Announcement: There is action on my new novels. The publisher renamed the series--they are still working on the name. I provided suggestions as did one of my prepub readers. Now the individual books will be given single names: Leora, Leila, Russia, Lumiere', China, Sveta, and Klava--at least these are some of the suggestions. They are also working on a single theme for the covers. I'll keep you updated.
Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.
I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I'll keep you informed along the way.
The four plus one basic rules I employ when writing:
1. Don't confuse your readers.
2. Entertain your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don't show (or tell) everything.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
All novels have five discrete parts:
1. The initial scene (the beginning)
2. The rising action
3. The climax
4. The falling action
5. The dénouement
The theme statement of this new novel is: An agent of the organization becomes involved with a
vampire girl during a mission, she becomes dependent on the agent, and she is redeemed.
Here is my proposed cover for Valeska:
Just remember, the purpose of novel writing is to entertain. It isn't therapy. It isn't communication. It isn't philosophy. It isn't theology. It isn't to teach. If you want to do any of these other things, you need to use a different type of literature. So, focus on this, the theme focus for a novel, to excite and entertain. (It really is just to entertain, but I like to include the excitement part) So, just as conversation in a novel is the essence of a perfectly entertaining conversation (not a perfect conversation, but a perfectly entertaining conversation), a novel is the essence of a perfectly entertaining theme statement.
I wrote before, you can start with an overused theme statement, but you better be a really good writer. For example, a vampire and a human fall in love. That is a pretty trite theme statement. Note that it has all the features of a good theme statement--it's just a pretty trite, and today, overused one. Here is a really overused theme statement: a boy and girl fall in love. You can expand this to: a boy and girl whose families hate each other fall in love. That's the theme for Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, just to name a couple. Notice that love is the focus of the theme in both these examples. Every adult novel should include love especially romantic love, however, there is nothing wrong with including it as a sub theme.
Every complete theme statement is perfect. This is the embodiment of the essence of perfect entertainment in a novel. So, if every complete theme statement is perfect, this is like beginning with the essence of a conversation. The trick is to make the result of expanding the theme statement be perfectly entertaining. This, as you can guess is the difficulty in writing a novel. Just for grins, I will approach the beginning of the novel again and attempt to focus more on the entertainment aspect of the writing.
More tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
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