Writing - part xxx605 Writing a Novel, Building a Protagonist, Fitting, Refining the Protagonist, Details, Telic Flaw Resolution, Plots, Items in Aine

25 February 2024, Writing - part xxx605 Writing a Novel, Building a Protagonist, Fitting, Refining the Protagonist, Details, Telic Flaw Resolution, Plots, Items in Aine

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.

6. The initial scene is the most important scene.

 

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 31^st 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 34^th novel (actually my 32^nd 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 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32^nd novel and 33^rd 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: Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

 

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. 

 

If I’m going to develop a protagonist, I need to bring out the protagonist outline.  I’ve got it somewhere in my writing—I just have to find it.

 

I guess I’ll start with the Romantic part of the protagonist.  Then I’ll move to the more specific pieces of the protagonist.  Most precisely, I’m looking at the list of potential characters from my list of characters in my other novels.

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.

I have Áine as the potential focus of the novel.  She’s a Celtic goddess.  This focus isn’t set yet, but I need a protagonist, and I need to develop and design one.  I’m contemplating a son of the Stuarts and the Calloways.  Here’s the information from my notes.

 

Elaina actually Evir Elisabeth Stuart,  Gaelic:  Eamhair Ealasaid Stiùbhartach – The girl: she was blond with grey-blue eyes and a very Nordic or Norman look.  Her long hair was tied in a tight French weave.  She was tall and looked mature—much more mature than Sorcha or Deirdre.

            Old Raleigh bike with a basket and a bell - an old Raleigh welded-steel frame girl’s bicycle

Elaina actually Evir Elisabeth Stuart,  Gaelic:  Eamhair Ealasaid Stiùbhartach  g. Oxford b. 1975 late to Wycombe Abbey a special student of Luna’s was being groomed for work in Stela and the Organization.  He specialty is with the Fae.  They are bound to her because of her nobility and background.  She is not Fae but commands the Fae to some degree. 

                                    m. James (Seumas) Donaidh Calloway b. 1971 

                                                            c. Eoghan (Owen) Ragnall Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach)

                                                            c. Aife (Eva) Eamhair (Evir) Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach)

So, my protagonist Eoghan will have the very special skills of charm and sensitivity to the creatures of the land.  He won’t have any other general powers of glamour. 

2. Set of beliefs (morals and ideals) that are different than normal culture or society’s.

He knows the Fae, the creatures of the land, angels, the God, and the gods and goddesses of the land.  That gives him a moral basis centered on an orthodox belief.  His family goes to church and practices all the strong tenants of Christianity. 

3. Courageous

Still, Eoghan and his sister gained some degree of training their mother and father never expected.  Eoghan is a park ranger with the Scottish National Park authority.  He was taught at their special training in law enforcement and all its attendant training.  The British military taught many of his courses, especially in hand to hand, weapons, and the wilderness.  He knows more than his mother would like, and he is strongly attracted to this life and this training.  He would like to be part of the military and has had overtures.  He is naturally courageous and naturally good.  Then he finds Aine, and she will give him a purpose for his special skills.

4. Power (skills and abilities) and leadership that are outside of the normal society.

Just be aware, it must have to do with the use of their powers of charm and sensitivity in relation to leadership.  That’s the ticket.   

5. Introspective

Eoghan must be an introspective character.  We have a protagonist’s helper to aid him in expressing his mind, but he won’t let out much or as much as Aine wants and that will help drive the novel.  Remember, in writing a novel, secrets are your best friend.   

6. Travel plot

I don’t expect a really powerful travel plot like I provided in Rose and Seoirse, but we need to get Eoghan and Aine into the regular world and into regular society—that’s where the differences and the interactions with people and each other can really play out.  Plus, there is no way after about 1500 or more years in a crypt that Aine wants to remain holed up in a rural or wilderness area.  She’s for society and culture, plus part of the real fun in the novel is for them both to have new and exciting experiences together.  The travel plot makes all this possible.

7. Melancholy

Eoghan is like his mother Elaina and his sister.  They are all touched by their mother’s and family’s depreciation of their aristocracy.  They lost all in the game of promotion and house.  They lost in the game of thrones, so to speak, but they all have charm and sensitivity to the Fae and beings of the land.  That makes them powerful in their own way, but powerless in society.  This is what we will change in Eoghan.  That’s one aspect of the novel’s telic flaw.      

8. Overwhelming desire to change and grow—to develop four and one.

This is the desire that will consume and empower Eoghan.  This is what will drive him and Aine forward in the novel.  He will have special skills, but the reader will realize that it isn’t the skill but the dedication and work behind the skill that leads to Eoghan’s success.    

9. Pathos developed because the character does not fit the cultural mold.  From the common.

I’m sure there are other ways to develop this pathos in the novel.  For Rose and in Seoirse, I used some other methods and means based on Rose’s qualities and skills to develop pathos.  In general, I used dependency and the military situation in Seoirse to build pathos.  This is easy with females, but a little less easy with males.  With females, the pathos becomes situational.  For men, the pathos is dependency based.  I’m planning and building a male protagonist, so these are important considerations.  With Seoirse, I could play off the female development of pathos and the male pathos.  I think this is a great means of designing pathos.  I might be able to do this for Eoghan with Aine too.              

10. Regret when they can’t follow their own moral compass.

In the end, Eoghan might regret some of his actions and the results of his actions.  This creates a situation that provides tension and release.  It also continues the tension and release in what is called a sequel by some writers. 

11. Self-criticism when they can’t follow their own moral compass.

In any case, self-criticism will be a characteristic of Eoghan, and it will drive Aine crazy.  Aine will be from an era where people made decisions based on life and death.  She isn’t used to second guessing.  I can imagine one of their discussions. 

To solve a problem, she says just kill someone or something.  Eoghan says no, and that astounds her.  Perhaps she will need to learn to be self-critiquing.   

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.

I will point out that with many and normal Romantic protagonists, the exclusion and self-isolation is intentional and permanent.  They desire it.  The exclusion and self-isolation caused by being an orphan or a partial orphan are also permanent and tend to develop automatic pathos in the reader for the Romantic protagonist.  I won’t use this for Eoghan. 

13. From the common and potentially the rural.

In any case, we want our Romantic protagonist to be out of the common.  We can work this in many ways, but the ultimate point is to convince the reader that the Romantic protagonist is just like them and not really special at all.

14. Love interest

So, we’ll have a great setup for this novel, this Romantic protagonist, and this protagonist’s helper.  What will really be fun is seeing Aine totally outside her comfort zone for many reasons trying to win over Eoghan.  I need to think on the details, but that’s what I’m thinking.  She’ll try all the wiles she knows and all the wiles she can figure out.

Meanwhile, Eoghan will want her to be mellow and gentle, but that’s not her way.  Can these lovebirds recover from each other?  Can they find love?  Will Aine have her way with Eoghan, or will she chicken out.  We shall see.  That’s what a love interest is all about. 

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. 

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 – I already wrote the theme statement for this novel.  Here it is:

 

Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

 

b.     Approximate age – I already wrote that Eoghan is between 19 and 21.  I think I settled on 20.  Here’s the details:                        

m. 2005 James (Seumas) Donaidh Calloway b. 1971 m. at 34 y.  2028 57 y. 

                                                            c. b. 2008 Jan Eoghan (Owen) Ragnall Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach) – 2028, 20 y.

                                                            c. b. 2012 Aife (Eva) Eamhair (Evir) Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach) – 2028, 16 y.

                                                            Aine appears about 16 y.

c.      Approximate social degree

 

      For Eoghan, he will be from an interesting background that allows him some opportunities, but most of them will be due to himself and not his background.  This is why I’d like to get Rose involved.  Rose has wealth and position, and she will know who should be her friends. 

    

d.     Sex - male

3.     Refine the protagonist

a.      Physical description

 

Eoghan (Owen) Ragnall Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach) was a young man of average stature, height, and build.  He was so average you might miss him in the crowd except he was a man no one could miss.  His bearing wasn’t really different from most other men, but you couldn’t miss him in any group.  His height wasn’t taller than others, he was average, but for some reason he always stood out.  His face was pleasant and somewhat nondescript, but it wasn’t nondescript at all.  It was striking in the most unstriking fashion.  He just looked regal while seeming completely normal.  Women couldn’t keep from looking at him, and men all wanted to be his friend.  They flocked around him, but never hid him or overwhelmed him.  All the time, he seemed like the calmest and most reasonable person.  He was the person you wanted to invite for any reason, tea, a meal, a game, a walk—just being near him was calming and wonderful.  Even when words didn’t pass from his lips, the time was delightful.  Men wanted to hear his voice and women to touch his hand.  His voice was unimpressive and quiet, but filled with promises and strength.  It was as if every word that came out of his mouth bolstered and strengthened even when he didn’t say something erudite or when he remarked about the weather.  It was uncanny and soothing, never unnerving or worrisome.  Even his name, Eoghan Ragnall Stuart felt noble while sounding so unnormally normal.  If you called him by his Anglicized name Owen Ronald Calloway, it still sounded noble but normal.  And then his smile was always encompassing, but unassuming.  It had a slightly gloomy bent as if he took even happiness and jovialness in a sober and thoughtful way so even the most lame jokes became important and intelligent even when they weren’t.  Eoghan was always the life of the party, but unfortunately, he didn’t attend many parties at all.  He was too busy as a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger handling small difficulties for the Crown and Stela.

       

b.     Background – history of the protagonist

 

      i.     Birth

m. 2005 James (Seumas) Donaidh Calloway b. 1971 m. at 34 y.  2028 57 y. 

                                                            c. b. 2008 Jan Eoghan (Owen) Ragnall Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach) – 2028, 20 y.

                                                            c. b. 2012 Aife (Eva) Eamhair (Evir) Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach) – 2028, 16 y.

                                                            Aine appears about 16 y.

                                                                                                                        ii.     Setting  

                                         iii.     Life

 

iv.     Education

 

                                            v.     Work

 

                                            vi.     Profession

 

                                            vii.     Family

        

b.     Setting

   i.     Life

                                                ii.     Setting

                                              iii.     Work

c.      Name - Eoghan (Owen) Ragnall (Ronald) Calloway/Stuart (Stiùbhartach)

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 – here’s the theme statement again:

Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

The theme statement includes the telic flaw, and this theme statemen is very blatant.  The telic flaw is this:  Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

Now, you might say this is pretty amorphous, but it does tell us a lot about Eoghan and Aine.  This drives the novel—the telic flaw is all about Eoghan determining what he wants as well as accommodating Aine in some fashion.  We can immediately see how these two ideas could fit together, and that’s what I want to do with the novel.  I want to use about 100,000 words to have Eoghan discover himself and discover his relationship with Aine.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it.  The main point in any novel is to put together a set of plots that give us a resolution of the telic flaw.  Note, there is a single telic flaw, and it belongs to the protagonist.  The rest is simply a connection to the protagonist. 

I already wrote that I am making Aine the protagonist’s helper.  This is how I love to write novels.  The protagonist’s helper is one of the most important characters in a modern Romantic novel.  That’s because the protagonist must share their inner thoughts, most specifically to be introspective.  You can’t have introspection without either telling or a sounding board.  The protagonist’s helper is a sounding board.  This character allows the Romantic protagonist to have dialog about themselves, and Aine will be the perfect protagonist’s helper.

That’s not to say, Aine won’t cut off information from Eoghan she doesn’t want to hear.  This is a real problem for and with Aine, she is a very direct, honest, and selfish person, but she really wants to please Eoghan.  She will realize her own deficiencies from the beginning, and although she will have constant lapses, she will know when she has stepped on Eoghan’s toes too much.  These events and incidents will drive the plots and the resolution of the telic flaw, Eoghan’s telic flaw.

a.      Changes required for the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw – this is what the protagonist and especially the Romantic protagonist is all about—the change.  This isn’t what you might think it is.  In some overall plots or themes this is obvious.  For example, the kid who wants to be a football player but is a 90 pound weakling.  You know what must happen.  I’ll state it, the kid must change physically and potentially mentally to achieve the goal of becoming a football player.  How about the kid who wants to become a rockstar?  They must learn to be a musician (maybe) first—that’s a change.

 

Most protagonist changes are much more subtle, and they all are redemption plots.  This is basically the definition of the redemption plot.  Even when you throw in the self-discovery or the skills plot, change insinuates some type of redemption in the change.  In fact, change itself defines redemption, and in the most beloved novels, the protagonist is all about self-discovery and change.  That’s the entire point of zero to hero and all. 

 

Just look at Harry Potty.  Harry must discover his magic and then refine it to be able to be the messiah for his friends and world.  This is a total redemption plot with a messiah none the less.  Other adult novels are much more subtle.  In Jack Vance novels, the protagonist must understand the rules of the culture and apply them.  That’s his entire Romantic protagonist development.  In other novels, the sparkly vampires, for example, the protagonist must become a vampire, but again that’s a young adult novel and not very subtle. 

 

In real past Romantic favorites, like Ivanhoe.  Ivanhoe must change his society to achieve his desired goals.  He still gets a Saxon princess.  In Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Romantic style novels, the protagonist must make incredible discoveries, mostly about mysteries and secrets to eventually achieve the redemption telic flaw resolution.  Think Treasure Island where the protagonist must deal with pirates and others but the ultimate point is about friendships and betrayal.  The Black Arrow gives us a protagonist who must discover just who he is escorting to safety and why he (who is really a she) is so weak and unmanly.  He still falls in love. 

 

Even our favorite, non-Romantic, protagonists make changes, but usually not in the same way.  For example, Sara Crew in A Little Princess, doesn’t change so much as she comes to a realization of the life of the lowly and poor, and she wants to do anything to get out of it.  Again a type of physical redemption, but Victorian protagonists don’t change emotionally or mentally as much as physically.  Sometimes, they have to just apologize.  In any case, the protagonist and the Romantic protagonist must change in some way to achieve the telic flaw resolution.  In adult type and sophisticated novels this change is subtle.  In youth based novels, this isn’t usually very subtle at all.  We’ll look at some potential redemptive changes for Eoghan.    

i.                Physical changes – I could easily state there are no physical changes necessary for Eoghan to resolve the telic flaw, but that would be wrong.  It isn’t just internal changes or physical personal changes, but rather movement, wealth, position, and etc. when we write about physical changes.  Let me repeat the theme statement again:

 

Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

 

                                                                                                                                                To achieve this resolution, Eoghan must get more from the world.  We’ve defined this as achieving his goals in life, to some degree.  We know that Eoghan has latent charm powers which he has been trained to use, mostly through not interacting with people.  He lives his ranger existence mainly away from others.  He is self-isolated mainly because his mother see this as the best way to keep his skills in check.  However, Eoghan will soon be convinced to use his skills.  We’ll get to that, that is mental and emotional changes, but the physical changes are still very important. 

 

Physical changes are what you do with your body and placement once the emotional and mental decisions are made.  The questions we might have are:  where will Eoghan and Aine go?  What will they do?  How will Aine integrate into the world?  What will the result of their romance be?  Is there any hope for their romance?  What will Eoghan achieve?  Where will they live, train, and exist?  What will his work be?  Who will he work for?  All these questions are physically based.  They have to do with what happens in the novel and the realizations the characters make. 

 

At this point, I can’t answer all these questions.  I have my own ideas, and I’m formulating them, but from my experience, it does no good to fully outline and answer every single question, because part of the power in creative writing is to figure out ideas on the wing.  Especially the detailed ones.  It’s enough to know they exist and they are not direct physical changes.  For example, if Eoghan wanted to become a football (soccer) star in Britain, he might need to make some real physical changes.  That’s something entirely different.

                                                ii.     Emotional changes – the emotional changes or mental changes are the ones we mainly expect from modern protagonists and especially Romantic protagonists.  What’s the difference?  Emotional are usually based on feelings while mental are based on reason.  Changes in the emotional outlook, thoughts, beliefs, and perhaps feelings, as well as, the interpretation of those things are mainly what we are writing about.  There are very complex issues and points.

 

                                    I’m mainly writing about human interpretation of ideas and not the ideas themselves.  Those ideas are the mental part while emotions are about how the characters see those ideas.  For example, an idea or a fact is a fact no matter what anyone thinks about it.  Let’s use for example, Eoghan and his mother.  How does he view his mother’s interference in his life?  Before Aine, I’d say he accepts it without much thought.  That’s just what his life and life is all about for him.  After Aine, Eoghan begins to see his mother’s interference and actions as not positive at all.  His reaction will be driven by his mother’s response and actions.  With reflection, we should see Eoghan begin to change and moderate his emotions and thoughts about his mother, or specifically, how he reacts to his mother’s actions. 

 

                                    So, what I expect is that Eoghan begins to resent his mother’s actions and interference that will lead to tension and release in the novel followed by a resolute focus where Eoghan will begin to ignore and accept his mother’s negative views.  We’ll see where this all goes.  This is just one example of the many complex situations about emotions I plan for the novel.

 

                                    Another is about Aine and her feelings about Eoghan.  There is much much more.

 

Aine is the protagonist’s helper and not the protagonist, but I intend to develop her in a very romance based manner.  The problem with Aine is her culture and her past.  She is used to aggressive men who deand what they want even to the point of rape against women they desire.  In fact, this rape concept is also called ancient marriage and was and is practiced by less civilized cultures.  The idea in ancient cultures is marriage is sex and sex is marriage.  When a man had sex with a woman, he took the responsibility for the progeny from that relationship.  He also was responsible for the woman.  This is very patriarchal, but in might makes right, you do have some choices.  Death and slavery is a couple of them.  Most of the time, slavery or concubinage marriage is better than death.  The rape concept of what is considered captive marriage is and was common.  That’s just how the American Indian culture worked.  In any case, that is the type of culture Aine is used to.  She’s in for a great surprise.

 

Eoghan is nothing like the men she is used to.  Eoghan is a man of honor and integrity.  That means in the sense of the modern culture and society.  He rescues Aine because he would rescue anyone, and Aine is unbelievably grateful.  The reason is that she thought all hope was lost.  I want to paint this very strong scene in a very poignant way.  Aine is completely willing to give up everything to Eoghan because he saved her from the crypt.  She would give up her virginity, her freedom, her everything, and from her cultural world, she expects Eoghan to take all.  Only Eoghan would never think of acting in that way to any woman.  Aine is horrified that Eoghan doesn’t want her right then and right in the open.  She’s a little insulted by it.  Already affected deeply and emotionally by his rescue, Aine has a lot to process and think about.  I’m deciding just how deeply I want the conversation to delve about this great problem for Aine.  In fact, this problem that starts as Aine’s will very quickly become Eoghan’s.  That’s one of the very entertaining and fun parts of this novel I’m developing. 

 

Aine is going to have to figure out how to capture not just the mind, but the heart and soul of Eoghan.  Once she learns what in the world this silly love thing is all about.  She will pursue Eoghan with a great fervor, but she has to figure out just what love is all about, in this modern age, and how to make Eoghan love her.  This causes mental changes for Eoghan.

                                              iii.     Mental changes – now we are moving into the norm for the modern novel.  I also want to remind you that the information here are sketches while the novel is the painting.  The point of this information is to define the protagonist and potentially other important characters while defining the scope and movement of the novel.  Mental changes are just he types of changes we in the Twenty-First Century are used to in our thinking about the protagonist.  In fact, physical changes, although the norm for most earlier literature, isn’t really what we think of in most modern literature.

 

For example, in Robinson Caruso, the major point of the novel is a survival and escape plot.  There are mental changes involved, but the main point of the novel is physical and not mental.  If we look at much of Charle Dickens’ novels, we see something similar.  The overall plots are not mental, but physical.  The escape from poverty or from the current circumstances.  Even George Eliot has a similar touch in her novels.  What we can gain from this is a couple of important points.  The first is that physical change in the protagonist can move mountains.  It can really produce a powerful novel and plot.  On the other hand, the Romantic protagonist gives us a type of filter into the mind of the protagonist.  With that filter, we can see the motivations and the reasons for the need of the protagonist to change.  We can’t tell this, we must show it.  The showing it part is always physical.  This leads to the mental.

 

In the case of the novel Aine, I want to show how Eoghan changes mentally by the influence of Aine and the circumstances around their lives.  The great hook in this novel is the emotional and physical disturbance that Aine causes in the world and specifically, in Eoghan’s world.  What changes does Eoghan need to make to achieve?

 

In the first place, Eoghan needs to learn to love Aine.  That means he must learn about loving a woman.  This isn’t as easy or flippant as it might sound.  Yes, we hope love comes naturally to people, but what does that love look like and how does it manifest itself.  We know, based on his character that Eoghan is a solid and decent young man, but he is young and inexperienced.  He just has no idea how to handle Aine and her personality.  I guess I’ll get more into this, next.

 

Aine is the problem.  She isn’t the telic flaw, but she is the focus of this novel.  In other words, she is the focal point that makes everything happen.  This is typical in almost every novel, but I’m not certain there is a name for this focus.  It could be considered the subject of the novel, and I’ve heard this referred to as the cause—that’s where we get the telic flaw concept from. 

 

A telic flaw is by definition (in the Greek sense), the cause and the resolution of the novel.  Telic, in Greek means the intersection of the horizon with a vanishing point.  This is both the beginning (cause) and the end (conclusion), although the Greeks wouldn’t put it exactly that way.  So, Aine is the cause of all that will happen to Eoghan, therefore, she could be called the telic flaw.  However, she isn’t the real problem.  Eoghan’s problems are extra Aine.  In other words, Eoghan has problems outside of Aine, but Aine is the thing, the cause, that will get Eoghan thinking and changing. 

