Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer’s Journey, has worked in Hollywood for many years as a story analyst. When Vogler was at Disney, he began to apply Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey to his work. Campbell had travelled the world studying culture’s mythological stories and discovered an 18-part story structure they all had in common. Vogler pulled insights from Campbell’s work and simplified the steps for screenplay analysis to 12.

Campbell traditionally displayed The Hero’s Journey in a circle. In the chart on the next page, starting at the top of the wheel, move clockwise through each step. Vogler’s stages of The Hero’s Journey are as follows: (1) The journey begins with the introduction of the Heroes in the Ordinary World, where (2) they are presented with the Call to Adventure. (3) Their initial reluctance may lead to Refusal of the Call, but they (4) receive encouragement from a Mentor to (5) cross over the Threshold and gain entry into the Special World. (6) There, they encounter Tests, Allies, and Enemies. (7) They Approach the Inmost Cave where (8) they must endure an Ordeal. (9) The Reward is seized and (10) they are pursued as they follow The Road Back to the Ordinary World. (11) They are transformed by the experience of a Resurrection and (12) return triumphant with the Elixir—an item of great value that will benefit the Ordinary World.⁶

Heroes endure physical activities (outer journey), but also experience internal transformations to their hearts and minds at each stage. Then, the outermost ring uses Star Wars: Episode IV as an example, showing the outer journey in gray text and the inner journey in green.

An important insight emerges when The Hero’s Journey is represented in a circle: it creates a clear division between the ordinary world and the special world (signified by the gray dotted line). There is a moment in every story where the character overcomes reluctance to change, leaves the ordinary world, and crosses the threshold into an adventure in a special world.

In the special world, the hero gains skills and insights—and then brings them back to the ordinary world as the story resolves.

A good presentation is a satisfying, complete experience. You might cry, laugh, or do both, but you’ll also feel you’ve learned something about yourself.

Presentations use insights from myths and movies in several ways:

• There’s a likeable yet flawed hero attending your presentation.
• A presentation should take the audience on a journey from their ordinary world into your special world gaining new insights and skills from your special world.
• The audience makes a conscious decision to cross the threshold into your world; they are not forced.
• The audience will resist adopting your point of view and will point out obstacles and road blocks.
• The audience needs to change on the inside before they’ll change on the outside. In other words, they need to alter their perception internally before they change the way they act.

Crossing the threshold is an important moment, because it signals that the hero is making a commitment. Let’s look more closely at that turning point.

If the audience is the hero in your story, then the objective during your presentation is to get them past the fourth step in the wheel. Your presentation takes them to the threshold, but it’s their choice whether to cross it or not.

At the heart of your presentation there’s an idea, and when you’re presenting you’ll ask the audience to adopt it and shepherd it into the world. It might involve recasting the shape of an organization, or explaining how your product fills a customer’s needs. It might involve helping students internalize certain subject matter or perform well on a test. Whatever it is, adopting this idea will require the audience to consciously step into something new.

You need to acknowledge that no change you request from your heroes will be made without a struggle. Making a change is not easy. Convincing people they should commit to change is probably the greatest challenge an organization can face. The time the hero meets the mentor is exactly the time that he or she

needs to make the decision to cross the threshold—and enter the special world. The parallel to making a presentation is lovely. Your ideas will help the audience commit to making a change. If you do a good job, they’ll voluntarily cross the threshold and enter the special world. But you can’t force them.

If the audience sees your presentation and then makes the decision to cross the threshold and adopt your perspective, they will start out on the rest of The Hero’s Journey (stages five through twelve) as soon as they leave. Since you’re their mentor, you should prepare them as well as you can for what to expect as they continue the journey, and equip them for success along the way. In movies, the stages of The Hero’s Journey usually take place in a chronological sequence. But in a presentation, you aren’t bound by the constraints of time and place. The presentation medium gives you the freedom to move around in any order you want as you address insights into how your audience can accomplish steps five through twelve.

Let’s remember that there is one indisputable attribute of a good story: there must be some kind of conflict or imbalance perceived by the audience that your presentation resolves. This sense of discord is what persuades them to care enough to take action. In a presentation, you create imbalance by consciously juxtaposing what is with what could be.

Clearly contrast who the audience is when they walk into the room with whom they could be when they leave (crossing the threshold into a special world).

What is versus what could be. Drawing attention to that gap forces the audience to contend with the imbalance until a new balance is achieved.

The Presentation Form

Drawing insights from mythological, literary, and cinematic structures, a presentation form emerged. Most great presentations unknowingly follow this form.

Presentations should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Two clear turning points in a presentation’s structure guide the audience through the content and distinctively separate the beginning from the middle and the middle from the end. The first is the call to adventure—this should show the audience a gap between what is and what could be—jolting the audience from complacency. When effectively constructed—an imbalance is created—the audience will want your presentation to resolve this imbalance. The second turning point is the call to action, which identifies what the audience needs to do, or how they need to change. This second transition point signifies that you’re coming to the presentation’s conclusion.

