Writing - part x894, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Entertainment

19 June 2019, Writing - part x894, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Entertainment

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 s 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. Money

16. Weapons and warfare

17. Transportation

18. Communication

19. Writing

20. Education

What’s the big deal with money?  Money is also called capital.  People get confused about this all the time, so let me define this for you.  The use of capital for trade instead of proto-money or goods is called capitalism.  That’s all capitalism is.  Capitalism means using capital (money) to purchase goods and services instead of barter.  Let’s talk about markets.

The law of markets is that price is governed by availability and availability governs price. 

The law of competition is that in any market competitive pressures will all cause prices to reduce because availability will always go up—that is unless the government tries to control the market.  A fascist economy is a socialist economy that is controlled by the government through regulations.  A socialist economy is one where the government owns businesses.  A communist economy is where the government owns the means of production.  These three types of economies, fascist, socialist, and communist, are unnatural economies—they require government control to enforce them.  The problem is that no one can control a market.  This is a short way of expressing the law of markets and the law of competition.

In the modern world almost all technology development is dependent on entertainment—the rest is dependent on need.  This has been true since the 1800s.  Need and entertainment are self-supporting and dependent qualities.  What this means is that needs of society can’t entirely support technological development without entertainment.  The computer is a perfect example.

No matter what people think or do, computers would have remained as hulking dinosaurs in giant rooms except that experimental computers meant solely for entertainment were introduced into the marketplace.  At that time, there was no need for personal computers in business or for individuals—other than for entertainment.  The use of computers for entertainment led directly to the development of programs that could be used in industry, and suddenly, there was a need for personal computers in business.  I’m not certain I can express to you the ramifications of the personal computer.  Let me explain a little.  Before the personal computer there were secretarial pools, actuarial and math pools, engineering drawing pools, and other groups.  With the personal computer, business people could prepare their own letter, memos, papers, and all.  With the personal computer, the average person had the power of an entire actuarial and math pool in a single machine.  With the personal computer, engineers didn’t need separate drawing specialists, they could do the drawing themselves. 

In a moment, thousands of people lost their jobs: secretaries, draftsmen, and financial clerks.  There were new jobs awaiting all these people, but the personal computer made it possible for an individual to take over the work that in the past hundreds had done.  This is the power of invention.  Computers as entertainment revolutionized the world, and it is doubtful if without computers as entertainment this would have ever happened.  The needs of society would not have changes or been fulfilled because the concept of computers and entertainment didn’t care about needs of any kind.  There were no needs that the personal computer fulfilled, except in retrospect.  Now let’s look at some real needs of society.

Military development is usually considered a critical need for most societies.  The question at hand is this, will military development take place outside of a competitive entertainment market?  The answer from history is probably not. 

If we look at the Soviet and the Communist Chinese examples, we would conclude that you can’t grow military technology outside of a competitive market.  In the case of both the Soviets and the Chinese, they had and have to steal their technology development, and there is a huge question as to their success with stolen technology. 

The bottom line is this.  To develop technology you require an entertainment based market.  Technology comes about in a market based on the ability to sell and expand sales.  Thus, the compact disk started life as a way to play music, but quickly moved into computers as a means to store programs and data.  This expansion led to Blueray disks, and now we are going to solid state storage.  Each of these milestones were developed for entertainment, but today they hold every type of data from governmental information to medical and financial records.  All of this because there was a market and the wealthy who could fuel that market.  More on this next.       

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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