Domestication

I know I am off my own topic, which I plan to return to, but I just had to post this.

As a cat owner, I just had to read an article in June 2009, Scientific American Magazine article, The Evolution of House Cats. Authors Carlos A. Driscoll, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Andrew C. Kitchener and Stephen J. O'Brien discuss their research into the genetic and archaeological findings. They give a creditable argument that house cats developed earlier than the Egyptian times previously thought. It was interesting to say the least. One sentence really caught my eye:

"And as to utility to humans, let us just say cats do not take instruction well. Such attributes suggest that whereas other domesticates were recruited from the wild by humans who bred them for specific tasks, cats most likely chose to live among humans because of opportunities they found for themselves." See whole article here.

I started laughing. Opportunists? Cats? I definitely believe cats chose to live among humans. To say we have domesticated cats is a mistaken notion. The truth is: cats domesticated us. They find us very useful. Good owners provide their cat owner's every need. While they are often neutered by their 'owner,' enough humans do nothing about their cats' sexuality, providing ample means to keep the species going. Yes, cats usually ignore orders of any type. They only hunt creatures humans consider vermin at their own leisure. Who else works just for a few contented purrs from their cat? And yes, there are not perhaps as many good 'owners' as cats might wish, but enough to keep millions of cats happy. The rest keep hunting.

Where The Story Starts 2

So how does this work? I’ve taken three romance stories many people have read. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, published in 1813; at the very beginning or romance writing. Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer, published in 1932, one of the first historical romances and Legally Blonde, the movie, released June 2001 based on a novel by Amanda Brown, a romantic comedy.

Why not use science fiction or fantasy stories? Because that’s where you expect to find mythological and folktale characteristics. If the precepts of the hero’s journey work, they should work with all genre and all media.

Opening sentences Pride and Prejudice:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little know the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

Within two sentences Jane Austin has established her setting (Austen’s contemporary society) – a typical upper class neighborhood. This is the ordinary world of the heroine. Austin also indicates the journey about to be taken.

Opening sentence from Devil’s Cub:
“There was only one occupant of the couch, a gentleman who sprawled very much at his ease, with his legs stretched out before him, and his hands dug deep in the capacious pockets of his greatcoat. While the coach rattled over the cobbled streets of the town, the light from an occasional lantern or flambeau momentarily lit the interior of the vehicle and made a diamond pin or a pair of very large shoe-buckles flash, but since the gentleman lounging in the coach wore his gold-edged hat tilted low over his eyes, his face remained in shadow.”

I had forgotten the way this story started. I’ve always considered it Mary’s (the heroine) journey. And while most romances are about the heroine’s journey, Devil’s Cub is about the hero’s journey. That is why the story starts in Dominic’s very exclusive self-centered world. It’s his world that changes. While you might think his abduction of Mary significantly changes her world, it doesn’t. Mary remains the same character as when she first walks into the story.

From Legally Blonde opening scene:
A pretty girl in close fitting clothes riding a bicycle with an envelope addressed to “Elle in the basket. She is riding through a college town, passing frat boys and pulls into a sorority house. Scenes shift between typical happenings in the sorority. Hawaiian singer Hoku sings “It’s a Perfect Day.” (It’s a perfect day, nothing standing in my way.)

Everything about this is so upbeat. Elle Woods, the heroine, has a perfect life. She is blonde, beautiful and lives on the surface of life with few cares and expectation that only good can come her way.

So there you have it, openings showing the ordinary world that is about to change as the world of adventure calls.

Where the Story Starts

Most stories start with an ‘Initial Situation’ or a depiction of the main character’s ordinary world, his home. Here the reader learns about the main character, his family situation, and any prophecies or forewarnings about this character. This setting indicates the hero’s condition, the world in which they currently live. Valdimir Propp called it the ‘Initial Situation,’ and Joseph Cotton, the ‘Call to Adventure,’ which he says, ‘signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.’

The Initial Situation also gives hint to the basic problem, or the main character’s lack, or a lack in his family or community. There may a coincidence or mistake that reveals a hidden secret or something amiss that the hero must resolved. These mishaps are often an invitation to journey, the chance change -- whether it be to find a new love, to solve a murder, to save the world, or to visit an all together different world. Adventure calls promising change.

With today’s fast paced society, stories have also sped up. Opening scenes, first paragraphs and first chapters have to have a ‘hook,’ a dilemma or situation that grabs the readers attention and pulls them into the story. Often this occurs in the character’s common world. In the television show, CIS, it is the murder as it happens or the discovery of a body and then shortly the main character and his investigation team that serves as the initial situation and call to adventure.

Check it out. Think about TV shows, or any book you’re reading. Can you identify the initial situation and the demand for change? It might be in the opening credits, an opening scene lasting a minute or less, it might be a sentence, a paragraph, or a whole chapter.

The Illud Tempus

Most fairy tales start with what is called ‘illud tempus,’ (now and forever) or a temporal-spatial determination meant to take the reader from their world to the world of the story. In stories from oral traditions it used to be the opening line, ‘Once upon a time.” That clearly informed listeners that the story did not take place here and now, but some timeless place both now and forever.

Admittedly, stories no longer begin with ‘once upon the time.’ However, the ‘illud tempus’ shows up in other forms through most of our media. There are book titles and covers that inform us about the change of place and time, plus those few pages a reader turns in every book before the story begins – just a few seconds to take a break from reality. In television shows there are initial introduction scenes and driving music that informs most viewers that the show is about to start, taking them to an imaginary place. This happens in movies, too. Watch for images during these openings. They also are often rich in mythic symbolism.

In addition, few of us listen to the stories in the original, oral tradition where ‘once upon a time,’ or ‘a long, long time ago,’ are needed. We chose to read. By making that decision we choose, at least initially, to suspend our disbelief about the impossible and improbable. We give our agreement to visit this story’s world in now and forever.

The Collective What?

For those readers unfamiliar with the phrase 'collective unconscious' it is similar to actions you take that are driven by your personal unconscious, but on a deeper level. This is where boogymen, demons and angels are found, along with many other dream characters. According to Calvin Hall and Vernon Nordby in A Primer of Jungian Psychology, "Man inherits these images from his ancestral past, a past that includes all of his human ancestors as well as his prehuman or animal ancestors."

The archetype characters in stories are identified as hero (soul-figure), mentor (teachers, crones, shaman), threshold guardians (characters who represent road blocks to success), heralds (characters who issue challenges or announcements), shape shifters (characters who are constantly changing mood, motivation, or appearance) , shadows (usually the villain) and tricksters (characters who are comedic or mischievous but drive change). There are more, but for stories, most fall into the listed types... And, some characters in a story can change archetype during the story. A secondary character might be a mentor, change to a herald or threshold guardian and end up a trickster. It's not the label that counts, but the function.

So authors who consciously create characters based on psychological archetypes found in the collective unconscious use themes universally identifiable, as pointed out in Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, Mythic Structures for Writers. Vogler worked to identify these structures in movies for production companies. The question becomes, can you write a story without using archetypes? Probably not as these phenomenon have resided in stories forever and they infiltrate every medium humans create. Whether you use them to advance your story is another question.

Reading and the Collective Unconscious

During the last century several scholars and scientists published studies on mythology, folklore and fairy tales, stories that had started with oral storytellers in man's early history. They wanted to understand the persistence of these stories. Moreover, they knew certain story motifs were encountered in many unrelated cultures and time epochs.

Ideas developed from the emerging study of psychology. One of these ideas claimed these tales were necessary for the development of the human psyche. The researchers found that in a subliminal way, these stories helped the listeners overcome the demons, terrors and dilemmas haunting their dreams and found in their everyday lives. Further they thought these stories helped the society's members learn the morals and customs of their culture.

Vladimir Propp, a Russian scholar, studied Russian fairy tales and in 1928 wrote the Morphology of Folk Tales, which was transcribed into English sometime in the 1950’s. Essentially, it described a series of plot devices found in every Russian fairy tale. Another eminent scholar, Joseph Campbell, in his The Hero With a Thousand Faces released in 1947, tied a similar story morphology with the archetypes and 'collective unconscious' of Jungian psychology.

What has this to do with readers (or those watching television dramas, movies, or at a guess, those playing video games, for that matter)? Only that these archetypes and plot devices thread through our own modern stories; at least the one we seem to like best.

As a writer I find this fascinating. Does that mean if all writers follows these structures every story will be like another? Not at all. Stories that contain these forms, just like snowflakes with only six sides, can enjoy an infinity of difference. A plus side – these story forms are already known to engage the audience.

In up coming posts I will try to show the popular archetypes and structures found in our media today and how they operate, so come back soon.

Are You Helping to Make A Difference?

If you don't watch NBC nightly news and have missed the Making A Difference segments, you are missing some inspiration from everyday Americans, the type of thing that is going to get us through this financial crisis faster than in the '30s. Go to Making A Difference and see what ordinary, every-day Americans do for strangers. I am a huge believer in random acts of kindness. It balances so much that is bad in life.