It doesn't feel at all like fall just yet where I live in northern California, so to help me remember it's already the middle of October, I'm giving away 2 copies of my Christmas novella, A Heavenly Christmas in Hometown (which is also a full-length play if your church is looking for a Christmas program). Just leave a comment to be entered in the drawing.~
The posts this week have been interesting and informative, and I can tell by your comments that you agree. But quite frankly I wasn't sure how to follow. So I'm going to make this True Confession Friday. I've heard the term archetypes, but before Bonnie's illuminating post I couldn't have carried on an intelligent conversation about what an archetype is and how to apply it to my writing. I checked the indexes (or indices if you prefer) of my favorite writing books and couldn't find the topic in a single one. So I googled the term. Now I can pronounce it correctly (ark-i-typ), give you a list of the most common archetypes used in literature, and possibly give you a literary example of most of them.
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That's True Confession #1. True Confession #2 is that I heaved a sigh of relief when I read Karen Shravemade's comment to Bonnie's post on Wednesday. I love that we trust one another on this blog enough to admit what we don't know or understand, and that any number of people -- readers and writers of this blog alike -- will gladly teach what they know without passing judgment on the one asking. Megan Sayer's comment to Karen's comment is a perfect example. By the way, I'm adding Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey to the next book order I place and I'll read it as soon as it arrives.
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What sprang to mind as I thought about all I don't know when it comes to the mechanics of writing, for lack of a better term, is that I tend to believe a writer at heart employs by instinct those techniques and aspects of novel writing s/he perhaps can't even define. Maybe she couldn't lecture about the finer points of archetypes and character arcs, subtext, the difference between narrative climax and dramatic climax, or catharsis as it applies to literature. But s/he knows how to tell a gripping story that includes every one of those elements. If we're writers, we're readers, and we absorb more than we perhaps realize about what it takes to write a good novel.
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I love the environment we've created, with your help, at NovelMatters. I hope this is a place you feel safe enough to bare your soul, to admit what you don't know and to share what you do. We're in this together. I think that, more than any other, is the message we want to convey. I look forward to meeting you at writers' conferences, and to seeing your names on the covers of extraordinary novels. But I also look forward, every week, to your input to what we write here. Thank you for engaging with us, and if all you've done is lurk in the shadows up till now, jump in. Become part of this community. Learn from us and let us learn from you.
