Heroes in all stories face this same choice. Do they take the high road or the low? Do they accept help from a stranger or go it alone? Do they face the beast head on or sneak out the back? That's what makes stories interesting. The intrigue. The unknown. The conflicts navigated by the hero and, of course, how that hero deals with the obstacles that inevitably head their ugly rear along the way.

One choice we all have, as teller of tales, is the choice between revolution and revelation, two words that sound almost exactly alike, but conjure up very different images in the mind.

Let's start with "revolution". Why is revolution a concept storytellers need to be mindful of? Because every truly great story IS a revolution -- both in the sense of revolving around a core theme and being an uprising, of sorts -- a conscious taking on of an old way of being that needs to be overthrown, enabling the hero to be saved from the burden of whatever it is that has kept him or her down and out: fear, doubt, hesitation, greed, selfishness, powerlessness, tunnel vision, assumptions, confusion, envy, or any of the other obstacles that prevent human beings from being on top of their game.

Simply put, storytellers are revolutionaries, taking on whatever systems or structures are no longer working. Being a revolutionary can be a very exciting path -- energizing, absorbing, and highly purposeful. But being a revolutionary -- pushing back against an existing order -- is only half the story. It's easy to fight against "the wrong", but it takes an entirely different mindset to live "the right".

Which is precisely why a lot of revolutionaries who end up in power don't make good leaders. They don't necessarily have what it takes to SUSTAIN their apparent breakthrough. And because they don't, they become ripe targets for the next revolution, now fighting valiantly for yet another cause.

Which brings us to the word "revelation" -- the act of revealing, the disclosing of some kind of timeless truth or wisdom. Good storytellers are not just revolutionaries. They are revelationaries, too.

What do storytellers reveal? Two things: access to feeling and the re-cognition untapped wisdom of what it means to be a fully conscious human being -- curious, awake, aware, adaptive, resilient, creative, reflective, responsive, kind, compassionate, evolving, generous, grateful and a whole lot of other words you can find in your nearest thesaurus.

That's why we tell fairy tales to our children. We want them to gain access to the wisdom they will need as they mature. And that's why we go to the moves, watch TV, or read a book. We want the experience of breakthrough, resolution, and wisdom made real -- even if the path to these noble aspirations are filled with conflict, obstacles, and angst.

You can't have one without the other. Revolution and revelation go hand in hand. If you have any doubt, all you need to do is read about the lives of some of the great souls who have walked this earth. Buddha had to leave his entitled life as a Prince and endure countless hardships as an ascetic monk before his enlightenment came. Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, too, all revolted against the existing order, but they did it in a way that brought revelation -- not only to themselves, but to countless others, too.

The "Hero's Journey" is what Joseph Campbell called it -- the path all of us are on, regardless of the name we give it.

As a storyteller, your responsibility is to increase the odds of other people going on this journey -- not only joining the storytelling revolution, but riding it as far as possible until the revelation comes.

My 2018 book on this topic
My 2015 book on the topic
Fuggedabout it! Sometimes all you need is poetry