Happy Monday! This week we’re going to do something a little different at MBT – Rach and I are both going to run away from home this week (in fact – we’re going to run away together, with three other authors to a booksigning in hardy, AK. If you want to stop by, you can find the deets at http://www.wordsafterwords.com/)

ANYWAY, we thought we’d take this blip in time to catch us all up to where we are in our Year with a Hero!

We’ve spent the last couple months learning:
Premise
Elements of a heart-stopping hero
Elements of a strong heroine
The Greatest Devices (Greatest Dream, Greatest Fear) to construct the black moment and the Happily Ever After
Storyworld
And…Inciting Incident

So, here’s where I let you in on my evil plan…ALL these elements are present in the first TWO steps of your Hero’s Journey.

There are three “Acts” in our Journey – the Departure (where the Hero steps out into his Adventure), the Initiation (or the body of the story, where our hero’s world is forever changed), and The Return (or the resolution and change of our hero). In this first Act (The Departure), there are five Steps, of which, we’ve covered the first two:

Step One: Home World — This is our hero’s starting point. His normal world, what his stasis is at the beginning of the book. Even if you have an exciting inciting incident, you sometimes have to track back just for a moment, into this world so that we can see our Hero’s starting place. In a Fantasy book, this is the ground work for the world, sometimes it takes a bit longer than other genres. In a Romance, often it’s the heroine’s goals and environment before she meets the hero. In a Thriller, it might be what they return to after they’ve had that first blip of I.I. In a Woman’s fiction book, it is often portrayed in her relationships. Whatever genre you’re writing, the reader has to know what is normal for the hero (and heroine) so they have a foundation to start from.

Obviously, Storyworld, and knowing what the hero’s “greatests” are, as well as hinting at some of the elements of both a hero/hn, comprise the essentials for this first step. If you’ve spent the time collecting these elements, and creating a home world, then you’re all ready to move your hero into the next step in the journey…

Step Two: The Call to Adventure – This is the abnormal occurrence in their world, the I.I. that forces them to realize that something is different, and that they will be required to act (or not act) on it. We began our Call to Adventure last week with a look at what that inciting incident was when we talked about how and when to use it, and some of the elements in the I.I.

Obviously, Step 1 and Step 2 (sort of like Thing 1 and Thing 2?) can be intermingled, and look alot alike. Hence why I didn’t want to introduce it and confuse you all…until, uh, now. *grin* But, if you’ve collected all your gear, I have no doubt you can sort these two steps out in your Amazing Word of Fiction.

Tomorrow, we’ll be going over the 6 elements of a great HOOK – that trigger paragraph that will reach out to your reader and pull them in. Ideally, it’s something you should have for the start of every scene, but we’ll be focusing on that first essential scene. So..if you haven’t developed the elements for Step 1 and Step 2 for your hero’s journey, no worries! Gather up your supplies while we backtrack a bit this week, hook everyone in, and then…we’re all off on our great adventure as we learn next week how to build a rich SCENE using Action words, Rhythm, and a Metaphorical pool. (As well as some other goodies!)

So…tune in tomorrow to get some HOOK sharpening tips…and then get your hiking shoes on, and your bags packed because from now on out, it’s the Great American Novel or Bust!