Recent content by Poppy

What's wrong with 9pm, 9.15pm, 10pm, 10.10pm etc

Well I went out and bought every Harry Potter book and made a judgement of chapter length based on those.

"Hunger Games' comes to mind. You can't tell me that "Katniss" wasn't chosen because of links to sly, wise cats. That's how it appears to me. Seems to me names are chosen to reference some character trait you want to communicate.

You're letting the fear of cliche block you. This is what many stories are about...many of them excellent and different and original...simply because of the way they're told. Sometimes the best way to be original is to do the obvious. Go with it.

There's a lot to be said for the monomyth but the OP's post is a v.superficial interpretation.

Just to say, I wasn't planning to get wrapped up in one particular discussion. Will probably move on. Easy y'all.

There's no reason to have an Inciting Incident at all. You can show a character's compelling life. But then you'll need to get her out of that to move the story on. People are incorrectly attributing that action as Inciting Incident which it is not. That's Call To Adventure. That's not my...

I know where you're coming from. Really, I do. But just go with a WHAT IF. Stick to a field, say movies. And lets say you're writing a novel which you hope Hollywood will make into a movie, so you're bringing in novels too. WHAT IF all those movies DID have them (and they DO). Then you have...

If you want to get shirty about it, you can wait.

James George Frazer and Robert Graves are two authors who have examined this issue from the short story / poem perspective. They make Campbell seem superficial. They basically get to the same idea that there is only one story.

No disrespect, but I don't think you know monomyth or understand it's implications. Lolita is easily a monomyth. You have the father figure who provokes the child who grows up. Just like in Star Wars you have a father figure who provokes the child to grow up. And that's just looking at it from...

They don't have to be myths. Millions of non-myth stories have been found to contain Campbell's stages. Bashir says that all the Academy Award winners contain them and they're not all myths. Say you go with the idea that ALL stories involve transformation. Then you must have State A and...

OMG You have repressed conflicts in the State of Perfection. It's Pandora's box all locked up. It's the Gremlins all tucked away safe and sound in the Chinese store. It's when Pandora's box is opened that the shit hits the fan and the story starts. And you're trying to get all the Gremlins...

You need to give it more respect and time, because it's awesome.

It makes beautiful sense. As I said, there are lots of "incidents" that "incite" in a story and each has a name. It's only called the "Inciting Incident" if it meets certain conditions and placement has a lot to do with it. It's a story structure thing. It's about pinpointing the geography of...