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:
Initially novels in English were written in a journalistic form. They were in the first person, present tense, implying the past. The point of the novel, at that time, was to convey a story in a long format. The first novels in English were written by Daniel Defoe. I hope you have read them all. Novels changed rather quickly as the form and the format was developed and improved. At first, the idea of the novelist was to tell the story of the life or an experience of a character--character revelation. In other words, novels began with the idea of revealing the protagonist. This was their initial form for a while. Even later novels in English bear this stamp: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Vanity Fair, and all. Many, if not most novels from the early period are all about character revelation and less about plot revelation.
Things began to change slightly in the Victorian Era. The novelist already had the right idea, although character revelation was the focus, the novel needed plot revelation to build and resolve the storyline. Novels took the form of the third person, past tense, implying the present (or near past). Novels moved quickly from a journalistic form to a reporting type form. They also began to take on the five discrete parts in the development of the plot. This process was relatively fast because the novel went from about one hundred percent character revelation to a long form of the short story. The short story form was developed, in English, about five hundred years before the novel. The idea of the discrete parts of a story were not unusual to the early novelists. The power of the novel was in the proper writing of these parts--however, the novel was still in development.
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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