No not me. I don’t do free courses. And though I’ve reached various levels of Amazon bestsellerdom over the years, I’d feel like a liar branding myself a “bestselling author.”
No, the bestselling author in question is James Altucher.
Altucher has published 25 books in his life. Some were total flops. Others got on the WSJ and USA Today bestseller lists. A couple were the number one selling books across all of of Amazon for a while.
I’ve been a fan of James Altucher for years. And even though I’ve just published a book (my new 10 Commandments book, which is built around an idea I actually got from Altucher), I was eager to listen to his new course.
It’s delivered for free, at least in part, via his podacst.
The initial lesson was inspiring and insightful, as usual with his material.
First came all the benefits that Altucher has personally seen from writing his many books.
Then he exploded objections about what writing a book really entails (spoiler: short, disorganized, and ungrammatical are perfectly ok, particularly in the first draft).
Then he gave three patented questions for positioning yourself so that your book naturally clicks with your audience, in the present moment.
All good stuff. And then, in lesson two, Altucher got to the Hero’s Journey. And I groaned.
As you might know, the Hero’s Journey is a story structure that keeps repeating, over and over, throughout various stories and cultures and ages. A familiar recent example is the first Matrix movie:
Neo is just some dude. Then he gets a call (literally, via a cellphone) to go on a quest. At first, he resists. Then he’s forced into it. He meets a guide in the form of a wise sage named Morpheus. He faces increasing challenges and obstacles as he progresses on his quest. He makes friends and allies along the way. Finally, there’s a climactic battle between Neo and the forces of evil, or rather, a climactic battle between Neo and his own doubts, fears, and limiting beliefs.
My issue with the hero’s journey, or with James Altucher talking it up, is not that the structure is not effective. Rather, like any structure or format that simplifies a complex topic and creates a feeling of insight (Myers-Briggs, AIDA), is that true believers start to shoehorn the entire world into this one structure.
Altucher does it in his course. Everything becomes a Hero’s journey, from Princess Leia’s backstory in Star Wars, to Moses dying right before he reaches Israel, to some woman writing a tweet about crypto.
If I didn’t already know the Hero’s Journey well, and if I didn’t already know there are lots of other effective ways to communicate that didn’t fit into this mold, I’d be very confused about what these very different stories actually have in common.
Anyways, this email is getting long. I got two conclusions for you:
1. If you want to follow the canonical Hero’s Journey as a paint-by-numbers structure, like the Matrix does, you’ll probably be fine. You might not write the next Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, and you might have to lie a little if you’re telling your own life story, but you will have a serviceable structure that people will understand and even respond to.
2. If you don’t want to follow the canonical Hero’s Journey. you don’t have to. The basic thing you want to have in a good story is tension, which comes from ups and downs, twists and turns. Remember that, and you can write effective content — a story, a book, a Tweet — that doesn’t fit the Hero’s Journey, even if true believers are sure to argue otherwise.
And now back to my new 10 Commandments book, specifically to the topic of tension, ups and downs, twists and turns.
Turns out this isn’t just valuable in telling stories, but in influence in general.
I have an entire chapter on the topic, which starts out with a famous screenplay (which doesn’t fit the Hero’s Journey), then moves on to a pickup artist seducing a lingerie model in a Hollywood nightclub (a story that doesn’t fit the Hero’s Journey), and finally ends with an example of a real live con game I dug up from a 1912 newspaper article, featuring the “Charles Gondorff Syndicate,” who managed to con a man for about $1.8 million in today’s money.
All these persuaders and influencers were relying on the same same basic technique, one that you can use if you want to sell more, persuade more, or simply communicate more effectively in your personal life. In the book, I sum it up in two words. Best part? Those words are not “lying,” “cheating,” or “Hero’s Journey.” For more info: