Writer's Journey: More than just a pit stop
THE WRITER’S JOURNEY – MORE THAN JUST A PIT STOP
Last book of the semester to discuss – The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler - and I’m glad I left it for the end for a variety of reasons.
I’ve been a long time fan of Joseph Campbell (and Homer – talk about two ends of the timeline on the craft of storytelling). Having been brought up with a worn out copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology by my bed stand as a child, the mythic structure of storytelling can never be discussed enough. And though some might call Vogler’s take to be formulaic, I vehemently disagree.
For me, mythic structure is to storytelling as genome mapping is to the human body. In fact, I have often wondered if there might be some symbolism in the genome that reinforces humanity’s need for tales of heroic struggle and the cast of characters that accompany her/him on their journey to overcome great obstacles. We (people aka readers) all suffer at some point in our lives. Having a story told to us that manifests, even in symbolism, our experiences, gives us hope to continue, and causes us to pause and reflect on our own lives.
A very recent posting on SHU’s message board explored how tragedy can be a great motivator to write. The focus was on love lost and horrific employers. And I in turn had responded that bad relationships, monsteresque bosses, war, betrayals, deaths -- in the end, they're all different sorts of tragedies and their scars can definitely fan a spark in me to want to write.
And to read. From ‘both ends of the desk’, I’ve found a constant need in my life to find or create stories that tie into the human experience. The mythic structure, laid out by Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, Christopher Vogler, John Truby and many others, shows how to make sense of the chaos of life so it can be shared with others in a way that will talk not only to their ‘human brain’ but to that deep seated part of themselves, that lizard brain, that little hurt child that sits dazed and confused attempting to create reason from the insanities of life.
When the hero fails, we can identify. As humans, we fail often. When the hero succeeds because of sheer determination, we can feel their accomplishment. Even if we have never had such success on a personal level. In our hearts, we do believe that if things had gone otherwise, we could have won. We could have saved the world, righted the wrong and been a hero.
Vicarious living? Perhaps. But over 5,000 years of storytelling has demonstrated that we need to experience other lives and adventures in order to make peace with our own.
I sometimes wonder if we write as a means to exude hope or fear. Two very basic human emotions. Maybe some tiny little part of our brains thinks that if we write, we can work things out for ourselves as well as providing cautionary tales for other.
In crafting the story for Critical Past, I strove for a mythic structure that would hopefully affect readers on a deep level, whether they related to Kate or Jon (my heroes). Here’s a breakdown of my characters, their archetypes, enneagrams and functions:
I just finished working a section of Critical Past where I strongly felt the presence of mythic structure in not just character but in plot as well. Before this piece, the good guys have struggled in the Ordinary World, they’ve been given the Call to Adventure by testing the new FTL and have fallen through the First Threshold into the Special World, a version of Earth that is contradictory to everything they know. Though the new Africa of my story certainly represents the crossing over, its fantastic nature also represents the first test for our heroes.
According to Vogler, the threshold crossing marks the end of Act One (for me this sort of Act structure works for books as well as films or plays) and the beginning of Act Two. Since I’ve just hit the 200 page mark, and expect this novel to be somewhere in the 600 page area, I am gratified that the story seems to be right where it should be. Vogler compares Act One to the “loading, fueling, taxiing, and rumbling down the runway towards takeoff.” Considering how much I’ve thrown on the heroes’ backs, I would say it is definitely time for flight. And I am excited to be underway.
One last side note. Vogler’s structure indicates that the mentor is usually introduced prior to this point in the story. (He does, however, state that it is never necessary for the pieces to go in the linear fashion he’s laid out). Although Burke likes to think he’s the mentor of Kate and Jon, the true mentor of this story – Heron, will not be introduced for a few more scenes. I’m going to need to be very careful to make it clear how influential Heron is in the growth of our heroes. Again, this is why I appreciate Vogler’s book. He stresses flexibility with the structure but provides a clear vision of how best to connect to the reader.
Which is something I sorely wish to do with Critical Past.
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
by Renni Browne, Dave King
It was June. I had three chapters to rewrite, a synopsis to do and I panicked.
I knew my first chapter wasn’t strong enough, but I didn’t know why.
I knew all three of my chapters weren’t clear enough, precise enough, to set the tone for the story I had in my head.
And I knew my head was black and blue from banging it against the wall.
Though it should seem obvious as to why I happened to read SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS (SEFW) while strategizing and then rewriting, it wasn’t. Maybe on some sub-conscious level, sure. But I wasn’t operating on all cylinders at the time (though there was that brief shining moment for two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August when my teen was out of town), thanks to a rather large black cloud that’s hung over my home this entire year.
No, it was really just luck that had me pick this book as the first to read in my contract series for the semester.
And yes, Mary Ann, there really is a Santa Claus.
No book has all the answers when it comes to writing (or anything else for that matter), but SEFW certainly comes close. Concepts that I had been hearing about for months, such as Show, Don’t Tell and RUE, otherwise known as Refuse the Urge to Explain, became suddenly clear and comprehensible thanks to the copious examples and explanations in this book.
Though the entire book was of value, I would have to say that the very first chapter was where everything, and I do mean everything, became clear. The authors take a passage from The Great Gatsby and run it through various drafts to exemplify the value of showing the intricacies of character and plot versus telling them. The first version is an almost synopsis like ‘telling’ of a dialogue scene between guests at a dinner party of Gatsby’s where the reader is first learning about the great enigma that is Gatsby, their host. We are told that Gatsby is an enigma. We are told that there are several guests that each have different theories about him. And we are told that each guest believes his or her theory to be the answer.
In version two, which is actually F. Scott Fitzgerald’s version, we’re shown all the above through a conversation surrounding the host’s quickness to replace an expensive dress of a guest who’d accidentally torn it while gallivanting around at another of his parties. We’re also shown that there is a mysterious element to Gatsby – no one knows where he was during the war or where he came from.
All this through dialogue. Not only was it plainly evident how much more entertaining it is to show versus tell, but by showing, the reader is pulled in and becomes a character. The story is revealed to them as it happens.
I read that chapter and immediately tore my own pages apart. And most importantly, I realized that having Kate ‘talk’ about her failed Mars mission wasn’t half the fun that ‘showing’ her failed Mars mission would be.
And so my new chapter one was born.
Another vital trick I picked up – that really carries across several of the key issues that Browne and King discuss in SEFW, was to write the narrative, even though it was in the 3rd person, with the flavor and personality of that individual’s POV. This has been fairly easy to do for Kate – and it’s another reason her scenes are so strong. Jon and Burke have definitely been tougher because I don’t really know them yet. But I believe as I continue to work on the story, that’s going to come out. The experiment I recently did with Jon’s relapse into a semi-autistic state was very insightful for me as a writer. Getting across that overload of sensory input, confusement as to what is right and what is wrong, added a definitive ‘flavor’ to his POV.
One area that I continue to struggle with, even with the help of SEFW, is ‘beats’. In the prose world, beats means pauses – using a bit of business, a physical movement or action interspersed throughout the dialogue to vary the rhythm of a scene and to help the reader absorb the implications of the dialogue. Of course, it’s also to make the scene more visual.
Firstly, I’m so incredibly prone – as it’s been pointed out repeatedly – to head movements that I must admit that even with this book, I still have a great deal to learn about how to use action and body language. Having written for television and stage, I was always trained to work with the actors, to find natural movements that their sub-consciousness wanted to do. It always made blocking easy and I didn’t have to worry about including the directions in the writing. In fact, that’s considered offensive by most actors.
But as a writer, I am the actors. Yikes.
The other challenge for me with the term “beats” is that having worked in TV/Film for so long – the word has a very different meaning in the visual medium. Beats in TV/film writing actually mean scenes or key moments that move the story forward. Twenty some odd years of using a term that way is a hard habit to break.
And in fact, since I created a 4 page ‘beat’ sheet for Critical Past before writing the synopsis – I don’t think I’ll ever break that habit.
NOTE TO SHU POSSIBLY: A workshop on physical action descriptives aka body language could be a good thing.
Still, I am very grateful for this book. It concretized the whirlpool of concepts and instinctual ideas running through my brain on what really works best in fiction. And although my ‘re-read before re-write’ pile is building, I’m going to have to include this on the list. SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS is a port in the storm of my struggles for lucidity as I try to tell a very big story.
