We all know Hero's Journey. And if we don't, we should. And most of us might know that Hero's journey is two journeys: - The outer journey is the plot line. - The inner journey is the character arch of a hero. And the structure of these two arches are similar and happen in almost the same rhytm. Differences in timing are small and reason for them is that what ever elicits something must happen before results. And then there is this thing that is both painful and liberating: Write what you know emotionally! If we refuse to go through the same phases of character arch, it's very hard to write character arches well. Then we might know them intellectually but not emotionally. And intellectual knowledge does not give same tools as having acted out something in one's own life. And compensating need for emotional experience and personal growth with intellectual information... Well... There is a hint of delusion of grandeur in that. Or at least a hint of not knowing what one is really doing. I use to underline the need to wide range of self reflection. Not only - or even mainly - psychological but skills, toolboxes, social mirrors we use, the role of identities in our life, personal history, life situations - past, present, future, agendas, values, logic orders... If we write what we know emotionally, we write three hero's journeys at the same time in our stories. There is the outer journey. There is the character growth of hero. And the meta story behind them is our personal character growth. It is our raw material. We take substances of it and bake our stories out of those substances. And self reflection is our toolbox. It is how we can pick substances from our life to those two visible journeys in our stories. Thoughts? Comments?
I don't think you have to go through something or draw on your own life experiences to write something. Sure, there's that saying write what you know. But we all know what sadness feels like, what love feels like and so on. When I write fiction, I'm not always thinking about myself. Sometimes it's okay to just make things up. Most people have some degree of empathy and that might be enough to write a story. You can imagine how it would feel to go through something without actually having gone through it. I think it's wrong to assume authors are always drawing on personal experiences or that's always the way to write. Often I write fiction to get away from myself. No inner reflection or digging deep into my soul or past.
It's possible that someone might not know Hero's journey. It's about general writing - and reading - of any kind of stories. It's a structural tool to understand how stories are put together. And in this level it is also a tool to story - audience connection. It's secondary level is a plot. It is also a plot tool. It's very adaptive. So it's possible to use it in publishing, setting development, research, as a genre tool (it's very good in that)... even in character development. But not one of those is it's primary or even secondary purpose.
Writing only 'what you know' is a severe limitation. I think it's far more important to be a people-watcher, and cultivate empathy.
I agree with this wholly. I think "write what you understand" is a much better way of looking at things; you don't need to be writing stuff that's strictly autobiographical, thank god, but you do need to be able to understand how people would really act in the situations you're depicting.
I'm slightly familiar with the Hero's Journey as a way of organising a story ...sometimes it's referred to as 'mythic structure.' In fact, although I don't consciously follow mythic structure in my stories, I do own an excellent book: The Writer's Journey—Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler. It's a very detailed look into what makes these stories work. I think @Alan Aspie meant (correct me if I'm wrong, Alan) that the success of these stories goes beyond just the plot, or story arc of the mythic 'hero.' An emotional connection to this character and what is taking place should also be there, if the story is going to grab us. Readers should be able to 'identify' with this character in some emotional way. These emotions will originate from the author's emotional intelligence, if not the author's own direct experience. If we can use our own experiences of emotional situations when we write—maybe involving how we react to loss or potential loss, or how we feel about justice and injustice, or how we would react if we were given the challenges that the mythic hero faces in these stories, the somewhat proscribed formula of these stories will spring to life. Readers will forget the structure (although we'll be conditioned to expect the story arc to follow a certain pattern in a Hero's Journey story) but we'll be so immersed in that character's life, the story will seem real and unique. It's too easy to get stuck into plotting and forget to make that emotional connection. Of course we can use our imaginations to create what we think that character's emotional state will be ...and they might be experiencing something we've never actually experienced ourselves. But our imagination is part of us, and will undoubtedly reflect something of us ...no matter what direction it takes. Super-imposing authors' own emotional experiences (either real or imagined) on a rather dry mythic story structure is an interesting idea. The author can then become the hero for a while, and take the journey with the character. And possibly learn something about him or herself along the way. Emotional involvement lifts the story from the realm of myth and fable, and makes it immersive for the reader.
I'm all for a writer taking that ride with the character. I think that's an important takeaway from this.
