Evon Davis

In Stage 3 of the mythic structure, the main character refuses the call to adventure, or is blocked in some way.  This sets up the beginning of conflict in the novel. Why doesn’t the character want to accept the call? Is it fear? Is there something in the character’s past that is holding him or her back?

There may also be factors outside the character that are standing in the way. For example, a character falls in love, but is already married. This character must then deal with a whole range of emotional and ethical issues.

Let’s look at this stage in some popular novels and films like Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (page 26), The Alchemist, and Avatar.

In Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is forced to use magic to fight off the Dementors, calling forth his patronis, the white stag.  As soon as he and Dudley return home, an owl shows up with a letter from the Ministry of Magic telling him that he will have to relinquish his wand and appear at a hearing in which they may decide to expel him from Hogwarts.  This is an example where the main character isn’t refusing the call, himself, but is being blocked.

In The Alchemist, Santiago receives the call to adventure when a fortune-teller tries to convince him that his recurring dream is true.  But he refuses to believe her and dismisses the dream.

In Avatar, the refusal of the call manifests in a unique way.  Jake Sully isn’t refusing the call (it’s too late; he’s already in the midst of his adventure), nor is he being blocked from the adventure.  Rather, what we see in the scene after he is separated from his own people, but before he meets Netyri, is a seasoned soldier who is truly terrified and vulnerable.  He’s doing his best to protect himself, but he and everyone else believes he will be dead before sunrise.

So, in these three examples, we see three ways that Refusing the Call can express itself.  One way is to block the character, another is for the character to simply refuse to answer the call, and a third way is for the character to be completely overwhelmed by his (or her) circumstances, such that he surrenders to his fate.

Mike Shevdon is the author of Sixty-One Nails and The Road to Bedlam.  I owe him for his inspiration and admire him for his writing. 

Hi Mike,

I first saw your book, Sixty-One Nails, on Jennifer Jackson’s website/blog, then I saw it one day while browsing in the bookstore. It looked interesting so I bought it and read it. I was hugely impressed!

I’m drawn into the world of magic that you create.  Because I live in a magical world and see it all around me, when I read stories with magic in them, I expect to see the core truths about magic.  That tells me the author knows what he or she is talking about.  I definitely see that in your writing. 

As soon as Road to Bedlam came out I bought it and started reading it, but had to put it aside while I focused on NaNoWriMo and then revising the novel I’ve been writing this year.  When I went back to it, I couldn’t put it down!  I stayed up late last night, way past my bedtime, to finish it.   

You are definitely on my list of favorite writers. I’m a huge fan of yours now and can’t wait to read your future books.   What I find appealing about your writing is that the characters feel so real to me.  Niall Peterson comes across as a very real person.  It’s been gripping watching him deal with the problems he’s had to confront, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he deals with his children and their powers, not to mention how the Seven Courts and humanity will resolve their conflicts. 

Along with Niall, Blackbird is one of my favorite characters.  She is a strong female (which appeals to me).  I was surprised that when you took away her magical powers in the second book, it didn’t diminish her at all.  It showed us that her power isn’t really in her magic; it’s much deeper.  (I think the same is true of Niall.)

The settings are intriguing as well.  Of course that’s expected as part of urban fantasy where settings are integral to the story, but you do an excellent job of bringing them to life.  The fishing village of Ravensby is as vivid as anything in real life.

We all have some kind of power (or what I would call magic).  One of your powers is writing.  I was pleased to read that you got a contract for two more books.  I hope there will be many more after that!

I’m sure I will enjoy reading them, and continue recommending your books to my creative writing students.  Thank you so much for the wonderful stories :)

Evon

Today I’m reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.  I read it when I was about 20 and have wanted to read it again for ages, but finally got a bug up my butt yesterday and went to the bookstore and bought a paperback copy.  I haven’t been able to put it down since.

This brings up the topic of money, of which there was no Martian equivalent; a perspective I admire immensely.  Those who know me, know that I have mixed feelings about money.  I wrote a blog called “Money, the Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated on Humankind.”  http://evondavis.com/blog2/2010/11/17/money-the-greatest-hoax-ever-perpetrated-on-humankind/

I call it that because it’s a mental straight-jacket.  Yet at the same time, virtually everyone believes in it, so you have to walk around as if you’re wearing that mental straight-jacket, whether you are or not.  In other words, you have to act like you believe in it, even if you don’t.  Just like an African bushman can’t walk around New York City without his clothes on, whether he believes in wearing clothes or not.

Fortunately, don Juan taught Castaneda a concept called “Controlled Folly” in which you play a role as if it were real.  The trick is to play the role without becoming lost and imprisoned by it.

What I mean by being “straight-jacketed” is that we’ve been imprisoned by our beliefs because in this system we are taught to believe that we HAVE TO sell our labor for money in order to survive.  But if people could see through the beliefs that have been fed to them since birth, they’d see that it’s not true.  It’s a choice.  People choose what they want to believe and then reinforce each other in their beliefs.  Then, because it’s what everyone believes, we have to play along with it.  Controlled folly is a way of turning it into a game.  This keeps our minds free, while on the outside, we pretend to take the game seriously.

I’m starting to put my belief more in Spirit than in Money.  Who could have predicted that I would be able to leave CBS and follow my heart for the past two years?  I had a little savings and a lot of faith.  I believe it’s the faith that’s gotten me this far.  Without it, I never would have been able to overcome my fears in order to listen to my heart.  Some would call it coincidence — that I’ve not only survived, but thrived.  I don’t believe it’s random.  And there was no way to predict it with logic before the fact.  That’s what I call magic.

But I admit, I haven’t completely shifted alliances… still seem to need money to pay car insurance, phone bill, website hosting bill, gas, groceries, etc.  So in 2011, I will play this game called “Controlled Folly” and see where Spirit leads me.  I will play the game as if I really believe in it, as if I were really wearing the mental straight-jacket.  Inside I’ll know the truth — that it’s just a game.  If I took it seriously, I fear I’d become depressed, or at least as neurotic and stressed out as most people find themselves.

In mythic structure, the story begins with the Ordinary World. For example, in The Odyssey, the story begins with Odysseus tending to his land. In The Frog Prince, the story begins with the little girl playing with her golden ball. It isn’t necessary to follow this structure exactly. It’s more a way of getting started with ideas.

Let’s look at this stage in some popular novels and films like Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (pages 1-15), The Alchemist, and Avatar.

In Harry Potter 5, the story begins with Harry sitting on a swing in a park in Little Whinging. Dudley and his friends start picking on him. Harry is at a point now where he’s not afraid to stand up for himself and he threatens Dudley back. That’s Harry’s ordinary world.

In The Alchemist, the young shepherd Santiago is tending his sheep. He sometimes camps out. One night he sleeps in an old abandoned church. The roof has long since caved in and a sycamore tree is growing up through the middle of it.

In Avatar, Jake Sully is waking up on a ship after being in hibernation. The ship has just reached the planet, Pandora. He disembarks onto the planet and listens to the officer’s warnings about the dangers on Pandora. Although this seems extraordinary to us, it’s Jake Sully’s ordinary world. He is a soldier in the future. For him it is perfectly ordinary to be shipped off to a “war zone.”

One of the best ways to begin writing a novel is to think about and describe your character’s ordinary world. Describe your character’s typical day. Take us right into the scene.

In the novel I’m currently writing, my character is unemployed. She’s searching for a job. Doesn’t know what to do with herself. Feels bored and depressed. Thinks obsessively about her most recent lover. She lives in London, but he lives in Washington DC. So even in her ordinary world she’s got conflicts.  Eventually she stumbles upon magic, a sorceress enters her life to mentor her, and she discovers her own latent powers (what they are shall remain a secret here; I will only say it has nothing to do with faeries, elves, witches, vampires, werewolves, trolls, or dragons).

When you describe your character’s ordinary world, it’s sort of like you give us a peek into the character’s daily life.  This is before the inciting incident occurs that sets her on her journey. Yet you will want to begin planting the seeds of your character’s troubles from the beginning.

For example, we wouldn’t want to see Jake Sully living a boring life on planet Earth. We want to start with him being deployed, and in this case James Cameron gives us his brother’s death as back story. He could have started us out at the funeral; that would have worked too. But these events are still considered ordinary. The inciting incident is when he’s placed in his avatar body and then gets separated from his group.

So remember:  ordinary, but not boring.

In the introduction to Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda wrote, “For the purpose of presenting my argument I must first explain the basic premise of sorcery as don Juan presented it to me.  He said that for a sorcerer, the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is.  For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.”

It seems to me like writers would get this better than anyone else.  That’s why I think of myself as a warrior-sorcerer, like don Juan, because that’s the philosophy I live by, or sometimes as a writer-sorcerer, because I think when we write, we create reality.  That’s magic.

Writers create reality by describing it, even if they are just making it up in their minds.  They are shaping reality.  Science-fiction often describes what our reality will become in the future and then we watch it unfold.

But I need to remind myself of this when I am fearful.  Whatever I am afraid of is not real, or out there, as I believe it is.  It’s only a scary story.