Monomyth/The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey. 

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

The Monomyth. The Hero's Journey. Everyone's going to be excited for this three FIVE part post, so stay in tune! I Haven't been on much because of school, but lets get this party started! This Will be my first Great project* On the site, So really keep in touch.

Part one: Journey into the unknown.

"As I enter into the unknown, the unknown moves away"

-Anonymous

A perfect quote to start us off. Lets address what it means to move into the unknown. We all love our heroes. There's something about heroes that makes our hearts race, Our desires and creative powers flow, and our dreams seem to become more achievable. So the question becomes how do heroes become heroes?

Without a doubt, Heroes are NORMAL people that do EXTRAORDINARY things. The call to adventure is what initially brings our heroes to the story (obviously) but what does that mean? Well, why does your hero decide to become a hero? Even if your protagonist's desire in life was to become a hero, (I cringe at this example, but Disney's Heracles does an excellent job at portraying that particular desire.) they still need some sort of driving force. 

Lets take the great fantasy novel into account- The Hobbit. 

Bilbo originally had no desire to go on this adventure. His call was from nothing more then a divine destiny that was never explained in the book. Bilbo didn't need to go- the entire basis of him being the one to go on this journey was because he. . . Sucked. 

The underdog! He had to journey from his quiet life into the unknown of adventuring. At first, He didn't want to go and came up with every excuse to leave until- The contract. Money may be the root of all evil, but money is a very awe-inspiring force. Along the road of course, Bilbo realizes he doesn't really need the money, being instead contempt with what he already has. 

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. While writing, Keep this thought in mind: Your Hero needs a driving force behind his actions. Why does your hero go to save the world? Why does he decide to leave his home in order to do ___ thing when no one else will. 

Stay tuned for part two: Crossing the threshold

Poems

A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth -
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? -
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth? -
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child's delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller's plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?
-Robert Frost

Nothing quite so fancy today guys. Your writing prompt? write a poem!

You provide the food, I'll provide the perspective.

Perspective. Point-of-view. The other side. Point-of-view is an Essential trait for any writer. New and old must master the content required in achieving an alternate perspective. the biggest reason why? Unless you're writing a story about yourself in first person, you'll be in the minds of others.

So you have to consider, what is the person in your story thinking? Have you taken into account the extremities of their situation? All too often, Writers (both new and experienced) write their characters into doing a stupidly brave thing. It depresses from the story, and it puts you into a situation where your characters are extremely powerful.

For example, If you have a character that has arachnophobia and he overcomes his fear and kills some giant spider, when does he come up with the bravery to do so? He doesn't get it overnight in a random surge of adrenaline: He will freeze up until something happens where his fear is less motivating then his desire to help ___.

Lets use an example from the master, J.R.R. tolkien: Sam doesnt help Frodo kill Shelob until AFTER frodo had been caught. He was still horrified, but he didnt charge out to protect Frodo before, because he was too afraid.

Use caution in your writing, so that your characters deranged acts of bravery make sense. Take into perspective what THEY'RE thinking, not what you think they're thinking. One of the hardest, and best things to do? The age-old question- Why are women/men so cray zee?

Thats your prompt. Pick up Aphrodite's mirror (men) or Ares' shield and spear (women) Show us what its like to be the opposite gender

Writing prompt: Write from the perspective of someone the opposite gender. Be careful of stereotypes!

Unkillable

Today, I'll talk about Immortal, or unkillable characters. These are a great incentive and a horrible pitfall all in the same fell swoop. Often, Immortal characters are seen either as a god or as an evil entity, something that should not be tampered with. Have you ever thought about your own characters being immortal? You might be doing it subconsciously.

Dues ex machina- a Latin word that means god from the machine. This is a plot device which is far too often used by writers, with or without their knowledge. Consider lord of the rings. If Gandalf helped destroy the Balrog without any consequences, what would happen to the party? The Balrog was seen as one of the most evil creatures alive in middle-earth at the time. From that point forward, there wouldn't be any reason they couldn't just march into mount doom and destroy the one ring.

Be careful when making your characters immortal in books, you need people to feel fear at the fact they're escaping. If they always get away in the nick of time with cuts and scrapes, if they always escape with a crippled limb, if something always happens to your Protagonist and he always gets out of it the same way, it feels less like a novel and more like a bad action film.
Conversely, immortal characters can help the protagonist in ways that can be useful to the plot. Just make sure the "Grace of god" doesn't get out of hand. This type of usefulness will be covered in the upcoming post, "The Hero's Journey"

Lastly, the immortal character can serve as a great antagonist. If the bad guy isn't striving for it already, the immortal bad guy poses a very interesting question, "How do we kill him?" Interestingly enough, this practice is seen in a lot of story plots for a good reason. In the Eragon Tetralogy (by Christopher Paolini),  Galbatorix is seen as a figure that cannot be stopped. In the Mistborn Triology (By Brandon Sanderson), The main antagonist has lived and ruled for over one-thousand years.

Granted, both series have their own plot twists and dramatic turns, But the evident correlation comes from the immortal aspect of the antagonist. The stronger they are, the more satisfying you feel when they get pulled from the throne, id say.

Special thanks to Christopher Paolini and Brandon Sanderson for helping with those analogies, and also thanks to Writing excuses for giving me the ideas for this post!
Be sure to check out Writing excuses, starring Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Mary Kowell, and Brandon Sanderson.

Good luck writing!

