Writing - part xx178 Writing a Novel, Protagonist Examples: Douglas Spaulding

29 March 2020, Writing - part xx178 Writing a Novel, Protagonist Examples: Douglas Spaulding

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 21^st 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 websites 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

Ideas.  We need ideas.  Ideas allow us to figure out the protagonist and the telic flaw.  Ideas don’t come fully armed from the mind of Zeus.  We need to cultivate ideas. 

1.     Read novels. 

2.     Fill your mind with good stuff—basically the stuff you want to write about. 

3.     Figure out what will build ideas in your mind and what will kill ideas in your mind.

4.     Study.

5.     Teach. 

6.     Make the catharsis. 

7.     Write.

The development of ideas is based on study and research, but it is also based on creativity.  Creativity is the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form.  It is a reflection of something new created with ties to the history, science, and logic (the intellect).  Creativity requires consuming, thinking, and producing.

If we have filled our mind with all kinds of information and ideas, we are ready to become creative.  Creativity means the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form.  Literally, we are seeing the world in a new way, or actually, we are seeing some part of the world in a new way. 

So, modern characters must look like the reader’s impression of the protagonist.  This is an interesting problem as culture and society change as does the impression of the readers.         

I’ve been presenting the means to develop protagonists and characters your readers will enjoy—precisely those that will entertain your readers.  Mainly, the ideas I’ve proposed are these: seeking knowledge, readers, decisions the reader would make, pathos building, and overall, entertaining. 

If we agree, any breech between the protagonist and the reader is not desirable, we can move forward.   

Most of the novels I have read that I really enjoyed I not only liked the protagonist, I loved the protagonist.  I can throw out examples:

1.     Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers

2.     Sara Crew from A Little Princess

3.     Menolly from Dragonsong and Dragonsinger

4.     Anthony Villiers from New Celebrations

5.     Lord Darcy from Randall Garett’s novels

6.     Horatio Hornblower from the C.S. Forester novels

7.     Keith Gersen from Jack Vance’s Demon Princes

8.     Adam Reith from Jack Vance’s Tschai

9.     Glawen Clattuc from Jack Vance’s The Cadwal Chronicles

10.  Flavia DeLuca from Alan Bradley’s novels

11.  Douglas Spaulding from Dandelion Wine

These characters are fun, entertaining, enjoyable, and likable.  I want to evaluate what makes them such good characters.  Let’s move on to Douglas Spaulding.

I looked through my list, and realized I didn’t put in a protagonist from a novel that many consider a classic.  So, I went back and pulled up the list of classics from my blogs.  This isn’t all the classics, but it is a list of novels and books many think are classics.  If you notice Dandolion Wine is number 4 on my list.  Just to be clear, these novels are not listed in any specific order.  It’s just a list of novels I think everyone should read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen – Victorian and not the best example of a modern novel.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – Tolkien is a great story teller, but not the best novelist.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -- Victorian
4 Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury – Best modern novel in English
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible – Most important book to understand Western culture.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte – Victorian
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 We The Living – Ayn Rand  
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens – Victorian, but more modern than others in the period.
Total:

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – Beginning of the US Victorian
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Dune – Frank Herbert
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – better to see as plays
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 The Cadwal Chronicles – Jack Vance
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Green Pearl Novels – Jack Vance
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total:

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy – I’m not so sure this is a great novel in English
25 Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck – In Dubious Battle may be better
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total:

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy – Not so sure about this one, but it’s worth a read
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen  - Victorian
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
37 The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu – the first novel ever written
38 The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
39 The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total:

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 Dracula – Bram Stoker – First Gothic horror novel
43 Til We All Have Faces – C.S. Lewis – two for one—you get Cupid and Psyche at the same time
44 Le Morte D'Arthur - Thomas Malory – chief basis for Arthurian Legend and chivalry
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott – perhaps the most important historical novel about England
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Total:

51 What Katy Did - Sarah Chauncey Woolsey under her pen name Susan Coolidge
52 A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett
53 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
56 Kim - Rudyard Kipling
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 Beowulf - Unknown
60 The Odyssey - Homer
Total:

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins – first detective story in English
64 The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett – first noir detective novel
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Robinson Caruso – Daniel Defoe – First novel in English
69 The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total:

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
73 Heidi – Johanna Spyri
74 Hans Brinker - Mary Mapes Dodge
75 Ulysses - James Joyce – really not worth the read and not really a classic, but you might as well know what a bad novel is.
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 The Big Sky Country – Arlo Guthrie
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Total:

80 The Black Arrow - Robert Louis Stevenson
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
83 The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
84 The Miser – George Elliot
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemmingway
87 Tarzan – Edger Rice Burroughs
88 The Death of Socrates - Plato
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
Total:

