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Thursday, March 28, 2019

Writing - part x811, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Knowing Truth

28 March 2019, Writing - part x811, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Knowing Truth

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 29th 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 30th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29th 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. 

Let’s look at a subject that is really ignored in the modern era.  I’m not certain how much this can help your current writing.  I would argue that theoretically, this subject can really help those who write historical and futuristic fiction.  It depends on how your write your historical and futuristic fiction.  There are two ways to write historical fiction—let’s look at this.

The first and most common way to write historical fiction is to write a novel that projects modern ideas and history as historical ideas and history.  In other words to present modern ideas and historical ideas as the same.  I think this is perhaps the most egregious and perverse means of presenting a false view of history.  The author is either completely ignorant of the past, is intentionally attempting to education people in a false view of history, or both.  The real historical world is very different both culturally and socially from our current world.  The true author attempts to convey this in historical writing.

The second and less common means of historical writing is to actually incorporate the past into a novel to convey the actual way people thought and acted in the past.  This approach actually goes back into time to give a complete view of the way the people thought and acted.  To this end, let’s look at how the world changed and how people thought in the past.  This is more of a historical look at the world for the purpose of understanding how the world worked in the past and how people thought and acted.  We’ll use historical information to see what concerned affected their lives. Here is a list of potential issues.  We’ll look at them in detail:

1.   Vocabulary
2.   Ideas
3.   Social construction
4.   Culture
5.   Politics
6.   History
7.   Language
8.   Common knowledge
9.   Common sense
10. Reflected culture
11. Reflected history
12. Reflected society
13. Truth
14. Food
15. Weapons
16. Transportation
17. Communication
18. Writing 

Perhaps the greatest change in cultures comes with literacy.  Before literacy a people can’t understand forms or complex ideas.  Studies have been accomplished on preliterate cultures and their concept of the world are very interesting.  It might be easier to look back from a literate point of view.

You might have been told that you can’t prove truth—whoever told you that is gravely misinformed.  There are precisely three methods to prove truth in the world.  The ancient Greeks invented the third method to prove truth at some time after 300 BC.  They might have developed it much earlier, but we don’t have much historical data before that—the historical-legal method remember.  The third method is the scientific method.  We think it was developed a little later than 300 BC because Aristotle mentioned and used it.

There are many many many events, ideas, concepts, and principles that you can prove using the proper or mixtures of the three methods to know truth.  As I noted before, the historical method can be used to prove non-repeatable events, thus historical events can be proven using the historical method.  If you don’t have written records of events, you can use paintings, archeology, architecture, photographs, videos, recordings, and other historical evidence.  In many cases, you might have to use logic to prove some of the ideas in history if you don’t have strong written records.  You might ask, what about carbon dating?  Isn’t that the use of the scientific method for historical events?

Actually, in using science based dating methods, we use the measured degradation of radioisotopes.  A radioisotope is a radioactive isotope of a common atom like carbon.  When a living thing consumes carbon in nature, it acquires some of the radioisotope.  When it dies, it stops acquiring the radioisotope and the isotope degrades at a constant rate back to normal carbon.  I can measure the rate of degradation and by the amount of remaining radioisotope, I can estimate the time between now and the death of the creature or plant.  This is using the scientific method to measure the repeatable degradation of an isotope to estimate the age of something.  Logic is used for the estimate, but the repeatability of the degradation of the radioisotope is the use of the scientific method.  Remember, the scientific method can only be used to prove repeatable events.

Thus, the scientific method can’t be used to prove, let’s say, the beginning of the universe.  We can gather all kinds of data about the beginning of the universe, but unless it is repeatable, we can’t prove much about it.  The other thing is repeatable is dependent on time.  If time doesn’t exist, we have no way of repeating an event, thus in the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, until 0.3 seconds into it we can’t measure anything because there is no time to use.  All the time before 0.3 seconds might as well be eternity.  The other problem with the scientific method is extrapolation.

Yes, you can extrapolate using logic and you can interpolate using logic, but extrapolation tends to be very misleading and unpredictable.  For example, in a lift curve slope, the slope is usually a straight line—interpolation is okay, but as any pilot and aerospace engineer knows, the lift curve slope ends with a significant non-linearity at the peak of the slope called a stall.  An extrapolation of the lift curve slope on any airfoil is a fool’s errand—it will lead to significant errors.  This is why scientific predictions based on extrapolations are usually considered the fair or fools and charlatans—no scientist is usually willing to go out on a limb to extrapolate any data because the continuing logical reduction of the data might be significantly in error.  The historical method then comes into significant play for scientific method comparisons and records.

The historical method has its own set of problems, but most of these are due to the primacy of witness.  In almost every case, a primary, first hand, witness is always considered a primary source of historical information.  In some cases, tertiary sources can provide great ancillary information, but never as good as a primary or secondary witness.  A great ancillary witness would be the settings of a Victorian Era novel and the interactions of the people in it.  We can’t learn much about the times from the novel itself, but we can glean some great information about what people wore, ate, said, and thought.  In any case, without a primary witness, you have a problem with historical information.  For example, in the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament), the accounts of Moses that he saw and experienced can be considered good primary information.  On the other hand, the information Moses wasn’t around to see or experience is only secondary and those things humans could not see or experience are worse than tertiary—if that’s possible.  In every case where you have a witness to a historical event, that witness is considered accurate unless you have another witness of greater primacy.  That’s the way we understand history and use the historical method.  There is much more to this.

Logic refines, interacts, and interoperates the scientific and the historical methods.  Logic with the scientific and the historical method can be used to prove many things especially principles.  You might be surprised at the many things you can prove using logic.  As I mentioned, Emanuel Kant proved there can’t be a “not God.”  To be clear, if you remember from geometry, you can’t prove any affirmation.  You can only prove a false or not affirmation, but you can infer from the not affirmation that the affirmation must be.  Thus, you can’t prove there must be God, but you can prove that there can’t be not God.  Kant proved using logic that there can’t be not God.  His proof still stands.  If you don’t know this, you need to study philosophy and especially Kant.  Indeed, philosophy can be used to prove many concepts.

We use philosophy to prove many modern ideas that we later use in science and technology.  Technology is the use of science in everyday products.  Much logic, scientific method, and historical method work goes into each scientific breakthrough and every technological use.  However, there is much more that you can prove and use than just in science and technology.  The three methods to know truth are fundamental to human understanding of the world.  Your heart doesn’t matter if your head can’t understand.  What I mean by that is that many things in the world that appear simple aren’t and many things that might seem complex are provable and understandable.  A quick example, feeding wildlife.  Feeding wildlife makes animals dependent on humans and reduces their ability to fend for themselves.  If you didn’t realize this, you might just continue to feed wildlife.  That’s why they put up signs all over the place to not feed the wildlife.  In some places it is against the law to feed wildlife.  There is much more to this. 

The use of the three means to know truth make modern human life possible and the world understandable.  Still, there are many things and concepts outside of current human understanding.  The use of the three means to know truth continue to increase our understanding of the world and our knowledge of the universe.          

More tomorrow.

For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

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