I’m a huge believer that the best stories are the ones with an element of truth behind them. I get a lot of my inspiration from real life events.

Someone on my FB friends page posted a link to this very sad story a couple of days ago. It got me thinking. Is it fair to turn other people’s pain into fiction? How easy would it be to take this article and turn it into a short story, but I’d be riddled with guilt 😦

Perhaps there’s a line that has to be drawn…….

As part of my course, yesterday I was reading about Archetypal Structures ie:

Journeys
The Quest
Rebirth
Monsters
The Siege
Tragedy
Comedy
Rags To Riches

Now I have to make a list of the last 10 books I’ve read and decide what Archetypal Structure they fit into. I have been very lapse on keeping a record of what I’ve read, so this is gunna be hard. I thought the easiest way would be to look at my GoodReads profile lol. You can’t really include short story anthologies or biographies can you lol

Into The Darkest Corner Now, this one is a combination IMO….. Journey, Quest, Rebirth, and there’s definitely a Monster. It’s also kind of Rags to Riches lol.

A Kind Of Vanishing I think this one is a Tragedy, but with an element of Quest.

Mr Chartwell Oh definitely Monster and Rebirth.

Bleed for Me A Journey, Quest, Monster and a Tragedy.

Quentins This is a difficult one as its a bunch of stories set in the same place, almost like reading a soap opera. Hmmmm, I think it’s absolutely every single type of structure lol.

Prophecy Is a Journey, Quest, Rebirth, Tragedy and Rags To Riches.

The Magic Of Fish Keeping (my current read) A Journey, Quest, Rebirth, Monster and Rags To Riches.

Sooo, isn’t that weird…every single book has more than one Archetypal Structure present, or am I being too analytical? 🙂

So my next task was to come up with a character, then choose a structure, then come up with ideas that would fit in with that structure. I decided to do it the other way round….I came up with the character, then brainstormed ideas that could happen to him, then looked at what structures would fit that. The results we’re pretty good, although, again, no happy endings for Mr Moorcroft….why am I so evil to my characters? *snigger* 😉

This has been a very interesting exercise as its made me realise I have a huge problem. I tend to start with a character and then want to knock them down. Surely, it should be the other way round…… Rags to Riches, not Riches to Rags lol

I’ve now finished all the exercises on my course, now all I have to do is the final assignment…..then what? I have to make some tough decisions on what I want to do next 🙂

Yesterday’s prompt about fruit picking Became the start of a story about a young girl picking strawberries for her mother *yawn yawn* lol. Today’s prompt is “Everything became shadow” after Arthur Rimbaud so a bit of investigation needed there I think 😉