Words to Write by

Does the mystery genre follow the Hero’s Journey? According to historical mystery writer Colette Clark. Not so much. 

Join us for our discussion about how Colette structures her novels and figures out who the murder is (sometime just before she finishes her first draft). 

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

If you have read even just the first part of a blog post on the hero’s journey, you know the hero starts off in the ordinary world before embarking on their epic adventure. But the ordinary world is more than a boring place the hero is itching to leave. 

According to Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey, there’s a lot of that needs to be included in the ordinary world section of the story. The writer must establish an interesting and sympathetic main character, set the mood and expectations, establish what’s at stake, and squeeze in backstory (using graceful exposition) and theme. 

That’s a lot to unpack, bur we somehow manage in this podcast episode! There are many, many more subheadings in this very loooong chapter, but as we point out, most don’t need to be there. 

Vogler finishes up the chapter with examples from The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the book) Rather than rehash that, we picked a better book: John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society and boy does it ever have on heck of an ordinary world for the hero to leave behind.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

In our regular podcast, we’ve successfully made it through all of Vogler’s archetypes (from his book, The Writer’s Journey). Armed with this knowledge we decided to see if we could identify the archetypes in Kim’s novel, What our Comeback Tour is Slaying Monsters (coming out this October). Along the way, Renee “learned more about boy bands then I’ve known in my whole life!”

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

Are we done with archetypes now? Almost!

There are just three more archetype chapters in Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey, and we have issues with two of them. 

The Shadow feels more like a force than a character and anyone from a legit supporting actor to unnamed gofer can be labeled an Ally. The one archetype we did like was the Trickster, whose actions and words can bring much needed chaos to your story. They all make for great discussions in this episode.

For literary examples we turned to Howl's Moving Castle and The Witcher (books, video game, but NOT the show)

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

What if writing the first draft was the easy part?

Every week on serial writing websites like Royal Road, hundreds of authors will upload 5, 10, 20,000, or more words of their latest saga. Many of these magnum opuses are LitRPG, a genre that's huge on Kindle Unlimited but pretty much unknown to most readers.

In today's workshop we talk to LitRPG author and podcaster, Madix, about LitRPG, what makes it so popular with readers and writers, and his own decision to rewrite the opening book in his Torchbearer series.

And if you want to know more, check out his LitRPG podcast - CritRPG

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

Everyone who's read a blog post on the Hero's Journey can spot the Hero and Mentor archetypes, but what about a Threshold Guardian, or Herald, or elusive Shapeshifter? 

Are these actual story archetypes or just personifications of the early stages in the Hero's Journey? Do they play a significant role in modern narratives? And just how sexist is Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer's Journey, going to get in his descriptions of the femme fatal/temptress Shapeshifter? Find out what we have to say about these three archetypes in this episode---and boy, does Renee have things to say.

As a bonus, we draw upon Diana Wynne Jones's book, Howl's Moving Castle, for examples.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

In response to Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousands Faces, aka The Hero's Journey, folklorists and academics (many of them female) countered some of the major steps and archetypes that Campbell claimed were universal.

In today's workshop we explore the some of the ideas of The Heroine's Journey with author and academic, Elana Gomel. Using her just published dark fantasy Nine Levels, Elana shows how her book doesn't follow the Hero's Journey, somewhat follows the Heroine's Journey, and eventually takes it's own path entirely.

Check out her book here.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

The Mentor -- Arguably the second most identified archetype from The Hero's Journey (after the eponymous hero). In his book, The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler has a lot to say about the mentor: why are they important, what do they do, what kinds of mentors are there, and do you actually need one in your story (okay, the last one might just be us).

In this episode, Kim and Renee discuss these points using examples from Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

Last episode we explored the concept of the hero archetype as presented in Christopher Volger's The Writer's Journey. But analysis is one thing. We wanted to see if we could use the ideas to create/develop an actual protagonist.

Renee's has a Frankenstein story idea that she so badly wants to read that she's willing to write it herself. In this workshop she applies Vogler's hero archetype concept and prompts to develop her protagonist and plot points. 

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.

Whether every protagonist is a hero is open to debate (and debate it we do in this episode) but it we can agree that the vast majority of protagonists in genre fiction are heroes (if not always heroic). In today’s episode we go deep into Christopher Volger’s chapter on the hero archetype from his book, The Writer’s Journey. 

To explore his ideas in we’re referencing The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Despite being written almost sixty years ago, Beagle’s fairytale feels modern and makes for an excellent sandbox to dig around in for support and opposition on whether the story’s hero (It’s the Unicorn, obviously) conforms to Volger’s hero profile, and also if his Hero’s Journey is a good framework for understanding her quest.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Tuesday. Check us out.