titanic hero's journey

Hero's Journey

Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or her swag? Yeah, scholar Joseph Campbell noticed first—in 1949. He wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces , in which he outlined the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey.

About half a century later, Christopher Vogler condensed those stages down to 12 in an attempt to show Hollywood how every story ever written should—and, uh, does —follow Campbell's pattern. We're working with those 12 stages, so take a look. (P.S. Want more? We have an entire Online Course devoted to the hero's journey.)

Ordinary World

Rose's ordinary world is a pretty bleak one: she's going back to America with her mother and her crummy boyfriend, whom she's being forced to marry in order to save her family from financial ruin.

While everyone else is excited about getting on Titanic, she's anything but—she dreads what comes at the end of the journey.

Call to Adventure

When she meets Jack Dawson, however, all that changes for Rose. As an artist traveling in steerage, Jack doesn't seem like an obvious friend to the well-heeled Rose—however, they're thrown together when Jack comes upon her trying to kill herself and prevents that from happening.

Having established their unlikely friendship, Jack immediately sets to work trying to get Rose to break free from her controlling mother and horrible fiancé.

Refusal of the Call

Rose is a well-bred girl, so she initially tries to keep her distance from Jack. For example, she bristles at his personal questions about her feelings for Cal.

However, given that she clearly endures (rather than enjoys) the company of her fellow Richie Riches and has trouble keeping her less appropriate thoughts to herself, it's not hard for Jack to coax her into some adventures aboard the ship…

Meeting the Mentor

This stage is already covered in "Call to Adventure." Jack is clearly Rose's mentor throughout the film, consistently pushing her to realize and acknowledge her own strength and ability to break free from everything that is holding her back, from family ties to social conventions.

Crossing the Threshold

Rose ends up just giving in to Jack and heading down to party in steerage, where she has a significantly better time than she was having with the folks in first class. After drinking and dancing for a while, Rose and Jack run around the ship getting into all kinds of trouble/adventures.

Rose lets her guard down entirely when she asks Jack to draw her in the nude (except for the giant diamond necklace Cal had given her), and they later get busy in the cargo hold in a stored car.

Tests, Allies, Enemies

Unfortunately, Cal and his valet, Lovejoy, quickly realize that Rose is off carousing with Jack—and they don't approve. Lovejoy spends a lot of time chasing them around the ship and trying to keep Jack away from Rose.

Then, everyone ends up with a much bigger problem: the ship hits an iceberg.

Rose and Jack decide to stop screwing around long enough to go warn the others that the ship's in big trouble. Rather than appreciating the heads-up, though, Cal just focuses on getting Jack away from Rose. To do that, he frames Jack for theft, ensuring that he'll be detained below decks…which, of course, is where water is busily flowing into the boat.

Approach to the Inmost Cave

Although she's initially distracted by the whole "boat sinking" thing and kinda/sorta seems to doubt Jack's innocence, Rose quickly realizes that Jack has been framed and sets about finding and freeing him before the boat sinks.

When Jack asks how she figured out he wasn't a thief, she says that she realized she always knew. Aww.

Now Rose and Jack have the teensy problem of getting themselves off the boat. Jack (and Cal) both try to convince Rose to take one of the lifeboats alone, but she jumps off at the last minute.

They end up going down with the ship.

Jack coaches Rose through surviving the entry into the water and then gets her aboard a piece of floating debris (a door). They wait for the other lifeboats to come back to rescue at least some of them. As they linger there in the cold water and Rose seems to be preparing for death, Jack makes Rose promise never to give up, no matter how tough things get.

Reward (Seizing the Sword)

Some time later, Rose is nearly frozen to death when she realizes a lifeboat has come back looking for survivors. She tries to get Jack's attention to let him know they're going to be rescued, but unfortunately he's frozen to death in the water.

She's distraught, but she hasn't forgotten her promise to keep on going no matter what, and so she gets the attention of the lifeboat and is rescued.

The Road Back

Rose boards the Carpathia , the ship sent to help the Titanic survivors, and heads to New York City. She manages to avoid Cal, who's also on the boat looking for her.

Resurrection

As the Carpathia arrives in New York City, a man is going around collecting passenger names. Rose reinvents herself, giving her name as Rose Dawson…in honor of Jack.

Return With the Elixir

At the end of the movie, as we see Rose dying warm in her bed (as Jack had hoped), we see pictures of all the adventures Rose ended up having—adventures that never would have been possible if Rose hadn't met Jack and realized she had the power to live a life that broke the mold her mother and Cal had set out for her.

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W hy's T his F unny?

The Titanic's biggest heroes and worst villains

On 10th April 1912 , the Titanic set off from Southampton on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. Already a month behind schedule, the luxurious ocean liner bound for New York was due to complete the crossing in just six days. However, tragedy struck four days into the journey.

The sinking of the Titanic is still one of the biggest non-military maritime disasters in history. Though the story of the Titanic is widely known, what is less known is the stories of the real people involved in the voyage and the after-effects of the sinking.

Here are some of the heroes and villains of the Titanic story and how their actions would go down in history for better or for worse.

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Hero: the carpathia.

The RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Carpathia departed from New York on 11th April 1912. Shortly after midnight, only a few days into her trip, the ship received a distress signal from the Titanic saying it had struck an iceberg. As soon as he received the distress call, Captain Arthur Henry Rostron rerouted the Carpathia and began preparing to onboard survivors.

The Carpathia was just under 60 miles away from the Titanic , but despite the danger that icebergs posed to the ship, Captain Rostron diverted the Carpathia at full speed to assist as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, due to the distance between the two ships, and the speed at which the Titanic was going down, the Carpathia didn’t arrive until an hour after the Titanic had sunk.

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Villain: the californian.

At 6:30 on the evening of the 14th, a nearby ship, the Californian , had sent out an iceberg warning to a nearby ship, the Antillian . They had spotted three large icebergs to their south. The Titanic ’s on-duty wireless officer, Harold Bride, picked up the transmission for the Antillian and passed it up to the captain. Despite the warning, the Titanic continued on full steam ahead.

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Later that evening, after encountering an ice field, the Californian opted to stop for the night and wait for the morning when visibility conditions were safer. At 10:20pm, the Californian spotted the Titanic on the horizon and sent out another iceberg warning to the ship, just 20 miles away. The transmission was received by the on-duty wireless operator, Jack Phillips, who was busy sending a backlog of passenger telegrams. Frustrated that his work was interrupted, Phillips sent the Californian a terse message asking them to stop sending any further transmissions until he had caught up on the backlog.

Surprised at the somewhat rude response, the Californian ’s wireless operator turned off his machine for the night and went to sleep. Just under an hour and a half later, the Titanic would start sending out SOS alerts to advise that they had hit an iceberg and required rescue. Had the Californian received those transitions, they would have been able to provide rescue to the passengers of the Titanic before the ship had sunk and prevented the substantial loss of life.

