Here’s a short movie about The Hero’s Journey, the classic plot-shape used in fantasy and science fiction. And there’s a nice summary of Tolkien’s The Hobbit in terms of the beats of that plot-shape.
If you recall, our lesson on writing immersive description (mini-lesson no.8) used a ‘rule of 5’. The creation a compelling character employs a different ‘rule of 5’.
Look at the passage below and identify what five general things (motifs) are described in order to create a compelling character.
‘Never stops.’ The tramp stood waiting at the zebra crossing. None of the cars slowed. He was dressed in newspaper, with string tied in a bow. On his head was a shapeless hat with holes in it – it didn’t do much to hold off rain or keep out the cold – he wore it for sentimental reasons. He counted the vehicles going past. He was always counting. He was good at counting. It calmed him. It lifted the frown from his face. ‘Never stops.’ He took a deep breath and stepped out into the road…
Answer:
- Something the character wears that is representative of his social position (newspaper)
- Something he habitually says (‘Never stops.’)
- Something he habitually does (counts)
- Something that is representative of his psychological state (the hat with a hole in)
- Something distinctive about his face/body (the frown)
When writing, it is always tempting to create noble kings, beautiful princesses, prince charmings, noble knights, evil witches and so on. But can readers really identify with such characters? Can we really care about what happens to them and do we really want to keep reading? If these characters are too perfect (perfectly good or perfectly evil), how can their characters actually develop?
If a character is to develop, they need a flaw or dilemma. At heart, then, they must have a ‘real’ issue or concern. In seeking to resolve that flaw or dilemma, they either transform for the better or worse. Whether they are Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, we can see ourselves in their place and care about them.
In order to describe a character effectively, many writers use the ‘rule of 5’ above. The writer should simply describe any five things that are unique to that character: something they always say, something they always do, something they always wear, something distinctive about their face, something distinctive about their body, and an x-factor element (such as something they feel or believe, or something representative of their psychological state).
Why stop at just five motifs? Well, it is definitely possible to over-describe a character. If you spend three pages describing a character, firstly it’s boring for the reader, and then you’re probably engaging in exposition and back-story (remember, it’s always better to show than tell), possibly making it hard for the reader to ‘identify with’ the character, to care or to want to keep reading. Therefore, keep your characterization fairly brief and loose, so that the character all but becomes a ‘cypher’ for the reader: the reader interprets the character as themselves.
If it takes the reader more than 30 seconds to read your piece of characterization, then the characterization is too long. People make up their minds in the first 30 seconds of meeting someone, you see. First impressions count. If you go on for more than 30 seconds, your description of character will begin to fight against what the reader has already imagined. And writers shouldn’t want to fight with their readers. The readers can just walk away.
Quick task
Try to write a one-paragraph character description of a mercenary or a market-place conjuror.
If you’d like me to look at how successful your attempt is, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.
Today’s lesson was produced by scriptwriter (and former Lecturer in Scriptwriting) Matthew White. He can be found on IMDb or twitter, and his latest movie is Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunchbreak, starring Katherine Parkinson, Tom Meetan, Jonny Vegas and Kriss Marshall.
Look at these basic story ideas, and decide on the various genres that each of them falls under.
- A plucky group of buddies goes on an epic mission to find or destroy something or someone important.
- A seemingly happy relationship is threatened when a charismatic individual comes between our couple.
- A lone voice of reason tries to warn a community about a terrible threat but is ignored – with terrifying results.
Possible answers include:
- Sci-fi (eg Star Wars)
Or Fantasy (The Lord of the Rings)
Or War (Saving Private Ryan) - Domestic Drama (Indecent Proposal)
Or Thriller (Fatal Attraction) - Thriller (Jaws)
Or Horror (Alien)
Or Disaster (almost every disaster film ever made).
The simplest definition of genre is… a class or type of literature, music etc. Yet in the world of creative writing, genre is anything but simple. Genre is endlessly mutable, and can come from a huge variety of sources, including:
- A setting or world, eg Western, Space Opera, War Movie
- An audience, eg Family, Young Adult
- The tools used to tell the story, eg Literary Fiction, Art-House movie
- The audience response, eg Horror, Comedy
Genres can be crossed, mixed, sub-divided, transgressed … it’s maddeningly complex, and definitions are the subject of much debate – not all of it reasonable.
