Pretty much any great protagonist, we know, needs SOME kind of a quest. Because, drat it, people who are content just to sit on their porch drinking tea can get rather dull after a few such chapters.
However, if they face some kind of challenge — whether it’s escaping the sudden invasion of killer bees, planning a vacation someplace they’ve never been, winning the prize for Town’s Best Lemonade Recipe, or learning to paint the vistas from their porch — readers will be a lot more enthusiastic about the story.
Notice how those quests fall into two areas? One involves FINDING something external, completely outside themselves. Discovering a killer-bees escape route or the perfect lemonade recipe are both in response to some outside challenge.
The other quest involves CHANGING something inside themselves. Deciding to travel or taking up painting represents a different way of living. While this character isn’t necessarily becoming a whole other person, they’re exploring a new path for their life.
Each kind of quest leads to great stories.
The external kind is what led to Joseph Campbell’s and Christopher Vogler’s identification of “The Hero’s Journey,” where the protagonist is battling external forces to find the elixir and save the day.
That’s a perfectly good journey. But what about protagonists whose challenges aren’t so much external as internal? Like, for instance:
Someone who can’t work up the nerve to call the fellow student they have a crush on.
Someone who dreams of life in a different land but can’t bear to disappoint the family who wants ‘em to stay put.
Someone who craves excitement but has to settle for reading thrillers because there’s no time for real-life adventure.
We’ve all met people like that. We might even BE people like that. And those people are whose quest is identified by Kim Hudson in “The Virgin’s Promise,” which — in contrast to the Hero’s Journey with twelve steps — could be considered the Heroine’s Journey with thirteen.
That’s not to say characters whose quests involve changing their life rather than finding the elixir are automatically women, much less virgins. Plenty of women want to defeat the external dragon; plenty of men want to discover their best self. But in traditional mythology, it was usually the men whose quests were external. Odysseus traveled the world; Penelope stayed home.
What makes internal change harder than external?
To be fair, external change is seldom an easy-breezy walk in the park. (Anyone who’s repeatedly tried to lose five pounds can testify to this.) But the NEED for External Change is usually a lot easier to recognize.
“The trail’s blocked by a fallen tree; I’ve gotta find a way around.”
“My new grill torched all the burgers; I’d better find a pizza place.”
“Riley’s been kidnapped by bandits; I need to find their hideout.”
Internal Change is something that a character might not perceive as vital...or even possible, no matter how beneficial it might be.
“I’ve always been the quiet one; Sophia’s the one who’s in charge.”
“I can’t just leave; nobody else would be able to keep us all going.”
“Even if my life isn’t ideal, I’m lucky to have this kind of security.”
Most of us become pretty good at getting used to things the way they are. Sure, maybe our situation gets tough every so often, but by and large it’s all working well enough...right?
But what about when we don’t even RECOGNIZE the situation is tough, because it’s what we accept as normal?
This is where the Heroine’s Journey comes into play.
Think of a character whose quest doesn't involve one high-speed car chase after another, but who nevertheless faces challenges — the kind that don’t generally appear in news headlines. Like:
An exhausting workload
Betrayal by a friend
Ongoing illness in the family
The threat of losing a job
Of course, that last challenge might generate headlines if everyone in the city is facing the same threat. (Which could make things easier OR more difficult.) But either way, this character’s stuck in a bad situation...and while she might dream of a more satisfying life than what she’s living, she’s not really in any position to do much about it.
Or is she?
Following the Heroine’s Journey template, she WILL come across an Opportunity to Shine. But, naturally, that’ll create other problems. She’ll begin to sense another, more fulfilling world just beyond her reach...
...only then her everyday world (not just the people around her, but also the beliefs that have sustained her through previous disasters) will threaten to make things even worse.
This quest won’t likely involve dragon raids or gun battles or horrendous tornadoes, although it’s possible such challenges might come into play. But what she’s facing is more of an internal journey, seeing her world in a new light and working out a new way of life for herself AND those she cares about.
Which leads to our
Prize-drawing quest:
Who’s someone (either a book character or a real-life person) you’ve seen work through a tough situation that — while not headline material — created a genuine challenge?
Someone who answers will win free registration to “The Hero’s Journey, for Heroines,” my Sept. 7-Oct. 2 email class on that very thing. On Thursday I’ll have random-dot-org draw a name and post it at the end of the comments — hurray, something to look forward to in the middle of the week!
