The Theory and Practice of the Journey Story: Part Three

Here’s something I’ve said hundreds of times in the creative writing classes I’ve taught over the years: A character without a past doesn’t have much of a present, and certainly has no future. You could write this: John walked into his office with a cup of coffee in his hand. But you have not created a character. You’ve got a name, nothing more, something paper thin. On the other hand, you could write this: The day after his mother’s funeral, John walked into his office with a cup of coffee in his hand. You suddenly have a character with the beginnings of a past. I’ve heard the writer Josh Weil say that a character should have a wound and a want. A wound, something from their past that they must address. A want, perhaps growing from their wound, something to send them toward the future. So to return to our plot outline for the journey story Action Background Development Climax Ending The background, creating characters who have a past, is vitally important. There are other parts of the background that are also important, and I think you would do well to be able to answer those famous questions from journalism: Who What Where When Why and How. Why do people go on journeys? Or, more to the point, why do people go on journeys in stories? The Quest is the most common reason. If you look at the list of stories from a couple of posts ago, a majority of them are quests of one kind or another. And the goal is concrete and specific. In “The Father,” the...

The Theory and Practice of the Journey Story: Part Two

To continue with my posts about the Theory and Practice of the Journey Story. In my workshop at Winter Wheat, I’m going to ask everyone to take a piece of paper (or open a document on their laptop) and list five journeys they’ve taken in their lives. These could be long journeys (to the Grand Canyon) or they could be short journeys (a trip to see Grandma, or a boyfriend). I might even ask everyone to list one imagined journey, either fantastical or simply desired – a Jules Verne style Journey to the Center of the Earth, or a journey to Tuscany during the grape harvest. And I might ask everyone to list the most amazing journey someone in their family ever took. I want everyone to come up with a few kernels from which a complete work of fiction might grow. And sometimes family stories can be a great source for fiction. From time to time, I’ll discuss books that have been useful to me in writing, since I want to make sure that I give credit where credit is due. And the next part of this post comes from a book I like, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. There’s a plot outline in Bird by Bird that works very well for the Journey story. It goes ABDCE: Action Background Development Climax Ending I’ll take on the first point of this outline in this post. Beginning with action is one of the most effective ways to start a short story. It’s certainly not the only way, but it’s one that is certainly used frequently. You begin the story...

The Theory and Practice of the Journey Story: Part One

I’m running a workshop/presentation in a few weeks at the Winter Wheat Festival of Writing, sponsored by Mid-American Review. The festival is a lot of fun, with workshops, panel discussions, readings, a book fair, and lots of good talk about writing. If you can make it, please do. More information, including how to register and sign up, can be found here: http://casit.bgsu.edu/midamericanreview/winter-wheat/ My presentation is going to be on how to write a journey story, and I’m going to blog here the elements of the presentation over the next few weeks. I plan to break the journey story into components and analyze how it works, and I hope that this will help you write your own. The journey story is the most traditional of forms.  It is at the center of Gilgamesh, the most ancient story known.  It is at the heart of The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote and many other classics of world literature, it is the plot of every space exploration movie, and it lives on in the contemporary short story and novel. Why is it a particularly pleasing form for fiction? It seems to fall naturally into Aristotle’s basic requirements for a story, that it have a beginning, middle, and end. Leaving is the beginning, adventures and misadventures form the middle, and arrival at the destination (or death) is the end. In the journey story, ordinary life is left behind. Something story-worthy is almost inevitably happening. A journey form naturally invites the invention of scenes, situations, conflicts. Most journey stories require a destination. If you have a character simply hitting the road, without some...