Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

Narrative modes ~ #1 the Heroic Journey

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Boon

Organizing your novel or story around a narrative mode can help your story follow a reliable framework and ensure you maintain your reader’s interest.  The heroic journey is a great narrative structure to follow and is one of the most popular in use, just check out every Pixar movie.

The heroic journey calls for several elements and in a fairly standard order.  There are variants in the structure, but this is one in common use.

  1. The main character, in this case the average Joe or Joelyne (potential hero) arrives on the scene.  
  2. An event occurs which forces Joe to leave his home and go in search of something important.  This is known as the call to adventure.  The event can be falling in love, having someone he cares about become sick, a favor asked for by someone, something taken away he must retrieve, or a trick used to get him out out of the way.
  3. What Joe needs can be a magic item, forgiveness, a physical quality, knowledge, a person, any number of things, a.k.a., the boon.    
  4. He need not go alone.  He may bring along friends (known as companions) to aid him in acquiring his boon.  The companions come in several archetypes: the simpleton, the loyal friend, the trickster, the guide, and there are many others.  They also can be acquired in the course of the journey.
  5. Frequently, the hero is not recognized as a hero, but he/she may already have a secret weapon.  This is known as a talisman and is used to give the hero strength.   It can be anything you can imagine: an object, a physical quality, intelligence, a innocent token carried for sentimental reasons, an inherited object.  The talisman must play an important role in the course of the journey, though it starts out innocent of any value.
  6. He must leave what is known and enter the unknown.  This is a case of crossing the threshold.  He has lived in a world where the rules are obvious and normal (the overworld).  When he crosses, he will find himself in the underworld where everything he has known will no longer apply.  The locations are often jungles, forests, desert, but could be just as easily, a country the hero has not been to, an experience, such as bungee jumping.  He will have to face several trials as he travels to acquire his boon.  These trials are challenges that strengthen the hero as he wins each one. Tests of strength and intelligence are the usual fair.  Traditionally, they are monsters, riddles, and puzzles that force the hero to mature for the final feat required to earn the boon.  For non-fantasy stories, personal fears and weaknesses can supply plenty of challenges.
  7. Along the way, he may face a challenge that is too great for him.  In this case, supernatural intervention is available to come to his aid.  The source of this intervention can be his talisman, the guide who is a companion or an outside force that provides the necessary time he needs to come up with his own means of meeting the challenge.
  8. After the final challenge, he receives his boon.  This can be a crucial event.  A nice twist at this point can be that he gets the boon he needs rather than the one he sought.  So the fellow searching for money and fame, finds the girl of his dreams instead or the woman determined to find independence and individual freedom, gives it up for someone else’s needs, but it gives her satisfaction.
  9. The last step is the hero recrossing the threshold, returning to his original home and integrating into society as a recognized hero.

And so the story is told, and the reader’s attention maintained. Next week, is the Faustian Legend narrative mode.

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Writing workshop: taking the risk to grow as a writer

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A couple of weeks ago, my creative writing class held their monthly workshop.  I have ten students working on various writing forms: poetry, short story, prose essay and novel.  What I noticed is they did not seem to know what to tell each other.   Each one knew what he or she wanted from the others but did not have confidence that the others would want the same.  There were so many, “Hey, your story is just great.  I like all the comic moments.  You really made me laugh.”  No substance to the criticism.  No chance for growth.  And then big, bad teacher thing had to sit there and attack failing description, pages of telling without concrete, sensory imagery, dialogue that offered little characterization, weak construction and a complete disregard for punctuating dialogue and paragraphing.  These students know better.  So why the sudden regression?

This was the sixth workshop we had this year, and my students had gotten
over shyness and taking things personally.  But a new student joining
us from another school and choosing not to speak at all when poetry was
on the floor seemed to take a lot of the earned confidence away from
those who were gaining familiarity with the forms they felt less
comfortable with.

