Writing - part xxx311 Writing a Novel, Cassandra, Editing for Cohesion

07 May 2023, Writing - part xxx311 Writing a Novel, Cassandra, Editing for Cohesion

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 21^st 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 30^th novel, working title, Rose, potential title Rose: Enchantment and the Flower.  The theme statement is: 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 cover proposal for Rose: Enchantment and the Flower. 

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 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  Writing number 31, working title Shifter.  I just finished 32^nd novel, Rose.

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.

For novel 33, Book girl:  Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.

 

For novel 34:  Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.   

 

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.

 

At this point I want to finish editing Casandra: Enchantment and the Warriors and produce the marketing materials.  I intend to show you the marketing materials before I’m willing to begin writing Seoirse.  I also need to work harder at getting a publisher—basically submitting manuscripts to potential publishers and agents.

 

Cassandra is a fun novel although perhaps not the best one I’ve written.  It follows the adventures and next assignment for Deirdre and Sorcha after they are expelled from Wycombe Abbey. 

 

At the moment, I’m working on the editing in Cassandra.  This isn’t about grammar and spelling although I’m finding some—the main thing I’m working on is cohesion and reason.  We fix our novels by finding the untied and uncompleted thoughts in it and then connect, remove, or just fix them.  The most important part is interweaving the ideas from front to back in the novel and thus making it mor cohesive and logical.

 

Cassandra is about Sorcha and Deirdre’s assignment to be finished and to find and interact with Cassandra.  In the novel, they gather a group of young women to fight to protect the city of Saint Malo in France as well as the province of Brittany.

 

Let’s look at editing.  In the first place, every document needs help with the basics.  You will never find any published novel or book where every word is correctly spelled, every piece of punctuation is in place, and every word is correct.  It is always the ultimate fault of the author, but the publisher, the publisher’s editor, the publication process, and just accidents, mistakes, or oversights can leave any book or novel with problems.  And, as I wrote, there is no novel or book in history without something you can find. 

 

What I’m mostly looking for in Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors is cohesive and logical problems that are more obvious than a missing period of time.  I do have a means to prevent these issues in my novels, because most of them have a historical basis. 

 

All of my novels are set in real time and real historical spaces and places.  For that reason, and because I like to make my scene setting very obvious, I started heading my chapters with the time and place.  Something like this:

 

September 1993, Saint Malo, France

 

This is an example from Cassandra.  The general time by month and year is obvious and the place is stated specifically.  In the text, I give the exact place for the setting.  This has been a great means of keeping my historical and time basis straight in my novels.  If they need to be removed by an editor, I don’t mind.  They are mostly for my clarity and time keeping.

 

Here is another trick.  When the time keeping is very important and close, I put the days and time in the scene setting.  Now, this is a good idea anyway, but I recommend it especially for really tight time issues.  It is very helpful for the author and the readers to keep track of the time through the scene setting. 

 

Here is a secret, most readers won’t even notice a messed up time sequence (unless it is really obvious).  Just like my novel, Sister of Darkness, they won’t notice even a glaring error as long as the rest makes sense and time marches along properly.  What they won’t like is confusion. 

 

This is in my basic rules for writing.  A reader who is confused is a reader who is looking for problems.  Really, they don’t look for problems at all, they just get confused, and if the novel is good enough, they might seek why they are confused.  This is the worst thing that can happen.

 

On about the third reading of Dragonsong by Anna McCaffrey, I noticed the time of the song writing was off.  This little detail was almost unnoticeable in the novel, but after a few readings it becomes obvious.  This is a cohesion issue.  Ms. McCaffrey could have easily fixed this with a little sentence in her text, but she didn’t.  It passed by her, her editors, her publisher, and her prepublication readers—how can this be?  It was just a small error in time sequence that hits the fan, but will be unnoticed by most of her readers.  This is what I’m looking for in Cassandra.  Also, I’m tightening the storylines and the plots.

 

What does that mean exactly?  I’ll write about that next.

 

I’m editing Cassandra and I’ll cover some of this before I get to the marketing materials.

 

I’ll repeat.  I just finished up Rose, and I want to finish up Cassandra.  I’m moving in that direction. 

 

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  

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