Writing - part x630, Developing Skills, How to Suspend Disbelief, Modern Imagination and Entertaining Characters

28 September 2018, Writing - part x630, Developing Skills, How to Suspend Disbelief, Modern Imagination and Entertaining Characters

Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the internet, but my primary publisher has gone out of business—they couldn’t succeed in the past business and publishing environment.  I'll keep you informed, but I need a new publisher.  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.

These are the steps I use to write a novel including the five discrete parts of 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

I finished writing my 29^th novel, working title, Detective, potential title Blue Rose: Enchantment and the Detective.  The theme statement is: Lady Azure Rose Wishart, the Chancellor of the Fae, supernatural detective, and all around dangerous girl, finds love, solves cases, breaks heads, and plays golf.  

Here is the cover proposal for Blue Rose: Enchantment and the Detective. 

Cover Proposal

The most important scene in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  I’m planning to start on number 31, working title Shifter. 

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 30:  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 31:  TBD 

Here is the scene development 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

          

Today:  Suspension of disbelief is the characteristic of writing that pulls the reader into the world of the novel in such a way that the reader would rather face the world of the novel rather than the real world—at least while reading.  If this occurs while not reading, it is potentially a mental problem.  To achieve the suspension of disbelief your writing has to meet some basic criteria and contain some strong inspiration.  If you want to call the inspiration creativity, that works too.  Here is a list of the basic criteria to hope to achieve some degree of suspension of disbelief. 

1.      Reasonably written in standard English

2.      No glaring logical fallacies

3.      Reasoned worldview

4.      Creative and interesting topic

5.      A Plot

6.      Entertaining

7.      POV

Everything is about entertainment.  The purpose for all published novels is entertainment.  Other than this is the only point of fiction literature, one of the main reasons is that entertainment can fill a lot of holes as well as result in the suspension of disbelief.

The factors that do lend themselves to entertaining are these:

1.      Characters

2.      Plot

3.      Setting

4.      Topics

5.      Writing

6.      Use of figures of speech (vocabulary and language).

How to develop entertaining protagonists?  I can’t leave the discussion of entertaining protagonists without mentioning the romantic character.  I assert that we are still in the Romantic Era for writing, but whether we are or aren’t, the romantic character is the favored character of most readers.  If your protagonist is a romantic character or has romantic characteristics, this will improve the chance your readers will find them entertaining. 

So, what does a romantic character look like?  I happen to have a short list.  This isn’t a perfect list, but it gets the basic idea.  I’ll find examples as well.

1.       The common man, innocence of humans, and childhood (children)

2.      Focus on strong senses, emotions, and feelings

3.      Awe of nature

4.      Celebration of the individual and individualism

5.      Importance of imagination

You could say that the romantics developed the use of imagination in their characters, plots, and settings to be able to make otherwise unentertaining subject entertaining.  Take a look at Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol and tell me that isn’t true.

Now, again, Dickens is usually not considered a romantic era or romantic author, but he was already moving his plots, settings, and characters into the romantic era.  He just usually isn’t remembered or studied much that way.  One of the reasons is that his characters tended to go the opposite direction—from noble to common and then back to prove the assertion of nobility.  I’ll mention this as a problem the early romantics had to deal with culturally.

The Victorian assumption is one of birth.  The Greek assumption if one of fate.  The Christian assertion is choice—just to make that very clear.  I mentioned Søren Kierkegaard in respect to romanticism.  Kierkegaard is literally the father of modern theological and philosophical thought.  Existentialism is the foundation for almost all modern philosophy and the basis for evangelical ideas in religion.  The modern era would not be the modern era without Kierkegaard. 

What Kierkegaard reminded us about is choice.  The American experiment further pressed this to what people call the American Dream.  It wasn’t just America, it was the world, but that took time and a change in thought from fate and birth to choice.

Dicken’s characters were born into nobility or respectability.  There are touches here and there in Dickens with the noble hearted prostitute and the good boys by nature but not by birth, but in general, Dickens subscribed to the concept that birth made the man or woman—this was a Victorian societal belief and a worldwide belief in almost every culture—either fate or birth.  The Christian worldview and the worldview Kierkegaard reminded us of is the idea that people are not birth and fate, but choices.  The good natured and pure hearted common or poor was birthed in romanticism and not in Victorianism.  As I wrote, there are touches in Dickens and other Victorian writers—look at tiny Tim and the Cratchets, but the general view was that the poor were fated until the birth of romanticism. 

This is where we get the idea of the common man making good.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, one of the major early romantic writers gave us Tarzan—Tarzan is a romantic character, but an emerging one.  He is a proof of nobility will out.  He is a nobleman by birth, and his character by birth shows itself in his goodness and qualities.  Where ERB shined wasn’t in this character, but in his less known novels.  The Mucker is a common man who chooses to become noble—for a woman.  Yes, the civilizing role in the early romantics was women.  The John Carter characters drove this idea further.  There is some level of birth and nobility in John Carter, but it isn’t the nobility of the ancient world.

If you steep yourself in the romantic literature of the turn of the 20^th Century, you will find almost every book exalts the common above the noble.  The common man is the man or woman who chooses to succeed and chooses to become.  This theme and this idea was radical at the time.  It permeated literature for the average person and for children.  The means of this development was the imagination of the character and not usually the setting or the plot.  That had to wait for the full development or really the integration of imagination in fantasy and science fiction.  This was what really began the development of modern romanticism and imagination.                 

  

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  

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