Writing - part x837, Writing a Novel, Changing World and History

23 April 2019, Writing - part x837, Writing a Novel, Changing World and History

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 

I should likely do more with politics, but why?  Politics changes too quickly and is too based on a horizon that you can’t do it justice, most people aren’t interested, and others get too interested—if you see what I mean.  I’ll move on to history, which is too broad, but worth looking at.

History changes—we know that.  What happens with history and us is the problem.  People have a limited event horizon which most can’t and won’t expand.  In general, readers depend on writers to expand their event horizon.  If the writers event horizon is short, then first of all the history is wrong, and second, the novel setting and presumptions is wrong.  This gets really deep.

As I noted, most people’s event horizon is very short.  They know that the world and history has changed, but it is difficult for most people to comprehend how people lived, acted, and thought in the past.  Someday, books will be as unknown as scrolls, and separate pages.  Most people know at one time there were scrolls, but they have no idea how many, how much they cost, how they were written, how they were read, and almost everything about scrolls.

Before scrolls, books were compiled in cases as individual sheets.  Bet you didn’t know that.  Some bright person, likely an Egyptian got the idea that the individual sheets could be sewed together and rolled into a scroll.  This solved the terrible problem of what to do when the individual unnumbered sheets got mixed up.  We haven’t found many sources of these very early compilations, but we know that was the means.  Let’s look at scrolls.

All ancient writing was mnemonics.  There were no capitals, sentences, punctuation, breaks between words, paragraphs, and in some cases, no vowels.  All scrolls were memorized.  When you bought one, they came with a book slave who had memorized the book.  The book slave either taught you to memorize the book or just recited it (read) it to you.  When people spoke of reading, they meant that you recited a book by referring to the mnemonics so you got the words correct and from your memory to get the breaks, emphasis, and pacing correct.  The book slave was an inexpensive part of the book because even though book slaves cost somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000, the cost of a scroll was the same as a 40 acre farm.  I’m sure there were chances in the market in Athens to get a good deal on a scroll, but they were expensive and they required a book slave.

Scrolls were so expensive the average library had only about six or seven, certainly less than ten.  Scrolls were expensive because of the materials, the means (book slave), and the rarity.  You didn’t write a letter or a scroll yourself, even if you were literate.  You hired a grammeteus.  The grammeteus brought ink, pens, paper, and parchment to your house.  You told the grammeteus what to write and the grammeteus wrote what you said and turned it into the correct Greek form for the writing.  The form was a logos to an unstated telos, but that is another point entirely.  Once you were happy with the text, the grammeteus would make three copies: one for you, one for him, and one for the book slave. The book slave went with the text.  Remember, since scrolls were all mnemonics, you could not easily read them yourself.  That’s why they needed a book slave or the originator.  You might say, some writers might write their own texts (scrolls).  Sure, but without a book slave or someone else who had memorized the text, the scroll was almost worthless.  You can see how this worked with the Torah scrolls of the Jewish people.

The Torah scrolls were memorized at the knee of a rabbi.  Every Jewish boy over eight was set to memorize the entire Torah for the purpose of presenting a reading after his twelfth birthday—what we call a Bar Mitzvah today.  Every Jewish male was supposed to have memorized the Torah so he could recite (read) the scroll perfectly in the synagogue.  If you notice, many people could read and understand the Torah scrolls.  This was also true of the Septuagint which many had memorized and could read.  Scrolls were not documents in isolation, they were documents in common use and knowledge.  This is a very different view of scrolls from our view of books.  It is also a significantly different view of scrolls and early books from our common and event horizon based knowledge.

Early books were called codices and came directly from scrolls.  All the little tricks we use to read a document were not invented and applied commonly to books until about 800 AD.  The reason why we went from scrolls to the codex are not known to most people.  We’ll continue from there.                       

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