The Writer’s Journey, Series #3, Post 2 of 5, Catharsis

What is Catharsis?

Generally speaking, Catharsis can be defined as “purging the emotions.”  This means taking a journey of some kind (perhaps by watching a movie or reading a book) that touches on every emotion in range, takes us to the pit of despair, and raises us back out again.

Why Catharsis?

People sometimes feel the need for a “good cry”.  We watch a sad movie, or listen to sad music, cry, and then we feel better about life in general.  Why?  Well, this is a Catharsis.  It is a purging of the emotions.  If you hold all your emotions bottled up constantly, eventually you explode.  Participating in the occasional Catharsis is a way to clean out the extra emotions so that we don’t explode.

The Role of Catharsis in Tragedy and Comedy

In Ancient Greece, they usually showed several plays at a time.  First, two to three tragedies, then a comedy to finish.  The idea was that it took more than one tragic story to get to the bottom of the Catharsis, but only one comedy to bring you back up to the top.  The Hero’s Journey that I’ve been discussing in these blog posts is designed to complete the full loop in the course of one story.

Looking at the example of Megamind that I used in last week’s post, there is a point where Titan has taken over and Megamind has given up.  Titan kidnaps Roxanne in order to lure Megamind to his final destruction, and Megamind tries to save her only to end up falling to his death from an impossible height.  These would be the lowest points in the story.  From here, we move out of the depths and back up to the lighter end of Catharsis.

Want to know more about Catharsis?

Check out Chris Vogler‘s Book, The Writer’s Journey Mythic Structure for Writers

Coming Soon – The Writer’s Journey, Series #3, Post 3 of 5, Stories Are Alive

The Writer’s Journey Series #2, Post 2 of 5, The End of the Beginning

Act 1, part 2

These are the next steps of the Hero’s Journey that occur in Act 1, according to Chris Vogler in The Writer’s Journey Mythic Structure for Writers.  Although I am presenting these in the order that Chris Vogler suggests, I also want to make sure you are aware of the disclaimer Chris Vogler attaches to his suggested order:  These scenes represent forces and plot points, and can appear in any order the writer sees fit.  This particular order seems to be the most basic and chronologically sound.

Refusal of the Call

This happens about halfway through Act 1, based on the diagrams in Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers.  It is the moment where the Hero hesitates before leaving the Ordinary World and plunging into the adventure.  On the other hand, this could also be a moment where a Hero is held back against his/her will.  I just watched the Miyazaki movie Ponyo recently, and there is a point near the beginning where the mermaid character, Ponyo, wants to go live with the humans and her father captures her and traps her underwater to keep her from going out of the Ordinary World (under water) and into the adventure.  Ponyo, of course, escapes, and leaps headlong into her Hero’s Journey.  For another example, in the book The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson fights for his life against a monster out of Greek Mythology but can’t quite believe that what’s happening is really happening.

Meeting with the Mentor

This is where the story inserts a force (either as a character or some other motivating force) that compels the Hero to respond to the Call to Adventure after the refusal.  At this point, the Hero is given what he/she needs to overcome the Refusal of the Call.  In Ponyo, this would be the moment where Ponyo escapes from the bubble where her father put her, and gets into her father’s potions, which allow her to escape completely from the ocean.  Her meeting with her father (Mentor) gave her what she needed to leave the Ordinary World (Ocean) and go to the Special World (Land).  In The Lightning Thief, this is when Mr. Brunner gives Percy a pen that turns into a sword he can use to fight off monsters.

Crossing the First Threshold

This is the end of Act 1 and the “point of no return”.  This is the point after Meeting with the Mentor, when the Hero finally enters the Special World and cannot go back to the Ordinary World.  In Ponyo, this would be when Ponyo runs through the ocean and creates a tsunami in order to get to the land and find Sosuke, the human boy she’s fallen in love with.  In The Lightning Thief, this event is almost the same thing as Refusal of the Call, and Meeting with the Mentor, because it happens in two places:  one, when Ms. Dodds becomes a Kindly One at the Art Museum and Mr. Brunner (Mentor) gives Percy the magic pen that turns into a sword; second, when Percy fights a Minotaur and loses his mother just before escaping into camp half blood.  In both cases, there is a sense that Percy is being forced out of the Ordinary World and into the Special World (while at the same time he is realizing that his teacher is more than he seems, and his other options are being taken away so that he will be forced to continue his adventure).

The Order of Events

Sometimes certain steps in the Hero’s Journey can appear to happen at the same time (as with The Lightning Thief, where Percy experiences Meeting with the Mentor and Refusal of the Call at the same time as Crossing the First Threshold).  Is there anything wrong with this?  Absolutely not!  The Lightning Thief is a fantastic story as it is, and so is Ponyo.  The thing about these steps in the Hero’s Journey is that they are almost like characters themselves.  They have their own personality and flavor, and they can be tweaked and combined, just like the archetypes can be.  As to which steps in the Hero’s Adventure are most essential, I’ll point you toward Chris Vogler’s Blog, where he has a post title “Hero’s Journey Short Form” which discusses the most essential steps in the Hero’s Journey.

Coming Soon:  The Writer’s Journey Series #2, Post 3 of 5, The Plot Thickens

The Writer’s Journey, Series #1, Archetypes – Main Characters

As promised, here is the first installment of my series on The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler and all the various insights he presents, along with my thoughts and ideas about stories and writing.  If I were ambitious enough to give each chapter of the book its own blog post (which one could legitimately do), I would be doing 26 posts in this series, and it would take 6 months to complete.  I have decided against such a vast commitment of time and will be combining chapters here and there for a total of 13 posts (to be written over the course of about 3 months rather than 6) divided into 3 series:  Archetypes, The Hero’s Journey, and Essentials for the Journey.

Archetypes – Main Characters

(series 1 of 3, post 1 of 3)

Today’s installment is the first of three in the Archetypes series:  Main Characters.  These are the main forces that will be present in any story.  They do not necessarily have to be represented as individual characters, though 9 times out of 10 they do appear as characters.  This, I think, is because of the strength of these forces.  These are the forces that create the plot.  Without these Archetypes, there is no tension and thus no real plot.  I am making the argument here (and I think most storytellers will agree) that plot requires tension.  If there is no tension there is no plot.  There may be a string of events plodding along one after the other and they may together create a timeline that someone could call a story, but I don’t expect it will be a very interesting story.

Hero/Protagonist

The first of these main characters is, obviously, the Hero.  Christopher Vogler makes the distinction that the Hero figure represents Freud’s Ego, which is the conscious self.  As such, this character begins as part of the normal whole, and through the Journey separates from the normal whole to become a separate individual, distinct from the normal whole.  Vogler goes on to say that the basic premise of the Hero’s Journey is the search for self identity and a sense of “wholeness”.  This is usually the character who changes the most in the story, or who has the most to lose, or both.  This character will be complex, face death, make some kind of sacrifice (possibly in relation to facing death), and will be flawed.  Vogler also discusses various kinds of Heroes from willing to unwilling, loner to group, and more.  Exactly which type of Hero you use will depend on your story’s needs, and your personal preferences.

The Hero is also usually the character your readers will relate to the most, which is why the Hero is the one with the biggest identity crisis or identity challenge.  The best example I can think of for this is in the recent movie Rango, where the lizard doesn’t even know his own name until he ends up in this small wild west town where he has to pretend to have a reputation to avoid misfortune.  He invents his entire past in just a few minutes and creates an identity that he will be challenged to live up to later in the story.  We all feel out of place at least some of the time (if not most of the time) and rarely do we feel that we truly belong somewhere.  We are painfully aware of our quirks and oddities and we struggle to find a group of people to call friends who are like-minded and who possibly even have similar oddities to ourselves.  This is why this character is most often the protagonist.  You want your protagonist to be the one your readers can relate to best, so that the entire story will remain interesting to your readers.

Shadow/Antagonist

This is the force opposite to the Hero, and Vogler immediately pegs it as an initially internal force, represented psychologically by the things we repress inside ourselves, “the dark secrets we can’t admit, even to ourselves”.  These are things like guilt, envy, feelings of lack, feelings of loss, severe trauma, etc.  Usually, these things are represented in an external villain or antagonist of some kind who opposes the Hero outright.  This opposition becomes the main source of tension in the story.  Vogler also makes the point that the Shadow doesn’t have to be evil, rather it’s more like the Shadow is working on his/her own quest or Journey and it just so happens that our Hero is in direct opposition to the Shadow’s goals.  Only one of the two can achieve victory, for there is no way to reconcile their opposing desires.

In Rango, to continue the example I started using above, there are two such shadows.  The external Shadow is the mayor, who is buying up all the land with plans to build a modern city that will make him a huge profit, but the internal Shadow is Rango’s own doubts about himself, his lack of belief in himself and his own certainty that he has no identity.  It’s not until after he overcomes those internal Shadows and discovers his identity that he has the ability to overcome the external Shadow and foil the mayor’s plans.

Mentor/Guide

The Hero cannot become what he/she needs to be without the Mentor.  Vogler calls the Mentor the psychological Self, which is the part of us that is our best, wisest, purest, etc.  This is usually a character, but could also manifest as a book, the Hero’s conscience, or other non-character forces.  The primary function of the Mentor is to prepare the Hero for the inevitable confrontation with the Shadow.  This will include giving the Hero gifts, protection, and lessons.

This may have something to do with me being a teacher, but I find Mentor characters the most fun to write and do different things with.  They can be willing or unwilling, good or evil, Shadows in disguise, or gods in disguise, and an infinite number of other possibilities.  The Mentor colors and shapes the Hero’s understanding the world beyond that normal place where the Hero began and shows the Hero how to face the Shadow – if that Mentor turns out to be corrupt, what will the Hero do then?  In Rango, there are two Mentor figures that spring readily to mind.  One is the Armadillo that tries to cross the highway and the other is the Spirit of the West that the lizard meets while on his quest to find his identity.  Each one only appears briefly, gives the advice that’s needed, and then moves on.  Of course, you could also have a Mentor who stays with the Hero too long and works with the Hero too much, and explore how that would help and hinder the Hero in different ways.

What do you think?

What are some of your favorite stories and who or what takes on these roles in those stories?  Can you think of any stories that lack a Hero, Shadow, or Mentor?  Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Coming Soon:  Archetypes – Secondary Characters, series 1 of 3, post 2 of 3

Writer, Killer, Character, Reader

Today I had lunch with a good friend who had just finished rereading the manuscript I’ve been working on.  She loved nearly all of it and when she did make suggestions about what to change, she was so passionate about them, I knew I had written something that connected to her on an emotional level.  She is as excited about this story as I am, if not more.

So where’s the ‘but’?  Well, it’s here:  The things that need to change the most are all related to the depth of the characters and making it feel like they are fully-rounded people instead of stereotypes.  The more we talked about the experiences these characters were having and the emotions that needed to be shown, the more I realized I had cheated my characters.

You can’t write a depressed or insecure character unless you can grasp the feeling of depression or insecurity within yourself and describe it in maximum detail.  This usually means dredging up painful memories and past experiences, reshaping them into the experiences of your characters, and then living those new experiences with your character moment by moment, recording everything that happens.  It’s one part acting, one part journalism, and one part creative fiction.

I think that in all good fiction someone is always in some kind of pain in every scene, whether it’s a life-threatening wound, or unrequited love.  Someone has to be hurting about something.  I cheated my characters in that I hadn’t been willing to write the painful emotions, and thus I had cheated them out of fully living.

I continued mulling this over all afternoon and into the evening and tried to start pulling up some of those memories of some of those experiences so that I could start really getting into the hearts of my characters instead of just inside their heads, and I hit a block.  It felt like I was killing something in the process of my catharsis, and at first I thought it was the earlier version of my characters (out with the old and in with the new), but the more I considered every angle, the more I felt that this feeling of death had nothing to do with my characters and everything to do with me.

You see, in order to get back into those old memories of mine, I first have to break through the psychological wall I’ve put up to protect myself from those memories.  I don’t need to go leaping headlong into some painful feeling, but I do have to be willing to at least dip my toes in to remind myself what temperature the water is, and even that much can be difficult.

And here is the incredible philosophical discovery I arrived at:  When I write in such a way that I take pieces of my deepest soul, where I locked away all those most painful memories, and display those emotions in profound detail in my characters, readers will connect to that.  In a way, it’s like my readers and I will have connected to each other through my characters and the emotions we all share among ourselves.  Isn’t that amazing?

It’s one thing to teach a class and be at the front of a crowd, giving instruction in what is actually a rather distant relationship.  It’s another thing entirely to be the one a reader connects to when she is curled up in her bed, at home with the flu, enjoying the story you’ve created.  That scenario of the relationship between reader and writer is so much more intimate, in its own way, because of the emotional closeness.  Physical distance means nothing.  Having that emotion spread out before you in painstaking detail means everything.

And now I want to go back through my manuscript and edit for emotional impact, make sure that every sentence, every moment, every letter, packs a tense punch to the emotional stomach of every reader.  So, I will leave you with these thoughts and go type some more on something that I hope will one day connect to readers all over the world.

Ten Tips for Query and Cover Letters

A friend of mine asked me to edit her cover letter for her application to a teaching position, and as I was going through it, I realized that although I have not written a cover letter in a very long time (actually maybe never), I have written a plethora of query letters, and that is the experience I drew on when I viciously edited and tore apart my friend’s cover letter.  As I worked, I realized that there are some general pieces of advice I could have given her at the beginning that would have saved both of us some work.  Of course, if you really want the best query advice out there, you should go to queryshark, but I figured I would go ahead and put my little list together and share it with the world anyway.

1. Save the business card for the bottom of the page:
   This is probably more a matter of taste than cover/query letter etiquette, but I think you should put your name and contact info at the bottom instead of at the top.  My reasoning is that the person reading your letter really doesn’t care who you are or how to get in touch with you until AFTER they read your letter.  So why take up their time and give them an eyesore before you’ve even fully introduced yourself?  Besides, if your letter is good, they will be dying to find out who you are and how to get in touch with you.  So, give them the info when they’re begging for it, and not when they really don’t care.
2. Address a specific person:
   Never address the office, the company, the agency, or publishing house, etc.  You need to make a personal connection, so figure out which individual person you’re writing to, and address it to that person.  Make sure to use Mr. or Ms. (but never Mrs.) and their last name only.  If you’re not sure about the gender because their first name is something like Cameron or Terry, then do some research and find out.
3. Explain why, not what:
   The fact that you’re writing this letter tells the person who’s reading it that you want them to hire you.  You don’t need to tell them that you’re “interested in applying yourself”.  They know you are.  You wrote the letter.  Instead of explaining the obvious, make the next jump and tell them WHY.  Why are you interested in applying for this position?  What is it in you that makes you want this position?  And why this position in particular?  Why this particular company or agency?  Why are you writing this letter to that person in particular?  Why did you single them out?  What do you like about their company or their agency or their whatever?  If you can show the person reviewing your cover/query letter that you’ve done your research and you have a list of reasons for choosing them, you are showing that you know who they are and they are more than just some random job to you.
4. Sign with the name you go by:
   Don’t sign with your middle name if you don’t go by your middle name.  It’s awkward.
5. Experience:
   When you write about your qualifications in a cover/query letter, you should never have to use words like “experience” or “qualifications”.  Do not tell the reader that you are now going to list your qualifications/experience and then list said items.  That’s what your resumé is for.  The cover letter is a place for your personality to shine through.  So, explain what you’ve done and what you’ve learned.  Be personal, specific, and professional.  Then, the person on the other end is going to think to themselves “wow, they have a lot of great experience!”  Sometimes, the trick of writing is not what words you put on the page but what words you make the reader think of on their own.  By making the reader think of the word “experience,” you’ve gotten them engaged in your letter.  They will remember that you had all of that experience, because they had to do the work to come up with the word “experience.”
6. Reduce your adjectives and qualifiers:
   Never use more than one adjective at a time and only use one adjective for every five nouns at the most.  There is no least.  A cover/query letter devoid of adjectives is strong.  (Just like how strong that sentence was.  Think about it.)  Do not put an adjective on the most important noun.  The most important noun needs to stand out, so don’t hide it with adjectives and qualifiers and run-on sentences.  Let it stand on its own and do its job.  Also, you should never have to use the words “great”, “good”, “best” etc.  Just show what  great thing you did, and your reader will think to themselves “wow!  that’s great experience!”
7. Professional means polished, not boring:
   Some people think that colors and life and fun are unprofessional because they are not boring and only boring things are professional.  Worms are boring, but they are definitely not professional.  Professional means polished.  It means you use a black size 12 times new roman font because it makes your letter look polished.  It means you have correct grammar and spelling, because that also makes your letter look polished.  It does not mean that you snuff out your personality and write like a robot.  Of course, you don’t want to come off as being too casual, either.  So, you have to find a balance.  Find ways to insert your sense of humor (or at least to show that you have one), without telling a joke.  Choose your words carefully.  Think about connotations.  For example, “enthusiasm” and “energetic” mean roughly the same thing, but we often connote “energetic” with chaotic children and “enthusiasm” with eager adults.
8. Show, don’t tell:
   This is probably the hardest thing for any writer to do, whether you’re putting together a manuscript or agonizing over a query letter.  In principle, this is how it works:  don’t tell them you love dogs, show them.  Here’s an example of telling:  “I love dogs”  Here’s an example of showing:  “I worked with dogs at an animal hospital for three years and loved every minute of it.”  This technique comes in really handy when you’re struggling with not listing off your qualifications.  Instead of using that paragraph to list qualifications, use that paragraph to talk about yourself through your qualifications and experiences.
9. Truth, truth, truth:
   Don’t make stuff up because it sounds better.  Don’t list closed down places as references when you never worked there.  What are you going to do when someone asks you about such and such manager who used to work there and it turns out their good friends and they actually can get in touch with that old manager who used to work at that closed down place?  If you think you need to make something up to make your cover letter stand out, you’re not thinking about your cover letter the right way.  You can make any experience that you really did have sound good if you get a bit creative.  Even sitting at home playing video games can sound good.  It takes a certain amount of mental skill to figure out the strategies and solutions required to beat a video game.  It also takes dedication to beat a video game.  Add a sentence that shows you know work is different from video games and you’ve not only shown your intellectual and dedication skills, but you’ve also made it into a joke, which shows that you have a sense of humor.  Truth is good.  Use it.
10. My suggested order for writing a query/cover letter:
    Start with a personal greeting like Dear Ms. Jones.  This tells them that you picked them out and you know their name – they are not a random anonymous person to you.  They are someone.  Then explain why you chose them with something like I am writing to your (company/agency/whatever) because I saw on your website that you (fact that is interesting to you and that relates to your application and the position to which you are applying).  This is interesting to me because (something personal about you – for writers, this is where you would put your one line manuscript description with word count, and the fact that it’s complete).  These two sentences tell the reader a lot.  First, it tells them that you’ve looked them up on the internet.  Second, it tells them that you actually read their website and got something out of it.  Third, it tells them that you already have a connection with them.  Fourth, it shows that you know who they are, what they do, and what they need.  After that, I would go into my experiences and qualifications, using sentences that show rather than tell.  A cover letter is not a resumé.  You’re not listing your experience for the sake of showing you’re experienced.  You are showing what kind of person you are and telling them more about yourself by using your experience as examples. At the end, I would put something along the lines of, I look forward to hearing from you soon and sincerely followed by my first and last name (I don’t go by my middle name, so I would leave it out), phone number, email, website, and mailing address.