Describing Place and Self

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.’

Anton Chekhov

Despite the fact that I had always carried the knowledge within me that I would one day become a writer, for many years I also believed that I couldn’t write, or at least that I was incapable of producing any writing of value. Not surprisingly, this caused a deep conflict within me and some confusion. Looking for the reasons behind this fundamental lack of faith in my own ability, I could cite low self-confidence or even low self-worth, and to a certain extent this was true. However, the real reason can be found in the word ‘value’. I believed that I could not produce anything of ‘value’ because I was quick to measure my abilities against those authors I read and often loved in high school. My schooling had given me a clear sense of what was valuable and what wasn’t. Maths and Science were valuable, while Art and English were not. And in English, the subject I was most drawn to, some authors were valuable while others were not. At the time I didn’t question these hierarchical constructions. I reveled in the glorious language of the authors I was studying, and in the process became deeply engaged in exploring the underlying meanings of texts and excited by their philosophical and spiritual explorations. Yet, while enjoying these texts I also came to believe that I was not a good writer because I couldn’t match D H Lawrence’s vocabulary, the intensity of his passion or the richness of his descriptions; Shakespeare’s depth of understanding was beyond me, and while the philosophy of Euripides was tantalisingly wise, I was too young to embrace it.

I was only able to liberate myself from this belief when I began to understand that the depth of meaning I was seeking was not found in language itself but in the spells we cast with words, spells which create stories that reflect our experience and in the process enable us to access a deeper knowledge. During the long process of letting go of my expectations, I discovered that sometimes the simplest writing speaks the most profoundly and that crafting a story is as valuable as writing vivid descriptions. As Robert McKee wrote, in Story, ‘you may have the insight of a Buddha, but if you cannot tell a story, your ideas turn dry as chalk’. Over time I found my own voice as a writer and with that, my own place in the spectrum of storysmith versus wordsmith. Right in the middle. This has proved to be both a blessing and a curse, as my writing bridges commercial and literary genres, leaving publishers at a loss when deciding their marketing approach. Yet despite having liberated myself from the misguided belief that for novel writers, description is more important than story, and despite having my novels published, I am still astounded when reviewers and readers comment (as they sometimes do) on the powerful evocation of landscape in my novels or the vivid depictions of characters.

Description is one of the fundamental elements in storytelling. It is a tool or a technique and over time I have learned how to use it. As with any technique of writing, description is both a craft which can be learned and an art which can only be discovered. Description has a function or a number of functions and should be used purposefully.  It grounds and sets the story in place and time, builds character, mood, tension and suspense, shifts pace, adds plausibility, provides metaphors and deepens thematic exploration. In any story there is also a balance that should be sought, between action, reflection and description. Too little description and the story remains floating, ungrounded. Too much description and the story threads become lost. As Stephen King wrote in, On Writing, ‘description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.’ When and how to use description, and how much to use, is something we can only learn through trial and error.

It is not always possible or even desirable to separate the art and the craft of description, as the art is fed by an understanding of the craft. We can only access the art of description by inhabiting the scene we are writing, by living, breathing and tasting it, and by grasping its subtleties. What more is this scene trying to tell us? How might it act as metaphor, as an expression of a universal truth, a human emotion, a philosophical idea? The art of description lies in what we make of a scene rather than what we observe. Powerful description suggests so much more than the words themselves. Powerful description layers and deepens our stories and their themes.

V. S Naipul once wrote, ‘Land is not land alone, something that simply is itself. Land partakes of what we breathe into it, is touched by our moods and memories.’ A reminder perhaps, that it is not possible to be objective in our descriptions when even the decision to include or exclude information is a subjective one. What we see inevitably changes according to our mood and our memory. We see what we feel and we interpret what we see through our emotions, our memory and the ideology which frames us and forms us. The way we describe the world is a political act, always subjective yet more often than not, heralding itself as objective. Yet most of the time it is unconscious. Most of us can only see the world in the way we expect to see it, limited and framed by our ideology, by our personal and cultural history, by our understandings. Perhaps it is enough to be aware of the restrictions within which we interpret and describe the world, in order to begin breaking free of these restrictions. In any case, it is certainly useful to be aware of these restrictions in order to make use of them when we describe the world through the eyes of our character/s.

If we describe how ugly someone is but neglect to notice the beauty of their expression, then we have missed an opportunity to deepen a character and extend our understanding further.  If we describe walking into a beautiful landscape that is filled with the stench of death or sewerage, we would most certainly need to call on our other senses in order to explore the contradictions and build tension into our story.  We see, feel, touch, taste, smell and intuit the world around us (see Writing Between Worlds – Describing the Indescribable), and recording these sensations helps us to bring our stories to life on the page. We also react to our environment, and those reactions are personal as well as cultural. Stepping out into the cold may be exhilarating for one person and terrifying for another, particularly if that person carries a traumatic memory that relates to the cold, or is being exiled from home, or simply, doesn’t have warm clothes. Returning to a childhood home or an old school will arouse different emotions in us, according to the memories we carry from our earlier time in these places. One person sitting on an outcrop of rocks, high up on a hill, might experience a peaceful summer’s day, the warm air sitting calmly in the valleys below, friendly voices calling out to each other, the smell of cut hay, sheep dung. . . yet another person sitting on that same rocky outcrop, might experience a day full of sinister overtones, the shadows in the valley too dark, the voices of others harsh and unfriendly, the sun burning. . . Through considering emotion, reaction and memory as well as the physical characteristics of a place, we can begin to build the tensions, the conflicts and the contradictions that will feed out story and make our characters plausible.  

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott wrote that ‘metaphors are a great language tool, because they explain the unknown in terms of the known.’  With metaphor we find ways of stepping beyond the limitations of language, of expressing meaning without reverting to cliché or telling the reader what really needs to be shown. If we describe a tiny plant struggling to grow through a crack in a concrete pavement in a busy city street, it tells us something about the power of nature over what is man-made. It also tells us about persistence and reminds us that strength doesn’t always lie in might. Perhaps too, it might tell us about a child growing up in a loveless family.

Nature acts as a powerful metaphor in storytelling. As Jung wrote in The Integration of the Personality, ‘all the mythological occurrences of nature, such as summer and winter, the phases of the moon, the rainy seasons. . . are symbolic expressions for the inner and unconscious psychic drama that becomes accessible to human consciousness by way of projection – that is, mirrored in the events of nature.’ In my novel, Flight, a journey into the wilderness in Tasmania is a metaphor for a journey inwards into the labyrinthine depths of the unconscious. Describing natures seasons in our stories also provides a deeper layer of meaning that links the cycles of nature to human experience, a link that reminds us of our connection to all life, and allows us to access and express universal truths.

