0 The Hero's Journey - Heather Dyer

Most - if not all - contemporary stories are modelled around Joseph Campbell's classic 'Hero's Journey', which he says represents ‘the pattern that lies behind every story ever told’. It’s a pattern that maps both outer journeys and inner, spiritual journeys.

Joseph Campbell created this mythic pathway by travelling the world collecting myths from primitive cultures. He discovered that all myths had certain sequences of actions, or stages, in common.

 

Typically, The Hero’s Journey follows the protagonist’s progress as he/she crosses the threshold from the known world into the unknown. The protagonist then faces various challenges and meets archetypal characters who perform specific roles. Typically, the hero confronts a dragon or the equivalent, and either dies or appears to die in order to be resurrected. He/she may then receive a gift, which they take back to the known world to benefit humanity.

Personally, I wouldn't advocate crafting your story according to a formula like this - but it's fascinating how (even without intending it) when a story 'works' it does seem to follow this pattern.

 

It can be helpful, therefore, to superimpose this pattern onto our stories at the first draft stage and ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Have we established our protagonist in the 'ordinary world' before we turn their lives upside down and make them venture out into the 'unknown'?
2. Does our protagonist need to meet a mentor - or gain wisdom from some other external source - in order to help them on their journey of transformation?
3. What is the 'dragon' that our protagonist has to face? Is it something or someone outside themselves? Or might the dragon be their own internal 'demons'?
4. Does our protagonist face their dragon and reach a point of 'death and rebirth' - which could mean that they have to face their worst fears, relinquish their strongest beliefs or greatest dreams - and change and evolve as a result?
5. What is the 'gift' that they get? Is it knowledge, courage or something more concrete?
6. Does their new insight or situation then allow them to overcome an old problem, or help somebody else?  

Finally, can you relate The Hero's Journey to your story? Or even to stories in your own life? Or is it possible to create a story that doesn't follow this pattern at all - but still works?

Heather Dyer's latest book is The Flying Bedroom.

www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Detail: The Hero's Journey - Heather Dyer

0 Bird by Bird - Heather Dyer

 

© nao-cha

“Bird by bird, son,” says Mr. Lamott, when his son is overwhelmed by a school project on birds and doesn’t know where to begin: “Just take it bird by bird.”

'Bird by bird,' is also what I tell myself when I’m facing the immensity of writing a new book. Often a new creative endeavour is a journey into the unknown. We advance paragraph by paragraph, scene by scene – often without being entirely sure where we’re headed. We keep our heads down, measuring our progress word by word.

But sometimes it's helpful to measure our progress not by word count, but by time spent writing. Therefore, 'bird by bird' could also mean ‘moment by moment’.

In October, Nicola Morganset up an October ‘NanoWrimo’ (Novel Writing Group) for authors in the Scattered Authors’ Society. All those who signed up agreed to declare our writing goals at the beginning of the month and encourage each other to keep on track daily via Facebook.

I signed up for the group to help motivate myself to write. But I didn’t declare a daily word count. My goal was simply to open one of my two writing projects – one fiction, one non-fiction – and work on it for an unspecified time first thing every morning. Only after this could I start my other work: editorial report writing, lesson planning, admin, errands…

I used to clear the decks of all this 'other stuff' before tackling my creative writing. But last year other work built up to such an extent that the decks were never clear. I ended up batting off one ‘urgent’ task after another, just to keep up. If I did get to pause I found myself panting and out of breath – not a conducive state of mind for creativity. I realized one day that it had been nearly a year since I’d properly given some attention to the sort of writing that all my other work was meant to support.

And what did I discover during the October Wrimo? I discovered that even fiddling ineffectually with my writing projects tended to produce at least a sentence or an idea that I could build on the following day.

Also, dipping into the worlds of my books – even for just half an hour – allowed these worlds to develop bit by bit in my unconscious. Then, in quiet or preoccupied moments (like walking to work or showering or meditating) lines of dialogue or new ideas tended to arise in my consciousness like bubbles in a pot of porridge on a low heat.

Bird by bird my projects grew, so that at the end of the week I was undeniably further on than I had been at the beginning.

