I love the Hero’s Journey.

Finding it was my ‘rays of sunshine coming through the clouds’ moment.

After quite a while of just writing randomly, I felt that there must be some rules of thumb that could be used to ensure a story flowed, evolved and climaxed in a decent way – so I was overjoyed when I discovered it.

Quick aside - If you don’t know what the Hero’s Journey is – it’s a series of steps that the vast majority of satisfying stories go through, from introducing the protagonist’s world, through calling them to action, testing them, meeting with a mentor, through to final confrontation with the big bad. Read about this 'Universal Storyline' in more detail here.

It wasn’t so much invented as discovered, by Joseph Campbell as he researched the earliest stories ever passed down by word of mouth to modern stories. Most of the elements of the Hero’s Journey can be seen in the vast majority of bestselling novels and blockbuster movies.

However, I often come across an issue when gushing with excitement about the Hero’s Journey, and that is that people’s perception still seems to be heavily influenced by the word ‘Hero’ and to a lesser extent ‘Journey’.

These words make people feel that it only applies to fantasy adventure stories where there’s going to be a swashbuckler slaying dragons with a sword.

But of course this couldn’t be further from the truth. This set of stages can be applied to all genres, including romance, historical fiction, war, crime drama, etc etc .

I recently came across the utterly awesome blog of Allen Palmer – Cracking Yarns – where he has come up with an interesting way to try to ‘dispel notions that this amazing paradigm doesn’t apply to female protagonists, intimate dramas or romantic comedies.’

I highly recommend you go to his blog and read it cover to cover, but here I’m going to reiterate what he says in this particular post: http://www.crackingyarns.com.au/2011/04/04/a-new-character-driven-heros-journey-2/

Allen has come up with a ‘Character Driven Hero’s Journey’. This avoids a lot of the mythological vocabulary and also helps focus on the fact that while plot is of course important, it is transformation of character that moves us.

Here are the steps, with very brief descriptions:

 

Incomplete

Maps to – introduction to the hero’s world

The protagonist is unfulfilled in their normal life. There will be two things missing – one thing that they think they want (like money, fame, a Porsche – you get the idea) and another thing which they haven’t thought of, but is the real thing that will give them fulfilment. (compassion, self confidence, etc).

 

Unsettled

Maps to – Call to Adventure

The protagonist’s world becomes unsettled by an outside force. An invitation, threat or attack, perhaps.

 

Resistant

Maps to – Refusal of the call

The protagonist refuses to do the right thing. They are afraid, selfish or just have different priorities.

 

Encouraged

Maps to – Meeting the Mentor

The protagonist gets advice from someone. This meeting should push them on their way, but the advice isn’t necessarily good or the giver helpful – it may be an ultimatum or a challenge.

 

Committed

Maps to – Crossing the Threshold

Now the main character gets pro-active and does something about that thing that unsettled them. Ideally they should take some action that makes it impossible to go back to how they were in the first scene – some burning of bridges.

 

Disorientated

Maps to – Tests

Now the whole world is different as they try to navigate towards their goal and face unfamiliar challenges and new rules. They will probably fail several times at this stage.

 

Inauthentic

Maps to – The Approach

The protagonist is confronted with their flaw, but they refuse to address it.

 

Confronted

Maps to – The Ordeal

This is a slap in the face for the protagonist where they finally realise they have to face their flaw and do something about it or lose everything that is worth having.

 

Reborn

Maps to – The Reward

The lead character demonstrates that they are a changed person.

 

Desperate

Maps to – The Road Back

Remember right back at the beginning when we said that the character has two things missing from their life – the thing they want and the thing they need? Right here is where you make them face a choice between the two.

 

Decisive

Maps to – Resurrection

This is the climax of the story, where the protagonist must actively make their decision. They don’t have to choose right, but the consequences of their choice must be poetic.

 

Complete

Maps to – Return Home

The protagonist gets what they deserve. In the vast majority of cases, they will have correctly chosen what they need and will now be fulfilled in themselves.

If you’d like each of these steps described in more detail by the inventor, like I said, go to: http://www.crackingyarns.com.au/2011/04/04/a-new-character-driven-heros-journey-2/

Or if you have any thoughts, comments or feedback - let me know below! 

Bet that bear packs a punch.

There are few things more disappointing than an unsatisfactory ending. We get these all the time in real life, so in fiction, we like all the loose ends tied up and for everybody to get their just desserts.

Here are three must-haves for your awesome novel ending.

 

Go big or go home

The final scene should be BIG. You can achieve this in a number of ways.

 

Involving more people than you’ve had in any previous scene:

• Maybe all the characters with intertwining stories finally come together in one big hullaballoo

• Or maybe it’s a crowd of extras to intensify the action and chaos (this could be a slavering audience, a group of protesters, a party)

 

Going to a new dramatic location

• Somewhere high up, perhaps, with big views and lashing weather

• Somewhere with lots of people (see above), such as a gladiatorial arena

Ideally you’ll involve all of the factors that give a sense of scale, by crashing all the major characters together, along with a big crowd of onlookers, in a gladiatorial arena at the peak of a mountain in the middle of a storm.

Obviously that’s only going to work in certain types of stories, but a lot of these elements can be used in all genres. Having an onlooking crowd as the boy finally admits his love to the girl (or the other way round) in a romcom is pretty common, and having a faceoff between the detective and serial killer on the top of a tall building is also hallowed ground.

 

Give your main character an impossible choice

You can read about this in more depth here (http://thenovelfactory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/secret-to-thrilling-climax-to-your.html) but in essence, this is about giving your protagonist a character defining choice.

Ideally this choice will be between attaining the goal she’s been chasing the whole story – but at a terrible price – and doing the right moral thing, but losing all she’s been personally longing for.

You can make your protagonist make the ‘right’ choice or the ‘wrong’ choice – it really depends on what sort of feeling you want to leave your readers with, the important thing is that the outcome reflects justice.

So if they sacrifice their wants for the greater good, something happens to give them an even better reward.

But if they choose to be selfish, their prize should turn out to be poison.

 

Make the triumph follow a tragedy

This isn’t about what you do in the final scene, but what you do just before it. In the scenes preceding the climax, your lead character should have reached rock bottom, and had a moment so low they could not possibly get any lower. They felt that life was not worth living. There seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

By having this low, it makes the climax, and probably triumph (assuming you’re writing that sort of thing) feel all the more exuberant.

This short writing exercise is based on one suggested by Margaret Geraghty in her excellent book – The five-minute Writer, which we highly recommend.

Sometimes the hardest thing about being a writer is just knuckling down and writing. And many writers live in fear of the dreaded blank page.

Writing exercises can help get the juices flowing and will also help hone your writing skills, preparing them for when you want to apply them to short stories, novels, or whatever else it is you write.

Writing about rituals

Rituals are not just all about religion and festivals, we all have all kinds of rituals in everyday life, many of which we’re probably completely unaware of – until they become interrupted and we find ourselves feeling unsettled or irritable.

When we read stories, the worlds and characters described on the page are not built entirely by the words that are supplied by the author, we use our life experience so far to fill out the details. If this didn’t happen, then authors would need to write reams of words in order to build an entire character or setting. As it is, they can use a few broad brushstrokes and know that the reader will apply stereotypes and personal life experience to fill in the rest.

We can use rituals to the same effect, by describing a common ritual that somebody might be familiar with, such as morning ablutions or making a first cup of coffee. It might be gathering all the things required for a yoga class or a dog walk, or preparing for a short or long trip.

The way in which the character carries out a common ritual will provide the reader with impressions of their character, as well as tone and atmosphere of the scene.

For example:

Janice bounds out of bed and splashes refreshing ice cold water on her face. She hums as she brushes her teeth and sweeps a bit of light make-up on, before heading downstairs for a crunchy breakfast of muesli and bananas with skimmed milk.

Nicole drags herself out of bed and swears at the perpetually flickering bare bathroom light bulb that she still hasn’t got round to fixing. She grimaces at herself in the mirror, squeezing spots of blood out of her gums. There’s no time for breakfast, as usual, so she slams the door behind her, stomach grumbling as she jogs down the road, not noticing the stain on the leg of her jeans.

A short writing exercise about rituals:

Think about the rituals you do in your life – this can be anything you do regularly, you don’t have to feel spiritual about it, or particularly attached, it’s just something routine. It may have a calming effect, but it may not. Write for fifteen minutes about your ritual. 

Try to write with specific detail, but there’s no need to over describe. For example, rather than saying ‘the dog lead’ say ‘the steel choker chain’ but don’t write 500 words when 300 will do.

The traditional moleskine notebook has probably largely been replaced by a smartphone app by now, but whatever your media, authors usually love to take notes from every day life and make lists of all kinds of details that may come in handy.

It’s hard to grab inspiration out of the air at the exact moment you need it, so it’s good to get into the habit of making lists that you can refer to and drop into at other times, such as when you need inspiration to make a character or location unique, or when you want a kernel of an idea for a story.

Making lists also helps develop your powers of observation, a vital skill for any writer.

Here are some things you might want to make lists of:

·         Ways that people walk

·         Speech tics and tendencies

·         Hairstyles

·         Types of houses

·         What people have on their living room walls

·         Shapes of clouds

·         Local birds

·         The types of shops that cluster together

·         What’s in people’s fridges

·         Nice words

·         Interesting names

·         Habits

·         What people have in their pockets

·         Children’s toys

·         Types of shoes

·         Types of handbag / briefcase

·         Styles of uniform

·         Local plants

·         Allergies

That should be enough to get you started!

Please let us know if you can think of any other lists we can add to our list of lists!

For more articles about creative writing and novel writing, visit The Novel Factory website.

Stuck for inspiration? Here are some of my favourite inspirational ideas for writing a short story:

1.  Find a poem and rewrite it as a story. (If you’re having trouble finding a poem, search for ‘The Nation’s Favourite Poems’ and browse through) 
2. Choose a limerick and turn that into a full blown story. (Search for Edward Lear for the master of limericks and delightful nonsense)
3.  Ask five random people to give you a noun, an adjective, a verb, colour and a random object, and write a story that incorporates them all. (or search for an online random word generator) 
4. Write a single scene story which describes one of your most painful of embarrassing memories. (the more painful it is for you to write, the better)
5.  Read synopses of poorly rated movies and base your story on one. (You can browse Netflix – even if you’re not a member – or browse the DVDs in the library or rental store – assuming those places still exist…) 
6.  Open a book at a random page, find the first new sentence and use that as the first line of your story. (Or just use it somewhere if you’re feeling wishy washy)
7. Write a story about change from the point of view of a fruit. (Or a plant or an item that is sitting on your desk) 
8. Write a story about loss from the point of view of your youngest child (regardless of whether you have any children).
9. Write a story about a terrible crime from the point of view of the criminal, so the reader sympathises with them. The greater the level of sympathy and empathy, the better. 
10. Find an idiom, such as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ and write a fable to explain the ‘origin’ of the phrase.

If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory. 

Pace is a really important aspect of a good novel, and you need to have the skills to put on the brakes or put the pedal to the metal, as appropriate.

In this article we’re going to have a look at slowing the pace in your novel, but you might also want to see Head Scenes and Tail Scenes, which is highly relevant to this topic.

 

Why would you want to slow the pace in your novel?

 

You might think that slowing down the pace sounds like a bad idea – slow = boring, right? Well, it’s not quite as simple as that. Here are some reasons you might want to slow it down.

Contrast

Interest comes from contrast – if you ate Peking Duck every day, then plain toast would seem like an exotic alternative eventually. In music, songs have alternate slow and fast sections to emphasise each one – three fast sections in a row have nowhere near as much impact as a fast section sandwiched inbetween two slow ones. 

Time to take a breather

If your novel is high octane, fast-paced relentlessly, all the way through, then readers will get excitement fatigue and will either feel too exhausted to keep reading or will simply shut off and become desensitized to the action, no matter how highly it escalates. By having slower, calm wind downs inbetween the action, you give them (and your protagonist) a chance to regroup, straighten out, then hunker down for the next conflict.

Atmosphere, tension and suspense

By slowing down the tension you can add layers of atmosphere, tension and suspense. Readers will be on the edge of their seat as you keep them hanging, knowing something is going to happen… any… minute…

Okay, so how do we control pace in a novel?

Length

This is the most subtle way to slow pace without interrupting the story. Simple things such as longer sentences with sub-clauses, and longer paragraphs, all serve to make the pace more leisurely.

Character Introspection

While the character is lost in reverie, there isn’t much action happening, and it gives an opportunity for reflection and consideration of how to proceed, ensuring the reader believes the character is behaving realistically (by which we mean in character, not necessarily sensibly), as they understand the motivations.

Flashbacks

New writers often play fast and loose with flashbacks, thinking it’s a great way to get in backstory or explain the motivations of their characters. But flashbacks should be handled with care, as they completely shatter the forward momentum of the story. Used carefully, they can help with controlling pace, but beware of throwing your reader out of your story-world, when you’ve just spent however long getting them immersed.

If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory. 

It has recently come to my attention that there are some new writers out there that aren’t sure how they should be formatting their manuscripts.

So this post is going to be dedicated to explaining the basic nuts and bolt of fiction formatting – basically how the text is laid out.

It’s important to stress that we are referring to fiction formatting, because formatting for fact based essays follows a different set of rules.

So, here we go:

Font

There is no standard font that you have to use, but as a general rule, if you’re writing for print, you should use a ‘serif’ font, and if you’re writing for a digital medium then you should use a ‘sans-serif’ font.

Serif fonts are ones with little tails and flicks at the end of the letters (such as Times New Roman or Georgia) and Sans Serif fonts are those without (such as Arial and Verdana).

This is because the font affects the readability of text, and for reasons too technical to go into, that is the way that works best.

Personally, I like to use Courier New, which looks like what comes out of a typewriter, because it just looks more writerly.

Also, don’t make the font too small – it’s not just painful for people whose eyesight isn’t perfect, it’s uncomfortable for people with 20/20 too.

Paragraph

Don’t leave line breaks (vertical space) between paragraphs. They should be snug above and below each other, with the exact same amount of space as there is between lines of the same paragraph.

Indents

New paragraphs should be indented by about a finger’s width – except the first one of a chapter  (I know, who comes up with this stuff? But that’s the way it is buster, so get used to it).

Line spacing

Use 1.5 or double line spacing. Otherwise the text ends up looking too dense and people’s eyes get lost while trying to read it.

Column width

This is more relevant for digital publishing, but make sure your columns aren’t too wide. Newspapers use narrow columns because they are easier to read. If the eye is forced to travel too far from left to right, then it loses its place and ends up skipping lines or rereading the same one twice.

Read about time and weather and how they relate to theme and variations in your novel here. 

Feedback is useful. It can help you highlight areas for improvement and can be encouraging, identifying your strengths.

So, it’s a good idea to get your friends and family to read your work, right?

Well, actually no.

It’s fine to get your friends and family to read your manuscript if all you want is to be told how wonderful and amazing it is (depending on how kind your friends and family are…). If that’s your goal then go on ahead and show them.

But as a writer, what you should really be craving is useful critique of your work. Incisive comments regarding character, pace, plot and drive that will help you improve, sentence by sentence, word by word.

Your loved ones are extremely unlikely to be able to supply you with this sort of input.

This is not their fault, it’s simply that in the vast majority of cases, your friends and family will not be professional or experienced writers (if they are, then you are probably the exception to this rule), and in most cases won’t have an interest in words any further than reading magazines and novels.

This means that the insights they can give about your work will be limited to ‘I liked it’ and ‘I didn’t like it’.

And not only are these comments  not particularly constructive, but they may not even be honest. I mean, is your mum really going to tell you she doesn’t like your writing? Probably not. And if your best mate says they don’t like it, it could just be because they like beach romance and you’re writing hardcore sci-fi.

So, if you really want someone to read your work, make it other writers, and make sure you read their work in return.

As you may know, this blog is written by the creators of the Novel Factory novel writing software, and shares a lot of the knowledge with that programme. The Novel Factory has been our baby for several years now, as we've worked on the formula, integrated a load of teaching knowledge, put together the guide and developed the software that brings it all together.

 

We launched recently, and already have had some really fantastic feedback. We're usually not ones to blow our own trumpets, but we're so chuffed with some of the comments we've had, because it feels like we're really achieving our aim of creating genuinely useful software for novelists, that we'd like to share some of the things we've heard.

If you haven't tried the software yet, you should know it's completely free for 30 days, so why not give it a go? You've got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

"I have achieved more in the past two months than in the previous two years, using your program and would recommend it to anyone."

"It is a worthwhile program that would work for a beginning writer as well as a more seasoned professional. Well done!"

“I love how the scenes are linked to the characters. That feature of being able to go through and really think about and record what each character is doing at any given moment is wonderful!”

“I really liked the way it broke down the writing process and got me thinking about each section of my story. I tend to rush in with the start and know my end but don't put any thought into how to get there. I like having to write a synopsis of each section.”