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Thursday, September 29, 2022

Writing - part xxx092 Writing a Novel, Underwear

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




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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