Writing prompt: Romance! We didn't discuss romance plot much here, but write about an immortal character  and his complications with love (I.E gods cant seduce mortals, their a witch/warlock and cant let that person know, ect. be creative!)

Writing Exercises

So its a bit late but I decided to put my thoughts down on paper (or blogger rather). A good writing tool is to come up with some writing Exercises. These, like normal exercises, help you to build up your writing in a good and well-refined manner, even if you don't write a lot that day. A common writing exercise is reviewing what you previously wrote that day (or an earlier day) and edit it to sound better. It's a common enough occurrence  but don't let it suck you in. It doesn't matter how long you spend editing the first chapter, your book won't be finished if you do nothing but edit.

Another commonly used one is known as the "Writing sprint" where you'll write a certain amount of _X_ thing in a certain time. It could be about your book, or about something completely different. The goal is to get your mind ready for excessive writing, and to let your mind and thoughts flow. This one is actually the exercise that I use (most of the time).

Don't be afraid to make up your own writing exercises too, if they help you with your writing. Just start off with a goal in mind, I.E. better at not using four million commas (*cough* I usually have to half ((lol. have to half)) the amount of commas I use before I publish. Whats with all these parenthesis anyway?) or better at having your descriptions or dialogue. Doing writing exercises every day can really help you become a better writer.

Writing prompt for the day: The world is flooded and you have to stay in your house or you'll drown.

(don't judge me on my semantics or parenthesis at all during this post.)

What to write?

Often times, you can have a hard time deciding what to write. Why not start with the basics? It's been done a million times before, a million different ways, and a million different memories. So why not use it? That's right, I'm sure you guys have it all figured out by now. We're going to write the bedtime story!

Dragons, knights, damsels in distress. Evil guarding a trove of knowledge, and a very *words catch in throat* woman at the end of the quest. We've all heard this story somewhere, yet it tends to slip away, and it's one of the easiest things to write. There is no difficult plot line, everything is simple and potent. 

Protagonist- A knight in shining armor.

Antagonist- An evil, treasure holding dragon.

Motive- one beautiful princess.

Those are the basic elements of a plot line. You don't *need* anything more then that. 

This post is a bit short, but there you have it

Go write!

Writing prompt: Write about a knight in shining armor, saving the damsel in distress.
Challenge: Make it different with a small twist.

New Writers! Aspiring writers!

Hello! New and aspiring writers! Looking to write, but not knowing what to do? How to do it? Writing is hard. It can be fun and rewarding- but it's difficult. I'm going to give you the number one absolute best advice any author could give you. Ever. It's literally the holy grail, the cats meow, the bees knees, the trinity of writing. 

Write.

I know you're probably all looking at my post with speechless awe, appalled by how stupid it sounds. But seriously: write! that is the number one problem with most writers. Refer back to your writing. We've all been in this situation before- you had an amazing idea with everything all planned out. The bad guy, the good guys, the plot. Maybe you had holes in it but you went at it anyway. Bam, the first chapter is pumped out and you're feeling pretty good about it. Everyone likes it, everyone critiques it, its exactly what you want.

And then you stop. No real reason for it, you just stop. Maybe you think your writing sucks, or your idea is stupid and it will never work. Maybe you find out you're a father or mother now and get distracted. All of that is okay! Just keep writing!

Your first draft is supposed to be garbage. It's not meant to be good. Every author I've talked to has griped and groaned over their first draft, and often times it doesn't remotely resemble the finished product. Maybe all you keep from it is your main characters name. That's perfect.

Consider an Olympic athlete. The runners might be naturally gifted in their craft and can run really fast, but if they don't ever train their running skills they wont be able to make it to the Olympics. If you never write, you won't be able to have that work published.

So to all of you beginning writers, Get out there and write! Set a goal for a simple 200-500 word a day limit. Write about one of the prompts on the blog, post a link to your excerpt in the comments! Just get 'er done. You don't have to write about the same story or idea, and often times your mindless writing can contribute to the amount of writing that you have in your finished product!

And with that, That One Monk is out. Be sure to keep the rest of the community posted!
Stay tuned for the second part to Aspiring writers where we will talk more in depth about writers block, and overcoming it.

In the beginning. . .

Ilúvatar (the one) Created the Ainur as the offspring of his thought. Ilúvatar brought the Ainur together and showed them a theme, from which he bade them make a great music.

Okay, not really. Die-hard fantasy fans might recognize this as the beginning of the Silmarillion, the great  mythopoeic collection of middle-earth's history. While its true that we have no relation to middle earth, that fantasy and creation is exactly what i hope to strive for.

My goal is to create fantasy, sci-fi, adventures, all akin to the world building power of J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Will I be as good? As loved? Perhaps, only time will tell. Despite my academic dependencies, my goal is to create a blog that aspiring authors (And other authors) can come to too receive insight, Inspiration, dare I say visions and revelations on what they need to do! I have a very creative mind and all my ideas couldn't possibly be used in lifetime. I'll be sure to keep the best ideas to my self, but by all means. Welcome to my blog! There will be a new writing prompt at least once a week, and hopefully great goodies that will be posted throughout. Get to reading, get to writing, welcome to The Author's Sepulchre!

( Hey! interesting little tidbit- a Sepulchre [sepulchre or sepulcher], for those of you who don't know, is an ancient burial ground, tomb, or altar for religious purposes. I don't intend for this website to be a cult, rather a place people can come to achieve insight towards their writing. Insight is often received at Sepulchres.)

I in no way affiliate myself to any religion actively using Sepulchres.
Thanks to Merriam-Webster for being free enough to let me link to their site.