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

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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.

The W-Plot - Heather Dyer

I’ve always been an awful plotter. I write intuitively, going down dozens of blind alleys before (sometimes) finding my way out into the sun. I’ll admit, though, that once written, my stories do all follow the generally accepted 3-Act story structure.

But I never found looking at the 3-Act structure helpful while I was writing. That is, until I came across Mary Caroll Moore’s ‘W-plot’ structure.

 

Mary has written 13 books – most of them non-fiction – and, interestingly, the W-plot structure applies to both fiction and non-fiction. I’m using it myself now with books of both types. Mary has also published her own book called Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, available in print and on Kindle:

http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.co.uk/

Mary has also made a YouTube video about her W-plot here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMhLvMJ_r0Y

Mary’s W-plot structure is ingenious because it shows how the action in a story ascends or descends at different times. I interpret this as being the way a character is swept down by events on the descending leg of the W – then moves upwards with new purpose on the ascending stroke.

The W-plot structure also nicely illustrates how characters change their minds as a result of things that happen to them, and consequently change the trajectory of the plot. The two major ‘turning points’ are represented by the two bottom points of the W. These turning points occur in the 3-Act plot structure as well. However, it was never clear to me (due to the linear way that the 3-Act structure is usually presented) that the turning points are not so much a turning point in the action of the story but a turning point in the character’s own motivation. In other words, your characters can change their minds. 

Surprisingly – after five books – this came as a revelation to me. I knew that my characters needed to change and develop over the course of the story, but I had always been so concerned about knowing who my characters were and keeping them ‘in character’ that I had not given them enough freedom to do a complete about-turn and take the plot off in a new direction.

So, although I still write my first drafts intuitively (as, indeed, Mary Caroll Moore still advocates), I keep in mind the W-plot structure and ask myself what it would take to make a character change their mind at a turning point – and how it would affect things if they did.

Heather Dyer
www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

That 'not planning' thing, and how it works for me - Linda Strachan

I've been thinking a lot recently about how I write, and reading some of the many blogs and books about how other people write. I find it fascinating to see how many different ways there are to get those ideas from inside our heads onto the page.

Some writers who plan their books seem to make detailed outlines, lists, high points and subplots, working out where problems might appear and try to resolve them, even before they write a word.  I have tried this approach but each time I try it I find that I seem to get bogged down and quite frankly bored with the idea, however enthusiastic I was about it before I began.

I recently started my own personal challenge to write 2000 words a day, usually first thing in the morning before 9.30am, and when I read Miriam Halahmy's post a few days ago on her editing process I was interested in a book she mentioned by Rachel Aaron.  In Rachel's book she mentions that she is a planner and talks about her process for writing more words in a day (2,000 to 10,000). Her planning is incredibly detailed and I can see logically how this would enable you to write a lot more and quickly because you always know what you re going to be writing about. It is a detailed road map. It obviously works, not just for Rachel but also a number of writers I know who do plot their books in great detail before they start.

But not only is this the complete opposite to the way I work, it sounds like something that would (for me) take all the pleasure out of writing.  I get such a buzz out of a new idea, even if I have no idea where it is going.  
I might have an image in my mind, that I have seen or imagined, and something about it will have triggered my interest and sparked an idea.  

Is it a log or a creature from the swamp?

It could be an animal or a person in a particular situation that sets my imagination off.
I often have no idea where the story will go, or what exactly it is and I need to start writing to find out.   Something about sitting at the keyboard, or putting pen to paper seems to bring the story out so that I can examine it and see what shape it is going to take.

Usually once I get the first idea down and I begin to explore it, I find that I need to know more about the main character. At that point I will often write in the character's voice letting them have a bit of a rant, which may or may not end up in the story. But crucially it lets me understand what is important to them and what problem or several problems the character is facing.  

Now and then I will start to write something and it does not become a complete story, so I save it and leave it to one side if that happens, because nothing is ever wasted.  

