every story has a beginning, a middle and an end.
Centuries later, many variations have grown from that first model. They became popular in literature and then in screenwriting (the three-act structure, Save the Cat, Dan Harmon’s story circle, among others).
The real shift came when writers began to analyse stories as more than beginning, middle and end, and noticed that character types and the way events unfold also repeat.
The clearest classic example in literature is Homer’s Odyssey. In film, the best known are Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings.
The 12 stages of the hero’s journey
Each stage of the monomyth has its own function and moves the character towards an end. Here they are, in their simplest form:
- The ordinary world: the journey starts before the trip, in everyday life, until an incident breaks it.
- The call to adventure: the incident opens the chance to take a different path.
- Refusal of the call: at first, the hero resists change.
- Meeting the mentor: the hero meets a guide who prepares them and warns them about what lies ahead.
- Crossing the threshold: the hero decides to set out.
- Tests, allies and enemies: the hero faces a series of trials and meets friends and foes on the way.
- Approach to the inmost cave: the hero confronts their greatest challenges and fears.
- The ordeal: the hero faces the biggest test and changes, for better or worse.
- The reward: the hero gains an object or knowledge that will help on the way back.
- The road back: the hero begins the return home.
- Resurrection: one last test, often a matter of life or death, transforms the hero completely.
- Return with the elixir: the hero comes back to the ordinary world with new knowledge or a skill that benefits their community.
Mapping your own trip: travel writing is not an itinerary
In a masterclass at the School of Travel Journalism, writer José Alejandro Adamuz, author of Una vida posible, reminded us of a common mistake: travel journalists often try to write a chronicle or a travel narrative as if it were a guidebook or an itinerary.
A travel narrative goes beyond tourist information. It shares the experiences, impressions and observations of a traveller (a journalist, a writer, a scriptwriter) through narration, description, reflection and analysis. The goal is to capture the essence and atmosphere of what you lived on the road.
The key is to think of the trip as a transformative experience, and to see yourself as the hero of a journey that taught you something.
So, to start writing, take all those raw materials (experiences, impressions, observations) and place them inside a narrative structure such as the hero’s journey:
- Outline the events in a short step outline, one line per scene.
- Cast the characters: who are your mentors, allies and opponents?
- Edit with your own voice, and if the story works better that way, change the order of events.
Try it: spot the stages in this short story
Read the following text and identify each stage of the hero’s journey.
I never thought much about the place where I lived; I just went with the flow. You never reflect on where you are until you leave it.
On the television in the corner shop, they announced a scholarship to study abroad. The only requirement was to travel to the city to sign up.
At first I ignored it. I had never left this village. But the girl from the shop, the one I liked so much, kept insisting I go with her to register, because she knew it might be a great chance for both of us.
I should be honest: I signed up only because she wanted to. I never imagined she would stand me up, and that I, not she, would be the one to make the trip.
For a moment I wanted to stay. I had no expectations of myself or my future. But the urge to get out of that ghost town made me grab my suitcase and leave, without telling anyone, for the place in the announcement.
Only one thought filled my head: if I study, one day I’ll be rich, and I’ll come back to marry the girl from the shop.
The bus took me to a town eight hours away. On the way I met a migrant who soon became my friend. He told me he was on the road to find a better life and send money to his family. I had no fixed purpose, so his story moved me and made me think.
We reached the first town and he convinced me to share the cost of a hostel. The next morning I woke up to find he had stolen my documents, my savings and my tickets, and disappeared. All I could do was continue on foot; maybe in a day I would reach the city. On the way I met many people who helped me out: a woman selling flowers to tourists at triple the price gave me a bed; a truck driver who took pills to stay awake at night drove me closer to my destination; a cleaner at a run-down motel shared her food with me; and the chef of a restaurant for migrants gave me shelter.
I had never spent time with anyone from outside my village, so I felt I was learning about everything: transport, tourists, food, the history of each place. Everything seemed to be teaching me a lesson, until I reached the city. The promise was a sham. The scholarship had been cancelled for lack of funds, and at the registration office a police officer was turning everyone away.
I survived that hellish city for a week. No money, a broken dream and, probably, no wedding with the girl from the shop. I slept on the street for a few days, until one afternoon, walking through the outskirts, I felt a rush of wind beside me. It was the migrant, running from some people who were chasing him. Something reminded me that I was there to find a better future.
I decided to go home, for my own good, but not before stopping to thank everyone I had met and learned so much from.
The trip was worth it, not because of the scholarship, but because of all the people who crossed my path.
When I got back, I told everyone what had happened. The girl from the shop was gone. She had migrated too, in search of a better life, like the migrant I met on the road. A few days later I realised that her leaving was my sign to set out again, “looking for scholarships” in other cities.
As you can see, the stages are easy to find: a protagonist who lives in a village, resists chasing a dream, is pushed by a girl, meets allies and opponents along the way and lives through a series of events that change him, bring him home and then send him off on a new path.
Now try it with your own trip. Write down the ordinary world you left, the moment you crossed the threshold, the people who helped or tested you and what you brought back. You will have the skeleton of a travel story that readers recognise instantly.
Want to go deeper into the hero’s journey and other storytelling tools for travel writers? Take a look at the online Master in Travel Journalism at the School of Travel Journalism. Your journey towards a transformative story starts now.