We use description to provide information, to slow the pace, to build tensions, to provide texture, to break up monotony, to establish mood, ambiance and theme. But most importantly, description is a powerful tool that when used well, enhances and deepens our writing, helping us to create a convincing setting that transports the reader into the world of the story, enabling them to suspend disbelief until the end. Description isn’t easy but mastering it is worthwhile and rewarding. And the key to that mastery is in capturing detail, seeking simile or metaphor and avoiding self-indulgence. 

Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Writing Between Worlds – Describing the Indescribable

‘The frontier of our world is not far away; it doesn't run along the horizon or in the depths. It glimmers faintly close by, in the twilight of our nearest surroundings; out of the corner of our eye we can always glimpse another world, without realizing it.’ 

Michel Adjvaz

Two months ago I arrived in Wales, a place of great beauty and wildness, a place laden with mystery and layered with history. Here it seems as if the veil between worlds is thinner than elsewhere, so that from the corner of my eye I see glimpses of other times - a flash of a man on horseback, the swish of long skirts. . . There are glimpses of other worlds too, as I discovered driving home one evening along a narrow country lane with a forest lining each side of the road. Ahead of me, I clearly saw a figure the size of a man yet not a man, moving across the road but high up, almost level with the canopies of the trees. Not wanting to make my children nervous, I decided not to mention it. Despite my precautions my son went strangely quiet and we drove home in silence. The next morning as we retraced the road through the same forest, I told my children that I had seen something the night before. My son stated that he had seen something too in this spot, but by the side of the road, just a little above the ground, a figure the size of a man yet not a man . . .

Real and yet not real. Imagination? Fantasy? It’s generally easy for others to rationalise these things away, as a trick of the light, a flight of the imagination, wishful thinking even. . . and yet when we experience something outside of the realms of what we consider normal or possible, then we know it with a deep and protective certainty. In my experience many people have seen or experienced something they cannot explain, yet most of them keep it to themselves in the knowledge that putting it to words generally reduces the experience, and in the fear that they will be ridiculed. In Weight, Jeanette Winterson wrote, 'Right now, human beings as a mass, have a gruesome appetite for what they call 'real'. . . Such a phenomenon points to a terror of the inner life, of the sublime, of the poetic, of the non-material, of the contemplative.' Perhaps we carry this fear in our genes, stamped by the horrors of history into our ancestors and passed down generation after generation. This has been reinforced by the successes of scientific materialism and the relegation of the non-rational to the status of superstition. Inevitably, over time we have become detached from the natural world around us and lost our own connection with the magic and mystery of life, handing control of the spiritual experience to the priests of organised religion and handing validation of our own experience, to their modern equivalent, the technocrats of science. We have been taught to hold the fear at bay by seeking certainty in the rational, the measurable, the flesh and blood physical world of the five senses, and in so doing we have passively watched the colour seep out of life. Perhaps it is fear that has led so many of us to consider as virtues the deadening qualities of scepticism and cynicism.

The best of religion is not blinkered and nor is the best of science. One of our greatest scientists, Albert Einstein, once said that ‘the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant,’ then went on to warn that ‘we have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.’ In so doing we have found ourselves limited by the constraints of the five-senses which have come to define the physical world, and yet there is so much more beyond these restrictions, so many more threads which connect all things and such a thin membrane separating the physical world from the invisible world. I have always been interested in treading the line between worlds in my writing, of finding ways to transcend the boundaries of time and space. Not by creating fantastical other worlds but rather by slipping back and forth between our everyday world and the worlds which sit beyond or within. Yet I know from personal experience just how difficult it is to translate extrasensory experience onto paper without losing its vitality, and for a time this difficulty led me to stay closer to the ‘real’ in my writing than I wished.

Stories themselves are not ‘of this world’. As Haruki Murakami wrote inSputnik Sweetheart, ‘a real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.' With this in mind, I finally took the plunge and began breaking the rules of realism, playing with space and time, with cause and effect and with the line between life and death. In Eva Luna, Isabel Allende wrote that ‘reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.” In a sense this is what I have done in Flight – taken my own experiences, many of which I hadn’t fully understood, and thrown them into the winds, letting them settle into place and form a story, whilst giving my imagination free reign to fill in the gaps. What eventually emerged was something more truthful than any material fact I could cite.

Writing that explores these boundaries between the visible and invisible worlds tends to be called magical realist but more often than not this title is applied to or claimed by only South American writers such as Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In truth, its roots are much broader, including among others, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Salmon Rushdie, Franz Kafka, and  Haruki Murakami. For want of a better word, I will label my latest novel, Flight as magical realist, a genre I am drawn to for a number of reasons. Firstly, magical realism has a strong affinity with Jungian psychology, encouraging a sense of connectedness between all things and often drawing on ancient esoteric beliefs. Secondly, I believe that magical realism is a subversive genre. Whether or not we write directly about politics, our writing is always a political act because depending on our approach it defines, reinforces or rewrites our understanding of the world in which we live. To re-introduce magic into realism is a necessary political act, pushing back against the restrictive socially constructed boundaries of what is ‘real’. And finally, as Lois Zamora and Wendy Faris wrote in Magical Realism, ‘the supernatural . . . [becomes] an ordinary matter, an everyday occurrence – admitted, accepted and integrated into the rationality and materiality of literary realism’. In this genre, magic is a fundamental part of life, as ordinary and as necessary as the air we breathe. This gives us the space to write about our experiences without fear of ridicule, drawing on symbolism and metaphor to create the necessary bridges between one world and the other. In so doing we are finally able to describe the indescribable. 

Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

The Alchemy of Story: Initiation, Transformation, Revelation

'The journey into the Underworld is nothing less than a voyage into the heart of Being.’

Peter Marshall, The Philosopher’s Stone

 When I finished my PhD last year, along with the expected sense of completion, came a building excitement because already I could feel the tug of future journeys; new directions in my research were piling up, luring me to explore ever more widely and deeply.  I felt as if I had only just begun my research journey and this is a feeling I still carry with me; constant and tantalizing it speaks of knowledge just out of my reach, of further personal journeys I must take in my writing and my life, revelations that will transform my perceptions and my self. For the knowledge gained through reading isn’t enough. It must also be ‘realised’ in some way, taken in and understood in our hearts and through experience. Research is a fusion of reading and experience, it is something we must live. As Paolo Coehlo wrote in The Alchemist, ‘There is only one way to learn. . . It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.’ Each of us is on a personal journey that links to but doesn’t follow exactly, the paths of those who have come before.  And each journey is an initiation of sorts, the plunging into darkness that is necessary in order to find the light.

 I have been reading Lindsay Clarke’s The Water Theatre, a beautiful and profound novel that explores this initiatory process. In it, Clarke refers to the Way of the Fool, a way that is sometimes hard and dangerous because it is a spiritual quest undertaken ‘without the protection and discipline that comes from membership of an order’. ‘On such a way one can get lost very easily. One can come to harm,’ warns a priest in the novel. Despite the difficulties and dangers of this path, for many of us this is the only way. With this choice comes an understanding that there is never just one journey, that each initiation leads us to another place from which we must plunge again into the depths as we seek the light. As Clarke writes, ‘though the journey is always inward, the outer journey – down and through and out again – is indispensable, for it is down there, in the darkness of the underworld that the sun at midnight shines.’

 Although I’ve already mentioned this in some of my earlier posts, I want to explore a little further the way in which mystical initiation can be mirrored in the structure of story and the inner journey of character. Initially it was my interest in the therapeutic nature of story that led me to explore the roots of and nature of shamanism. Unexpectedly, threads of my research began to appear in my novel in the form of references to shamanism and to the process of initiation that candidates are forced to undertake in order to become shamans. However, it wasn't until much later that I began to understand the shamanic journey as a metaphor for something that was reflected in the very shape of Flight, as well as in my own personal journey during the writing of it.

 According to Jungian analyst, Donald F Sandner in Sacred Heritage: The Influence of Shamanism on Analytical Psychology, 'the basic shamanic pattern is not a manifestation of a certain culture but rather an archetype, a constant and universal part of the human psyche'. Anthropologist, Joan Halifax refers to shamanic initiation as a metaphysical voyage, while Jung saw the patterns in shamanism as a metaphor for the process of individuation. These patterns are implicit in the structure of most stories: the symbolism of death and mystical resurrection, descent to the underworld, followed by magical flight. It is a turning away from what is known and a stepping into the unknown. It is a call to change and to adventure. To deny the opportunity for adventure is to deny life and in so doing to restrict the growth of the soul. 

 Religious historian Mercea Eliade, studied shamanism and myth and drew strong parallels across many cultures, parallels which are useful for exploring the relationship between shamanism and story. Of particular interest is his map of the structure of the shaman's world and the way in which shamanic journeying mirrors the structure of narrative. In shamanism there is usually an upper, middle and lower world, which mirrors the selves or the layers of the psyche. The middle world is the world we recognise, the world of ordinary events. The lower world or underworld is associated with death and shadow, as well as dangerous spirits and in Christianity is generally considered hell. The upper world is associated with light and ascension, it is 'the realm of transcendent consciousness' a realm that Christianity refers to as heaven. Crucially, however, one can only access the higher world through the lower world. We cannot ignore or bury what lurks in our depths without becoming weighed down, too heavy for the required ascent.  It is possible then, to extend this idea of an upper, middle and lower world to the structure of narrative, with the protagonist beginning in the middle world, journeying into the underworld, then, if the necessary lessons are learned, ascending to the upper world, before returning once again to the middle world to share his or her rewards.

 In Flight, Fern's journey is an initiation. I used the term shamanism and indeed, Fern's initiation pattern is very similar: a sickening, followed by a loss of self, then a journey into the underworld to face one's demons, followed by a regaining of power and flight. However, this is the journey of the soul and does not need to be labelled as a shamanic journey. When Fern expresses a discomfort about shamanism, Cassie tells her that it is just one of many paths, all of which bring you to the same place, your self. 'A shaman,' she says, 'is just someone who has healed themselves and because of this, they can heal others.'

 Following my instincts and the needs of the novel I am currently writing, my research has led me to begin exploring mystical initiation through the ages, in particular alchemy which can be interpreted on both a literal (physical) level and a metaphorical (spiritual) level. In The Philosopher’s Stone, Peter Marshall explains that ‘first and foremost alchemy is the art of transformation’ and goes on to describe the alchemical process as mirroring ‘the stages of the integration and realisation of the self’, something which Jung identified in his own studies of the art of alchemy. The parallels between shamanism and alchemy were immediately clear, as were the parallels between alchemy and story. In story, the external plot mirrors the inward transformation of character; in alchemy ‘the transmutation of external matter mirrors the inward transformation of the soul.’

 Initiation, Transformation, Revelation is a fundamental part of the alchemical process and something that is repeated again and again in our lives and our stories. The writing of a novel can also be an initiation of sorts, changing us fundamentally, as has happened to me with each of my books. In the preface to his novel, The Chymical Wedding, Lindsay Clarke describes the writing process as a discovery that a book about alchemy also needed to be a ‘work of alchemy’.  He writes, ‘I soon found myself getting lost again and again, like the alchemists before me, inside a bewildering labyrinth of images, as both the book and the author underwent a sometimes gruelling process of transformation.’ There are many ways to self, just as there are many paths to writing a novel. For each there are a multitude of guides, mentors and techniques acting as the threads to help us find our way blindly through the labyrinth, following the Way of the Fool in order to become ourselves.

Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Seeking The Paradox Within Story

'Most fables contain at least some truth, and they often enable people to absorb ideas which the ordinary patterns of their thinking would prevent them from digesting.'

Idries Shah, The Sufis

As I have mentioned in other posts on this blog, I am fascinated by the fundamental paradox that I see within story, in that while it encourages us to conform to society, it also encourages us to become true individuals by shedding mindless conformity. And it is this aspect of story that I keep returning to, asking myself how a narrative can enable us to evolve as individuals. I believe there is an alternative knowledge structure deeply embedded within story, a structure that enables and encourages personal transformation, and that echoes thousands of years back to the first stories of the shamans and the ancient myths of indigenous peoples around the world, as well as being evident in many contemporary narratives. People write, read and listen to stories, not because they wish to escape from themselves, but because they wish to find themselves. So perhaps then, a key to self transformation is embedded within story.

The idea that stories might contain hidden meanings is not a new one, stretching back to the interpretation of early religious texts across many faiths and persisting to the current day through continued scholarly analysis of literature. These theories are also rooted in mystical knowledge associated with Sufism and other esoteric groups, some of this knowledge dating back thousands of years. The ancient Aesops Fables which are popular in the West, are an example of stories that are designed to jolt us out of the boundaries that restrict our thinking. In his book, The Sufis, Idries Shah writes that the popular and humorous Nasrudin Stories which date from around the thirteenth century, 'may be understood at any one of many depths. . . and the experiencing of each story will contribute towards the 'homecoming' of the mystic'. Perhaps then, rather than reinforcing blind acceptance of society's constructed realities, stories might use hidden meanings in order to innately question them. Idries Shah goes on to explain the use of humour in the Nasrudin tales, saying that 'humour cannot be prevented from spreading: it has a way of slipping through the patterns of thought which are imposed upon mankind by pattern and design.' While humour is not a strong element in my writing at present, I agree that it has great power, encouraging us to question and laugh at what we hold sacred or simply take for granted.

