Inside Out Hero's Journey

Blurb:

After young Riley is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco, her emotions – Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness – conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.

Ordinary World:

Riley’s feelings live up inside her head but she has her emotions controlled mostly by Joy.  Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust share the control room of Riley with Joy during her whole life.  The characters are called on an adventure when Joy and Sadness are sucked into a tube and are pulled to the Long Term Memory when they try to save all the core memories after Sadness disturbs one of the core memories by making them almost turn blue and into a sad emotion rather than keeping it a happy one. 

Call to Adventure: 

After Joy and Sadness land in Long Term Memory, Joy struggles to stay positive when she knows that she is now far away from headquarters and Riley.  After a few minutes of panicking, Sadness explains that she knows the way back to headquarters because she had earlier read all the manuals and instructions of how to get around Long Term Memory and what you should avoid there.  But later taking about three steps into the journey, Sadness no longer has the energy to guide Joy through the memory lanes so Joy literally drags Sadness on the ground along with her. 

Meeting With The Mentor: 

As the characters travel deeper within the journey, along the road, Joy and Sadness meet Bing Bong who was Riley’s imaginary friend back when she was only a toddler.  Bing Bong takes Joy and Sadness to a short through Imagination Land. 

Crossing the Threshold:

They cross Imagination Land but see Riley’s personalities falling apart and going down to the Forgotten Zone.  They must hurry up.  They take the train but it is not working because Riley is not awake.  They try to wake her up in the Dream Studios by scaring her awake but Bing Bong is taken to the subconscious prison where all of Riley’s nightmares stay.  They go after Bing Bong, rescue him and then wake up Jangles the clown to wake Riley from her sleep.  When the train is back on working and going to headquarters, the track starts to fall apart due to the lack of another personality structure.  Joy and Bing Bong fall into the Forgotten Zone.  But in there Joy starts to understand that Riley shout not be happy every time.  She sees that Sadness is a step to reach happiness.  Joy and Bing Bong try to get out of there by using Bing Bongs rocket to get out.  After trying, they fail multiple times. 

The Sacrifice:

Bing Bong then realizes that he is overweight in the rocket and he has to sacrifice himself so that Riley has a chance to be happy again. 

Joy makes it out of the Forgotten Zone with the Core Memories and looks for Sadness who is depressed for being useless to Riley.  Joy is able to send Sadness in a cloud headed to headquarters and follow her just after.  At this moment Riley has left home and is inside a bus going back to Minnesota because of the idea that Anger put inside her head.  When Joy and Sadness make it back to headquarters, Joy convinces Sadness that she is the only one able to take the running away from home idea from Riley’s head, that Riley must have sad moment as well. 

Sadness gets courage and does just that.  However, Sadness sees that Joy misses the fact that she was in control and she invites her control Riley together.  Riley starts to produce memories that are happy and sad at the same time, these memories end up being Core Memories. 

Reward:

Riley is now and forever a happy girl, adapted to a new city, with friends and hobbies.  A new control board arrives for the emotions at headquarters, much bigger and much more complex.  Now Riley has many more personality lands and Core Memories to explore. 

New Control Panel.