The Road to ArmageddonAn Interview with Summer H. Hanford Check it Out: The Hero’s Journey Study Guide Subscribe to our Newsletter How do you craft a journey worthy of an apocalyptic showdown? Epic Fantasy author Summer H. Hanford reveals the art of preparing characters for those fate-of-the-world battles that define the genre. Through insights from…

Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s JourneyStage Six: Approach to the Innermost Cave Subscribe to our Newsletter Remember how we’ve occasionally side-eyed Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey? Well, today we fully roast this bewildering mess, starting with his “Approaching the Innermost Cave” stage, which is the part of the story where the protagonist(s) prepare to face their…

An Interview with Kristen Tate Check it Out: The Hero’s Journey Study Guide Subscribe to our Newsletter Looking for help with your novel’s middle section? While countless craft books offer guidance on crafting gripping openings and satisfying endings, the challenging second act often gets overlooked. In this workshop episode, we dive deep with freelance editor…

Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s JourneyStage Six: Tests, Allies, and Enemies Subscribe to our Newsletter What really happens between “accepting the call” and facing the big bad? Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey skims through this crucial story phase with vague talk of Tests, Allies, and Enemies. But Kim and Renee aren’t settling for that. Armed with…

In today’s episode we take a break from discussing and analyzing creative fiction to examining possibly one of the most important, and certainly most stressful, nonfiction projects in a young person’s life: writing their college application essay.

Our guest, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Martha Mendoza, has been helping high school seniors with these essays for over a decade and is one of the organizers in her local school district’s annual essay mentoring program. In our discussion she talks about what makes these essays so difficult, gives advice for how seniors might choose topics and how we, as writers, might help a student out.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.

How do you shift your book’s hero from their nice, cozy ordinary world into the adventure? According to Christopher Vogler’s, The Writer’s Journey, you have them answer the call. In this episode we discuss the various forms the Call to Adventure can take, and also why, even the most willing hero must “refuse the call.”

To illustrate how this works in a non-movie example, we turn to John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society that fulfills both these requirements in clever and witty ways. Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday.

Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey The Hero’s Journey Study Guide Subscribe to our Newsletter Does the mystery genre follow the Hero’s Journey? According to historical mystery writer Colette Clark. Not so much.  Join us for our discussion about how Colette structures her novels and figures out who the murder is (sometime just before she finishes…

If you have read even just the first part of a blog post on the Hero’s Journey, you know the hero starts off in the Ordinary World before embarking on their epic adventure. But the Ordinary World is more than a boring place the hero is itching to leave. 

According to Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey, there’s a lot of that needs to be included in the Ordinary World section of the story. The writer must establish an interesting and sympathetic main character, set the mood and expectations, establish what’s at stake, and squeeze in backstory (using graceful exposition) and theme. 

That’s a lot to unpack, but we somehow manage in this podcast episode! There are many, many more subheadings in this very loooong chapter, but as we point out, most don’t need to be there.