Much of our interpretation of a text relies on how we read. Joseph Campbell emphasised the importance of poetic interpretation, as compared to literal reading, warning that 'wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed.' Karen Armstrong too, wrote passionately of the need to re-engage with story, using 'intuitive, mythical modes of thought' instead of the 'more pragmatic, logical spirit of scientific rationality.' When I was writing Flight, I began to wonder how I could layer the story in order to encourage different interpretations on the part of the reader. I wanted my readers to read intuitively, to find a story a that spoke to them in unexpected ways. In the end though I found myself unable to plan a novel in this way and decided instead to trust my unconscious to do this for me through the use of symbols and metaphor, as well as through the way in which the story structure formed itself around the character arc.

While it is clear that stories can and do contain hidden meanings, Campbell went further than this in his analysis of heroic myth, by suggesting that the very structure of story has a hidden meaning, that it is a metaphor for Jung's individuation process or the journey to self. Now that Flight is complete and published, and there has been time to receive reader feedback, it has become clear that the novel does act on a number of levels: as entertainment, as a psychological study and as a document of a spiritual journey, one in which readers can find themselves. I have always felt strongly that in my writing I am holding a mirror up to readers and helping them remember who they are, perhaps because this is what I seek from my own reading. However, my motives are not entirely altruistic, because first and foremost it is myself I am finding, both through the process of writing and through the mysteries of the unfolding story. It is my own past I am exploring and my own scars I am acknowledging and releasing, as I seek to uncover the treasure within me, the essence of self, by breaking down my fixed thinking patterns. Perhaps ultimately this is what stories are for.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Writing Character: Uncovering The Wound

'To release the full potential of the treasure, the wound must be uncovered, delved into, healed to some degree, as if coated with loving layers of lustrous deposits.'

Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

Earlier this year an astrologer friend looked at my birth chart and winced. When I asked, she explained that my year was full of major transits, meaning major upheavals. Well she wasn't wrong. Until a few weeks ago I thought I'd been through enough upheavals for a year a significant birthday, awarded a PhD, a new novel published. . . but no, there was more to come in the form of an interview in Wales for a position as Creative Writing Fellow at Aberystwyth University. When I was offered the position, I gulped and said yes, then sat down suddenly and began to consider the implications. Moving from Hobart in Tasmania, across the world to Aberystwyth in Wales is a major upheaval, paling all else that has happened this year into insignificance. A new home, new schools, a new job, a new country to become familiar with. . . there's no doubt these are exciting times. Exciting, but frightening too, because like many of us, I am afraid of change.

Change is something we tend to yearn for and then fear as it approaches. It's a natural part of life but not easy to allow. Change is also the major catalyst for story, in fact without it we wouldn't have story, or at least our stories would be extremely dull. Major upheavals tend to signal those moments when a new story begins and are often linked to characters who are afraid to embrace this change - the reluctant Hero, as Vogler calls them. The nature of the change tends to depend on what wounds our characters (or ourselves) are carrying, as often the unfolding drama involves a healing of those wounds.

We all love wounded characters. A wound adds mystery, back story, tension and most importantly, the potential for healing, for as psychologist Jean Houston writes, a wound can be 'an invitation to our renaissance'. A character's wound may be a physical one in the form of a scar or a limp perhaps. Or it may be a psychological wound, a memory of an event that has isolated the character from the world, making him or her an outsider; perhaps the loss of a child or a spouse or some other injustice that is indigestible. This is something that is often evident in the cowboy story or detective genre where the protagonists are outsiders, running on the edge of law, isolated from society and family, and generally carrying a heavy chip on their shoulders. The isolation and pain is revealed through a bad habit, perhaps a drinking problem or perhaps an abrupt manner towards other characters. In more complex stories that carry a good deal of psychological exploration, the wound may be less clear, revealing itself through a number of memories fused together, the scar tissue creating a filter between the character and the world so that each action a character takes is really only a programmed reaction to the past. In story, the character arc often provides an opportunity to change or unravel one or more of these programmed reactions, and if not, it generally reveals the tragedy that occurs when we are unable to do this.

'In many cases in psychiatry,' wrote Jung, 'the patient who comes to us has a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. It is the patient's secret, the rock against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story, I have a key to the treatment.' The story that Jung refers to is one that even the patient may not be consciously aware of. It often resides deep in the unconscious, buried under layers of scar tissue. The process of uncovering this wound can be long and arduous, but it is necessary, for it is the clue, or as Jung says, 'the key' to psychic health. In Soulcraft, psychologist, Bill Plotkin writes that 'the wound does not necessarily stem from a single traumatic incident. Often, the wound consists of a pattern of hurtful events or a disturbing dynamic or theme in one or more important relationships.' This is the case with the two main characters in Flight which explores complex psychological patterns within the main character, Fern, and the man she learns to love, Adam.

For Adam, one aspect of his wound lies in the birth of his brother and the guilt Adam feels for being normal. Another aspect lies in the death of the father and the guilt Adam feels for his part in that tragedy, as well as the loss he felt, growing up without a father. Both of these wounds have created a series of reactions in Adam, sending him away from Tasmania and into the army, where he has tried to follow in his father's footsteps. And it is in the army that Adam wounds himself so deeply he can only withdraw from society and from his family, hiding in a basement in Sydney and attempting to drink himself into oblivion.

Adam's healing begins when he meets Fern who takes his attention away from himself. The healing continues with his return to Tasmania and his family, and then with his return to nature. Adam is of the earth, the wilderness feeds his soul and it is only in the wilderness when he has been brought back from the brink of death by Fern, that he can tell his story. In the telling, Adam makes it conscious and begins to live again, bit by bit, releasing the guilt that he is holding.

Fern's wounds are even more deeply layered. The story opens with her having retreated to an attic room where, like Adam, she is hiding from life. Fern is damaged by her childhood, by the callous treatment of her adoptive family and by the guilt she feels at being accused of trying to kill her father. Through the course of the story, Fern also uncovers pre-verbal wounds that occurred while she was in the womb and just after birth, the trauma of her birth father's violence towards her in his two attempts to kill her, and also the trauma of being abandoned by her birth mother. Then, as the story unfolds, Fern discovers that she has another connection to her birth father, one that reaches back through many past lives and involves a repeating pattern of abuse.

Psychologist and physical healer, Jean Achterberg, writes that 'in traditional shamanic cultures, healing bears little relationship to the remission of physical symptoms. It refers, rather, to becoming whole or in harmony with the community, the planet and certainly ones private circumstances.' This attitude differs greatly from allopathic medicine, where symptoms are almost always treated before causes, and for which healing generally means, a 'return to normal where normal is culturally defined by some measuring standard created by society's members.' Achterberg cites a remark made by an Indian Medicine Man: 'With white man's medicine you only get back to the way you were before; with Indian medicine, you can get even better.' In a sense then, the writing of Flight was an exploration of Indian medicine, an attempt to truly heal a condition (Fern's depression), rather than treat the symptoms.

At the beginning of the novel, Fern has lost most of her self, something that in shamanic tradition is considered a serious illness, leading eventually to depression, damage to the immune system, cancer and many other disorders. Soul retrieval is a major element in shamanic healing. In order to retrieve a fragment of the soul, shamans must travel into the upper world or underworld with the help of their power animal/s and find it, sometimes having to coax it back, sometimes having to fight for it. These fragments may have left the soul in shock at a violent action or been taken by another person. As the story progresses, Fern is able to retrieve a number of parts of her self, and in the process realises how much she had lost.

In Greek myth, the wise and gentle Chiron the centaur is a wounded healer. When he is wounded by a poisoned arrow he is forced to live the rest of his life in great pain. Because of this he studies the healing arts, finding many remedies that heal others but none that take away his own suffering. In shamanic culture, prospective shamans generally become very ill, and then must agree to become shamans before they can heal. It is only in experiencing pain that we are able to heal others. Joan Halifax writes that 'the true attainment of the shaman's vocation as healer, seer, and visionary comes about through the experience of self-wounding, death and rebirth.' This is the process that Fern must undergo. In the novel, Shamesh tells Fern about the initiation process, which is a process of clearing the dense parts of the self. When Fern asks why the process is so slow he tells her that she will become a healer but must first experience the process herself. Fern only accepts the possibility of becoming a healer towards the end of the story, when she uses her hands to heal Adam and remembers that she had done this before. Towards the end of Flight, Fern studies homeopathy and herbalism, 'trying to understand the patterns of illness, trying to see its source which is so often beyond the physical'. She says, 'I have understood that true healing is not something you can do with a closed heart. It must reach deep into the spirit and work its magic from within. True healing changes a person, clears scar tissue and the patterns of reaction that have formed their character. It is not an easy path to choose.

According to Houston, we must be 'willing to release our old stories and to become the vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time.' When Fern tries to tell her story to Adam, she realises that each story is linked to another and she feels weighed down by back stories, wishing she could sever them all. Through the course of Flight, both Fern and Adam reluctantly and painfully release their own stories. By the end of the novel, they are creating a new story, both together and individually. Accepting change provides us with the opportunity to let go of an old story and create something new. It enables us to learn something new, integrate that knowledge, and in the process heal an old wound or wounds. No doubt I will need to repeatedly remind myself of this over the next few months, as change picks me (and my family) up and hurls us across the world to beautiful Wales and to a new story.

For other posts on characterisation see:

Digging Deep: Writing Character

Catharsis and Transformation in Story

Motivating Character

Juggling Archetypes: Heroes, Villains and Tricksters

And there is more on The Wound in Story as Therapy: Healing the Wound

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Writing Myth

'A myth is a story that is true on the inside but not the outside.'

Joseph Campbell

As my new novel begins to form I'm wondering how I might use myth to enrich the story and deepen the themes - something I did extensively in my previous novel, Flight. This has inspired me to consider once again what it is about myth that is so fundamental to humanity and whether or not it is still relevant in our world today. It is myth that forms the basis of most cultures' storytelling, so it has a number of functions that are above and beyond simple entertainment. Myth is an intuitive way of interpreting the world around us but to a large extent it has now been superseded by the current rational method of understanding and measuring reality. For me, myth contains vital truths and yet in our modern world, it has come to be defined as something untrue, as seen in our phrase, 'exploding the myth'. As Karen Armstrong writes, 'we have developed a scientific view of history; we are concerned with what actually happened. But in the pre-modern world, when people wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an event had meant.' So it seems to me that in our modern tendency to confuse fact with truth we are in danger of losing meaning. 'A myth is true,' says Armstrong, 'because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed.'

Jung wrote that 'myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science.'  In The Mythic Journey, Jungian psychologists, Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke wrote that 'myths have the mysterious capacity to contain and communicate paradoxes, allowing us to see through, around and over the dilemma to the heart of the matter.' Mythologist, Joseph Campbell wrote that 'myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.' While Christopher Vogler applied definitions of myth to contemporary stories, insisting that all stories are sacred, all have the capacity to heal and all mirror the structure of their larger counterparts, the mythic heroic stories.

In The Artists Way, Julie Cameron writes that 'creativity cannot be comfortably quantified in intellectual terms', while Catherine Ann Jones believes that 'to write from one part of your self, the logical mind, results in a fragmented story as well as a fragmented life'. Certainly for me the writing of Flight was not an simply an intellectual process but one which intuitively drew upon the mystery behind creativity. A few years ago as I was writing Flight, I found to my surprise, that I had been unconsciously using mythic elements, drawing from both the content and the patterns of ancient stories. Once I had recognised that this was happening I was able to make the process conscious and develop certain elements in order to explore the themes that were important to me. In the end it was myth that gave shape and depth to my novel and it was myth that helped me to understand what I was writing about and why I needed to write it. Consequently, Flight is heavily laden with references to myth and fairytale; from Sleeping Beauty to the myth of Cassandra, something I will explore more further in a later post. It's themes and plot were drawn from common elements in myth such as the curse or prophecy, mirroring in many ways the classic patterns of heroic myth as identified by Otto Rank. Fern is born to a powerful man, her birth is accompanied by a prophecy, she is abandoned and brought up by strangers, unaware of her identity. As an adult she must seek her father and confront him, potentially bringing about his death in order for the natural cycles of change to continue unimpeded. And finally, the structure of Flight mirrors in many ways the stages of story that Joseph Campbell identified, something I discuss briefly below but will explore further in a later post.

Campbell not only identified a common pattern in the structure of mythic stories but also interpreted what this pattern meant, socially, psychologically and to a certain extent, spiritually. Of all stories, Campbell believes it is the myth that speaks to us most strongly. And of all myths it is the universal story of the quest to find the essence of self, that appeals most to a modern day humanity in search of meaning in a world where meaning and identity has moved its focus from the group to the individual. In the past, and primarily for survival purposes, the individual was first and foremost a part of society. Exile was a life-threatening break with existence and therefore the worst possible punishment. Yet exile (physical or psychological), is also the necessary first step on the heroic quest, a breaking free of the known or ordinary world and a stepping into the unknown. In the opening to Flight, Fern has unknowingly taken the first step in the quest, exiling herself from family and society 

The reward for this quest is self-knowledge, but the true hero will also ultimately return to society bringing back that which he/she has learned, and thus enriching the community. However, unlike fairy tales, which almost invariably finish with a version of 'and they lived happily ever after', myths embrace the possibility of tragedy and change. In myth, endings are not fixed and new quests are often necessary, the hero may die on his quest, or like Gilgamesh, return triumphant from the Underworld, only to have the elixir for eternal life slip through his fingers. Sometimes the hero may find that the metaphorical gold he or she found, has turned to dust, or like Buddha, he or she may return with their treasure, only to be faced with the difficult task of telling a story that is beyond words. In Flight, Fern is given information, allies and tools that she must integrate and begin to use, in order to overcome the obstacles and dangers. In the end, Fern uses these rewards well and returns to society carrying this metaphorical gold.

