Getting down to it and the Hero's Journey

Will I ever stop thinking up new story ideas and starting them?  No.
Will I ever put aside a new idea to write on an old one?  Yes.
Will I ever finish my first boo?  Remains to be seen.

My mind is on - dream.imagine.create - all the time.  So when I find some new idea, I have to write it down to work on later.  But does later even exist?  Dunno.  It'll be a miracle the day I finish the first chapter of Kalissa's Book and I'm satisfied enough with it to move on.  It has to be perfect.

Why?  Because this is basically my number one idea.  This was my first dream, my first world, and my first version of myself that I really continued to develop.  Kalissa is a part of me now, but the world she lives in keeps changing so much that I keep rewriting her story to fit into the world.  Really what I need to do, is find what story I want to tell, that is hers and can stay hers, and then fit the world around that.  What I'm trying to do with this book, is make it into Christian fantasy.  I've kinda tried too hard, because my ideas for turning it into that make it sound WAY too allegorical.  I want something like the DragonKeeper chronicles.  Those are by Donita K. Paul.  I totally admire her writing style so much!  She's my second favorite author for writing style.

My dad keeps telling me that I should write an outline, but I can't do any sort of traditional one, with Roman numerals.  You just can't fit fantasy into:
I. chapter 1
  A. what happened first
  B. what happened second
    1. the bad part
    2. the good part
  C. what happened last
II. chapter 2

No.  Not happening.  But!  I went to this writer's workshop called Teens Write, for Christian teens, that really helped me.  Now I can write an outline in the form of the Hero's Journey.  Ever heard of it?  It's totally awesome.  The person who thought of it was genius.  Basically all stories have the hero's journey in it, if not always the same steps in the same order, or having all the steps.  However, it works incredibly well for my book(s).  This is how it goes.

1. The Ordinary World - where the hero starts.
2. The Call to Adventure - which can take the hero out of the Ordinary World.
3. Refusal of the Call - the hero can either accept or refuse the call.
4. Meeting with the Mentor - can be a friend, a teacher, a wizard, etc.  A person who helps the hero.
5. Crossing the First Threshold - the hero begins the adventure, not knowing what will happen.
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies - on the adventure, stuff starts to happen.  The hero can meet trials, challenges, friends, enemies or neutral characters.
7. Approach to the Inmost Cave - the hero is about the encounter the central ordeal of the adventure.  Romance can develop here.  The hero will soon meet up with the main Antagonist.
8. The Supreme Ordeal - the crisis and rebirth of the character.  The hero will "die" and be reborn as a changed being.  This is the central event of the story.
9. Reward - this is where the hero experiences the after effects of surviving death.  Celebration, love, revelation can take place here.
10. The Road Back - the hero starts back to the place he/she started from.  He/she is changed, not always for the better, in some way.
11. Resurrection - this can be the climax, when you think it's "happily ever after" and a deathly encounter occurs.  This is optional.
12. Return with the Elixir - the hero, if she/he is a true hero, will return with something they can share with others or that will heal, restore, or help a broken people or dying land.
13. Looking Back - this is the epilogue if the story calls for it, if the story ends so abruptly that the readers will be saying, "what?"

This is the full set of steps in the Hero's Journey.  You can mix them up a little, or take out a few, or leave off the ones at the end.  Whatever make your story YOURS.

I found this a week or so ago.  Hero's Journey
It's cool, and makes you condense your ideas into precise notes, not going off on threads.

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