Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Film CourageFilm Courage

Articles

How Writers Can Create Stories That Change The World With Pamela Jaye Smith

Watch the video interview on Youtube here

Pamela Jaye Smith: Myths are the stories we tell ourselves to explain the world around us and the world within us.

ONE WEEK FROM TONIGHT

There is a conflict in every human heart between the light and the dark. Sometimes the darkness overcomes what Lincoln called The better angels of our nature.

ON TUESDAY OCTOBER 23RD, 2018

I cover all of the basics anyway: plot, structure, theme, dialogue, characterization. But I put a mythic depth in it for people and say Do you know that you’re doing this mythic theme? And most of us don’t but most writers intuitively are tapping into one of those wonderful old stories, it’s what you do as a writer. And we keep telling the same stories over and over again.

WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN US AND WRITER PAMELA JAYE SMITH

Does anybody in your story actually make a positive change in their personality? I think there should always be some element of sacrifice and remember that the word sacrifice means to make sacred.

FOR A ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT

You’ve got a lot of people out there with petty little gripes and they are going to do it, they are going to point the finger because humans can sometimes be pretty tacky and mean. And so you give people a big target and they are going to throw everything against it.

EVENT INFO BELOW

Love is at the center of so many people’s lives whether it’s that they’ve got plenty or they don’t.

MYTHIC CHALLENGES: How writers can create stories that change the world.

Give us someone or something to be sympathetic to, give us some danger and give us some kind of salvation or resolution. I like to use the initial SDS – sympathy, danger, salvation.

You shatter someone in their lives and they just go What the heck? Why bother? I’m just going to get mine.

And in this instance of the myth, it’s very dark and the whole world suffers because of their loss.

Ultimately, there comes a time in the life of a dark magician’s career through the dark side that it just doesn’t work anymore.

And then all that they have been holding back, whether it’s aging (someone who has had the youth spell), whether it’s rotting from the inside out, whether it’s being stained by the tools that you used to slay other people, it eventually comes back.

Someones realizes they’ve got to change in order to get what they want. So there’s still a little bit of self issue-ness in it. But if they do it well, if they do it with humility and integrity, it can work.

What is their path and then do you want them to stay there? Do you want to grow into the next level or are they going to be taken down to a lower level and then try to struggle their way back up? Maybe they’re switching from one path to another.

Winners write about history, losers write about love because the losers aren’t doing anything. They lost in love so they are the ones who will write about love. And idealize it and how things should be.

When you have someone operating from the higher levels of psychology and consciousness, it’s more from the heart than it is from the loins.

Watch the video interview on Youtube here

When we say falling in love, note the word falling. Another thing to keep in mind is symbolism and we all use symbols all the time. It’s once again who we are. It’s the oldest form of art. Look at your cave walls, right? Symbols going on for seventy thousands years now. There are three levels of symbolism, there is the emotional, personal level. There is the situational or environmental level and then there is the conceptional level. Take three levels of opposition, there is internal. And then there is opposition from those around you: family, society, culture. And then from bigger level of stories there is opposition from the big outside – bureaucracies, aliens, tsunamis.

A missed opportunity is a factor of idealism because that opportunity is not fact, it’s an opportunity, it’s a possibility. And onto that we can cast all of our dreams. And I think all of us have had those moments, a glance across a room. You’re crossing a street, you look at somebody, they look at you and you go Yeah!? And then you both walk on and then you think should I just go stand on that street corner forever and wait for them to come by again? And some people do. But I think the thing about a missed opportunity most at it’s core, the reason that it reaches us so deeply is it offers that question What If? And we can see might that have been the perfection that deep in our hearts we’re all striving for?

In my work with writers, we identify what mythic theme their story is on and the subplot and then work with archetypes for their characters and symbolism and certainly the power of the dark side, which is ever so much fun and can really add a lot of depth to characters.

So I infuse my work with writers with the ancient (but still very current and fabulously useful) tools of mythology so they can consciously use all those great old classical story tools.

MYTHIC CHALLENGES: How writers can create stories that change the world.

October 23rd speaking event info below.

 

MYTHIC CHALLENGES: Create Stories that Change the World

Is your story issue-oriented? Do you want to raise awareness and motivate your audience to action? Put yourself ahead of the curve-of-change with the story tools in this seminar.

In this 2 hour speaker series (that will include Q&A) mythologist, author, international consultant-speaker, and award-winning writer-producer-director Pamela Jaye Smith will help you learn to use the classic story tools of Mythic Themes, Archetypes, and Symbols to give your story global appeal.

Pamela will address some of the 15 Global Challenges facing humanity today as protagonist goals and dramatic conflict [water, women’s rights, the rich-poor gap, technology, ecology, international organized crime, etc.]

 

Purchase tickets here on Eventbrite

 

Additionally, she will identify believable storylines, approaches, methods, and techniques for your characters to affect change.

Mythic Challenges works with the Millennium Project’s Global Arts and Media Node (Millennium-project.org and c3visionlab.org) to explore topics, issues, and techniques important to making positive transformation for individuals and the planet.

The pilot program worked with youth in an LA high school and their sister schools in Afghanistan, in conjunction with the U.S. State Department.

Mythic Challenges won the FutureVision Award from c3: Center for Conscious Creativity.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 23rd from 7:00pm – 9:00pm.

WHERE: 5628 Vineland Ave. North Hollywood, CA 91601

COST: $25.00

**Tickets only sold online through Eventbrite here. Limited seating available. Sorry, no tickets at the door.

 

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

PAMELA JAYE SMITH is a mythologist, author, international consultant-speaker, and award-winning writer-producer-director with 30+ years in features, TV, music videos, commercials, documentaries, web series, corporate and military films. She has worked at major studios and with wildly independent companies in Hollywood and around the world, always enjoying the process of bringing creative ideas to worldwide screens.

Credits include Fox, Disney, Paramount, Microsoft, Universal, RAI-TV Rome, UCLA, USC Film School, American Film Institute, Women in Film, Natl. Film Institute of Denmark, LA and Marseille and Roma WebFests, Romance Writers of America, Children’s Book Writers LA, and many media festivals and story conferences.

MYTHWORKS helps others enhance their stories with the power of myth: themes, symbols and imagery. Pamela also brings the insights and effectiveness of archetypes to storytellers’ character development. These classic tools work for any style and any genre, on any platform, in any stage of development — plus, they’re fun to use.

Besides her own works she writes for others, coaches writers and actors, advises organizations, and helps individuals discover and use their personal archetypes.

Smith is the author of THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDEINNER DRIVESSYMBOLS IMAGES CODESSHOW ME THE LOVE!BEYOND THE HERO’S JOURNEY, and ROMANTIC COMEDIES. She appears as a myth expert for Fox’s “Ice Age: Continental Drift”, Microsoft’s “Age of Mythology” and the “American Jedi” documentary.

Pamela is the founder of MYTHWORKS and co-founder of Mythic Challenges – Create Stories that Change the World, and the Alpha Babe Academy

Her script The Cuban Circuit was a winner at the 2015 Bahamas International Film Festival; with co-writer Monty Hayes McMillan she attended the Screenwriters Residency Program.

She is on the Board of Advisors for the LAWebFestJaipur Intl. Film FestivalThe Orpheus Institute and c3 Center for Conscious Creativity. She has served on think-tanks for the Entertainment Industries Council, Boeing’s Workforce Development, and the U.S. Army’s Advanced Warfighting Working Group at Fort Knox.

For more on Pamela and her work, please visit:

pamelajayesmith@gmail.com

Mythworks.net

Mythicchallenges.com

Alphababeacademy.com

 

If you purchased your class on CourseHorse, our cancellation policy applies to your purchase. If you need help canceling or have any questions, please visit CourseHorse here.

 


Like this video? Please subscribe to our Youtube channel. Or love this video and want more? You can show additional support via our Youtube sponsor tab (hit the JOIN button on the front page of our Youtube channel in the upper right hand corner or underneath any video if watching on Youtube) or through Patreon.

 

 

Advertisement – contains affiliate links:

 

Lights, Camera, Save! is a teen video contest that encourages teens to educate themselves and their peers about the value of saving and using money wisely. Each fall students enter the contest by submitting videos to local participating banks. These banks then choose a local winning video and submit it for judging at the national level. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.


Is your story issue-oriented? Do you want to raise awareness and motivate your audience to action? Put yourself ahead of the curve-of-change with the story tools in this seminar.

Please join us for a 2-hour speaker series (that will include Q&A) with mythologist, author, international consultant-speaker, and award-winning writer-producer-director Pamela Jaye Smith where she will help you learn to use the classic story tools of Mythic Themes, Archetypes, and Symbols to give your story global appeal.  Here is a video from our recent event with screenwriter/author Mark Sanderson.

 

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like

Business of Film

  [Watch the video interview on Youtube here] Film Courage: Shane, by the time you’d finished what the fifth grade you’d already had a hundred...

Authors

[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]   Film Courage: What are the three worst ways to start a story? Steve Douglas-Craig, Owner/Teacher at The...

Authors

The Mentor, Shape Shifter and more.

Screenwriting

Every character thinks they are the center of the story.