Getting Started: Creating the Ordinary World

In my last blog post, I outlined 12 stages I intend to focus on as I complete the draft of my first novel. My goal is to write 12 chapters, one each month. To accomplish this, I am following the mythic structure of the Hero's Journey as identified and made famous by Joseph Campbell. My plot structure is a simple one cobbled together using Linda George's wonderful little book called Fill-n-the-Blank Plotting, which marries Joseph Campbell's hero's journey with the three-act structure. George suggests creating two storyboards, one to track the hero's journey and one to outline the three-act structure. All I've done here is mesh the two into one storyboard. See my earlier blog post "12 Chapters in 12 Months: Or How I Will Write a Novel this Year."

So my objective for January is to write the first chapter. Since I have already written 10 chapters to my novel, I am going to work on two fronts simultaneously. I'm going to push on through toward the long middle section of my novel and then on toward the end. At the same time, I am going to do some soft revising on the first section, which I wrote last fall. As I gently comb back through the book, I will be looking specifically to see how much of the hero's journey I have or haven't included in my story. Joseph Campbell identified a pattern that many stories follow, a shape or structure that he referred to as the hero's journey. This mythic structure, he said, can be seen in stories from every culture in every period of time all over the world, and embodies universal truths about the human condition.
My chief goal for chapter one is to introduce my protagonist and to show her life in the ordinary world she occupies. The purpose of the Ordinary World is to orient my reader in time and space, a place that will soon be contrasted sharply with a Special World. A world she will soon enter as she embarks upon a quest of some kind.

But first, the Ordinary World.

The ordinary world is home, whatever that may be. It may be a good home or a bad home, but it's always a place of normalcy for the protagonist. What's normal for one may not be normal for another, but whatever it looks like, it is life as usual for the hero. Though there may be dangers present, the Ordinary World is relatively safe for the protagonist. And even though it may at times be difficult, life in the Ordinary World is reasonably comfortable.

And yet, it has its problems. One of which seems to dominate the hero's life in some way. This is the obstacle that must be overcome.

Often, the hero will seek refuge from the problem by escaping into a fantasy life of some kind. He or she may long for an adventure. He may daydream or escape the Ordinary World in books, movies, games (or in some other fashion).

Once the Ordinary World is introduced, the hero unwittingly catches a glimpse of another world, a Special World that has been hidden from her until now. This is the world she is about to enter, though she does not know it at the time.

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And that's it for Chapter One. Our goal is to introduce the protagonist, living her life as usual in the ordinary world, and to allow her to accidentally catch a glimpse of the special world, a world she may be dreaming of though she doesn't realize it.