Writing - part x817, Writing a Novel, Changing World and more Modern Writing

3 April 2019, Writing - part x817, Writing a Novel, Changing World and more Modern Writing

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. 

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 

Literacy brought about perhaps the greatest change in thought.  You can see that directly out of literacy, the ancient Greeks invented the three ways to know truth.  We use these ideas to record history, continue rule of law, create science and technology, develop mathematics and philosophy, and basically progress human invention and society.  There is much more that came out of literacy.

We saw how writing and the understanding of writing has changed over the time since humans invented literacy.  The ancient Greeks are the model because we have more ancient documents preserved from that culture.  We also have a lot of Latin and Hebrew documents, but realize this—there are no originals from any document in antiquity, and all of the documents we have are manuscripts.  They are all hand written copies of the originals.  The historical method is used to study and work with these documents.  To be clear, because these documents are copies and manuscripts, does not reduce their historical viability or veracity.  What it means is that we must carefully apply the bibliographical methods for evaluating works in antiquity.  We actually use the same methods for evaluating modern works.  Here is the method in a nutshell.

First, we apply the bibliographical test.  This test has two parts.  Number one, how many manuscripts of the document do we have, and number two, what is the time between the earliest manuscript we have and the time the manuscript was written.  The more manuscripts we have, the more reliable our knowledge of the copies as passed down through time.  The lesser the time between the earliest manuscript and the original writing, the less hands the copies went through—or the less copying process.  The next test is the internal test.

The internal test looks at the internal consistency and primacy of witness for the text.  If the text claims to be an eye witness account, that’s a primary witness and considered excellent history.  The quality and consistency of the writing is also important.  Plus, the primacy of witness from the text is important.  A document written about Egypt but composed in Greece might or might not be an accurate text—the writer might have traveled to Egypt and come back to Greece to compose the text, however, a document with no connections to Egypt but written in Greece could only be a secondary or tertiary witness and source.  Time, place, author, and claims are all elements of the internal proof tests.  The internal proof tests are always considered accurate for a document as long as it passes the bibliographical tests well and as long as it is not contradicted by a work with a higher primacy of witness.  This is called the external test.

If I have two works from the same period with similar bibliographical results, the work that is a better witness is automatically considered the most accurate source—other sources are considered inferior.  The external tests are usually confirmatory and not exclusionary.  For example, if a primary source states that a city is in a certain area, the historian must assume the work is correct even if archeology doesn’t show results in that specific location.  Locations are difficult to pin down in antiquity and many times we find the author is correct, but the place names and identifying landmarks have changed over time.  Usually, we find the city or location is close, but not exactly where we expected it.  One element of ancient writing which is very interesting is miracles.

You find miracles and miraculous events in almost every work of antiquity from Pliny to Caesar and Plato to Aristotle.  What is funny to me about this is that almost every person thinks the Tanakh and the New Testament documents (NTD) are not historically viable because they have miracles in them.  If you throw out the Tanakh and NTD for miracles, you either haven’t ever read other works in antiquity or you need to throw away every work in antiquity.  As scholars, we need to be consistent with our application of the historical method.  So how do we explain miracles in antiquity—that’s a better question?

The answer is simple.  If you remember, people in these cultures understood the world much differently than we do.  We see the forces of the universe, world, and nature—they saw spirits and gods.  Anything you see and can’t explain is a miracle, and we are the same.  Many in the modern world claim to have seen miracles.  When you read their eyewitness account what will you do with that?  In any case, works of antiquity are not at all like modern writing.  The authors tried to leave a good account of what they observed, but their views, understanding, culture, and writing forms are different from ours, and this is the only correct way to understand them.  There is more to write about forms and writing.

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