Episodes
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How do you shift your book's hero from their nice, cozy ordinary world into the adventure. According to Christopher Vogler in his book, The Writer's Journey, you have them answer the call. In this episode we discuss the various forms that the call stage can take, and also why, even the most willing hero must "refuse the call."
To illustrate how this works in a non-movie example, we turn to John Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society that fulfills both these requirements in clever and witty ways.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Does the mystery genre follow the Hero’s Journey? According to historical mystery writer Colette Clark. Not so much.
Join us for our discussion about how Colette structures her novels and figures out who the murder is (sometime just before she finishes her first draft).
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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If you have read even just the first part of a blog post on the hero’s journey, you know the hero starts off in the ordinary world before embarking on their epic adventure. But the ordinary world is more than a boring place the hero is itching to leave.
According to Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey, there’s a lot of that needs to be included in the ordinary world section of the story. The writer must establish an interesting and sympathetic main character, set the mood and expectations, establish what’s at stake, and squeeze in backstory (using graceful exposition) and theme.
That’s a lot to unpack, bur we somehow manage in this podcast episode! There are many, many more subheadings in this very loooong chapter, but as we point out, most don’t need to be there.
Vogler finishes up the chapter with examples from The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the book) Rather than rehash that, we picked a better book: John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society and boy does it ever have on heck of an ordinary world for the hero to leave behind.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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In our regular podcast, we’ve successfully made it through all of Vogler’s archetypes (from his book, The Writer’s Journey). Armed with this knowledge we decided to see if we could identify the archetypes in Kim’s novel, What our Comeback Tour is Slaying Monsters (coming out this October). Along the way, Renee “learned more about boy bands then I’ve known in my whole life!”
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Are we done with archetypes now? Almost!
There are just three more archetype chapters in Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey, and we have issues with two of them.
The Shadow feels more like a force than a character and anyone from a legit supporting actor to unnamed gofer can be labeled an Ally. The one archetype we did like was the Trickster, whose actions and words can bring much needed chaos to your story. They all make for great discussions in this episode.
For literary examples we turned to Howl's Moving Castle and The Witcher (books, video game, but NOT the show)Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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What if writing the first draft was the easy part?
Every week on serial writing websites like Royal Road, hundreds of authors will upload 5, 10, 20,000, or more words of their latest saga. Many of these magnum opuses are LitRPG, a genre that's huge on Kindle Unlimited but pretty much unknown to most readers.
In today's workshop we talk to LitRPG author and podcaster, Madix, about LitRPG, what makes it so popular with readers and writers, and his own decision to rewrite the opening book in his Torchbearer series.
And if you want to know more, check out his LitRPG podcast - CritRPGRemember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Everyone who's read a blog post on the Hero's Journey can spot the Hero and Mentor archetypes, but what about a Threshold Guardian, or Herald, or elusive Shapeshifter?
Are these actual story archetypes or just personifications of the early stages in the Hero's Journey? Do they play a significant role in modern narratives? And just how sexist is Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer's Journey, going to get in his descriptions of the femme fatal/temptress Shapeshifter? Find out what we have to say about these three archetypes in this episode---and boy, does Renee have things to say.
As a bonus, we draw upon Diana Wynne Jones's book, Howl's Moving Castle, for examples.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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In response to Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousands Faces, aka The Hero's Journey, folklorists and academics (many of them female) countered some of the major steps and archetypes that Campbell claimed were universal.
In today's workshop we explore the some of the ideas of The Heroine's Journey with author and academic, Elana Gomel. Using her just published dark fantasy Nine Levels, Elana shows how her book doesn't follow the Hero's Journey, somewhat follows the Heroine's Journey, and eventually takes it's own path entirely.
Check out her book here.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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The Mentor -- Arguably the second most identified archetype from The Hero's Journey (after the eponymous hero). In his book, The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler has a lot to say about the mentor: why are they important, what do they do, what kinds of mentors are there, and do you actually need one in your story (okay, the last one might just be us).
In this episode, Kim and Renee discuss these points using examples from Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Last episode we explored the concept of the hero archetype as presented in Christopher Volger's The Writer's Journey. But analysis is one thing. We wanted to see if we could use the ideas to create/develop an actual protagonist.