Campbell emphasised the importance of metaphoric and poetic readings of myth, which allow for psychological and metaphysical interpretations that help us to map our development. Purely literal or rational interpretations of story create a dangerous black and white world in which dogma rules. So do our contemporary stories fill the spaces that myth once filled or have they lost something fundamental? Is it the stories that are depleted or simply the way that we read (see Reading Between The Lines)?  I don't know the answers to these questions but I do know that if we simply skate over the surface of stories we will forget how to measure them in anything but rational terms – the terms of logos. It is in the depths of story that the true lessons lie and it us up to us as writers to include the hidden truths of mythos in our stories in order to feed our readers and our selves on living stories that speak to us on many levels.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Where Truth Lies: Fact versus Fiction

'Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.'

Francis Bacon

In a novel, the reader is often interested in how much is true, while in a memoir, the reader wants to know how much is untrue. The line between fact and fiction is much finer than we imagine. When we assert the factual validity of our memories we often discover that a sibling, a friend or a parent remembers the same event quite differently. A few years ago, a mother and her adult daughter enrolled in one of my life writing classes in order to write a memoir about the daughter's turbulent teenage years. Both described the same events but from a different perspective. At one stage the daughter referred to a formative experience that had occurred in her early childhood when her mother had left her. The mother was shocked, because in reality she had only been away for one night, but in the daughter's mind it was an eternity. Of course, factually it is correct to call it one night, but the emotional truth lies elsewhere. There's a world of difference between truth and fact,' writes Maya Angelou. 'Fact tells us the data. . . but facts can obscure the truth'.

Psychotherapists also recognise the complexities of truth. In Other Lives, Other Selves, Roger Woolger states that 'for the therapist there is another kind of truth, psychic truth: that which is real for the patient.' Jung also maintained that clinical material does not have to be historically true so long as it is subjectively true and filled with meaning for the patient. For Jung, harmony is not achieved by realigning an individual to society, which is itself a human construct, but instead from realigning them to their self and hence, to life. It is in the inner or psychological journeys that we take and on which we send our characters, that an emotional, and perhaps a universal truth can be found.

In his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung writes about his his inner experiences, including his dreams and visions, referring to his life as one that he could only map or understand through recording its 'inner happenings', his encounters with the unconscious. 'In the end,' he says, 'the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one.' Like Jung, when I sat down to write, I discovered that I had embarked on my own inner journey, a journey of the soul. As I worked on my novel, I was surprised to discover that I was unconsciously writing about myself, drawing on my own past, my dreams and my numinous experiences and weaving them into a plot-driven fictional story.

John Singleton, in The Creative Writing Handbook, explores the relationship between memory and imagination and between autobiography and fiction. The autobiography he says, 'only translates the past' while fiction 'transforms' it. 'The vital force in this re-creative process is the imagination.' Autobiography, 'describes the self as already known, or explains the self as presently understood. While fiction, on the other hand explores the self as yet hidden, in the dark. . . Something secret is hitherto revealed which you sense you've known unconsciously all the time.' Transformation, then, is made more possible by stepping into fiction, if only because the writer then gives their imagination permission to work with memory and transform it, thereby allowing true self reflection, that which comes as a revelation and not simply an intellectual construct.

'All fiction is autobiography in disguise', wrote Catherine Anne Jones, in The Way of Story. This is certainly the case with Flight, though if I had written it as a memoir I would not have been able to grant myself permission to explore my own past and thus transform it, at least not with the freedom I found in fiction. It is difficult to say exactly how much of Flight is true in the factual sense of the word. Like Fern, I was born in Adelaide and adopted by a religious couple. The house I grew up in is the same as I depict in the novel. The adopted father, Richard, is almost identical to my own adopted father. I too lived in Sydney in an attic room and toyed with the idea of studying fashion design. The house Fern visits in Kettering, Tasmania, is a house I lived in for six years. These are factual truths and easily identified by those who know. There are other true events in the story that are not so easily identified as fact. The memories of childhood that I give Fern are all my own, as are the dreams and visions she has. Otherwise, the characters and events are fictional. Although fact and fiction are woven together throughout Flight, the themes are personal to me, as is Fern's psychological and spiritual journey. These are my truths, but they are also universal truths, referring back to a long tradition of storytelling that begins with humanity's first storytellers, the unnamed shamans, as well as to ancient myth, to Dante's Inferno, Goethe's Faust, Hesse's, Steppenwolf, Le Guin's Earthsea novels and Murakami's Kafka On The Shore, to name but a few.

In The Western Dreaming, John Carroll, in asking what truth is, looks at the roots of the word. 'When the Greeks designated truth by their word aleitheia, they built in a narrative. Truth is that which is a-lethe, not lethe, Lethe being the place of oblivion or forgetfulnes, and later the river running through the underworld. To drink the waters of this river was to extinguish memory. Oblivion is thus the natural human state, one in which individuals have forgotten what they know.' Carroll then makes a further connection, one that is vital in an age where post-modernism would deny the validity of truth. 'Moreover,' he writes, 'as English has picked up, to be without Truth is lethal, death in life, its condition that of lethargy, a weariness of spirit in which all vitality has drained away.' This is the condition of Fern as my novel, Flight opens. She has forgotten so much and lost so much of herself, that there is very little vitality left and she is told: 'If you do not take this journey you will die,'

A post modernist might say that it isn't possible to define truth, or at least that there are multiple truths. That truth is not fixed, but instead changes according to who is telling it and the context in which it is told. It changes too, according to the unique collection of filters each individual applies to their reading of a text. As Walter Truett-Anderson writes in The Truth About Truth, 'truth is made rather than found.' Yet below this slippery world of relative readings, I believe, like Joseph Campbell, that there is another world, a more stable one of universal truths and themes. Not tribal or dogmatic 'truths' that are socially constructed and create divisions but truths which are beyond divisions, beyond polarities. This, for me, is where truth lies. As a writer I can only approach it through metaphor, story itself being a metaphor for the journey of the soul, the journey to that truth which is beyond language. It is a journey that must be taken over and over. Factual truth has little bearing on this journey, which involves a seeing through of ideology, as well as the acceptance and subsequent release of constructed psychological truths, in order to receive a remembering of something deeper and more sustaining.

