So you think you have an original story idea. Um, think again. Christopher Booker, who took thirty-eight years to write The Seven Basic Plots, subtitled, Why We Tell Stories, boiled down all the plots to these: Overcoming the Monster Rags to Riches The Quest Voyage and Return Comedy Tragedy Rebirth Every story plot derives from one of these themes, according to Booker. I can see how a writer could manipulate her plot to fit into one of these, except maybe Riches to Rags, but that’s tragedy then, isn’t it? I won’t bust your bubble, but whatever storyline you are working on, someone has done it before―thousands of times. Now if that isn’t a downer, I don’t know what is. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to create something different, knowing it's impossible.  There are dozens of books on how to write a novel. Many teach structure: In The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell’s narrative arc, refined by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey, the hero’s journey ...

Welcome to March, dear readers, and another month of writing adventures. We'll be exploring script writing a bit (who doesn't want their novel to become a movie?) and examining the differences between book and movie plots, which tend to have dissimilar story arcs. It's perhaps important to first understand the monomyth or hero's journey concept upon which so many modern movies are based. Joseph Campbell held that numerous myths from different times and places share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  You can read more about it at Wikipedia which has a comprehensive essay on Campbell's work. There are also many YouTube videos including this TEDx production:   On Thursday, author, artist, and actor, Daniel Donche will share his expertise on how the hero's journey is important to screen writing, and can even improve the plotting in your novel if consciously applied to characters and plots at k...