I can feel a slight draft

I wrote the first 1000 words of the first draft of my novel today.

I started at 8:30 this morning with the intention of working till 5pm, just writing down as much as I could within that timeframe without stopping to do an edit. That got me to about 500 words in the first hour or so written in the first person that were pretty basic and felt pretty rushed. So then I stripped down two main points I wanted to make from my 500 words and rewrote them as scenes from a movie, you know, scene descriptions and dialogue lines.

I then took those two scenes, placed them alongside the first person draft I had started and rewrote in the third person. I got to about 600 words and then stopped for what was supposed to be a one hour lunch. I took a two and a half hour lunch instead. Discipline and focus are not necessarily my middle names, though I think I read somewhere that they were the middle names of a couple of Anthony Robbins' children.

Then after lunch I wrote another 400 words surprisingly quickly and decided that rather than stick it out till five I would call it at 1000 words. So I finished at 3:45pm.

I've read a few writing tips online and in books that stress that a first draft of any novel is pretty much a load of shit. Mine's no different, reading it back I realized that it's lighter in tone than I intend and also it's pretty sloppy writing than needs tightening. I certainly don't want words like light and sloppy being associated with what I do ultimately, I get enough of that from the ladies as is, so there will be some tightening up done down the line.

I'm happy with some of it though. There's something there that's real.

Breakthrough! I have found my novel.

I've found my novel!

 It's not the one based on my dragon dream that I discussed in my last post, also I didn't find it by sprinting my way through trying to piece together a first draft bit by bit.

It's been swimming around in the back of my mind for these last couple of months since I started this blog but each time it kept trying to tell me about itself I ignored it because it wasn't what I had in mind for the kind of thing I wanted to write.

I was keen on writing some sort of fantasy related thing. Not necessarily straight genre fantasy but I was pretty determined to write something that involved mythical and imagined creatures in some context.

The novel i'm setting out to write from this day forward is more of an adolescent coming-of-age story, in broad terms at least. My friend Erin commented a few posts back that she imagined me writing something along the lines of Catcher In The Rye or High Fidelity, and again in broad terms this comes from a place that's similar. But different too, possibly inspired from a place inside of me where inspirations like Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut will always live.

One of the reasons I kept ignoring this idea was because I really didn't want to write a semi-autobiographical story, and this book will be definitely along those lines.

Reading Vogler inspired the outline that i've written so far. His chapters about the world the hero lives in before the adventure starts and his outline of the Mentor archetype made an impression. Yes my story will have a Mentor character. I can see him in my mind and i'm pretty happy with him.

Also Rex Pickett's words must have had a positive influence on me. I mentioned in my last post that he thinks it's very important for the writer to have his main character living in his mind in order for the writing to be successful. I have a character in my mind, he's been with me these last couple of months and actually I was nearly going to use a version of him in the Gnome thing I set out to write all those posts ago.

He's inspired by an artist I admire. That's all I want to say on that.

This is it! I can feel it in my waters.

I've written a broad outline for myself, and i'm setting to map out the world my character lives in. The relationships and institutions that make up his world. The way i've done this so far has come naturally, and I can see a path ahead of me that has appeared amidst the fog i've been stumbling around in.

Move quickly and stop letting things dragon.

I did some writing!

 I pulled my head out of the arse sized void of procrastination, doubt and confusion.

I wrote 1000 words that are best described as existing somewhere between the beginning of a first draft and the beginning of an outline. My story is based on my kick-ass dragon dream that I mentioned a few posts back.

It was a few random different elements that got me to actually put finger to keyboard.

1) Rex Pickett the author of Sideways, which was also an Oscar nominated film, randomly started following me on twitter. He wrote a blog post about being ripped off by the publishing industry, I in turn sent him a tweet telling him how I thought it sucked that he'd had such a bad experience. (I'll post a link to his blog at the end of this post.) He wrote back thanking me and then made a joke I didn't understand further underlining his experience. (That reminds me I have to go back and look at his tweet, i'm sure i'm capable of getting the joke, I just may have to use a dictionary that's all.) I mistook this as rapport and wrote back to him asking how he approached writing his first novel. Was he a make it up as he went along kind of guy? Was he a meticulous planner? I was looking for a nugget of inspiration that would set me off on my journey to greatness.

He ignored my follow up tweet. However not long after that he started posting writing tips as part of his twitter stream. I only started following him because he'd been following me so I don't know how long he's been doing that for, but some of his advice rang true to me. His biggest gripe it seems is with the Robert Mckee's, and by extension the Christopher Voglers of the writing world. He seems to really hate writing guru's. He's all about people finding their own stories inside themselves. Also he's a big believer in having a main character being vividly alive inside the writer when they write. I haven't yet absorbed that bit of advice. The important thing is his tweets got me believing that there is a story in me somewhere that can come out naturally.

2) Vague memories of Stephen Kings book On Writing kept swimming around in the back of my thoughts. I mentioned this previously, but to recap the main bits of advice I remember are that King is a big believer in writing without stopping too much to worry about things like grammar and research when trying to punch out a first draft. His main advice was read a whole hell of a lot and write 2000 words a day at least. I've been trying my best to read more lately, as you can see from the right-side of my blog i'm dividing my time between four books at the moment. Four books you say? Maybe I do have ADHD? An online test I took said I showed possible signs. Hook me up with some Ritalin.

3) I kept reading tweets of random writing advice about the importance of having a first draft out of the way. An idea started to form in my mind that I should just try to power through a first draft, even if it turns out to be more outline that story. Think less, do more.

4) November is novel writing month. People all over the world are currently committing themselves to, and falling short of, a goal to write 1700 words a day through November so that they have a novella to work with at the end of the month. Sprint, sprint, and sprint is the message.

I'm not entering the November challenge, but i'm trying to capture some of it's spirit, even though a few posts back I mentioned this sort of thing is not for me. I think at this point everything and anything both is and is not for me. Is that clear?

5) I started following this non-famous but published (possibly self-published) author on twitter called kendall Grey. At least I think that's her name. I'll look it up at the end of the post because i'm all about commitment to detail. She kept making posts about her daily sprinting sessions through a draft of some romance or supernatural romance thing that she's writing.

Write quickly, make shit up on the spot, and just improvise. This is my newest mantra.

Rex Pickett's website;

http://rexpickett.com/

What do you know, Kendall Grey has her own website too. I've never looked at it but she describes herself as an Urban Fantasy Author, which sounds pretty cool to me.

http://www.kendallgrey.com/

Fuck it, dude, let's go bowling.

It's A Bad Case of Writers Procrastination


I haven't done any writing. I've done a bit of thinking about writing, and i've done quite a lot of not thinking about writing. I watched a couple of crappy movies, Lords Of Dogtown was one of them, which most interestingly featured Emile Hirsch morph from a young pro-skateboarding pioneer to a wannabe Mexican gangbanger. I don't think he was supposed to be Mexican though? Anyway, apparently it was all based on a true story. Heath Ledger was in it as well, his character seemed like a bad Hunter S Thompson impersonation, but then maybe the guy he played was in real-life a badly lived impersonation of Hunter S Thompson, so I guess that would be make Ledger a genius again? Nah, it was a shitty movie packed with decent actors giving shitty performances.

Why am I going on about it? Procrastination, dude.

I will make this a blog about procrastination if I have to, even if it gets to the point where my stats show zero page views. I will goad myself into pulling my head out of my arse and writing something.

Anything.

You down with O.C.D? Who's down with A.D.D?

I'm seriously starting to consider changing the name of this blog to It's A Bad Case Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or even It's A Bad Case Of Attention Deficit Disorder. I say this because I am obsessed daily by my desire to write a novel, yet i'm also daily plagued by an inability to want to follow through on any writing goals that I make for myself.

In my last post I talked about summarising what Don Delillo does with his writing to help me propel my own writing forward. Well i'm not going to do that now. Why? Because I don't want to, that's why!

It's not like I made that technique up, i've read several pieces on writing tips that suggest you study your favourite writers to better understand how they do what they do. I've already lost interest in doing that, or at the very least it doesn't feel like that's what i'm looking for at the moment.

I worked today and while I was at work I played out in my mind the possibility of trying again to build more on my gnomes vs. faeries story from Septembers posts. Then I moved onto resolving to really just focusing on building up my skills more by getting back into ficly.com as much as possible. I thought about making a list of every possible story idea i've had over the years, god knows there's been a few of them. None of these felt right though.

A friend of mine texted me today to remind me that it's November writer's month. Which basically involves some website where you sign up and commit to writing a 50,000 word novella over the month, basically equating to 1700 words a day. I remember looking at this last year, but didn't even bother looking up the website for it this year as that's just another avenue that doesn't feel right for me.

I finished reading a great book tonight. Eleven by Mark Watson. A friend of mine was working at a film festival and it was being handed out as part of some gift bags, so she swiped a couple of said gift bags and gave me the book. I don't know if it would have made it onto my radar under any other circumstances, but i'm glad it did.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eleven-Mark-Watson/dp/1847379680

I'm not going to write a review, it's late and i'm tired and the less said about it the better because it's packed full of surprises. Did I mention i'm thinking about changing the name of the blog to It's A Bad Case Of Feeling Tired?

Anyway, after finishing it I was inspired by an idea that I do want to follow through with. I'm going to start with an event, sometimes referred to in literary terms as something happening. Then i'm going to start with a character that this something happened to, and i'm going to interview that character.

This feels right. I don't know why?

Let's see by the next post if this has gotten me anywhere.


Unfocused by Nature.

The journey of writing 300 pages begins with a single summary.

I just wrote a summary of chapter one of White Noise by Don Delillo. It's a very brief 2 page chapter so i'm off to an easy start. My 'goal' which really is better stated as my 'quiet desperate hope,' is that I will summarise a chapter, then either on that same night or on the next night i'll do some writing based on some of the techniques discovered in my summary, before moving onto the next chapter. It's past midnight and i'm feeling pretty tired so I hope in a quiet desperate way to do some writing tomorrow night after work and then move onto chapter 2. 

I love it when a plan comes together.

I think it's been about ten days since i've written anything, either on here or on ficly.com. As much as I enjoy posting short stories on ficly's website I can't let go of the nagging idea that I really want to settle on some sort of plan for what my novel is going to be about.

So far none of the goals i've set on here have really worked for me in a way that's satisfying. I have no desire to keep reading Voglers book on The Writers Journey. I don't discount what he says in his book, I think it's full of interesting ideas and was surprisingly much more intelligent than I thought it would be, I just don't feel like it's for me. Not presently anyway.

Also I love writing stuff on ficly, but the minute I turned it into a goal-driven exercise for myself was the minute I lost enthusiasm to keep at it everyday.

Maybe it's impatience, or maybe it's instinct, whichever it is, I can't stop thinking that the only thing that's important for me at the moment is to develop an idea for a story that I actually want to write. So with this in mind i'm going to start on yet another way of approaching this thing.

My plan is to use my favourite novel as a model for a way of developing my own story. My favourite work of fiction is White Noise by Don Delillo. I certainly don't want to write a plagiarised carbon-copy of Mr Delillo's book, but rather i'm going to spend some time using his structure to develop a story for myself. The way he introduces his characters and themes, i'm hoping to extract the essence of his book to use it as a series of building blocks to create my own original work.

Let's see if that gets me anywhere.

Not quite King for a day, fool for a lifetime.

I got out of my funk and added five more short stories to ficly.com today. I say stories but really they're scenes. It's roughly the equivalent of writing 1000 words. I read Stephen King's On Writing a couple of years ago and remember him saying that his recipe for being a good writer is to read for about 6 hours a day and then write 2000 words.  I am not at that point, but it does sound like a good goal to eventually try to live up to.

Adding scenes to ficly.com feels like great practice for eventually tackling larger chunks of writing. I'm going to try and write 5 stories a day on there for the next week.

I'm still not sure what I want my first book to be about. I have a lot of conflicting images, story ideas & characters in my head. The old saying goes that every one has at least one book inside of them, for me it's more like I have about 20 or 30 paragraphs inside of me that don't really have anything to do with each other.

Not to worry though, it's still early days. Right?

Hardly noteworthy

It's been over a week since i've written anything. I've just been staring at my computer for the last hour, trying to find a way to get back into it. I want to add some more stories to Ficly.com but nothings working so far. Blerg!

Whinge and Purge

I haven't managed to get any writing done for a few days. I miss it. I keep thinking of things to write about on Ficly.com. Problem is life gets in the way sometimes.

I've had an as yet not properly identified sharp pain on the left side of my head for a few days. The doctor put me on antibiotics and I keep taking tablets to stop the pain but so far it hasn't improved. I highly doubt it's anything serious, but it is seriously annoying.

I've also been working more than usual the last few days, and because i've been on afternoon shifts I tend to sleep in of the mornings and then i'm too tired to write by the time I get home.

I did have an amazing dream the other night that I want to use as the basis for a story. I dreamt that there was a good wise Dragon that gave birth to a nest of eggs and at the same time there was a dark evil dragon that gave birth to four eggs. The eggs of the evil dragon hatched and before it could be stopped, the first-born of the evil dragon killed it's three siblings straight away. Instinctively evil.

Hopefully this tuesday i'll have most of the day to spend on writing.

Who likes short shorts? I like short shorts.

I've set myself a goal of writing 100 short stories on;

http://ficly.com/

I need the practice doing some writing and this is the perfect way to try a lot of different things in a short time.

No matter what writing advice you read they always invariably say 'Read, read and read some more.' I haven't done much reading the last few days. I'll have to rectify that. A bit of Game Of Thrones & a bit of Submarine.

I even have a column in Ebony magazine called 'Musings'

Rightly or wrongly i've been speed reading my way through Book Two of Vogler's Journey. At the end of each chapter he has a series of six or so questions to help you break down and think about the elements he is discussing. I haven't started writing answers for any of these yet. I know I should, but i'm stuck in this no man's land at the moment still trying to form a broad picture in my mind of what my book will be about. I think i'll have to pull my finger out and just started writing some answers. Maybe i'll post some or all of them on here.

I've been playing around some more on ficly.com. Such a fun interactive way to get some small writing done. Also i'm trying to write a short story (max. 750 words) for a writer's digest competition. See link below.

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/promptly/your-story-prompts/your-story-3

What the hell do I want to write about? Seriously, tell me.

That is so wizard!

I've got all of today to write, and think about writing, and do some more reading about writing, and i'm glad for it.

Here's a breakdown of what i've achieved so far;

Firstly I set myself a ten minute limit to write down as many books as I could think of that have made an impression on me over the years. I'm less sure with each day that the whole Emily, the Faeries and the Gnomes story is really what I want to do. I wrote a list of books I like to help me form a better picture of what the hell it is I want to write about.

I read another chapter of Voglers book. This one expanded on the idea of the ordinary world and the placement of the hero within it. A lot of good stuff in this, I won't go into it now, i'll just wait for it to come out in the process of finding and planning my story.

I then started looking for some more stories on ficly.com to add onto but couldn't find anything that really jumped out. So I distracted myself by looking at another one of the writers resources i've mentioned in previous posts. It's a profile sheet for creating characters. Very useful stuff, I think this could be a great prompt for building a story from scratch by starting with characters that really appeal to you independent of any story line.

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/writing-character-profiles.html

I started tooling around creating a Wizard character for myself when it occurred to me to go back to ficly.com and start my own story thread based on this character. On ficly.com they have a challenge prompt if you're interested wherein they set a theme or an idea for you to base the start of your story on. I chose a romance prompt, which is not like me really, but I thought it suited my Wizard.

This is the story thread I started on the site;

Dr. Wz. Agrimon Crocumn would be his full title.

He had become a doctor first, as had been his families expectation, but once his studies had finished and he had found placement in a small village as a herbal practitioner, his first love for all things magic had returned to his thoughts, and try as he might he could not shake it’s grasp.

He knew his ambitions would be met with vague family disapproval, but for Dr. Crocumn it wasn’t a great stretch to go from being a local. H.P. to also being a Wizard. There was a great cross-over in knowledge of herbal remedies and ‘magic’ was really just as likely to cure as many ailments as ‘medicine’ despite the stigma attached.

The villages youngest witch, a Miss Primrose Wort, had certainly expressed much encouragement when Dr. Crocumn had told her of his plan. “That sounds delightful Croaky”, she had said, and she’d sounded like she really meant it too.

Dr. Crocumn had other dreams he wanted to tell Miss primrose of, dreams of him and her, but he struggled to do so.

I think for the rest of the day i'm just going to repeat the different activities i've done so far.

Ficly.com

Okay so just had a bit of fun playing around on the site ficly.com. I sourced this from one of the writer's resources mentioned in the previous post.

The basic concept of the site is people post very short stories or scenes for others to read, and at the end of it you can write a prequel or sequel for it.

I set up a user profile called 'Catcher in the Why' and then wrote a sequel to someone's poem. I didn't write a poem myself but rather turned it into a story.

The best way to explain is to show you. Everything that's on the site is viewable without logging in so I don't think i'll be causing any offense by reposting it here. If I end up talking to the author of the poem and they're bothered by this i'll take it down.

Someone going by the username THX 0477 posted the following poem;

http://ficly.com/stories/26864

Pocket of life amidst the barrens
Bowl before the heavens
Stony tendrils spread under vaulted sun
In their midst a spring fed glade

Amidst miles of rock and held aloft
Greenery grows and beckons souls
Weary of war and valley heat,
“Come partake, my verdant sanctum.”

Little more than grass and shrubs
This little spot, a mountain’s Eden
In all directions, rock, dust, death and war
Pocket of life amidst the barrens

At the end of the poem in the comments section he mentions he was trying an experiment, writing an idyll poem from a dare.

I posted this as a sequel.

http://ficly.com/stories/26890

Tim covered his face with his hands from embarrassment, unconsciously becoming the proverbial ostrich burying his head in the sand. He was in school assembly, every grade was in attendance, and his younger brother Jeremy had been selected to read out one of his poems as a part of literature week.

Tim knew Jeremy was a ‘unique individual,’ their mother reminded him often enough, and on one level Tim had always admired his brothers ability to be himself at any cost, but there were times when social pressure got the best of him and he wished Jeremy would just try a little anonymity.

It was one thing for him to be reading his poetry in school but why, dear god why, did he have to do it dressed as a wizard wearing attached breathing apparatus. What the hell was a space wizard anyway? This thing was way too conceptual for a high school crowd and Tim had a sinking feeling there were more props involved that hadn’t even been seen yet.

Tim looked up from his masked face & saw Jerry Hull grinning at him. Oh crap!

It was fun. I'm going to try some more I think. I certainly hope THX takes no offense at my turning his post into a story about being embarrassed by poetry. I have no problem with poetry at all, just wanted to have a little fun and try my own experimenting. This was definitely a good antidote to all that analysis of late.

Book Report : Book one completed

So i've finished book one of Voglers 'Writer's Journey.' It was essentially broken into 2 main categories. Firstly outlining his stages of a hero's journey into a 12-step program, and then secondly outlining the psychological and dramatic functions of 8 archetypes which can serve as character models. It has been incredibly useful, thought-provoking information so far that has somehow managed to leave me in a total funk. Not depressed, just flat, though I am considering watching '2 and a Half Men' which is on mute on my tv at the moment so maybe I am depressed.

I need to think in different terms for a few days. Try a different approach. Just to freshen up before pushing onto book 2, in which Vogler starts to outline the hero's journey in more detail introducing possible ways to integrate the archetypes. . I remember reading an interview once in which Neil Gaiman said that he'd spent his whole career as a writer avoiding books like these, not because he thought they were wrong but because he didn't want his creative process boiled down to a serious of formula's and patterns. He didn't want to know if all stories are just patterns repeating themselves in some way.

In contrast to Gaiman's thoughts Wired magazine posted an article online the other day interviewing Dan Harmon about his creative process. His whole writing career is based on a philosophy which is very similar to the things discussed in Voglers book. Now i've never fully enjoyed Neil Gaiman's work, before having read his interview or thought about Voglers book I used to always think after having read anything of his that he had story's full of interesting ideas that always fell apart because his story lines were weak. Meanwhile Dan Harmon's tv show Community is currently one of my favourite things in the world. I think it's hugely original and his episodes often tie together in unique, interesting and satisfying ways.

I did come across a good blog post via twitter the other day entitled '100 Resources for Writers.'
http://blog.emilysuess.com/2011/09/13/resources-writers/

Might try a few of the exercises in this to apply a bit of a squeegee to my third eye.

This is how i feel...

The demon at the gate that say's "whatever!"

Vogler dedicates three and a half pages to his next archetype;

The Threshold Guardian

These are characters or forces at play that try to deter the hero from crossing the first threshold that propels them into the adventure of the story. For every movie about dancers stepping up in 3D, these are the characters that tell Billy & Honey that their dreams are foolish and impractical, irresponsible even.

In every movie that you've ever seen about someone who has a dream these are the characters who are basically pricks, at least for a while, until they usually realise that there kids dream was worthwhile after all, because it made them successful, rich and probably got them laid.

These characters don't have to be assholes, they can be acting out of concern or good common sense. They can be your parents that time they tried to prevent you travelling overseas on your own. But you went anyway, didn't you tiger?

Ugh, you know what, i'm bored writing this, I can't imagine how bored you must be reading it.

I think i'm just going to try and read through the rest of his archetype summaries for myself, maybe do a recap at the end.

My threshold guardian at the moment is the voice inside my head that's telling me i'm wasting my time because it will take me forever to find something I really want to write and then it will take me an eternity to be good enough to write it.

I need to defeat him to push on.

There goes my hero, hopefully she's not too ordinary

Here is what i've achieved tonight so far.

1. Wrote an outline for a story based on Voglers 12 point method. It has nothing to do with the Gnome thing i've been talking about up until now. It was fun to do. Seemed like a decent idea for a book. Don't know if i'll do anything more about it at this stage.

2. Wrote a fairly decent outline of who Emily could be. Pretty happy with that so far.

3. Made a few notes of some 'mentoring' i've received in my own life. The good, the bad and the ugly.

I think at the heart of this whole attempt to write a book is the dilemma that whilst I want to write one more than just about anything in the world, I don't really have any particular book yet that I want to write.

I'm not going to let that stop me though.

The biggest surprise for me is that i've really come to respect the way Vogler has broken this stuff down. A lot of what he says pops into your head and random times and really helps you to form ideas in your mind. Too many ideas. His method ain't gospel but it does get you thinking.

I'll take that as a comment

I only just realised the other day that I didn't have the comments box enabled for anyone and everyone to use. It was stuck on some subscribers only setting. I can see from my stats there are a small group of regulars checking in daily. Any thoughts on the creative process so far would be appreciated. Positive or negative. No pressure.

Struggling

F**k me i've been struggling this fortnight doing a.m. shifts. Made some notes this afternoon, trying to rethink the basic structure of the story. Didn't get very much done, now i'm planning to watch some episodes of Daria on dvd and fall asleep in front of the tv just as soon as I get this written up.

Here's what i've been thinking. I'm considering turning Emily into an orphan (yeah I know, I hate me too). Going to have her live in a kind of strange shared custody relationship between her eccentric Aunt and her religious Aunt.

My conflict wasn't strong enough thinking about it as being a battle between Gnomes and Faeries. At most that's a surface conflict that should act as a key action sequence in the book. The heart of the stories conflict needs to be emotional and needs to relate to Emily. I made a list of some emotional conflicts that should do that. When i'm more conscious i'll think about how to weave them together with the big battle sequence.