Renee's has a Frankenstein story idea that she so badly wants to read that she's willing to write it herself. In this workshop she applies Vogler's hero archetype concept and prompts to develop her protagonist and plot points.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Whether every protagonist is a hero is open to debate (and debate it we do in this episode) but it we can agree that the vast majority of protagonists in genre fiction are heroes (if not always heroic). In today’s episode we go deep into Christopher Volger’s chapter on the hero archetype from his book, The Writer’s Journey.
To explore his ideas in we’re referencing The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Despite being written almost sixty years ago, Beagle’s fairytale feels modern and makes for an excellent sandbox to dig around in for support and opposition on whether the story’s hero (It’s the Unicorn, obviously) conforms to Volger’s hero profile, and also if his Hero’s Journey is a good framework for understanding her quest.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Last episode we mapped all 12 steps of Christopher Volger's Hero's Journey (as presented in his book, The Writer's Journey) to J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit. As you can see from Renee's show notes, they lined up pretty well. But what about a story not written by a British scholar steeped in mythology and folklore? For this workshop, we put Kim's soon-to-be-published novel, Our Comeback Tour is Slaying Monsters, through the same analysis, to mixed success.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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We've officially started our new book, Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. And boy is there a lot in the first two chapters!
First (or first after Kim's rant) is an overview of the Hero's Journey, yes, dear listener, we cover all twelve steps. And as examples for those steps we turn to... The Hobbit (the OG book version, not the movie). After that, we move to archetypes, what they are and what they mean for your story.
It's a very informative episode. Also, check out our show notes.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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We're on the last chapter of Judith Barrington's book, Writing Your Memoir: practical advice on critique groups, plus the dos and don't of giving and getting feedback. It's practical and useful and everything thing we've come to expect from Barrington. And before we close the book on memoir, we give our final takes on the book along with what chapters we think are mores useful.
And then .... something new.
Our new book is Christopher Volger's The Writer's Journey. Written back in the 90's this book brought the Hero's Journey mainstream for scriptwriters, and also, as the subtitle promises, for writers. Before we jump into the book proper, we take a moment to consider its introductions (there's two of them) and the promises they make. Get ready for the snark, but also an examination on the mythic structure plotting approach to your writing.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Your memoir is about you (obviously) but it’s not just about you. In this episode we cover Judith Barrington’s chapter on how (and why) to bring events from the real world into your memoir. And in our writing exercise we try it out by remembering our own lives during a moment in history.
Then it’s on to the penultimate chapter in Writing the Memoir where Barrington has some writer self-care advice. Who can disagree about self care? Well…
Also in this episode Kim interviews a poet who left the Plain community about how she navigates revealing true details when writing about her experiences from that time.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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For this week's workshop episode, Renee wrote about the brief time she spent as a child in Pacific Grove, CA, taking care to identify specific streets and locations as recommended by Judith Barrington in her book Writing the Memoir. We discuss and analysis this technique to see how it can improve our memoir writing.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Writing (and publishing) a memoir can be nerve wracking. What if the people you’re writing about don’t like your portrayal of them? What if they hate it? What if they decide to sue?
In this episode we discuss the chapter (and appendix) that cover this memoirist’s fear in Judith Barrington’s book, Writing the Memoir — both from an emotional and legal perspective. We also talk about the importance of using place names in your memoir and practice the technique in our writing exercise.
And, check it out, we have a new intro (same music of course)!
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Okay, maybe that's a bit of hyperbole, but not by much. In this stand alone episode we talk with Erik Klass, the entrepreneurial editor behind the submission service Submitit about what literary journals are looking for in short stories and creative non-fiction. He also discusses how his company evaluates and chooses particular journals for their client's stories.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Last week we covered time in memoir, specifically how the writer can jump back and forth in time and the reader can follow along easily.
In this episode, we identify signposts and time jumps in two short memoir pieces. One by one of Kim' s favorite science writers, Rebecca Skloot.Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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Memoirs are rarely straight chronological narratives, what with the musing we talked about last episode, and they almost always jump forwards and backwards in time. We discuss Judith Barrington take the mental Time Machine from her book Writing the Memoir, specifically the idea of the “Now” and how with a little signposting, readers can follow along. We also do a bit of grammar review (just a little) and how we use tenses in our own books.
Then it’s onto the nearly ubiquitous chapter that every writing craft book has on sensory detail. We cover the difference between concrete and abstract detail and the best practices for describing characters.
This week’s exercise is some text analysis where we pick apart a short memoir timeline. Time to get our literature geek on.
Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.
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