Tuesday's Inspiration revisiting the Writer's Journey - Christopher Vogler #MFRWauthor

Written in 2010 and revisited today.

Years ago, I bought The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler and started to read it but for some reason I put it on the shelf and didn't finish it. While doing these things to inspire people in their writing I pulled it off the shelf and started to read.

He maps out a sort of 3 act arc. This begins in the ordinary world. This made me think about the ordinary world. This is different for each character one creates and this means one has to build a bit of the character's world before the story begins. For me this means that after I've decided what my story is going to entail, I have to think about what is going on in a character's life and what makes them want to leave this world that may be comfortable or uncomfortable. He talks about :The fish out of water." Sometimes I've used this but sometimes I've made the fish be in the water and the changes that come from without. Mrs. Miller in the first two stories of the mystery series is in her world and her world is threatened. In the third and fourth books of the series she does step out of her world and I think when I get to the fifth, she will again leave her world and in the sixth she will return to her world being disturbed by events. So reading just a few paragraphs has made me think about the stories I've written and the ones I'll be writing.

Re-reading this segment made me realize how important world-building is for the writer to master. Even in the contemporary story each character's world is slightly different. As I've continued to write since I read this part of the book, world building has become a vital part of the way I start to plan my stories. How about you? Do you look at the characters' view of their world whether contemporary, historical or a fantasy world?

Inspirations - More on the Writer's Journey

In The Writer's Journey Christopher Vogler Moves onto the Reward or Seizing the Sword. This comes after the Black mOment and for a long time I puzzled over this. In many of my books there isn't an object that comes as a result of the dark time when all is believed to be lost. Then one phrase struck me and that was knowledge. Knowledge is valuable to the writer and this is what I've taken from this part of the journey he writes about. Often my characters through a search of themselves or of communicating with other people what is true and what is not. They may also learn more about the person and discover what they believed was false.

I've been re-reading some of my favorite novels by Jo Beverly and she uses the idea of knowledge one character believes to be trus and learns it is false or the character's idea of what it means has been skewed by their own insecurities.

One of my books The Warrior of Bast really does have the heroine and hero recovering treasures after undergoing some adventures that would have ended their lives. But recovering the treasures didn't end the book. They had more steps to take on their journey.

Inspirations - The Writer's journey

Years ago, I bought The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler and started to read it but for some reason I put it on the shelf and didn't finish it. While doing these things to inspire people in their writing I pulled it off the shelf and started to read.

He maps out a sort of 3 act arc. This begins in the ordinary world. This made me think about the ordinary world. This is different for each character one creates and this means one has to build a bit of the character's world before the story begins. For me this means that after I've decided what my story is going to entail, I have to think about what is going on in a character's life and what makes them want to leave this world that may be comfortable or uncomfortable. He talks about :The fish out of water." Sometimes I've used this but sometimes I've made the fist be in the water and the changes that come from without. Mrs. Miller in the first two stories of the mystery series is in her world and her world is threatened. In the third and fourth books of the series she does step out of her world and I think when I get to the fifth, she will again leave her world and in the sixth she will return to her world being disturbed by events. So reading just a few paragraphs has made me think about the stories I've written and the ones I'll be writing.