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Hero: joseph bell.

When the iceberg was first spotted, engineering received the command to set all engines in reverse in an attempt to avoid the collision. As the events unfolded, the situation for those working in the bowels of the ship became increasingly more dangerous. If the cold water of the Atlantic came in contact with the boilers, it would have created a thermal explosion that would send the ship down considerably faster.

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Chief engineer Joseph Bell, along with his team of lead engineers and electricians, worked furiously to reroute the power to ensure that the lights stayed on throughout the evacuation and reverse-engineered the pumps to slow the speed at which the ship sank.

Bell and the engineers who chose to stay below deck slowed the sinking by as much as an hour and a half, allowing more time to launch lifeboats.

Villain: Joseph Bruce Ismay

Joseph Bruce Ismay was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line at the time of the disaster. Aboard the Titanic for her maiden voyage, it is believed that Ismay was putting pressure on Captain Edward Smith to beat the record for the quickest crossing of the Atlantic. While there is no explicit evidence to show that Ismay had ordered the crew to push through the iceberg warnings, his actions during and after the evacuation of the Titanic , led to his being brandished as a coward.

Despite having been active throughout the night assisting passengers into the lifeboats and urging them to safety, Ismay faced heavy criticism for his own evacuation. Aboard lifeboat C, the ninth and last lifeboat launched from the starboard side, Ismay had claimed that when he climbed aboard the boat, there were no women or children left nearby. However, witness reports state that Ismay’s assessment was incorrect and that a majority of the passengers near lifeboat C were third-class passengers from the Middle East.

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The Carpathia , already carrying her own passengers, had rescued 705 survivors from lifeboats. Despite the limited space, once aboard the Carpathia , Ismay insisted that he be given a private room to quarter in. He refused to leave the cabin until the Carpathia was docked in New York. Despite being a passenger aboard the Titanic , the public opinion was that Ismay should have emulated Captain Smith by going down with the ship, leaving the space he took for the women and children that remained aboard.

Hero: Charles Lightoller

Second Officer Charles Lightoller was the senior member of staff aboard the Titanic to survive. As the officer in charge of the evacuations, Lightoller maintained the ‘Birkenhead Drill’ principle of women and children being the first to be evacuated - despite it not being maritime law. He only allowed men aboard the lifeboats if they were needed to ensure the safety of each lifeboat.

As the ship began her final descent into the ocean, Lightoller assessed the situation from the bridge to see if there was anything further he could do. Seeing water rushing up the deck, Lightoller realised that there was nothing more to be done and dove from the bridge's roof into the Atlantic. Amazingly, he managed to avoid being sucked down with the ship and survived by clinging to an overturned lifeboat. When the Carpathia arrived the next morning, Lightoller was the last to be pulled from the water.

Lightoller would go on to serve as a commanding officer in the Royal Navy during WWI and was twice decorated for gallantry. His heroism didn’t end there, though. Despite being retired, when the call to assist in the evacuation at Dunkirk came through, Lightoller voluntarily provided his yacht to help the soldiers trapped on the beach.

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Villain: harland and wolff.

During the British inquiry into the disaster, shipbuilders Harland and Wolff were accused of using sub-standard materials to cut costs.

The Titanic was a cutting-edge ship designed to be made almost entirely of steel. However, due to her design, some of the rivets couldn’t be placed using machinery and had to be placed by hand. As steel rivets would be impossible to place by hand, these rivets were to be made of wrought iron instead.

There were over three million wrought iron rivets in the hull of the Titanic , but all of them had been made of a lower grade standard than was necessary. The high levels of slag that remained in the rivets would have made them incredibly brittle at cold temperatures. This brittleness would have caused the rivet heads to pop off as the Titanic encountered the iceberg and weakened the integrity of the steel plating on the hull of the ship - accounting for the speed at which she took on water.

Had the rivets been of a higher grade of iron, the damage to the Titanic might have been significantly lower and slowed her sinking, or even prevented her from sinking altogether.

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April 15, 2012, marks the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic . Construction of the Titanic commenced in 1909 in Belfast, Ireland, by the ship-building company Harland & Wolff. Shipbuilders worked tirelessly for two years to create the mammoth structure that was to become the Titanic , and eight workers died during its construction. After the ship was finished in 1912, the Titanic was set for its maiden voyage in early April. The Titanic was designed to be a luxury ship to ferry people back and forth across the Atlantic. Onboard, there were more than 900 crew members, including waitstaff, engineering , and deck crews. The Titanic carried first-class, second-class, and third-class passengers. Many second- and third-class passengers were European citizens immigrating to America in search of a new life. The total number of people aboard the Titanic was a little more than 2,000. When the Titanic struck the iceberg , it quickly became apparent that the ship’s "unsinkable" reputation was not true. The Titanic would be sitting at the bottom of the ocean in a little more than two hours. As the Titanic was sinking, passengers were loaded onto lifeboats by the deck crew. The engineering crew stayed at their posts to work the pumps, controlling flooding as much as possible. This action ensured the power stayed on during the evacuation and allowed the wireless radio system to keep sending distress calls. These men bravely kept at their work and helped save more than 700 people—even though it would cost them their own lives.

• The letters R.M.S. stand for Royal Mail Steamer. This means the Titanic was authorized to carry mail across the Atlantic Ocean.
• The top speed of the Titanic was 23-24 knots, about 21 miles per hour.
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• 679 members of the Titanic 's crew died in the sinking.

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October 19, 2023

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Related Resources

Titanic (1997)

Titanic (1997) story structure.

IMPORTANT: This is a very rough and general deconstruction, which is meant to simply illustrate that this story follows the pattern described on the main page .

DO NOT attempt to write a story by following this deconstruction – it contains inaccuracies, critical stages have been omitted and it does not benefit from the latest insights; if you need an accurate deconstruction of this story, place an order here .

Order a full, professional deconstruction / worksheet of this or any other film

Buy the 2100+ stage Hero's Journey And Transformation Through A New World / State Mailing list tips of the day - lots about hero's journey you don't know Social networks

by Kal Bashir

The Role of Archetypes in Literature

Christopher Vogler's work on archetypes helps us understand literature

• Tips For Adult Students
• Getting Your Ged
• The Hero's Journey

The Job of the Herald

The purpose of the mentor, overcoming the threshold guardian, meeting ourselves in shapeshifters, confronting the shadow, changes brought about by the trickster.

• B.A., English, St. Olaf College

Carl Jung called archetypes the ancient patterns of personality that are the shared heritage of the human race. Archetypes are amazingly constant throughout all times and cultures in the collective unconscious, and you'll find them in all of the most satisfying literature. An understanding of these forces is one of the most powerful elements in the storyteller’s toolbox.

