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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Writing - part xx355 Writing a Novel, the Plot of The Odyssey

22 September 2020, Writing - part xx355 Writing a Novel, the Plot of The Odyssey

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 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 29th 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 30th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29th 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 Till We 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

The Odyssey by Homer is a classic epic poem from ancient Greece.  This is both a classic piece of literature and a classic tale from the ancient world.  This is akin to Beowulf as an example for writers today.  The plotline of The Odyssey is simple, but the author has added all kinds of plots that build the entertainment value and excitement in the work.  And that is the point.  Homer knew that the excitement and entertainment value in The Odyssey was improved by the adventures of Odysseus as he returned home.

You could look at this from an ironic standpoint.  If you were Odysseus and you had to explain why it took you so long to get home, you might make up just this type of story.  In any case, we have the tale of Odysseus’ return from the battle of Troy, and during that return he experienced may adventures—all of them related to that return.  Let’s look at the plots.

The first and most obvious plot is the travel plot.  Odysseus wants to return home, we presume.  We’ll get to that.  We have a travel plot, but interjected within that travel plot are achievement plots.  There is a reason plot from Calypso’s island where Odysseus escapes, tells his tale, and seeks help.  We start with a shipwreck plot.  That seems to be a popular one.  This is the other side of the escape plot, so basically the same thing in inverse.  There are repeated achievement and escape plots from different monsters and situations.  We also have consistent magic plots.  In the end, Odysseus convinces his captors to help him home, and they do.

Here we have a mistaken identity plot when Odysseus disguises himself as a beggar and goes to his palace.  We have an achievement plot in the archery contest and a vengeance plot with Odysseus’ response to the suiters.  And that is the end a revelation plot when he reveals himself to his wife and people. 

These are pretty simple plots, but the means and method of their development and writing provide an excellent example of how to put together a basic plotline and adventure plots.  That’s exactly what we have.        

Here’s the list of plots.  I’m going to amend the list as we noted. 
1.     Redemption – 8i, 3e, 7, 6ei  
2.     Detective or mystery – 26
3.     Messiah – 5
4.     End of the World - 1
5.     War – 12
6.     Anti-war - 1
7.     Revenge or vengeance – 20, 2ie, 1e, 1
8.     Revelation – 25, 1e, 1
9.     Zero to hero – 10
10.  Romance – 24, 1ie
11.  Achievement – 9e, 12ei, 16, 2i, 1
12.  Article – 1e, 15
13.  Travel – 23, 1e
14.  Coming of age – 15, 1ei
15.  Progress of technology – 3
16.  Discovery – 2ie, 20
17.  Rejected love (rejection) – 13, 1ei
18.  Miscommunication - 2
19.  Love triangle – 7
20.  Betrayal – 1i, 15, 1ie
21.  Totalitarian – 1e, 6
22.  Blood will out or fate – 18, 1i
23.  Psychological – 11, 1i
24.  Horror – 7
25.  Magic – 4, 1
26.  Mistaken identity – 4, 1
27.  Money – 2e, 11
28.  Spoiled child – 3
29.  Children – 8
30.  Historical – 7
31.  Legal – 3
32.  Adultery – 10
33.  Illness – 5, 1e
34.  School – 6
35.  Self-discovery – 2i, 6
36.  Guilt or Crime – 10
37.  Anti-hero – 4
38.  Immorality – 3i, 1
39.  Proselytizing – 3
40.  Satire – 3
41.  Reason – 5, 1ie, 1
42.  Escape – 1ie, 5, 1
43.  Knowledge – 7
44.  Camaraderie – 7
45.  Parallel – 2
46.  Allegory – 7
47.  Curse – 3
48.  Insanity – 2
49.  Fantasy world – 3
50.  Mentor – 5

Odysseus is the protagonist of The Odyssey.  He’s about the only person alive to return.  His telic flaw is that he wants to return home.  This is the external telic flaw and there is really not internal telic flaw.  In the end, he returns home and that’s that.

Did you see how this overall travel plotline works?  The telic flaw is Odysseus’ return to home and his recognition as the leader of Ithaca.  He could have just returned home, but that would ruin the entertainment value of the poem.  What Homer did is to give us adventure after adventure as Odysseus makes his way home.  This is a beautiful setup and matches exactly what I’m trying to show you about plots, plotlines, and producing great plots.

Just pick any simple plot and add adventures to them.  With that you get a Homeresc adventure plot.  Use this as an example for how to build a great story with a plotline and plots.  

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:

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

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