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 my newest novel, Valeska, is this: 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:
Look at my rules three through five:
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don't show (or tell) everything.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
Don't waste your imagination on things that are not unique. You don't need good imagination to describe the world you are in or to set the scenes of your novel. I'll give that a caveat. For scenes that are unique and not within the fabric of the normal world, you will need some degree of imagination, but let's see how we can reduce that. For example, in Children of Light and Darkness (unpublished Ancient Light novel), the climax takes place at a real place in England, but the climax pits the protagonist against the Unseelie Court. The Unseelie Court is the court of dark or evil fairies. Now dark fairies (or fairies of any type) are obviously the figments of imagination. To ground the writing, I used a real place that I could describe in the setting. I used classical fairies and descriptions of fairies to ground the reader. The circumstances and the events were wholly the work of my imagination, but many elements of the setting and the events were based in folklore and real places. The point is that although a grand amount of imagination was required to develop the scene, the scene was still grounded in the real world--note rule three above. At the same time, the scene was developed from a completely imagination based circumstance.
I'll go further, the climax of the novel was not only fully based in imagination, the climax was obvious from the theme, plot, and storyline--in other words, the climax was inevitable and yet based in fantastic and unworldly elements. This is the point of imagination and the point of immersion in the writing. The imagination takes the unique and makes it inevitable. The imagination is not those things known and regular, but those things revealed and special.
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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