Understanding these ancient patterns can help you better understand literature and become a better writer yourself. You'll also be able to identify archetypes in your life experience and bring that wealth to your work. 

When you grasp the function of the archetype a character expresses, you will know his or her purpose in the story.

Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure , writes about how every good story reflects the total human story. In other words, the hero's journey represents the universal human condition of being born into this world, growing, learning, struggling to become an individual, and dying. The next time you watch a movie, TV program, even a commercial, identify the following archetypes. I guarantee you'll see some or all of them.

The Hero's Journey

The word "hero" comes from a Greek root that means to protect and serve. The hero is connected with self-sacrifice. He or she is the person who transcends ego, but at first, the hero is all ego.

The hero’s job is to incorporate all the separate parts of himself to become a true Self, which he then recognizes as part of the whole, Vogler says. The reader is usually invited to identify with the hero. You admire the hero's qualities and want to be like him or her, but the hero also has flaws. Weaknesses, quirks, and vices make a hero more appealing. The hero also has one or more inner conflicts. For example, he or she may struggle over the conflicts of love versus duty, trust versus suspicion, or hope versus despair.

In The Wizard of Oz  Dorothy is the story's hero, a girl trying to find her place in the world.

Heralds issue challenges and announce the coming of significant change. Something changes the hero’s situation, and nothing is the same ever again.

The herald often delivers the Call to Adventure, sometimes in the form of a letter, a phone call, an accident.

Heralds provide the important psychological function of announcing the need for change, Vogler says.

Miss Gulch, at the beginning of the film version of The Wizard of Oz , makes a visit to Dorothy's house to complain that Toto is trouble. Toto is taken away, and the adventure begins.

Mentors provide heroes with motivation , inspiration , guidance, training, and gifts for the journey. Their gifts often come in the form of information or gadgets that come in handy later. Mentors seem inspired by divine wisdom; they are the voice of a god. They stand for the hero’s highest aspirations, Vogler says.

The gift or help given by the mentor should be earned by learning, sacrifice, or commitment.

Yoda is a classic mentor. So is Q from the James Bond series. Glinda, the Good Witch, is Dorothy's mentor in The Wizard of O z.

At each gateway on the journey, there are powerful guardians placed to keep the unworthy from entering. If properly understood, these guardians can be overcome, bypassed, or turned into allies. These characters are not the journey's main villain but are often lieutenants of the villain. They are the naysayers, doorkeepers, bouncers, bodyguards, and gunslingers, according to Vogler.

On a deeper psychological level, threshold guardians represent our internal demons. Their function is not necessarily to stop the hero but to test if he or she is really determined to accept the challenge of change.

Heroes learn to recognize resistance as a source of strength. Threshold Guardians are not to be defeated but incorporated into the self. The message: those who are put off by outward appearances cannot enter the Special World, but those who can see past surface impressions to the inner reality are welcome, according to Vogler.

The Doorman at the Emerald City, who attempts to stop Dorothy and her friends from seeing the wizard, is one threshold guardian. Another is the group of flying monkeys who attack the group. Finally, the Winkie Guards are literal threshold guardians who are enslaved by the Wicked Witch.

Shapeshifters express the energy of the animus (the male element in the female consciousness) and anima (the female element in the male consciousness). Vogler says we often recognize a resemblance of our own anima or animus in a person, project the full image onto him or her, enter a relationship with this ideal fantasy, and commence trying to force the partner to match our projection.

The shapeshifter is a catalyst for change, a symbol of the psychological urge to transform. The role serves the dramatic function of bringing doubt and suspense into a story. It is a mask that may be worn by any character in the story, and is often expressed by a character whose loyalty and true nature are always in question, Vogler says.

Think Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion.

The shadow represents the energy of the dark side, the unexpressed, unrealized, or rejected aspects of something. The negative face of the shadow is the villain, antagonist, or enemy. It may also be an ally who is after the same goal but who disagrees with the hero’s tactics.

Vogler says the function of the shadow is to challenge the hero and give her a worthy opponent in the struggle. Femmes Fatale are lovers who shift shapes to such a degree they become the shadow. The best shadows have some admirable quality that humanizes them. Most shadows do not see themselves as villains, but merely as heroes of their own myths.

Internal shadows may be deeply repressed parts of the hero, according to Vogler. External shadows must be destroyed by the hero or redeemed and turned into a positive force. Shadows may also represent unexplored potentials, such as affection, creativity, or psychic ability that goes unexpressed.

The Wicked Witch is the obvious shadow in the Wizard of Oz.

The trickster embodies the energies of mischief and the desire for change. He cuts big egos down to size and brings heroes and readers down to earth, Vogler says. He brings change by drawing attention to the imbalance or absurdity of a stagnant situation and often provokes laughter. Tricksters are catalyst characters who affect the lives of others but are unchanged themselves.

The Wizard himself is both a shapeshifter and a trickster.

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The Hero’s Journey: 12 Steps That Make Up the Universal Structure of Great Stories

by David Safford | 0 comments

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At some in your writer's life, you've probably come across the term Hero's Journey. Maybe you've even studied this guide for storytelling and applied it to your own books—and yet, something about your own application felt off. You wanted to learn more, but didn't know where to start.

Maybe you needed a resource that would simplify the hero's journey steps and all the other major details instead of complicate them.

The Hero's Journey is as old as humanity itself. And through history, this single story form has emerged over and over again. People from all cultures have seemed to favor its structure, and its familiar types of characters (archetypal hero, anyone?), symbols, relationships, and steps.

If you want to build or strengthen your writing career and win a following of many happy readers, you want this particular tool in your writer's toolbox.

Let's dive in.

Need help applying The Hero's Journey to your story outline and manuscript? Download this free Hero's Journey worksheet now!

Why I Love the Hero's Journey (And You Will, Too)

Like many, I grew up loving Star Wars. I especially loved the music and bought the soundtracks at some point in middle school. When my parents weren't home and I had the house all to myself, I'd slip one of the CDs into my stereo, crank the volume up, and blast the London Symphony Orchestra. I even pretended I was conducting the violins and timpani myself.

I know it's nerdy to admit. But we love what we love, and I love the music of great movies.

In a way, the Hero's Journey is like a soundtrack. It follows familiar beats and obeys age-old principles of human emotion. We can't necessarily explain why a piece of music is so beautiful, but we can explain what it does and simply acknowledge that most people like it.

As I've come to understand Joseph Campbell's groundbreaking monomyth theory, commonly known as the Hero's Journey, I've fallen deeper and deeper in love with it.

But it's important to make sure you know what it is, and what it isn't.

The Hero's Journey isn't a formula to simply follow, plugging in hackneyed characters into cliched situations.

It's not “selling out” and giving up your artistic integrity

The Hero's Journey is a set of steps, scenes, character types, symbols, and themes that tend to recur in stories regardless of culture or time period. Within these archetypes are nearly infinite variations and unique perspectives that are impacted by culture and period, reflecting wonderful traits of the authors and audiences.

Also, the Hero's Journey is a process that your reader expects your story to follow, whether they know it or not. This archetype is hard-wired into our D.N.A. Let's look at how to use it to make your own stories stronger.

How to Use This Hero's Journey Post

In the beginning, there were stories. These stories were told by mothers, soldiers, and performers. They were inscribed on the walls of caves, into tablets of stone, and on the first sheets of papyrus.

This is how the Hero's Journey was born.

In this post, I'll walk you through the Hero's Journey twelve steps, and teach you how to apply them into your story. I'll also share additional resources to teach you some other Hero's Journey essentials, like character archetypes, symbols, and themes. By the end of this post, you'll be able to easily apply the Hero's Journey to your story with confidence.

And don't skip out on the practice exercise at the end of the post! This will help you start to carve out the Hero's Journey for your story with a practical fifteen minute exercise—the best way to really retain how the Hero's Journey works is to apply it.

Table of Contents: The Hero's Journey Guide

What is the Hero's Journey?

Why the Hero's Journey will make you a better writer

The Twelve-Step Hero's Journey Structure

• The Ordinary World
• The Call to Adventure
• The Refusal of the Call
• Meeting the Mentor
• Crossing the Threshold
• Trials, Allies, and Enemies
• The Approach
• The Road Back
• The Resurrection
• Return With the Elixir

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A Guide to Structuring Your Hero's Journey

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• 5 Hero's Journey Symbols
• 5 Hero's Journey Themes

What Is the Hero's Journey?

The Hero's Journey is the timeless combination of characters, events, symbols, and relationships frequently structured as a sequence of twelve steps. It is a storytelling structure that anyone can study and utilize to tell a story that readers will love.

First identified and defined by Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey was theorizied in The Hero With a Thousand Faces . Today, it has been researched and taught by great minds, some including Carl Jung and Christopher Vogler (author of The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers ).

This research has given us lengthy and helpful lists of archetypes , or story elements that tend to recur in stories from any culture at any time.

And while some archetypes are unique to a genre, they are still consistent within those genres. For example, a horror story from Japan will still contain many of the same archetypes as a horror story from Ireland. There will certainly be notable differences in how these archetypes are depicted, but the tropes will still appear.

That's the power of the Hero's Journey. It is the skeleton key of storytelling that you can use to unlock the solution to almost any writing problem you are confronted with.

Why the Monomyth Will Make You a Better Writer

The Hero's Journey is the single most powerful tool at your disposal as a writer.

But it isn't a “rule,” so to speak. It's also not a to-do list.

If anything, the Hero's Journey is diagnostic, not prescriptive. In other words, it describes a story that works, but doesn't necessarily tell you what to do.

But the reason you should use the Hero's Journey isn't because it's a great trick or tool. You should use the Hero's Journey because it is based on thousands of years of human storytelling.

It provides a way to connect with readers from all different walks of life.

This is why stories about fantastical creatures from imaginary worlds can forge deep emotional connections with audiences. Hollywood knows this, and its best studios take advantage. As an example, The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien, contains mythical creatures like elves and hobbits. Yet it is Frodo's heroic journey of sacrifice and courage that draws us to him like a magnet.

Learn how to easily apply the Hero's Journey 12 Steps to your books in this post. Tweet this

Step 8: The Ordeal

Every heroic journey features a unique Shadow with a unique “fortress,” and yours will, too. As your Hero enters this place, it's time to clash swords!

There must be a scene where the Hero (and possibly their companions) sneaks in, attacks, parachutes down . . . whatever is true for the world and story you're telling. And it is usually one of the most fun scenes to write. While this may not be the actual final battle, you want the stakes to be high and absolutely thrilling.

Learn more: Hero's Journey Step #8: The Ordeal

Step 9: The Reward

For their valiant efforts, the Hero must acquire the goal, yet the goal, as acquired, must be revealed to be inadequate. Usually this takes shape by the Hero reaching a crisis in their inner journey, where an inner need (for justice, peace, morality, etc) comes into conflict with the reality of the physical goal and what it provides (like wealth, fame, comfort, etc).

The point of this step in the Hero's Journey is that the Reward is never  enough. As much as we believe they will, the physical rewards of life never satisfy as deeply as we hope. The Hero's Journey reflects this universal human truth by continuing the story even after the Hero seems to get what they want.

Learn more: Hero's Journey Steps #9 and 10: The Reward and the Road Back

Step 10: The Road Back

Another way to identify the Road Back could be the  Response to the Reward,  whether it is the Hero's response (disgust, disappointment, resolve, etc) or the Shadow's (vengeance, change-of-heart, etc). After the Hero acquires the goal, there must be a flight or return back to the Ordinary World.

The key to the Road Back is that it creates a false sense of peace, safety, and finality. Because the Hero has seemingly gotten what they wanted all along, the reader may be left with a sense of completeness, but not a deep thematic satisfaction. Some readers might even wonder why the book isn't complete yet.

Step 11: Resurrection

Everything in the Hero's Journey leads up to this climactic step: the Resurrection. In this scene, the Hero must face the story's evil in an ultimate way, often in the actual final battle (after the fake-out ending in Step 10). Then the Hero must  suffer a form a death. It may not be literal, actual death; but it must be a death, regardless. During this death, the hero is often trapped somewhere, like a dungeon or the “belly of the whale.”

Then the Hero must be resurrected. This is not easy to pull off. It requires careful planning and revision when the details don't add up exactly as you'd like. But through their own power, skill, righteousness, cleverness, or kindness to others, the Hero must earn a resurrection that brings them back into the fight.

Learn more: Hero's Journey Step #11: The Resurrection

Step 12: Return With the Elixir

The conclusion of your Hero's Journey necessitates some kind of return. This is a return to the original Ordinary World, or a return to the community of the world if it has had to relocate.

When they return, the Hero brings back gifts and blessings, an ultimate boon that usually takes physical form, like food, rain, or safety. However, it also takes spiritual form, as in hope, faith, and love. The Hero must  bring these gifts back and share them with their community. It is essential to your reader's experience of catharsis, and represents the apotheosis of the story's themes and values.

Learn more: Hero's Journey Step #12: Return With the Elixir

Inside the Steps: 5 Essential Hero's Journey Scenes

One final way to do this is by noting checkpoints as they outline and/or verify if and how the Hero's Journey works in their story.

