A classic hero’s journey has twelve distinct steps, from the call to adventure to the return home – give them a quick Google and then see how many steps you can spot in the next movie you watch or book you read. This kind of story is so ubiquitous that it’s sometimes called the monomyth. In fact, George Lucas is said to have a framed chart of the Hero’s Journey hanging in his office. It’s Odysseus coming home from Troy, and it’s Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi. It’s a coming-of-age story, or a bildungsroman if you want to get fancy. At its most basic level, it’s about how an ordinary person goes through a transformative experience. This is probably the most classical story structure of them all. What I learned might be called formulaic, but I prefer to think of it as classic: these are the kinds of plots that have proven their worth time and again, from ancient fairy tales and epic poetry right through to the present day.

With Venturess, I tried to learn all that I could about plot structure and the methods great storytellers use to make their tales compelling. (I highly recommend playing that particular mental trick on yourself if you think you’re writing your masterpiece, you might worry so much about stacking up that you’ll never finish your first draft.) I tell myself I might write my masterpiece in twenty years’ time it takes the pressure off the book I’m writing now. The thing is, I try to treat each of my books as a learning experience, a chance to improve so that the next book I write will be better. Is this a bad time to tell you that my new novel, Venturess, is all about action and adventure? That I leaned hard into the parts of my writing I knew could use the most work? The aspects of writing that inspire me, that once in a while feel like they come naturally, are things like lyricism and gradual character development.

National Emerging Writer Programme Overview.

With a queer romance at its heart, this lush historical thriller offers readers an irresistible mix of vengeance and empowerment.

But can Adele save herself from the same fate as those she protects? Together, they become vigilantes meting out justice. After a violent assault, she turns to a roguish young con woman for help. Many of the men that try to charm Adele's new friends do so with dark intentions. When she's finally sent away to boarding school in London, she's happy to enter the brightly lit world of society girls and their wealthy suitors. In this daring tale of female agency and revenge from a New York Times bestselling author, a girl becomes a teenage vigilante who roams Victorian England using her privilege and power to punish her friends' abusive suitors and keep other young women safe.Īdele grew up in the shadows-first watching from backstage at her mother's Parisian dance halls, then wandering around the gloomy, haunted rooms of her father's manor.

Tides by betsy cornwell