2 October 2022, Writing - part xxx095 Writing a Novel, Communicating the Impossible
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.
We have
finally arrived at the communication of the non-real.
We have
symbols and archetypes when we have literacy.
Literacy allows the communication of ideas. Yes, ultimately we are writing about word,
but I already proved to you that with literacy, we get words that are otherwise
impossible to understand or know. We get
words like love, and there are many others.
I’m sticking
with these ideas at the moment. The most
important takeaway for the writer is that your job isn’t just describing,
writing action, and putting together the showing of fiction. That’s part of the technical actions of a fiction
writer, but most importantly, your job is to communicate your mind to the
reader.
We don’t
really care about what you think—your thinking isn’t really part of this. What maters isn’t what you think, but what
you can imagine. This should take all
the wind out of the sails of those who want to make some kind of social
statement. Writing is about entertainment. Social statements are usually not entertaining. They are boring. In fact, fiction writing isn’t about social
statements at all. If you think it is,
your probability of publication is almost zero.
Entertainment is what fiction writing is all about. This is the purpose of fiction, to
entertain. If you aren’t entertaining,
you will fail.
Now, we aren’t
about simply describing, writing action, and putting together the showing of
fiction. The reason is that although all
of these are tools, very commendable tools, the point is to take the mind of
the author and with abstraction, turn the thoughts of the mind into words which
convey some degree of those thoughts.
This is all about relating the symbols and archetypes from one mind to another. This is the work of mind translation without
a cultural worldview.
Here's the
main point of this, and this is why foreign language authors usually fail
miserably in languages other than their own.
The translation of ideas requires a similar cohesive worldview. Without that, no communication can take
place. It’s like this, and it is
entirely cultural. If your view of color
is different than your reader, how can you describe or even use color. Likewise for any other major feature of the
world.
Take
love. Love has various meanings
dependent on the culture and the society and especially on the language. An English language speaker should understand
love with enough cultural fidelity to understand the use of the concept—this isn’t
always true. However, a person who is
not an English speaker will have almost zero familiarity with the term love in
any context. How can that be?
Greek does
not have any word that equates directly to the English word love. Some are close, but none are that close. In Japanese, love is really like and like a
lot is really love. There is no
equivalent in Japanese to English. In
Hebrew, ancient Hebrew, there is no word for love at all. The closest isn’t close at all. There are four words translated love, but
none are close to the English word love and all four are human based and
interactive.
The English
word for love is not necessarily human based or focused, and not necessarily human
interactive. For example, I love Pizza
has me as the core but the thing I am loving is not human. I love my dog, is the same. I love my child, is a human focus and
interaction of some type of love, but it is certainly different than loving
pizza or a dog. I love my wife is even further
from these but significantly closer to what we mean generally about love—except
it isn’t. Other cultures don’t have this
degree of ambiguity. In them, love means
usually some degree of human interaction with other humans—sometimes positive
and sometimes negative.
In any case,
we are getting to the meat of this entire point. The meat is the abstract communication of
ideas from the writer to the reader. Culture
and cultural understanding is critical to this communication. That’s where we are going.
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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