Turning the light on in workshop

Today we sat down and talked about what each writer wanted to know to improve the work submitted to the workshop.   There were some revealing moments.  There had been a real division between the poets and the prose writers, a strong belief that there was little they had in common.  But as they added to the list on the board that each wanted feedback on, so much turned out to be the same: imagery, purpose, viewpoint, consistency, tone, tense, timing, conventions.  Sure there were areas that had greater need:  my novelists needed to know that they were consistent with the details, and my poets’ main concerns were imagery and message.  But they still all needed this feedback to improve and most importantly wanted it.  By the end of our discussion there was a better sense of how not just to use the workshop to benefit oneself, but how to provide the best assistance to the other writers.

This one class discussion brought back the chance for growth in all of them and put a stop to the belief that there was any good reason to sit out when a less familiar form was needing feedback.  It is two weeks before our next workshop.  I will probably have a briefing the day before we start so they can recapture this new view of criticizing each genre and how they can assist their peers in growing as writers.

How to keep track of facts for a book series?

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One thing I have been crunching possibilities on is how to keep track of details so they remain consistent between books in a series.  Sometimes it is as simple as did I spell it with a hyphen or without?  What was Misty’s date of birth again?  Is the clump of white hair at her left temple or her right?

I have been using yWriter 5 for organization and word count because it has a section on characters and a place for notes: physical description, alternate names, biography, and the like, as well as the actual chapters.  But I write in a word process and transfer scenes as I go, so I do not always have it open and easy to check my facts.

protect my husband’s wall from sticky note infestation

I have considered a notebook, but that is not split-second access ready.  A wall of sticky notes would be a great idea, but I can just hear my husband now indirectly criticizing by pointing out all the little colorful sheets of paper on the wall which detracts from his fine paint job or the ones floating about the floor because I will be working on this for a few years, what with seven books to the series, and some of that sticky on the paper is going to give itself up to variations in mugginess and dry air.  And what about the fact that I am usually working on two or three projects at once in different stages of production:  drafting, redrafting, editing, getting publication ready?  I don’t have that many walls available.

I never use spreadsheets (some sort of neurosis holding my back from that) unless there is no avoiding them, i.e., other people have to make them and my job has to require I look at them.

Right now I have a piece of graph paper with a timeline on one side and various scribbles on the other for current important facts I keep needing to confirm.  I think it is buried under a draft of my anthology and a notebook full of poetry.

So can anybody recommend a solution to this issue?  I am interested in hearing novel ideas tried and true or otherwise.  Please keep the spreadsheet recommendations down to a minimum though.

Revisiting linear vs non-linear plots parallel plots

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Back on 10/10/12, I wrote about a redraft I was working on for In Times Passed.  I had set up two parallel plots, one linear and one non-linear.  I felt pretty good about the changes, but I was uncertain about if the reader would be able to follow the non-linear plot line.  I had chosen the non-linear scenes to match to the linear flow based on common links in dialogue, which seemed a reasonable approach to connecting the two plot lines.

You know that part of you that syncs together what you write, that manages the pull of imagery, purpose, characterization, depth of character, release of the gathering of facts?  The inner coil that tightens as you develop plot and bothers you when things are not working. Well that place, that wellspring of creativity was giving me muffled bursts of dismay at that non-linear flow, unflow.  Last week, just to check, I moved the pieces about and straightened out the sister plot so they both ran chronologically in line but not in the same time frame (one is set in the future).  That muffled burst of dismay settled down with a contented sigh.  There was no mistaking it. 

I am letting it rest as I line edit and watch out for any more muffled bursts.  My advice, if something in you is protesting, check it out.  Make the changes called for and see if you find creative peace.  You can always revert back to the original draft.

When I have trouble getting the words out

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What some might call a mild form of the infamous writer’s block.  I have never suffered from the extreme form.  I do have times when a scene I have in mind isn’t working, but I don’t call that writer’s block.  It is more a case of not having worked out the details or I am expecting something from my character that really isn’t what he or she would do, or maybe not how that character would do it.

On Goodreads recently a writer was looking for advice on how to overcome her writer’s block.  I made some suggestions but they were based on my practices to improve my effort when I felt I was failing to produce something worthwhile.  It has never been a case of not being able to put words on the page, which does sound awful, something I do not want to face.

So these are the things I do when my writing is not up to snuff.

