Words to Write by

Just when you thought you had the Hero's Journey all figured out, we're back with a surprising twist! In our previous episode, we confidently declared that the "Road Back Home" stage was the climax of the journey. But according to Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey," we may have jumped the gun. It turns out that the true climax lies in the "Resu...

Think you know where your hero's journey is headed? Think again. We're diving into the Ordeal - that gut-punch moment some people still confuse with the Climax (spoiler alert: they're not the same thing, folks). This episode had us playing cartographer through the wonderfully labyrinthine (read: headache-inducing) chapters of Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. Beca...

Remember family road trips? When you're finally past the halfway point and it's nothing but "Are we there yet?" from the backseat? That's where we are in Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" - six more stages to go on his Hero's Journey roadmap, and in this episode we're hitting two big ones. First up is "Rewards," where our h...

Horror stories and the hero's journey - a match made in hell? In this insightful workshop episode, we talk with award-winning horror writer Tim Waggoner to explore his plotting techniques. Tim shares strategies for keeping everyday protagonists actively engaged during the challenging Ordeal stage as they fight for survival. As a bonus, Tim discusses his other cool writing gig: adapting horror...

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 her Summer God Adventure series, Hanford uncovers the delicate balance of building tension, raising stakes, and keeping readers riveted as heroes ready themselves for their ultima...

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 greatest order (Which is somehow not the story’s climax... we're as confused as you are.) Despite...

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 Kristen Tate, author of the new craft book Novel Study , who reveals why middles become "saggy" and explains why so many write...

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 John Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society (and ditching those tired old Hollywood examples), they'll show you...

After the hero finally accepts the call, it's onto the next stage, crossing the threshold, provided they have some helpful mentor guidance. Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.

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, journalist Martha Mendoza, has been helping high school seniors with these essays for over a decade and is one of the organizers i...

How do you shift your book's hero from their nice, cozy ordinary world into the adventure. According to Christopher Vogler in his book,  The Writer's Journey , you have them answer the call. In this episode we discuss the various forms that the call stage can take, and also why, even the most willing hero must "refuse the call."  To illustrate how this works in a non-movie exam...

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 her first draft).  Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.

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 th...

In our regular podcast, we’ve successfully made it through all of Vogler’s archetypes (from his book, The Writer’s Journey ). Armed with this knowledge we decided to see if we could identify the archetypes in Kim’s novel, What our Comeback Tour is Slaying Monsters (coming out this October). Along the way, Renee “learned more about boy bands then I’ve known in my whole life!” Remember, we have a Wr...

Are we done with archetypes now? Almost! There are just three more archetype chapters in Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey , and we have issues with two of them.  The Shadow feels more like a force than a character and anyone from a legit supporting actor to unnamed gofer can be labeled an Ally. The one archetype we did like was the Trickster, whose actions and words can br...

What if writing the first draft was the easy part? Every week on serial writing websites like Royal Road , hundreds of authors will upload 5, 10, 20,000, or more words of their latest saga. Many of these magnum opuses are LitRPG, a genre that's huge on Kindle Unlimited but pretty much unknown to most readers. In today's workshop we talk to LitRPG author and podcaster, Madix, about LitRPG...

Everyone who's read a blog post on the Hero's Journey can spot the Hero and Mentor archetypes, but what about a Threshold Guardian, or Herald, or elusive Shapeshifter?  Are these actual story archetypes or just personifications of the early stages in the Hero's Journey? Do they play a significant role in modern narratives? And just how sexist is Christopher Vogler, in his book The W...

In response to Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousands Faces, aka The Hero's Journey, folklorists and academics (many of them female) countered some of the major steps and archetypes that Campbell claimed were universal. In today's workshop we explore the some of the ideas of The Heroine's Journey with author and academic, Elana Gomel. Using her just published dark fantasy Nine...

The Mentor -- Arguably the second most identified archetype from The Hero's Journey (after the eponymous hero). In his book, The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler has a lot to say about the mentor: why are they important, what do they do, what kinds of mentors are there, and do you actually need one in your story (okay, the last one might just be us). In this episode, Kim and Renee di...

Last episode we explored the concept of the hero archetype as presented in Christopher Volger's The Writer's Journey. But analysis is one thing. We wanted to see if we could use the ideas to create/develop an actual protagonist. Renee's has a Frankenstein story idea that she so badly wants to read that she's willing to write it herself. In this workshop she applies Vogler'...

Whether every protagonist is a hero is open to debate (and debate it we do in this episode) but it we can agree that the vast majority of protagonists in genre fiction are heroes (if not always heroic). In today’s episode we go deep into Christopher Volger’s chapter on the hero archetype from his book, The Writer’s Journey .  To explore his ideas in we’re referencing The Last Unicorn by Peter S. B...

Last episode we mapped all 12 steps of Christopher Volger's Hero's Journey (as presented in his book, The Writer's Journey) to J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit. As you can see from Renee's show notes , they lined up pretty well. But what about a story not written by a British scholar steeped in mythology and folklore? For this workshop, we put Kim's soon-to-be-published novel, Ou...

We've officially started our new book, Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. And boy is there a lot in the first two chapters! First (or first after Kim's rant) is an overview of the Hero's Journey, yes, dear listener, we cover all twelve steps. And as examples for those steps we turn to... The Hobbit (the OG book version, not the movie). After that, we move to archet...

We're on the last chapter of Judith Barrington's book, Writing Your Memoir: practical advice on critique groups, plus the dos and don't of giving and getting feedback. It's practical and useful and everything thing we've come to expect from Barrington.  And before we close the book on memoir, we give our final takes on the book along with what chapters we think are mores u...

Your memoir is about you (obviously) but it’s not just about you. In this episode we cover Judith Barrington’s chapter on how (and why) to bring events from the real world into your memoir. And in our writing exercise we try it out by remembering our own lives during a moment in history. Then it’s on to the penultimate chapter in Writing the Memoir   where Barrington has some writer self-care advi...