h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

the best part. I liked the meadowlark, but the lion was a little tame.
A gigantic escalator, huh? good visual image, and punching into the tree was nice and messy. He should have eaten the meadowlark, though.

I'm not totally satisfied with the meadowlark and the lion in this one. Not sure what the point of them or the whole story is, except to say that stories should sometimes make as little sense as real life. (And just before I wrote this, I had read a book about archetypes in writing, and this "threshold guardian" idea infected me. Three challenges to surpass in order to finish your story, only the vamp never finishes his story.)

Not sure about eating the meadowlark, though. I like that he daydreams later about the meadowlark being a trickster god. But who says a god can't be eaten? Hmmm...

does the obligatory Hannibal Lecter imitation...
With fava beans, and a little chiante.
Archetypes? Been reading jung, have you? I always wanted to do a scene where 2 archetypes are sitting in the park playing games with characters' lives. Say, the trickster and someone. That's about what you've done.

Worse than Jung. A book on writing stories or screenplays called "Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers" by Christopher Vogler. It was pretty good, breaks down a bunch of popular movies and stories into chunks of archetypal plot, like so:

Hero is called to action.
Hero faces challenge (obstacle or opponent).
Hero finds a mentor.
Hero slays beast (defeats adversary, overcomes obstacle).
Hero wins the Grail (device or prop to heal a person or community or himself).
Hero returns home.
Hero gets reward, marries princess, becomes king.

Stuff like that. It kept talking about "threshold guardians," any kind of beast or opponent or obstacle that must be defeated or overcome by the hero to reach the next step (symbollically crossing a bridge or entering a doorway to a new and different part of the journey).

It's amazing how many plots you can break down into these elements that Vogler describes. You'd think it would make a boring, formulaic plot, but it seems to work, if only by the fact that so many good, solid classics can be seen in this kind of framework.

I'm usually reluctant to read books (or magazines or software or whatever) about how to improve your writing. You could read books and take classes and buy software until you're 87, and finally drop dead without having written anything. There's really too many tons of stuff out there to read claiming it can help you write better. My mother got me a subscription to Writer's Digest several years back, and although I enjoyed some of the articles, it always made me depressed, because it showed me how many suckers there are who think they can write the Great American Novel. Enough suckers to support a magazine all full of ads for books to improve your writing, classes, software, pens, computers, websites to improve your writing, endless things you can pour money into.

Have I rambled enough yet? Anyhow, in spite of all that, the Writer's Journey is really good.

I got to get to sleep! Been good talking with you.

Later,
Deidzoeb

jwf

Cool stuff

I liked the first part the most - the Gods, and the way these stories seem to go - someone *does* always end up losing an eye or two... . I loved the sort of wry epic flavour - like a self-deprecating Homer or something.

The ever-descending tree was a neat trick (myself I'd have made heaven infinitely far away instead, but I'm mathematical like that...); reminds me of Iain M. Banks and his ever-receding capital in 'State of the Art'.

It did feel a bit weird though - the way it ended... I think that's probably a good thing - but it does show just how deeply ingrained classic story structure is. No progress at all is comfortable - progress to some kind of climax is comfortable - but this kind of progress that ceases... it's strange, cos that's what life is like, but in a story it's just totally unexpected.

Ummm....
Poor Yygdrasil (sp?) everybody picks on her. Will you lambaste the tortoise that Atlas crouches on next? Or the tortoise that the tortoise stands on. Or Yertle himself?

Of course, the Vampire was a Gen X style idjit from the first and there is a long tradition of heroes being short a brick.

I'm not sure how the bird tricked the vampire.

I subscribed to the Writer's Digest until I read William Saroyan's contention that you can't teach writing to someone who has to write.
You can only teach it to those who want to pretend to write.