Lastly I started making a list of details that will define Emily's world to begin with. Rather than make this too ordinary a world i'm striving to make it something odd before the creatures are even introduced.

So there's that.

And here's this.

I love this song, I hope you love it too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zYOKFjpm9s

Keep on Vogling.

To keep it fresh and interesting for myself i'm returning back to Vogler's book to dig a little deeper into his method. There's quite a few things on the internet about myths and stories involving fairies and gnomes, and i've got a great book at home about gnomes to refer to which was given to me as a present a little while back (see Amazon link at the end of the post for reference). It feels unnecessary at this point to just keep posting information about them, the important thing is to start using those legends and stories to start creating my own mythology. 

My plan is to write up a field report of both creatures as if written by an anthropologist. I think i'll post at least some of these as I go along.

Which brings me back to Vogler. The next part of his book to tackle is an extended analysis of the Mentor archetype. This chapter breaks down the psychological and dramatic functions of this role. Admittedly I don't want to get too bogged down in this so i'm going to try and skim through this as quickly as possible.

Vogler says "In the anatomy of the human psyche, Mentors represent the Self, the god within us, the aspect of personality that is connected with all things. The higher Self is the wiser, nobler, more godlike part of us."

For some people I know this is the part of themselves that likes to get a little chilled out, read books like The Celestine Prophecy, buy jewellery and clothes from markets, take up twirling fire sticks and buy trance music cd's with pictures of the Buddha on the cover.

 At least that was it's manifestation when they were in their twenties. A few years have passed since then.

The Mentor is our highest self and not in the ceramic bong that looks like a wizard sense. Though in all honesty it probably is for some, no judgement here. 

Vogler breaks down the Mentor's dramatic roles;

Teacher - Pretty obvious really.

Gift-Giving - Think larger than an itunes gift-card. 

Gifts Should Be Earned - The hero must pass tests to show they are worthy of the gift. I mean you wouldn't give an itunes gift-card to someone who's favourite music was Celine Dion and Enya. 

Mentor As Inventor - "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious shit." 

The Hero's Conscience - Oh so Jiminy Cricket wasn't just a lovable insect friend?

Motivation - The Anthony Robbins archetype as this will one day be known.

Planting - "Planting information or props that will become important later" says Vogler. Like Basil Exposition in the Austin Powers movies

Sexual Initiation - My stories mentor is marked to be the eccentric Aunt. Vogler you sick bastard.

                            "This doesn't have to relate to your story G." - Vogler

                            "Of course it doesn't, how silly of me" - G.

Vogler then lays down some types of mentors;

The Dark Mentor - This sounds cool but my mind is still back at sexual initiation.

Fallen Mentors - Broken men and women and things that can talk lost on their own heroes journeys

Continuing Mentors - Gandalf.

Multiple Mentors - Does this have anything to do with sexual initiation?

They can be comic, shaman,inner or a role shared by other characters and the hero. Blah, blah and blah.

 

I think we get the picture? 

Here's that link to the awesome Gnome book I have at home.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gnomes-Wil-Huygen/dp/0810909650/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316666077&sr=1-3

Fairy bread

Fairies are practical jokers apparently, they're the George Clooney's of the ethereal world. At some point soon enough i'll have to start deciding how many people know about them in the village, and if so, how many are afraid of them and what strange measures do they take to safeguard themselves. Maybe decide is the wrong word, perhaps discover is better.

The whole section on the wikipedia page about literature and legends is full of interesting details;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy#Fairies_in_literature_and_legend

Including this little historical oddity;

“The prototype of food, and therefore a symbol of life, bread was one of the commonest protections against fairies. Before going out into a fairy-haunted place, it was customary to put a piece of dry bread in one’s pocket.”^[44]

More bull dust

More heavily researched material from Wikipedia.

One popular belief was that they were the dead, or some subclass of the dead. One tale recounted a man caught by the fairies, who found that whenever he looked steadily at one, the fairy was a dead neighbor of his.^[17] This was among the most common views expressed by those who believed in fairies, although many of the informants would express the view with some doubts.^[18]

Fairies as zombies, as the living dead, that's got traction, as they say in literary circles. I like the idea of them having a dark disturbing connection to the dead.

I'm going to keep collecting any little nuggets of ideas like this, let them swim around in my brain for a while and then repeat the conversation exercise, this time centred around the first conversation Emily has with the fairy she meets.

Fairies wear boots

Nothing says research like Wikipedia, so here's a few interesting things that it has to say about Fairies;

Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and having magical powers. 

I was imagining mine in the typically classic sense. Small and feminine with wings. In fact I can only imagine them as female at this point. I might stick with that idea because then it raises interesting questions about how they reproduce as a male free race. Introducing male fairies of course immediately lends itself to a type of innuendo comedy that probably did and should have reached it's peak with all those 'Carry On Up The (whatever)' movies of years ago. Still i'm not ruling anything out at this stage.

I haven't given any thought to what, if any, kind of magical powers my fairies would have. The power of enchantment and manipulation? It occurs to me that it would be kind of funny to write about the fairies as if they were the creation of a hateful mysogynist who projected all of his issues with women onto them but it would be a big challenge trying to find a context in which to make that work and seem ironic.

n some folklore Fey have green eyes and often bite. Though they can confuse one with their words, fairies cannot lie. They hate being told 'thank you', as they see it as a sign as one forgetting the good deed done, and want something that'll guarantee remembrance.

The colour of their eyes seems like an important details. Can't put my finger on why just at the moment. Definitely love the idea of them being biters. I mean really love the idea. Being unable to tell a lie could create some interesting character dynamics. Maybe mine can lie but they do so knowing that it comes with some sort of enchanted consequence. If they can't lie then they can't manipulate and I like the combination of biting and manipulation so, I don't know.

That 'thank you' thing is a funny little detail.

5 letter word. This movie starred Streep and Hoffman

Doubt.

So here are some of my doubts and worries about the process so far.

1. Why this story? Why this character of Emily? Okay so my starting point was a fight between faeries and gnomes and I stand by that idea as a premise with entertainment potential, but the character of Emily doesn't come from anywhere personal in me. Her whole story was literally the first thing that came into my mind. I think I chose a female character because I was conscious of trying to write something outside of myself. I didn't want to create a boy character because that could all too easily become a thinly veiled version of me, and for whatever reason that's something I don't want to do. Actually I do know the reason I wanted to avoid that, I wanted to prove to myself that I could create something out of my imagination and not just rewrite myself into a fantasy world.

2. Emily is still so very vague in my mind at the moment and that's frustrating.

3. In choosing to follow Vogler's method (God knows I needed some way to get myself started doing this) i'm therefore following to choose the hero method of storytelling. The thing is I very rarely read books about heroes, for example a couple of my favourite novels are 'White Noise' by Don Delillo and 'The Music of Chance' by Paul Auster, which are more or less literary novels. The main character in White Noise is a professor of Hitler Studies who is terrified of death and the main character of The Music of Chance is a man who abandons his child after receiving a large some of money so that he can just drive around America doing nothing with his life before he finally gambles away himself as a slave to a couple of rich freaks when his money runs out.

4. In thinking of this thing as a Young Adult novel i'm essentially trying to write something I would have almost no interest in reading. Furthermore I don't read fantasy novels lately unless they're written by Terry Pratchett, yet I want to write about faeries and gnomes. Pratchett would do something fun with these kind of characters, so if I want to bring life to this thing I think I need to take a lesson from his style. I should try to make this thing as funny and as twisted as I possibly can with little to no consideration of how a YA audience might react to it or even if it would be suitable for them. I'm now writing this for anyone who might find a Pratchett book funny irregardless of their age. If sex, swearing and violence become a natural element of this story then I don't want to be stopping to think about the moral implications for young minds. I just want to write whatever I think would be the most interesting way to tell this story.

