The Writer's Journey

by Christopher Vogler

  Kore/Persephone's return was celebrated at festivals called the Lesser Eleus-inia in February, marking the return of spring.

  Every five years, the Greater Eleusinia, the greatest festival in the Greek calendar, was held in September. Some of the carvings from the pediment of the Parthenon depict these jubilant ceremonies, when the young horsemen of Athens would fetch the sacred objects from the temple of Demeter and march them to a special shrine, the Eleusinion, at the base of the Acropolis. The story of Demeter and Kore was acted out in secret ceremonies of great emotional impact for a select group of initiates, using all the effects of lighting, music, dance, ritual, and staging to bring about the desired catharsis.

  Nowadays we may use the term catharsis more broadly to mean any kind of emotional release or breakthrough. Catharsis was adopted by the psychological community to describe a therapeutic process in which repressed thoughts, fears, emotions, or memories are deliberately brought to consciousness, triggering an emotional release or breakthrough that is supposed to relieve anxiety and relax tension. Movies and stories as well as art and music can have a role to play in triggering a psychologically healthy cathartic reaction.

  THE CATHARSIS OF COMEDY

  In the classical Greek system, it was recognized that balance is needed in a dramatic presentation or else it can be overwhelming and exhausting. They added comedies to the ritual line-up to relieve the emotional intensity of the tearful tragedies with some cathartic laughter for contrast.

  Comedy belongs to the "plerosis" or filling up portion of the ritual cycle. Once emptying and purging have been fully experienced, it's time to fill up again with something healthy, tasty, and life-affirming that stimulates Invigoration and Jubilation.

  The word comedy comes from "komos" which means "the revels," a wild party or orgy. Rituals of Invigoration in very ancient times involved a big feast in which eating, drinking, and all kinds of merriment were encouraged, to make a vivid contrast with the somber tone of the Mortification and Purgation rituals that preceded it. One aspect of comedy is the stirring up of sexual urges. Greek comedy often dealt with power struggles between men and women and celebrated sexuality with exaggerated costumes and situations. Freud considered that there was a strong linkage between laughter and sexuality, and of course sex is a natural catharsis that relieves tension.

  The Greeks thought two or three heavy doses of tragedy would do a good job of mortifying and purging you, and a dose of comedy was just the right finish to a ritual cycle, sending you back into the next season of the year refreshed, psychologically cleansed and reborn, and cheerful. As they used to say in vaudeville, "Always leave 'em laughing."

  RETURN OF THE LIGHT

  A feature of the seasonal rituals in ancient times was the re-lighting of the sacred fire in a central temple, symbolic of the victory of life over death. The flame would then be passed from person to person, carrying home candles or small oil lamps from which the individual hearth fires could be re-lit to Invigorate the culture. The hearth fire would be used to cook a feast that was consumed as part of the Jubilation that concluded the seasonal cycle.

  Some of these rituals survive in various ways around the world today. I witnessed one remnant at a Greek Orthodox Easter service in New York City. Part of the Lenten observations is to cover the beautiful painted statues and icons with purple cloths and put out the candles for a time, symbolically evoking grief and lamentation over Christ's suffering, death, and burial. Then, at a moment symbolizing the Resurrection, a large Paschal candle is lit in the darkened church. In the

  Greek Orthodox church in New York, the congregants had brought along small candles which they lit from the big one. At the end of the service they exited the church, but the ritual went on as the families walked home or got into their cars, carefully shielding the flames from the wind, preserving the light of the new season to kindle their own symbolic hearth fires in their homes, just as people used to do thousands of years ago. In similar ceremonies in Jerusalem, Greek pilgrims will even carry home the sacred flames on specially chartered airplanes.

