Writing Talk and an Essay
Essay 8:
I’m straining for topics of late and am in the middle of a rewrite of my prologue for the fantasy novel, so this week will have a very short essay where I use Spenser’s The Fearie Queene to talk about Campbell’s Hero Journey. Since this essay is really short and I have a small amount of free time I also will include some talk about my current wip and what I’m thinking of doing with my Prologue.
We’ll start with the short essay:
The Journey of the Redcrosse Knight
Before analysis of the character of the Knight of the Red Crosse, hence forth called Redcrosse, one must understand the form that the journey usually takes. Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is often represented by a wheel the top half representing the normal world and the bottom half representing the supernatural or divine. Campbell’s journey is then divided into 12 steps, the first five and last two take place in the mundane world, with the fifth step actually being the transition from normal to special world. Steps 6 though 10 involve the special world and the transformation of the hero.
With Campbell firmly in mind, the Faerie Queene starts off almost directly on step 5. Redcrosse and Una seek shelter from a storm underneath a thick canopy of trees, but these trees are the mystical wandering woods, as such our hero and his companion have left the normal world and entered the supernatural. Immediately they are both assaulted by the snake/woman creature Errour. Redcrosse of course, fights this creature and at first he is doing well, but he starts to flag, and his companion urges him on with her belief in his might. He dispatches his foe and her brood devours her corpse and die of gluttony. Now as this piece is a poem all names are actually symbolic, so Redcrosse represents Protestant Faith come to take over England, Una the companion is the representation of truth, and Errour is the Roman Catholic Church.
The battle with Errour is but the first trial that awaits Redcrosse. He will face numerous battles with Archmagios (Arch Mage, or High Mage) who can appear as anyone he wishes and who attacks Redcrosse by striking his self-doubt, creating inner turmoil, and by separating Redcrosse from Una; thus leading the knight away from the Truth and making him wander with a duplicate named Duessa. Duessa is the anti-Una, she is seductive and filled with falsehood, her name literally meaning Duplicity. He also had to face a trio of knight brothers: Sansfoy, Sansloy, Sansjoy, again with literal names of Faithless, Lawless, and Joyless; respectively. Redcrosse faces all of these while being weakened by his own betrayals and the lies of Duessa who eventually leads him to the House of Sin run by Lucifera, a feminized from of Lucifer and the embodiment of Pride, the other seven deadly sins are also in residence and Redcrosse is nearly destroyed body and soul. He escapes their dungeon only to then be seduced by Duessa, they have sex which allows Duessa to drain away most of Redcrosse’s strength as his stain of sin is grown. This leaves him vulnerable when he gets attacked by the giant Orgoglio, Italian for pride. This corresponds nicely with Campbell’s 8th step; Ordeal, Death, and Rebirth. Una arrives with her new companion, Prince Arthur, a holy knight looking to find the titular Faerie Queene, and he slays the giant and reunites Una and Redcrosse. From here the story takes a turn to renew and heal the wounded Redcrosse, heal both body and soul, with the Truth (Una) returned to his side and with Arthur capturing Duessa, who is forced to reveal her true form as a witchy demon sprite. Redcrosse can begin his healing, his rebirth as a newly fortified warrior who has learned from his trespasses. He is now ready to face the Dragon that has been ravaging Una’s parents and their lands. The dragon represents Satan, and the three day battle is symbolic of the death and resurrection of Christ. Each day during the battle Redcrosse is nearly slain but only a symbolic holy sacrament saves him. On the first day the dragon nearly burns him alive, but he dives into a well, baptism. On the second day while lopping of the dragon’s tail he is stung and battered and seeks shelter under a tree, the tree heals him, this is likened to Communion. On the third, renewed by resting under the tree of life Redcrosse faces the dragon head on. The dragon tries to swallow him whole, but Redcrosse has full faith in his God and in himself, he strikes with his spear not flinching from the fatal bite and his spear strikes true, killing the dragon instantly.
With the dragon slain Redcrosse and Una return to the normal world and her parents, who award Una to Redcrosse to be his wife. He agrees but first he must honor his oath to Prince Arthur, and help that knight find the Faerie Queen.
