Announcement: My new novels should be available from any webseller or can be ordered from any brick and mortar bookstore. Information can be found at www.ancientlight.com. Check out my novels--I think you'll really enjoy them.
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.
If you remember the mathematical proofs you had to do in geometry, you know how to develop a logical proof. You start with definitions. It looks like this:
1. Define the terms
2. State assumptions
3. Produce proof
4. Logical conclusion
Logic, in the eyes of the Greeks was the only means to see past the physical world into the rest of the Philosophia. The Philosophia includes: thoughts, mathematics, emotions, spiritual stuff, gods, God, spirits--anything that couldn't be empirically known in the physical world. Before you discount the ideas of the Greeks, realize that there are things outside the physical world which are true and do exist: mathematics, thoughts, emotions, etc. In the mind of the Greeks, the spiritual and the gods were on the same level as thoughts and emotions. In fact, the Greeks called thoughts, psuche, autonomic breath (the unconscious breathing), because, in their world view, a person never stopped thinking. They called the spirit, pneuma, the conscious breath, because free will was the spiritual conception of a person. A human was sarx (flesh), psuche, and pneuma. In general, this is the view of almost every non-atheist in the world. If you are an atheist, logic can't hurt you, but if you are not an atheist logic can indeed be used to prove the spiritual.
Prove the spiritual--what do I mean by that? We aren't talking about ghosts, but rather about things that exist but that can't be measured or proven empirically. Everywhere you go, you hear people who aren't very well educated yammering about empirical proof. Well, thoughts and emotions are not governed by empirical proof. Workload is hard to measure too, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In general, empirical means you must use the scientific method to evaluate it. I already showed that the scientific method can only work on repeatable events. You need the legal-historical method to prove non-repeatable events. And here is the rub, empiricism is nothing but rubbish without logic and mathematics, and logic and mathematics are especially about non-empirical events and solutions.
The point logic is the premier tool in the evaluation of the world because it allows us to look deeper than the physical. The logical proof is the context for the author in developing truth. This is what we've been looking forward to in the first place.
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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