Accessing Your Imagination Takes Courage – Part 2
I wrote a personal story in yesterday’s post to illustrate how accessing your imagination takes courage as does, in the face of rejection, courageously standing by your imagination. Yesterday was about the courage needed to overcome your fear of outside ridicule, criticism and harsh judgment. Today, Part 2, is about the courage needed to face what you find once you do access your imagination.
Courage is necessary when accessing our imagination because we’re afraid of what we’ll find there, because we’re afraid of what we might find out about and confront in ourselves.
In Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story through Action, Emotion and Theme, Jordan and I talk a lot about shadow and light — and always in reference to your character. Any of you who have read The Plot Whisperer or are watching the Spiritual Guide for Writers know I’m always one to blur the lines between your characters and you. Read the following first with your characters in mind. Read it again with you in mind…
In Writing Deep Scenes, we “show you how to explore the “shadow” and “light” sides of your characters’ journeys—from less self-awareness to full awareness and emotional maturity—as they progress through their stories and through the stages of their emotional, spiritual, and/ or physical integration.
“Shadow, as it pertains to the character, is best explained by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. He defined shadow as an aspect of a character’s personality to which she is oblivious. The shadow side of her includes everything outside the light of her consciousness, both positive and negative. As Jung explained: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” In deconstructing the plots and scenes of successful stories, we find the shadow side everywhere: in all action where the protagonist is not in control; in settings under antagonist’s rule; in turning points that twist the character into unfamiliar territory, forcing her to confront hidden sides of herself, both flaws and skills; and in the imagery that describes these events. To the untrained eye, scenes appear to be unified and whole; by teasing apart the hidden layers, we shine a light on the shadow side—the subconscious, symbolic, and subtextual elements of stories to reveal aspects writers can consciously integrate into their own scenes to create more exciting, dynamic plots.”
How does this pertain to you, the writer? You, too, have a shadow side — an aspect of your personality to which you may or may not be oblivious. When fully accessing your imagination, you open the door to this shadow side of you. Shadows and darkness bring up fear and the need for courage to face even that which is the blackest and densest inside you. Without the courage to access and then shine a light on this shadow side of yourself, you’ll always cut off some of the riskier and more miraculous sides of your imagination. With courage, you’ll have access to gems that can change the world with your writing.
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