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 4 of 5, Act 2, the Crisis

Act 2, The Crisis

These are the events that take place in the second half of Act 2.  After the Reward, we will enter Act 3, which will be covered all in one blog post.

The Ordeal (Midpoint/Death/Rebirth)

The Ordeal, as far as I understand it from reading Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers, is meant to be the midpoint of the energy of the story.  This does not necessarily mean page 150 out of 300 or minute 60 out of 120.  It means that this is the point where everything has been risked, everything has been sacrificed, and there is nothing left to give.  It could be at the end of the book or the beginning of the movie.  Vergil’s Aeneid begins with Aeneas and his ships being tossed around in a storm that was created by the gods, who are constantly fighting over Aeneas’ future and whether or not he gets to live happily ever after.

Reward

This is where The Ordeal pays off, and the Hero receives whatever it was he or she was seeking.  Sometimes this is an object, sometimes this is knowledge or understanding, and sometimes this is a change of the internal self.  Sometimes this is something the Hero must steal or win by trickery.  Sometimes it is a gift given to the Hero after overcoming The Ordeal.

In The Aeneid, the Reward after the Ordeal of being tossed around in the storm is the safety of the shore where they dock and meeting of Queen Dido, who takes in Aeneas and his men and gives them a place to stay for as long as they need.

Crisis, not Climax

The thing that stands out to me the most about this part of the story is that it is not meant to be The Climax.  It’s simply The Crisis.  This means that the tension can still mount higher and there can still be a last-ditch effort made by the Shadow to stop the Hero and turn the happy ending into a tragedy.  There is another story arch that I’m used to thinking about that was analyzed by Gustav Freytag and goes like this:  Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution.  That’s the story arch that I was taught in High School English classes, and I think it works for a lot of stories, but I also think that having a Crisis in the middle and the Climax at the end will keep readers more interested for a longer period of time, because the tension will continue to grow up to the last pages of the book, or the last minutes of the movie.

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

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 – 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

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.

Writing Exercise 01

So I’ve started jump-starting my brain by doing this writing exercise where I go to a random word generator (http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomWord/RandomWord.aspx) and use an online timer (http://www.online-stopwatch.com/) to give myself ten minutes to freewrite about the first random word I get without actually using that random word.  One of these exercises from the other day gave  me the word “Review” and this is what I wrote about it:

“Now take your papers home,” Mr. Vanderbilt announced, “and look them over.  Find the red marks I made and see of you can figure out how to fix them.”

Sarah glanced over the typed essay, counting the violent red scribbles tucked neatly into the double-spacing.  She took it home and examined every crimson stroke with care.

There were a few that had easy solutions like commas and new paragraphs, but there was one in particular that she didn’t know how to resolve.  This series of red marks consisted of a parentheses encircling a portion of a sentence with a single word written above:  expand.

Sarah tried to stretch the words out, but instead of oozing into more words, they broke into senseless piles of letters.  She tried stretching her brain around the words, but that only gave her a headache.  Finally, Sarah looked at the empty spaces between the words and stretched those out.  It took some time, but gradually, she began to find extra words stuck to the edges.  Sarah pried these off with her pen and placed them carefully into her sentences.

When she gave the paper back to Mr. Vanderbilt, she smiled and said, “I didn’t know it was possible to make something out of nothing, but now I’ve done it!”

Mr. Vanderbilt smiled too.