Blog | Classes, Wine Making and Wine Writing, Writing Techniques | By: nick

Write on the Sound: Quest Narratives

I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual Write on the Sound writers conference in Edmonds, Washington, yesterday. I talked about Quest Narratives, one of the oldest and surest ways of telling a story. Here’s some of my advice about how to organize a quest narrative.

Writing a quest narrative

Describe the object of the quest and why it’s important. You don’t have to start the story with this statement, but it should come near the beginning, explaining why you’ve arrived in New Guinea, for example.
Set out on the quest. What do you bring? How do you prepare? Who goes with you?
Describe the journey and the difficulties of achieving it.
Describe whether you achieve the goal or not.
What did you learn from it? Don’t have to achieve the goal, but have to say something interesting about failing to achieve it. For example, Peter Mathiessen’s The Snow Leopard is a quest narrative, about his trip to the Himalayas, to see a rare snow leopard. He never in fact sees one of the animals, but through his journey there learns something important about himself. This is a kind of Zen ending to the quest narrative, but he certainly carried it off as The Snow Leopard won the National Book Award.

This is the kind of approach I take in my Seattle writing classes, Travel, Food and Wine writing classes, or online writing classes.

The forms of things unknown and the the poet’s pen…

And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

One false word, one extra word…

One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store.

Patricia Marx

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

V.S. Naipaul

There are only two or three human stories.

Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.

Willa Cather

Get it down. Take chances.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.

William Faulkner

Literature is nothing but carpentry.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The difference between the right word and the almost right word…

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Mark Twain

…with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.

I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced…the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.

Ernest Hemingway

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth.

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

Anne Lamott

Just follow your hero.

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!

Ray Bradbury

Pleasure in a good novel…

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Jane Austen

Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you.

Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

Barbara Kingsolver

Writing a novel is a terrible experience.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

Flannery O’Connor