If there are truths which are absolute, there are also an indefinite number and colourful variety of paths to these truths. As Campbell warned, it is dangerous to believe in the paths as truths in themselves, creating dogmatic 'isms' that limit our perception and more often than not, cause great divisions. Dogma insists that the path itself is the only way to an inaccessible truth, establishing twists and turns and dead ends to keep the masses away from this profound realisation that the path is constructed, it is a map, not the truth itself. In contrast, the journey of the soul is an individual and a universal journey, each person finding their own way, with their own unique signposts to guide them. The path is not important, as Fern discovers in Flight. Fern's journey is not one any other character could take because like each of us, she has her own individual stories to deconstruct; stories that have arisen from a multitude of factors: genetic, experiential, environmental, historical and cultural. At the end of her journey, Fern is able to step beyond constructed truths and perceive once again a vital universal truth that enables connection and harmony and the innate knowledge that everything is one.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Juggling Archetypes: Heroes, Villains and Shapeshifters

'Archetypes are part of the universal language of storytelling, and a command of their energy is as essential to the writer as breathing.'

Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey

An understanding of archetypes is a useful tool for writers. Perhaps because archetypal characters have always inhabited our myths and fairy stories, they resonate deeply within our psyches. As Catherine Anne Jones writes in The Way of Story, 'if you can create a character which conveys a universal archetype, the collective will identify and respond more deeply to your story.' It is important, however, to ensure that what is produced is a character not a caricature. In fairy tales, which generally don't seek subtlety, archetypes are easy to identify and are often called by their archetypal names, such as Threshold Guardian or Wicked Step Mother. However in a novel our characters need to be more complex and often their role/s change as the story progresses, so it's generally best to develop our characters complexities before considering their archetypal roles. Psychologist, Robert Johnson describes real human beings as 'combinations of many types that join together to form one rich, inconsistent, many-faceted human personality.' To avoid creating one-dimensional caricatures, Christopher Vogler suggests in The Writer's Journey, that we look at the archetypes as 'flexible character functions rather than as rigid character types.' This way it is possible to see that a single character can encompass a range of archetypes through the course of the story, donning and changing masks as the story evolves.

The word archetype comes from the Greek roots, arche, meaning the first, and type, meaning imprint or pattern. According to mythologist, Joseph Campbell, each one of us embodies a range of archetypes and the pantheons of gods and goddesses found in ancient cultures, and in the myths and fairy tales passed down through history, are an expression of these archetypes, forming a kind of dynamic and ever changing map of the psyche. The post modernist idea that each of us is constructed of a number of selves interpreting the world and expressing themselves in many forms, is in a sense, a much older concept, drawn from esoteric theory which suggests that the unevolved human (most of us) is a mechanical being comprised of programmed conflicting selves. Campbell calls these selves archetypes and suggests that they express facets of the human personality. As with esoteric theory, this position is easy to differentiate from post modernism because he believes that within the harmonious balance of these archetypes lies a central archetype, or archetype of wholeness, a true or essential Self which is the goal or outcome of the individuation process.

In Awakening The Hero Within, Carol S Pearson refers to archetypes as 'inner guides' on our journey to Self. There are many archetypes but for the purpose of discussing the journey of the Hero (ourselves) she limits herself to listing twelve major archetypes: the Innocent, the Orphan, the Warrior, the Caregiver, the Seeker, the Destroyer, the Lover, the Creator, the Ruler, the Magician, the Sage and the Fool. Each, she says 'has a lesson to teach us and each presides over a stage of the journey'. While Pearson's archetypes are useful for a deep analysis of our characters and ourselves, Vogler's are probably more useful for understanding the dynamics of story. He lists the archetypes that are most frequently found in stories: Hero, Mentor, Threshold Guardian, Herald, Shapeshifter, Shadow/Villain, Ally and Trickster. Of these archetypes it is probably the hero that we are most familiar with. Drawing on Jung's idea of a true or essential Self, Vogler suggested that 'the Hero archetype represents the ego's search for identity and wholeness. In the process of becoming complete, integrated human beings, we are all Heroes facing internal guardians, monsters and helpers. . . All the villains, tricksters, lovers, friends and foes of the Hero can be found inside ourselves. The psychological task we all face is to integrate these separate parts into one complete, balanced entity.'

In order to illustrate how it is possible to explore archetypes through our characters, I'll use a few abbreviated examples from my recent novel, Flight, which contains complex archetypal characters with clear character arcs, while drawing heavily on myth and fairytale. For those who haven't yet read it the information on archetypes should be useful anyway. Also, the geographical restrictions on Flight will be lifted soon, so readers outside of Australia and New Zealand will be able to access it. 

The Mentor is a guide or teacher and a giver of gifts, sometimes of this world, sometimes not. Vogler writes that 'mentor figures stand for the hero's highest aspirations . . . In the anatomy of the human psyche, Mentors represent the Self, the God within us, the aspect of personality that is connected with all things.' Fern has a number of Mentors who give her guidance and sometimes tools she can use to protect herself and to learn more. Ultimately though, in her journey of remembering, Fern becomes her own mentor, re-integrating that aspect of herself, so that in the end, she knows intuitively how to defeat her father.

According to Vogler, 'Herald characters issue challenges and announce the coming of significant change'. In Flight, there are a number of characters who at various times act as Heralds, delivering the Call to Adventure, while in a sense another Herald is simply the impossible situation Fern finds herself in, stuck in an attic while her house mates move out. In the end though, it is Shamesh who is the most important Herald, bridging both the physical and metaphysical worlds and compelling the reluctant Fern to begin her journey.

Threshold Guardians are like the demonic figures found around the doors of cathedrals that act as obstacles for those unworthy to enter. According to Vogler, their function is to test the heroes preparedness for the journey. There are a number of thresholds guardians in Flight who attempt to stop Fern from continuing her journey, but the most effective Threshold Guardian is Fern herself. It is her own fear, depression and uncertainty that stops Fern so she find a way of sneaking past, outwitting or overcoming these internal guardians.

An Ally usually travels with the hero. Vogler writes that they 'do mundane tasks but also serve the important function of humanizing the heroes, adding extra dimensions to their personalities, or challenging them to be more open and balanced'. One of the most memorable allies in film is Shrek's irritating but beloved friend, Donkey. In Flight, it is Adam who is Fern's major ally. He travels with her, providing his physical strength, his knowledge of the wilderness, and ultimately his love, which sustains Fern and gives her the strength to face down her father.

Vogler writes that 'Shapeshifters change appearance or mood, and are difficult for the hero and the audience to pin down. They may mislead the hero or keep her guessing, and their loyalty or sincerity is often in question.' There are a number of minor shapeshifters in Flight, including Adam, but it is Fern's father Eric who is the main Shapeshifter, with his frequently changing character and moods. Impossible to pin down, he confuses Fern, who knows he is dangerous yet wants to trust him. Eric's shapeshifting goes beyond his physical manifestation, into the metaphysical world, where Fern is confronted with some of his manifestations in past lives. As the story progresses, Fern discovers that she is also a Shapeshifter, in the sense that she too moves between worlds and like Eric, has many manifestations of the same soul.

