Writing - part xx307 Writing a Novel, Plot of Great Expectations

5 August 2020, Writing - part xx307 Writing a Novel, Plot of Great Expectations

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.  This moves us on to plots and initial scenes.  As I noted, if you have a protagonist, you have a novel.  The reason is that a protagonist comes with a telic flaw, and a telic flaw provides a plot and theme.  If you have a protagonist, that gives you a telic flaw, a plot, and a theme.  I will also argue this gives you an initial scene as well. 

So, we worked extensively on the protagonist.  I gave you many examples great, bad, and average.  Most of these were from classics, but I also used my own novels and protagonists as examples.  Here’s my plan.

1.     The protagonist comes with a telic flaw – the telic flaw isn’t necessarily a flaw in the protagonist, but rather a flaw in the world of the protagonist that only the Romantic protagonist can resolve.

2.     The telic flaw determines the plot.

3.     The telic flaw determines the theme.

4.     The telic flaw and the protagonist determines the initial scene.

5.     The protagonist and the telic flaw determines the initial setting.

6.     Plot examples from great classic plots.

7.     Plot examples from mediocre classic plots.

8.     Plot examples from my novels.

9.     Creativity and the telic flaw and plots.

10.  Writer’s block as a problem of continuing the plot.

Every great or good protagonist comes with their own telic flaw.  I showed how this worked with my own writing and novels.  Let’s go over it in terms of the plot.

This is all about the telic flaw.  Every protagonist and every novel must come with a telic flaw.  They are the same telic flaw.  That telic flaw can be external, internal or both.

We found that a self-discovery telic flaw or a personal success telic flaw can potentially take a generic plot.  We should be able to get an idea for the plot purely from the protagonist, telic flaw and setting.  All of these are interlaced and bring us our plot.

For a great plot, the resolution of the telic flaw has to be a surprise to the protagonist and to the reader.  This is both the measure and the goal.  As I noted before, for a great plot, the author needs to make the telic flaw resolution appear to be impossible, but then it happens.  There is much more to this.  Here’s the list of plots I’ve looked at already:

1.     Redemption

2.     Detective or mystery

3.     Messiah

4.     End of the World

5.     War

6.     Anti-war

7.     Revenge or vengeance

8.     Revelation

9.     Zero to hero

Here is the list of classics that everyone should read.  What I want to do is evaluate this list for the plots. 

This is the plan.  Let’s look at each novel and try to pull out the plot types, the telic flaw, and the theme of the novel. The ultimate point is we can glean plot ideas and types to add to our list.  Part of this evaluation, we can try to identify the zero and the hero of the protagonist.  All this might help us define plots and perhaps help us to develop plots for our own novels.  This is kind of like looking at art as an artist and figuring out what makes a picture successful.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

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

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 We The Living – Ayn Rand

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

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

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

25 Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

37 The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu

38 The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne

39 The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 Dracula – Bram Stoker

43 Til We All Have Faces – C.S. Lewis

44 Le Morte D'Arthur - Thomas Malory

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

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

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

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

64 The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett

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

69 The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

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

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 The Big Sky Country – Arlo Guthrie

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

112 The Aeneid – Virgil

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is not my favorite novel.  I like Dickens very much, but I’m just not enamored of Great Expectations.  This is not a modern novel.  It is an oddly placed Victorian Era novel, but not a completely Victorian Era plot, although the pain and suffering of the Victorian Era “blood will out,” dominates the plot.

First of all Great Expectations has a coming of age plot.  This is also a revelation plot, but most Victorian Era novels are.  The coming of age is Pip into his gentlemanship and maturity.  One of the main reasons I don’t like Victorian Era novels is that fate and “blood will out” are large components of the story.  In the case of Great Expectations the problem is whether Pip can earn his way into his gentleman stature or if “blood will out” and he will be stuck perpetually in his original class.  The question Dickens wants to answer in the affirmative is that wealth can make a gentleman, his answer is ambivalent.  The problem is the Victorians and their Era.  In the mind of the average Victorian, breeding is a function of breeding, and of course, wealth and refinement can’t make a person noble or a gentleman.  This idea pervades and controls Victorian Era society, culture, and literature.  We can still gather good ideas from these novels.

Next, there is a very deep theme and plot of rejected love.  You could call this anti-love or anti-romance.  I’ll just call it rejected love.  You start with Miss Havisham who was jilted at the altar and wants revenge on all men, and her protégé Estella, whom Miss Havisham is training into a true hater of men and all romance.  There is no shade of romance in this novel.  Any appearance of romance is only the artistry of the author over the faded brocade of the Victorian idea of love and marriage.

