The Writer’s Journey, Series #3, Post 1 of 5, Polarity

What is Polarity?

Polarity is a certain type of tension that comes from having two opposing forces constantly pulling or pushing each other throughout the story.  The Movie Megamind is a perfect example of the ways in which polarity can be used to bring tension to a story.

At first, we have Metro Man, who is polarized as a “good guy,” and Megamind, who is polarized as a “bad guy”.  Then Megamind is suddenly successful in overthrowing Metro Man and the polarity is thrown completely off-balance as the bad guy gains control of Metro City.  At first, it’s all fun and games, but then Megamind gets bored and decides to create a new good guy to re-establish the balanced polarized tension.  However, Titan, the hero Megamind creates, turns out to be more of a bad guy than Megamind.  He defeats Megamind and takes over the city.  Now the polarity is overbalanced in one direction.  When Megamind decides to come back and challenge Titan to heroically save the city, Megamind shifts his polarity from “bad” to “good” and restores the polarized balance.

The Rules of Polarity

1. Opposites Attract – Megamind and Metro Man attract each other’s attention in their battles for control of Metro City
2. Polarized Conflict Attracts the Audience – The audience is drawn in by the conflict between Megamind and Metro Man
3. Polarity Creates Suspense – The audience is in suspense because of the tension in the conflict
4. Polarity Can Reverse Itself – Megamind goes from “bad guy” to “good guy”
5. Reversals of Fortune – Megamind goes from the one who is constantly losing to the one who always wins

Polarity and Balance

The single most important thing about polarity is that it stays balanced.  If one character in the pair begins moving toward the other side, the rest of the characters, or the scenery, or the plot, or the story itself must somehow balance out the other side of the polarity in order to maintain polarized tension.

This does not have to apply to “good” and “bad”.  It could also apply to “selfless” and “selfish” or “physical” and “mental” or “emotionally receptive” and “emotionally distant”.  Any pair of opposing character traits can be used to create polarized tension.  They can be applied to characters or plot devices or to the world where the story takes place.

How to Use Polarity

Polarity will inevitably appear anywhere there is tension.  You can insert extra polarity if you want, or you can use the polarity that appears naturally in your characters and your story to help make the story more tense, create more suspense, and draw your audience in deeper.

Want to know more about Polarity?

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

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

The Writer’s Journey Series #2, Post 1 of 5, The Adventure Begins

Acts

I had never really thought of a novel in terms of acts before I read The Writer’s Journey; Mythic Structure for Writers, but I’ve found it helpful to think of the beginning as Act 1, the middle as Act 2, and the end as Act 3.  As far as I can tell, there isn’t that much difference between the terms except that when I think of “beginning”, I think of a vague section of story that may or may not have a fixed length, that will only sometimes end before the middle starts, and that might appear a second time at the end of the book.  However, when I think of “Act 1″, I think of an exact section of story that has a limit to its length (though the exact length may be different from story to story), that will always end before Act 2 begins, and that will never appear a second time in the story.  Not only does this make the beginning/middle/ending clearer in my head, but it also makes plotting easier.

This series will use Chris Vogler’s grouping of the stages of the Hero’s Journey as a rough guide for breaking up and discussing the various stages of the Hero’s Journey.

Act 1, Part 1

Ordinary World

This is usually the very first part of the story, where the writer establishes “Normal” and makes sure the reader knows all the rules of the world.  If you’re writing fantasy (which I most often am), this is the part where you make the reader aware of the particular quirks and rules of the fantasy world that don’t exist in the real world.  If you’re writing fiction (which I most often am not, so take this with a grain of salt) I believe this would be the first chapter where you set up the main character and his/her relationships and exact predicament and everything else.  This is basically the place for introductions.

Chris Vogler also discusses the Ordinary world as a place for foreshadowing what is to come, putting the Dramatic Question out there, introducing the internal and external problems the hero will face, and a great many other things that I don’t have the time or word count to get into here.  I strongly recommend that you buy the book and read each chapter yourself, as I am only giving you my impressions and the things that stood out the most to me.

Call to Adventure

According to Vogler, the Call to Adventure can appear in a number of different ways:  synchronicity (when apparently random events come together to cause change), temptation, heralds, reconnaissance of the Villain to discover how best to attack the Hero, disorientation/discomfort, lack/need, having no choice, warnings.  Vogler goes on to discuss the idea of having multiple Calls to Adventure.

I’m sure that there are an infinite number of ways to call your hero into adventure, but my favorite idea about the Call to Adventure is that you could have a Hero being Called to Adventure all the way through the Journey even up to the very end.  If there are both internal and external problems for the Hero to solve, it is entirely possible that the Hero will immediately jump on solving the external problem while completely ignoring the internal problem (or vice versa).  This provides an opportunity for the Hero to be constantly Called and Called again to resolve the internal problem throughout the duration of the story.

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

Archetypes – Secondary Characters

(Series 1 of 3, post 2 of 3)

These are the archetypes I’ve personally grouped as secondary characters from those listed in Christopher Vogler’s Book:  The Writer’s Journey.  These particular forces or archetypes do not strike me personally as necessary to establish a story’s existence in the same way that the Hero, the Shadow, and the Mentor are required in order for a story to exist.  However, I think that these characters are rather inevitable once the story has been established.

Shapeshifter

This is a character or a force that changes throughout the story such that its very nature becomes something it wasn’t before.  Most characters will display some variation of the Shapeshifter as they grow through the events in the story.  The Shapeshifter as a character represents the things the Hero understands least or all the doubts that surround the Hero.

I have to admit that the first time I read Vogler’s Chapter on Shapeshifters, I was not satisfied that I fully understood what a Shapeshifter was and how a Shapeshifter was different than a trickster, but after some thought and rereading, here’s the clearest way I can put it:  The Shapeshifter absolutely changes completely and does not even know for herself what she will be when all’s said and done, which may lead to doubt and (unintentional) deception; the Trickster is deceptive on purpose.

Trickster

The trickster is the character that is always playing tricks, or in other words, the trickster is the comic relief.  This is the character that reminds everyone else not to take things too seriously.  She functions as a kind of anchor or grounding force when the story or the Hero or the audience gets strung too high.  Vogler spends a page or so on the function of the “Trickster Hero” who achieves her goals by tricking or outwitting the Shadow.

Something that I thought I saw Vogler suggest extremely subtly at the end of the Trickster section was that the Trickster can have as much depth as a Shadow or a Hero, if given the correct background and experience as a full character.  I think this is a truth that is often forgotten when considering various “comic relief” types of characters, and I just wanted to remind the world that this is a possibility and it shouldn’t be ignored.

Ally

Allies, of course, are those who ally themselves with the Hero to help the Hero on the quest.  This is often a character used as a kind of mirror in which the storyteller and the audience can better examine the hero.  Sometimes an Ally is exactly like the hero minus one or two qualities, and other times an Ally is almost exactly a Hero’s opposite.  Sometimes an Ally comes willingly or is forced into helping the Hero against her will.

Vogler spends some time discussing various kinds of allies, including side-kicks, animals, ghosts, and servants.  He says that allies serve the psychological function of any friend, personality trait, or other force that would be helpful to us.  I am inclined to agree that allies have this function in common, no matter what kind of ally they are or where they come from, and I would say that no storyteller should leave that stone unturned.  Where did this particular ally come from?  Does she like helping the Hero?  Why or why not?  What if this ally turned out to be a Trickster or became a Shapeshifter?  How would this change the dynamic of the story?

Why Aren’t These Main Characters?

You could argue that the Mentor is a type of ally figure anyway, and that therefore allies are main characters, but the Mentor could also be a force, like nature.  If the Hero’s job is to survive nature, then nature is going to have some pretty difficult lessons to teach the Hero, and in that way, nature becomes the Mentor.  I suppose you could also argue that if surviving nature makes the Hero stronger, then nature is an ally as well as a Mentor.  However, my point is that you can have an ally that does nothing to help the Hero grow but only provides comic relief as a Trickster type of Ally.  If the Hero is going to grow or change at all, the Hero is going to require some kind of Mentoring force that will also inevitably be some kind of Ally, but that the Hero will not necessarily require an Ally who is not a Mentor.

Likewise, if there is a Shadow, there will most likely also be a Shapeshifter of some kind, whether it is the Hero shapeshifting into what she needs to become in order to defeat the Shadow, or the Shadow itself shapeshifting into something more and more unbeatable.  And, where there is a Shapeshifter, there is probably a Trickster, to help make light of the situation and throw extra doubt into all the corners the Shapeshifter missed.

These characters and forces are very common in stories told everywhere and in every way, but I don’t think the stories depend on them.  I think the Shapeshifter, the Trickster, and the Ally depend on the story.  They become what the Hero, the Shadow, and the Mentor and the story itself need them to be, whereas the Hero, the Shadow, and the Mentor determine to a great extent how the story itself will be shaped.

What Do You Think?

Do you disagree that these forces are secondary compared to the Hero, the Shadow, and the Mentor?  Do you think the Hero, Shadow, or Mentor is secondary to these forces?  Do you agree?  Please leave a comment!

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

The Edge of the World

Some day I’m going to write something about the edge of the world.  Actually, I’ll probably write several somethings about the edge of the world.  It’s such a philosophically ripe concept.  I mean, you can think of it as an ending, but by definition an ending implies that there was a beginning at some point, somewhere along the way, and if you look at it from another point of view, all endings beg new beginnings.  And that brings up the question:  what kind of a beginning starts at the end of the world?

What I’m seeing in my mind, is basically a cliff edge, but at the top there’s grass and trees and animals and people, of course, but down in the bottom it’s all fog and mist and no one can see what’s below for miles and miles.  It’s like an ocean of fog, and they call it the edge of the world.  Well, the story idea I’ve got in mind starts with the main character jumping off the edge of the world.  Not sure why she jumps yet.  I’m torn between having it be forced, like she’s running away from something, and having it be a choice, like she wants to see what’s out there.  Another idea would be starting with having her attempt to kill herself, but I’m nervous about writing that kind of thing, because it’s very intense in a lot of ways and I want to be able to do that subject the justice and seriousness it deserves.

So, anyway, that’s the idea so far.  Not sure if it’ll ever turn into anything, but I needed a topic to blog about this week, and this was all I had.  Hopefully it was worth your time. 

Patience is an Author’s Best Friend

Writing is not a profession of instant-gratification or even monthly-gratification or even yearly-gratification.  Writing is a profession of patience.  You have to be willing to wait, to work every day with little or nothing to show for it.  You don’t get to see your fans screaming at you from the mosh pit while you perform on stage.  If they’re anywhere out there in the darkness beyond the spotlight, they’re curled up on the floor with your book in their laps, reading.  You, author, don’t get to see your fans at all, unless you spend some time on twitter, Facebook, MySpace, the blogging arena, and everywhere else on the internet.  Even then, you don’t have time to catch up with fans.  You’re an author.  You have to spend every moment you can spare working on that manuscript.

There are things like writing conferences where you can go and meet other authors and people who love to read and who love books.  If you make it to mid-list, you might be invited to speak at a local school or something…but that’s about it.

No career is for the faint of heart, and writing is no exception.  You may love writing, but you won’t love what you’re writing every day you write it.  You work at it every day anyway, not knowing for sure how your readers are going to react.  Maybe you find a writing group of people you trust to share your work with, and that gives you some companionship and criticism to work with.  You do this for a year, and then your agent tells to fix it.  You work on it with the agent for a few months, and then your agent find a publisher and the publisher’s editor tells you to fix it.  You work on it with the editor for a few months, and then the publisher begins the sluggish process of putting it in print.  You won’t hear anything else about it after that.  The world has it.  The world is reading it.  Reading is a silent activity, most of the time.

There will be no screaming mosh pits for you, author.  Just another day in front of your laptop, typing patiently on the next silent concert while your fans gather in the darkness beyond your spotlight and read.

Writing As a Career – the First Steps

This week is my first week back teaching and you’d think that the reason they have the teachers come back a week earlier than the students is so that we can prepare for the students, but really it’s so that they can take up all our time with meetings and not give us any time to prepare anything.  At least, that’s what it feels like this close to “zero hour”.

Anyway, I decided to make this week’s post simple.  Here is a list of things I did when I decided that I wanted to make writing my next career:

1. Decide to treat writing like a career (if I was willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on my bachelors degree in classics, I should also be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on conferences, books, etc. to further my career in writing)
2. Read books about how to write (do the suggested writing exercises, and practice)
3. Read books that are similar to your manuscript (don’t steal, be creative, come up with new twists/ideas)
4. Join a writer’s association (it’s expensive, but it’s worth it, even if all you get out of it is the ability to say you belong to one)
5. Go to a writer conference (it’s expensive, but it’s worth it, especially if you meet an agent)
6. Join a writing circle (and attend!  Get feedback.  Give feedback.  Be brutally honest and learn how to gracefully accept the brutal honesty of others.)
7. WRITE! (start typing.  Now.)

Review: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I often gauge how good a movie was by how it makes me think after watching it.  A good movie will make me want to write after watching it, either because it’s inspired me with an idea for a story, or because I’m so excited I want to write some fanfiction.  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice went one step beyond that:  it inspired me with a philosophical idea that I will now share with you:

It is easy to move a person’s mind – all you need is a riddle.  It’s harder to move a person’s heart, but even that looks easy when compared with the task of moving a person’s soul.

I won’t say anything more about the movie.  It was GOOD.  It was worth spending money on.  You should go watch it now.

Sleepless Rambling About Impossible Wishes

So I couldn’t sleep and I had this story idea flitting around in my head and decided to write it out and get it out of my head and figured that might help me sleep.  The characters are based on people I know in real life and in the story, one character does something for another that is absolutely wonderful and needed but could never happen in the real world.  It made me sad.  I’ve never wanted so badly to do something for someone that was so impossible.  I thought about making it impossible in the story as well, but my thing about writing is that I have to live in and live with the real world, while  I can create whatever kind of world I want in the stories I write and I can make whatever I want real there – so why ever do things the same way they are in reality when I don’t have to?  Of course, with that kind of attitude, you can cheapen a story easily by not forcing a character to go through something they don’t want to go through but need to and giving them what they want but don’t need instead.  Right now this particular story is just a pair of scenes and a handful of back story notes, but I want to see it happen in real life instead of just on paper in a fantasy adventure story.

And that’s why I want to write books that are eventually published worldwide.  If I can capture that impossible wish, wrap it up, and present it to the world as a story, someone somewhere will read that and get inspired by it and maybe that someone will have the right talent and skill and training to make that impossible wish into something possible.

There is so much power in the written word:  to make people think, to make people dream, to make people hate someone, love something, or believe in things they can’t see.  Through the written word, others have changed the world.  Of course, it also depends on how the world interprets what you write, and there’s no way to control that.  But there is something to be said for trying.  And if I never try or if I ever stop trying, I’ll never know what impossible wishes someone could have made possible because of something I never wrote.

Someday all the things we once thought were entirely impossible will be things we take for granted as part of a daily routine.

Getting Lost in Writing and Vice Versa

I was talking with a friend the other day about philosophy and the meaning of life and explained that the reason I decided not to major in philosophy (and the reason that I do not allow myself to study it at all) is that I am afraid I would get lost in it and never come back and never be able to fully function in reality.  I’m the same way about art as well.  Latin, on the other hand, is something I enjoy and I can get lost in, but I can always come back whenever I need/want to.  Reading is harder to come back from, but the book always ends eventually anyway, which means that I will have to come back no matter what, so I don’t mind that pleasure either.

When I considered my relationship with Writing, I came to a conundrum:  I’m not sure whether it’s me who’s lost in my writing or if it’s my writing that’s lost in me.  I can sit down with a computer, or with pen and paper, or with the notepad feature on my cell phone, or even just the inside of my own head and compose any amount of writing and be completely lost in it.  When the inspiration passes, I come back to reality and am no longer lost in my writing.  However, I also often notice myself narrating my life and the lives of those around me without really thinking about it – as if I suddenly realized the pattern of my own breathing or the sound of my own heartbeat.  It’s constantly in the background, rasping and drumming as the bass-line of my existence.

So far, I have come up with two possible answers.  One is that I am already so overly consumed with writing (and always have been since I first understood the concept of storytelling) that I am already completely lost in it and will never come back (though, clearly, I can still function in reality quite well).  The second possible answer is that while I can get myself lost in my writing sometimes, my writing can also get itself lost in me.

That idea makes me wonder about existence in general and what would it be like to be just a character in someone’s book, at the mercy of some anonymous god I had never met but who controlled every aspect of my life?  How much free will do we as authors really give our characters and how much of that free will do those characters really accept and exercise (if they are truly capable of it at all)?  I am a big believer in developing your characters and allowing them to drive the plot and the story along as much as possible, and refraining from “divine intervention” whenever you can, but I wonder sometimes how much of that is illusion and how much of it isn’t.