At Agile Writers we adhere to The Hero’s Journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell in his seminal work The Hero With a Thousand Faces. We also take lessons from movie plots and combine them into the Agile Writer Method. The Hero’s Journey has a standard pattern. The hero starts out in a familiar world where things are pretty static. Then something […]
Recently at Agile Writers the topic of what is “allowed” in certain genres came up. In particular, a couple writers are working on Christian Inspirational fiction and wondered what words or topics were taboo. In that genre, readers are very sensitive to words that are perceived as “swear” words. Our own Cat Brennan related a story of how a Christian […]
One of the things I teach in my seminar on The Agile Writer Method is that the climax is the seventh and final turning point in the story. There is the classic climax where the hero defeats the villain and solves the main goal of the story. But there other ways to handle a climax. One of them is what I […]
By James Bono Twas the night before Thursday. Throughout Martins’ store Rishonda was browbeating us to write more. “Ten pages are sent every Sunday by peak agile writers. So how was your week?” Elevator pitches graced those who would dare, in hopes that Saint Gregory soon would be there. Each writer was nestled all snug in his seat while visions […]
“You don’t have to be a great grammarian or great speller to write a novel. You don’t have to have connections in the writing world. What you need is a passion for your story and a plan to complete. You bring the passion, we’ll bring the plan.” -Greg Smith (2011) Founder Agile Writers Creator of the Agile Writer Method
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One of the first recommendations I give to my writers is to create a website and a Facebook page. This is the beginning of creating a platform for selling their book. Even if the book isn’t written yet, the new writer needs to create an interested following. The easiest way to do this is through social media. As a writer, […]
The following is a digest of a movie in the format of the Agile Writer Method. The Story Abstract gives a high-level overview of the story. The Hero Abstract gives an overview of the Hero (protagonist). The Storyboard is an 8-stage breakdown of the story along with elements of the Hero’s Journey (by Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler). You can learn more […]
At Agile Writers we use the Hero’s Journey and break it down into 8 stages to tell a compelling story. But compelling stories don’t come just from novels. Here is the Agile Storyboard in a nutshell: The Hero – learning about the hero in her ordinary world The Special World – something happens to the hero and she is cast into […]
When I started on my journey to discover the secrets to great stories, my first stop was Joseph Campbell’s book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces.” In it, Campbell dissects the elements of the great mythical stories from antiquity to today and from around the globe. He observes that the same patterns emerge. A hero starts out in their ordinary […]