Writing - part x776, Writing a Novel, Protagonist in the Initial Scene, more Naturally Good

21 February 2019, Writing - part x776, Writing a Novel, Protagonist in the Initial Scene, more Naturally Good

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:  Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events. 

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:  Why don’t we go back to the basics and just writing a novel?  I can tell you what I do, and show you how I go about putting a novel together.  We can start with developing an idea then move into the details of the writing. 

To start a novel, I picture an initial scene.  I may start from a protagonist or just launch into mental development of an initial scene.  I get the idea for an initial scene from all kinds of sources.  To help get the creative juices flowing, let’s look at the initial scene. 

1.     Meeting between the protagonist and the antagonist or the protagonist’s helper

2.     Action point in the plot

3.     Buildup to an exciting scene

4.     Indirect introduction of the protagonist

The protagonist is the novel and the initial scene.  If you look at the four basic types of initial scenes, you see the reflection of the protagonist in each one.  If you noticed my examples yesterday, I expressed the scene idea, but none were completely independent of the protagonist.  Indeed, in most cases, I get an idea with a protagonist.  The protagonist is incomplete, but a sketch to begin with.  You can start with a protagonist, but in my opinion, as we see above, the protagonist is never completely independent from the initial scene.  As the ideas above imply, we can start with the characters, specifically the protagonist, antagonist or protagonist’s helper, and develop an initial scene. 

If we start with a protagonist, we need some kind of guide.  Here is a general guide for developing a modern protagonist.  We’ll look at examples and explain the ideas.

1.        Normal person (not wealthy, noble, or privileged)

2.      Loves to read

3.      Loves to learn

4.     Unique skill(s), power(s) and/or learning

5.      Pathos (poor, homeless, abused, friendless, ill)

6.     Individualistic and independent

7.      Introspective

8.     Leader

9.     Naturally good

10.  Rejection of the urban

11.   Rejection of the modern

12.  Appeal to the imagination

A romantic protagonist is naturally good.  The Romantic ideology is that children and innocents are perfect and pure just like nature and the natural is perfect and pure.  Romantic protagonists have religious leanings, but they worship on their own terms.  This comes directly out of existentialism and evangelism. 

The reflection of the idea of natural goodness is that the Romantic protagonist need not be Christian or any religion.  A non-Christian or non-religious protagonist doesn’t need to be converted to be considered good.  What this gave birth to was the redemption plot with and without a conversion focus.  I think this was a very important and healthy development in the novel.

Many Victorian Era novels have a redemption plot.  Jane Eyre is a redemption plot.  Oliver Twist is a redemption plot.  A Christmas Carol is a redemption plot.  Pride and Prejudice is a redemption plot.  There are many more.  Most of these are a redemption plot with a focus on not conversion to Christianity, that was assumed, but rather conversion within Christianity.  Christianity made the characters good while they needed to be redeemed from their situations or behavior.  Romantic characters require redemption from many more types, degrees, and problems.  One of those notably is conversion or redemption to religion.  This would have been impossible under Victorian thinking. 

You see some Victorian novels that do deal with conversion, but very few.  If the assumption is Christianity, there is no need for conversion.  Romanticism changed all that.  It gave birth to the unspoken idea in Victorian thought that someone might need conversion while still expressing the basic Romantic notion that children and nature are innocent.  This also brought into literature the idea that children and adults are different.

You see some children’s literature developing at the end of the Victorian Era, but it really blossomed with the advent of Romanticism.  If children are innocent and naturally good, then their literature, development, and being are not the same as adults.  They aren’t just little adults, they are beings with their own nature.  At the same time, the Romantic protagonist is also naturally good, and that goodness comes from within and not from without.

Remember, this isn’t about theology but rather about ideology.  The Romantic protagonist gave writers the ability to produce conversion as well as redemption plots.  Additionally, the Romantic protagonist brought about a revolution in redemptive plots just because writers could express ideas that were never allowed in Victorian writing.  For example, redemption from poverty or from abuse or from prostitution or from lack of religion or from vampirism or from any host of problems that could not be expressed in Victorian terms.

As an example, the Victorian novel Oliver Twist could take the Christian boy Oliver who was a member of a highly born family and whisk him out of poverty and abuse because he was aristocratic and only accidentally born into poverty due to love.  This is redemptive, but nothing like Edgar Rice Burroughs The Mucker where a man born into poverty with a low pedigree and makes his living with his fists can be redeemed by a beautiful woman into a man of sophistication.  Oliver was born into his state of grace and redeemed back into it.  The Mucker began life with nothing and redeemed himself into his state of grace.  This is the ultimate product of existentialism and evangelical thought in human ideology—that a person can redeem him or herself from the state he or she is born into through skills, power, or education.  This is ultimately the message of Romanticism that humans are not fated.  The idea that humans are naturally good is perhaps a mistake of understanding the human condition, but it has led to some of the greatest literature about human redemption and success.

In any case, the Romantic protagonist is naturally good.  How this plays out in literature is what we will look at next.        

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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