We Don't Need Another Hero

Allan Gardens chrysanthemums

Some of my readers know that I'm writing more than just the mini-memoirs that make their way onto this blog every week. There's a book in the works, some short stories and maybe a play.

To help me with these projects, I've been reading something called My Story Can Beat Up Your Story, a book better than its title that provides a by-the-numbers breakdown of screenplay writing. The formula goes in part like this: your sympathetic hero works her way through a series of increasingly difficult obstacles as she progresses through four stages of character type: the orphan, the wanderer, the warrior, the martyr.

You may be thinking now about the Harry Potter books, or The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The movie exemplum of this structure is the first Star Wars movie. Luke Skywalker is orphaned, joins up with Obi Wan to wander, fights the Empire, and willingly risks his life to destroy the Death Star. 

There. Now you don't have to buy the book.

I found an ad in the back of My Story Can Beat Up Your Story for Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, a venerable standard textbook in screenplay writing classes that does the same thing as the other book, but also cribs from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I'm reading it now.

Both these books are good guides for thinking about what drives a story (hint: it's the characters), what happens next (hint: it needs to be more challenging than what's happened before) and what are all the other characters doing (no hint; I haven't read that far in Vogler).

So even though I'm not writing a screenplay ... screenplays are old hat by the way; now everyone's doing one hour pilots for Netflix ... it's useful to have these concepts in my head as I write the book and the short stories.

After these are done, I'll try the one hour pilot.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen