The lessons of the Olympics for writers of romantic fiction

What lessons do the Olympics hold for writers of romantic fiction? Or, indeed, for writers of any kind? If you think this an idle question asked simply to cash in on the world’s current obsession with the events going on in Beijing, you’d be wrong.

Let me go back to one of the great story templates. Anyone involved in the writing of fiction will, surely, have heard of Joseph Campbell and his great “Hero’s Journey” thesis? Let me refresh your memory, briefly:

The hero (of any myth, legend, novel or movie – and for “hero” also read “heroine”) starts in the familiar realm of the everyday world. S/He is challenged to action by an inciting incident, to leave the familiar world on a quest that will necessarily take her/him into unfamiliar territory – a strange world filled with unknown antagonists. S/he will have to meet various challenges and undergo a number of trials or tests. In due course s/he will find her way to the citadel where her nemesis hangs out, and will there engage in battle with the enemy, dying in the process. Reborn, the hero/ine makes her/his way back to the familiar world with some deep insight, what Campbell called a “boon” which s/he will share with her friends or community.

That (in a very small nutshell) is the hero’s journey, pared down to its bare bones.

It is an extraordinarily powerful template which underpins, Joseph Campbell says, all the myths and fairytales ever told – and, arguably, all the stories we’ve ever told each other in any form, whether as novel, movie, or the most casual of bedtime story told by a distracted mother to an entranced child.

Now let’s look at your typical Olympic event…

For every contestant, the trip to Beijing represents the journey into the unfamiliar world. When they get there, they meet a number of assailants as their skills and their strength and their endurance are tested across a range of preliminary events in order to qualify for the right to challenge the very best in the world. That challenge is Cambell’s assault on the citadel, the attempt to overthrow the old order. If they triumph and emerge from that test with a medal, their old selves – as neophytes with hope in their hearts and determination of steel – dies, and they emerge as the new generation of world beaters, able to return to their own countries with tales of their derring-do, and a thousand lessons to pass on to the next flight of hopefuls.

In other words, dear writers, the trajectory of an Olympic athlete fighting to beat the best in Beijing is identical to the trajectory of the story you wish to tell of a heroine overcoming the odds in her fight to find and embrace true love. Your heroine undergoes trials as ingenious as any you can devise which test her resolve, her steadiness of purpose and her moral fibre. She meets her nemesis – a rival, or someone who, not to put too fine a point on it, does not have her best interests at heart – proves her love for the hero, and emerges victorious with him ready to impart her new understanding of romantic love to the world.

Read The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell