The Billionaire Writer’s Arcanum
Posted by Essay Help on August 8, 2009During a career spanning 25 years of novel, film, and receiver activity, I’ve cardinal major tools most important: the Hinduism “chakras” for characterization, and Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey for plot artifact.
These are not random choices, nor were they chosen because of the many intelligent and bemused essays on their relationship to booming film or class myth.
Rather, they are important because they create a connection between the inner class of the writer, and the external class of the finished work&ndashand the reader.
A plot artifact is nothing more than a means for organizing events in temporal film. Piece thither are more much structures than thither are professional writers, few of them meet what thousands of students consider a critical attempt: are they actually easy to consume and apply? A simple means, however limited, can be of greater consume than a complicated means that requires years to master. Remember: you will achieve real quality in your writing only by mastering your basics.
The Hero’s Journey, extracted from thousands of years of class mythology, has the advantage of actually mimicking the path of life itself. The “three act structure” does not. After all…life isn’t divided into III, or five, or eight acts. Much divisions can be functional tools, but they should never be mistaken for any kind of “truth” about existence. In comparison, note this interpretation (thither are others) of the stairs of the Hero’s Journey, and to explain them, we’ll look at the first Character Wars movie, “Episode IV, A New Hope”:
1) Hero Confronted With A Challenge. “Come with me, Luke, learn the distance of the Force.” This is pretty clear, right? Thither has to be a challenge, or a beckoning, or the character won’t begin to change&ndashand all great writing is about change.
2) Hero Initially rejects the challenge, :I promised Uncle Owen I’d process the moisture evaporators.” A real challenge, one that can provoke real change, will be frightening and exciting. A character will unremarkably have any reservations.
3) Hero accepts the challenge. Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed, freeing him from his oath. If your character doesn’t accept the challenge, thither is no story&ndashunless the account is about the consequences of not accepting responsibility.
4) The Road of trials. Travelling to the desert townsfolk and cantina, getting on Han Solo’s spaceship, travelling to other planets, etc. This is the area where locations and film interact. The character travels, learns, commits actions that force inter-action with the environment, and the environment responds positively or negatively, with greater and greater bet as the account proceeds.
5) Gaining Allies and Powers. Luke meets Han Unaccompanied, and Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan, and Princess Leia. He learns of the Force, and the consume of Light Sabers, and how to fly and fight and rescue princesses. If your character doesn’t have to grow in order to resolve the problem, you may have chosen the wrong problem or character!
6) Initial Confrontation with Evil, and defeat. Obi-Wan’s death. Or possibly the disastrous attack on the Death Character. One is private and emotional, the other striking and physical.
7) Dark Night of the Feeling. The moment of greatest imperfection. Luke begins to believe he cannot gain, and everything he loves will die.
Leap of Faith. “Trust your Feelings, Luke.” The leap of Faith is always faith in one of III things: faith in consciousness, faith in your companions, or faith in a higher power. In “Star Wars” it is all III! This may be the only time in the history of cinema that this was accurate, and helps to explain why George Lucas is a billionaire.
9) Confront Evil&ndashvictorious. The Death Character blows up.
10) Educatee Becomes the Educator. Luke is presented with medals, which establish him as a role model.
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The above ten stairs are not any cookie-cutter pattern. They are the combined class wisdom about the path of life itself, the process we go finished in achieving any worthwhile goal. Thither will be fear. Thither will be defeat. We will need to gain new skills and friends and partners. We must be clear on our acceptance of goals and responsibility. We must have faith. And finally, if we have struggled, and learned, and sacrificed, and moved finished our fear…we learn and grow and follow. And so we instruct others. This is the pattern of life, and any time you organize information and events into a pattern even mistily reminiscent of this, the human nervous group, cosmopolitan, will recognize it as account.
It is NOT any kind of cure-all for bad account tellers. What these ten stairs are is something analogous to the eighty-eight keys of a piano. Believe the emotional and life implication of each block, and so “play them” as your developed instincts dictate. Make your own kind of music. The pattern has worked for about XXX 1000 years. It will activity for you, also.
Tags: advice, artifact, novel, writing