Nonfiction is, I must say, a great deal more nerve wracking than fiction. Your support is appreciated. I really hope that if you’re intersted in why you enjoy my book hugs and other comforting books like them, you’ll give The Heroine’s Journey a try.
The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers and Fans of Pop Culture offers up an alternate model of story telling to the Hero’s Journey that applies to books, TV, movies, and much more. I designed this book to give you a foundation, history, and guided step-by-step process to understanding the Heroine’s Journey. It will train your eye to spot it, but also how to write it, or fix your story with it. Also it explains why it’s so critically disenfranchised.
You can see why it took a whole book?
Anyway, the content is laid out inside this book in such a way that you can skip around to whatever part is most relevant you and your desires. But it’s also designed to be a fun read cover-to-cover.
So as it’s already an informative book, what extras can I offer? Here’s what I came up with:
Special Extras!
- Citations & References
- Check out the table of contents and read the introduction
- Heroine’s Journey Pinterest board with lots of fun mythological graphics.
- By popular request I did some schematic graphic thingies! Feel free to download and use as needed (so long as you credit me, I don’t care!)
Producing Nonfiction
- Post where I write about coming up with the cover, why I chose the elements I chose, why yellow, and how it’s different from designing a fiction cover. (Starla designed the cover and she also voices the audio.)
- Shelley Bates of Moonshell Books did the copy editing (plus multiple beta readers). But I should say that she specializes in historical genre fiction, not nonfic.
- The book is formatted for both electronic and print using Vellum. I’m particularly proud of the print edition’s formatting. It’s very slick.
Here is a sample of the Heroine’s Journey audiobook narrated by Starla Huchton.
I chose Starla because she is familiar with my own vocal reading style (for years we were in a writing group together), and so I think she handles my non-fiction voice similarly to how I actually talk. In other words, we sound a bit alike. Before you ask, I just don’t think I have the skill set to do my own narration.
More?
I don’t often recommend specific pop culture in conjunction with this book (because I think part of the fun is learning how to identify the heroine’s journey yourself in the wild), but I must mention Kdrama “W.” I LOST MY MIND over this show because it’s a hero character on a hero’s journey who becomes self aware, decides he wants a happy ending, and tries to become a heroine on a heroine’s journey instead. But the hero’s journey narrative keeps trying to self correct for this. It’s flipping brilliant!
The plot is difficult to describe but the concept is genius. Basically the hero of an online web comic series realizes he is a fictional character and doesn’t want the inevitable fate that’s in store for him, so he tries desperately to move into either the real world, or a different narrative arc, or both. A real world woman falls in love with him and tries to help.
Once you know this, and all about the two different journeys, this series is SO MUCH FUN. It basically becomes a dialogue between the inevitability of a fictional journey plus how to satisfy reader expectations if the POV character is sentient and wants to change the narrative beats of his own fate. Very meta. Highly recommended it’s on Rakutan’s (Kobo’s parent company) video platform Viki.
Praise Quotes
“The first book on writing structure that’s ever truly resonated for me and made sense of the way my favorite stories work. I’ve thought back to this book so many times since reading it, and I know I’ll be reading it again!”
~ Stephanie Burgis, Author of The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart
“A lot of educators are going to be very interested in this. The heroine’s journey narrative structure aligns with positive parenting and the anti-bullying programs’ goals and techniques. Their preferred stories emphasize team building and non violent conflict resolution. Understanding that this is a long standing historical and culturally relevant narrative structure will help them find more stories that resonate with their programs, and help defend the programs from more patriarchal critics. ”
~ Janis Wright
“Okay, look…I’m not sure how you can just rewire my brain to see the heorine’s jouney like this and then expect me to make coherent, thought-out comments about the text when all I want to do is hold it in my twisted little grip while I shove it at people screaming like a madman and pointing at passages, but I guess that’s what I’m going to do. ”
~ Author Beta Reader
“I knew that my stories didn’t neatly fit the mold of the Hero’s Journey, but it wasn’t until I read this excellent resource on the Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger that I finally understood why. Now I understand not only how to reliably write in this form, but also how to better position my stories for readers and agents. ”
~ Ethan Freckleton, Author & Host of The Fearless Storyteller podcast
“The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger is a game changer for genre fiction. Using dozens of examples from books and movies, Ms Carriger carefully and convincingly divides these into two distinct story camps based on the character arc of their protagonists: the lone wolf and the team player.”
Yours,
Miss Gail
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BOOK DE JOUR!
The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture
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My first non-fiction book! How to use ancient story structure to understand and crack bestselling genre fiction.
Gail’s Daily Tea Party
Tisane of Nifty
Writerly Tincture
Expand Your Vocabulary With This Site of Untranslatable Words
I would like to add:
Faen (Thai) – Gender neutral lover/partner/special someone. Faen is more significant than a boyfriend/girlfriend but also not as legally binding as spouse.
Book Nibble
Quote to Sip
That Alec quote is so good.
Also, I visited the Eunoia site and and it’s really cool! But I would recommend that not everything you find there is taken at face value. I thinks it’s probably based on voluntary submissions, and not always by native speakers (sometimes of either language). I checked what they had in Swedish, and a few of them were not correctly translated. For example, solkatt (literally: “sun-cat”) is given the meaning of “The glimmer that reflects the sunshine off a wristwatch”, which is both too specific and not very clear. It is the speck of light, often moving about erratically, that appears when sunlight is reflected off something small and shiny, like a mirror, a piece of glass, or polished metal. (The glass on a wristwatch can certainly produce a solkatt, but it’s not the only thing that can.)
Vabba is translated as “to be at home with the kids”, which is also not entirely correct. It means “to be [legally] home from work with a sick child”. The word is fairly recent and comes from “VAB”, which is an acronym for the Care of a Sick Child legislation (Vård av sjukt barn).
There’s no single word for just being at home with the kids.
Also: One of the words in the list is not actually Swedish, but Norwegian… XD
Faen is a great word. I’m currently reading Kris Ripper’s latest book, The Love Study, where the protagonist is dating a genderqueer person, and at one point in the story they are talking about what word they should use since neither “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” works. I immediately thought of faen! Sadly, because it’s originally a loan of the English word “fan”, loaning it back into English would make you sound like a conceited tool if you used it about your Special Someone.
Also, I’m a bit bummed that I completely forgot about the preorder of The Heroine’s Journey.
Hmm it seems like your site ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I had written and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any suggestions for rookie blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.
I have resources section of the website with a bunch of stuff for beginning writers. That would be a great place to start. https://gailcarriger.com/resources/
I’m very interested in this book, but I was wondering how this compares to The Heroine’s Journey By Maureen Murdock. Was it inspired by? Was this your take on this concept? Have you never heard of this other book and had no idea another author wrote a book in the 1990s on the same topic?
Sure thing. I have a section on Murdock in the book, also she’s mentioned at length in my citations and references with are available online here: https://gailcarriger.com/2020/12/21/citations-online-sources-for-the-heroines-journey-for-writers-readers-and-fans-of-pop-culture/
I focus on the Heroine’s Journey from a story structure and narrative analysis stand point, as opposed to Murdock’s focus on a more personal journey of self discovery, Jungian therapy, and phycology interests. Two entirely different approaches to the same subject. So if you are looking for something more like hers, this is not it.
Thank you for the run-down! Frankly, I was quite surprised when I did a search for “The Heroine’s Journey” to even come across another book by the same name. I couldn’t really tell what could be similar or different so your answer is absolutely perfect. I am definitely interested in your book and may check out the other one as well. Thanks again!
My pleasure! Thanks for stopping by.