12 September 2023, Writing - part xxx439 Writing a Novel, Historical Mundane
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.
I finished writing my 34th
novel (actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential
title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment. The theme statement is: 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 cover
proposal for Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment:
|
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 finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior. I just finished my 32nd novel and
33rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse:
Enchantment and the Assignment.
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 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.
For novel 35: TBD
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.
My main focus, at the moment, is
marketing my novels. That specifically
means submissions. I’m aiming for agents
because if I can get an agent, I think that might give me more contacts with
publishers plus a let up in the business.
I would like to write another novel, but I’m holding off and editing one
of my older novels Shadow of Darkness.
I thought that novel would have fit perfectly with one potential agent
who said they were looking for Jewish based and non-Western mythology in
fantasy. That’s exactly what Shadow
of Darkness is, but they passed on it.
In any case, I’m looking for an agent who will fall in love with my
writing and then promote it to publishers.
That’s the goal.
The dependency I’d like to present in a
new novel is similar to Valeska but one where the protagonist falls
romantically in love with the focus. The
question is the focus.
Now, I’m looking and researching for a being
or character who would fit the needs of the book I’m proposing.
Don’t modify known settings, people, or
history unless you are writing alternate history. Modify, at will, those things that are not
known or recorded in history. That comes
to a very important point about historical fiction, even reflected worldview
historical fiction. That is that history
doesn’t record much of the mundane we wish to include in our novels.
The problem with history is this—if they
didn’t write about it, how can I know it, and how can I write about it. This is a serious question because you really
can’t use the modern world or even the modern world of history to write
historical fiction. For example, before around
1000 AD, furniture, as we use and understand is, was nearly unknown and
definitely not in common use. Furniture
in all of the world until about 1000 AD was similar to what you might find in
Japen until around the 1950s. If you have
any furniture in an early novel and the people aren’t nobility, you aren’t
historically correct. In fact, until late,
there were no tall tables or chairs. If
you remember from the first Century we know people reclined to eat. They might have had short reclining tables,
but we aren’t completely certain because none have survived. We can pretty much assume there were
reclining tables, but people might have eaten like the formal Japanese on
individual small tables. We just don’t
know, so we take from historical documents what we can.
That gets to later periods. You even have a grave problem with later
times like the Victorian age 1850 to 1900.
The problem is that although many artifacts exist, and we have a lot of
historical documents, the historical doesn’t tell you much about the mundane. For example, we know a lot about the food and
the drinks as well as the meal times and the meals and courses. What we don’t know is the how of the intricacies
of eating the drinking—no one wrote them down. We can go to fiction sources like Dickens and
others to gain some insight, but we quickly see that even that information
doesn’t tell us everything we want to know.
For example, I did find in one novel about children drinking beer at
dinner and supper, but even ideas like breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper are
slightly foreign and require research to understand properly.
The part about breakfast, dinner, tea,
and supper is relatively easy because we can take, for example, British society
today with historical and fiction sources, and figure out how the meals
worked. If you are writing in the Victorian
Era in the West, I suggest you significantly research the subject time and place
before you write and interpolate the information we don’t know exactly.
There I used the word,
interpolate. What does this mean exactly? Let me elucidate. I have an author friend who is writing a
novel about the American and Mexican War.
He needed information about shaving and writing utensils. Believe it or not, but at the time, the
fountain pen was just invented. This was
the up and coming tool for writing, but few had them, and fewer were to be
found. Knowledge of a simple device like
this was difficult to come by at the time and today. He is and completed significant research just
to write about a writing utensil. This
is what writing historical fiction is all about. Further, he wanted and wants to include the
idea of shaving in the field and at garrison, but who recorded the details of
shaving in this period? That’s the ever present
problem of historical fiction. We just
don’t have much about the mundane and as you go back in time, it gets worse and
worse. Again, you must interpolate the
information. I’ll look at interpolation
next.
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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