5. I started thinking about another book I want to write. I started thinking about who my heroes are in real life. I don't really use the word hero as part of my vocabulary but there are artists who I admire. People like Mike Mills, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. I started thinking of a story that takes composite components of these kind of people as a basis for a stories protagonist. Now I want to start planning that thing out instead.

6. Somewhere at the back of my mind i've started rewriting Vogler's rules. I think this might be a good thing though.

Now for something positive.

I did recently join the email list of a new writing website being launched called LitReactor. They sent me a free PDF of brief interviews they've done with writers they're working with. Two pieces of advice stuck out that i'm going to paraphrase. Neil Gaiman said to ignore the advice that you should write what you know. This can get in the way of you imagining things you've never experienced. Bret Easton Ellis said writing everyday is overrated.

I think I should stick with what i've started. This fairy/gnome thing can be a learning curve, I guess.

All Quiet on the Writing Front

Things have been quiet on the writing front for the last few days, but I had no work today which has allowed Stella some time to get her groove back. Yeah that's right, I sometimes refer to myself in the third person as Stella. I'm working a lot of early morning shifts this week at my day job, normally I adjust pretty well to getting up at five in the morning but these last few days it's been knocking me on my ass. I'm getting too old for this shit.

I'm starting to think i've seen too many movies.

So I mentioned a couple of posts back that I was going to be working on the following three writing goals;

1. Writing an outline of the first act
2. Writing an unplanned conversation for about two hours between a couple of characters
3. Writing a mission statement for myself defining what I think wholeness means so that it can inform where my story is headed toward in the third act.

I didn't work anymore on my outline today. I'm up to the point with that where Emily is about to meet the fairy for the first time and I feel woefully uninformed about how I want that scene to play out, so I think I need to do a little research on faeries and gnomes before I move forward plotting that bit.

I sat for an hour and a half writing a conversation between Emily and her Aunt (and to a lesser extent her Uncle). The premise for the conversation was that it was the first sit down talk she'd had with the Aunt since moving into her house. To begin with it was pretty boring, awkward and painful stuff. I had no plan in doing this exercise beyond seeing what would come out of it naturally and for the first fourty five minutes it felt like it really was going nowhere. Then the Uncle, who was in the background of the scene, started to take shape a little bit and then something started to flow between Emily and her Aunt. The Aunt started to reveal herself as a blunt yet warm personality who has a fascination with the meaning of words. This fascination with words and meaning starts to impart on Emily a little as well.

Finally I wrote a brief statement of what I think wholeness might mean. In the end I came away with four points that I think will help drive this story towards a conclusion. Although I have started to see how these points will relate to story specifics, for now i'm going to keep that to myself. The four points in general terms are;

1. Shed false beliefs about self. (This idea has helped me shape an important part of Emily's character that was missing before today)

2. Take responsibility for your own choices. (The universal existential realisation)

3. Forgive parents

4. Find best version of true self (I'm working on the theory here that everyone has a deeper true self that drives or haunts them, but even acting on any gifts that stem from this true self can still lead to a good or dark place depending on the choices you make.)

So another small step forward has been taken. So now i've got some more short-term goals for myself.

1. Do some research on faeries & gnomes
2. Blog about the next chapter of Vogler's book (I've missed doing this. I needed a break but now i'm keen to get back into it)
3. Start a second blog as a sideline project. This has nothing to do with the novel but stemmed from an idea that a friend of mine gave me. This will be another specifically themed blog that i'll explain once i've got it set up. The reason to do this is because I believe I should be doing as much writing as possible and this will be a way to practise writing anecdotal short narratives which all goes toward making a better writer of myself.

Excuses, excuses.

I've been getting up before 5am lately to work, and picking up extra shifts all of which has left me too tired to focus on this the last few days.

I haven't abandoned the attempt or the blog and haven't lost the commitment, life's just been getting in the way. Hope to rectify that shortly.

Quick update

So i've bumped my outline up to one thousand words now. I've moved past Emily's backstory, she's living in the village, learning a little of her strange family history and finding herself drawn to the strange woods that start just a small walk from her new home. I've got seven characters, twelve if you include dead ones. Managed to add a couple more dimensions to Emily's character which hadn't occured to me until I just started writing stuff out. The outline at this stage is still short on detail but a few major broad strokes are being made at least.

Of course i would have liked to have done a lot more at this point. I'm craving a whole afternoon to sit down and attack the three main areas of writing I mentioned a couple of posts back. My work schedules all over the place at the moment so will just have to see what I can get done for the next few days.

Admittedly I had an afternoon free today but I filled that with a pub lunch, followed by drinking cider along the waterfront with a friend and her friend, and then topped the day off with a nap. All of which I do not regret.

At least it's a start

So it's been a pretty long day for me. Got called into work to do an extra shift after a lousy nights sleep. Still i'm pretty committed to keeping the ball rolling on this thing so I did a little writing, not much mind you, about 430 words of the outline of the first act.

I briefly covered Emily's backstory for myself. It wasn't as detailed as I would have liked it to be, but was surprised to find myself actually doing that thing writers talk about when they say they start to discover things about their characters. In 6 brief paragraphs she already seems more real and interesting to me.

I've always wanted to know the specific details of the writing processes published writers go through to get their novels completed. That's something they're always vague about at best. When writers talk about writing there first draft I wonder how that works for them. I'm not up to writing my first draft yet. I'm only 430 words into writing my first draft of an outline. I'd love to know how other people work. How the hell do they do this?

If I wasn't blogging about this then this idea would have already fallen at the wayside. . 

Write said Fred

I was having coffee with a friend of mine today, who for the purposes of respecting privacy I will call Fred. So I was having coffee with Fred and she said "all this time you're spending blogging about writing, couldn't you be spending it writing?"

This blog is providing the drive to do this thing but Amy's right to some degree, before I go on I should probably write some stuff. The following is my list of things I think I should start on;

1) As detailed an outline as possible of the first act of the story (including backstory)

2) A freely written conversation between characters

3) The sense of 'wholeness' I think my story should be headed towards

They seem like good places to start. I don't know how much of these i'll share on here. Time will tell.

If anyone has an opinion on anything else I should be writing about at this point please feel free to comment.

I'll keep blogging while i'm doing these.

I wonder if Freud would have liked that show Heroes.

Vogler says when it comes to a Hero the audience must identify with them, they must experience personal growth and they must be active, they have to "do" things.

Qualities I struggle to relate to lately but luckily i'm not writing about myself, or am I? Well yes, say Freud and Vogler.

I'll come back to these points somewhere down the line.

Vogler says the true quality of a Hero is Sacrifice. Self-scarifice. This is a benchmark character trait. Must remember to sacrifice Emily at some stage or stages in the story.

Okay so reading on Vogler says Heroes teach us about dealing with death, blah, blah, blah, other characters can be heroes, the character should have flaws, some heroes are willing, some unwilling, for some reason the song lyric 'some girls will, some girls won't' is now stuck in my head. Okay still reading, You can have anti-heroes, groups of heroes and loner heroes. Finally lets end this with catalyst heroes, they do heroic things but change little themselves, being rather an agent of change for others.

Admittedly I found this chapter boring. I'll have to start actually fleshing out the details of Emily's character soon enough, and i'll probably refer back to these main concepts, but for now I just can't be stuffed.

We don't need another archetype

The Hero

Vogler says in Freudian terms the heroes journey is one from a state of pure ego, the self seen as separate from the rest of the group, to being a complete & integrated member of the whole. The other archetypes in the story representing other fractured elements of the self that must be experienced on the journey leading to wholeness.

If it helps reread that last bit again and imagine we are on a spiritual retreat together. We're sitting in the spa, Voglers in there with us, his resemblance to Cheech Marin is even more striking now that you can see him up close. Behind us pan flute music is being piped out of pretty decent quality speakers, not Bose but definitely some good Sony ones. Voglers looking deep into your eyes now and asking you to understand that your heroes journey is a metaphor for the self finding completeness. In the blissful quiet of the californian desert which is seen in the background, sitting in the spa which has some kind of pyramid roofing, this seems right and true.