But there’s also a simple truth at the heart of it all: genre, from a writer’s perspective, is all about expectations.
When a reader or viewer engages with a story, they will have certain expectations set by who is telling it, how it is presented to them … and what genre it claims to be in.
If it’s comedy, they’re expecting funny. If it’s family, they WON’T want to be offended. If it’s a Western, they’ll expect a locale, a period and a story in some kind of frontier world. And note how a lot of those Western tropes quickly became the norm in space operas too.
Although the purist in you might want to fight against the demands of genre, you’ll be wasting your time and energy in doing so. If you don’t identify a genre by which to categorise your work, your publisher, producer or bookseller most definitely will.
And your reader will too.
So, the two key lessons you should learn are:
- You need to know your genre. If you are writing a tense, Cold-War era thriller, read or watch ALL the Cold-War thrillers you can get your hands on.
- You need to know the expectations you’re raising. If you are writing a comedy-horror, it had better be both funny and scary/horrific. If you’re dabbling in psychological thriller, then you should know that people will expect a very different experience from that of, say, an action thriller. That way, if you want to do something clever or challenging, at least you know what the expectations or “rules” are, before you start playing with them.
Not convinced you need to learn those lessons? Well, here are two examples to consider:
- Steven Spielberg is a master of making films that fit squarely within a particular genre. He’s very successful at that – not least because when he’s not making films, he’s watching films, and watching more films, and discussing them and analysing them.
- Kazuo Ishigura has written two novels which combine literary fiction and sci-fi or fantasy. And they were very successful, because he knew his sci fi and he knew his fantasy.
Further reading
- Lucy Hay, on her website com, has a lot to say about genre – and it’s great.
- Blake Snyder, the US scriptwriter-turned-guru, has an interesting take on story genre. Check out Save the Cat Goes to the Movies (it applies to books too).
Quick task
Look at the following logline for a supernatural horror script I’m working on.
A modernising young vicar moves to an isolated rural parish to dismantle its “backward” traditions – only to release a vengeful spirit that is intent on destroying the descendants of its tormentors.
Now re-write it, and turn it into:
(a) an excellent comedy, and
(b) an excellent love story!
If you’d like me to look at how successful your attempt has been, please do feel free to email me (Adam, in lieu of Matthew): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do SHARE it with others.
The two passages below use the ‘rule of 5’ to provide an immersive description. But what are the five things? What five things are being appealed to?
- Setting a scene
When described to someone who had never been there, Arlford often sounded colourful and exciting. But viewed up close, it was pretty much all one colour in various shades; and that colour was brown. The main streets on either side of the river were always churned up, even in the hottest summers. With horses and herds so regularly brought into town, the streets were a constant slurry of dung. It covered boots, buildings and faces alike. Brown even got into the water, judging by its brackish taste and the particular flavour of the local ale. It hung in the air and was breathed deep into lungs.
[from The Book of Orm]
- A fight scene
His face was pressed against sun-metal. His skin had burned away, and now his soft interior and eyeballs were cooking. He had slipped from Luhka Sha’s grasp by changing form, but the Lead Warrior had followed him down and pinned him where there was no chance of escape.
‘Smells good,’ Luhka Sha drooled in Ba’zel’s ear, broadcasting the thought to the avid assembly so that they could share in the moment. The smell of charred flesh spread through the chamber and saw a number of the nearest spectators unable to resist chewing on their own limbs. [from Tithe of the Saviours]
Answer: both scenes appeal to all five of the senses – sight, smell, sound, taste, touch. It’s a simple but effective trick if you want to help the reader ‘imagine’ they’re actually standing there experiencing Arlford. Referencing all five senses makes a scene vivid or ‘360-degree’.
So, I’d suggest adding the ‘rule of 5’ to the other techniques we have already looked at for providing engaging descriptions: mini-lesson no.4 ‘metaphor’ and mini-lesson no.5 ‘enactment’. Indeed, to give you a classic example of enactment when describing a town, let’s return to Arlford, shall we?
Nearly all goods being traded between the northern and southern reaches of the region had to pass through Arlford. There had always been a market there, where goods of every kind could be found. It was also a place where men of every type could be found – mercenaries to protect caravans from bandits; hawkers and hauliers; sellers of weapons; labourers; flesh-traders from more distant parts; a motley of minstrels and jugglers; conjurors and charmers; itinerants and philosophers; priests and mendicants; whoremongers and doxies; physickers and the purveyors of potions, tonics and elixirs; arrangers and well-guarded lenders; and then a good number of simple butchers, blacksmiths and ostlers. All life was to be found at this meeting place of humanity.
[from The Book of Orm]
You’ll notice that the third sentence of the passage above is a very long and colourful list. Listing is a simple device for mimicking the overload of images a new visitor to a place experiences. It’s a chaos, hubbub, and a melting point. The extended length of the sentence also demands unusual organisation and punctuation – reflecting humanity’s diversity and general disorganisation. It’s a sensory assault on the reader that ‘immerses’ them in the scene.
Quick task
Write a short description of a panorama, city or battle that appeals to all five senses!
If you’d like me to look at how successful your attempt is, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do SHARE it with others.
Put the following 6 steps in the correct logical order to describe the plot of The Hobbit.
a. High adventure, fun and peril, but leading to a calamity: the party are in the mountains; they enter the goblin warren; Bilbo finds the magic ring but becomes isolated from the others and lost among the lowest levels of the mountain
b. Moral dilemma: should Bilbo selfishly stay in the safety of his burrow, knowing the world will be destroyed by the goblins and Smaug, and that the evil will eventually come to the Shire, or should he go on an exciting adventure with Gandalf that is so dangerous it may cost his life?
c. The original dilemma revisited: in the dark, Bilbo encounters Golem, a creature of Bilbo’s own species who selfishly stole the ring and murdered a friend… all leading to Golem living alone and isolated in the dark; should Bilbo use the ring to murder Golem and escape with the treasure… or should he not, and probably end up dying?
d. Results of ‘wrong’ decision: the ogres catch Bilbo; the dwarves come to rescue him and they too are caught; they are all about to be cooked and eaten; Gandalf arrives in the nick of time to save them; Gandalf warns Bilbo that if he doesn’t give up his selfishness then they are all doomed
e. Our hero makes the ‘correct’ decision this time, meaning the lesson has been learnt, he is a ‘better’ person and salvation is achieved: Bilbo realises that murdering Golem, to keep the ring selfishly, would be to repeat the same crime as Golem had committed (meaning that Bilbo would become this dark and lonely version of himself); so Biblo relies on his wits to achieve a near impossible escape instead, and becomes a virtuous and superpowered hero who is able to defeat the dragon Smaug (Satan) himself!
f. Trigger event that causes the ‘wrong’ decision: becoming boastful at the party with the dwarves, Bilbo promises to go on the adventure, and then on the adventure, as the party’s thief, he selfishly tries to steal gold for himself from the ogres.
Answer: 1b, 2f, 3d, 4a, 5c, 6e
The general plot-shape above is popularly known as ‘The Hero’s Journey’. It is a model that is used time and again in fantasy, YA fiction and science fiction narrative. It is the model used by many, many Hollywood films, including Star Wars: A New Hope, The Matrix, E.T., The Hunger Games, and so on.
Academically, The Hero’s Journey is known as ‘The Monomyth’, first described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Campbell considered all the great works of classic literature and decided that the same general plot-shape was shared by all of them. There is only one story, and that story is ‘The Story of Life’.
If you think about it, The Hero’s Journey is also a coming-of-age or rites of passage tale, about a person growing up, maturing, moving from selfishness to selflessness, and entering the dangerous adult world. At the same time, we need to be aware that it is quite a Christ v Satan story, so potentially ‘too’ Christian, and that it is also a model that comes out of the literature of patriarchy and Empire, so perhaps encourages ‘toxic masculinity’. Even so, the damn thing really works!
Quick task
The passage below provides you with an opening moral dilemma. Make up and write down the next five steps of the plot using the model of The Hero’s Journey.