The Hero’s journey
So, I DO enjoy the Campbell monomyth, though I don’t adhere to it strictly. This essay also wasn’t my idea it was assigned and I had to adhere to a simple question. I’m forgetting what that was as this was written over a year ago, I think I merely had to pick any one character in the book and describe their journey, but it might also have been that everyone in the class had write their interpretation of Redcrosse… as such this is short and to the point.
I enjoyed reading the book, for some reason I liked working my way through his spelling and trying to figure out what the words meant in the Faerie Queene. I actually thought it was easier than reading Shakespeare, though I was apparently the only one in my class to think this.
My enjoyment of the story was ruined by reading up on Spenser’s personal life and his feelings about the Irish, and also my own personal issues with the Reformation in England and the creation of the various Protestant sects. But I don’t want to wander into the world of religion in this blog.
You made it this Far:
If you made it this far then I guess you are interested in my writing and I think you for that. So, I have had some issues with my writing of late. I try new things all the time in my writing and sometimes that is a very annoying issue. I run into problems implementing the new methods or it messes up what had already been a good workflow.
This wip I decided to try out a couple of new things for me… the most annoying was I decided to write each chapter as its own file. Now part of this was because I started this novel as part of my workshop classes in my Bachelor’s degree. So it made sense to complete a chapter and then submit it for workshopping.
The problem showed up later when I suddenly had Prologue 1, Prologue 1.2, Prologue 1.3, Teacher feedback, student 1 feedback, student 2 feedback, prologue 2, prologue 2.1 final. And I didn’t put them all in the same folder, instead I put them in folders based on which classes they were work shopped in. This has led to a bunch of confusion over which is the right file and did I just make a bunch of changes to prologue 2 or 2.1…
Second Guessing
Besides having issues with all the drafts and the files not being arranged in a clear way (yes I know I can go by dates on the files and I could easily reorg everything, let me complain it helps). I keep having second thoughts about some of the revisions and keep thinking I need to go back and rework the earlier chapters and this keeps pulling me in two directions.
In the past I would sit down and write the book in linear fashion. Start at page one and write the whole thing in a single file and straight through and other than tightening up and maybe revising the previous days work a little I would save the revision until after the rough was completed. But now I keep wanting to go back and fix things, or add things, and its driving me crazy.
The Prologue Issues:
I have two issues with the current draft of the prologue.
The first is that when I first approached the prologue, I had three different versions outlined and I allowed students in my class to pick the one they thought was most interesting and too the point. There was a version where I wanted to show a sneak peek of where the book was going to end (actually where I think the entire last third of the book will take place), give a little taste for the horror and evil shit at the end of the book. Instead I went with the prologue where a survivor of the “Place” wanders out of a wasteland ranting and we get just an idea that something is “out there.”
The book then moves on to the various groups of people who want to go see what is out there. I am really regretting not showing a little of what is to come right in the prologue, I feel like THAT is the purpose of a prologue. Especially as my prologue POV is only in that one chapter, and this upset my work shoppers.
The second issue ties back to the first, or at least it will by the time I get to the end of this paragraph. But my original prologue was 10 pages long and introduced a bunch of the setting to the novel. I was talked into cutting the prologue down to the leanest 5 pages possible and I still feel like it is lacking.
There was a lot of sensory description and a living setting that was reduced to a character picking the pocket of a madman and then selling rumors to finance his way back home.
What I Want to Do:
I’m thinking I need to do a Prologue 3… I’m writing an epic fantasy and I should not feel ashamed of taking pages to tell a story. The 10-page prologue needed to be tightened up, for sure. But I think that was to give it room for more story, not less pages. I’m thinking I might break my own 1 POV per chapter rule and let my prologue work from several scenes.
So I am going to write a scene that does show a little of the end of the book, it will have the pov of a man driven mad by what he’s seen and from wandering through the wastelands. Then transition to the city and the character that is the current prologue, and then possibly better showcase how he spread the rumors to the people who are the main characters of the novel.
This all sounds great to me… but I know I will agonize over it for a while and then I will worry that 2.1 prologue that was workshopped three times by about 4 different people and drafted numerous times might be the better written work but the longer version 3 might be the more satisfying to the story. And then when I query this book, I’ll probably mention that I have three versions of the prologue. Sigh.