Barbara Seymour Giordano, Writer/Coach and Founder of StoryWorksLA: I clicked on images and I saw something called The Hero's Journey [Author Joseph Campbell] and I was like
you know what I feel like I've heard about that before? What is this crazy
thing called The Hero's Journey?
Film Courage: Do you like rules when it comes to writing and telling stories and you very
much a stickler for the rules whether it's the hero's journey me and rules I
know you grew up in the Bay Area Barry elected myself included yeah you know
yeah rule third I really fought rules because how does it go no I just feel
this inherently I'm just gonna put it down because the first talks that I ever
wrote the first speeches I ever wrote for or for TEDx Orange Coast I wrote
eight of them and I was like what I'm doing you know I know how to tell a
story but I didn't really know how do you get the person's life from point A
to point B to the end right and so I would get halfway through the script and
by the way I did turn around a lot of the scripts in two to three weeks eight
of them Wow so I didn't how much time and I was
working seven days a week and like a I'm gonna figure this out oh my goodness
right and so the rules were I was anti rule really and then one day
I was working on it on a speech for this TED talk one of them and I wanted to do
this woman justice I just adored her her name is Amy Purdy and she and I were
collaborating together and I just thought I've got to do this justice what
how do I tell a story you know we were in there we were doing stuff but it just
wasn't hitting the mark and so I said okay Google let's locate magic 8-ball
let me just show you see what comes back and I just typed in story arc and all of
a sudden I clicked on images and I saw something called the hero's journey and
I was like you know what I feel like I've heard about that before what is
this crazy thing called the hero's journey and I looked at the visual it's
a beautiful visual somebody taking their time to really show me all the steps and
I was like wait this is how I this is how this works I can do this
this is exactly what I need Amy had eight minutes TED talks are off in 18
minutes but she only had 8 minutes that's what they gave her and some of my
other speakers had 12 minutes and you know which four minutes is a huge
difference let me tell you eight is tight and so I was like I can do this I
can cross the threshold with her story this is wonderful and we did it and her
talk went viral and so this was back in 2011 and it was affirmation for me and I
was like I don't know these Hollywood people this way but I love them and so
then I started following that for certain people I started using the
hero's journey and because there are their emotional beats in there and I
noticed that my speeches were following those beats I would just look over I'd
be like is this going the way it is I would find it I would just mirror them
and they could almost cross map and what was beautiful about that is that the the
people I tend to work with the speakers I tend to work with and especially now
now that I've been doing this a long time I'm really I really want Beauty out
in the world and I want my speakers to disseminate that that beauty which they
already have in them right and the hero's journey really does that because
the audience doesn't hear the speaker they hear what the speaker has been
through but they only think about themselves and what they've been through
in relation to what that speaker has been through so you know speakers will
be like I don't know if I can say that I'm like it's not about you the audience
is gonna say oh my god - you know or my mother went through that or someone I
knew or you know and they they start to they hear your story but in relationship
to themselves and so that that hero's journey has been incredibly important in
in in the storytelling process can you give me an example of how you used some
of the the parts of the hero's journey to work with Amy's speed
was there like one part in particular that you really sort of worked on
together I'm not quite sure of Amy's story forgive me maybe we can share some
of it so amy purdy story spoiler alert I'm just saying
okay I haven't seen that okay the talk thank you stop the video now go Google
Amy pretty TED talk and watch it it's only eight minutes and then come back
so essentially Amy's story is that at 19 she contracted meningitis and she died
essentially and then was brought back but she'd gone to the hospital she what
it does it she was so advanced in it that the the body tries to save the
organs and the blood rushes from it so rushes from the vital organs and your
hands turned purple her feet turned purple her cheeks and nose and when it
happens it's like frostbite and so when they got her to the hospital it was
touch-and-go she she actually did pass away very briefly and they brought her
back but it was touch-and-go for a long long time and then in the end they had
to to amputate her legs from the ankles down or the calves down and both of them
and but everything else was saved I mean she did have a lot of other she lost
hearing in her ear she had all of these issues so here she was this story and
she done a lot already at this point you know she had been in a Madonna video and
she'd done all these things but I had to because she'd done so many things I had
to weigh and measure what was important in the story and that's where I had to
trust my intuition and where I could actually look at this guide of the
hero's journey because her life story this particular incident fit perfectly
in it so it isn't a life story it's not an autobiography it's a moment in time
and a great speech is it doesn't try to cover too much it's a very narrow
subject and this narrow subject for Amy was her
life this life where she no longer she had to let go of the old Amy to embrace
the new Amy and we wrote that in there and every time she just for every every
time I say that line I cry but that was the middle part of the hero's journey
the very point where she then begins to embrace the journey that she's on so
even though she go over the threshold right you go through the steps of and I
can't remember all of them but there's that low point in the circle right and
that's where she began to rise like a phoenix from the ashes and she began to
bring back what she learned of course to cross back over and bring the elixir
back to the world which was a speech so it was really about her experience and
what she learned and the struggles that she went through and how hard it was but
yet how she wouldn't change a thing right and so I had to figure out do we
keep the Madonna video part in there because my speakers use slides right the
majority I think I've only worked with a couple who have not um in high
resolution photos I don't but a tional II I let them use text if it's important
to the story but the the images are wallpaper that really helps the emotion
stick so the story will be stickier if the resolutions and the photos of the
resolution the resolution of the photos are super emotional the photos
themselves and she had a lot of emotional photos and so we chose the the
most important parts of the story so we had to take them the audience low to the
lowest point to bring them back up again in the journey where she was resurrected
and that is it was quintessential hero's journey and I don't know who posted that
but I need to send him a thank-you note because I just devoured that I didn't
read anything about it I just used that chart so I'm eternally grateful to the
hero's journey Joseph Campbell and and whoever posted that beautiful
rendering of the steps so she does the TED talk and then what's the response
within what amount of time so this is so exciting because it's a TEDx talk right
so this is 2011 and and she's like okay I did the talk it's been posted it took
like a month before they posted it great and this was probably so we did it in
May it probably went up in June crickets guinea kitty kitty she got
about 20,000 hits and through December and then I think it was in December all
of a sudden she calls me like completely worked up oh my god Barbara what she go
look at the TED talk they had taken the TEDx talk and put it on the Ted page oh
and they don't do that anymore but they they did it for her and so she that's
where you can see it is on the Ted page they put it on the Ted page and once
that happened it went viral and she's people are fighting an Arabic like a
month later it just started going everywhere and we were watching it tick
through like you know 30,000 40,000 50,000 by the hour and we're like oh my
gosh this is so exciting and yeah so she just captured the hearts and minds of so
many people her story and it's it's remarkable story and she's a remarkable
woman just a really beautiful on the outside but equally is beautiful on the
inside
you