Writing - part x831, Writing a Novel, Changing World, Writing, and Culture

17 April 2019, Writing - part x831, Writing a Novel, Changing World, Writing, and Culture

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 

Culture is the basis of customs, arts, religion, social fabric, language, dialect, reasoning, myths, and ideas of a particular group of people.  Culture is based on three very important ideas.  First, what the people in the culture think about themselves.  Second, what the people in a culture actually do.  Third, what other cultures or people observe about the culture in question.  All of this is important to writing.

Much of writing is about cultures, clash of cultures, and all writing is about interaction of the protagonist within cultures or a culture.  The culture is part of the worldview setting.  There are books that are set in a culture, rely on that culture, and have nothing but peripherally to do with other cultures.  You see this in Victorian novels.  The assumption is the Victorian Era English culture.  The novel is about a Victorian Era English culture.  Finally, any other English or other culture is viewed in terms of the Victorian Era English culture.  Is there something wrong with this?  Yeah, no, maybe so.

We are generally happy with novels written about our own cultures, in terms of our own cultures, and looking at other cultures from the standpoint of our own.  I’m not so sure this is the best way to write a novel, but writing about other cultures, in terms of the other cultures, and looking at other cultures from a standpoint outside any of them is difficult.  Let’s explore this.

I think the power of any novel is first of all the interaction of the protagonist in the setting or worldview of the novel.  Most specifically, all novels are a revelation of the protagonist in the resolution of the telic flaw of the novel.  In developing an entertaining novel, the revelation of the protagonist is entertaining, not because the protagonist fits perfectly into the culture of the novel, but because they don’t.  Think about any novel you have read and enjoyed.  Take my favorite negative example—in this case it won’t be negative.  Harry Potty is about a protagonist suddenly and unexpectedly shoved into an entirely new and different culture.  The novel is written from the standpoint of the magical society’s culture and not the culture of modern Britain.  In fact, Harry Potty is a novel about the clash of cultures.  There is a clash of cultures between the good magicians and the bad magicians, but there is an even stronger clash of cultures between the magicians and the muggles.  These clashes are the focus of the telic flaws of the novels, and these clashes of culture are what makes the novels entertaining.  Then there is the protagonist.

The protagonist, Harry Potty, is a magic user who was raised as a muggle.  The major entertaining point of the revelation of the Harry Potty novels is the revelation of the magical culture itself seen somewhat from the standpoint of Harry.  Here is where the author doesn’t use this theme as well as she could. 

The power of Harry Potty is not the wizarding world, the power of Harry Potty is that this wizarding world is hidden from view in the middle of the modern British society.  This is the most powerful and entertaining point in all the novels, but the author handles it as a sideline and not the focus of the novels.  On the other hand, my novel, Aegypt, is representative of a novel that is focused entirely on the clash of cultures both modern and ancient. 

The protagonist of Aegypt is a French Foreign Legionnaire—already the novel is about a completely different culture from the English or American norm from the standpoint of that culture.  In the novel, the clash of cultures is historical between the French, the Tunisians, the Berbers, the other desert peoples, and I interject into it the English, Parisian French, and Scotland.  Further, the novel is all about understanding the ancient Egyptians and their interaction in Northern Africa in the past with the encroachment of the issues they caused in the future.  This might sound complex, but it isn’t as complex as this simple synopsis indicates.  The main point is that the novel Aegypt is about explaining the ancient Egyptians and their culture, and then seeing it from the standpoint of the modern era through the eyes of a Frenchman.

I chose this clash of cultures specifically due to the setting of the novel in history and time.  I chose the settings due to the telic flaw of the novel.  The clash of cultures and the cultures themselves provide the impetus for the entertainment in the novel.  That’s my point, and in my opinion, this is how we produce an exciting and entertaining novel.  

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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