  When we deal in drama or narrative today, we are building on forty thousand years of tradition and experience. Humans have always sought orientation and emotional release through drama. Although our entertainment is more evenly distributed throughout the year, we still partake of some of the seasonal ritual effect. New shows on television are typically launched in September, time of the fall equinox. Going to movies with family at holiday times or watching particular holiday films like It's a Wonderful Life each year is an emotional tradition for many people. Certain kinds of movies seem to be associated with specific seasons. In general we like love stories and sport stories in the spring and summer, while more thoughtful dramas tend to be released in fall and winter. The winter solstice, roughly coinciding with the Christmas and New Year's holidays, is a good time to release big fantasy pictures, especially those that comprise trilogies that can be run over successive year-end holidays. Summer is the time for the blockbusters and action pictures.

  THE POWER OF THE SEASONS

  We are not so conscious of the seasons these days since we are somewhat insulated from their effects, and most of us no longer live by the rhythms of planting and harvesting. However, the seasons still have their power over us, affecting our lives and our moods in ways both obvious and subtle. The seasons of the year and seasonal holidays can be useful to the writer, providing natural turning points, a measure of the passage of time, and distinct emotional associations. The passage of a single season makes an effective time frame for a movie (That Championship Season, Summer Catch) or a story's four-movement structure could be built around the passage of the seasons (The Four Seasons'). A change of seasons in a story can signify a change in the hero's fortunes or mood. A story could be built around a character who is disastrously out of synch with the rhythm of the seasons.

  In your writing, remember that the purpose of everything you're doing is to bring about some kind of emotional reaction in your reader or viewer. It may not always be the full-blown explosive reaction of catharsis, but it should have its effect on the organs of the body, stimulating them through repeated blows of conflict and setback for your hero. You are always raising and lowering the tension, pumping energy into your story and characters until some kind of emotional release is inevitable, in the form of laughter, tears, shudders, or a warm glow of understanding. People still need catharsis, and a good story is one of the most reliable and entertaining ways of bringing it about.

  QUESTIONS

  1. What role do holidays and the seasons play in your life? What role in your stories? Do you associate the holidays with emotional catharsis? Do your characters?

  2. What happens if you resist or ignore the rhythms of the seasons? What happens if you don't participate in the seasonal rituals of your culture?

  3. How is the seasonal cycle of catharsis played out in the world of sports? Do we get more catharsis from playing athletic games or from watching them?

  4. Why are competitive reality shows and talent contests so popular? What is the catharsis that they provide?

  5. What is the effect of experiencing a dramatic catharsis in a group? How is watching a movie or play in a packed theatre different from reading a book, playing a computer game alone, or watching television at home? Which do you prefer, and why?

  6. Has reading a book or watching a movie, play, or sporting event ever triggered a feeling like catharsis in you? Describe that experience and try to make the reader feel it too.

  7. What was your most memorable holiday experience? Could that experience be material for a short story, a one-act play, or a short film script? Would a character in it experience a catharsis?

  8. What role does fashion play in the seasonal cycle? Are we manipulated by the fashion industry or is it natural to wear different colors and fabrics for each season?

  9. What seasonal rituals are still practiced in your community? Do any of them use dramatic effects to create cat
harsis? What feelings are stirred by these rituals?

  10. Where are movies going in their search for situations that will trigger some kind of emotional or physical reaction? Is it harder to stimulate people today, and what will moviemakers and storytellers of the future use to bring about catharsis?

  Although we use our minds to process and interpret stories, much is going on throughout the rest of the body as we interact with a narrative. We react to art and to stories about our fellow creatures with the organs of our body. In fact the whole body is involved, skin, nerves, blood, bones, and organs.

  Joseph Campbell pointed out that the archetypes speak to us directly through the organs, as if we were programmed to respond chemically to certain symbolic stimuli. For example, big-eyed infants of any species trigger a reaction of sympathy and protectiveness, or cause us to say things like "How cute!" Puss-in-Boots from the Shrek movies knows how to exploit this deep emotional trigger by making his eyes huge when he wants sympathy. Emotions are complex processes, but on one level they are simple chemical reactions to stimuli in our environment, a fact that storytellers have always used to get their emotional effects.

  Certain images or tableaux have an automatic emotional impact on us, felt in the organs of our bodies. A tableau is a figure or several figures in a setting, enacting some primal scene that either affects us intuitively, on an almost animal level, or that has become charged with emotion because of long tradition. The Last Supper, images of the Madonna and child, and the Pieta depicting Christ's mother cradling her dead son's body are all emotionally loaded religious tableaux. Similar images with equal force existed in earlier cultures, like the Egyptian goddess Hathor nursing her child or Isis tenderly assembling the scattered pieces of her dismembered husband Osiris. Images of beings in conflict, people in combat or gods and heroes wrestling with monsters, cause tension in our stomachs as we identify with one or another of the combatants. Images of protective or generous spirits (kindly grandmothers, angels, Santa Claus) give us a warm feeling of comfort. Representations of sympathetic characters in physical torment evoke a physical response, as in graphic medieval art depicting the Crucifixion and the martyrdoms of various saints like St. Sebastian who was shot full of arrows.

  Classical Greek drama used startling visceral effects on stage, like Oedipus appearing with his eyes torn out, to elicit a strong reaction in the bodies of the beholders. The language of Greek plays could be bold and brutal, hammering at the audience with vivid word choices that suggested violent blows and the spilling of blood. Often a bloody act was committed off-stage, but described with stomach-wrenching detail, or the shocking evidence was displayed in the form of blood-soaked clothing or actors portraying corpses.

  The Romans took this to extremes in their version of Greek theatre which became more degenerate and cruel as the Empire stumbled to its death. Symbolic or simulated acts of violence were replaced by real ones, with condemned criminals suffering the fate of the fictional characters, literally bleeding and dying on stage to amuse the Roman public. Gladiators stepped into plays to enact mythological combats and actually fought to the death in the theatres.

  In the late 1700s, the puppet character of Guignol was imported from Lyons to Paris, where his brash, violent nature gave birth to a whole wave of plays known as Grand Guignol, whose object was to provide thrills of terror and shudders of horror with the realistic depiction of torture, beheadings, dismemberments, and other insults to the human body.

  Observers of the first impact of moving pictures on the public remarked on the realism and physical power of the images on the screen, causing audiences to jump back when a train approached or flinch when a gun was pointed at them for the first time in The Great Train Robbery.

  In the 1950s and '60s, Alfred Hitchcock was known for provoking physical reactions in his audiences, and he was a master organist, playing the viscera like a mighty Wurlitzer in tension-filled movies like Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo, but he was not alone, for all good directors know instinctively how to use their tools to make us feel something, physically and emotionally. They employ everything in the toolbox — story, characters, editing, lighting, costumes, music, set design, action, special effects, and psychology — to bring about physical responses such as holding the breath in suspense, gasping in response to surprises, and exhaling in relaxation when the on-screen tension is released. In fact, the secret of drama may come down to control of the audience's breathing, for through the breath all the other organs of the body can be regulated.

  In the 1970s the special effects—laden movies of Irwin Allen (Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno) were heralded, and sometimes condemned, as a new wave of visceral entertainment, playing to the body rather than the mind. With the arrival of the modern special effects masters of the Spielberg and Lucas generation, movies were able to seduce the eye and the other organs of the body ever more convincingly.

  Along the way there have been many experiments to enhance the physical effects of entertainment and drama, from the burning of incense at Greek rituals to modern technical marvels like 3D, IMAX, and mechanized seats that vibrate in time to on-screen machine-gun fire. In Roman theatres and stadia, the presence of gods could be suggested by sprays of perfumed vapor and showers of fragrant flower petals. In the 1950s experiments were done with 3D, "smell-o-vision," and "Percepto," an effect in theatres specially rigged for William Castle's unique effort, The Tingler, Seats were wired with buzzers that made them vibrate at supposedly shocking moments on screen, where a creature was depicted attaching itself to people's spines.

