24 July 2023, Writing - part xxx389 Writing a Novel, Seoirse, Editing, -ly
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 31st novel, working title, Cassandra,
potential title Cassandra: Enchantment
and the Warriors. The theme
statement is: Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school
where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events.
Here is the cover proposal for Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors:
|
|
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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. Writing number 31, working title Shifter. I just finished 32nd 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.
I’m now writing Seoirse, and since I retired from my day job,
I’m back to a chapter a day. I could
likely write two chapters a day, but my brain gets tired. I think it’s important to report again on how
to write a novel. Let’s start at the
beginning.
I already developed the protagonist for this novel: Seoirse Séamas
Wishart. That is his name in
Gaelic. His common or English name is
George James Wishart. Why the
difference. It all has to do with the
worldview of my novels. The worldview is
reflected and therefore the supernatural exists. We are mainly writing about the common and
mythical supernatural in the world. I’d
like to say that whatever the basis for the usual supernatural in human thought
exists in the reflected worldview of this and my novels. Thus there are vampires, werewolves, fairies,
the Fae courts, dragons, gods, goddesses, and other mythical creatures. They aren’t the world. They world of my novels is the world you see
around you. The supernatural aspects are
generally unseen, unknown, and rare.
They exist like the supernatural exists in the world today: generally
unseen, unknown, and rare. That’s the
basis of the world in my novels.
This is where I am with Seoirse. I’ve been writing a chapter a day. That means I’ll likely have a completed novel
in less than a month. That’s what I
usually do when I have an idea and a novel to write. I’m also writing pretty exclusively when I
should be working on a publisher or an agent.
Here is a list of parts of words and words you can use to
search your documents. I’ll discuss each
of these.
-ing
had
-ly
were
was
gotten
even
said
got
utilize
-ly – you gotta
know what we are looking for here—these are the dreaded adverbs. In English we make adverbs by adding -ly as
in quickly, nicely, softly, visibly, hardly, mostly, and so on. What’s wrong with adverbs? That’s just part of this story.
I personally think the war on adverbs has gone way too far. It’s mostly the said and less tag as well as
the no action tag crowd who also scream no adverbs. Here’s the classical example from the
websites, books, and whatever:
Jane spoke quietly, “Bring me a muffin.”
Here the rabid anti-adverber will say, why not use a
stronger tone indicator:
Jane whispered, “Bring me a muffin?”
My answer is, that’s great, but what if she didn’t
whisper. A whisper is a lot different in
my experience as a human being than speaking softly. To mollify the non-adverbers, okay I might
rewrite this or use a different way of expressing it. In my opinion, the use of adverbs gives you
great latitude especially in tone tags and action tags. I usually don’t get too worked up about these. So, I’d say generally in dialog, the use of
adverbs, especially in tone and action tags is okay. You might want to fix some of these and the
answer is always stronger tone verbs.
Here’s some examples:
Instead of: Jake said
loudly, “Get over here.”
Write: Jake yelled, “Get over here.”
Instead of: Jack said
nicely, “Get over here.”
Write: Jack cajoled, “Get
over here.”
On the other hand, you might really need an adverb to
express some very important tone tags.
Where I’m looking for adverbs to exterminate or fix is not
usually in dialog, but in narrative. For
example:
Jane walked quickly to the door. Or Jane walked swiftly to the door.
How about: Jane ran to the door. Or Jane rushed to the door.
In this case the adverbs are easily replaced with stronger verbs. Do this every time. There is no reason to either redundantly use
adverbs or to use weak verbs modified by adverbs. Here’s some cases of the redundant use of
adverbs:
Jack yelled loudly.
Yelled is loudly, you don’t need to be repetitious. Jack yelled.
Jack whispered softly.
Whispered is softly. This is
redundant. Write: Jack whispered.
Don’t overdo it, but let’s not misuse adverbs and adjectives. For example:
She spoke polite.
That’s an adjective.
She spoke politely.
That’s the adverb. However, do not write: She was a polite girl. That is the use of the identity verb which we
will get to, and it is telling. Show us
how she is a polite girl don’t tell us that she is a polite girl. Now, here is an advanced technique. I’ll give you, once you have shown us she is
a polit girl, then you might remind us:
She was always a polite girl.
He played tennis good.
That’s incorrect.
He played tennis well.
That’s correct. Again, this is a
little less telling and more of a discriminator, but really, if this is
important to your plot or storyline, don’t tell us, show us how well he plays
tennis.
What’s the point?
Look for -ly in your novel and make a decision about each use. If it fits and makes sense and sounds right,
leave it. If it is redundant, can be
replaced with a stronger verb, can be improved with an adjective, or if it
telling, then fix it. The adverb is a
great part of speech and a very worthwhile one, but it needs to be used
properly. I do want to mention adverbs
in dialog as well as style in writing.
Certain adverbs, especially, are considered unnecessary. Here’s some examples: extremely, definitely,
truly, very, and really. Then why do
they even exist? These are indeed
sometimes just filler, and especially in narrative, you might want to dump
them, however, these are very common in speech and sometimes common as
modifiers that add character and irony to the writing.
Lady Tash snarled back, “Very well. I see where all this is going. I just want my house back, and I want to go
home. I’ll accept him in these
capacities as long as I know exactly how he can help me, and what he’s going to
do. I don’t need him mucking up my work
or plans.”
Ms. O’Dwyer smiled, “That’s precisely what
I wanted to hear.” She turned toward Seoirse,
“Mr. Wishart, please inform Lady Tash how you intend to support and defend
her?”
Here is an example from my newest novel. The main point here is the use of very, exactly,
and precisely. These could be considered
extraneous, but I’d argue that they represent both the speech patterns of the
characters and mirror common conversation. There is a touch or irony from Ms. O’Dwyer,
but it’s small. Lady Tash is in an
elevated situation of emotion, her speech is very precise, but at the same time
exaggerated intentionally. I’d call this
a good use of adverbs in communicating the feelings of the speakers.
I want to write another book based on Rose and Seoirse, and the
topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s my plan. We shall see.
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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