Writing - part x895, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Wealth

20 June 2019, Writing - part x895, Writing a Novel, Changing World and Wealth

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.

For some reason wealth and the wealthy as well as companies and corporations have gotten a bad rap in the modern era.  This is likely a remnant of the Romantic Era, but still a little Victorian or even Enlightenment thinking would be helpful.  The reason is that markets and productivity are driven by wealth and companies.

If you don’t have people with wealth and a market that allows that wealth to be used and developed especially through companies that design products, you don’t have much technology development.  Let me put it as simply as I can.

If I invent something, especially something complex and electronic, I can’t just start building it out of my garage and selling it.  In any world, to make money, I need to be able to produce the product at the lowest cost possible (at least lower than I intend to sell it).  Let’s use an example.  Let’s say a single person could invent a new type of electronic phone that provides more functions than those currently in the market (iPhones and such).  The development costs for something like that could be from the millions to nearly billions of dollars.  In other words, unless our individual has millions of dollars to develop the new product, it is likely he or she can’t.  First point, it takes wealthy to develop new products.

Next, once I develop the product, I need to produce it.  Production of a complex electronic device is expensive and painstaking.  If you remember that cost and production is based on touch labor, then you can’t affordably make it yourself, and you certainly want to reduce touch labor as much as possible, so a factory in China or another third world country is right out.  You want robots and a third world country with robots and cheap labor for finishing and touch labor is great.  If you handmade each device in your garage the cost might be $10,000 per unit.  If you produce the items in a robot controlled factory with minimal touch labor, the cost of manufacture might be 10 million dollars for the first unit, but by producing 10,000 units, the cost goes to $1000 per unit initially.  To make up the cost and price, you need to produce a lot of items.   The second point is that production anywhere is expensive.

Third, at $1000 for the initial cost of the units, I need to sell them for a profit.  A company needs to make at least 5% profit clear of all costs to continue to exist.  To continue to improve and create new products, a company needs at a minimum to make about 7% profit clear of any costs.  Most companies barely make above 10% and that is considered high growth.  That doesn’t mean I can sell my new $1000 phone for $1100 that means after all costs in including transportation, marketing, sales, development of the current product, refurbs, returns, customer service, debt, taxes, and paying off the investors, you have some clear profit you can drive back into the company for new development.  This means the retail price of the product is usually double the manufactured price.  I’m selling the product for $2000.  Who’s going to pay $2000 for a phone?

Well you can do impressive marketing and sales, but generally your initial customers will be wealthy people and companies.  The companies have to see some value in the new product and alas, like computers, companies want to wait and see if there is any value in the product, so strike companies.  That leaves the wealthy.  That’s just what happened in every new product development cycle in the modern era.

A new product comes out.  At first the price is above anything the average person can afford.  The wealthy buy it in enough numbers that the price can come down into the range of the average person and suddenly Walmart is selling it.  This is true of almost all newly developed consumer goods.  Even established products fit this general mold.  Look at the so called 4D TVs.  Who needs a new TV?  The 4Ds came out at a very high price.  Only the wealthy or the greatly dedicated could afford them.  Slowly the prices have come down to the point that the 4D is approaching the cost of the previous TVs.  Before than it was the flat screen in all of its variations.  Before than the tubed TVs and monitors.  Before that—there was black and white and nothing.  You and I might not remember it, but the original TVs could only be afforded by the wealthy.

Without the wealthy and companies, you don’t get product and technology development that enriches the average person and the increases technology.  If you couple this with the concept of the entertainment market, you can see that nations with communist, socialist, and fascist economies can’t develop new technology or products.  They certainly can’t produce innovative products because they don’t have an open free market and their wealthy group is too small and ineffective as a market.  This is exactly what we see happening to China and happen to the former Soviet Union.

Back to the idea of the Enlightenment and Victorian view of the world.

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