You are Now Leaving the Ordinary World

Words to Write by

If you have read even just the first part of a blog post on the hero’s journey, you know the hero starts off in the ordinary world before embarking on their epic adventure. But the ordinary world is more than a boring place the hero is itching to leave.

According to Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey, there’s a lot of that needs to be included in the ordinary world section of the story. The writer must establish an interesting and sympathetic main character, set the mood and expectations, establish what’s at stake, and squeeze in backstory (using graceful exposition) and theme.

That’s a lot to unpack, bur we somehow manage in this podcast episode! There are many, many more subheadings in this very loooong chapter, but as we point out, most don’t need to be there.

Vogler finishes up the chapter with examples from The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the book) Rather than rehash that, we picked a better book: John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society and boy does it ever have on heck of an ordinary world for the hero to leave behind.

Remember, we have a Writers Process meetup every Wednesday. Check us out.