Perhaps you’ve been curious about the novel Sun Valley Moon Mountains. Here’s a chance to get it for free! so we’re going to forsake some of the topics we’ve explored, from the Second Amendment to Wonder Women to writing, and announce a free ebook Giveaway on Amazon this week. Starting on Thursday, 11/2, and running through Monday, 11/6, SVMM will be available in Kindle format for your e-reader free. Just click and download it. Watch for the announcement on Thursday.
The Hero’s Journey
Sun Valley Moon Mountains is a Quest, much in the broad category of other Quests from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Lord of the Rings.” More specifically it might fit the outline of The Hero’s Journey, as first conceived by the American anthropologist Joseph Campbell. That template of a monomyth has been embraced in other forms as A Heroine’s Journey, and most famously The Writer’s Journey, which arose out of a memo written by Christopher Vogler in the 1980s and embraced by many screenwriters since.
Essentially, there are a number of steps the hero takes from his existence in the ordinary world when he is called upon to meet a challenge:
- The Call
- Refusal
- A Mentor
- Crossing of the Threshold
- Tests
- Allies
- Talismen
- Enemies
- Approach to the Innermost Cave
- Ordeal
- Reward
- Road Back
- Return
- Resurrection
What is curious about this formula, sometimes criticized as too simplistic, is that it is a nearly perfect fit for my own story in SVMM. However, I had no idea that this was the template I was using until after I learned of its existence from my publisher Patricia Hamilton.
Maybe the monomyth is something more fundamentally hard wired in us than we realize.
