27 April 2017, Writing Ideas
- New Novel, part x111, Creative Elements in Scenes, Plot Devices, Mind
Switching (Soul Switching)
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)
Mind Switching (Soul Switching) – Current discussion.
Unreliable character
Incarceration (imprisonment)
Valuable item
Identification
Contest
Search
War
Brotherhood (sisterhood) (camaraderie)
Crime
Theater
One way love
Mind Switching (Soul Switching): here is my definition – Mind Switching (Soul Switching) is the use of physically, mentally, or spiritually exchanging brains, thoughts, or spirits (souls) from one creature to another to further a plot.
I’m
not certain which author first used this plot device—it may have been Edgar
Rice Burroughs in his Martian series. In
any case, ERB had a mad scientist exchange the brains of his hero and heroine into
ugly Martian beings. This was just the beginning. Most everyone is familiar with The Fly where the heads of a fly and a
man are superimposed on the other’s body.
Andrea Norton used various mental swap scenarios in her science fiction
novels. There are quite a few other
examples.
Let’s
note that in the Western (Greek rational) worldview, you can swap the brains,
thoughts, and spirits. The Greeks would
have called this sarx, psuche, and pneuma.
What do these exactly constitute?
The sarx or physical is easy.
Just as ERB did, you can theoretically exchange the brain or head with
another creature or human. The psuche
isn’t much more difficult. You can
transfer the thoughts or thinking process from one being to another. This has been the focus of much of the
current mind swap ideas in novels. How the trick is done is up to the author,
but the end result is the thoughts and mental process of one inside or
exchanged with the thoughts and mental process of another. The third concept or pneuma is a little more
difficult. The pneuma is the idea of the
soul. The Greeks believed this was the
expression of free will and of the personality. What exactly is a soul swap is
up to the author.
I
haven’t used a brain swap in my writing.
It’s an interesting idea. I have
used the mental or psyonics field with a little of the thoughts swap in some of
my writing. I have used the concept of a
soul or spirit exchange in my science fiction.
Here
is an example from my writing from Athelstan
Cying.
The
presence watched the men as they approached and boarded his ship. He saved them once and learned a skill of
immense value. He saw them come to
innocently desecrate his “tomb of millennia” and paid them little attention
until one stood purposely before the sealed cabin doors. That’s when the presence first tried to warn
the man.
The
man opened the doors to the first and second cabins.
He
realized the direction of the man’s search and attempted to turn him from his
intentions. The man now stood before the
door to the breached cabin.
“Stop!” the being shouted soundlessly into
the stillness. “Stop!” he pleaded
without effect. “Fool!” he screamed as
the door opened and the white suited body swept into the cabin. The man tore through the remains of a friend,
and was impaled on a dagger of plasteel that rimmed the breach in the hull; one
gaping wound produced another.
The being moved instantly to the wounded
man. He felt the man's life as it
slipped out of the body, and he struggled to call it back. He tried to hold on to the man’s soul. He tried to restart the dying body and
recapture that breath of God’s devising.
Unbidden, his consciousness merged with the dying man's, and he felt the
pain and then more than pain as Den's soul slipped from his hold. He could do nothing to stop it. Den would no longer fight for his life or his
body. His soul was gone and the only
thing that was left was the castaway husk.
Then, with dread, the presence realized he
was caught in the vacuum of the discarded body—a body that still desired life,
but whose original master was gone. He
became a person he never wished to be, a being he was not born to be. He was captured, a soul encased in a body that
would not let him go. Resolved and as
unrelenting to death as he had been for millennia, he struggled least he slip
the way of this body's previous tenant.
With a will as powerful as the plasteel that pierced him, he recovered
the body’s breath and then the heartbeat.
The contest was more than any, the man,
Den, could have made himself. Slowly,
the body responded, stabilized, fell from shock to unconsciousness, helpless
but sustained and alive! He was safe for
the moment—that is, if anyone would come help him. Resolutely, the powerful mind and soul kept
guard over its new and fleshly prison.
Steven reached the breach in the ship just
as Den's vacsuit clad body rushed uncontrolled out of it and was impaled. The limbs trashed for a moment, then became
still.
Steven yelled over the suit radio, “Johan,
Den's hurt!”
“How bad?” Johan snapped back.
“Really bad,” Steven tried to keep the
horror out of his voice as he picked his way through the shattered plasteel
toward Den. Steven choked back nausea as
he hurriedly scanned the biomonitors on the suit. The suit sealed along the edges of the
plasteel, but the indicators showed no respiration, no heartbeat, and the
composite monitor gave a report of severe shock. Den’s faceplate was entirely fogged over.
Suit’s malfunctioning, Steven whispered,
“If the suit's sealed, the faceplate shouldn't be fogged—ever—unless…,” but he
wouldn't think of that possibility. Den
would have to be... Then, for a moment,
the fog cleared, and he caught sight of Den's eyes through the ceriplast; at
first, the eyes remained dull and wide open, but then, as if a fire were
kindled behind them, they suddenly lit up.
Den's face took on an appearance like none Steven had seen there before,
an aspect of maturity unsuited to the visage of his youth. Then the eyes closed and the mask fogged over
again. When Steven looked back at the
suit monitors, the body functions had become incredibly normal.
In
this piece, the presence attempts to save Den Protania’s life. This being already saved the ship, Twilight
Lamb from destruction and protected the crew.
While attempting to save Den Protania, the being becomes trapped in Den’s
body (mind) and replaces his soul. Thus
we have the soul swap that drives the entire series of the Ghost Ship Chronicles. This
is still a plot device—it happens to use a soul swap to propel the device and
the plot.
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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