Adding Your Personal Touch to the Hero's Journey

How do we keep our stories from being too predictable?  One approach is layering, where, as in music, you repeat and vary your melody and harmony, intertwining similar but slightly different threads together.  You could, for example, create a couple that seems to have the same fight over and over again-- but the arguments evolve slowly, maybe even imperceptibly so, and the repetition serves to highlight the subtle differences.

If you think of the hero's journey as a classic story arc, another way to keep the story from being too linear is to add mini-arcs (subplots) which collide with the characters and their expectations.  To decide which are worth developing, what is your protagonist depending on (or assuming is constant)?  What seemingly external changes could completely change the course of their journey?  Those are the threads to develop-- and who knows?  Maybe your subplot will be more intriguing to you and become the main story line.

The most important thing, of course, is to write what feels good and organic to you and forget all of the story structures and advice you hear if it doesn't resonate with you.  Writers often doubt themselves, wondering if their writing is any good.  If it's true for you when you write it, then you've created a small time capsule for yourself.  You'll likely never feel or think exactly the same way again, and even if no one else gets to enjoy it, you can look back and see your own truth years later and remember yourself at that moment.

I started journaling when I was seven, and I'm now up to journal 54.  So, while one may think that I need more of a life or just write really huge, I love that I have so many time capsules of my different selves.  I can't, for example, even imagine thinking what I wrote as a seven-year-old: wishing there would be a toy store in Palm Springs when I heard we were going there, calculating how much extra TV I could watch because I'd watched less than my allotted quota the day before, and looking forward to spending the night at my friend's house so I wouldn't have to brush my teeth.  (What a nasty child I was.)

So, forgive yourself for being your age or for not being the best writer-- and keep on writing.  The only way to get better is to keep at it.