Writing - part x826, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Slavery

12 April 2019, Writing - part x826, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Slavery

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 came about through religious developments, but then changed the fabric of religion significantly by bringing in pantheonic paganism and then mysterium.  Literacy indirectly affected slavery by the ascent of Western Civilization through Greek Rationalism, Hebrew Legalism, and Christianity (which is really that same mix).  Here’s what it is all about.

Every ancient culture is and was slave based.  Nearly all of these cultures were feudal in character and they needed enormous amounts of human labor to subsist and develop.  If the workers weren’t serfs, they were slaves.  In general, you see where societies that had private property based agriculture, their farmers and farms were not slave based, and they were not purely survival cultures—the people had some degree of caloric assurance. 

In any case, all ancient cultures are slave based.  The ancient Greeks had a population of five slaves to one citizen.  Since the citizens were all male warriors and most of the slaves were female, there never was a problem for a slave uprising.  All feudal cultures are serf or slave based.  This was the plight of most of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the rest until the coming of Christianity and Western Civilization.  Christianity and Western Civilization provided the reasoning for the elimination of slavery, but the cause was an effect as opposed to an immediate response.

As I mentioned, all ancient cultures were slave based.  The word slave comes from the word Slav—the Romans asserted that the Slavs made the best slaves, and appropriated the word.  The word slave in English came directly from the enslavement of the northern Europeans by the southern Europeans.  By the way black slavery was uncommon in Europe only because blacks had problems accommodating to the climate and there was insufficient trade between them and Africa. 

The slave based culture in Europe was mostly serfs and indentured.  You see this as a significant force in servants in Europe and in the early Americas.  What Western Civilization and Christianity did was to provide a moral reason and movement of many from indentured slavery to freedom.  The improving capital markets in agriculture and trade goods also provided circumstances where the indentured could pay off their contracts.  So you see a gradual change in the framework of the indentured slave from complete and purely slave-like servanthood to eventual freedom.  This is well documented in much of European literature, but not as evident as other types of slavery.  The slavery that gets the most attention is the black slave trade.

The reason for this is the backward and non-middle class European farms could barely sustain the people who owned and tilled them. There was no constructive possibility until private property and free markets could bring them prosperity that large scale agricultural slavery in Europe could take hold.  Europe had enough problems feeding, providing jobs for, and housing the people they had.  It would take real freedom from monarchies and feudalism to get productivity to a level of great economic power.

The Americas were a different story.  There was no feudalism and only freedom to be had especially in North America.  The people had plenty of calories, so much so that they could expand farming into cash crops such as cotton, jute, and sugar cane.  In addition, they could use much of their barley, wheat, and rye to make alcohol which is easily transportable and salable.  The need for labor was acute and slavery provided the bulk of that labor especially in the south.  African slaves could accommodate the climate and the work.  Then something really good happened—the industrial revolution followed the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment started the ball of freedom rolling.  Freedom brought private property to the farmer and productivity beyond anything humanity had ever seen.  The Industrial Revolution brought jobs in producing modern products and moved serfs and servants into the middle class.  This was historic powerful and freeing.  Humans had never had so much food, goods, wealth, or freedom before.  The problem was that the Industrial Revolution also needed skilled hands and free hands.  The free and well paid are the basis for production not the enslaved and destitute.  This is why slave factories and slave production is so ineffective—it is too easy to cripple industry through sabotage and who can really blame the destitute and the enslaved.  Slave labor is ineffective labor, and the economies of the British Empire and the American South began to feel it. 

In 1833, the British abolished slavery in their realms.  This was not simply a moral move, it was an acquiescence to the ineffectivity of slavery.  Slavery did not produce in any measure the productively of free labor in a free labor market, and the Brits couldn’t afford it any more.  The Americans were having the same problem, and if the slave culture had not become the culture of the South, it would likely have died a quick but quiet death as it did in Europe.  The Brits started it and the United States went out with a bang. 

Slavery had always been abhorrent to Christianity.  After all, Christianity said all are equal, male, female, slave, and free.  The equality of the male and female was moving along briskly away from the views of the ancient world.  Women had more rights in the Western world than women had ever had in history.  But slavery had been a part of human culture from the beginning.  Christianity saw it as a general problem and the modern world of Western Civilization saw it as a problem.  I will point out that Western Civilization is the only civilization that has completely repudiated slavery.  Most other cultures still practice it in some measure.  Indentured servanthood is common in Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East today. 

In any case, the 1860s in the USA brought an end to slavery there and in much of the modern world.  The Brits started the reformation and the USA pretty much finished it.  As I noted, you will find most governments and cultures today repudiate slavery, but many have indentured servanthood, which in Western Civilization is considered a type of slavery.  I will also point out that any type of socialism is feudalism—it is a government (nobility) in charge of a business or service which controls the people who are compelled to participate in the government controlled and owned business or service.  Modern socialistic feudalism is a blast of slavery from the past. 

Perhaps we should move next to sexual equality.           

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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