I would like to suggest a rather simple exercise based on this. Take one of the submissions from the list and look for the hero. Do a little analysis: how does this hero serve for audience identification, what growth do they achieve, how about their action, do they exemplify sacrifice, and what is the death that they deal with -- and how do they deal with it?
Don't forget to look for the character flaws...
So this exercise is simply to analyze the use of the hero in a submission.
Another exercise, slightly more difficult, is to consider a character that you may be working on. Could they be a hero? If they were, how would you provide for audience identification? What kind of growth would they be likely to achieve? What kind of actions would they take? What sort of situation would make them sacrifice themselves -- and for what or whom? What kind of death do they need to experience?
Perhaps one more exercise? Pick a number from 1 to 6...
1. "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." F. Scott FitzGerald (1945)
2. "The greatest obstacle to being heroic, is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt, and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and went to be obeyed." Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)
3. "Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes." Victor Hugo (1862)
4. "No hero to me is the man who, by easy shedding of his blood, purchases fame: my hero is he who, without death, can win praise." Martial, Epigrams (A.D. 86)
5. "We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod." Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1766)
6. "A hero is a man who does what he can." Romain Rolland (1904)
[Quotations taken from The International Thesaurus of Quotations by Rhoda Thomas Tripp ISBN 0-06-091382-7]
Okay, you have a quotation. Now consider what light this may shed on the hero. What does this quote say about the psychological ego of the hero, the desire for identity, the search for distinctiveness and self expression? What does it say about the dramatic functions of the hero:
- audience identification - growth - action - sacrifice - dealing with death (symbolic or actual) - character flaws
(Having considered this quote and a hero, you may want to put them in a situation, a scene, a boiling cauldron that will test what your hero is made of and show us the results...could be a story, a poem, or something else:-)
"Billy, in one of his nice new sashes, Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes; Now, although the room grows chilly, I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy." Ruthless Rhymes [1901]. Tender-Heartedness Harry Graham
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Re: Writer's Journey (Part Two)
Date: 2008-02-01 05:06 am (UTC)Don't forget to look for the character flaws...
So this exercise is simply to analyze the use of the hero in a submission.
Another exercise, slightly more difficult, is to consider a character that you may be working on. Could they be a hero? If they were, how would you provide for audience identification? What kind of growth would they be likely to achieve? What kind of actions would they take? What sort of situation would make them sacrifice themselves -- and for what or whom? What kind of death do they need to experience?
Perhaps one more exercise? Pick a number from 1 to 6...
1. "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." F. Scott FitzGerald (1945)
2. "The greatest obstacle to being heroic, is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt, and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and went to be obeyed." Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)
3. "Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes." Victor Hugo (1862)
4. "No hero to me is the man who, by easy shedding of his blood, purchases fame: my hero is he who, without death, can win praise." Martial, Epigrams (A.D. 86)
5. "We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod." Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1766)
6. "A hero is a man who does what he can." Romain Rolland (1904)
[Quotations taken from The International Thesaurus of Quotations by Rhoda Thomas Tripp ISBN 0-06-091382-7]
Okay, you have a quotation. Now consider what light this may shed on the hero. What does this quote say about the psychological ego of the hero, the desire for identity, the search for distinctiveness and self expression? What does it say about the dramatic functions of the hero:
- audience identification
- growth
- action
- sacrifice
- dealing with death (symbolic or actual)
- character flaws
(Having considered this quote and a hero, you may want to put them in a situation, a scene, a boiling cauldron that will test what your hero is made of and show us the results...could be a story, a poem, or something else:-)
"Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy."
Ruthless Rhymes [1901]. Tender-Heartedness
Harry Graham