Perhaps the most powerful plot and telic flaw for the protagonist is the achievement plot.  Pip, the protagonist wishes to be a gentleman.  He also wishes to be loved and married to Estella.  Unfortunately, his wealth to be a gentleman comes from Magwitch, the convict he aided as a child, and the girl he loves has been perfected as a woman who hates men and romance.  Any hope for achievement is impossible for Pip if he wishes to be and act as an honorable man—in the Victorian mind, Pip is an interloper.  He is a common person trying to become a gentleman through wealth.  He is a common man trying to love a woman who can’t love him in return.  The problem of being a gentleman is the same as wooing Estella.  Pip wants to be a gentleman in a society that doesn’t want him to be a gentleman.  Is this the message Dickens intended?  Not at all.  The actual plot has little to do with Pip as the protagonist.  This is overall a redemption plot.

The redemption of Miss Havisham and the convict Magwitch are the actual plots of the novel.  I still will leave the achievement, rejected love, blood will out, and a revelation of coming of age.  These are all plots to bring entertainment and meaning to the plot, but the reality is the true strength of the plot is the redemption of Miss Havisham and Magwitch.  If you didn’t know this, just look at Dicken’s Christmas Carol where the redemption of Scrooge is the entire focus of the plot.  Now, we have all the major plots in Great Expectations, we can add them to the scoreboard and look at the telic flaw.

Here’s the list of plots.  I’m going to amend the list. 

1.     Redemption – 2i, 1i

2.     Detective or mystery – 3

3.     Messiah - 1

4.     End of the World - 1

5.     War - 1

6.     Anti-war

7.     Revenge or vengeance - 1

8.     Revelation – 1,1

9.     Zero to hero - 1

10.  Romance - 2

11.  Achievement – 3e, 1ei, 1e

12.  Article – 1e

13.  Travel – 1

14.  Coming of age – 2, 1ei, 1

15.  Progress of technology - 1

16.  Discovery – 1ie

17.  Rejected love -1, 1

18.  Miscommunication -1

19.  Love triangle – 1

20.  Betrayal – 1i, 1

21.  Totalitarian – 1e, 1

22.  Blood will out or fate - 1

The telic flaw in Great Expectations appears to be the achievement of Pip, but I don’t think this tells the story enough.  Indeed, I will conclude that Pip achieving the position of gentleman and love are indeed the external telic flaw—this telic flaw is the same telic flaw as the redemption of Havisham and Magwitch.  Havisham and Magwitch must both be redeemed if Pip is to achieve his gentlemanship but also his love or marriage.   

If Miss Havisham achieves redemption, her ward, Estella will be able to love, and hopefully love Pip.  If the convict Magwitch achieves redemption, then Pip will accept his money, and Pip will be able to be a gentleman.  This is the overall plot and internal telic flaw of the novel.

How well did Dickens succeed?  I’m not sure he played out this plot as well as he should.  He was a Victorian, I’m not certain he believed Magwitch could be redeemed or Miss Havisham could repair the damage she did to Estella.  The novel wasn’t really about Estella but Pip.  It’s almost as if a miracle occurred: Pip went to Egypt and redeems himself, not really by becoming a gentleman, but acting as a gentleman.  On well.  When Pip returns to Egypt, he finds the widowed Estella, and he sees "no shadow of another parting from her." 

This leaves us in Victorian limbo.  There is no love as far as we can see.  What has changed Estella?  Marriage?  Living with a Victorian man?  Sex?  Suffering?  We aren’t fully certain.  We presume they are going to seek marriage: he a ruined gentleman, and she a ruined woman.  If we understood the view of the Victorians about those who left Britain to go to other nations for commerce, we might realize how little position Pip has as a gentleman.  Did he achieve his goals?  This is nearly impossible to answer, but I’d call this novel an almost tragedy.  Pip gets a used position and a used woman as his love.  Even if Pip is her only love, she is a soiled lady as a widow.  Even if Pip is a great success in Egypt, he did so in a savage culture outside the sphere of the normal British life.  This is not success in the mind of the Victorian.  In addition, Miss Havisham and Magwitch are not fully redeemed.  They were too late to achieve the redemption they really needed.  In any case, we have a partial comedy.  This is one of the reasons Great Expectations is not my most favorite novels.  It is a complex plot and a great read, but not my favorite.  It is not typically Victorian, but classically Victorian.   

In the end, we can figure out what makes a work have a great plot, and apply this to our writing.     

  

Let’s start with the idea of an internal and external telic flaw.  Then let’s provide it a wrapper.  The wrapper is 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  

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic