Writing - part xx372 Writing a Novel, the Plot of The Big Sky

 9 October 2020, Writing - part xx372 Writing a Novel, the Plot of The Big Sky

 

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 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 The 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 – 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 Big Sky by Arlo Guthrie is a historical novel of great entertainment and great reflective value.  The reflective value is for authors because Guthrie writes just as he describes in his Field Guide to Fiction Writing which is a classic.  I find Arlo Guthrie very entertaining, but his topics are not fun or funny.  It isn’t what I write about, but Guthrie is a fictional historian more than he is a novelist.  His goal is to present a tale about the real west in the American West.  Some of it isn’t pretty, but it is important history and, as I noted, it is entertaining.  I find Guthrie entertaining where I do not find Steinbeck entertaining.  I find Hemmingway entertaining where I don’t find Faulkner entertaining.  I would rather that Guthrie write about true heroes and especially true Romantic heroes, but he doesn’t.  His protagonists are damaged people.  While they are damaged people, Guthrie’s style of writing is entertaining and presents a story in such a way that is classically tragic. 

 

What are the plots surrounding the plotline of The Big Sky?  First, we have a betrayal plot.  This is Boone’s attack against his abusive father.  Then a crime plot when Boone steals his father’s rifle.  We have a travel plot as Boone runs away, and a vengeance plot with Boone’s pursuing father. 

 

This is a revelation plotline with zero redemption and zero achievement.  There is an achievement plot, but it is unrealized.  With Teal Eye and Boone, there is a romance plot, but we question the motivation of Teal Eye and the actions of Boone.  The rifle gives us an article plot, but not fully realized because it is stolen from Boone.  Boone’s revelation is a coming of age plot.  At the same time, he discovers his goals and his life desires, which are unfulfilled. 

 

 Boone gives us a rejected love plot with Teal Eye, and we have a love triangle between Boone, Teal Eye, and Jim.  This results in an adultery plot, but it is not an actual adultery.  The other plots are an escape plot followed by another travel plot and then crime plots.

 

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

1.     Redemption – 9i, 5e, 11ei, 8  

2.     Detective or mystery – 38

3.     Messiah – 5

4.     End of the World - 1

5.     War – 13

6.     Anti-war - 1

7.     Revenge or vengeance –3ie, 2e, 25, 1

8.     Revelation –1e, 40, 1

9.     Zero to hero – 14

10.  Romance –1ie, 27, 1

11.  Achievement – 11e, 15ei, 2i, 26, 1ie

12.  Article – 1e, 26, 1

13.  Travel –1e, 36, 1

14.  Coming of age –1ei, 18, 1

15.  Progress of technology – 3

16.  Discovery – 2ie, 32, 1

17.  Rejected love (rejection) – 1ei, 16, 1

18.  Miscommunication – 4

19.  Love triangle – 9, 1

20.  Betrayal – 1i, 1ie, 25, 1

21.  Totalitarian – 1e, 6

22.  Blood will out or fate – 20, 1i, 1e

23.  Psychological –1i, 33

24.  Horror – 10, 1

25.  Magic – 5

26.  Mistaken identity – 9

27.  Money – 2e, 18

28.  Spoiled child – 4

29.  Children – 14

30.  Historical – 10, 1

31.  Legal – 5

32.  Adultery – 12, 1

33.  Illness – 1e, 12

34.  School – 9

35.  Self-discovery – 2i, 8

36.  Guilt or Crime – 19, 1

37.  Anti-hero – 5

38.  Immorality – 3i, 5

39.  Proselytizing – 4

40.  Satire – 4

41.  Reason – 6, 1ie

42.  Escape – 1ie, 10, 1

43.  Knowledge – 11

44.  Camaraderie – 10

45.  Parallel – 2

46.  Allegory – 9

47.  Curse – 3

48.  Insanity – 5

49.  Fantasy world – 3

50.  Mentor – 6

51.  Prison – 1

52.  Secrets – 5

 

Boone is the obvious protagonist of The Big Sky. I write obvious because Guthrie wrote about writing, and he understood writing.  One protagonist is enough and enough.  More than one should not be attempted for any but the most very specific reasons.  For example, I have a friend who has written one novel about the war of 1812—he provides five protagonists and five views of the war.  I think his novel works well.  It is interesting and entertaining because it uses the point of view (PoV) of five protagonists.  This is an historical novel with a specific point and purpose.  This is one reason to write such a novel.  On the other hand for more novels, more than one protagonist is an abomination.  It doesn’t work, and it is not pleasant for the reader.

 

Boone’s telic flaw is that he wants to make something of himself outside of the normalcy of his family’s and parent’s life.  This is an achievement plot.  This is the telic flaw and it is partially realized and partially unrealized.  What Guthrie is trying to provide us is a realistic view of the world of the wild West.  This wild West is populated by mountain men rather than cowboys.  This is the real wild West, and it is the wild West of Boone.  Boone seeks achievement of the excitement of exploration and the adventure of the west.  He is a mountain man, but a mountain man is not a settler.  Boone’s desires can’t be met as a mountain man.  This is the interesting truth of Guthrie’s novel. 

 

This is where I disagree with Guthrie.  As a student of history, I find that people in any age cling to the hope of their society either what they grasp as different, for example as a mountain man, or what they grasp as normal, for example a farmer and settler.  The people are content, but from a reflective Monday morning quarterback position, their lives appear to be fraught with malcontentment.  They are not malcontent.  They are happy with their life and experiences.  This is true in every generation.  There are more people content than not.  They are settled in their live and lot.  Guthrie presents a malcontent world, but the real world is not.  I want to write about the unique in a regular world, people in the time of Guthrie wanted to write about their own lack of success and progress.     

 

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  

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