26 April 2017, Writing Ideas
- New Novel, part x110, Creative Elements in Scenes, Plot Devices, Augmented
Human (Robot) (Society)
Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the internet, but the publisher
has delayed all their fiction output due to the economy. I'll keep you informed.
More 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.
Today's Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my
writing website http://www.ldalford.com/ and select "production
schedule," you will be sent to http://www.sisteroflight.com/.
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.
4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage
of the novel.
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
I
finished writing my 27th novel, working title, Claire, potential
title Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse. This might need some tweaking. The theme statement is: Claire (Sorcha) Davis
accepts Shiggy, a dangerous screw-up, into her Stela branch of the organization
and rehabilitates her.
Here is the cover proposal for Sorcha:
Enchantment and the Curse.
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|
Cover
Proposal
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The most important scene in any
novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the rising
action. I started writing my 28th novel, working title Red Sonja. I’m also working on my 29th novel,
working title School.
I'm an advocate of using the/a scene
input/output method to drive the rising action--in fact, to write any
novel.
Scene development:
1. Scene input (easy)
2. Scene output (a little
harder)
3. Scene setting (basic stuff)
4. Creativity (creative
elements of the scene: transition from input to output focused on the telic
flaw resolution)
5. Tension (development of
creative elements to build excitement)
6. Release (climax of creative
elements)
How to begin a novel. Number one thought, we need an entertaining
idea. I usually encapsulate such an idea
with a theme statement. Since I’m
writing a new novel, we need a new theme statement. Here is an initial cut.
For novel 28: Red Sonja, a Soviet spy, infiltrates the
X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s administrative clerk, learns
about freedom, and is redeemed.
For novel 29: Sorcha, the abandoned child of an Unseelie
and a human, secretly attends Wycombe Abbey girls’ school where she meets the
problem child Deirdre and is redeemed.
These are the steps I use to write a
novel:
1.
Design the initial scene
2.
Develop a theme statement (initial
setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action statement)
a.
Research as required
b.
Develop the initial setting
c.
Develop the characters
d.
Identify the telic flaw (internal
and external)
3.
Write the initial scene (identify
the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action movement)
4.
Write the next scene(s) to the
climax (rising action)
5.
Write the climax scene
6.
Write the falling action scene(s)
7.
Write the dénouement scene
Here is the beginning of the scene
development method from the outline:
1.
Scene input (comes from the previous
scene output or is an initial scene)
2.
Write the scene setting (place,
time, stuff, and characters)
3.
Imagine the output, creative
elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and
release.
4.
Write the scene using the output and
creative elements to build the tension.
5.
Write the release
6.
Write the kicker
Below is a list of plot devices. I’m less interested in a plot device than I
am in a creative element that drives a plot device. In fact, some of these plot devices are not
good for anyone’s writing. If we
remember, the purpose of fiction writing is entertainment, we will perhaps
begin to see how we can use these plot devices to entertain. If we focus on creative elements that drive
plot devices, we can begin to see how to make our writing truly entertaining. I’ll leave up the list and we’ll contemplate
creative elements to produce these plot devices.
Deus ex machina (a machination, or act of
god; lit. “god out of the machine”)
Flashback (or analeptic reference)
Story within a story (Hypodiegesis)
Third attempt
Secrets
Judicial Setting
Legal argument
Prophecy
Two way love
Three way love (love rival)
Rival
Celebrity (Rise to fame)
Rise to riches
Military (Device or Organization manipulation)
School (Training) (Skill Development)
Supernatural
Comeback
Retrieval
Taboo
Impossible Crime
Human god
Revolution
Games
Silent witness
Secret king
Messiah
Hidden skills
Fantasy Land (Time Travel, Space Travel)
End of the --- (World, Culture, Society)
Resistance (Nonresistance)
Utopia (anti-utopia)
Fashion
Augmented Human (Robot) (Society) – Current discussion.
Mind Switching (Soul Switching)
Unreliable character
Incarceration (imprisonment)
Valuable item
Identification
Contest
Search
War
Brotherhood (sisterhood) (camaraderie)
Crime
Theater
One way love
Augmented Human (Robot) (Society): here is my definition – Augmented Human (Robot) (Society) is the use of mentally or physically augmented humans or society including robots or cyborgs to further a plot.
In
the beginning was robots, but the science fiction author who wrote about robots
and missed cyborgs were completely out of touch. We got I
Robot in the beginning. I Robot is a cute idea and a cute book,
but Asimov completely missed the point.
Robots are not the future problem cyborgs and cybernetics is the
problem. Then came the earthshattering Ghost in the Shell. How a movie, TV, anime, and manga could
completely outclass major science fiction writing, I don’t know, but there you
are.
A
robot, to a degree is an augmented human brain.
That is as long as the robot’s brain is based in human thought, it
is. This is where Ghost in the Shell was revolutionary—it projected cybernetics and
robotics almost without boundaries.
Thus, you get humans that look like robots—the brains are human or
include a human memory. You get robots
that look like humans. Their brains are
designed to be like humans. And so
on. This is a plot device because it can
be part of a plot without being a theme or a plot center-point. I’ve used this
plot device before, and I intend to use it again. I think you can easily see this is the future
for humans and robots—Ghost in the Shell.
Here
is an example from my writing from Athelstan
Cying.
Natana
glanced helplessly at Den then reached her hand through the opening.
Dr.
Fleisher grabbed her hand and pressed the end of the tube against her
forearm. When he pulled away the tube, a
small organic chip lay on her wrist.
With the chip on her arm, the Doctor pulled his own hand as far back as
possible until he held just her fingers in his pincher-like grip.
Natana’s
head tilted up. Her mouth worked
soundlessly. The chip began to move on
its own and she gasped. A moment later,
a bright red drop of blood lay on her wrist.
The chip was gone. Natana cried
out and ripped her hand out of the doctor’s grasp. She held out her arm and fell to her knees. She bit her lips and moaned.
The
chip moved just under Natana’s skin about a centimeter a second up her
arm. Den grasped her arm just above the
chip and tried to stop its movement. The
chip dug deeper and she screamed horribly.
Natana held out her arm and arched her back, “Hold me! Den!
Hold!”
Den
rocked her in his arms. Sweat dripped
down the sides of her face. She lay
still and finally Den could think. What
now? He couldn’t stop the thing. Then he had a revelation. He had accomplished mechanical manipulations
many times before. But then he had
manipulated inorganic circuits, and this was an organic device. He wasn’t sure he could control it, but, at
least, he could find it in her body and determine what it was doing.
Den
concentrated on Natana’s mind and body.
He hadn’t attempted this kind of psyonic work in a long time. In a moment, he noted her body’s archetype,
and he began to search mentally for the foreign device inside her. Up along her arm to her shoulder. At her neck—there, he found it. He could see the chip inside her. It was a floating mote of contrast moving
through the muscles of her neck. Natana
moaned. Den focused the force of his
mind to stop the motion of the chip. It
still moved unabated. He focused on the
chip itself and tried to manipulate its internal components. He felt some success, but still it
moved. Its pace was unabated. He began to trace the chip’s circuitry. It was incredibly complex. He could only quickly map out its major
portions. His mind found the power
source for its mobility. Yes, there, and
he began to choke its power off. The
thing slowed. It moved only at a crawl
now. Den thought he had been
successful. He thought he had beaten
it. It rested near the top of Natana’s
spinal column, and then he discerned its goal.
It was programmed to attach itself at the base of her brain just where
the spinal chord attached. In this
position, he guessed it would allow her body to be controlled from some outside
influence, physically, psyonically, he couldn’t tell.
The
chip slowed, stopped. In his inner eye,
Den saw it inside her, short of its goal.
Suddenly, the chip set out thin tendrils into her brain. Miniature lines, nerve filaments from the
chip sprang upward into Natanna’s cerebrum and cerebellum. Most of the lines stretched too short to meet
where they were originally programmed to go and attached themselves in lower
portions of her brain. They sought
alternate connection sites. Many more
touched her spinal chord and laced themselves into the base of her brain.
Den
was vaguely aware of the Doctor’s movements.
The Doctor had turned off the psyonic shield and now manipulated a
keyboard in his hands. Natana pushed Den
away. She stood up and held her head in
her hands. Den maintained his mind and
his thoughts on the chip buried in the depths of her brain.
Natana
acted almost like an automaton. She stepped
toward Den and raised her hand. Her face
was full of woe and awe, “I can’t control myself,” she announced. She struck at Den with her open palm. He concentrated so intently that he couldn’t
do anything to stop her. She hit him
full in the face. He didn’t go down, but
he tottered, and she struck him again.
Den’s ears rang with the blow.
Slowly with one strike after another, Natana forced Den back against the
bars of the cell. When he was trapped
there, he slid to the floor, and she fell on him and pummeled him with her
fists.
Den
manipulated the nerve strings from the chip in Natana’s brain. He cut one after another from the main chip
to Natana’s spinal cord. There were too
many to try to get all that attached themselves to her nerve endings, but the
ones directly to the control points of her nervous system were the lines Den
aimed for. He barely felt her
attacks. He couldn’t defend against them
and continue his delicate surgery.
Natana’s movement began to slow.
Dr. Fleisher cursed and shook his control pad. Under his breath he mumbled, “She isn’t
supposed to stop until I command it.”
One
after another, Den cut the tiny tendrils.
He severed the last one. Natana
halted in mid blow. She bowed her head
and said to him in his mind, ‘I don’t know how you did it, but he can’t control
me anymore.’
The
Doctor snarled, “The meter is off the scale.
They must be conversing mentally.
I don’t know how they did it.
Perhaps the chip was faulty. It
was a very old piece of equipment and not fully tested in the past.”
Den
opened his eyes. He could barely open
them. They were bruised and he was
bleeding from his nose and mouth.
In obvious disgust, the doctor turned
the cell’s shield back on and left the laboratory.
In
this scene, the doctor places a cybernetic chip inside of Natana. The result is rather spectacular, but the doctor
never finds out. This novel is not
focused around the chip or the capabilities of the chip, but the plot device
allows many other future uses and entertainments. This is a foreshadowing and a Chekov’s Gun. The chip becomes very useful in the next four
novels. This is just one example of
human augmentation as a plot device.
More
tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my
author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline,
character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing,
information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic
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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