3 January 2023, Writing - part xxx187 Writing a Novel, A New Romantic Protagonist, Paragraphs Topics in Scenes, Editing Dialog, Small to Big Talk, Examples
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. Writing is the abstract communication of the
mind through symbols. As time goes by,
we as writers gain more and better tools and our readers gain more and better
appreciation for those tools and skills—even if they have no idea what they
are.
We are in
the modern era. In this time, 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 also showed how the end of literature
created the reflected worldview. We have
three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected, and the
created. I choose to work in the reflected
worldview.
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.
With that said, where should we go? Should I delve into ideas and creativity
again, or should we just move into the novel again? Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we
know, will result in a new novel. I’ve
got an idea, but it went stale. Let’s
look at the outline for a novel again:
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 initial scene is the most important scene and part of
any novel. To get to the initial scene,
you don’t need a plot, you need a protagonist.
Let’s be very clear.
You can start with a plot, a protagonist, an idea, or an idea for an
initial scene. The easiest and most
controlled method is to start with a protagonist. As I’ve written over and over, a protagonist
must come with a telic flaw. I think it
is impossible to have a protagonist without a telic flaw, but I suppose you
could develop a completely lackluster protagonist without any telic flaw
connected to them.
Here is my list for the characteristics of a Romantic
protagonist. I am not very happy with
most of the lists I have found. So, I
will start with a classic list from the literature and then translate them to
what they really mean. This is the
refined list. Take a look.
1. Some power or ability outside the norm of society that
the character develops to resolve the telic flaw.
2. Set of beliefs (morals and ideals) that are different
than normal culture or society’s.
3. Courageous
4. Power (skills and abilities) and leadership that are
outside of the normal society.
5. Introspective
6. Travel plot
7. Melancholy
8. Overwhelming desire to change and grow—to develop four
and one.
9. Pathos developed because the character does not fit the
cultural mold. From the common.
10. Regret when they can’t follow their own moral compass.
11. Self-criticism when they can’t follow their own moral
compass.
12. Pathos bearing because he or she is estranged from
family or normal society by death, exclusion for some reason, or self-isolation
due to three above.
13. From the common and potentially the rural.
14. Love interest
Here is the protagonist development list. We are going to use this list to develop a
Romantic protagonist. With the following
outline in mind, we will build a Romantic protagonist. However, I’m going to ignore the first
step. Instead of starting with an
initial scene, I’m just going to design a Romantic protagonist. Then we may apply the outline to them.
1.
Define the initial scene
2. At the same time as the above—fit a protagonist into the
initial scene. That means the minimum
of:
a.
Telic flaw
b.
Approximate age
c.
Approximate social degree
d.
Sex
3. Refine the protagonist
a.
Physical description
b.
Background – history of the
protagonist
i. Birth
ii. Setting
iii. Life
iv. Education
v. Work
vi. Profession
vii. Family
c.
Setting – current
i. Life
ii. Setting
iii. Work
d.
Name
4. Refine the details of the protagonist
a.
Emotional description (never to be
shared directly)
b.
Mental description (never to be shared
directly)
c.
Likes and dislikes (never to be
shared directly)
5. Telic flaw resolution
a.
Changes required for the protagonist
to resolve the telic flaw
i. Physical changes
ii. Emotional changes
iii. Mental changes
b.
Alliances required for the
protagonist to resolve the telic flaw
c.
Enemies required for the protagonist
to resolve the telic flaw
d.
Plots required for the protagonist
to resolve the telic flaw
e.
Obstacles that must be overcome for
the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw
Here’s what I want to do or how I want to place these on a
protagonist. Let’s clean them up a
little and begin to evaluate a protagonist.
I’m not ready to write a new novel yet, and I’m too busy to
put the extra time to write an initial scene.
I’ll repeat. I just
finished up Rose, and I want to finish up Cassandra. I’m moving in that direction. For now, I’ll focus on the finishing steps of
Rose, and then the marketing development steps. This might get tedious, but I’ll try to keep
it meaningful and helpful.
I am into heavy editing for Rose, and I’d like to
finish with Cassandra. I’m using Cassandra
as an example for my other blog, so I really do need to catch it up before I
run out of material. In any case, I was
going over the basics of real editing.
I’ll repeat myself.
If you have a problem with basic grammar, spelling, and punctuation, you
might not have the required level of education to write effectively. If this is true, you need to get more
education and of the correct types.
True editing is about language, ideas, and reason. It’s not just about grammar, spelling, and
punctuation. We’ve moved well away from
spelling, punctuation, and grammar. I’m
looking at sentences.
Yes, sentences are much more difficult than words. Look at words. I just need to ensure they are spelled
correctly, are the correct word, are not repeated, and sound right. Sound right is something we haven’t looked at
yet—we shall. That is an advance editing
technique.
Sentences are something else entirely. When we look at sentences, we need to look at
word order, word use, grammar, which includes, punctuation, correct verbs,
correct number, correct tense, and all.
We have touched on these with the word list.
Word editing is simple compared to sentence editing, but
sentence editing may be the most important for cohesiveness, clarity, and
understanding. We really haven’t gotten
into logic and reasoning much. I’ve
centered our original editing on the words, and showed you how editing words
can be used to help edit sentences. I’m standing by the, but you must get to
the more important parts of sentence editing.
Let’s turn sentence editing into logical or reasoned
editing, as well as touching on paragraph or multi-sentence editing.
We’ve looked at word editing and then sentence editing. The next stage is multi-sentence
editing. This specifically means
paragraphs. I’ll bet you didn’t see that
coming. Yes, paragraphs are the next
stage of editing, and this is a very important part of editing.
Unfortunately, many writers have no idea first how to craft
a paragraph, second where to break paragraphs, and third how to use paragraphs.
We all know we are supposed to use paragraphs, but many have
never been taught how to write a paragraph, break, or use them. This is a problem of education. Let me remind you about how to write a
paragraph. Every paragraph has the
following form:
Topic sentence
Sentences supporting, arguing, and/or developing the topic
Conclusion or implied completion
Tie to the next paragraph
This is how every paragraph should be written except one
type—dialog. In English, we break each
statement of dialog by a new speaker into a paragraph break. That doesn’t mean the dialog statement is a
complete paragraph—it’s just the way we break dialog. Extended dialog can be broken into
paragraphs, and each of those should follow the paragraph development form.
Pretty simple, yes?
Paragraphs are relatively simple, but they are perhaps the biggest
problem for new writers. The best hope
for you is to write a lot. Look at your
paragraph structure. Make certain your
paragraphs connect in some fashion. Know
when to stop and when to start a paragraph.
Next, let’s look at these:
Connecting paragraphs
Breaking paragraphs
Paragraph order
Topics in paragraphs related to scene development
I’m leaving this in the paragraph and scene section because
that’s exactly where it should be.
Although in English writing, dialog is treated like individual
paragraphs, we rarely really look at it that way in scene development. Yes, we punctuate it that way, and we put it
together that way, but we don’t tend to treat it that way. I’m as guilty as everyone else at that, but
I’d like to have us look at dialog and especially the editing of dialog in
terms of scenes and paragraphs.
We’ll kind of modify our idea of paragraphs in dialog a
little—let’s call them ideas or complete thoughts.
When we write and edit dialog, we are seeking to make
completed or complete thoughts in the context of the novel and scene. In other words, the writer wants to make some
point, to communicate some idea, or get some information first to the
characters and second to the readers.
This is very important.
1.
Clarity –
a.
Tags
b.
Action
c.
Character setting
2. Realism
a.
Less direct attribution or
identification
b.
More contractions
c.
More real
interaction (correct introductions, etc.)
d.
More showing and not telling
e.
Dum the accents as much as possible
f.
No cutesy stuff
g.
Complex
Dialog may be the most important part of writing, and may
also be the most difficult to master. If
you practice, get experience, and study it, you might have some hope. Then there are the details of the dialog
itself. This is what we will look at
next.
For some reason, realistic interactions is a significant
problem for the inexperienced writer.
I’m not certain why this is, but it’s a real issue, and makes the dialog
not just strange but almost unreadable.
The reason is lack of real human interaction.
Just look at how people interact with one another verbally—they
almost always follow a certain set interaction.
I’ll outline it, and then explain it:
1.
Greetings
2. Introductions and salutations
3. Small talk
4. Big talk (in depth conversation)
5.
Farewells
Almost every human interaction follows this pattern, and everyone
should know it. Perhaps the problem for
the inexperienced is that they don’t converse enough, or they aren’t aware
enough about real human interaction. I
suspect it is just lack of experience, and the desire to get to the pitch
before the buildup.
Buildup and pitch are exactly what we are building up
to. We are moving from introductions and
small talk to big talk. This transition
is perhaps the most important in dialog construction. This is also where authors get hung up.
Usually, the problem is moving into the big talk. You see that’s exactly where we want to
go. We need to discuss the big and
important subjects, and we need to transition to them in a way that feels and
seems natural.
You can’t write a complex or entertaining novel filled with
only small talk. You can try, but I’ll
bet no one will read it. If they do,
they’ll not be entertained. The most
important point to remember in dialog is this—the author wants to get out
information to the readers and the characters.
That is the entire point of dialog.
There are just plain entertainment aspects as well, but although that’s
not secondary, getting the information to your readers and characters is not
more important than entertainment, but you need to do it together. Entertain and communicate. That’s asking a lot.
At this point, let’s just say we want to get information to
our readers and our characters. We hope
the rest will follow—I’ll try to help you with that to, but we are writing
about style and skill, and that is very hard to teach.
Point is, we want to get from small talk to big talk, and we
want to do it so the dialog sounds reasonable and normal. You need to play this out in your mind. That’s the way I do this for every scene I
write. I imagine the characters in the
scene and I write exactly how I want them to seem in the scene. This is all about using imagination to see
the scene and to then communicate the scene including the dialog. I see my characters moving, acting, emoting,
sensing, speaking, and communicating to build from small talk to big talk.
I wrote yesterday that I would provide you with more
examples. Okay. Here’s another one:
The coffee shop wasn’t
very busy this time of night. They
walked in and found a table at the back.
When they sat, Lilly
stated, “I told you—I don’t have any money.”
“That’s okay. My treat.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to be obligated…”
“I figure you already
owe me an explanation…”
“An explanation?”
Dane looked over the
menu at her, “An explanation about the FastMart Bucks and everything.”
“Oh.”
“Have whatever you
want.”
“Thanks.”
When the server came
over and placed a basket of breadsticks on the table, Dane ordered a cappuccino
to drink and a turkey and lingonberry sandwich.
Lilly ordered a turkey and lingonberry sandwich too. She eyed the wine menu, but chose a coke to
drink.
Dane asked, “Would you
like a glass of wine?”
“I never had one
before.”
Under the lights of the
restaurant, Dane got a better look at her.
She was really petite for her height, and she wasn’t all that tall. She looked undernourished. Her face was thin and kind of plain. Her eyes were very large and blue. They looked like an almost transparently
blue. Her cheek was turning a dark shade
of purple already. Dane guessed that was
where Billy hit her. He didn’t think it
was that hard. Her hair was long and
kept falling into her eyes. It was
blond, but how blond was hard to tell—the dirt and, he guessed, grease
discolored it. Her eyebrows were so
light they were almost invisible, so her hair must be really dirty. Dane looked at her hands again. They were clean and the nails were
clean. That was odd. When he was close to her, he did note she had
a scent. It wasn’t that bad a scent, but
it was like a mix of dirty clothing and unwashed body. He asked quietly, “How old are you?”
She glanced at him and
her eyes flashed, then she looked down again, “I’m a student here.”
“Really?”
“I have an ID.”
“Why were you stealing
food?”
She bit her lip and
didn’t look at him, “I don’t like to think of it as stealing.”
“It is, you know.”
Her eyes flashed at him
again.
“Then why were you
borrowing the food?’
“Isn’t that
obvious? Because I was hungry.”
“Yeah, but a half
gallon of milk and a loaf of white bread—that’s barely enough to sustain life…”
“What do you know about
it? It would keep me going for a few
days. I don’t take more because I don’t
like taking it that way, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. People don’t keep track of that kind of stuff
much, and many people don’t use their credits at all. I just got unlucky that the account I was
using belonged to someone in the store at the time.”
“I’ll say. What are you going to do now?”
She stared at him.
“Your tablet was
broken…”
“I’ll go hungry for a
while, but the garbage cans are pretty full around here…”
Their food arrived so
Dane didn’t continue with his next question immediately. The moment the food sat in front of her, she
closed her eyes for a few seconds, made the sign of the cross, and picked up
her sandwich. She ate the first half
before Dane had a good grip on his. The
second half was gone when he looked up again.
She began on the salad.
Dane asked between
bites, “What else did you eat today?”
“Nothing.”
“I thought not. How are you going to get another tablet? Maybe I should ask, how did you get your last
tablet?”
She blushed and looked
into her coke, “I used my laptop to credit an account at Best Buy. They have credits too, and they limit the
amount…I only could afford a repaired one.”
Dane leaned back, “Let
me get this straight. You can just hack
any account you want? How do you do it?”
“I dunno. I can just do it.”
“Do you guess passwords
or what?”
“I look at the coding
and then use mathematical algorithms to find the passwords and the usernames.”
Dane raised his chin,
“Just like that…how do you prevent detection?”
“I can see the lines in
the code for the services. If the
programs are compiled, I look at the machine code.”
Dane’s mouth became
suddenly dry, “You can read the machine code?”
“Can’t you? Can’t everyone?”
Dane shook his head, “I
don’t know of anyone who can directly read machine code…how do you do it?”
“I see the patterns in
the code. The sequences are obvious to
me.”
“Do you write in
machine code too?”
“Of course.”
Dane rubbed his chin,
“How did you learn to do all this? How
is it even possible?”
“When I was small, our
family had nothing—we still have nothing.
Everyone made fun of me because my clothes were dirty or strange. I started with the school’s computers. I found I could make them show me their
codes. I saw the sequences, but I didn’t
know what they meant, so I read all the books in the library on coding and
programming. Pretty soon I could make a
computer do almost anything I wanted. I
programmed the kids’ game systems and computers to get them through the game
levels. They didn’t make fun of me much
after that.”
“When did you start
hacking accounts?”
“About the same
time. It isn’t hard if you can discover
where the data is stored and then how to unscramble it…”
“And you can unscramble
the data?”
“You don’t believe me?”
Dane held up his hands,
“It isn’t a question of disbelief, it’s a question of understanding. I’m not sure anyone else in the world can do
what you can do.”
“People hack accounts
all the time…”
“Not on the fly, and
not to buy bread. I would have said it
was impossible.”
She glared at him, “How
would you know?”
“I’m a student in the
computer engineering department.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your major?”
She smiled,
“Mathematics.”
A look of recognition
came on in Dane’s eyes, “You’re Lilly Lin aren’t you. Lilly Lin Grant. You’re the little math whiz kid who entered
last year. You maxed out the SAT and the
ACT and won a whole bunch of math contests.
Why’d you come here? Why didn’t you
go somewhere more important? Somewhere
they would feed you?”
Lilly groused, “I
didn’t want any recognition…”
“That’s silly. Why not?”
“Listen to me. My mother is a crack head. She takes everything I have and sells it for
dope. She’d take my scholarship and sell
it if she could.”
“Dump her.”
“Don’t you think I
would if I could?”
“Lilly, you can hack
accounts to buy bread, why don’t you hack your way out of your mother’s
control…”
Her mouth opened wide,
“Wha…”
“Look, I know
computers. I can show you exactly what
to do and where to do it. I can’t hack
them, but I can show you where to hack them.”
A large smile grew
across her features. She didn’t say
anything after that, but the smile on her face told Dane she was thinking very
intently.
They ordered desert and
Dane had more coffee. Lilly drank
another coke. Just before they left,
Lilly looked to either side and slipped the remaining breadsticks from the
basket in the center of the table into a napkin. She carefully folded the napkin over the
bread and shoved it into her bag.
When they were done,
Dane paid with Lute Bucks. He stood,
“Let me take you home.”
She pulled her baggy
sweatshirt a little closer, “You don’t need to.”
“But I do—we have an
agreement…of sorts.”
“We have an agreement…” They exited the restaurant and Lilly shoved
her hands in her pockets. She slumped,
“Come on.”
This dialog comes from another novel, Lilly: Enchantment and
the Computer. In this dialog, we get
a very gentle and slow transition based simply on information. As Dane gets more and more information about
what Lilly can do, he gains a greater and greater degree of knowledge about
her. This is the beginning of their
relationship.
I should also note that just prior to this scene is the very
wonderful initial scene where Dane saves Lilly from the boy, Billy, whose
account she hacked. Lilly hacks for
food. This little issue is what brings the
entire point of the dialog to its head.
Why would a girl like Lilly waste her very great skills just to hack for
food.
Part of Lilly’s problem is inexperience and lack of friends. You can see that Dane is about to become her
friend whether he wants it or not. In
fact, much of the novel is about Lilly’s infatuation and courting of Dane. I thought that was a pretty fun part of the
novel—the courting of the classic modern male who really isn’t that interested
in love or relationships. Perhaps that
is just a myth, but I though the circumstances were entertaining and
interesting.
You can see Dane’s interest in the person, but who could
expect Lilly’s infatuation. By the way,
the protagonist is really Dane while the protagonist’s helper is Lilly.
We’ll get there.
Should we have another example?
Next, we will transition to the small talk and the big talk.
I want to move on to editing dialog next.
We’ll continue to look at logic and reason as we transition
to multi-sentences and paragraphs.
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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