Writing - part x846, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Language

2 May 2019, Writing - part x846, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Language

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 

There is so much more to write about history and the changes to human culture through history, but I’ll move on to the next subject, language.

I’ve already written about the changes in words and word meanings through time and in cultures.  Language will focus on the overall changes in languages and what that means for a culture or cultures.  There is no way I can touch every language and every culture, but I will focus on the most important ones to English speakers and to some peripheral languages I am familiar with.  I use these languages and cultures as examples in my classes, and I’m familiar with certain aspects of them.

Let’s look at English first.  The history of the English culture and the culture that produced the English people has a lot to do with language and with different cultures.  Here is a piece of information that is not conveyed very well in most history classes.  In the ancient world, cultures were segregated externally, between cultures, by language and by cultural expression.  You can consider language the great divider and cultural expression as dialects. 

In our modern world, we don’t give much thought to dialects except to identify people from other areas—they are actually people from similar but different cultures.  For example, the South, Bronx, New Jersey, the Midwest, and all.  If we think about it, these are different cultures, but we don’t see the world that way very much.  In the past, this made a huge difference.

In the ancient world, language divided cultures externally and dialects divided cultures internally.  The same is true today, the difference was what externally and internally meant.  In the ancient world, external cultural division meant generally not just cultural exclusion, but cultural extermination.  It was not unusual in the ancient world for groups to attack one another when they were of a different cultural external cultural group.  Markets and safe contact points with translators enabled trafficking and trade between different external cultural groups.  As the world expended and cultural groups came together, there were continual problems.

For example, if a person moved or migrated to Athens, this would only be possible if the person spoke Greek well, that person would be expected to follow the entire culture of the Athenians from their gods to their festivals to their housekeeping habits.  Any deviation from the cultural norm might get a person and their household executed.  The reason was that, for example, when in a city state, everyone was expected to follow the gods and worship habits of that culture—to not do so would potentially bring the wrath of the gods down on the entire city state.  These were strongly held human beliefs.  In the era of the rule of law and assumed human rights, we don’t fully comprehend this viewpoint, but in the ancient world of animism and pantheonic paganism, the gods were real and too close.  A few merchant cultures were allowed their own spaces and practices in ancient cities of this time.

The Jewish people were a very strong merchant and banking class that had enclaves in many Greek and Roman cities.  They were allowed their own cultural practices in these places as long as they didn’t interfere or cause harm to the city states.  Yet in history, we see when cataclysm hit the city state, the first scapegoats were these enclaves.  The Jews especially were persecuted, but they also had their allowed positions in the city states until something terrible happened.  In the big picture of the ancient world, it is pretty special that they as an external culture were afforded a place where many other cultures were not.  But you do see other similar cultural accommodation.  In some cases in Greek and Roman cities, we see other external cultural groups given space, but only if they spoke the language, didn’t interfere with the culture, and didn’t cause real or imagined problems.  That was with external cultures—there is still the issue of internal cultures.                        

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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