To distill this lengthy structure into an easy checklist, writers need to learn how to plan and draft five scenes that are the building blocks of a well-written Hero's Journey. I cover each of these in their own individual post, which I highly recommend you check out:

Scene One: “Choice to Go” 

Two: “Initation” 

Scene Three: “Task” 

Four: “All Hope is Lost” 

Scene Five: “Hero Returns with the Ultimate Boon”

Structure is an extremely subjective matter to storytellers. It is the source of the schism between so-called “Planners” (those who write with a plan) and “Pantsers” (those who write by the seat of their pants ).

No matter where your preference lies, there are principles of storytelling that can benefit you on your mission to write a great story with a solid, timeless Hero's Journey at its core.

In order to help you apply the Hero's Journey Twelve Steps to your story, consider these three (practical!) principles of solid story structure:

1. Divide Your Story Into 3 Acts

How does Three-Act Structure overlap with a Twelve-Step Hero's Journey? It's actually not that complicated. Usually, the Three-Act Hero's Journey looks like this.

Act 1 = Steps 1 through 5

The Beginning of your story shows the reader the Hero's Ordinary World, their Call to Adventure and Refusal, the introduction and early work of the Mentor, and the Hero's “Choice to Go,” or Crossing of the Threshold.

Act 2 = Step 6

Yup. All of Act Two, the Middle Build, is a single Step: Trials, Allies, and Enemies. This is why it's essential to realize that this Step uses the entire twelve-step structure within itself, and must put the Hero to the test a number of times on their journey toward the final goal.

Act 3 = Steps 7 through 12

The Ending of the story begins when the Hero pauses to Approach the final Ordeal. It then proceeds to the major Ordeal, the Reward and consequential false ending, any Road Back that may be involved, the ultimate showdown resulting in Resurrection, and the Hero's triumphant Return with the Elixir.

2. Use Word Counts to Plan Your Drafting

There are benefits to generating an idea of how many words and chapters you should be writing. If that sounds like too much planning for you, consider this question: Do you like wasting time?

I don't. And I'd prefer to waste as little as possible. That's one of the great benefits of planning your writing with word counts in mind.

Knowing a rough estimate of how a Hero's Journey could break down by the numbers can help you plan, write, and edit a novel with a steady and strong pace. And simultaneously, it's likely that this road map will give you even more motivation to finish your story.

You might also consider devoting certain percentages of your time to the Beginning, Middle, and Ending of your book, which I'll cover more in a future post.

3. Specifically Plan Your Steps

Once you've made upon a rough word count estimate, you can plan your steps quite deliberately. As you complete this process, you can alter your estimate as well.

With this kind of plan in place, you can determine when it's time to move on to the next step as you draft. This isn't to “follow the rules,” but to stay attuned to the kind of stories that readers love and have loved for thousands of years.

With this in mind, you'll be able to use the Hero's Journey as a guide that provides a massive canvas for you to freely paint upon—and one that will come in extreme convenience as you study and apply the Twelve-Step Hero's Journey.

Hero's Journey Examples

Learning these concepts one-by-one is certainly useful, but might not help you see the power in a well-told, well-structured Hero's Journey story.

In order to really master the Hero's Journey, you can explore popular books and films that use these steps and archetypes with expert artistry.

These three examples were a turning point in my writing career while studying the Hero's Journey:

Example #1: Star Wars

Perhaps the most obvious Hero's Journey example, Star Wars  contains a feast of archetypes and structural choices that will help us see Campbell's work in action.

As an appetizer, I explore some Hero's Journey essentials in Star Wars in its own post. In it, I discuss topics like the ways Luke Skywalker is an ideal Hero,  and how on his journey, Luke faces the villainous Darth Vader, the story's Shadow . And who could forget the mysterious supernatural aid: Luke's Mentor , Obi-wan?

Whether you love or hate George Lucas's space opus (and/or what Disney has done with it since 2012), the films of the Star Wars  universe are excellent examples to study and learn from.

Learn more: Discover ALL the ways  Star Wars  uses archetypes here!

Example #2: Toy Story

Few Hollywood studios regularly utilize the Hero's Journey to incredible effect more than Pixar. In its first outing, Toy Story,  Pixar successfully told two  Hero's Journeys for both Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear. In subsequent sequels, it would recapture the magic, taking its cowboy protagonist along a sequence of heroic steps that resonant with the human experience.

For example, Woody begins in an Ordinary World  in which he comfortably runs Andy's bedroom; he's Called to Adventure  when a new toy arrives and challenges him for the role of Andy's favorite toy; and he Refuses the Call  by choosing a crooked path, in which he attempts to have Buzz knocked into a corner where Andy won't find him.

As you can imagine, the story continues from there, with Woody and Buzz split between two worlds, and our heroes choices seem to perfectly follow the Hero's Journey as they attempt to reunite with Andy and forge a relationship that isn't purely antagonistic.

Beloved by generations of audiences, Toy Story  is an ideal work to focus on as we study Campbell's work.

I ‘ll breakdown the Hero's Journey Twelve Steps in this iconic film in a future post. 

Example #3: The Hunger Games

The dystopian genre is filled with unlucky heroes who realize that their worlds are broken, only to rise up against invincible forces. In one of the most popular of these stories, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games,  follows a dirt-poor girl on a quest to unseat a tyrant and bring justice to Panem. As you certainly expected, The Hunger Games  is a perfect case study of the power of myth to bring a fantastic world into stark reality.

For example, Katniss Everdeen, the story's hero, follows in the footsteps of many other protagonists by bearing a Magic Weapon,  or object that seems to heighten the hero's powers and reveal his/her greatness.

Once out of her comfort zone, she endures numerous Tests and Trials,  including the lengthy Task  of surviving the Hunger Games themselves. Along the way she enters a Belly of the Beast,  or cave, where she must nurse her partner Peta back to health. And in the story's gripping conclusion, Katniss must survive an onslaught of Creatures of Nightmare  as the “Mutts” swarm the Cornucopia where she and Peta must make their last stand.

These situations, symbols, and more appear all throughout the Hunger Games trilogy, and I'll share exactly how these Hero's Journey essentials apply in a future post. 

Additional Examples of The Hero's Journey

These three stories are by no means the only examples of the monomyth executed to perfection. Some other stories great for analyzing the Hero's Journey could include:

• The Lord of the Rings,  by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Harry Potter,  by J.K. Rowling
• Pixar's Ratatouille
• Pixar's WALL-E
• Back to the Future
• The Great Gatsby
• Pride and Prejudice,  by Jane Austen
• Alien and Aliens  (directed by Ridley Scott and James Cameron, respectively)

BONUS! Additional Hero's Journey Resources

Applying the Hero's Journey steps to your story will connect with readers on a human level. However, that's not the only insight you can learn from the Hero's Journey. If you're up for it, learn more about why the Hero's Journey touches readers with these bonus essentials.

Hero's Journey Character Archetypes

Every story begins with great characters, and the Hero's Journey is the study of recurring character types , known as archetypes.

A character archetype is a character type that serves a specific role in a story and tends to reoccur in myths, legends, and stories across genres, cultures, and time periods.

In order to be properly utilized, a character archetype must fulfill its set purpose while exhibiting new, innovative traits. There are several important character archetypes used in heroic storylines—especially these five: hero, shadow, loyal retainer, mentor, and threshold guardians.

Learn more: Hero's Journey Character archetypes that will make your story awesome

5 Hero's Journey Symbols to Use

A Hero's Journey Symbol, also known as a symbolic archetype , is an object, location, or image in a story that contains more than one functional meaning. It has both a physical meaning in the story world and a thematic meaning for the reader to interpret.

Within your Hero's Journey scenes and relationships, you can use objects and small events to add even more thematic significance to your story.

Read more about five effective Hero's Journey symbols here:

1. “Light vs. Darkness” Symbol

2. “Magic Weapon” Symbol

3. “Underworld” Symbol

4. “Castle” Symbol

5. “Unhealable Wound” Symbol

5 Hero's Journey Themes to Explore

A Hero's Journey Theme is a relationship between two opposite ideas or elements. Throughout the story, the pros and cons of each idea/element are explored, with the Hero making high stakes choices in the context of this conflict-filled relationship. The conclusions the reader comes to about this relationship are its themes.

Read about five favored Hero's Journey themes in these posts:

1.   “Good vs. Evil” Thematic Relationship

2. “ Have n vs. Wildnerness” Thematic Relationship

3. “Nature vs. Machine” Thematic Relationship

4. “Father vs. Son” Thematic Relationship

5. “Sibling vs. Sibling” Thematic Relationship

It's Time to Tell Your Hero's Journey

Star Wars, Toy Story,  and The Hunger Games  are just three members of a near-limitless collection of stories, new and old, that use the Hero's Journey structure and archetypes to thrill readers.

The next, I hope, will be written by you!

Use the Hero's Journey Twelve Steps to outline, write, and/or edit your book—and touch all your readers on a human level.

Have you applied the Hero's Journey to your stories  before? How did it go?  Let us know in the comments .

There's no way to write a full Hero's Journey novel in just fifteen minutes. But you  can plot out your next story according to the Hero's Journey, which is what I encourage you to do.

For today, spend fifteen minutes writing a story premise that (1) you're eager to write, and (2) you can use to outline the Hero's Journey. Then, if you're up for it, journal about how the twelve steps in the Hero's Journey could apply to this story idea.

Write your ideas in the Pro Practice Workshop here . When you're done, leave some feedback for your fellow writers, as well!

David Safford

You deserve a great book. That's why David Safford writes adventure stories that you won't be able to put down. Read his latest story at his website. David is a Language Arts teacher, novelist, blogger, hiker, Legend of Zelda fanatic, puzzle-doer, husband, and father of two awesome children.

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The Writer’s Journey: A Must-Read for Storytellers

by Melissa Donovan | Oct 26, 2021 | Writing Resources | 0 comments

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.

If you read only one book on storytelling, make it The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of books on writing fiction. Many have been helpful, but some have left me feeling disappointed, especially those that promise their methods will result in a successful story or make grand claims that their way is the only correct way to write a story. I’ve seen these claims made in books on the writing process and in books on story structure.

The Writer’s Journey makes no such claims, but it does provide us with a story structure that was discovered, not created. It’s based on universal patterns in storytelling that are flexible yet proven. As you read through it, you’ll immediately recognize these patterns in almost every story you’ve read or watched.

A Little History

“The pattern of the Hero’s Journey is universal, occurring in every culture, in every time. It is as infinitely varied as the human race itself and yet its basic form remains constant.” — Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey

Joseph Campbell was a mythologist who discovered recurrent patterns in myths, legends, and folklore. These patterns occurred in stories throughout human history and all around the globe. He recorded these observations in a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces . This is the book that gave us the Monomyth, which is more commonly known as the Hero’s Journey.

Although it was brilliant, Campbell’s work was dense, highly academic, and spent a lot of time on the connection between psychology and mythology (as well as stories from scripture and religious traditions). It identified common patterns in storytelling, but it focused on myths, legends, and folklore, leaving out other genres. It was also rooted deep in the past, because it was based mostly on ancient tales. Human culture has since evolved, and so has storytelling.

Enter Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood script analyst who studied Campbell’s work and produced a seven-page memo for his peers to help them improve the stories in the films they were making. Vogler had reworked Campbell’s discoveries into a simple model for storytellers — a model that was applicable to all stories, not just myths and ancient legends. The memo became legendary in the storytelling world and was eventually expanded into a book called The Writer’s Journey .

The Hero’s Journey

“The self-conscious, heavy-handed use of this model can be boring and predictable. But if writers absorb its ideas and recreate them with fresh insights and surprising combinations, they can make amazing new forms and original designs from the ancient, immutable parts.” — Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey

You’ve probably heard of the Hero’s Journey. There are hundreds of articles, videos, and blog posts about it all over the internet. Many authors have created their own variations. I’ve studied various incarnations of the Hero’s Journey over the years, but nothing is as clear or useful as The Writer’s Journey .

The Hero’s Journey is a structure for storytelling — a form, not a formula. It was observed, not invented, so it already existed and had a proven track record long before Campbell unearthed it or Vogler refined it. The pattern can be observed in stories such as The Wizard of Oz , which was created long before Campbell or Vogler came along.

The Hero’s Journey can be used to write stories, troubleshoot stories, or analyze and study stories. It also provides us with language for discussing common elements in stories, like the Herald, the Mentor, or the Call to Adventure.

I’ll provide a brief overview of the Hero’s Journey, but you’ll only get a fraction of what it’s all about if you don’t read Vogler’s book, which, by the way, is a fun and delightful read.

“The Hero’s Journey is not an invention, but an observation.” — Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey starts with eight archetypes. They are often characters, but archetypes are better viewed as functions or energies in a story:

• Hero: Protagonist who undergoes a meaningful transformation through the story.
• Herald: Signals that an adventure (or change) is imminent.
• Mentor: Teacher and guide.
• Threshold Guardian: Blocks a threshold that the Hero must pass.
• Shadow: The villain and other characters that stand in the Hero’s way; often they embody the Hero’s negative or undesirable traits.
• Shapeshifter: A character or entity whose motives or intentions are unclear.
• Trickster: Comic relief; tricksters are often catalysts for change.
• Allies: The Hero’s friends and helpers.

Each of these archetypes has a very specific job to do in a story. Some characters may perform the functions of multiple archetypes, and some archetypal roles may be fulfilled by events or objects (such as when a book provides the function of a mentor).

Stages of the Journey

“The model only shows the most likely place for an event to occur.” — Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey then delves into twelve stages of a story. This is not an outline or formula. The stages can occur out of order, and they can overlap one another. This is a very loose guide that we can use to assess a story’s structure and identify its core beats:

NOTICE: This section includes spoilers for The Wizard of Oz , Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Harry Potter , and Titanic .

1. Ordinary World: We see the Hero’s world before the story really kicks in. In The Wizard of Oz , this is Dorothy in the gray world of her family’s Kansas farm.

2. Call to Adventure: Something (usually a Herald) signals that change is afoot. A classic example is the first appearance of white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland .

3. Refusal of the Call: The Hero refuses to answer the call to adventure, often citing excuses. In Star Wars , Luke Skywalker insists he can’t accompany Obi-Wan Kenobi because he must stay and help his uncle on the farm.

4. Meeting with the Mentor: The Hero encounters a Mentor, who will provide guidance and bestow necessary tools and skills. In Harry Potter , Hagrid (and many other characters) provide Harry and his friends with guidance and magical objects that will be essential in overcoming the series of challenges they will face.

5. Crossing the First Threshold: The Hero passes the first Threshold, leaving the Ordinary World and entering the Special World of the story. In the film Titanic , Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiance. This is an example without a Threshold Guardian, but often the Hero must pass a test and get past a guard to cross the threshold into the Special World.

6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The Hero acquires allies (often building a team), faces tests, and establishes enemies. In The Wizard of Oz , Dorothy finds allies in the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion. The Wicked Witch of the West issues a threat, becoming Dorothy’s enemy. Dorothy and her friends overcome a series of challenges as they journey toward the Emerald City.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave: The Hero (usually accompanied by Allies) approaches the story’s central Ordeal. In Star Wars, this is when the Millennium Falcon is being sucked into the Death Star.

8. Ordeal: The Ordeal often occurs underground or inside the enemy’s lair. The Hero (and team) face their biggest threat and undergo a metaphorical death and rebirth. In some stories, this is a love scene, such as in Titanic , when Jack and Rose consummate their relationship in the vehicle storage section of the ship.

9. Reward: The Hero is rewarded for surviving the Ordeal. In The Wizard of Oz , Dorothy gains possession of the Wicked Witch of the West’s broom after she successfully kills the witch.

10. The Road Back: There’s one more big challenge ahead. In Star Wars , Luke and his team are going to attempt to take out the Death Star.

11. Resurrection: This big challenge includes another metaphorical death and rebirth. In Titanic Rose almost drowns but wakes up and swims through the freezing water to grab a whistle and get herself rescued.

12. Return with Elixir: The Hero has successfully completed the journey and can now return to the Ordinary World, often bringing an elixir, which can be something that saves the people of the Ordinary World but can also be personal improvement. In The Wizard of Oz , Dorothy returns to Kansas with a new appreciation for home and family, and having integrated and balanced the three traits of kindness, intelligence, and courage.

The Writer’s Journey is a Must-Read for Anyone Interested in Storytelling

The Writer’s Journey is a guide, not an instruction manual, for storytellers. And while the overview above will give you a broad sense of how it works, the book itself delves deep into each archetype and stage of the Hero’s Journey, providing clear yet detailed descriptions along with examples from well-known films, so you can easily relate the concepts to real-world examples. There are also in-depth analyses of films like The Wizard of Oz , Titanic, and Pulp Fiction to show how the Hero’s Journey works in some of the most successful stories of all time.

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. And I’m glad it’s available in paperback, because I marked it up with notes and highlights, and I’m sure that I will return to it again and again, both in my work as a storyteller and as a writing coach.

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Titanic Hero: The Autobiography of Captain Rostron of the Carpathia Paperback – August 15, 2011

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• Print length 192 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Amberley Publishing
• Publication date August 15, 2011
• Dimensions 6.14 x 0.5 x 9.21 inches
• ISBN-10 1445604205
• ISBN-13 978-1445604206
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amberley Publishing (August 15, 2011)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
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• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1445604205
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The Heroine Journeys Project

Exploring and documenting life-affirming alternatives to the hero's journey, drama and film.

Although the majority of the winning films follow the Hero’s Journey pattern, there has been a significant increase in Heroine Journey films in recent years. In the past several years, the Academy Award winning film makers have also gravitated toward movies that involve ambiguous journeys ( The Shape of Water ) or resist concluding a journey arc ( Moonlight and Parasite ).  We believe this trend is based on an increasing recognition (at least by artists) of the complexity of an interconnected global world.  Our review of these movies also reinforces our observation that literature and films with Heroine Journey arcs most often involve female protagonists and/or men who are marginalized due to prejudice or an unusual characteristic.

The Silence of the Lambs: female protagonist

The English Patient:  female protagonist

A Beautiful Mind :  male protagonist who is mentally ill

Crash: multiple outsider protagonists and overall story examines racial prejudice from many angles

The Hurt Locker : a male protagonist with PTSD.  This story plays with the border / point of view relevance of  Hero’s Journey and Heroine’s Journey narrative.

The King’s Speech :   male protagonist with a speech impediment

The Artist :  male protagonist who is literally without a voice

12 Years a Slave :   disenfranchised African American male protagonist who is enslaved.

Spotlight:  a Hero’s Journey narrative arc with heroine’s journey elements for some characters

Moonlight:  Hero’s Journey arc with twist at the end; best friend chooses heroine’s journey. Main characters are marginalized by class and race.

The Shape of Water:  A fantasy that can be interpreted as hero’s journey or heroine’s journey depending on how magical elements are interpreted. Main characters are marginalized by disability and species (metaphor for all marginalized people treated as non-human).

Parasite:      Aborted Hero’s Journeys; characters appear to be following hero’s journey arc, but film maker aborts journeys and characters end up dead or where they started. Central theme of story and characters’ lives is class.

Nomadland: Collection of people in loose van community go on separate interrelated journeys to heal a variety of life traumas and find peace with their situations. Some of the healing journeys are completed within the film story and some are ongoing at end of the film.

CODA: Daughter in marginalized deaf family of fishermen struggles to thrive as independent hearing adult and remain loyal to her family. Murdock Heroine’s Journey.

Everything Everywhere All at Once : Fantasy/ psycho-drama in which Middle-aged Chinese American immigrant woman must put together and reconcile her disparate life past, present, and future dreams, experiences, and potentialities in ongoing parallel universes. Challenges include immigrant, ethnic, class, LGBTQ , mental health, intergenerational, and marital issues, among others. Schmidt Heroine’s Journey.