Notice how the middle moves up and down as if something new is happening continually. This back and forth structural motion pushes and pulls the audience to feel as if events are constantly unfolding. An audience will stay engaged as you unwrap ideas and perspectives frequently.

Each presentation concludes with a vivid description of the new bliss that’s created when your audience adopts your proposed idea. But notice that the presentation form doesn’t stop at the end of the presentation. Presentations are meant to persuade, so there is also a subsequent action (or crossing the threshold) the audience is to do once they leave the presentation.

Let’s look at the form in more detail on the following pages.

The Beginning and Call to Adventure

The Hero’s Journey begins when “a hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder.”⁷ Your presentation may not offer “supernatural wonder,” but you are asking the audience to leave their comfort zone and venture to a new place that is closer to where you think they should be.

The beginning of your presentation is represented by the first flat line of the presentation form. This is where you describe the audience’s ordinary world and set the baseline of what is. You can use historical information about what has been, or the current state of what is, which often includes the problem you’re currently facing.

You should deliver a concise formulation of what everyone agrees is true. Accurately capturing the current reality and sentiments of the audience’s world demonstrates that you have experience and insights on their situation, and that you understand their perspective, context, and values.

Done effectively, this description of where your audience currently is will create a common bond between you and them, and will open them up to hear your unique perspective more readily. Audiences are grateful when their contribution, intelligence, and experience are acknowledged.

Additionally, describing their existing world gives you the opportunity to create a dramatic dichotomy between what is and what could be. Proposing what could be should throw the audience’s current reality out of balance. Without first setting up what is, the dramatic effect of your new idea will be lost.

The beginning doesn’t have to be long. It might be as simple as a short statement or phrase that sets the baseline of what is. While it can be longer, it should not take up more than ten percent of your total time. The audience will be anxious to know why they came and what you are proposing. So, although the beginning is important, it shouldn’t be long-winded.

The first turning point to occur in a presentation is the call to adventure, which triggers a significant shift in the content. The call to adventure asks the audience to jump into a situation that, unbeknownst to them, requires their attention and action. This moment sets the presentation in motion.

“A bad beginning makes a bad ending.” Euripides⁸

The call to adventure should present your big idea of what could be in a way that’s clear and memorable. This is the first time the audience will see the glaring contrast between what is and what could be—and it’s imperative that the gap is clear.

The call to adventure in a presentation plays a role similar to the inciting incident in a movie. Story author Robert McKee says, “The inciting incident first throws the protagonist’s life out of balance, then arouses in him the desire to restore that balance.”⁹ That imbalance is what elicits the audience’s desire for a reality different from the current one. Pose an intriguing insight that your audience will want the presentation to address. It should stir them up enough (positively or negatively) so that they want to listen intently as you explain what is at stake and what it takes to resolve the gap.

This turning point should be explicit, not muddled or vague. The remainder of the presentation should be about filling that gap and drawing the audience toward your unique perspective of what could be.

“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” William Hazlitt¹⁰

The Middle: Contrast

The middle of a presentation is made up of various types of contrast. People are naturally drawn to contrast, because life is surrounded with it. Day and night. Male and female. Up and down. Good and evil. Love and hate.

Your job as a communicator is to create and resolve the tension created by contrast.

Building highly contrasting elements into a presentation holds the audience’s attention. Audiences enjoy experiencing a dilemma and its resolution—even if that dilemma is caused by a viewpoint that’s opposed to their own. It keeps them interested.

The audience wants to know if your views are similar to or different from their views. While listening to a presenter, audience members catalog and classify what they hear. Having come into the room with their own knowledge, and biases, they are constantly evaluating

whether what you say fits within their life experiences, or falls outside of what they know.

It’s important to know your audience so that you can understand how your views are both similar to and different from theirs. There will usually be some disparities. A rather obvious business example would be that you want them to buy your product, and they don’t want to spend the money.

But differences aren’t a problem. The polarity between similar and dissimilar concepts creates a force that can be put to good use. In fact, both extremes are necessary in a presentation. They allow you to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar—and to cover several points of view. They create observable distinctions between your perspectives and your audience’s perspectives—this helps keep their attention. Though people are generally more comfortable with what’s familiar to them, conveying the opposite creates internal tension. Oppositional content is stimulating; familiar content is comforting. Together, these two types of content produce forward movement.

• Emotion: Emotional contrast moves back and forth between analytical and emotional content.
• Delivery: Delivery contrast moves back and forth between traditional and nontraditional delivery methods.

Contrast is a motif woven throughout this entire book, and is at the heart of communication because people are attracted to things that stand out.

“As the polarized nature of magnetic fields can be used to generate electrical energy, polarity in a story seems to be an engine that generates tension and movement in the characters and a stirring of emotions in the audience.”
Chris Vogler¹¹

Call to Action

The second transition, the call to action, clearly defines what you’re asking the audience to do. Successful persuasion leads to action, and it is important to clearly state exactly how you want the audience to take action. This step in the presentation gives the audience discrete tasks that will help bring the ideas you convey in your presentation to fruition. Once this line is crossed, the audience needs to decide if they are with you or not—so make it clear what needs to be accomplished.

Whether a presentation is political, corporate, or academic, the audience consists of four distinct types of people capable of taking action:

Doers, suppliers, influencers, and innovators.

People have different temperaments, but all the audience members will have a tendency to prefer one type of action over another. Offering each audience member at least one action that suits their temperament lets them choose the action that makes them most comfortable. When they see ways to help that are appropriate to their type, it builds momentum and speeds the way to results. Virtually everybody in your audience will be able to effectively perform one of the four types of actions. A truly passionate revolutionary who supports the ideas you present could very possibly perform all four.

You can ask the audience to take more than one action per category—but make sure to identify actions that are simple, straightforward, and easily executed. The audience should be able to mentally connect their actions with a positive outcome for themselves, or for the greater good. Present all the necessary actions and make sure the most critical tasks for success are highlighted.

Many presentations end with the call to action; however, ending a presentation with a long to-do list for the audience is not inspirational. Neither is asking the audience to act on small, seemingly trivial tasks. So it’s important to follow up the call to action with a vivid picture of the potential reward.

The End

Notice that the presentation ends on a higher plane in the presentation form than where it began. The ending should fill the audience with a heightened sense of what could be and make them feel willing to be transformed—to either understand something in a new way or to change their actions. The goal of persuasion is to transform the audience. If you skillfully define their future reward, you will convince them they should be on board with your idea.

The ending has two parts: repeating the most important points and delivering inspirational remarks encompassing what the world will look like when your idea is adopted.

The principle of recency states that audiences remember the last content they heard in a presentation more vividly than the points made in the beginning or middle. So you should create an ending that describes an inspirational, blissful world—a world that has adopted your idea. What will the audience members’ lives look like? What will humanity look like? What will the planet look like?

In order to get the most out of the audience, describe the possible future outcomes with wonder and awe. Show the audience that the reward will be worth their efforts. The presentation should conclude with the assertion that your idea is not only possible but that it is the right—and better—choice to make.

“Getting the audience to cheer, rise, and vocalize in response to a dramatic, rousing conclusion creates positive emotional contagion, produces a strong emotional takeaway, and fuels the call to action by the business leader. The ending of a great narrative is the first thing the audience remembers.” Peter Guber¹²

Let’s say you pulled off an incredible presentation. You used the principles in the presentation form with grace and ease to convey your ideas and the audience made a commitment to transform. Sounds like a huge victory—but it’s not over yet.

The end of your presentation marks the next phase of the adventure for the audience.

The human ability to accept new insights creates room for people to become something different. As indicated by the final dashed line at the end of the presentation form, the audience starts becoming something different from what they were at the beginning of the presentation.

But when you are done delivering your presentation, the adoption of your idea is still inconclusive. The audience will determine the outcome. Some presentations end with the audience leaving full of support, some don’t. Your idea could end as a comedy or tragedy—the two forms of dramatic resolution proposed in Greek literature. If they don’t adopt your idea, it could end as a tragedy. Tragedy is the downfall of a once admirable hero—a good person whose demise comes as a result of some personal error or mistake. Or it could resolve as a comedy. Comedy doesn’t mean it’s funny; it’s defined as a rise in the fortune of a sympathetic hero. The hallmark of comedy isn’t laughter, it’s the satisfaction felt when a deserving person succeeds.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” T.S. Elliot¹³

The analytical tool used throughout this book to represent presentations graphically is the sparkline. Viewing a presentation’s contour helps you clearly see the contrasts. The line moves between what is (the lower position) and what could be (the higher position) to show contrasts in content. It changes colors to show contrasts in emotion and delivery. Every presentation has a unique sparkline. No two are alike, because no two presentations are alike.

Using a tool like the presentation form to achieve great results isn’t new. Movies and myths all have a form, and they all yield beautiful and unique results.

Similarly, presentations that follow the Presentation Form will all be unique. The presentation form isn’t a formula, because it has enormous flexibility; rigid adherence to it could become predictable. So, it’s equally important to embrace its versatility.

Above is an annotation of how to read the sparklines in the book. The case study on the following pages will show the first use of the presentation form applied as a sparkline. Videos of all the presentations analyzed are available online along with additional annotations to the transcripts.

Tryst with Destiny

Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian politician, political heir of Mohandas Gandhi, and India’s first Prime Minister of independent India. He was a charismatic leader who pushed for complete independence from the British Empire. After India suffered during a hundred years of non-violent struggle against the British Empire, Nehru delivered a speech to the Indian Constituent Assembly on August 14, 1947, the eve of India being freed from British rule. The speech, Tryst with Destiny, is one of the greatest speeches of all time. It is beloved in India, similar to how Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is beloved in the United States.

Nehru’s Sparkline

Above is the shape of his speech. You’ll notice he starts off with what is and moves back and forth between what is and what could be in almost perfect frequency. The speech ends high and to the right by describing the new bliss. He created a perfect cadence of contrast.

Nehru’s speech is in classic form. As the first independent leader of India, he delivered a rousing speech that ushered in an era of freedom and reformation.