Writing - part xx274 Writing a Novel, Make it Sense Setting, Conclusions

3 July 2020, Writing - part xx274 Writing a Novel, Make it Sense Setting, Conclusions

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. 

I’ve worked through creativity and the protagonist.  The ultimate point is that if you properly develop your protagonist, you have created your novel.  I should move back to the initial scene, but I’ve been writing about showing and not telling in my short form blog, and I want to expand that out a bit in this blog.  Let’s move on to perhaps the most important feature of the novel: showing and not telling.

Novelists are not storytellers.  Novelists are story-showers.  I hope you have heard the fiction writer’s adage: show and don’t tell.  This is the most important aspect of the internal construction of the novel. 

I will reveal that in reviewing a recent self-published author’s book, I was compelled by the wholesale telling in the book, I can’t call it a novel, that I had to address each area where the author failed to show.  That’s where I came up with the following list:

Show and don’t tell.

Omniscient voice is poop.

Only write what the characters saw, tasted, felt, smelled, heard, said, or any action.

Identity is a problem.

Don’t tell.

It’s all about dialog.

Perfect tense can be a problem.

It’s all about the senses.

Don’t be boring.

Eating is living and dialog.

Creativity and senses.

Start with scene setting.

Make it sense setting.

Visualizing.

So just what does it mean to show and not tell?  This seems to be a very difficult question for new writers as well as a source of contention for experienced writers.  It seems that many writers can’t agree or even concede on what showing vs. telling really means. Not to worry—I have the answer.

I’m going to finish up this section on showing and not telling.  I’ll never stop reminding you, because if you can’t learn to show, you can’t ever write good fiction, and I want you to write great fiction.

Many of the ideas I discuss are basics of the craft.  In fact, most of what I present here are basics.  I’m certain about the basics of the craft of writing.  What worries me are those who are trying for more than the basics and never figure out the basics.  You can get all wrapped around the axel about plots and plot development, but I think most people don’t screw up their plots at all.  Most writer’s problems have nothing to do with the plot and everything to do with the most basic nature of writing fiction.  In fact, many plots by bestselling authors and classic writers are awful.  It’s usually not the plot that matters.  What really matters to most readers is the protagonist revelation and the showing quality of the novel.  The readers what to live in the imaginary space a novel creates.  That imaginary space is what writers call the suspension of disbelief. 

Your goal as an author is to build this imaginary space, grasp your readers by the collar, and hold them there until they can’t and won’t ever leave that space—not until the last word of the novel is read.  Any great novel will achieve this.  A poor novel cannot. 

The way you develop this imaginary space for the suspension of disbelief is you must place your readers within the stage of your novel.  This is what I keep calling scene setting.  You set the scene such that the imagination of your readers is excited and activated.  No reader’s imagination is excited and activated by telling.  You can tell all you wish, tell just like a journalistic report and not a shred of the reader’s imagination will turn on.  Without imagination, there is no suspension of disbelief. 

Imagination is what defines suspension of disbelief, and imagination is what defines great writing.  Imagination is not imagining information about people, places, or things—imagination is the ability to see that imaginary space and write it on paper such that another can also see the space you imagined.  There can be no telling in this type of writing.  You must show the imaginary space.

So, imagine, how can you write a description such that another can see the imaginary space you see in your mind.  How would you write it?  You could start like this:

I see a dark forest of maples and hardwood stretching from a river to the mountains.

I hear the sounds of birds and animals chirping and moving in the branches.

I smell the sunlight and musky earth in the air.

I taste the dark earth on the air as I move through the trees.

I can feel the thick and heavy bark of ancient trees as I step through the groves.

This is all showing and no telling.  This isn’t good writing, and it’s first person, but I think you can get it.  On the other hand, here is what you can’t do.

The farm was farmer Dave’s delight.  He loved it like a child.  He built it up from nothing to what it is today.  His father left him the land, but his father wasn’t a good farmer or even a good man.  Farmer Dave went to school to learn to become the best farmer he could ever be.  Dave came from a bad family, but he intended to make a better place and a better world.  He was working even now to make the place a greater and better one. He had invested his money, time, and sweat into this farm. 

I could go on.  Every word in the paragraph above is telling.  I read this kind of telling all the time in novels.  I suspect you’ve seen it too.  I hope you haven’t seen it in properly published novels.  This is terrible writing and it may be fiction, but there is no imaginary space in it.  There is no suspension of disbelief in it.  There is no heart or soul in it.  How can we turn the telling paragraph into a showing paragraph?  I’ll show you.

Dave stared out at his deep green fields and heavy wheat crop just as the sun began to rise over the horizon and the dew began to sift out of the air.  The crop was nearly ready to harvest and the white heads and dusky tan wheat stalks looked like a blanket of snow on light earth.  He smiled and then frowned.  His father hadn’t been much of a farmer.  He could see the gravestones in their unorderly rows across the green field he’d just cut yesterday.  Dave uncurled himself as he stood and stretched to his full height.  He reached out his hands as if grasping the daylight and the day.  He breathed in the thick wet air filled with the scent of ripening wheat and musky earth.  Dave laughed and headed to the barn.

This is showing.  The only telling in the entire paragraph is the statement, “His father hadn’t been much of a farmer.” That allows the transition to the description of the graveyard.  This paragraph sets the scene and shows you Dave’s farm or pieces of it.  I don’t have to tell you he loves his farm.  That should be obvious by the care he shows it.  I don’t have to tell you his mind or thoughts, I just show you his actions and his farm on the stage of the writing.  I could write even more in showing to let you know about the farm and Dave’s feelings for it.  This is showing the other is telling.  Show and don’t tell.

What we should move on to is plots.  We looked at characters and showing.  Why not look at plots?

       

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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