  THE BODY AS A GUIDE TO CRITIQUING

  It's not easy to critique your own writing work or that of others. It can be hard to articulate what's wrong, how the story made you feel, what was lacking. Sometimes the best way to measure a story's effect and diagnose its problems is to ask "How did it make me feel — in the organs of my body? Did I feel anything physical at all, or was I just having mental processes that didn't much involve anything but the brain? Did it make my blood run cold? Did it make my toes curl with horror or delight? Did it make my nervous system alert as if the dangers the hero faces were actually threatening me?" If not, there may be something missing, an appeal to the body, a physical threat, an emotional tension.

  As a professional evaluator of stories I became keenly attuned to the emotional and physical effects a manuscript could have on me. I came to depend on the wisdom of the body to determine the quality of the story. If it was bad and boring, my body would grow leaden and the pages would weigh a thousand pounds apiece. I knew it was bad if, as my eyes scanned down the page, my head kept drooping and I nodded off to sleep. The good ones, I noticed, the ones that ultimately made good movies, had the opposite effect on my body. They woke me up. The organs of my body came to life one by one. The body became alert, light, and happy, squirting fluids into the pleasure centers of the brain, "the proper pleasure" as Aristotle called it, of experiencing emotional and physical release through a well-told, cathartic tale.

  As we watch a good movie or are engrossed in a good novel, we actually go into an altered state of consciousness, with a measurable change in brain waves detectable by the tools of science. Perhaps changes in the rhythm of the breath, combined with focusing the attention on the imaginary world of the story, bring about this almost hypnotic effect.

  When I started critiquing screenplays and stories for a living, I soon found that what I was really reporting was how they had triggered chemical reactions in the organs of my body. The organs squirt fluids, all day long, as we react to various emotional and physical situations in our environment, and its no different when we watch a movie or imagine scenes from a novel. When we are stressed or frightened, our adrenal glands transmit a chemical jolt through the body, sending signals to increase the heart rate and pace of breathing. When we are in shock from seeing traumatic or frightening things, our bodies send messages to shut down certain processes to preserve a core of life in an emergency.

  The wor
d "horror" derives from the Latin word for bristling and reflects the body's automatic reaction to uncanny events, things that upset the normal order. Such sights trigger a physical reaction in the skin of the arms that resembles the response to cold air. Tiny muscles cause the hairs on the arms to stand up, a reaction called "horripilation," that means "bristling hair" or hair standing on end. Horror is hair-raising. Some scientists think this may be a survival from hairier times in human history, when having your thick pelt of hair stand up when threatened would make you look bigger and scarier, as many animals will swell up or ruffle up their fur when facing threats.

  A tip for designers of sensory experiences: A sudden blast of chilly air can trigger a shuddering effect in audiences, especially if they are keyed up for it by some emotional or musical manipulation. The chill can trigger the graveyard shudder of fear or a more exalted form of physical reaction, like awe, wonder, or spiritual rebirth.

  The effect of shuddering, in which the muscles of the body, especially the arms and back, involuntarily ripple or spasm, is associated with other emotional effects in addition to horror. Religious awe or deep psychological insight can produce shudders that can be very pleasurable, signs of grace, endorsement from the body of the Tightness of a thought. A shiver of this kind in French is called a "frisson," and I noticed the phenomenon when I concentrated hard on working out a story problem, especially when working collaboratively in open discussion with other people. In the course of trying out different ideas someone would say something that triggered a shiver of response in me. I would feel a tingle passing down my spine, almost as if thousands of small pebbles were rolling down my spinal column. It felt the way a rain stick sounds, one of those hollow wooden tubes with dried peas inside that makes a sound like falling rain. Sometimes other people would feel it too, or feel something like it, because I could see their bodies being jolted by it. The shiver ran round the room.