Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Does your WIP fit the Hero's Journey?


Does it have to?

There's a pretty good site (okay, their selling something but I still like their outlines) that talkes about the Hero's Journey. They list a bunch of movies on the site and outline them into the Hero's Journey. And they do it more indepth than I've ever seen it before. 188 stages!

Now I want to go back and watch the movies so I can match them up visually to the Hero's outline, because I just want this to sink into my brain better.

Now I'm looking at my own WIP and trying to see how it fits. Did I cover all my bases? Forget a major part that will leave my work looking weak? And if I have a hero and heroine who are both major players....do I have to "journey" them both? I mean, sometimes I'm in the heroine's head so does she need a journey here too? And did that guy who wrote Star Wars have the hero's journey in his head when he was writing it?

Here's the basic journey I'm working off of:

The Call

Threshold

Challenges

Abyss

Revelation

Transformation

Atonement

The Return


Not 188 but its a start.

Does anyone think of this while their working their WIP?

Opinons?

4 comments:

laughingwolf said...

what i do: hammer it out, without much thought, to the end... go back and use guides to see if i missed anything, then add/rearrange/rewrite...

Aimlesswriter said...

I'm using index cards right now to see if I flow.
Do you have any other guides other than the Hero's Journey?

Spy Scribbler said...

I have. I think a journey book is a journey book, and not every book is a journey book. But a lot of them are.

Now that you bring it up, I've been struggling with the ending of my current WIP, and I just realized it was a hero's journey and my heroine doesn't have a hero's climax, LOL.

Thanks!

I have trouble forcing a form like this. I need to internalize it before I can do it. Unfortunately, I can't internalize it until I've forced it, LOL.

I've forced myself with both the hero's journey and the Marshall plan, in my first couple longer stories. I wouldn't take it back, but I'm not sure I could do it again. I'm glad I did it, though.

Does that make sense?

Maybe I would try it again. I'm not sure. 188 steps, huh? Wow, LOL. The work would practically write itself with that!

laughingwolf said...

recommended to me:

bird by bird; anne lamott

the first five pages; noah lukeman

worlds of wonder; david gerrold

the forest for the trees; betsy lerner

writing the breakout novel; donald maass

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