Where Secrets Lie – The Well of Images Part 2

Read Part 2: "Where Secrets Lie," at WritersCafe.org.

After months of hard work, I am pleased to announce "Where Secrets Lie," the second story in The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster, book 1 of The Well of Images.

Accepting Professor Berkeley's offer to take her on as a research assistant, Hope is dismayed when Berkeley forbids her from entering the Realms on her own, because of dangers unknown. Samuel, the only person who could be her delving partner, is completely disinterested. Can Hope find a way to convince him to join her, or will she have to brave the uncertain depths alone, behind her mentor's back?

When starting a new project, it can be easy to get wrapped up in beginner's enthusiasm. Getting through the first challenge is tough, but your excitement gets you through it. The hard part begins with the second challenge. You're already tired, and some of that enthusiasm is draining away. Worse, all of the parts you're most excited about don't happen until later, and you find yourself having to grind through the boring parts of the journey, while trying to make it look interesting enough to keep your readers' attention. With that in mind, getting "Where Secrets Lie" to a high enough quality level to share with the world is one of my most significant writing milestones. Here is to a successful future of the series.

The Well of Images is a fantasy series of short stories, following two college students in their adventures through the Unconscious Realms, full of symbolism and mythological archetypes. If you have not read part 1, or if you are from the future and want to read a later chapter, you can find them in the Finished Stories tab.

The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster:
1. Pandora’s Gate
2. Where Secrets Lie
3. Limits of the World
4. The Fool’s Gift
5. Loki’s Game

If you like "Where Secrets Lie," why not support me on Patreon? It means a lot to me to know that others find what I am passionate about to be meaningful.

Tapping the Unconscious – The Secret to a Great Story

Meaning and Purpose:

Jungian Archetypes

The Most Important Question

Fact and Meaning

A good story requires good writing. That’s a given. But even with good writing, some stories are amazing, and some are just okay. This means that there must be something else at play, but what? The answer lies in how writing transports us into other worlds, stimulating our imaginations to take us somewhere else so vividly that we can forget where we are.

When it comes to perception, our mental wires are tangled up in a messy web. Colors feel warm or cold. Musical tones feel like emotions. Shapes will make us wary or put us at ease. Everything we sense or experience is connected with all kinds of other things, most of which have no connection in the outside world. This is how metaphors work. If a writer says the sky is smooth as glass, it creates a picture in your mind of cloudless blue, even though the sky and glass have nothing in common.

Can you guess which of these shapes is called a "kiki" and which is called a "bouba"? Around 90% of people choose the same thing, regardless of native language.

The best stories are those that resonate with us, tickling these crossed wires so that we get to things that are deep and meaningful. It is one thing to talk about human nature analytically, and another entirely to learn about it through the guided experience of an artist’s hand.

Back in the early days of psychology, Sigmund Freud modeled the mind as three layers, the conscious, which is where our thinking and perceiving and everything that we are aware of takes place, the unconscious, a vast ocean of ideas, beliefs, and calculations we are completely unaware of, and the subconscious, which lies between the others, and takes things from the unconscious and brings them to the conscious.

Freud’s contemporary, Carl Jung, added to this with the idea of the collective unconscious, a commonality of the unconscious minds of all of humanity. He came to this idea by looking at mythical archetypes, characters, events, settings, etc., that appear in stories all over the world. For instance, there is the hero, who does grand and difficult things for the good of their community; the mentor, who helps the hero reach their potential; the trickster, who manipulates everyone for their own ends; and many more. It is a common misconception to think that Jung meant everyone’s minds are connected. What he really meant is that humans have a lot of the same stuff in our unconsciouses, just like we all have two hands and two eyes.

Influenced by Freud and Jung, mythologist Joseph Campbell came up with the idea of the monomyth, also called the Hero’s Journey, which is a structure that the most powerful stories in human history, the ancient myths from all over the world that have survived until today, adhere to. The monomyth has several stages, including the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, death of the mentor, figurative or literal death and rebirth of the hero, ultimate triumph, returning home with the prize, and others. Few stories have all of the monomyth’s elements, but most of the great ones have some. It is also worth mentioning that there are other story formats that resonate besides the monomyth.

Star Wars: A New Hope is often hailed as the modern representation of the monomyth.

The fact that tales from all over the world follow this structure suggests that the secret ingredient that makes stories great is when they resonate with the collective unconscious. You may have heard writers say that the story already exists, and they are just putting it to words. Back in the day, there was an idea of a personal genius, a spirit that gave creative people inspiration for their work. It turns out this is not merely superstition; the subconscious mind functions just like a personal genius, bringing forth the best ideas from the reservoir of the unconscious. When creators follow the guiding of their genius, it is an expression of the unconscious, and when this expression resonates with lots of people’s unconsciouses, it is a great story. True art appears when the artist looks inward and lets their heart guide them.

Announcing: Short Story Series, The Well of Images

Read Part 1: "Pandora’s Gate," at WritersCafe.org

After years of blogging, practice writing, and listening to experts, I am proud to announce the debut installment of an original series of short stories, called The Well of Images, formerly under the working title of Project Soul. It tells of the adventures of two college students who discover that the Jungian collective unconscious is literal, and they have the ability to go there and explore. In this series of worlds made out of mind stuff, the characters meet mythical archetypes, face sides of themselves that they didn’t know they had, and confront deep questions about the natures of humanity and reality.

The series will be laid out with several “books,” which have overarching plots and themes, which are broken into “parts,” or “chapters,” which each contain their own plot. It is like a TV show, with the books being seasons, and the chapters being episodes. The first book, The Mentor, The Hero, and the Trickster, will have five parts, and the others may have more. I do not have a release schedule, since I do not know my own writing speed well enough to know the correct pacing, but I would not expect more than one part every two months. The first part, "Pandora’s Gate," is finished and available for reading.

November is over, which means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has come to a close. This year, I wrote drafts and scenes of The Well’s upcoming chapters. The default goal of the event is to write 50,000 words by the end of the month, but I kept instead to my personal goal to write at least 1000 words every day. I found this to be easier than last year, and it gave me better results too, leaving me with workable material instead of pure trash.

In a continuing story like this, there is no way to predict everything that will need proper setting up. I might look back on the early chapters with the wisdom of hindsight, and want to touch them up and make slight alterations to the events. Because of this, I’m reserving the right to come back and edit these early parts if I feel it is appropriate.

They say you need to write a million words in practice before your first book gets published. Right now, I’m at a few hundred thousand, and The Well will be the key to the rest. It is my first serious attempt at an original story with the knowledge I have gained from blogging and from listening to experts, and I feel like I am making good progress. Someday, I just know, I will be able to walk into a bookstore and find something with an eye-catching cover and my name on it, but for now it’s a step forward to post stories on the internet for free.

The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster:
1. Pandora’s Gate
2. Where Secrets Lie
3. Limits of the World
4. The Fool’s Gift
5. Loki’s Game

If you like "Pandora's Gate," why not support me on Patreon? It means a lot to me to know that others find what I am passionate about to be meaningful.