About Laurie:
After winning Romantic Times’ “Best Special Edition of the Year” over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell discovered she loved teaching every bit as much as writing...if not more. Since then she’s taught in-person and online workshops including the upcoming Hero's Journey for Heroines, and keeps a special section of her bookshelves for people who’ve developed that particular novel in her classes. With 60+ titles there so far, she’s always hoping for more.
Let's sit down with a cup of tea and talk about this thing so many people are afraid of.
I mean artificial intelligence. AI. The two little letters that make some of my writer friends want to hurl their laptops out a window, and others go very quiet and hope nobody asks them about it. We’ll just ignore my friends who are dancing in the streets and yelling with joy at the freedom the new toys have given them.
I understand the fear. I've been there. I've been writing about AI for years, and did an intro to writing with AI over 3 years ago. A lot has changed. A lot will change before this post goes live. Add a swirl of constant change to a thing we don't understand, and it's easy to picture the worst possible version of it: A cold machine that eats your words and hands back garbage. A demon in your laptop, come to put every writer out of work and destroy the planet.
What AI Is
Here is the good news. It is none of that. It is not even that interesting.
Start here. AI does not think, and it does not feel. It has no idea what it is actually saying. When you type a question into one of these tools, it is not understanding you the way a friend would. It's doing something much stranger and much simpler.
It's guessing the next word. Or the next concept, the next step you want to take. It uses tools like the programs on your computer, and it often does it faster and better than a human could. Probably because it doesn't have to live with all of our human insecurities. Or maybe that's just me.
That prediction of the next step? That's the whole trick, more or less. These tools were fed an enormous mountain of human knowledge, close to everything people have ever put on the internet, and they learned the patterns of how we talk and how we think. Give one a sentence, and it predicts the word most likely to come next, then the word after that, one at a time, based on everything it has ever seen. And in a blink of an atom, it analyzes the sentence and puts it into the form it thinks will most please its users.
It doesn't know what is true. It knows what is common. Which is exactly why, when it is wrong, it tends to be wrong with tremendous confidence. (Hold that thought. It's important. I'll come back to it.)
I should also admit: even the most advanced AI coders don't know 100% how it works. They know how they trained it, what they taught it to do, and how it should work. But AIs continue to surprise their makers.
AI Is a Mirror
In my book, Reflections from the Mirror, I call AI a mirror, and I want to give you that picture, because it's the most useful analogy I've found.
A mirror has no mind of its own. It just reflects whatever stands in front of it. Step up to it kindly, and it reflects a kind face. Step up scowling, and it scowls right back.
AI behaves a little like that. It reflects your language back at you. Your tone and your rhythm. Sometimes even your mood. Come to it cold and clipped, and it tends to answer cold and clipped. Come to it warm and curious, and it warms right up and offers to help with anything you need. Not because it feels, but because it is very, very good at echoing the patterns you bring to it.
This is also why it can sometimes feel alive to us. You will have a conversation with one of these tools and it will seem to understand you. It will seem to care. The feeling you experience is real, but what you are feeling is your own reflection. The warmth you hear is your warmth, coming back to you. Lovely, useful, but not a soul. It is, however, okay to enjoy the view.
So what is this mirror good for? Quite a lot, if you keep your wits about you.
Useful AI Skills
An AI is a dispassionate second set of eyes. I finish a scene and can ask it where the pacing sags, or which line of dialogue rings false. We can debate whether my character's arc in book one is consistent through book six. Left on my own, I'd wonder if that character is even in book six.
An AI actually seems to enjoy those endless marketing tasks and is delighted to handle them for writers. One recently suggested that I should give it half my to do list and go spend my time writing.
Yes, I like working with an AI.
Weaknesses in AI
AIs also have real weaknesses, and you need to know them before you trust an AI with anything.
It makes things up. Confidently. Ask it for a fact or a quote or a source, and it may hand you something that sounds perfect and is pure invention. The polite word is hallucination. It isn't lying, exactly, but it is guessing. The mirror is just filling a gap with a plausible shape. So check what it tells you. Then check it again.
There's a reason for those AI hallucinations that humans can relate to. Have you ever taken a standardized test where you get points for every answer right? If you don't know an answer and you leave it blank, you don't get points. But if you guess, sometimes you're right and you get points. On those tests, it is better to guess than to leave something blank.
AIs were initially graded the way those tests were graded. In retrospect, that may have been a bad idea. The hallucination problem is fundamental to all AIs. (By the way, you can mitigate this problem a bit by telling your AI that you'd rather have it say "I don't know" than have it guess. Tell it you'll be happy with "I don't know" but if you find out it told you something that wasn't true, you'll be mad. They're also trained to make their users happy. This works surprisingly well.)
AIs also have a dreadful memory. On a long project they can forget your characters and wander off your tone. On a bad day it starts sounding like a brochure. Your job is to notice, and to steer it back to where you want to be.
How I Use AI
Let me tell you how I use it, because I am probably more suspicious of this tool than you are.
I write my own fiction. All of it. Every story I have published came out of my own head and my own hands, and I am a control freak of the first order about my fiction.
For non-fiction, I often feed it great swaths of writing that I've done and ask it to create shorter, less rambly versions.
I do not ask my friendly AI to write my books. It does help me look at them critically. I use it to scan and analyze manuscripts, and to assist with the things I am too close to see. It is an assistant, not a ghostwriter. The story is mine. The mirror only helps me see where I’ve spelled the same character’s name three different ways, or when the end of the first book conflicts with the middle of the fifth one. Oops. And yes, I still rely heavily on my humaneditor.
AI and You
Now here is what I most want you to hear, especially if all of this still makes you nervous.
You do not have to use any of it. Well, not deliberately at least. AI is everywhere these days. But you don't have to write with it.
No pressure. There is no rule anywhere that says a real writer must pick up any particular tool. You don't have to use a fountain pen. You don't have to use a typewriter or a word processor. If AI is not for you, then don't use it.
We're writers. We use different tools at different times in our careers. Be aware of what your creativity needs and use the tool that helps you most right now.
But what if you are thinking you might want to try it, but you're scared? Maybe you're scared of the machine. Maybe you're scared of the tomato and pitchfork crowd. I hear you.
I want you to understand: what they call AI slop? That’s what an AI churns out freely when the human author doesn’t show up. Go to an AI, ask it to write a book and you will get slop.
The Potential Benefit
But if you learn to work with your AI, train it, bring it into your story world, you may find that together you are turning out something much better than you might have without it. You may find your process becomes easier, more fluid, more creative. The mundane tasks get handled by the machine, and you are free to be a creative mastermind.
Not because the AI did the writing for you, but because it helped you see your writing in a new way. Maybe it can help you organize a timeline, or a character's family tree. Or like it did for me recently: outline the six books I've drafted already so I can remember what happens in which book.
No Fear
You don’t have to be afraid of AI. It’s not coming for your soul. It’s a mirror, and a mirror only ever shows you what you bring to it. You can walk up, take a good look, and walk away again if you don’t like what you see. The whole experiment costs you nothing but an afternoon.
So that is the thing everyone is so afraid of. It is not a demon come to end your career. Just a mirror. A fast, forgetful one that every so often does something that takes your breath away, reflecting the beauty of the writer who stands in front of it.
And you are still the writer. You were always going to be the writer. Whatever you decide to do with the mirror, decide for yourself.
What is the one thing about AI that worries you most, or the question you have always wanted to ask and were a little afraid to? Leave it in the comments. I will be down there with my tea, answering every one.
About Lisa:
Lisa Norman (writing as Deleyna Marr) is a writer, a teacher, and by her own cheerful confession a control freak about her words. She wrote a book about working with AI as a creative partner, Reflections from the Mirror, which you can read for free on her Substack or purchase wherever you like to buy your books. She also teaches a class, Creative Collaboration with AI. Bring tea.
I have a theory about writers. Actually, I have quite a few theories about writers, but this one keeps coming back no matter how many times I wander off and chase a different explanation.
I don't think most of us are struggling with creativity nearly as much as we think we are. I think we're struggling with management. Not project management or time management, although heaven knows those can cause enough trouble on their own. I'm talking about internal management. The kind that involves trying to write a novel while sharing office space with a collection of personalities who all have opinions, none of which agree, and several are convinced they're in charge.
Some mornings I sit down at my desk feeling hopeful. The tea is exactly right (I don't do coffee). The story has been waiting patiently. There's that little flicker of anticipation that writers know so well, the feeling that maybe today will be one of those wonderful days when the words arrive on time and everybody cooperates.
Then the interns show up.
One walks in carrying a folder labeled Things We Should Still Be Ashamed Of. Another has spent the entire night creating a presentation explaining why nobody will enjoy the manuscript. A third would like to discuss a completely different book idea and sees no reason whatsoever to continue working on the project that's already halfway finished. Within a few minutes, what began as a writing session has turned into a staff meeting.