Emilys backstory leading up to her living in the small village is all about pure ego. The self raging against everything that is defined as her life. Meeting her kindly aunt and uncle and befriending the fairy could all represent elements of the self moving towards finding a shared identity. The gnomes and Martin being elements of the self that she is now at war with within herself.

"That's good, you're getting it", says Vogler as more people join us in the spa and somebodys hand brushes against your knee.

The initial problem I possibly have with this is, do I fully accept Freud's notion of finding wholeness through a shared identity? I do believe it's important to be a functioning member of society, but functioning doesn't necessarily mean agreeing, does it? In mapping out Emily's conclusion I will probably have to draw up a theory of what I believe to be wholeness. That will help me know where to steer my last two acts towards, and how to shape my characters towards a main story goal.

Riffing on Jung's name is just too obvious.

The next stage of our magical writers journey involves fleshing out the characters. For this Vogler has drawn on some of the ideas of Carl Jung about archetypes. My initial reaction is to be a little cynical of this idea, it seems to me that whenever writing teachers or personality testers want to avoid having their ideas criticized as being cliched and bullshit they always bring out a bit of Jung to give them weight.

Now maybe i'm in a bit of a cranky mood because it's 1am and I just ate slices of toast with only butter on them because there was nothing better in the flat but i'm going to set up the premise for this next stage and then stop for the night.

The archetypes we're going to play with are;

Hero
Mentor
Threshold Guardian
Herald
Shapeshifter
Shadow
Ally
Trickster

Vogler says the following should be your guide;

"Two questions are helpful for a writer trying to identify the nature of an archetype: 1) What psychological function or part of the personality does it represent? and 2) What is it's dramatic function in the story?"

No end in sight

Step 12 - return home with the elixir

The hero returns to the ordinary world with a treasure or lesson learnt. (Vogler)

Barely needs commenting on at this stage as my second and third act are far from clear.

Vogler does say that the steps are interchangeable or any can be dropped that don't fit the story structure.

So far I feel his method has inspired a definite first act for a young adult novel, so might as well stick with it.

Note to self.

I like the idea of this. I'll have to remember to come back and try this as an exercise.

Joyce Carol Oates recommends sitting for two hours and writing a conversation between your characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgJ809QKmas

Having trouble maintaining a resurrection?

Step 11 - Resurrection

Vogler says this is a second life-and-death moment, almost a replay of the death and rebirth of the ordeal. Death and darkness get in one last, desperate shot before finally being defeated (sprained ankles galore!). It's one final test to see if the hero has really learned the lessons of the ordeal. The hero is transformed by these moments of death-and-rebirth and is able to return to ordinary life reborn as a new being with new insights.

Well this has thrown a spanner in the works. How will I replay my life-and-death ordeal? I'm guessing there must be a few pissed off gnomes still hanging around, or is it just pissed off villagers? Maybe Martins parents go fully mental on Emily's arse. Maybe she cops all of these things plus her parents turn up as well. No, surely not, the parents thing would be too tacked on. I think.

What lessons did Emily learn from the ordeal in the first place? Be careful taking sides, or don't get involved in politics? Remember to see things from both sides of the argument? Violence is not the way? Don't mess with gnomes? I don't know. I just hope they're dark harsh lessons.

The long and winding road.

Step 10 - The Road Back

I'm feeling like this has brought me back on track with Voglers model of storytelling. I forgot to add in my last post that Vogler said reconciliation can be a big part of the reward for step 9. Reconciliation with parents was one of his examples. That in no way fits in with where my story was at, in fact I would have said Emily had just dug herself deeper into trouble with nearly everyone around her.

The road back however feels just right for where my vague second-act outline was at. Vogler says the road back is the beginning of act-three and is all about confronting the dark forces experienced in the ordeal. Now if in my story Emily has helped her fairy friends back through the gateway only to have realised that the battle she fought for them was a confused mess of principles, and she's left with a wrecked village and an uncle who has suffered anything from a sprained ankle to a bloody death depending on how that plays out, then I would say she has some pretty dark forces to contend with.

Vogler says step 10 is the point where all the forces the hero hasn't reconciled with come raging after her.

So I guess that leaves Emily to contend with her parents and the villagers, especially Martins parents because I have no idea what has happened to him at this point. Maybe he got dragged into the other world or maybe he also sprained his ankle. I don't know.

I don't even know if there's any gnomes left over at this point. Maybe there's a few pissed off ones left hanging around looking for payback.

I'm just left with my sword dangling in my hand.

Step 9 - Reward (Seizing The Sword)

Vogler says at this point the hero should have survived death and the ordeal, being cause of celebration for both hero and audience. The hero gets her reward.

Which is fine but basically flies in the face of what I was imagining the outcome of the ordeal to be. In my mind I was imagining the crux of my stories ordeal to be dark and horrific, you know in that funny and entertaining the light side of rape kind of way I was discussing for step 5.

So what is Emily's reward for having helped the faeries fight the gnomes? I guess one reward is she can help them access the gateway to the other world. God knows what that will mean for my story? Plus I didn't mention it earlier but at some point I wanted to explore the notion that this really wasn't a story of good vs. evil but rather a story of one side vs. another.

I think whatever reward comes from all of this, at least at this point in the story it should be majorly tainted. I think i've gone off track somewhere in regards to Voglers teachings.

Vogler and those godless executives at Disney would be most displeased.

Musn't cave in.

Step 7 - Approach to the inmost cave

Vogler says "the hero comes to the edge of a dangerous place."

The dangerous place in my story will presumably be the lair of the gnomes. Will that be in an actual cave? Maybe.

The dangerous place may turn out to be the disputed land that lies at the heart of the village and marks the gateway to the other world. This will be the scene of the battle.

Step 8 - The Ordeal

To paraphrase Vogler the hero comes face to face with their greatest fear and faces death, be it literally or figuratively.

What is Emily's greatest fear? She's afraid of messing up so badly with her behaviour that she makes herself unlovable and unmanageable  by everybody. Going into battle in a tiny village, fighting alongside creatures that mostly can't be seen by other people, that can only lead to mayhem. Mayhem that will probably be blamed on Emily. This feels like a story arc that should happen towards the end of the story, but this is all guess work for now.
If death has to be faced then I don't think it should be her own. I still think for now something will happen to her eccentric uncle in the battle.

Maybe the war between the creatures remains unresolved after the battle but Emily and her uncle suffer some major fall out.

I need friends. For my story silly, ahahahahaha!

So with Voglers step 5 (from the previous post) addressed the 'first act' of the story is supposedly completed. You've probably heard of the three act structure before, and if you're like me you really had no idea what they were talking about. The first act it seems ends with the hero of any book, movie etc. accepting the call to enter the adventure that is at the real heart of your story.

Step 6 - Tests, Allies & Enemies

I only have hazy notions about where i'm going with these at the moment. For all the story ideas i've mentioned so far i've left a lot out, enough I would say that at this point I could probably write a fairly detailed outline mapping out a lot of what I want to do with the first act. Beyond that though all I can see is fog with a few shapes silhouetted.

Now I know that Vogler goes on to introduce archetypes later on in his book, which serve as character models. I'll wait to see what he says, hopefully that will help fill in the blanks.

Still might as well get a few ideas out there. If for a writer his stories are his children, then the next few lines are the equivalent of a writers sperm being sprayed on a wall. No, canvas. A writers sperm being sprayed on a canvas.

That was a metaphor.

Okay so once the fairies have won Emily's sympathies she is going to start asking for more details about the gnomes and how they live etc. At this point she will learn abut her cousin Martin. That's a name i've never been keen on so for now we'll call him Martin. It turns out her cousin Martin, who is of a similar age (whatever age that is? How old are these kids anyway?) is a friend to the gnomes.

Martin will be established as a character in the first act. I will set up a dynamic where along with the kind eccentric aunty and uncle she finds herself living with, there is also a bothersome aunty and uncle who keep wanting to interfere in Emily's life. They have a monster of a child and his name is Martin (for now).

After that I don't know. I have no story plan for how the battle will escalate, so I don't know what tests Emily will have to endure. I have no outline for any of the fairy or gnome characters, I don't even know how many of them there are. Act two is still quite a mystery at this point.

Digging The Grave.

Step 5 - Crossing the threshold

Vogler says "the hero commits to the adventure and enters the special world of the story for the first time."

Okay so it occurs to me now that I really didn't set up the call to adventure in stage 2 beyond saying Emily sees a fairy. So I had a little think about it last night in bed and have fleshed out how she gets involved in the battle between the fairies and the gnomes.

So Emily goes for a walk and hears a faint cry coming from the woods at the end of the village. She goes to investigate and sees a small group of gnomes harassing a fairy. Now what I mean by harassing will have to be considered a little further. I read an article online about the increasingly dark themes being explored by YA novels, which leads me to wonder whether the gnome harassment could or should be sexual? Thing is I mostly want to try and keep this thing funny and entertaining and i'm not sure how much funny I can get from attempted rape. Meh, i'll figure that out later.

So having being saved by Emily from the gnomes attack the fairy starts to tell her a little bit about herself and the difficulties between her race and the gnomes. It's a matter of land and religion, specifically the two magical peoples have two differing religious beliefs that keep them at odds with each other (the specifics of which I have vaguely mapped out in my head.) The real problem lies though in the centre of the village. There is a gateway between this world and another that both the gnomes and the fairies feel they have a claim to as part of their seperate traditions. A new gnome chief has just been appointed and so what has always been a divide between the two worlds is becoming increasingly stirred up because of a new gnome rhetoric. The fairy asks Emily for her help.

So as mentioned earlier Emily goes through a bit of balking, it's only natural, but then after some well timed words from her odd aunt she decides to get involved in the fight for fairy religious freedom.

Mentors: The Fresh Maker

Step 4  - The Mentor

Okay so not the cleverest blog post title i've come up with, but to hell with you it's 1:30am. I should probably be asleep.

As mentioned in my previous post i've already envisioned the aunt character serving as a mentor. Further to this I really can see the aunty and uncle she's living with serving a dual mentoring role.

I see them as kindly eccentrics who see and know more than what they let on.

"Baby on board, something, something Burt Ward. This thing writes itself." - Homer Simpson

All these initial steps at least seem pretty straight forward enough. At some point i'll be forced to dig a little deeper.

You got the fear. F.E.A.R

Step 3 - Refusal of the call ( the reluctant hero)

Vogler says this is about the hero balking at the threshold of adventure. This is a pretty universal thing, we've all balked at a threshold at one point or another in our lives. People's whole lives can be defined as balk. This is an important element of the story, it's in our balking nature's that we humans are probably partly attracted to fictions. As we balk in our own lives we identify with characters that do the same thing, but then we are swept into the story because unlike us at a lot of stages in our lives, our stories heroes then overcome the balk and march forward. Look to be honest I started off writing this paragraph mainly as a way of repeating the word balk, which is fun to say and doesn't come up much in conversation, but in sitting and thinking of ways to relevantly repeat the word i've realised what i've said is true. A lot of life is balk.

Vogler says that at this point in the story "the hero has not yet fully committed to the journey and may still be thinking of turning back. Some other influence... is required to get her past this turning point of fear"

Vogler mentions a mentor being one possible influence. I think i'm just going to use that idea as written in my story. There's probably many ways you could innovatively play with the mentor dynamic of a story. The hero could mentor herself. The hero could be mentored by a memory or by an imaginary friend which again would be an element of themselves. The hero could be mentored by a talking cat or perhaps going more obscure, a talking pencil. Whatever possibilities there are i'm going to go with a fairly literal interpretation of what Vogler said, because I think it would suit the story i'm outlining and also because I can't be bothered to stop and give it much more thought at present.

Fear would be a natural element in Emily's story at this juncture. Having had emotional problems in the past that have already effected her life's course and having committed herself to going straight, seeing a fairy and having experienced something of it's world would possibly have her seriously questioning her grip on sanity. And speaking as someone who's balked a few times in his life and found himself questioning his grip on reality I can attest that this experience of questioning reality would be a very terrifying fearful experience.

At this point I would introduce the aunty she's living with as the mentor. Sensing a little of what Emily's going through I would have the aunty give her a deep and meaningful speech about not being too hard on yourself when trying to do right in this life, and also not to walk too narrow a path when trying to find a way to be. To just be, you know? Most importantly the speech would involve the aunty telling Emily to be open to the world around you, and to let as much of life's magic touch you as you can. This will tie in with a part of fairy life i've realised I want to include. I'll introduce the idea that humans have a strange power over gnomes and faeries. They have to be careful of being seen by humans because the ones that don't believe in magic have the power to make gnomes and faeries disappear from the world altogether.

Emily's aunties words cause her to go back and seek out the fairy she saw.

Adventures calling, do you accept the charges?

Step 2 - The call to adventure.

Vogler describes this as "the hero being presented with a problem, challenge or adventure to undertake."

He goes on to list examples from all genres of movies, from science fiction to romantic comedies. I think this stage would be best summed up as 'something happens.' This 'something' happening causes other things to happen.

My something is Emily seeing a fairy. She follows it and witnesses/experiences a bit of fairy life. Not sure what that would constitute yet, apart from a disdain for gnomes. I don't really know much about fairies, be they from fiction or history (specifically the Chalcolithic age).

Anyone got any idea what faeries are like?

A life less ordinary.

Step 1 - The Ordinary World

Pretty self explanatory stuff. The world where the hero lives before the world of the story takes over and transports them into that other place. That other place may be a physically different one or may be a world of psychological construction. For my young adult novel idea I am going to go for the more obvious transformation into a new more world magical but first I need to establish the ordinary world of my story.

So I said my story begins with a troubled teenage girl living with her Uncle and Aunty because her relationship with her parents became too strained. Let's call the girl Emily, it's a name i've always been fond of. Now her ordinary world is the small village she finds herself living in with her kooky relatives. Emily's ordinary world for my idea needs to be informed by some sort of back story. Emily was living in the city with her parents but from a young age had displayed a strong willed rebelliousness that caused her to act out at the world around her. After a history of thieving, bullying etc an incident that involved her tying a boy from her school to a tree (based on something a friend of mine did when I was in school) causes her parents to reach snapping point. Her mother contacts her sister, Emily's aunt who she's never met, the aunt still lives back in the village she grew up in (as do some other odd relatives) and Emily finds herself shipped off to a new life.

My ordinary world would open with Emily trying her best to establish herself in her new home, trying to correct her former behaviour so that she can get out of the home she see's as a prison and back to her life in the city. This initial ordinary world would be about her home life with her new minder's and about life in the village and her social interactions with some of her other family she's never met before and other village locals.

Not bad as far as beginning's go I guess.

Every great journey begins with a single blog.

Okay so i'm starting on book one of Vogler's journey. His book is split into two parts. He starts with a 12 step program that outlines what he calls the 'heroes journey.' It was only a matter of time before I found myself involved with some sort of 12 step program so why not this one. I once read a critical article of AA that accused it's 12 step system as being cult like. Have I joined a cult, a writers cult? Is Vogler my guru? Does that mean that i'm expected to have sex with him at some point? Looking at the blurb on his books back cover he looks a little like Cheech Marin dressed as a born again preacher. Maybe at some point i'll need deprogramming from what it's doing to me.

I'm not sure of the legalities of discussing a persons work in an open public forum but I remember once hearing something on television about how you can reproduce peoples work if it's meant as some sort of critical analysis of media. Now i'll probably never have more than half a dozen people read this blog but seeing as I plan on talking a whole bunch about this guys book and probably a few other peoples as well let me just say now that this thing is meant as some sort of critical analysis of Voglers work. Word.

Vogler by way of introducing his 12 steps to writing a story says that a lot of his theory is influenced by Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero With A Thousand faces,' which is another book I hope to 'critically analyse' on this blog at some point. So Vogler says that he wrote an essay of sorts based on Campbell's ideas, which then became an industry bible for executives at Disney. The beginning of book one is a revision of that initial essay embraced by those godless monsters at Disney (I don't have enough time to go into that right now.)

Here are the 12 steps;

1.   Ordinary world
2.   Call to adventure
3.   Refusal of the call
4.   Meeting with the mentor
5.   Crossing the first threshold
6.   Tests, allies, enemies
7.   Approach to the inmost cave
8.   Ordeal
9.   Reward (seizing the sword)
10. The road back
11. Resurrection
12. Return with the elixir.

Points 1 to 8 on some level instinctively make sense to me, but for now 9 to 12 still seem really vague and confusing. This will be a journey of learning.

(pun related title to be added later)

Okay so it's late and I was at work until late and i'm already over this 4 point framework of form because lying in bed last night thinking about the few things i've written I came to an early conclusion that makes me think I can push on past it further into Vogler's world of what writing can be.

I think the key to formulating one of these 4 point story plans is to start with the ordeal in your mind first and plot your other story points around that.

I'll make my argument about this in a minute but first let me address the other two points Vogler makes about form to get the whole context.

The hero must move on his journey from the ordeal to a place called the road back, this is point 3. Then from the junction marked as heading on the road back the fourth point is not surprisingly the end. Now in his story scenario the road back equals the lovers escaping from the clutches of their villain heading towards safety. He throws in a twist in which the woman dies and the journey back becomes the journey to revenge.

Admittedly this story model doesn't completely make sense to me and seems kind of vague and stupid, but then people have accused me of being vague and stupid myself so probably best to keep trying to follow it through to some kind of conclusion.

Now in my mind if you start with an opening journey that leads to a change of journey then no matter how great your opening premise it will be bound to those subsequent rules, but if you start with the ordeal in your mind, which is in essence the heart of these kind of stories then every other point will be created in harmony with the guts of your story.

Let me introduce a basic example that I started plotting out in my head last night. It would be a young adult fantasy novel.

The ordeal I would start with would be an all out battle declared between the few remaining gnomes and faeries that live in the forest land that surrounds a small country village.

Now working backwards from the ordeal I need a character who is starting out on a journey but who's initial course is altered in a natural way to lead them smack bang into the middle of the battle. So I imagined a teenage girl who has had some behavioural problems over the years and who has exhausted her parents efforts to contain her so in an act of desperation they ship her off to live with her eccentric Uncle and Aunty in a small village because they're the only one's willing to try and put up with her.

Arriving at their house the young girl has made a conscious decision to try and start afresh in her new life and to prove to everybody that she can be someone other than the trouble maker they all have her pegged as. However not long after arriving she rather surprisingly makes friends with a faerie.

Now in the village she has a boy cousin who unbeknownst to her is friends with the village gnomes. This magical connection runs in the family you see. Anyway the boy and some gnome or gnomes kill one of the faeries and so our main character becomes personally involved in helping the faeries go to war with the gnomes and boy, inadvertently causing a lot of mischief in the village as the battle's stakes raise.

Turning at the story's point of ordeal the girls kindly eccentric Uncle gets seriously hurt as a result of the battle and the hero of the story starts to feel bad for everything that has happened since she arrived and determines to make everything right before more bloodshed ensues.

Where the story ends depends on what her success was at bringing the war to a peaceful end.

Okay so maybe that's not a perfect outline but everything flowing into and out of the stories main conflict still now makes the most sense to me. Time to move onto what's after this four point outline.

Quick thought

Maybe the hero of my story could be someone who works in conflict resolution and can see the tell tale signs of conflict coming.

About preface. Forward march!

Vogler's next lesson on form(ula) is reaching the middle of the story, which is called the ordeal. The ordeal in his simple example is that the villain of the story captures/kidnaps our previously mentioned lovers .

So let me use his example to flesh out my previous exercises, but before I do that let me just ponder on kidnapping people in love. Why is that such a universally recognised theme/cliche in stories? That almost hardly ever happens. I've known plenty of people who have fallen in love and I don't think any of them have ever been kidnapped and had their love challenged by someone who may or may not be wearing a cape and/or a mask.

Makes me want to kidnap a couple in love and challenge their love. For research purposes only.

1. Our young man of lost faith finds himself in debt to a drug dealing pimp because this is the natural progression of anyone who ever leaves the church and loses faith. It happens all the time. The pimp dealer makes the former altar boy turn tricks for him to pay off his debts and at his lowest point he blows his former priest who doesn't recognise him because of the hard life he's lived in what feels like a short amount of story time.

2. Our young traveller & his crew of merry entertainers find themselves low on funds and having to set up business in a trolls mining village (this story gets pretty damn fantastical). The young man accidentally offends a drunken troll and is taken captive. The troll says that the young man is to be eaten in an upcoming festival. He finds himself trapped with a young woman (did I mention she was hot?).

3. The sheriffs daughter goes missing after a couple of more murders that make everyone suspect the writer is the killer.

Even though I was just messing around in their own ways I felt like each of those story ideas started off kind of interestingly enough but the introduction of this ordeal half-way marker has already started reducing them to very familiar trite story ideas.

Is it possible to write an interesting fresh novel that is in no way headed towards a conflict?

Time to put my preface on.

In Vogler's preface to his book he is keen to stress that what he is teaching is a form and not a formula. With that said he outlines a four point formula for thinking of a story as a whole.

Act one involves the stories hero setting out on whatever mission he is on before encountering his first main threshold or obstacle. His example is a hero setting out to find treasure but he falls in love with a fair maiden and falling in love changes the course of his journey. I guess the implication being that love is the real treasure he is seeking the most. Pretty gay stuff.

Anyway, I guess I could start here and spitball some ideas. There are no bad ideas in a spit-balling session except for the following few;

1. A young man sets out to become a priest but after the death of his wayward best friend loses all faith in god and the church and sets himself on a mission to destroy everything in his life and in himself that has been influenced by his previous faith.

2. Set in a magical otherworld, a young man is set to marry his childhood sweetheart when he finds her in the arms (i.e bed) of another. Lost and confused he runs away with a rag tag bunch of bards and actors who are passing on their way through his village. This story would probably feature at least one dwarf and one gnome to establish it's other-worldliness.

3. A successful horror novelist moves to a remote area to write his next novel when someone is brutally murdered in the nearby small town. The sheriffs emotionally stunted but brilliantly minded daughter (did I mention she was hot?) happens to be a big fan of the author and enlists him to help her find the killer.

These are just exercises. I have no idea what I want to write about.

Write By Numbers

So i'm starting with one of those instructional books like many before me, because I don't want to let originality get in the way of my creative ambitions.

It's called 'The Writer's Journey : Mythic Structure For Writers' by Christopher Vogler.

It's all about heroes and caves and how the same structures are as present in contemporary narratives as they were in tales of old. The caves are of course meant to be ultimately metaphorical, but I have no idea what i'm going to write about yet and i'm not sure that "imagination" is really my "strong suit", so sufficed to say my book will probably feature a really dramatic scene in a cave.

A Mission Statement (which will lead to personal KPI's)

After years of talking about it and dreaming about it and making many half-arsed attempts at it, i've finally decided to commit myself to trying to write a novel.

As part of that process i'm going to keep a blog of my attempt to understand the writing process.

I've tried blogging once before (see link below). It was pretty well received from the 3 or 4 people who knew me and read it at the time. If like me you choose to see your small social circle as an industry of sorts then it had a certain amount of industry-buzz. I would have kept that blog going but I couldn't figure out how to log back into it after the 3 year break I took from it so here is version 2.

Forgive my incorrect use of grammar and my occasional bad spelling. Or don't. You were always a bit of an arsehole like that.

Enjoy.

http://badcaseofwritersblog-g.blogspot.com/