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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20000
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20000
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Can you have the Ordinary World in flashbacks? Absolutely. It can be a place or a state of being which _used_ to exist and now doesn't, and the goal of the journey can be to restore it. We do need to get enough feel for the Ordinary World to know why the Hero wants it restored, so that we feel that along with the Hero, but if it doesn't currently exist, that's fine. This is, of course, presuming that the Hero _wants_ to get back to the Ordinary World.

Can the Hero stay put and the world change? Also absolutely. In David and Leigh Eddings's Belgariad and Malloreon series, several characters start as "simple farm boys," but their actions change the world (and in some cases the universe) around them. The Ordinary World of their innocent childhoods has been changed, or for one character obliterated. They miss the innocence of childhood, but they don't actually want to restore that life, because there were Bad Things happening at the time as well which they had to conquer. Lyra goes on a similar journey in Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_.

A Hero's Journey without an Ordinary World to return to is, as Chris Sunami points out, more of an episodic cycle, like _Star Trek_ or a police procedural. Each single episode may (or may not) return to the status quo; on Trek this is known as Hitting the Reset Button. If your story is too episodic, then the characters don't grow or learn anything. That's more of a comic strip (like _Foxtrot_, where nobody ages).

Original score: 4