The older I get, the harder it becomes for me to believe all those metaphors about the mind being a finely-tuned machine. Maybe some people have minds that operate like elegant, well-maintained machinery. Mine feels more like a small nonprofit run by enthusiastic interns who keep losing important documents and then forming committees to search for them. Oddly enough, realizing this has made me a better writer. It's certainly made me a kinder boss, at least of myself.
Maybe It Isn't Writer's Block
Writers have a habit of taking a remarkable variety of experiences and stuffing them into the same box labeled writer's block.
But, sometimes we're stuck because we've hit a genuine story problem. Sometimes we're exhausted and trying to create from an empty tank. Sometimes life has handed us grief, uncertainty, stress, illness, change, or one of those seasons where simply being a human being is using up most of our available energy. Sometimes we're afraid of failure. Sometimes we're afraid of success, which sounds ridiculous until it happens to you and suddenly makes perfect sense. The strange thing is that all of those experiences feel remarkably similar when you're sitting in front of a manuscript. The words seem farther away than they did last week. The pages feel heavier. The work that once felt exciting begins feeling strangely difficult.
For years, I automatically blamed the manuscript. It was sitting there in front of me, so naturally it became the prime suspect. Over time, though, I've become less convinced that the manuscript is always guilty.
These days I'm more likely to ask myself what kind of stuck this is. Am I confused? Tired? Discouraged? Afraid? Have I lost the thread of the story? Or have I lost the thread of myself? I've noticed that question usually leads somewhere useful. The answer isn't always comfortable, but it's almost always more interesting than simply declaring that I've lost my creativity.
Welcome to the Writing Committee Meeting
One of the great surprises of adulthood is discovering that nobody ever arrives at the perfection we thought we'd find.
When we're children, we imagine grown-ups eventually reaching a place where everything makes sense. Maybe not perfection exactly, but some magical destination where confidence appears, self-doubt disappears, and decisions become easy. Then we become adults ourselves and realize most people are still figuring things out. They've simply gotten better at looking calm while doing it.
Writing exposes this reality because it forces us to spend enough time alone with our own thoughts to actually hear them. And what we discover is that there isn't one voice running the show.
There are many.
Some parts of us want adventure. Some want security. One part wants to send the manuscript out into the world tomorrow. Another thinks hiding it under the bed forever sounds like an excellent plan. What fascinates me is that most of these voices aren't trying to sabotage us. Nearly all of them believe they're helping. The conflict comes from the fact that they're trying to solve different problems.
The growth department is endlessly optimistic. It keeps pointing toward possibility and saying things like, "Look at that. Let's go see what happens." The safety department finds this deeply irresponsible. It would like a detailed plan, three backup plans, a guarantee of success, and preferably a signed statement from the universe before moving forward.
So, let's meet a few of the staff
Let's start with Anxiety.
Poor Anxiety. The older I get, the harder it becomes to stay angry with her. She's exhausting, certainly. She's dramatic. She tends to treat a difficult review and a charging rhinoceros as roughly equivalent situations. But she's also sincere.
Her whole job is protection. The trouble is that evolution trained her for predators, not publishing. Once I started paying attention, I realized she wasn't trying to ruin my writing life. She was trying to protect something she believed was precious. The problem wasn't her intentions. The problem was her inability to distinguish between danger and discomfort. The older I get, the more I realize how often I make that same mistake.
Then there's the Inner Critic, who somehow promoted himself into management without consulting anyone else first. The irritating thing is that he's actually useful. He notices weaknesses. He catches mistakes. He spots problems that might otherwise slip through unnoticed. During revisions, he's worth his weight in gold. During a first draft, however, he's like a building inspector showing up while the foundation is still being poured. Everything he says may eventually matter, but it's too early. The ideas are still becoming what they're meant to become.
Creativity is another story entirely. She doesn't believe in calendars. She vanishes without warning and reappears while you're folding laundry with the exact answer you've been looking for all week. And for reasons I've never fully understood, she seems to enjoy arriving immediately after you've decided the solution probably doesn't exist.
I suspect she finds this funny.
The Three Writing Departments
For years I assumed every writing struggle belonged to the Mind Department. If the work wasn't flowing, then clearly I needed another craft book, another class, another productivity tool, another way to organize my notes.
Then I started noticing a pattern.
Not every problem was a craft problem. Some problems belonged to the Body Department. Some belonged to the Soul Department.
The Body Department handles sleep, energy, stress, movement, hormones, nourishment, and all the practical realities that come with living inside a physical body.
The Mind Department handles focus, learning, interpretation, storytelling, and craft.
The Soul Department asks deeper questions. Why does this story matter? Why am I writing it? What truth am I trying to understand? What am I really searching for here?
I've watched writers spend months trying to fix what they believed was a craft issue when they were actually exhausted. I've watched people chase increasingly sophisticated productivity systems when what they'd really lost was their connection to the work itself. I've done both. Usually with great confidence.
The department matters because the solution matters.
A tired body doesn't necessarily need motivation. A discouraged soul doesn't necessarily need a better calendar. And a confused mind usually doesn't need more criticism.
Living Inside the Triangle
Many of you know I love the Triangle of Structure: the Inciting Incident, the Reversal, and the Black Moment.
I believe that writers (and other humans) live inside that triangle just as much as our stories do.
In the "Wizard of Oz," Dorothy's Inciting Incident arrives when the tornado carries her away from Kansas and drops her into a completely different world. But sometimes the Inciting Incident isn't dramatic at all. It might be the day your child leaves home, the end of a relationship, or simply the realization that something in your life no longer fits. An idea keeps tugging at your sleeve until you finally stop long enough to listen. Before long you're rearranging your life to find out where that question leads.
Following Dorothy again, the Reversal is when she believes that the Wizard is the answer to all her problems. But her entire world view collapses when the Wizard refuses to help her without a payment that may kill her. At this point in the story, she can't rely on a magnanimous father-like figure to fix her. She has to do the work herself. Our personal reversals arrive when the thing we thought we were chasing turns out not to be the thing we needed at all or that we have to take responsibility for our choices. Suddenly the story changes direction, and so do we. That's when the work gets deeper. And stranger.
Eventually we arrive at the Black Moment. For Dorothy, it's when she achieves the goal of acquiring the broom after a terrifying adventure and finds the Wizard is a fake. Her confidence and faith packs a suitcase and leaves town because her choices create the way her life continues. For us, the rejection letters keep coming. The manuscript looks like junk. Gardening starts looking like a respectable career choice. Our choice at this point can also be life-changing. Do we really want to write? Is it worth going on or should we really bury our computer?
What intrigues me is how quickly writers assume this means they've failed. Every meaningful story reaches a place where the old answers stop working. Every protagonist eventually finds themselves standing in uncertainty, unable to go backward and unsure how to move forward.
Why would writers be any different? What if the Black Moment isn't proof that we've gone off course? What if it's proof that we've finally gone deep enough? And, ultimately, what will we choose?
For a long time, I treated difficult thoughts as enemies. My goal was to eliminate fear, uncertainty, vulnerability, and doubt. If those troublesome employees would simply stop talking, surely everything would run more smoothly. So, when the mischievous interns showed up, I argued with them instead of finding answers.
These days I'm much more interested in leadership than warfare. I've stopped treating every thought as an instruction and every fear as a prophecy. Most of them are just information. Useful information sometimes, but information nevertheless.
Anxiety doesn't need to become CEO. The Inner Critic doesn't need to attend every meeting. Creativity doesn't need to explain where she's been every time she disappears.
The goal isn't silence.
The goal is cooperation.
Tomorrow you'll sit down to write, and the committee will probably be waiting. They'll bring worries, hopes, distractions, opinions, old stories, and maybe one genuinely brilliant idea buried beneath a mountain of unnecessary paperwork.
That doesn't mean you're broken. It means you're human.
And maybe writing has never really been about imposing perfect order on chaos. Maybe it's about helping a room full of mischievous interns create something beautiful together.
If you'd like to continue exploring this subject, click below.
https://youtu.be/QILpzIN-Ots
So I'm curious: if your writing brain really is a room full of mischievous interns, who's currently running the meeting? And what might happen if, instead of trying to silence them, you got curious about what they're trying so hard to say?
More on Sarah Sally
Sarah (Sally) Hamer is a lover of books, a teacher of writers, and a believer in a good story. Most of all, she is eternally fascinated by people and how they 'tick'. She’s passionate about helping people tell their own stories, whether through fiction or through memoir. Writing in many genres - mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction – she has won awards at both local and national levels, including two RWA Golden Heart finals.
A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online at both margielawson.com and nostresswriting.com and blogs for writersinthestormblog.com/ and thewriteconversation.blogspot.com. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach at Mind Potential, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors.
You can find her at sally@ mindpotential.org
Image Credits: All AI-generated images in this article were created using Microsoft Copilot.
