Story structure
The Hero's Journey
Campbell's monomyth and Vogler's practical twelve-stage version: the round trip of departure, initiation and return.
The Hero's Journey is the monomyth described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949): seventeen stages across departure (call to adventure, refusal, supernatural aid, crossing the threshold), initiation (trials, the ordeal, the boon) and return. Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey turned it into the practical twelve-stage version most writers use: Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, Refusal, Meeting the Mentor, Crossing the Threshold, Tests/Allies/Enemies, Approach, Ordeal, Reward, The Road Back, Resurrection, Return with the Elixir.
It pairs naturally with the three-act structure and with Vogler's eight archetypes, which describe characters as functions relative to the hero.