The Heroine's Journey

For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture

By: Gail Carriger

Narrated by: Starla Huchton

Tired of the hero's journey? Frustrated that funny, romantic, and comforting stories aren't taken seriously? Sad that the books and movies you love never seem to be critically acclaimed, even when they sell like crazy?

The heroine's journey is here to help.

Multiple New York Times best-selling author Gail Carriger presents a clear, concise analysis of the heroine's journey, how it differs from the hero's journey, and how you can use it to improve your writing and your life. Narrated by Starla Huchton.

In this book you'll learn:

• How to spot the heroine's journey in popular books, movies, and the world around you.
• The source myths and basic characters, tropes, and archetypes of this narrative.
• A step-by-step break down of how to successfully write this journey.

What do Agatha Christie, JK Rowling, and Nora Roberts all have in common? They all write the heroine's journey. Read this book to learn all about it.

From Harry Potter to Twilight, from Wonder Woman to Star Wars, you'll never look at pop culture the same way again.

With over a dozen New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, and over a million books in print, popular genre author and former archaeologist Gail Carriger brings her cheeky, comedic tone and over a decade of making her living as a fiction author to this fascinating look at one of the most popular yet neglected narratives of our time.

This is an excellent writing reference for genre fiction authors seeking to improve their craft or for readers and pop culture enthusiasts interested in understanding their own taste. It is the perfect counterpoint to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, not to mention Save the Cat, Women Who Run with the Wolves, and The Breakout Novelist.

©2020 Gail Carriger LLC (P)2020 Gail Carriger LLC

Finally found the Journey I’ve actually been writing without knowing.

I’ve been writing a Heroine’s Journey for years without realizing it. It’s so nice to realize I’m not alone in loving this journey and understanding more of the intricacies of the Heroine’s Journey. I know it’ll help me more as I outline and work on my own novels in the future. Thank you!

A better understanding

I didn't really know what the heroines journey was before listening to this book. I knew what I was writing didn't fit the typical hero journey but not what it did fit. Now I have a much better understanding of how to structure this type of story. I also ordered this in print so it would be easier to reference. Thank you so much for telling us about the heroines journey, it has helped me immensely.

Very informative and useful

Gail illuminates a whole new perspective on storytelling, the suppressed yet extremely popular and secretly ancient Heroine's Journey. As a reader and author both, I found the book interesting and extremely useful, and will listen to it again for certain.

Love Gail’s fiction books love the bts non fiction too

I have loved everyone of Gail’s fiction books. I have a writing itch and this book was informative and had much of the same charm of her fiction writing.

The title put me off, but having read the book I now like not only the book, but the title as well.

When I first heard about this book I was automatically opposed to/offended by it, as I didn’t like what I interpreted as the implication that a female person would by necessity have a separate and distinct journey from that of a male hero. Having now read the book, I am delighted to say that I could not possibly have been more wrong!
It’s not about the sex or gender of the protagonist as we are used to thinking about it. It is instead about the lore, history, and writing and acknowledgment of my favorite kind of story.
A story chassis that can be gloriously Applied to a character of any gender, to create the sort of warm, good feelings stories that are the majority, although not the sum total. of the books that I want to read and enjoy, over and over again, on an ongoing basis in my life.

Thank you Gail Carriger. For not only writing many of my favorite fictional stories and characters, but also giving me one of the best lessons on how to write that I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing!

Color me intrigued

I found the whole book fascinating, even when I disagreed. That was rare, however. I found that the ideas within were closer to some stories I wrote than I expected.

If nothing else, it was worth it to me as an aspiring writer to listen to.

Read at x4 speed good but felt drawn out and Academic

So for about two years now I’ve been trying to write a book and I couldn’t figure out why the story wasn’t working with the heroes journey and as I read this book I realized it’s because my main character was on the heroines journey not the hero’s!! It did take me a couple days to get through this book when normally I can read stuff like this in one sitting mostly just because I felt like there were a lot of examples that I had never heard of before and we’re very outdated and old‘s lol no offense but it would’ve been a lot better with more modern day examples and There were a lot of citing of where she got books and articles and stuff and honestly I couldn’t care less about any of that and I felt like almost half of it was just her telling you where she got her facts from but overall I did finish it and I probably will read it again later as I work through my book and I need to go over the different trials they need to go through and the different character types that before this book I’ve never really heard of although thinking back I have seen a lot of them in movies and books it just never occurred to me what they were!!

Good in terms of archetypes and story beats

I have not totally finished this yet but I am enjoying it. I am a member of the LGBTQ+ peoples so I appreciate a mention of sex and gender identity. What I did not need is a lengthy explanation of gender and sex etc in the beginning. I have gotten that elsewhere, many elsewhere-s and it is important just not so much in this book.

What could have been said is: Anyone of any sex or any gender can write or be a character in either a hero’s or heroine’s journey. That’s all. Instead there was a lengthy quite lengthy rambling monologue about sex and gender that wasn’t needed. If you are already well versed in these ideas I would skip the first chapter maybe two and get to the business about structures and writing.

Great book, unfortunate voice performance

I love this book, but the audio narration was so stilted I thought it was a voice synthesizer. When I confirmed it was an actual person, I wondered why on earth she was imitating an voice synthesizer. The weird robot voice got in the way big time - it was an especially bad fit for this topic - but I got through it because the content was so good.

Interesting content; well-written.

Very interesting! I enjoyed the learning experience but did not enjoy the narrator. Her voice was pleasant enough but her rhythm and cadence were often choppy and mechanical-sounding, which could be distracting. (Mini-pauses where there couldn’t have been a comma.). The fact that I powered through to the end is wholly due to how interesting the content is (and how well-written).