Writing - part x838, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Writing

24 April 2019, Writing - part x838, Writing a Novel, Changing World and 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 

Most people have no idea how writing and reading came about.  They assume that people always read and write just like they do today—the truth is much further than they can imagine.  I went from scrolls to the codex yesterday.  Now the reason people moved from scrolls to the codex. 

If you have ever handled or seen a no kidding scroll like a Torah scroll, you will realize they are large, hard to handle, and somewhat delicate.  A bright person got the idea to take the individual sheets of the scrolls and bind them together on a side, thus forming a codex.  A codex is a book, but a book of manuscripts.  The first codices were of the New Testament documents.  The New Testament documents were critically important to the new sect of Judaism called teen Hodos by the Jews and themselves and called Christians by the Greeks.  When these manuscripts were put together in a codex, they traveled much better and were easier to handle and read.  Many of the missionaries of teen Hodos had copies and many early churches had copies.  We know there were thousands of copies by the second century and the documents had a wide distribution.  The Septuagint was in a similar place by this time, both because it was a popular read especially by teen Hodos and in codex form it was easy to carry around—or at least, portions were.  A codex is still an imposing document.

Codices made reading much more available to large groups of people, and interest in the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint increased the desire to be able to read these documents alone or without book slaves.  Plus Christianity was relatively poor and moving away from the high cost of slaves.  The provident invention of beginner codices or teaching scrolls made a major change in the world.

Teaching scrolls had a space between the individual words.  This allowed the students to read the text with minimal use of a book slave.  You didn’t have to memorize the text since you could break it out as words—in a heartbeat, writing went from mnemonics to actual reading.

It took a while for important codices to take on the new innovation of the teaching scrolls, but once they did, the world of reading took off.  You no longer required a book slave, but other stuff happened.

With a book slave or anyone who had memorized the text, they know not just the word breaks, they also knew the emphasis and the idea breaks.  Since ancient Greek really doesn’t have many idea breaks, this wasn’t a problem, but the concept of emphasis, phrasing, and paragraphs had yet to be realized.  It was natural for the one who memorized the text to know exactly where all the correct breaks were—it was not obvious to the new readers.  We needed a new invention.

That’s what happened.  Not long after, well, long enough after the invention of spaces between the words, someone got the bright idea to mark important words with capitals.  In the past, the writer just wrote in capitals or small case whatever the current fashion.  Especially in the New Testament documents and the Septuagint, the writers wanted to set the name of God, Jesus, Christ, and the Holy Spirit apart.  They did it by using capitals.  This caught on for secular documents as well.  Then someone had an even better idea—put a capital on the beginning of the phrase.  We aren’t sure when that started exactly, but not long after, we have punctuation breaking up thoughts and phrases. 

We do know that about 600 to 800 AD, the New Testament and the Septuagint began to get chapters and later verses.  The main reason was to be able to find your place easily, which was a very difficult problem for unnumbered scroll and codex pages.   

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