29 September 2022, Writing - part xxx092 Writing a Novel, Underwear
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.
|
|
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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.
For Novel 32: Shiggy
Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization
gives her for her latest assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and
needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.
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: Let me tell
you a little about writing. Writing isn’t
so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime.
Writing is a habit and an obsession.
We who love to write love to write.
If you love
to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well. We want to write well enough to have others enjoy
our writing. This is important. No one writes just for themselves the idea is
absolutely irrational and silly. I can
prove why.
In the first
place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only purpose. If you want to write for yourself, you need
to invent your own writing and language that no one can and will
understand. It would be better if you
can’t understand it either.
The purpose
for writing is communication. It really
has no other purpose. You can give it another
purpose just as I can use your head as a hammer. A head as a hammer will do little for the
nail, the head, or the accomplishment of the work and the work of writing is
communication.
If you aren’t
using writing to communicate, you are using your head as a hammer—not good. In fact, irrational.
Writing is
literally the communication of ideas in the brain of the writer to the brains
of others. This process begins with speaking,
but speaking is very different than writing.
I hope that’s something you already got out of this discussion.
I’ll get to the
communication of the non-real, but let’s continue with history.
We have
symbols and archetypes when we have literacy.
Unfortunately, with the beginning of literacy, all writing is mnemonics. They are used to ensure the “reader” gets the
memorized text perfectly. The reason for
this is that all early writing deals with religion.
The
invention of the book with spacing and punctuation was perhaps the most important
innovations in literacy, but what really got literacy going was the printing
press. The cost of a book went from
$50,000 to $5000. A great beginning, but
then something wonderful happened—people began wearing underwear.
This is one
of my favorite tales from history. The
cost of clothing had been steadily decreasing with the advent of modern methods
and then cotton fabrics. Underwear was
an idea, but people didn’t routinely or even normally wear it. It really didn’t exist until about the middle
of the 1700s, that’s the 18th Century. That’s when a bunch of stuff happened in the
cotton marketplace. Some caused by the
natural markets and some caused by political actions. The end result was that the wealthy began to
wear underwear.
Clothing was
still very expensive, but as soon as the wealthy got it, the middle class
wanted it too, and the poor got it as hand-me-downs. Yes, people sold used clothing. Used clothing and clothing made from used
cloth and clothing was a huge market in this time (18th Century).
A market
existed for taking used clothing and reusing it. Much of it became rags, but something wonderful
happened, and it’s all about books.
Paper was relatively
expensive—that’s the main reason books still cost around $5000 a copy. In the 18th Century, the cost of
books had slowly come down to about $500 a copy, but they were holding pretty
steady. The bottleneck was the paper. Paper was made from cotton and not wood—that had
to wait until the end of the 19th Century.
As I wrote,
paper was made from cotton. Then
suddenly at the end of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th
Century, there was a lot of discarded cotton available. All that underwear had made its way from the
wealthy to the middle class to the poor and the poor were done with it. Remember, I just wrote, there were entire
industries involved in taking used clothing and reusing, reclaiming, or
reselling. They were getting lots of
unusable cotton underwear at the time—what to do. The answer was to make paper.
The industry
suddenly provided jobs for thousands of women who were called ragpickers. Ragpickers took the used clothing, took off
the buttons and other hard items, cleaned out the pockets, sorted, and
deconstructed the clothing. The cotton, especially
the underwear, went to the vats to make paper.
The reason it had to be underwear is because underwear is usually
undyed. The caustic chemicals available to
make cotton white again didn’t exist, and there was plenty of white cotton
underwear available anyway. The other
clothing was resold when possible, but the goldmine was in the white cotton
cloth.
Paper went
from literally dollars a sheet in modern money to less than pennies a sheet. Almost overnight the cost of a book went from
$500 a copy to $50 a copy. A family
could afford a book and what they wanted was Bibles.
There was something
else happening too. With books at these
prices, libraries, churches, and people could begin to own more than just a
single book, and literacy soared. Something
else happened as well. Remember all
those papers and pamphlets people could afford with the advent of printing—they
still were being produced, but in the West, fiction had taken off.
Most fiction
was produced in series. A chapter in one
of these novels usually cost a penny—thus they were called “penny novels.” The chapters cost a penny and the ragpickers
bought them in droves. You could say the
female ragpickers drove both ends of book production. They provided the cotton for the paper and
bought the penny novels which fueled the market for books and printing of all
kinds.
Religion was
still a powerful driver of the book and literacy because everyone learned to
read from and for the Bible. Every
family had to have a Bible. Every church
and every library had to have a Bible, and that led to something else.
Literacy had
another profound affect on religion and on society in general. It was all due to underwear.
The reason
this is so important is that with literacy, we can communicate ideas that are
fully outside of reality to others.
Writing is the
abstract communication of the mind through symbols.
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.
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.
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
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