Announcement: My editor sent a round of emails last night concerning the back cover materials. That included the book teaser and the author bio. They looked good. They also sent the covers for the individual novels. I'll put up the covers when I can. The proposed 3 in1 cover and info can be found at www.ancientlight.com. I'll keep you updated. I should have three new books out soon.
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:
The purpose of a novel is to reveal the protagonist and usually the protagonist's helper, the author needs to place them in circumstance that allows them to reveal themselves. The means can be conversation, exploration, discovery, other's conversation, confession, accidental discovery.
There are three ways to know truth: the scientific method, the historical-witness method, and logic. The three tests used for all documentary evidence in history are: the bibliographical test, the internal test, and the external test. Let's see how we can use these tests.
Many people ask me: what about the miracles in the New and Old Testament documents? Anyone who has any experience with ancient documents knows that almost all of them talk about the gods, prophecies, and/or miracles. Caesar, Plato, Zeno, Hippolitus, Aristotle, Josephus, and all write about miracles either ones they saw with their own eyes or ones reported in their knowledge of history. If you want to throw out historical documents that talk about miracles, you need to get rid of almost every document in antiquity. It's kind of like that and the bibliographical test too. The New Testament documents pass the bibliographical tests (number of documents and the closeness to the original) magnitudes better than any other document in antiquity. If you throw out the New Testament documents, you must throw away all other documents in antiquity. Likewise, if you don't like miracles, get ready to dump almost every document in antiquity.
The problem with people in the modern era, is they do not understand how people in the ancient world thought or lived. This is something I strive to express in my novels: how people from the past think and act in the world. In our world view, their actions sometimes seem illogical, but it is only because you don't think like they did.
In the modern world, there are extensive examples of groups that don't think the same a Western Civilization. Western Civ thinks like the Greeks--that is logic. The Greeks invented the three means to know truth: scientific method, legal-historical method, and logic. If you grew up in the Western World or generally in modern nations that have accepted these means to know truth, you are most likely a Greek thinker. The ancient world and other groups in the modern world don't use logical means in their thinking. This idea is very important to both writing and understanding.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment