Writing - part x833, Writing a Novel, Changing World, and Comparing Cultures

19 April 2019, Writing - part x833, Writing a Novel, Changing World, and Comparing Cultures

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.

You can write a novel from three potential cultural viewpoints: exclusionary, clash, and inclusionary. 

There is much more about culture.  You can likewise write a novel contrasting what people think about a culture and how they actually act in that culture.  The Victorians couldn’t write this way—the Romantics couldn’t stop writing this way.  The clash of cultures was from within.  This is a trope of modern literature.  In fact, it isn’t just a trope, it is an ideal of modern literature. 

Modern, Romantic literature (all literature), just loves to show how society doesn’t hold up to its own ideals and concepts.  The protagonist is almost always at odds with some degree of the culture of its society.  My favorite example is Harry Potty.  Harry is at odds with the cultural norms of his school and wizarding society.  In fact, all the “good” characters in Harry Potty are at odds with the norms of wizarding culture.  From Dumbledore to Harry, every one of the “good” are in some way opposed to their current cultural norms.  The “bads” are seen as non-progressive and non-inclusive.  The reality is that the entire wizarding society is non-inclusive and bigoted.  I hoped you noticed that.  Harry Potty is a children’s novel, and we don’t expect good and reasoned thinking from children’s literature—we certainly don’t get it in the modern era.  On the other hand, great modern literature is all about this internal clash between social and cultural norms at odds with the real world.  Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Adams, Herbert, to name just a few great modern authors present this clash.  Science fiction authors, Herbert, Heinlein, Panishin, Vance, Clark, Asimov, all give us this clash as an allegory highlighted by future societies—it’s amazing how much they look like modern cultures.  Or, in the case of Vance, how his cultures look like extrapolations of modern and ancient cultures.

Clash of culture is the modern way of writing, and it isn’t the clash of real cultures—that’s too nineteenth and eighteenth Century.  Today’s novels are rarely about real and actual clashes of cultures, they are about contemporary societies and the difference between actual and expressed cultures.  How we can continue this for too long should be a great question in your mind.  We likely can because culture and society show no signs of coming to terms with its silliness, in fact, cultures in the modern world are becoming more and more detached from reality.  How can we tell?  Education in the modern era has failed miserably.  The average child entering college today knows almost a 1000 times less than the average child who entered high school at the turn of the Twentieth Century.  I have copies of tests from that period for entry into high school.  The average graduate schooler could not pass these tests.  I can assert with no qualms that people today are not educated as well as people were in the past.  This is a serious cultural problem.  The reason is that people today assume that they are much more educated than those in the past.  They know nothing, but they have high self-esteem.  High self-esteem is the number one measure of the criminal mind.  A proper novel about today’s culture would contrast the clash between the educated and the uneducated—there is little likelihood of this because this cuts too close to home.  The actual rift in education is in readers.

Your readers are reasonably educated.  Not as educated as in the past, but much more educated than the status quo.  They can appreciate the clash of cultures in education, but they don’t want to read about uneducated of non-reading characters.  I’ve written about this before.  Your readers will love to read about the clash of political, capital, groups, native cultures, just to name a few, but they will not warm to real clashes of culture such as education, tribal, intraracial, although you might try readers and non-readers—that has worked for some writers.  In any case, touching the third rail requires allegory and euphemism.  If you remember, all fiction writing is about entertainment, you will realize why some subjects and some clash of cultures will not bring in an audience.      

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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