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 Huckleberry Fin – Mark Twain
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
96 Matilda – Roald Dahl
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

101 The Once and Future King – T.H. White

102 The Deerslayer – James Fenimore Cooper

103 The Black Book of Communism – Various

104 Ben Hur – Lew Wallace

105 The Robe – Lloyd C. Douglas

106 The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

107 The Histories – Herodotus

108 Lives – Plutarch

109 The Call of the Wild – Jack London

110 Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner

111 The Shockwave Rider – John Brunner – prediction of the computer virus and inspiration for it

112. The Aeneid - Virgil

That’s the list and going back through it, I see I included many of the novels I mentioned as including beloved protagonists.  What I intend to do is go back through these novels and glean them for excellent protagonists.  With that in mind, I think you should note that not every classic includes lovable or even likable protagonists.  In fact, many classics include protagonists who are barely rememberable.  This is more a reflection that great novels can be more than the protagonist, and also that some classics are focused more on the plot than the protagonist. 

I think this is partially sad, but not completely sad.  The fact that Victorian type protagonists don’t appeal well to modern readers and readers expecting Romantic characters should be a great lesson.  The best way to look at this is to compare protagonists from this list.  At the moment, let’s look at Douglas Spaulding.

Douglas Spaulding is the teen from Dandelion Wine who observes the great changes of the summer described and shown in the novel.  What makes Douglas Spaulding such a perfect character is because he is the epitome of a Twentieth Century child.  From almost the first words of the novel, the average reader sees a direct reflection of their mind. 

Now, is Douglas Spaulding really a reflection of the mind of the average Twentieth Century child?  Not at all Douglas Spaulding is the reflection of the mind of the average Twentieth Century reader as a child.  In fact, not so much a child as the perception of the modern reader of what they would have been as a child.  Douglas Spaulding reflects the opposite of the faults of Flavia DeLuca. 

Where the author of Flavia DeLuca presents her mental failings as childish, Douglas Spaulding is not childish.  He is just like every reader.  He is the reflection of the coherent mind of the reader as the reader perceives himself as a child.  Douglas Spaulding is the cogent mind of the adult reader seeing the world through the eyes of the teen Douglas Spaulding.  This is how to write a classic.

In each scene, the reader descends into the mind of Douglas Spaulding and sees the world in an entirely new and expressive way.  This is the way Douglas Spaulding is seeing the changing world of the summer of the novel, but Dandelion Wine isn’t just about a single summer.  Dandelion Wine is about the changing world of the Twentieth Century and especially the world changing from agrarian and connected through family, foot, and faces to an urban world connected through machines, memories, and things. 

Douglas Spaulding is a boy with a mind just like the reader imagines his or her mind was in his or her youth.  Douglas Spaulding is all knowing, all understanding, all reading, all feeling—falling into the character of Douglas Spaulding is like begin born again and seeing the world again—not a new world, but a world that really never existed, but that everyone knew existed.

Douglas Spaulding is a very important protagonist for us to see and emulate as authors.  We really can’t copy Douglas Spaulding, but by understanding how Douglas Spaulding connects to readers, we can understand how to build characters who perfectly connect to readers.

Most importantly, Douglas Spaulding never makes a decision the reader wouldn’t make him or herself.  Douglas Spaulding is the perfect youth who sees the imperfect world and sees how that world fits perfectly into life.  This is why I tell you—don’t have your protagonists make bad decisions or immature decisions.  Protagonists must reflect the mind of your readers.  Anything else risks the dissolution of the suspension of disbelief. 

I think a direct comparison between Flavia DeLuca and Douglas Spaulding is very revealing.  Douglas Spaulding is the common person elevated to the Romantic protagonist (who looks like the reader).  Flavia DeLuca is the nobly born child who has every advantage but whose mother is dead and whose family is losing everything.  Pathos building but not Romantic.  Douglas Spaulding is the learner, learning more and more in his world.  Flavia DeLuca is the learner who thinks she has reached the peak of learning.  Douglas Spaulding is the searcher who sees the world we already know in new ways.  Flavia DeLuca is the finder who sees the world in many faulty ways.  And I like Flavia.  She is a lovable character, but she is not as powerful a character as Douglas Spaulding.  Flavia isn’t a classic either—perhaps that says something.      

Next, we’ll evaluate the classics and glean rememberable protagonists from them.

The point is that we need to keep our readers content and pleased with our characters while presenting the revelation of the protagonist and the plot.    

The beginning of creativity is study and effort.  We can use this to extrapolate to creativity.  In addition, we need to look at recording ideas and working with ideas.    

    

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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