Announcement: I heard from my publisher that my Aegypt novels will continued to be titled Ancient Light and that the next two books will be called Sister of Light and Sister of Darkness. These were the original titles. They will be released individually and as a 3 in 1 volume. I saw the proposed cover. 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:
Each paragraph is like a miniature scene--except that a paragraph is specific and conveys a single thought or idea. For example, a paragraph might be the scene setting in time. A paragraph might be the scene setting in place. You might place the entire scene setting into a single paragraph (time and place). Another paragraph could be the character setting, or you can break the character setting into a paragraph for each character. If you get the point of the paragraph, you will already guess that I will tell you to use a separate paragraph for the time setting, for the place setting, for each character setting, for each description, for each introduction, etc.
Each new idea should have a separate paragraph. That doesn't mean you should have bunches of single sentence paragraphs. If you are writing single sentence narrative paragraphs, you are not properly writing paragraphs. I make the distinction between narrative and dialog because, in English, we separate each person's statement as a separate thought (paragraph). Some thoughts (statements) require more than a single paragraph, but that is somewhat unusual.
I'll break down the steps of building a paragraph next.
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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