Hero’s Journey, khichdi, and that little gremlin called “Story”

Life is not a pleasant place. Far from being safe and cool as the castles of Disney princesses, life is harsh, and brutal. Especially for those who dare to dream. Blunders happen. Fears take you over, and you freeze like an iceberg. To blend in with the world, you start walking around with a face of ice and eyes left glassed out with numbed emotion.

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Huh, huh, huh, humans!

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And then, there are humans. The world is rumbling with humans who try to pull you down each time you struggle to rise and fulfil your life’s greatest purpose, something that not only makes you happy but is also the best and the most right thing for you. They will pick on your self-doubts, greatest fears, insecurities, hesitations, conflicts and confusions, and use these as hooks to pull you into their own mind matrix, something you didn’t subscribe to. In disguise of “inspiration,” people will often attempt to spoil the little joys, sometimes going all the way to disrupt your life path with barriers that you could have easily avoided. Those that were just a waste of time.

 

The great hoggy-poggy soup (khichdi)

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All these blunders, pricking humans, voices of your mind, fears, insecurities, envies, and failures blend together to form a hoggy-poggy soup (khichdi!) that slowly drowns you, so you forget the real purpose of why you are doing what you are doing.

But wait, there’s good news. Simmering and bubbling within the depths of this khichdi is a little gremlin creative writers call “story.”

 

That little gremlin called “Story”

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Story, this little animal, is the journey a hero navigates to overcome the obstacles, barriers, and challenges laid out by the villain. For a hero, villain is an “angel in disguise.” He is the messenger and catalyst that cooks up this khichdi for you and then drowns you in and then highlights to you “obstacles” that will help you find a way out of this khichdi. 

Writers, there’s a bonus!

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If you happen to be a writer, this entire khichdi episode turns out to be a “bonus,” because once you start noticing this tug-of-war happening between the hero and the villain within your mind, you put yourself on the seat of a storyteller. If you are attentive enough, you’ll end up receiving the bonus of a story (although it might take another few years for you to learn how to put it out in your notebook!).

 

Hero and Villain: The Great Devastating Combo of Story

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The moment a villain pops up into the picture, the hero has to emerge. And the moment both of them materialize on the canvas of your mind, what happens then is called a “story.”

 

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Now the villain will do his best to hinder the hero’s pathway with obstacles, barriers, and challenges. Drama will unfold, event after event, scene after scene. The journey that the hero will traverse to overcome the challenges posed by the villain will become the story. His journey, both inner and outer, will make up the skeleton of the story.

Now, a story doesn’t imply a hero, but a hero and/or a villain always implies a story.

 

Listening to the gremlin

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In my own writing journey, I’ve come across zillions of obstacles, both in the inner world and the outer world, that have fueled my interest in this little gremlin called “story.” From feeling depressed after noticing beginner writers churning out thick novels in their first attempt to creeping out at my bizarre writing struggles to loathing at my gigantic lack of pure talent, I have traversed a long way. And all the while, this little gremlin has stayed with me, following me like a shadow, hovering above my shoulders, trying to tell me something, in hush whispers and tranquil bleats. Sometimes, terrifying screams.

For long, I dismissed its screams. But then, I decided, to listen. To shut my mouth, roll my sleeves, and just listen.

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When I gaze into the abyss of mind and listen to what this tiny gremlin has to say, I realize how fascinating this hero-villain story archetype is. It is the type of a story every human can relate to. The human mind, in itself, is a background for the hero and its corresponding evil twin, the villain.

 

Mechanism of a Hero-Villain Story Archetype

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Google says that this hero-villain story archetype is “one of the most fundamental and enduring structures in narrative across all forms of literature, myth, and film.” The core mechanism, according to Google, of this story type is based on two factors: “polarized conflict” and “mutual definition.” To put it from a spiritual perspective, this type of story stems from the feature of human mind called “duality.” In this case, this is the duality of the hero (light) and the villain (shadow).

 

The Hero (The Protagonist)

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The Hero is a character who functions and operates on the “good,” “conscious,” or the “positive” side of life. He rises to the challenge posed by the villain to restore the balance or improve the world. His journey often involves “inner transformation” alongside external battles. Sometimes, the role of the hero might be to protect or sustain a code, or return to a state of normalcy or order, or achieve a greater goal.

 

The Villain/Shadow (The Antagonist)

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The Villain, in contrast to The Hero, is his “shadow.” He represents the duality of life. He indicates all the weirdness and darkness that lurks beneath the positive/good façade of the hero, the mud that makes the hero, the hero. Without the existence of this villain, the hero wouldn’t exist. They are two sides of the same coin. He represents all the unobserved fears, desires, hatreds, anxieties, and hatreds that secretly boil within the deepest trenches of the hero’s mind.

 

So while he reveals them to the hero, the agitated hero undergoes annihilation while traversing a journey of transformation. Joseph Campbell named this process “Hero’s Journey.”

 

Hero’s Journey

According to Joseph Campbell’s concept of Hero’s Journey, outlined in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this hero-villain story is constructed in three main stages: stages—departure, initiation, and return, collectively called “monomyth.” The hero receives a “call to adventure” that beckons him to leave their familiar world. They may refuse the call, but then they cross the “threshold” and this marks their initiation on the “road of trials.” Aided by allies and catalysts, they confront their greatest fears and challenges, ultimately returning to the ordinary world with a gift or bonus that will restore the balance of the world.

 

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The Hero represents the human ego striving for self-actualization and integrating the conscious and unconscious. The Hero’s existence is the very threat to the identity of the villain, something that forces the conflict.

 

Villain: Mirror of the Hero

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In the words of Carl Jung, the villain represents the “shadow” aspects of a hero’s personality. He manifests as the “mirror or the distorted reflection of the hero.” Disguised as power play, revenge seeking, chaos, and a twisted sense of justice, a villain actually proves to be the greatest “motivation” for a Hero to navigate his journey and arrive at the goal. The Villain actively attempts to thwart the Hero's quest, often forcing the Hero to face their greatest fears or moral limits.

 

The Hero-Villain Dynamic: Conflict and Mutual Definition

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The relationship between a hero and a villain is symbiotic, where each character defines the other. Unless the hero integrates and assimilates the shadow of their denied and unlived potentials, depicted by the villain, the journey will continue to unfold. And this little gremlin called “story” will continue to scream and bellow in the  writer’s ears.

 

The Matrix of Morals

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Another element of this dynamic is “moral ambiguity.” In Moby Dick, for instance, Captain Ahab is driven by an obsessive, destructive quest for revenge, which challenges the moral position of the protagonist. The villain could also be an impersonal character, or the destructive force, like the Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. In this case, the hero isn’t fighting against one particular character, but an entire system or matrix.

 

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Personally, I have never written a story based on this hero-villain story archetype, but as I jot down these thoughts, on a blissed-out Saturday evening, my writing muscles are already clenching with the desire for writing one. (In this case, the writing muscles are the hero and the procrastination is the villain. Let’s see who wins!)

Read more writings on the topic of "Craft of Writing"

The "Conflict Fusion" method of Short Story Writing

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The core idea is to “fuse” Character Need with an Unusual Constraint.

Story plot = Character need + Unusual constraint

 

Three main steps

Step 1: Define the Character and their Need (Who and Why)

Choose a protagonist (Name and what they do. For example: Rupa, the librarian. Monty, the hair stylist. Chabukranga, the sorceress)

 

Choose a core emotional need, goal, or purpose that the character is inspired to fulfil or accomplish. For example, Rupa’s purpose is to inspire the world to love books and read more books. Chabukranga’s purpose is to hunt an ancient locket with which she could break an old curse on her son. Daniel, a writer, needs to finish a poem before sunset. Arman, a clockmaker, wants to repair a broken heirloom watch.

 

Step 2: Create the Constraint (The "What" and "Where")

Take the need from step 1 and place it inside a highly contradictory situation or constraint. Add a single strange element that would make it incredibly challenging for the character to achieve the need. For example: Uninvited guests turn up to meet Daniel and sunset is approaching soon. He needs to finish the poem but can’t avoid attending the family members. Arman, the clockmaker can repair the heirloom watch, but can’t do it without a bizarre magical tool: this tool works only in moonlight.

 

Step 3: Fuse the Conflict

Story idea = Need + Constraint

For example: Conflict Daniel is facing. Conflict Arman is facing. The process of how they resolve this conflict and arrive at the solution is the trajectory of the story.

 

Step 4: Action

Once it is clear that the “process of arriving at the resolution of the conflict” is the essence of the story, the next step is to actually start navigating this process by writing “action.” How does this process look like for the character? That’s action. How the character struggles, what they experience during this process, both good and bad, both positive and negative, that all comes under the action.

 

To build the momentum of drama in Action, focus on a single obstacle or a unique challenge of the constraint. One obstacle after the other, the momentum builds. By the time the story ends, the need is either met, denied, or transformed. For example: In case of Daniel, he is able to write the poem or he fails to write the poem or he realizes that the goal wasn’t writing the poem but to interact with someone and express his feelings, which he already did with the family members.

 

The “Conflict Fusion” method draws inspiration from several creative sources. For instance,

The "Story Spine" method from Pixar/Dan Harmon's Story Circle -  It simplifies plot down to a core chain of events and character needs.

The "Idea Generator" (from writers like Neil Gaiman): Taking two disparate concepts and forcing them to interact—creating instant conflict and novelty.

The Power of Constraint: Like the famous constraint given to Ernest Hemingway to write a six-word story ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn."), a simple constraint forces you to be creative in your short story.

Writer's Block - The Journey Within

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Writer’s Block

 

The phrase sounds relatable.

 

It’s not just a phrase. It’s a state of mind.

 

Every writer encounters this state some-time or the other in their writing journey.

No one can escape it.

 

And even if somebody succeeds in escaping it, they wouldn’t be able to call themselves a writer in the real sense. Because unless you have gone through this state zillions of times, you won’t understand, beyond just concept or belief, what exactly it is. And unless you understand what it is, it is almost next to impossible to find a way out of it.

 

It’s not just a journey of overcoming a barrier in your writing process. It’s also a journey of withdrawing your mind’s energies and gathering them at one point of concentration. It’s not just a battle of words, it’s a battle of concentrating your mind.

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“Writer’s block” pops up as a challenge to be solved. To solve this challenge, the writer needs to delve into their deepest self and look through this block to realize that it’s, in fact, not real, but just a shadow. The goal of this shadow is to keep the writer frozen and hesitant. And if the writer is a tad bit scared, the shadow will keep them frozen for years and years.

 

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The more you run away from it, the more vigorously it will follow you.

 

To live in a persistent state of “writer’s block” is like living in a haunted house, except that it’s not a building that is haunted, it’s your own head.

 

Many people think that this so-called “writer’s block” is a lack of ideas or inspiration. But that’s an incorrect perspective to look at this state.

 

This state of mind, called “Writer’s Block” is a paradox. It isn’t an absence of ideas or inspiration. Rather, it’s an influx, so overwhelming that the ideas keep on whirling and hovering in the space of your head, and you can’t seem to figure out which one to pick first and which one to store for later.

 

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The state doesn’t need to be fixed, just understood.

 

While meditating and reflecting upon this state of “writer’s block,” I came across some ideas that can help a writer cross this state and step into what lies beyond.

 

To begin with,

Write down everything. Just everything. Random thoughts. Gibberish. No matter how scattered it appears right now. If there are some stories which are there but blurry in your head, write about the non-blurry parts and soon they’ll reveal to you the entire story, crystal clear. Fill up documents or notebooks. Just don’t think. Let them scatter and spill out of your brain.

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The goal, here, is to empty the head and lay down the thoughts in front your eyes like wafers drying in the sun. Once they are in front of your eyes and you can externalize them as objects, it becomes easier to do something about them. If they keep rumbling and circulating in your head, it’s difficult to actually use them or do something about them. 

 

So, first tip is, write down “everything.”

 

The second tip is, once you write down everything, step away from it and do something entirely different. Create “distance.”

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If you are standing amidst a cloud of buzzing bees, you won’t be able to distinguish one bee from the other. But once you step away and look at the cloud from a distance, you’ll be able to discriminate between different bees and what is the purpose of each individual bee. This one is orange and this wants honey. This one is yellow and it just needs to tell a story. This one is black and it needs a place to rest.

 

Credit: Gemini pundit

Once the distance is created, the cloud, the jumble of thoughts a.k.a. “writer’s block” untangles itself and reveals to you what needs to be done. Five short stories, check. Two poetry books, check. Three novels, check. One short film script and one video, check. A list of little writing projects, check.

 

Problem solved. 

Credit: Gemini pundit

The Memory Palace technique of Storytelling

 The Memory Palace Method of Storytelling

 

If the mind was an abandoned palace, and the hero of the story was thrown away into that palace, what he would do? He would walk through the palace, explore it, investigate the details, and ultimately, find a way to escape and return to his original world. The technique of “Memory Palace” allows your characters to do just that.

 

“Memory palace,” also called as “Method of Loci,” is a creative writing technique used to remember vast amounts of information. In storytelling, the technique can help the writer craft a character or even the entire story by delving into the intricate structures and mechanisms of their mind.

 

The technique relies on putting the character in a tangible, imaginary landscape and then scanning different parts of that landscape, investigating what part mirrors which aspect of your character’s personality.

 

It could be a real or imaginary space, such as a library, a museum, a fantastical castle, a garden, a hilltop forest, a shop, a market, or anything. Consider this place as your “Memory Palace.” The next part is to walk through different parts of this “memory palace” and look deeply. Each part of this imaginary palace represents a different aspect of your character’s life or a major theme of your story.

 

A kitchen might serve one purpose while a bookshop the other. A garden might serve one purpose for the character while an airport might open up interesting possibilities for you to take your story forward.

 

If you are willing to delve deeper, you can also assign different imaginary objects in this imaginary landscape to represent or explore different attributes of your character or storyline. The object could be a simple as a blade of grass or a wall clock.

 

Consider this example: Lila’s Memory Palace

 

Lila sat at her desk, the blank pages of her new notebook yawning before her like an abandoned attic. She wanted to write a list of goals, tasks, and to-dos to organize, but what she really desired was to carve out a picture of her life’s universe. When swarms of thoughts buzzing and rumbling in her head became too noisy for her to actually jot down any words in the notebook, she closed her eyes and started an inner journey into the halls of her “Memory Palace.”

 

The Grand Hall

Sitting at her desk with closed eyes, in a meditative mode, Lila took a mental trip into the “Grand Hall” of her “Memory Palace.” A giant silk banner unrolling before her on a wall and an enormous wooden table in the center were some of the details she could see. On top of the table was a glowing orb. Taking a mental note, Lila placed her ambition on this orb: Write a novel. At this point, the character of the writer had set an intention to accomplish a goal.

 

The Conservatory

The next room in Lila’s Memory Palace turned out to be her “Conservatory,” a garden where she stored all her creative ideas and projects. While walking in this garden, she imagined a giant blank notebook in place of the soil. Suddenly, the blank pages began to sprout with colorful flowers, grasses, tiny bugs, and trees, that represented ideas, stories, and the projects she desired to work on.

 

The Library

The long corridor of “Library” in her “Memory Palace” was sprawling with shelves of books. These, however, were not typical books. In Lila’s inner world, each book represented a collection of memories, dreams, desires, thoughts, everything she liked or disliked, loved or hated, the chronicle of her individual self.

 

The Observatory

Finally, Lila stepped into the “Observatory” of her “Memory Palace” and started peering through the telescope to project her greatest and the best self in the stars and the galaxies. A famous writer with dozens of successful, published novels, a house filled with pieces of art, a mini library of her own, a garden of solace.

 

By the time Lila opened her eyes, she had navigated a landscape in the “Memory Palace” of her mind and now she was ready to jump into her notebook and scribble down all the details she saw in that dark, inner world, tell a story no one but only she could see. 

Should I be happy yet? #Comics

 

Should I be happy yet?

Dialogue between Me and a Voice in my head

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, you are not a billionaire yet. You are not even a millionaire yet.

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, you haven’t achieved the desired weight in the gym yet.

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, there are still all these problems in your life you need to solve (Problem 1 + Problem 2 + Problem 3 +.…..Problem n)

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, there are still people in your life who won’t appreciate if you are happy too soon. (Person 1 + Person 2 + …. + Person n)

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, you haven’t yet overcome all the barriers in your mind. You are not enlightened yet.

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, you haven’t yet achieved all the goals in your list, you haven’t even reached halfway into your bucket list.

 

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, you haven’t found that one person who will accept you for who you are.

Me: Should I be happy yet?

 

Voice: No, there are still a lot of traumas and griefs from the past you need to heal that are blocking you from being happy.

Me: [Scratching head]

Be Happy Now!

 

 

Reach somewhere beyond which there's nothing...

Wherever you are, 
keep on going farther
until you reach somewhere
beyond which there is nothing.

The best place to be...

 

The best place to be in…

 

The moment when you feel like you have nothing to write, is the very moment you should start writing, because this “nothing” is the gap where a treasure trove of words are awaiting for you to wake them up so they’ll tell you about their pains and stories, and like a diligent transcriber, you’ll take the dictation and copy their dialogues and monologues and whisperings and sweet nothings in your notebook.

 

This “nothing” is the best place to be in. Within the inky abyss of this nothing-ness lays asleep a colony of creepy little monsters, also known as “words.” Some of these monsters had been sleeping in this n-cave for, probably the past billion years. Nobody ever tried to wake them up, partly because they had no idea that they even existed. It wasn’t until these crazy person called “writers” finally slumped down on their desks with their notebooks or laptops perched in front of them.

 

For at least half-an-hour, the writer gazed at the blank page, rolling her sleeves, clenching her lips, tightening her belly, flitting her eyes from side to side in agitation, until, quite suddenly, some blurry images of these monsters starting materializing in her brain. And she was jolted in a shocking curiosity that caused her to become even more restless than she previously was. Who are they, she was left wondering.

 

Her attention kept on flipping between the blank page and the images of these monsters. Nothing seemed to work. Life was approaching an impending doom and her dream of surpassing the success of JK Rowling was already shattering in front of her eyes. So, the writer stood up from the desk, despondently walked to the kitchen, and made herself a glass of coffee. As molecules of dopamine rushed into her brain, she felt hopeful, again.

 

Nothing could be gained by abandoning hope. So, she kept sitting there, gazing at the blank page, her curiosity for knowing the monsters was dwindling away with each passing moment. By the time, the glass of coffee was slurped down till the last bubble, she stood up again. She slapped the notebook cover, shutting the blank page, vowing to never come across it again. The world was always right. Writing was not for everybody. And she was not one of the lucky ones.

 

After this horrifying encounter with life’s brutal hopelessness and a depressing realization, the writer resigns herself into exile. She steps out of the house to wander like a stray dog in the park and sit on the grass with closed eyes.

 

As she sat with eyes closed, all she could see was darkness. It was a place called “nothing.” The writer had already resigned to her hopeless fate, which helped her surrender much more easily to this n-zone. For the first few minutes, nothing remained nothing, nothing but the ever pervading, empty, silent darkness. But then, something happened. The sound of a bird. A bird flitted past her, likely flying towards the nest for the night.

 

In that moment, a word materialized in the n-space, in this boring, bizarre place called “nothing.” A spark flickered in the darkness, dimly lit. At first, there was one word. But as the writer kept sitting there, still hopeless, another word materialized. Then another, and another, and another….

 

Suddenly, the writer’s head was rumbling with an entire forest of words, desperate and agitated to tell their stories, their pains, their lost loves, their unfulfilled desires and terrors. As the words pulled the strings of the writer’s attention, she had no choice but to run, to run fast and reach her desk. So she ran and like a car suddenly pulling the brakes, she hurried to the desk and like someone who has been possessed by a ghost, she began tapping the keyboard keys, taking dictation from these word monsters and collecting their stories in the empty ocean basin of the blank white page. The blank page was no longer blank, thanks to that place that nobody likes to visit, that everyone is terrified to visit, a place called “nothing.”

 

For others, this place is of no particular significance whatsoever.

But for a writer, this is the best place to be.

 

Nothing. The best place to be.