creating

Writing Starters – Final Instalment

day 7 photo31-35 Just one prompt today and that’s for NaNoWriMo writers like me who don’t have a plot yet.

 A sure-fire plot plan exists in the steps of the hero’s journey. Documented by scholars such as Joseph Campbell, this pattern has been worked into stories across cultures and millennia. I wrote a fantasy for middle readers several years ago, and when I looked back, I found I had unconsciously followed the pattern almost perfectly. It’s been used in movies as diverse as Star Wars, The Lion King and The Princess Diaries.

Two great books on the subject and how the pattern applies to writing today are: The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler and The Key: How to Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth by James N. Frey. Here’s the journey as Vogler describes it. Take your heroes and heroines on the same journey and see what happens.

The Hero’s Journey Outline

The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development.  It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization.

Its stages are:

1.        THE ORDINARY WORLD.  The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma.  The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history.  Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

2.        THE CALL TO ADVENTURE.  Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.

3.        REFUSAL OF THE CALL.  The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly.  Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

4.        MEETING WITH THE MENTOR.  The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey.  Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

5.        CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.  At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values. 

6.        TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES.  The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

7.        APPROACH.  The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

8.        THE ORDEAL.  Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear.  Out of the moment of death comes a new life.

9.        THE REWARD.  The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.  There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

10.      THE ROAD BACK.  About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home.  Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

11.     THE RESURRECTION.  At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home.  He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level.  By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

12.       RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR.  The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

Writing Starters Instalment #5

NaNoWriMo is getting closer. Here are 5 more ideas to get the creative juices flowing.

21. Write a first paragraph in which your characters comes into physical contact with someone or something.

22. Think about secrets. Make sure your character has some and imagine the kind of person he or she would trust with those secrets. How could that other person gain that trust? Why might that person betray that trust and tell the secret to someone else?

23. If you have an antique or flea market nearby, look for old postcards and read the messages on the back. Here’s one I found. What story can you imagine lies behind the message? “I suppose you are still in Plaster Rock.  Heard that Frank 1st has left you.  I guess he must be a wanderer.”

24. Brainstorm around the words: flame, table, cover, mask, hollow.

25. Send  your characters on an adventure to a “land far, far away.”  Look through some old issues of National Geographic and imagine how your character would cope in a yurt, or in a market in Marrakesh or in a tent on the side of a mountain?

“If [my characters] were real, they’d hate me by the end of the book.”  Clive Cussler.

Writing Starters Instalment #4

Still looking for some NaNoWriMo inspiration. Here are 5 more writing starters to get you creating.

16. Head to your local bookstore or library with a friend and your writing journal. Take 2 envelopes and lots of small pieces of paper. For 5 minutes wander the store and write random novel titles on the small pieces of paper and put them in your envelopes. At the end of 5 minutes, exchange envelopes. Dip in and pull out a title and brainstorm a story that would go with those words. Maybe you could use the words as a line of dialogue to begin your story or in the opening sentence. Keep playing until one story starts to claim your full attention. Start writing.

17. Begin your story with your character in motion—driving, running, flying, riding. What is your character running from? What is your character running to?

18. You’re walking home with a friend after dark.  When you look at her, her eyes reflect light like a cat’s.

19. Your character loses a backpack/ purse/briefcase containing one thing that his or her future depends upon.

20. Free write around one or all of the following words: box, watch, garden, window, ship

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug.”  Mark Twain. 

Writing Starters Instalment #3

Here’s the next instalment for NaNoWriMo plotters. Have fun!

11. Play with the word “needle.” How many different needles can you visualize? Put one or two of them in your character’s hands or just out of reach and see what happens—someone away from home for the first time sewing on a button, fearing a dentist’s needle, needles clacking while heads roll… Or have your character needled or needle someone else.

12. “I never start a novel until I’m satisfied with the title.”  Ed McBain.  Work on your title until it’s right.  It’s the cup you are working to fill.

13. Look at your favourite CD cover.  Hide everything but 1 square inch.  What do you see?

14. Write an opening sentence in which something or someone falls.  What happens when they get up–or don’t!

15. Turn off everything and try writing in silence or change your background sounds.  Try jazz, blues, Benedictine monks, Mozart.

 “When you are telling the story you are meant to tell, you are actually going to feel the truth of it, and in feeling that truth, your spirit is going to soar.  When you are telling that story the way it needs to be told…you are going to feel that, too.”  Elizabeth George. 

Writing Starters Instalment #2

More ideas for NaNoWriMo writers and other creative folk.

6. Think of the skills you have: putting up a tent, downhill skiing, solving crosswords, cooking. Add these skills and interests to your characters or make learning them essential for your main character’s survival.

7. Think of the places that you know well: a neighbourhood, a city, a school, a cruise ship, a gym, a museum, a library. Now imagine them as places where your characters can fall in love or be shocked or frightened in. They can be places where a murder takes place or where people reveal secrets.

8. Decide what frightens your characters or grosses them out. Make sure this appears in your story somewhere (think Indiana Jones and the snakes).

9. What does your character value the most? Is it an object like a ring or a photograph? Or is it a reputation for honesty or an influential position or the chance to find true love? How can you put what your character values most at serious risk in your story?

10. Elmore Leonard said, “I once named a character Frank Matisse, but he acted older than his age; and for some reason he wouldn’t talk as much as I wanted him to.  I changed his name to Jack Delany and couldn’t shut him up.”  Try renaming one of your characters and see what happens.

“Nighttime is really the best time to work.  All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.”  Jessamyn West. 

Writing Starters Instalment #1

Here are the first 5 writing starters for the week.

 1. Find a place where you can do some serious people-watching. Pick three strangers and, one by one, imagine them saying good-bye. Decide what they are saying good-bye to–their homeland, their family, a lover, a job, a threat. What has happened to bring them to this moment? What lies ahead of them? Is the good-bye the beginning of their story or the end?

 2. Draw a map. It could be of a country, a city, an island, a kingdom, a space station. Add lots of details and place names. Now send your characters on a journey through the imaginary world you have just created, making sure that they get into lots of trouble along the way.

 3. Start with the sound of sirens. How does that sound affect you? What do you imagine has happened? Where has it happened? Who is affected?

 4. Have your character find or receive something small enough to be held in two hands. Now create a story around that small thing that turns your character’s life upside down. Think of Bilbo and a ring, Arthur and a sword, Snow White and an apple.

 5. Free write using one or all of the following words: sage, match, corner, light, border.

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”  Samuel Johnson

Losing the Pattern

Sweater-No-Longer-In-Progress
Sweater-No-Longer-In-Progress

I have looked everywhere for the pattern for my partially completed cardigan. The only thing I can think of is that I laid it on top of the newspapers on the kitchen table and it got scooped up in the recycling. Can I remember what magazine it was in? No. Have I looked everywhere? Yup, pretty sure–darnit.

 Now what do I do?

I had just about reached the decreases for the neck and sleeve shaping on the left front. Now, I have to figure out what I did with the right front and reverse it.  The decreases are very difficult to see in the pattern, and, of course, I will have to invent a sleeve pattern, too, to finish the piece.

Is it possible for me to do all this? Yes, probably, if I had lots of time and patience and was willing to slog through a lot of trial and error to get it right. And I’m sooooo not in the mood to go there. The yarn is lovely to work with and I want to get back to the feel of it slipping through my fingers and making its unique colour pattern as it grows.

Solution? Tear it down. Frog it. Find another knitting pattern (and make several photocopies of it!) and start again.

Has this ever happened in my writing? Definitely! I have lost the pattern there, too. Or rather I’ve found that the pattern I was following was the wrong one. Sometimes I’ve realized that I’m writing in the wrong voice. I change third-person to first and suddenly the story takes on a new life. My main character gets a little cheekier, takes more risks, and has more fun— and so do I. Sometimes, the plot lands in a bog where it threatens to sink into complete inaction. In that case, I need to drag my characters back to the crossroads and point them down a different road.

Today, I’ll be winding balls of yarn and looking for a new knitting pattern. Tomorrow, I’m going to go back to my young adult work-in-progress and get my character into a lot more trouble than she was expecting. And I’m going to enjoy doing both!

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