Our hero is rushing to a job interview for their once-in-a-lifetime-dream job. They get a phone call saying that a close relative has been taken into hospital and may be about to die. Your hero is asked to come to the hospital to be with the loved one in their final moments – and the loved one has asked for them specifically. But that would mean missing the interview. Argh! What to do?
If you’d like me to look at how successful your plot-shape is, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do SHARE it with others?
Look at the opening lines from specific novels below. What question does each line generate in your mind?
- It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. [from 1984, science fiction]
- My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. [from Fingersmith, historical fiction]
- All children, except one, grow up. [from Peter Pan, YA fiction]
- They threw me off the hay truck about noon. [from The Postman Always Rings Twice, neo-noir thriller]
- The corpse opened its eyes. [from Necromancer’s Gambit, dark fantasy]
Possible answers:
- How can clocks strike thirteen? What world are we in?
- What’s her name now? Why did she change her name?
- Really? Which one? How is such a wonderful thing possible? What’s the secret?
- Why did they throw you off? What did you do? Or was there something about you they didn’t like?
- How can a corpse open its eyes? Whose corpse is it, by the way? Do they feel anything? How did they die? Who killed them? Do they want revenge?
What all the opening lines have in common is that they provide a ‘narrative hook’, a piece of incomplete information that triggers questions in the reader’s mind. Once the reader is ‘hooked’ they’ll keep reading… so the writer should resist giving the answers to the questions for a good while. The writer needs to resist explanation and exposition.
TV shows and films often use narrative hooks too. Think about the CSI show. Even before the title sequence starts, we are shown the bizarre crime scene, and we start wondering how the person died and who might have been responsible for the death. Think about Lost. It’s just one hook after another, with no answers ever given.
Even Shakespeare knew to provide a narrative hook in the opening line of his plays: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’! And if narrative hooks are good enough for Shakespeare, then…
Quick task
Write the opening line for each of the following plots/scenarios…
- a crime novel that starts in an underground public toilet. Our detective suffers from OCD.
- a horror set in a world where the ground is now barren. Nothing grows anymore. The only sustenance left is meat…
- a science fiction novel set on an intergenerational star ship, five generations into its mission.
- a fantasy novel in which a blacksmith has been forced to turn mercenary.
If you’d like me to look at how successful your opening lines are, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.
Look at the passage below and decide if the female character is worried about the mouse or not.
“It is large, so a house mouse, not the country cousin field type which are more petite, she knows that much, and although she doesn’t like it, shudders at the thought of it running over her sleeping body, doesn’t care to share her home with it, or pick it up, or touch it, or even have it sitting this close, and is very aware of the fact that it is bound to mean them, she is heartily relieved that it’s not a rat and therefore isn’t overly concerned.” [Tony Dew]
Answer: despite the assertion by the main character that she ‘isn’t overly concerned’, the reader can tell that she is actually very concerned about the mouse!
But how can the reader tell that? Well, it’s something to do with how the passage has been written. The passage represents the character’s internal thoughts. The passage is a single, long sentence, almost a ‘stream of consciousness’. The short phrases scurry this way and that way, like the actual mouse that she is watching. Therefore, the mouse is filling and defining the character of her thoughts – she is fixated on it. She is extremely concerned by it.
When the style of the writing matches what is happening in the plot or scene (and shows us the character’s emotions, rather than telling us those emotions), it is known as the narrative device of ‘enactment’. It is a hallmark of superior or literary prose. Why is it? Well, because it makes reading a delight – our ‘reading between the lines’ has been enabled and we become privy to secrets. It gives the act of reading an extra reward.
Quick task
Look at the opening lines below. Choose one of them and try to write a short passage starting with that line. Make sure the style in which you write ‘enacts’ the nature of the character or the scene in which they find themselves.
- There was something unfinished about him, something… interrupted.
- ‘Rubbish!’ came her firecracker voice, making the audience jump.
- Here was a slow and methodical man, a man who believed in being sure of the wherefores and wherebys before approaching anything that he would term a conclusion.
If you’d like me to look at how successful your writing has been in terms of enactment, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.
