22 April 2021, Writing - part xx567 Writing a Novel, Plots and Telic Flaw to Themes
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:
Redemption: the protagonist
must make an internal or external change to resolve the telic flaw. This is the
major style of most great modern plots.
Revelation: the novel reveals
portions of the life, experiences, and ideas of the protagonist in a cohesive
and serial fashion from the initial scene to the climax and telic flaw
resolution.
Achievement: the novel is
characterized by a goal that the protagonist must achieve to resolve the telic
flaw.
I evaluated the list of plots and categorized them according
to the following scale:
Overall (o) – These are the three overall plots we defined above:
redemption, achievement, and revelation.
Achievement (a) – There are plots that fall under the idea of the
achievement plot.
Quality (q)
– These are plots based on a personal or character quality.
Setting (s)
– These are plots based on a setting.
Item (i)
– These are plots based on an item.
I hate to pull down our list of plots and the information we’ve
developed from them, but it is time to move on.
Plots, the telic flaw, and how they relate to the protagonist
are very deep and important subjects for the writer. At this point, I’d like to address an even
stickier issue—theme.
First of all, no single word can ever express the theme of
any complex work of literature, or even not complex work of literature. This idea is both silly and wrong. My mentor and many of my literature professors
would have smacked anyone who put out this idea.
Second, plots are not themes, but in some cases, they sure
look like themes. For example coming of
age. One of our definitions uses this as
an example. This is a type of plot. Is it also a theme—of a type.
Third, themes are much more complex than they appear.
Here are the boiled down definitions of theme:
A literary theme is the main
idea or underlying meaning a writer explores in a novel, short story, or other
literary work.
A theme is a universal idea, lesson, or
message explored throughout a work of literature.
Theme is defined as a main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work,
which may be stated directly or indirectly.
a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is
a central topic, subject, or message within a narrative.
I would argue that these really don’t fully represent well
the true depth of the theme. My mentor
would say the theme must represent the entirely of the writing. Really all these definitions just beg the
question of what is a theme. If you look
at all of them closely, the major theme in all of them is the main idea,
subject, message, and topic. All these
are different aspects of a work. So,
what really is a theme?
Let’s start with what a theme is not.
It has become popular to write this drivel about literary
themes being relatable as single words.
This idea perhaps comes out of the era—it should be still a teaching practice—where
children were given a single word to write a “theme.”
In this case, “theme” in terms of a school paper and literary
theme are two different meanings of the same word. Yes, Virginia, you can take a single word as
an inspiration and write a theme paper about it. In this case, it might relate a main idea,
subject, message, and topic of the theme paper, but that is not a novel.
If you were to write, this novel, play, or story is about
love, okay, so it’s about love, but what kind of love? How about romantic love, but surely, that isn’t
all that is in the piece. You could
relate this to plots, for example, a romantic plot. That’s great and a single word, but if you
were listening (reading) before, we discovered the classics were filled with
different plots. There was a plotline,
but many plots around the plotline. The
plotline might have been related to romance (romantic love, not Romantic), but
that wasn’t all the novel was about.
I have written over and over that comedy novels are all
based on the zero to hero plot. This is
the basis of the plotline of the comedy.
(Tragedies are all based on the hero to zero plot.) However, just stating this, even though it is
true, says nothing about the theme at all.
In fact, in our romantic love plotline, saying the theme is love, really
doesn’t give us the idea, subject message, and topic.
Now, I think my mentor, Roz Young, and her generation had a
better grasp of theme than we do. I
really wish I knew and could have sat in on her classes as a child and seen how
her teachers defined and expressed the idea of the theme, because, even at the
time she was helping mw with my published novel, Aegypt, her idea of
theme was much more than a single word.
In fact, she would not have accepted a single word for the theme. What she wanted was a sentence or a short
paragraph that encapsulated the overall work.
This isn’t much different than the back cover material or the publicity
materials publishers want to see.
What Roz wanted from me was a single statement that put the work
into perspective. From my records, this
is the theme I finally gave her:
Theme: How do men react
to the spiritual when it is revealed to them plainly, and how do we communicate
those thoughts across centuries and drawing rooms?
Even in retrospect, this is incomplete, but it’s a pretty
good marketing blurb. I think this was
her ultimate goal. I should have given
this to my publisher, but I didn’t.
Roz wanted me to put into a single sentence, not a single
word, the overall idea that drove the novel.
I think this is both difficult and, except for marketing materials, not
that important.
Let’s go back for a moment to the purpose of the theme. Okay, we really haven’t written about that. Perhaps that should be the next topic of
discussion.
In the end, we can figure out what makes a work have a great
plot and theme, and apply this to our writing.
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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