Day 14
Word count: 28,801 words
Word count goal: 28,000 words
Mapping the Hero’s Journey: Approaching The Inmost Cave
Save The Cat: Bad Guys Close In
#vss very short story
Carl couldn’t sit in this claustrophobic cave another second. Knowing they were out there, waiting, was torture enough. He grabbed his six-shooter and ran out with a roar. He was greeted by birdsong and the rustle of the wind through the trees.
Plotting with Tarot
Today’s main scene in my story includes two secondary characters. They are both, in a way, the anti-heroes of their own stories and they have a lot of trouble communicating. For today’s reading, I thought I would do Approaching the Inmost Cave Readings for each of them and then compare and contrast. We’ll call the top row T and the bottom row D.
Today I got my card interpretations from Truly Teach Me Tarot.
T Approaching Inmost Cave: The Empress upside-down- insecure and tense, experiencing difficulty in some area of life, finding it hard to get anything off the ground or complete any projects. In fact very little may be working out.
T Leap of faith your character must take: Knight of Pentacles upside-down- loses values and morals resulting in apathy, stagnation and lack of motivation
T Old angst that character revisits: Ten of Pentacles- success, prosperity and abundance; you have done or will do very well for yourself, not by chance, but by working very hard to achieve it
D Approaching Inmost Cave: Page of Pentacles-a solid grounded start to whatever projects you are about to embark on. You are organized, prepared, and ready and waiting to get started. You are now ready to invest in your future. If you have been worried about having enough money, you have enough to get started with.
D Leap of faith your character must take: Page of Swords-asks you to be honest and fair in your dealings with others. Do the right thing by everyone and be the good guy in this situation.
D Old angst that character revisits: High Priestess upside-down- you are not listening to your inner-self or have problems accessing your intuition. You do not trust yourself to make the right decision, or have any faith or belief in yourself. You are letting others run your life and doing what they think is right for you. Deep down you know what you want but you ignore the inner calling.
My interpretation: These two characters couldn’t be approaching the inmost cave from more opposite positions. It makes sense that there will be many misunderstandings. They have very different motives to enter into this risky situation. One thing that really stood out to me in this reading is D’s Leap of faith. The scene has him doing something that most would consider very bad behavior, but he believes he’s being honest and fair. He thinks he’s the good guy, here. I love that aspect and will try to draw that out as I write today.
Ask Your Character
- Do you have any bad habits?
- Do you think you have any bad habits that annoy others?
- Could any of your bad habits be considered strengths against your adversaries? How?
Word Of The Day
spendthrift: noun- a person who spends possessions or money extravagantly or wastefully; prodigal. adjective- wastefully extravagant; prodigal.
8 Action Verbs:
annotated clarified correlated estimated
improved moderated recorded started
Poem prompt
Thanks to a post on Sascha Darlington’s Microcosm Explored called All the Things We’ll Never Know #amwriting (finally) #novembernotes, I have been made aware of another November poetry challenge called #NovemberNotes. This challenge has a song to listen to each day as a poem inspiration. Here’s their list:
For today’s poetry prompt choose one or more of the songs listed for days 1-14 to inspire you to write about your MC’s feelings as The Bad Guys Close In.
Wow. I’m glad I took a look at Wise Enough by Lamb. The official video over on YouTube is absolutely beautiful and it fits nicely with today’s theme.
A Drop Of Water
A drop of water opens the door
Freedom from tortured thirst
Provides precious time to think of more
Crossing the sea of suits
To a golden hopeful shore
No longer just killing time
Escaping the human traps for humans
Diving into the waves sublime
Air bubbles fight to the surface
The salt licks off years of grime
A drop of water opened the door
Awesome Sentence Challenge
As you develop your antagonist and your secondary characters, you want to show parallels between them and your protagonist. Parallelism is also important in your sentences.
If two or more ideas are parallel, they are easier to grasp when expressed in parallel grammatical form. -from A Writer’s Reference
a. Balance parallel ideas in a series: Hooked on thriller novels, I learned that there is nothing more important than being rich, typing code, and to have having more than one gun.
b. Balance parallel ideas presented as pairs- these ideas are usual connected with a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or); a pair of correlative conjunctions (either . . . or, not only . . . but also); with a word introducing a comparison (than, as): It is easier to speak in abstractions than grounding to ground one’s thoughts in reality.
c. Repeat function words to clarify parallels- Function words such as prepositions (by, to) and subordinating conjunctions (that, because) signal the grammatical nature of the word groups that follow: In an attempt to stop her thumb-sucking habit, her parents tried painting a noxious substance on her thumb to change the taste or making her wear gloves changing to change the texture.
While you write today, look out for places to use parallelism for clarity in your sentences.
Today’s Simple Task
Your MC feels self-doubt and abandons his/her main objective for a lesser goal. S/he explores some regrets.
Warm-up Exercise
Set your timer for 15 minutes. What will your hero do to resist change? What will your hero do to fight the biggest battle he must overcome – himself? – from SavetheCat.com
Recommended Word Crawl
Alice in Wonderland Word Crawl
Need a break from all this writing, but still want to be working on your hero’s journey. You could watch Alice In Wonderland
Experience Writing 
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