Saturday, August 25, 2007

Mythic Structure

I am reading The Writers Journey Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler. I have it out from the library right now (due back next week, darn it!), but I am going to buy a copy to keep in my collection. It's excellent, and I'm still in the first 50 pages. It puts Joseph Campbell's work with the hero's journey into the context of storytelling. It also has a lot of examples from movies to illustrate the various concepts. And at the end of each of the middle chapter is a section called "Questioning the Journey" where the author asks the reader to pinpoint the concepts just covered in a range of popular movies. I like this format better than using books because if some of the questions are about movies the reader hasn't seen, it's a lot quicker to pick up a video and watch it than to read an entire novel before being able to get back to the questions.

One think that I really like is his illustration early on of the hero's journey. Instead of the incline diagram I used, he has the journey drawn like a baseball diamond. This is really an excellent illustration of just how sharp the turns are at the various stages on the hero's path. You're not just hitting some bumps in the road when you get to the plot points, etc. It's a *big* change. I will probably use this diagram in conjunction with an Aristotelian incline for my next novel planning.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails