7. Ordeal and Reward

Graduate school is taking a chunk out of my leg and skewing it... like a pig with an apple in its mouth. I apologize for the lateness of this entry. I have not been conquered by school just yet, but it's finding ways to be increasingly more chaotic. I predict this will settle down these next couple of weeks.

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What disturbs me about Vogler’s writing is that I can easily place myself into his words and find relevance to my life, not just my writing, but my own personal quandaries. I read the chapters on Ordeal and Reward awhile back and somehow let the entry slip from me. I think it bore a hole through my brain and left me in a puddle to ponder and be amazed.  

I understand intimately the 2nd act crunch of ordeal. I think it’s absolutely true that a real crisis will change a person and things won’t be quite the same, as cryptic as that sounds. It’s that hideous yellow wallpaper that once you notice, it has to be stripped off the walls, and as you claw at it you get absorbed into it with flakes of yellow on your clothes. The infamous “Yellow Wallpaper” short story has such a menacing hold on the idea of crisis that it mocks a great deal of fiction, and all it took was a postpartum woman trapped in a nursery room with cheap wallpaper.  

As with this section of Volger, I think it makes a great deal of sense as to why writers struggle with the middle portions of their work and end up with a sagging middle. I think it’s difficult to create a strong enough ordeal that it isn’t such a powerful black hole that the third act can’t compete with it, and on the other hand, it seems fairly easy to write an ordeal that barely qualifies as a cough. 

The ordeal scene I think needs to reflect the beginning and end. It needs to fit with the culmination of events the hero has experienced, and it also needs to wipe them out and foreshadow what is to come. This isn’t particularly easy as it takes some consideration and may be rushed by the writer in order to focus on the ending or go back to the beginning and polish it once more. The middle is long, it needs to both have structure and also present chaos for the character. If it pulls too much one way it can end up forced, too clinical, or dry while it can also be tedious, indistinguishable, or a series of bullet shots that never fully hit their mark. 

I think I recognize my weakness in writing since I admit that middles are not my strong suit. Lately, I’ve been well equipped for the beginnings or the ends. Maybe if I were to extend this as a metaphor for life I would see that I am lost in my own middle, unable to navigate through the haze even if I have some foresight as to my end. 

The reward... I feel like is much easier. Once the ordeal makes itself apparent, a compatible reward should be in close proximity. If we truly know the main character’s obsessions and what makes him desperate -- that should be key in solving what is his reward. As well, if we really know what is his reward we should then know what exactly should stand in the way of it. These puzzle pieces of the hero’s journey do best when they are placed around each other rather than held in isolation.      

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies, and the Inmost Cave

A story without conflict will only lead to two dimensionality for instance: Sesame Street, though it may have its need in society, it isn’t exactly a narrative based show. The importance of having the hero cross into the special world with new characters which he must make quick observations and connections with is that inevitably in our real world we experience this with new steps and the process always comes with frustrations, challenges, and chaos. This is a normal process as anyone moves to a new town, puberty, riding a freaking bike for the first time, or even being born. It’s through friendships and trials that the inevitable external and internal conflicts of the story are made clear. They give the hero identity, or at the least, a framework with which to work in order to combat their call which is ultimately their fate.

On another note, lately I’ve been tying my thoughts together that have been building through the last few months, or years perhaps. I believe the real dynamic that people face in their everyday life is the struggle against desiring power and seeking their own sense of character. I think what we’re really seeing with internal conflict is that people mistake power for character, which is the exact opposite: power is a delusion, it doesn’t inspire our essential self but instead causes us to buy into false realms placing our security on money, institutions, crippled forms of love, and so on and so on.

I think what is really truly villain time and time again are characters who are in close reach of being a hero but due to hurts, greeds, and the shadows that are within these characters ends up causing them to place their selves into the hope that power will be their answer. In truth it is really those that sacrifice themselves who are the ones who are consistently rewarded with having character and end up ironically finding their real self. We are all characters; we all have souls ticking inside of us that sometimes with the right wind, string ensemble, or particular puffy cloud that we feel our own spirit tingling within. There’s a whole list of villains I could write down just to prove that their main fixation has to do with power, while the hero who sacrifices ends up being the one who actually finds their self... and their real intrinsic power.  

In this world of people many of course mean well with their actions, but most villains meant well not knowing how their actions hurt others, often including most importantly how their own contrived actions hurt themselves. I think the struggle that’s the closest to the heart is our identity and that we have a battle against the power we seek vs. the character we are meant to be. And over these past few years I’ve realized that those who have character are the ones who are succeeding, not necessarily those of talent but those who are dedicated to the end, those who can continue riding the mechanical bull even when it goes postal and starts to fly into space. If one’s character is not in check, a person will end up fighting themselves and blocking their own talents from having the chance to flourish. 

The inmost cave to me is facing the internal self. If we can’t go into the depths of ourselves and fight off whatever sick thoughts decide to appear, we won’t be able to take on the real tangible obstacles that stand before us. Our minds are full of labyrinths with a variety of thoughts; this is the place of raw material that channeled correctly can be effective, but if channeled poorly it can turn into emotional wrecks, minds that somehow are cut off from their bodies, or forces that storm through life without any sense. I think the film the “The Science of Sleep” is a perfect description of a character who is unable to focus in their inmost cave, and so they are stuck and that being stuck is causing the protagonist's entire life to disintegrate.

What a horror fest to never be able to escape one’s inmost cave, and as a viewer of “The Science of Sleep” I felt beyond tense watching this film. It upset me that he couldn’t move forward, but just kept screwing himself over again and again without release.

We need the training ground that’s inside of us. It’s our most personal, private, and unique place that no one else can fully experience or completely understand because once we speak what’s happening inside our minds it’s being translated into a whole new medium, being compressed from it’s true source material into conversation.