But best of all, I no longer felt the guilt associated with not having been 'creative’. It was only once this guilt was lifted that I realized that I had been struggling to work through a low-level stress caused by the knowledge that I had neglected something that was important but not shouting for attention; something hovering in the background, waiting. I found that by attending to my creative work first, this stress disappeared.

And in the end, I still got as much 'other' work done. If anything, I became more efficient, more patient,  and worked with a greater focus – because I have already satisfied that ‘thing’ hovering in the background.

This way of working is not new to me – in fact, I advise all my students to try working this way. But somehow I had let my priorities slide. The October NanoWrimo group prompted me to remember my priorities. I feel better for it – and so does my writing.

 “Bird by bird,” is the title of Anne Lamott’s book about writing and about being a writer.

Heather Dyer's latest book is The Flying Bedroom.
www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

 

Detail: Bird by Bird - Heather Dyer

0 The Best-Laid Plans, or Down, Characters, Down!

I’ve always been a planner; the idea of starting a novel and ‘seeing where the story took me’ was anathema to me. After all, I was the writer; I was in charge.

Despite this, my last novel, Still Falling, out in February 2015, was a mettlesome beast, running to nine drafts before I and my editor were happy. But I’d begun it without a contract, shelved it for nine months to write a commission (Too Many Ponies), and besides, the subject matter took me into darker psychological places than I’d ever gone before – so maybe it was natural that it shouldn’t bend to my will as easily as previous books.

the best-laid plans

The work-in-progress, Street Song, would be completely different. Because my agent wanted a full outline for this year’s London Book Fair, I’d thought through the story and knewexactly where it would go. It was a simpler story than Still Falling and for once I hadn’t had to struggle with the main female character – I’ve always found boys easier to write – as she’s very like me as an eighteen-year-old.

I’d promised the couple of interested publishers that the novel would be ready by the end of the year. Challenging, but not impossible. I set a tight schedule – 80,000 words in three months, July to September. I knew I’d over-write – I always do in a first draft; but I told myself I wouldn’t over-write much this time, because of my great outline. By 30^th September the first draft would be done; I could fit in something else in October, and get back to it with plenty of time to redraft.

What could possibly go wrong?

On the first page the male protagonist, Cal, announced he was a recovering addict. Unexpected, but it went well with the story, so that was OK. In fact, it made some of his later choices much easier to justify. I don’t tend to get fanciful about the creative process, but it really was as if I hadn’t made that fact up; it was part of the character’s history that he hadn’t been able to tell me until I actually let him speak.

As for Toni, my female MC – what a cow. If I really was as smug as that as an eighteen-year-old, it’s a wonder I had any friends. Her epiphany is meant to be the moment she realises that she doesn’t want to go to Oxford; it was her mum’s dream rather than hers. When I found Cal telling her that it was her dream, she was just scared of failure, I was annoyed at his cheek. I was the writer; he was simply a not-very-perceptive boy (and a made-up one): who was he to tell Toni what she was thinking when even I hadn’t known that?

But he was right.

Listen, guys -- I'm kind of in charge here...

my low-tech approach to word count

As July moved into August, and September loomed, the word count grew. At first it was all about hitting those magical targets. Then, on a week’s retreat to finish the draft, just before the climax, another unexpected thing happened. A minor character, meant to be just a random girl in a bar, turned out to be something more. She needed to be rescued by Cal. He won’t be up to the task, I thought: and anyway, I hadn’t planned this. Maybe I should just delete her? After all, I was now at 85,000 and no end in sight. But you know what? She was right too. I’d underestimated Cal, and in fact the ending (when I get there) will be improved by his actions.

It’s all just a bit… inconvenient. My characters are behaving like – well, like people.

And now my meticulously-planned 80,000 word draft is a huge messy long thing well over 100,000 (I’ve stopped checking). I’m two weeks late in starting my next project for which the deadline is – well, it’s too scary to type here but SOON.

have stopped checking the scary word count

But you know what? Every surprise, though tiresome, has made for a better story in the end. Like an unexpected but essentially welcome visitor. She might throw your routines out, and need a bit of looking after, but it’s so much fun to have her in the house.

And if the book has outstayed its welcome in my carefully-worked-out life, well, maybe that’s taught me something important about the creative process too.

Though I do need to finish it TODAY.

Detail: The Best-Laid Plans, or Down, Characters, Down!