  • I go read someone I think is a great writer and hope his or her ability will rub off or inspire my own (my writer’s muse frequently is named Heinlein.  I can’t tell you how many times I have read Door into Summer).
  • I lay my self down on the couch, close my eyes and imagine my character in the scene I am working on.  I put in all the details: lighting, decor, emotion, what happened just before, what is going to happen after.  Soon there will be dialogue of either the character talking to me or to some other character. At some point, I find something I simply must start writing, and I am off the couch.
  • Sometimes, convinced I am just tired, I will go to lie down and that will last all of two minutes.  Counter to my intentions, I suddenly have plenty to write.
  • I tell my self to just write anything, summarize what I wanted to cover, write a scene that is needed, dredge up an old hurt my character has, anything, good or bad.  At some point I am warmed up enough that I have something to write worth writing.  I never expect perfection.  I always tell myself, “Hey, you are going to redraft it anyway.”
  • When there are times that I cannot write, but I really want to, I record it on the memo app on my phone. Then when I am actually able to write and can’t think of the wording, I listen to the recording which always has some key line that I can leap off of, and then I write. 
  • A writer once told me (YA and children’s novelist Joan Oppenheimer) never leave your writing finished. Always leave yourself at a point where you know where the plot is going next or what the next issue is, whatever. Make a quick note to yourself about what is next.  Then when I come back, there is my reminder. I don’t have to stare at a blank sheet, something is already waiting for me.
  • I review the scenes I know are coming up and see if one seems ready to be written now.  I’ll write it and later fill in the missing space that I was having trouble with.  I have the start and now the end point, so filling in the middle won’t be so difficult.

My Doubling Plan for the Year.

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Scheherazade’s rice doubling

So last year I reviewed my efforts to publish my first book on Smashwords (first book anywhere, to qualify that), and I viewed a simple download of a sample of my work and the 151 times my blog had been sampled as a positive step forward to being a writer. I talked about my plans to publish my second book in my series Students of Jump, and I wanted to double the number of times my blog had been viewed.  So how did I do and am I still looking forward positively when I still remain undiscovered by a reading public?

  • I unpublished In Times Passed this past September to revamp and reedit as I felt it was incomplete.  I intend to republish before this month is out, and it is now complete and just in need of some review editing.
  • No-Time Like the Present, the second in the series, is not published yet, but is on its last redraft and close to a full-blown edit and first reader run.   It suffered a delay when I pulled book 1 off the line for a revamp and reedit.  I can say book 2 is two to four months away from publication.
  • I did publish an anthology of short stories called Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories last July.  I chose to hit my publish date for book 2 with this anthology as I hated missing a self-imposed publishing day.  I follow the philosophy that backing down from a promise is just a habit in the making. So this was my way of keeping my promise but not putting a book out before it was ready.  These shorts stories felt ready.
  • So I wanted to double my 151 blogger visits.  That would mean I had to have at least 302 hits for 2012.  I have had 1,726 hits.  Guess I hit that goal a few times.  Sure, I know that is not much when looked at in popular blog numbers, but here I am with a plan to double it again.  So I am off to break 3,456 by next year.
  • I started a Twitter account (@LDarbyGibbs) and had quite a run with it until school started and I had to put my valuable time elsewhere.  I met some great writers, learned to get my point across in 140 spaces or less and found Hootsuite a hoot better than a hollar.  I still visit Twitter every couple of weeks and wish I could do more.  Second semester has always been the easier part of the school year for me, so perhaps I’ll be on more in the coming year.
  • I slipped off Goodreads once September came, same excuse applies.  But I read five books in the last week and half while on Christmas break.  So I do have something to talk about.  I might get back on as the new semester gets settled.
  • Book 3 of the Students of Jump is drafted, titled (Time on my Hands), and waiting in the wings.
  • I am still publishing on Smashwords, which is really publishing everywhere else I want to be anyway.  I’ve sold a total of 18 books which is 18 more than I started with.  I can say I doubled my numbers since last year.  Okay, try not to snigger too loud.  Remember what happened when Scheherazade told the story of doubling the grains of rice just a few times.  I have a tried and true plan here.
  • New goals besides what is stated above:  keep writing, keep reading, keep loving my family and being worthy of their love, make more writer friends, and grow a little wiser in the effort.

So what is your plan for the year 2013 in the making?