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.
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ReplyDeleteYou could write a story about a young priest who sets out to marry his childhood sweetheart and best friend; she also happens to be a gnome. After she rejects him, the young priest brutally kills her and with a travelling troupe of bards and actors, moves to a small town where he writes a sucessful horror novel about it. Claiming he has lost all faith in god and the magical otherworld around him, the young priest enlists the help of the local sheriff's pretty daughter to help find his ex-love's 'supposed' killer. The young priest and sheriff's daughter eventually fall in love and live happily ever after. They have a dwarf child and name him Annie ;)
ReplyDeleteI eagerly await the next three points of the form...
the first comment posted was exactly the same as the second... just accidentally deleted!
ReplyDeleteI like egg's idea... you don't really hear about priests in a mythical gnome ridden other-world... and they don't mention writers either, especially those that write about murders (even though everyone knows gnomes are all about the art of murdering.)
ReplyDeleteIt's a good mash of all your ideas and you can stretch it out to a few books... like the Song of Ice and Fire series- those books are like a mythical medieval realm written by Earnest Hemingway (they amount of detail is mind numbing...). Anyway, mash everything together- it definetly opens up thousands of possibilities and twists and turns (ooooo).
Egg I like a lot of your ideas takes individually, maybe we should collaborate.
ReplyDeletePriests interacting with gnomes.
A priest marrying a gnome (love it).
A priest who commits a brutal violent murder.
Yera is the Songs of Fire & Ice the books that inspired Game of Thrones? Been meaning to reading them.