Wandering in the forest of imagination

The story I am writing at the moment includes two of these short pieces that I wrote at different times, years apart. 
I'd been juggling several ideas in my head that were gradually coming together and as I started to write they coalesced into an idea for a novel. When I started writing it I realised that something I had written long ago was exactly what I wanted to begin a strand of the story, quite separate from the main storyline.  It was soon after that I remembered the other completely unrelated piece, and it too feels right as another element that will build on the first ideas I had. 

I am having a huge amount of fun writing this, that is not to say there aren't times I am fighting with the story, trying to wrestle it into place.  I have a vague idea of where it is going to end up and what is going to happen close to the end of the book, but no more than that.

Recently, in view of trying to write more each and every day, and after reading about all those plotters and planners out there, I tried to plot out the story and lost two days struggling to get my head around laying out the whole story.  In the end I gave up, I am fairly sure my brain is not wired that way, because I could not dig out a single idea beyond what I had already written.

I went back to one of the story strands where I was desperate to find out what was going to happen next and started writing.  The following day I went to another part of the story and continued that bit.  I discovered one thing. If I wasn't interested enough in writing what happened next then the chances were it was not right and would not be interesting for anyone else, so it needed to be cut or rewritten.  

I have decided that planning and plotting are fine, if that is how it works for you, but it is not for me. It drains all the joy out of writing and while the way I write may not seem the most logical way to do it, for some reason it works and best of all I can't wait to get back to it.

I don't think I am the only person who doesn't like plotting but I would be interested to hear about your method of getting the words on the page. 



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children  

Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me  

Linda  is  Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh 


website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 

Painting and Writing and Life - Heather Dyer

 

 © William Cho

 

I visited the studio of an abstract painter once. There was a group of us. All the others were painters; I was the only writer. We started flicking through a portfolio of abstract paintings, and I have to say that they all looked much the same to me: like wallpaper samples. But every now and again when the next painting was revealed, these other painters would collectively say: “Ah! Now that’s interesting!” Their reactions were spontaneous and genuine – and I realized then that they were seeing something that I was missing.

I’m certainly no expert, but I’ve come to understand that appreciating abstract art is about how a painting makes you feel. It’s not about what you think it is. But this is a difficult mindset to get into. Like a lot of people, I like to understand something. I like to know what it’s about. I need to be able to articulate what it is telling me. I’m not used to asking myself how a painting makes me feel.

I visited another abstract painter’s studio yesterday. She had a canvas leaning up against the wall that looked unfinished to me. There was an outline of what could have been the figure of a woman in the middle, and a pool of yellow in one corner and some bright splashes in the other. I wanted to know what it was about: was the woman falling? Was this the sky and this the ground? Which way up was it supposed to be? I wanted to be about something – I wanted to understand the message. “It’s not about anything,” said the artist. “It’s what it is, that’s all.” 

 

A Young Lady's Adventure by Paul Klee

 

This painter works by feeling. She doesn’t know what she’s going to paint before she starts a canvas, she only knows the colours she wants to use, and which brushes. Then she’ll ‘play around’ until some combination of colours appears that she can ‘have a conversation with’. Then she follows the conversation to see where it leads – which might be nowhere. Or it might become something bigger than she herself was capable of, if she’d tried to impose a plan on it beforehand.

Painting and writing are both creative activities, and I recognized parallels in how she described her process. I know that my trouble with writing is that I need to know where it’s heading, I need to know what the message is, well before it appears. I know that this inhibits my creativity, and presents me from feeling the ‘conversation’ that the book might want to have with me.

I asked her how she managed it. “The first thing you have to do,” she said, “is stop. Then, you have to feel with your heart where you need to go next. You need to be playful, you need to be brave, and you need to take risks. And you mustn’t be afraid to make mistakes.”

I know she’s right. The best stuff is always the stuff that we never intended to write about. The best things can’t be articulated, and the most wonderful thing about writing fiction is when a story surprises you, and turns out – to your delight – better than you feel you could have made it. The same process would seem to apply both to painting and to writing – and also, in fact, to life.

www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

Letting a story off the leash - John Dougherty

Very often, when I'm talking to groups of children, I'm asked, "How do you plan your stories?" 

Most children in schools in England are taught that before starting to write a story, you have to plan it out showing the beginning, the middle, and the end; and so they expect me to tell them that that's what I do. But the truth is, I don't. Normally I've got a vague idea of where the story's going and how it gets there, but as long as I've got a few ideas and, most importantly, know where it starts, I'm usually pretty confident about sitting down to write.

This is particularly true of my new series, Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face - the first of which, if you'll allow me a quick boast, was The Times's Children's Book of the Week last week. Writing these stories, I suppose I'm really trying to get back inside the mind of a seven-year old me, a child at play without too many worries about "getting it right". So the deal I have with my internal self - that subconscious, creative part of my mind - is that if (s)he gives me an idea, I'll put it in the story. Only if it really doesn't feel right will it get taken out again. Essentially, I'm just letting the story and the characters lead me where they will, and never, ever saying "You can't do that!"

This approach isn't without its problems, of course. The first story came in at around 12,000 words; the third - whose first draft I finished on Tuesday - is closer to 21,000, so I have a lot of trimming to do.

But something that's struck me very forcefully is how much that internal part of me seems to know what it's doing, at least when it comes to stories and structure. 

I noticed it first - really noticed it - whilst writing the second book, Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Quest for the Magic Porcupine. After a short conversation,  I needed to get my characters moving. 

- Better make something happen, then, murmured my subconscious mind. 

- Yes, but what? I replied.

- It starts to rain, came the reply. 

That seemed reasonable. I began to type:

Just then, it began to rain. 

Fair enough. That's a good way to get things going.

It was not an ordinary rain. It was a horrible, inky-splattery, thick wet rain that left dark splodges on the ground and smelled faintly of bananas. 

I sat back, looked at the screen, and laughed. And then I thought, Smelled faintly of bananas? Where on earth did that come from? And what on earth am I going to do with it?

I nearly deleted it again. Only the thought of the internal pact made me keep it. If it doesn't work, I can always get rid of it later.

I kept racking my brains, though. I needed a plan, a way of showing why the rain was horrible, and inky-splattery, and thick, and why it left dark splodges on the ground, and most importantly, why it smelled faintly of bananas. And I kept trying to think of a reason, and coming up with none.

Until, of course, I decided to let it go and get on with the story. And of course, later on, when the children are talking to Miss Butterworth the Ninja Librarian, they mention the smell of bananas - and in doing so they introduce a further complication. But it's funny, so I leave it in, even though I have no idea where to go with it. 

And then we discover where the rain is coming from, but it still doesn't explain the smell of bananas - until much later, when we reach a scene I had begun to plan in my head; but for which I hadn't worked out a resolution. And I remember the further complication, which gives me an idea for a character who up until that point I hadn't even thought of, and all at once there's a great joke and an explanation for the bananas and a resolution for the scene, and everything comes together and moves us neatly towards the climax of the story. And none of it - consciously, at least - was planned in advance.

I might have thought that all of that was just happy coincidence, if it hadn't been for something very similar that happened in the writing of the newly delivered first draft of Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza. I needed a solid object, and it occurred to me that it might be funny if that object turned out to be some kind of character; so in comes someone new, someone whom I really only intended to be in that single scene. But then this character mentions that he's expected to appear in another chapter, later in the book; and it's funny, so I leave it in. But then, of course, I have to bring the character back.

And then I need - simultaneously - a resolution to the main problem of the story, an explanation for this character's reappearance, and a way to wrap things up neatly, and my internal self says:

- Here it is!

And lo and behold, the reappearance provides the first resolution, the first resolution leads neatly into the explanation, and the explanation wraps things up neatly. All, again, unplanned - consciously, at least.

Does it work? I think so. In fact, I strongly suspect - no, I firmly believe - that it wouldn't have worked half so well if I'd made sure to have everything planned and pinned down before I started. It's the sense of liberation, of being at play, of not having to worry too much about getting it right, that makes the story fizz and sparkle, that makes the jokes funny, that makes everything come together neatly.

I'm not saying this is the ideal way to write every story. And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to introduce children to the idea of planning. But I am saying that in teaching them that they have to plan, we may be robbing them of something very precious indeed.