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Business Insider

Famous figures who had Titanic tickets but didn't make it on board

Posted: April 14, 2024 | Last updated: April 15, 2024

• As the Titanic was the height of luxury in 1912, some celebrities had tickets for its maiden voyage.
• But not all of them ended up boarding the ship.
• J. Pierpont Morgan and Milton Hershey were among those who missed the disaster.

The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 still captivates us today, with numerous books, a multibillion-dollar movie , museums , and, controversially, expensive tours of the wreckage available.

Interest in the ship led to another maritime tragedy last year when an OceanGate submersible went missing on the way to the wreckage and was eventually confirmed to have imploded , killing all five people on board.

In the aftermath, stories emerged about people invited to participate in one of OceanGate's trips but decided against it — much like, more than 100 years ago, how people were fascinated with those who had almost been on the Titanic.

Here are seven notable figures, some of whom were among the richest people in the world, who were supposed to sail on the Titanic's maiden voyage but didn't — and four well-known people who were booked to go on a future journey with the ship.

Milton Hershey, the founder of Hershey's, sent the White Star Line a $300 check to reserve a spot on the Titanic, but he ended up sailing home on the SS Amerika instead.

As they aged, Hershey and his wife, Catherine, spent their winters on the French Riviera. In December 1911, the couple left for another extended European vacation. For their return journey, Hershey wrote a $300 check from the Hershey Trust Company to the White Star Line to reserve places on the maiden voyage of the company's brand-new ship, the Titanic.

According to Lancaster History , pressing business matters forced Hershey to cut his vacation short, and he left Europe just days before the Titanic would set sail, instead heading home on a German liner called the Amerika, which would later warn the Titanic about the dangerous amount of ice.

Hershey's canceled check is still in the possession of the Hershey Community Archives , and you can view it online.

J. Pierpont Morgan — yes, J. P. Morgan himself — had a personal suite on the Titanic and had attended its launch party in 1911. But he extended his French vacation and missed the sinking.

"I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan canceled his passage on the Titanic," the Titanic expert George Behe told Reuters in 2021. Some speculated that the reasons were that he was in bad health or having issues with customs because of his art collection.

However, we know that Morgan, the cofounder of General Electric, International Harvester, and US Steel, was also the founder of the International Mercantile Marine, which in turn owned White Star Line. According to The Washington Post , he was even on hand to witness its 1911 launch.

"Monetary losses amount to nothing in life," Morgan told a New York Times reporter after the sinking. "It is the loss of life that counts. It is that frightful death."

Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Prize winner who invented the radio, opted to head to the US three days earlier on the Lusitania, forgoing a free ticket on the Titanic.

You might know that Marconi was considered a hero after the sinking of the Titanic because his invention, the wireless radio, helped ships in the surrounding area find where to look for the lifeboats.

But did you know he was almost on board the ship himself?

His daughter Degna wrote in her 1926 book, "My Father, Marconi," that he was offered a free ticket aboard the Titanic. But because his stenographer got seasick, Marconi opted to sail to the US on the Lusitania because he trusted that ship's stenographer more than Titanic's, Degna wrote.

Henry Clay Frick, the chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, missed the sailing of the Titanic because his wife sprained her ankle in Italy and needed to be hospitalized.

Visitors to New York City might recognize Frick's name from the Frick Collection or the Henry Clay Frick House. He was an important industrialist and a patron of the arts — and he was close to sailing on the doomed voyage.

"The Fricks booked the suite first, and then Mrs. Frick sprained her ankle while they were in Europe buying art and touring and things; so, they stayed behind to get medical attention," the historian Melanie Linn Gutowski told CBS News Pittsburgh in 2012.

"The suite that they booked, that some historians think that they booked, was some kind of savior suite in a way," she continued. "Everybody who booked it managed to survive either by not being on the ship, or jumping into a lifeboat at the last minute."

Eventually, the tickets made their way to J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line. Controversially, he was one of the few men who made their way onto a lifeboat and survived. He was criticized for this for the rest of his life.

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt canceled his ticket on the Titanic at the last minute. He was on board the Lusitania when a German U-boat sank it in May 1915.

As a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt was a well-known member of New York society, so there was media coverage when it was revealed he'd narrowly escaped the Titanic.

Unfortunately, just a few years later, he was aboard the Lusitania , a British ocean liner that was sunk by German U-boats in 1915. He was one of the 1,200 passengers who did not survive the attack.

The American journalist Theodore Dreiser was persuaded by his publisher to take a cheaper ship home across the Atlantic.

Dreiser wrote about his brush with disaster in a chapter of his 1913 memoir, "A Traveler at Forty." Slate said the section about the Titanic, "The Voyage Home," was "one of the most gripping chapters in the memoir."

Dreiser wrote that he wanted to sail home with the rich and powerful people aboard the Titanic to get a peek at how the other half lived, but added that his publisher convinced him to sail home on the Kroonland, a cheaper ship, two days before Titanic sank.

"The terror of the sea had come swiftly and directly home to all," Dreiser wrote, according to Slate. "To think of a ship as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking in endless fathoms of water. And the two thousand passengers routed like rats from their berths only to float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying!"

John Mott, another Nobel Prize winner, was also offered a free ticket on the ship, but he chose a smaller ship, the Lapland, instead.

Mott, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was the longtime leader of the YMCA, was another near-miss. Gorden R. Doss , a professor at Andrews University, said that Mott came close to death a few times.

First, he skipped the Titanic and opted for the Lapland. Three decades later, in 1943, he narrowly avoided a train crash.

Mott said, "The Good Lord must have more work for us to do" upon hearing about the sinking, according to Sotheby's .

There were other celebrities who had tickets to sail the Titanic in the future, had it not sank. J.C. Penney was set to sail on the ship's next trip from England to New York.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine , the founder of JCPenney was set to sail on the Titanic's second  voyage from England to the US.

Frank Seiberling, the cofounder of Goodyear Tires, was booked to return to Southampton on the Titanic's next voyage.

The Akron Beacon Journal reported that Seiberling, the cofounder of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, and his wife frequently traveled to England and were huge admirers of English architecture. But one of their trips was postponed when their ship out of the States, the Titanic, sank.

So was John Alden Dix, the governor of New York.

Smithsonian Magazine also reported that Dix, the governor of New York from 1911 to 1913, was on the passenger list of the Titanic's return trip to England.

Henry Adams, a historian who was a descendant of President John Adams and President John Quincy Adams, was also booked on this trip.

"My ship, the Titanic, is on her way," Adams wrote in a letter on April 12, 1912, "and unless she drops me somewhere else, I should get to Cherbourg in a fortnight." As history tells, Adams was never able to board the ship and was forced to book passage elsewhere, The New Republic's Timothy Noah wrote.

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