The Smart Wiki : Reviews

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Journey to the Center of Reality

The Hero's Journal

I hate Game Matters by Scott Miller, Into the Woods by Bob Bates and The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell.

They must be the three evils I was sent to Earth to destroy, because that's what I'm about to do.

"Mythic forms and mythic structures are the foundation on which all good stories are built; these forms and structures are the key a good storyteller can use to create powerful fiction."

No. Don't build on that deathtrap they mislabeled foundation. It's a ruse.

Stories need tons of structure and organization, and must never be chaotic. Structure is important and expressive.

Never standardize it.

Must every song structure be the same, too? Modality, tonality and atonality were to lengthen and vary music.

Tonal songs are naturally longer than modal songs. Their forms can't be the same. Modal songs with tonal forms always bore.

Do you love hearing 'knock'n on hea'n's door' but with different vocals? Nobody does.

Epic form lengthened poems. That was its use. It's replaceable with any long structure.

Remember, epic form: you're disposable. No!

A story's power is in its heart, its writer's heart. Don't standardize any property of a creative work of art, or anything.

Or I'll standardize your face.

Standardized characters + standardized form + standardized setting + standardized plot = a dead story + hurt readers.

The Hero's Journey vs God

Each Bible book structure is different and important to the message, story, etcetera, blah. . .

Look at Psalm 119, longest Bible Psalm and chapter. It's an acrostic. The simple, faceted form lengthened it real natural-like and pleasurably.

The hero's journey is from the idea all's been done, from Ecclesiastes 1:9:

'That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.'

So I should publish old as new? Which is better: to use somebody else's characters, or make new ones?

Original characters and ideas are better, so are new structures.

What about 'sing a new song'? That means nothing to you?

'If ain't it broke, fix it don't.' Why write the same story again? What's the point?

Anybody can read Joseph Campbell and follow the hero's journey. The only impressive thing is how incredibly dumb he is for misinterpreting great works of art, history and the above mentioned aphorisms.

That's unnatural dumb. He does drugs.

If George Lucas followed it consciously, it's not innate.

And the artistic morality ideas are wrong, wrong, wrong.

3-Act structure = beginning, middle, end. Not brilliant.

A good ideal story model by me

Hero beats the God damn hell out of every corrupt, mediocre, complacent scumbag in the common world.
Authorities torture our poor, innocent hero, and drop him off a cliff or into a well, depending on the genre, as a sympathetic crowd watches, powerless.
Hero conquers known universe.
Profit.

Now do you see that their steps are one step? Look

Establishing the hero's world
The call to adventure
Entering the mythological woods
Trail of trials
Encountering the evil one
Gaining the hero's prize
Returning that prize to the community

They're all the same thing! This is worthless bs. Pathetic. What a sham. I'll say.

We're not heroes. We're just ordinary people with super powers.