According to Jungian psychologists, we deny archetypes at our peril, for if one aspect of ourselves is buried or pushed aside, its power grows, and it becomes a Shadow. Often the journey of a character is to reintegrate or rebalance one or more of the shadow aspects within them. In Flight, it is Eric who is the Shadow, representing what Vogler describes as the 'energy of the dark side, the unexpressed, unrealized, or rejected aspects of something'. Eric represents the masculine, but in its shadow form. He is a successful businessman, immensely powerful but ruthless, arrogant and greedy. In a sense Eric is Fern's shadow self, as is often the case with villains in stories. The Shadow is the monster in the centre of the labyrinth, that which we fear and deny, but it can also represent positive qualities within us that we also deny. Fern has closed her heart to life in order not to be hurt, so lives in a shadow world, frightened and passive, immobile and shut down. She must reclaim her feminine power and access her intuitive self. But she has also rejected the masculine, represented in its more positive form by Adam, and in its shadow form, by her father, Eric. Unconsciously, Fern is seeking the balance that Jung referred to as Mysterium Coniunctionais, the inner marriage of the anima (feminine element of a man) and the animus (masculine element of a woman). In order to find harmony, a balance must be sought, and more often than not this means a confrontation with the shadow self, which is exactly what Fern is faced with in Flight.

While archetypes are useful to apply to our characters they are also easily applied to our own lives. According to Vogler, we are all the Heroes (albeit often reluctantly) of our lives, acting as characters in stories whose plot points we may not even be aware of. As writers, we all recognise the archetypes that help us and hinder us along the way: the Mentors, the Allies, the Villains and of course the Threshold Guardians, in the form of publishers, agents, a lack of time perhaps, fear of failure, or simply the certain knowledge that we're in for a long haul with no certainty of success. Recognising these archetypes within ourselves helps us to use them well, to trick them when necessary and ultimately to overcome our limitations as writers.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Motivating Character

'We must look at the intentionality of the characters and where they are heading, for they are the main influence upon the shape of stories.

James Hillman, Healing Fictions

For many of us (myself included), life consists of a series of reactions to the past, reactions which exist in the present and hence form our future. Unless we consciously seek to unravel the tangle of influences within us, we remain mechanical creatures, programmed by past events, by the people in our lives, and by the ideologies that we embrace, often unconsciously. The first step to unraveling this tangle is to see that there is a tangle in the first place. After that we can begin exploring what motivates our actions, what lies beneath the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Perhaps this is why strong, plausible characterisation is so fundamental to story.

To write stories well we need to understand character; not just what characters looks like, or how they act, but what motivates them. Why do they do what we do? What drives them? Why are they driven? What has formed them? These are basic questions that often reveal unexpected and richly rewarding answers. According to Jung, it is character that drives plot, not plot that drives character. And in The Way of Story, Catherine Anne Jones writes that 'it is the inner psychological state of the main character which fuels and drives the external plot'. Plot then, is secondary to character. Certainly in my own writing process this is the case; this is how I have always written, allowing the story to form around the characters. It is where I find the links with my own life and development, and where I attempt to write a 'living' story. I have found it vital to surrender to the process of writing and trust that a story will emerge; rich with character and complexity. To plot a story before it is written and then force the characters to act like puppets within the plot, is more often than not a recipe for unmotivated action and 'dead' implausible stories. As a writer it is playing it safe, refusing to respond to the call of adventure that signals the journey of story.

The source of a character's motivation often lies hidden within the early patterns of childhood, in the wounds and blessings that have formed a person. In The Writing Book, Kate Grenville warns against an over emphasis on motivation, saying that it can create characters that are 'too neatly motivated and too one-dimensional'. I don't agree. As in life, a three-dimensional, plausible character should be motivated, not by a single factor but by a number of factors, not all of them conscious. He or she should not only act, but also react to people, places and events, and these actions and reactions should have a convincing weight that carries and directs the story. When creating a three-dimensional character, I look for the factors and sometimes the patterns that motivate that character, and at the psychological reasons for that motivation (why they are motivated). I ask myself questions. What does my character want? What is stopping him or her from getting it? The answers to these questions can be found both externally (a character might want a new job) and internally (a character might want to be understood, or want to make a difference). Fusing the answers to these questions with the factors that motivate a character, helps to create conflict, a fundamental element in story.

Conflict is found on three levels. Firstly, from something unavoidable in the external world; an earthquake, for example, or the loss of a job. Secondly, from tension between characters, a disagreement with an employer or a power struggle between father and son. And lastly, from internal tensions within a major character, such as the fear of change, a deep sense of self loathing, or an unexpressed love. Internal tension is a strong generator of conflict and without it all the external tension in the world will feel hollow. As Robert McKee writes in Story, 'the closest circle of antagonism in the world of a character is his own being: feelings and emotions, mind and body, all or any of which may or may not react from one moment to the next the way he expects. As often as not, we are our own worst enemies.' Conflict generates story and within story lies the keys to the change and development needed to create a satisfying character arc.

As mentioned in a previous post, the outer passage of a story is the plot, while the inner passage of a story is the character arc. The outer passage the costume, the inner passage the essence. It is in the inner journey that the character uncovers the fragments that motivate him or her. This is the case in Flight, as Fern must search the past in order to find the motivating factors that have forced her to act in certain ways. It is within the flashbacks to her childhood and the visions of past lives, that the clues and motivations to Fern's character are provided. While not all stories involve a character arc, most do (more on this in a later post). Readers generally want to see the protagonist learning something about themselves. It is not a new self that is sought but a healthier, more knowledgeable self. Perhaps a self who can come to some acceptance of his or her circumstances, or a self who is able to reintegrate into society because of what he or she has learned. A short story might simply show a moment of epiphany or self realisation and leave the reader to imagine its potential, but in a novel there is generally a longer time line, so when a character learns something about themselves there is the opportunity to reveal to the reader the change that this knowledge brings. However, this change should come about gradually, otherwise the characterisation will necessarily be weak and the story formulaic.

Jung defines individuation as a coming to self hood or self realisation. In The Undiscovered Self, he writes passionately and urgently of the need for individuals to resist the collective forces of society, saying that to do this we must face our fear of the duality of the human psyche, in other words we must accept our shadow selves. It is in the inner structure of the story, the character arc, that we can see the process of individuation at work. Individuation, or the Hero's Journey, as Campbell would call it (more on this in a later post), is simply another word for a process that is as old as humanity - a journey of the soul or, as some would prefer to call it, a psychological journey. As writers and readers, perhaps we are seeking through story an experience of connection, a sense of commonality that can be discovered beneath the surface differences that appear to divide us from each other. Perhaps in some ways we use story to explore our own lives and the themes that move us. And ultimately, perhaps following the arc of a character in a story enables us to identify and understand the motivating factors in our own reactions and from this knowledge ultimately begin to act in more conscious manner.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/