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.