Timeline
Place the vocabulary in its historical context, from the Poetics to modern craft models.
Ideas have histories
This chronology orders the selected events rather than presenting them as inevitable progress toward one final model. Dates identify publications or historical episodes, not the invention of every underlying idea.
- Fourth century BCE
Aristotle’s Poetics
An account of poetic representation and dramatic action, including reversal and recognition.
Read the context - 1863
Freytag’s Die Technik des Dramas
A historical account of dramatic construction behind the familiar pyramid.
Read the context - 1912–1913
Jung’s separation from Freud
Theoretical divergence and personal separation precede the later popular use of Jungian vocabulary in story craft.
Read the context - 1928
Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale
The Russian publication precedes its first English translation in 1958.
Read the context - 1949
Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The monomyth reaches a broad readership through a comparative and symbolic account.
Read the context - 1964
Man and His Symbols
The collaborative book associated with Jung appears after his death in 1961.
Read the context - 1977
Star Wars
The film later subtitled A New Hope brings a journey-shaped adventure to a mass audience.
Read the context - 1979
Field’s Screenplay
The three-act paradigm becomes an influential practical screenwriting vocabulary.
Read the context - 1985
Vogler’s seven-page memo
A practical adaptation of Campbell circulates in a studio storytelling context.
Read the context - 1988
The Power of Myth
The Moyers conversations and companion book expand Campbell’s public audience after his death.
Read the context - 1990
Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey
A response centered on wholeness and the cost of dominant values.
Read the context - 1992
Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey
The memo and teaching develop into a book, revised in subsequent editions.
Read the context - 2005
Snyder’s Save the Cat!
A fifteen-beat craft vocabulary enters wider circulation.
Read the context - 2020
Anniversary editions
Vogler’s twenty-fifth anniversary edition and Murdock’s thirtieth anniversary edition revisit influential models.
Read the context
Sources & further reading
Source notes identify the model or work discussed. Story mappings and diagnostic questions are this site’s interpretations.
- Aristotle — Poetics. Fourth century BCE; S. H. Butcher translation. Sections 6–8 and 10–14 on plot, unity, reversal and recognition.
- Gustav Freytag — Die Technik des Dramas. 1863; German text. The original dramatic context differs from later generic plot pyramids.
- ETH Zürich Library — Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Archive biography. Biographical record and manuscript context.
- Vladimir Propp — Morphology of the Folktale. Russian 1928; English 1958; second English edition 1968, translated by Laurence Scott. Chapters III and VI distinguish functions and spheres of action.
- Joseph Campbell — The Hero with a Thousand Faces. First published 1949; New World Library, third edition, 2008. Foundation commentary distinguishes the three essential movements from optional variations.
- Syd Field — Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. First published 1979. Official publication history; the paradigm is a screenwriting craft model.
- Christopher Vogler — The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 25th Anniversary Edition, Michael Wiese Productions, 2020. Author’s account of the memo, book and flexible use of the model; stage and archetype discussions refer to the book.
- Maureen Murdock — The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. Shambhala, 1990; thirtieth anniversary edition, 2020. A psycho-spiritual model of integration; not a universal gender rule.
- Blake Snyder — Save the Cat!. Michael Wiese Productions, 2005. Official beat-sheet companion lists fifteen beats.