Monomythic
I am on a creative journey. I wish there was a way of phrasing that sentence without sounding like a giant douche. Maybe I sound more like a turd sandwich? Or maybe I sound like a giant douche had a baby with a turd sandwich, and their child (who is me) decided to start an art blog. I went through too many versions of that opening, each more stomach-turning than the last. My word processor began auto-correcting my font to those found on throw pillows sold at Target. This (of course) led to a flare up of my SLJS (self-loathing Jew syndrome, a very real genetic disorder) but after applying aloe vera to the rash, my skin is mercifully on the mend.
So, this journey I’m on, this journey where I create things…gosh darn it! Now I sound like I possess a shaky grip on my dubious 3rd-grade reading level. I’m sorry. I just need a minute.
Ok. Here’s what I am trying to say:
Artistically, creatively, I am in process. I am not where I want to be. I have a horizon I am pushing for and yet, when I look back at the first things I made, I see growth.
The way I understand my position relative to my progress & destination is through the lens of story structure. I don’t know what your relationship is with story structure, but mine has changed over the years. I used to hate the idea. How can there be RULES for telling a story??? The punk in me revolted. Joseph Campbell’s theory of the Monomyth made me angry. How could he say that every story is actually the same story?? I thought it was pretentious. Pigeon-holing everything from Lord of the Rings and Hellboy to Schindler’s List and Finding Nemo into a sterile cookie cutter shape just seemed gross.
I am not mad any more. My initial rejection of story structure was rooted in a misconception of what a story is. The Theory of the Monomyth is an interesting proposition which may or may not be true, but the idea that there is an underlying cadence to the way in which human beings communicate with each other? That is empirically verifiable.
That cadence is story structure.
There are many ways of describing and deconstructing the components of a story. Screen writers tend to favor the Three Act Structure, Pixar likes The Story Spine and of course there is The Hero’s Journey. Each method has it’s merits, but I got to roll with Brian McDonald, cohost of the podcast You Are a Storyteller, who points out that these are not different structures. A story is a pie. You can cut a pie into 3 pieces, 7 pieces or 32 pieces, but you never have more than one whole pie.
The first coherent presentation of story structure I encountered was written by Dan Harmon, creator of Community, Rick & Morty & Krapopolis. He wrote an short treatment of story structure for The Channel 101 film festival, which you can read here. He opens this discussion by asking and answering a very simple question:
“Why does a story have to contain certain elements, in a certain order, before the audience will even recognize it as a story?
Because our society, each human mind within it and all of life itself has a rhythm & when you play by that rhythm, it resonates.”
He didn’t begin with a dogmatic diatribe telling me I was an idiot for my aversion to what he was pushing. He didn’t tell me he was right and I was wrong. He simply stated that, much like music, story has a beat and invited me to join him on the dance floor. It was enough to bring me in with an open mind. What I am about to share is my understanding of his understanding of story structure. Yeah, now we’re playing telephone now.
Every story is circular.
It is therefore best represented by a circle.
We begin at the apex, a point to which we inevitably return.
The arc of a story leads a character through a descent as they seek to meet their need, followed by a rising action that returns them, changed, to the place they began.
Dan Harmon divides this descent and return into eight stages, which he admits, are more or less an adaptation Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Each stage gives the audience critical information that moves the story forward.
1. You - Establish our protagonist.
2. Need - There is something they need or want.
3. Go - Our protagonist ventures out to meet that need.
4. Search - They seek the solution to their problem.
5. Find - Our protagonist finds…something & it is not necessarily what they were looking for.
6. Pay - What is found, has a cost. The price must be paid.
7. Return - Our protagonist completes the story’s rising action, returning to their point of origin.
8. Change - The story ends where it began, but something is different.
The difference may lie in the character, their companions or the the environment itself. The type of change that occurs and the juxtaposition it creates with the story’s opening depends entirely on the point the storyteller is making.
Remember that journey I opened with? Characterizing my own evolution in terms of this story circle helps me gauge my progress and hone my trajectory. Here’s what I mean.
If you want to advance,
If you want to improve,
If you want to become a master of your craft,
You must begin practicing your craft & beginning necessitates doing it poorly.
I heard Becky Cloonan on a comic con panel say that every comic artist has 1000 bad pages trapped inside of them. The profound, beautiful, poignant pages are buried beneath the first 1000. She told us all that there was a path, a spell, a healing rite, every member of the audience could perform if we wanted to draw jaw-dropping comics. All we had to do was draw 1000 bad pages, first.
To become great, first you gotta suck.
To ascend from the depths, you must sink to the bottom.
The path to the mountain’s peak, First. Leads. Down.
So where am I now?
You know who I am (1!). You know what I need (2!) and you have seen me Cross The Threshold (3!). I survived The Road of Trials (4!) to finally find what I was looking for (5!).
What comes next?
Step 6: The Terrible Price.
What I have learned must come at a cost. What will I have to pay (6!) in order to return (7!) changed (8!)?
God only knows & I am excited to find out.
I will catch you next YEAR on the 3rd to kickoff Gutter Zine S24!
-JT⚡
P.S. If you want to ride with me, hit my contact page & subscribe to my email newsletter. I drop a new issue, complete with articles, illustrations and mixtapes on the 3rd of each month!
