Does the Hero’s Journey Still Work? How to Modernize the Monomyth for 2025

The Hero’s Journey built some of the most beloved stories in modern history. If your villain monologues, your hero resists the call, and your mentor sacrifices themselves right on cue, your reader may already be five steps ahead.

And yet, the monomyth endures. It continues to shape blockbuster franchises, bestselling novels, and even successful ad campaigns. That is because it works best when you make it feel personal, fresh, and intentional. If you feel boxed in by traditional templates, this guide will show you how to modernize the Hero’s Journey for 2025 while keeping its emotional core.

Why Some Writers Are Moving Beyond the Hero’s Journey

Common Critiques of the Monomyth

The monomyth often centers a lone protagonist pursuing an individual goal. This structure can leave little space for ensemble storytelling or stories based on community, restoration, or nuance. Critics also point out how often it defaults to a masculine-coded path of conquering, resisting, and returning.

When the same structure repeats across media, especially in fantasy and sci-fi, it can make new stories feel overly familiar. Readers crave emotional originality, not just structural reliability.

Is It Too Predictable in 2025?

Streaming platforms, serialized content, and genre saturation have trained audiences to expect certain beats. If they can predict your inciting incident and midpoint crisis before your protagonist leaves the ordinary world, the emotional payoff may fall flat.

Writers in 2025 should know that predictability sneaks in when you treat story structure like IKEA instructions: follow every step exactly and you’ll end up with something functional, but no one’s going to cry over it. The Hero’s Journey still has the juice, but only if you treat it like a stage and not a paint-by-numbers kit.

When the Hero’s Journey Still Works

Emotional Clarity

One thing the Hero’s Journey does well is create a clear emotional arc. The departure, initiation, and return framework offers a digestible rhythm that helps readers connect. It works especially well in stories where the protagonist undergoes deep internal change.

Framing Internal Growth

If you strip away the dragons and dark towers, the journey still functions as a map of transformation. It excels when you use it to illustrate a shift in self-image, relationships, or values. For creators writing character-driven fiction or personal storytelling, that scaffolding can be invaluable.

For a full explanation on the Hero’s Journey, check out my explainer article here!

How to Subvert or Modernize the Hero’s Journey

Flipping the Roles

Shift the mentor to a peer, the antagonist to a belief system, or the hero to a group. When roles stop being fixed, you open space for complexity. This can add moral ambiguity or reflect modern questions around identity, power, and change.

Playing with Sequence or Outcome

Try opening on the resurrection moment and work backward. Or let the call to adventure go unanswered. These techniques let you keep the structure but unsettle the pacing in a way that keeps readers curious.

Introducing Collective or Anti-Hero Narratives

A single protagonist does not need to carry every story. Consider collective protagonists or anti-hero arcs that challenge the journey itself. Shows like The Bear or Succession succeed because their arcs feel emotional, surprising, and earned—even without chosen ones or swords.

Alternative Structures to Explore

Kishōtenketsu

A four-act structure popular in East Asian storytelling. Kishōtenketsu separates story progression from conflict. It introduces a twist in the third act and invites the audience to find meaning through contrast rather than resolution. Great for slice-of-life, meditative, or surreal narratives.

Fichtean Curve

Instead of a single big climax, the Fichtean Curve builds story through a series of escalating crises. This works well for thrillers, mysteries, and tightly wound dramas.

Dan Harmon’s Story Circle

Dan Harmon, showrunner of Community and Rick and Morty, uses his own structure called the Story Circle. It's basically a simplified version of the Hero’s Journey with a modern edge. Harmon distills the arc into eight steps focused on psychological need and return. He's even literalized this structure in episode of Rick and Morty called "Never Ricking Morty" where the main characters are stuck on a train that perpetually loops through the cycles. 

Keep the Heart, Lose the Formula

Look the truth is, in the year of our lord [INSERT CURRENT YEAR HERE], you can write however you want. But the reason you're here is because, presumably, you tried that, and it wasn't working. So if you're working on something and loving the process, great, you can ignore this. But if you ever get stuck, or if what you're writing just isn't connecting with your readers, come back to monomyth. 

Truly great, successful pieces of writing come when you fuse your personal sauce with a structure digestible by the masses. And guess what? Western audiences have been fed on stories based on the Hero's Journey for thousands of years, so it's a pretty safe bet it will help. 

For more tools, check out my personal guide on how to use the Hero’s Journey to outline a story and start writing a book.