11 October 2022, Writing - part xxx104 Writing a Novel, History of Novels, Reflected Worldview
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.
Most early
writing attempted to be real worldview.
If you notice, however, the idea of what is real has changed quite a bit
since Robinson Caruso.
Robinson
Caruso is indeed considered by many to be
the first compete novel in the English language. That isn’t to say other earlier works were
not complete, but to be a novel, the work should be an entertaining piece of
fiction that is a complete work based on the following outline:
1.
The initial scene
2.
The rising action scenes
3.
The climax scene
4.
The falling action scene(s)
5.
The dénouement
scene(s)
The major
characteristics of Robinson Caruso is that it is written in the first
person, past tense, in a journal style, implying the past. Each of these are very important for looking
at the development of the novel.
By the
Victorian Era, the novel took a different form, that was third person, past
tense, narrative style, implying the present.
Romantic
protagonists and plots became the form of the modern novel about 1900. There have been few changes to this form, but
we are seeing some interesting and problematic changes in the tenor of the
protagonist.
As technology
began to increase significantly, the action and dialog style along with the
push of technology forced novels into the form of third person, past tense,
action and dialog style, implying the future. This is the modern style of the novel.
I’ve written
before about the three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected,
and the created.
The real is
the normative worldview. The earliest
novels were using this worldview. The
Created worldview is the science fiction and fantasy worldview. It came next in the history of the
novel. The third worldview may be the
most important. It is a newish worldview
because it really wasn’t acknowledged much until the last part of the Twentieth
Century. It existed at least as early as
the Nineteenth Century, and perhaps earlier.
It just wasn’t understood. In
these early periods, the reflected worldview looked similar to the real
worldview. Here’s an example.
Look at Gulliver’s
Travels at the time, was this seen as a real or a reflected or a created
worldview? Well, it really wasn’t a
created worldview although it might as well have been. Swift did create much of the world he
presented in his great satire, but he might have written that he based it on
the ideas of people at the time. In
fact, he presented the novel as a real worldview and like a journal.
This is the
problem with the reflected worldview. If
the reflected worldview represents what people think about the world, then what
is real and what is reflected?
Most of us
would state that Dracula is a reflected worldview—today. In its time, was it a real or a reflected
worldview. Bram Stoker made up what he
wrote in Dracula but he based it on historical and mythical knowledge. That’s one of the things that makes Dracula
so effective as a novel—it looks and feels real. That’s also what makes a reflected worldview so
powerful.
Harry Potty
is really a created worldview, and not a reflected worldview. I suspect Rowling wanted to present it as
reflected, but alas, it can’t be. The
magic system is no based in what magic thinkers imagine about magic. Indeed, those who do magic in the modern
world do not subscribe to most of Rowling’s ideas. This is no problem for the novel because most
people just read it as an entertaining trope and not for any other reason.
The worldview
Harry Potty is trying to achieve is magical realism. This is the genre that asserts the reality of
magic in the real world. It is a fantasy
as well as a reflected worldview. The
reflected worldview is a bit more specific than the fantasy or other created
worldview. What’s the difference?
Here is the
difference. In a reflected worldview,
this is what people historically, in myths, in stories, and generally have
believed about the supernatural (or about the world in general for that
matter). In a reflected worldview, any
and all things known, in the past, by humans to have existed can exist. Thus, the pantheon of the Greek gods can
exist, vampires can exist, dragons can exist, and all. The only real caveat is that if a being, creature,
or god is going to be presented in the worldview, it must subscribe to the
specifics of that being in history. Now,
this doesn’t mean the author is bound to every imagined characteristic of the
being, creature, god, or person. It does
mean the being should be identifiable by it’s characteristics.
For example,
a sparkly vampire who is not evil, can go into the sunlight, and doesn’t
require human blood in some manner for life, is just not a reflected worldview vampire. You can call it a vampire all day long, but
that doesn’t make it a vampire. On the
other hand, if you constrain the vampire in some way, for example, they only
feed during the full moon on human blood, they can’t attack a Christian, the sleep
in a crypt or a coffin, and all, then that is recognizable as a vampire.
My general
measure of the reflected worldview is if the reader can make a search either
internet or historical via normal approved sources and can recognize the being
or idea, then that is a reflected worldview.
If they can’t that is a created worldview. Recursive searches are not allowed. For example, a search for Harry Potty or
elements of Harry Potty will result in Harry Potty as a source. That is a recursive search. The same is true of the sparkly not so
vampires. On the other hand, if you
search for a being or idea mentioned in a novel and get some historical or
classical information on that character (not a fantasy site), then we can
accept the worldview as reflected. That is
a reflected worldview.
I’ll look at
the importance of the reflected worldview next.
We will basically see how it becomes a literary reference or allusion.
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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