 

For this reason, I’m calling Aine, and this concept in writing, the focus.  She is the reason everything happens, but not the telic flaw that needs resolution.

 

Now, what does this have to do with mental changes?  Aine is and will be a very peculiar person.  She is a being out of time, which is exactly what I aim for in my novels.  Almost all my novels are about ancient people and beings caught up in modern times.  This allows me to compare and expand for my readers the events of the past as well as the people from the past.  I want to do this intentionally as opposed to placing modern people in the past or writing a historical fiction novel.  The point is to enable a comparison between the times, the thoughts, and the people.  That’s what is so delectable about Aine.

 

Aine is no girl from the present.  I’m sure there are girls (women) like Aine in the modern world, but what is so powerful is that Aine represents a culture, the ancient Celtic and Gaelic culture.  This provides me a circumstance of writing about that culture and the ancient times.  Every reference Aine has is a reference from the past.  She has no idea or concept of the present or modern times.  Eoghan will be an enigma for her.  I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll get into it next.  That is Eoghan as seen by Aine and the changes he must make mentally to resolve the telic flaw.

 

Perhaps the first major or main change in Eoghan is to accept Aine.  Eoghan has never met a girl let alone a person like her.  In his worldview, she is crass, crude, dangerous, violent, emotional, somewhat underhanded, driven to excess, uneducated, unrefined, uninformed, among other negatives.  Some of these just aren’t her fault.  She can’t really help being uneducated by the times—they passed her by.  The problem is to get Eoghan to see the world from her standpoint, and also to see success using her methods and her approaches. 

 

I’m not saying that Aine has better ideas or ways of living, but she does have many positives.  Let’s look at them.  Aine is a survivor.  She is educated in living in the wild and with nothing.  She’s used to having nothing and most of her life has been a real fight for survival and just to eat.  She is a deity, but what does that mean?  She doesn’t need food or sustenance to exist, but she desires it to live and for life.  As a Celtic deity, her desire is to provide and to receive adulation.  She is the sun goddess and represents the growth of the crops.  Most specifically she is “the Celtic sun goddess and goddess of wealth, sovereignty, and summer. In Irish mythology, she is also a fairy queen and goddess of the moon, earth, and nature, and could shapeshift into a red horse.”  These abilities don’t necessarily make her invincible.  They imply and give her powers and responsibilities that she then gives to the Celtic people.  These are also the things she knows and has power over.

 

In the reflected worldviews I use, the gods and goddesses have great powers, but their powers are significantly limited by the constraints of their environment as well as the limits of myth.  Aine can bring wealth, sovereignty, and provide summer, but she can’t make the world perpetual summer, that would destroy nature.  The longer and more power she applies to hold the world in summer, the weaker she gets.  Likewise, she can bestow wealth, but that requires actions to produce wealth.  The more she has to do to bring it about, the more power of the land it takes from her.  She is very like the Fae—they also use the power of nature to use glamour.  Aine controls glamour but also direct miracles. 

The main point of this is that Aine must convince Eoghan of her value and Eoghan must come to terms with Aine’s personality and abilities or lack thereof.  Aine must change and Eoghan must change.  That may be enough said.

b.      Alliances required for the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw – remember, none of this information is ever shared with the reader.  This information might and may be revealed, but only through actions and dialog.  We show alliances, we don’t declare alliances. 

 

Now, you might reach some point in a novel where the characters come to some agreement to work together.  Yes, that is an alliance, they can even call it an alliance, but that should never be declared in the narration or by some omniscient voice of the narrator, or any other such means.  If the author feels like a declaration of alliance needs to be made, then that is expressed in dialog—that’s showing.

 

I’ve done this in many of my novels.  I really haven’t called it an alliance perse, but my characters have made agreements and contracts with each other to support their goals, some mutual and some not so mutual.  Now, back to Aine.

 

The most obvious alliance is between Aine and Eoghan.  This will be carefully and deeply manufactured based on their personalities and likes and dislikes.  The point is to get the very strong willed Aine to agree that she must depend on Eoghan.  I think this will be easy to show and to work since Aine starts entirely and completely dependent on Eoghan. She has nothing in this world, no friends, no acquaintances, no support, no money, nothing.  She starts emotionally and physically dependent on Eoghan.  He’s just a nice guy.  He would never hold anything back from her.  Part of the fun of this novel will be the clash between these two with Aine constantly reminding herself of her own dependency and lack of everything.  Then there are the other characters who will bring great fun into the novel because of their closeness and alliances with Eoghan and then Aine.

 

This is the point, Eoghan naturally brings people into his camp—Aine does not.  I’ll get to those alliances, next.

 

What I want to do is to expand Aine’s world in the novel while bringing Eoghan into the fold of the world and others in the Organization and Stela.  At the beginning of the novel, Eoghan’s only connectiona to the Organization, which I’ve explained, and Stela, which I’ve explained, are his mother and his father.  He is an isolated person.  I’m not sure how I’ll play his earlier friends and acquaintances or if he has any.  What I really want to build up is the relationships with the characters I’ve developed and made in my other latest novels.  These are specifically: Rose (Lady Tash, Princess of the Fae), Seoirse (Lieutenant Wishart), Shiggy (Major Cross), Major Cross (Shiggy’s husband), Luna Bolang (Colonel Bolang), Sorcha (Lieutenant Colonel), Ms. O’Dwyer (Mrs. Marshall), and all.  There are many many more.  The point is to introduce Eoghan and then Aine to these people and bring him out of his shell and into the community of his work and those who work for these groups. 

 

The primary people I’d like Eoghan to meet are Rose and Seiorse, but I’m not sure how I’ll play this out.  The other person I’d like Aine to become acquainted with and friends with is Eoghan’s sister Aife (Eva).  That’s a start.  Eva has desires for much more than she currently has.  She wants more from the world and is something of a mirror to Eoghan.  Aine and Eva will collude together to use Eoghan to get what they want.  Perhaps the best first contact is with, Stela in the Organization.  That would be Mrs. Marshall (Ms. O’Dwyer).

 

Ms. O’Dwyer is the head of Stela.  She is the main connection to all the others.  There may also be some means of connecting Eoghan to the others through the Black Branch and the Red Branch.  The Red Branch is the Celtic training island for men analogous to the Black Branch which is the Celtic training island for men.  The Celts had strange ideas about warrior training.  They believed women warriors should train men and women warriors should train women.  Women were the trainers.  That’s odd in cultures.  What’s fun about this is that Aine is not a warrior of any kind.  Eoghan isn’t a warrior either.  On the other hand, Rose and Seoirse are warriors.  I want to contrast these two couples.  That’s part of the point of the Eoghan and Aine pairing.  These are the alliances I’d like to develop.  They will build on these to eventually resolve the telic flaw.  Then there are enemies, like the antagonist.         

c.      Enemies required for the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw – yes, there should and must be an antagonist.  In modern writing and literature, an indirect antagonist is becoming more and more common.  I’m not sure if this is good or bad.  An indirect antagonist is like a nation, a government, nature, a company, a religion, an idea, a concept, a force of nature, or an organization.  Authors can make these direct antagonist by turning them into a leader, a person in the government, a god, the CEO, a priest or religious leader, a guru (one who sells and leads the idea), a professor (one who sells and leads the concept), a spirit, or a leader.  Notice each of these are personifications of the broader organizations or concepts they represent.  What shall we do with Aine?

 

The problems in Aine relates to Stela and the Organization and their connections to the British government.  These are really the indirect antagonists in the novel.  To personify these antagonists, I should use the leaders and specifically Mrs. Marshall (Ms. O’Dwyer).  Now, Mrs. Marshall isn’t really opposed exactly to Aine or to Eoghan or to their desires and wants.  Eoghan’s mother and father are a bit.  Basically, the system and structure of the organizations in authority here are somewhat opposed to the interests of Eoghan and Aine only because of lack of knowledge and because of fear. 

 

Mrs. Marshall wants to protect Britain from the supernatural.  She will view Aine as a potential threat and Eoghan with Aine as a real threat.  Eoghan has much much more power than Aine in many ways.  This will become clear in the novel.

Eoghan’s mother and father want what’s best for Eoghan and his sister Eva.  Aine will be offering something new and different to them both.  The excitement and new worlds Aine offers are really not from Aine herself only her rogue and uncontrolled nature.  Aine offers freedom and excitement and new ideas.  These will be promoted by Rose and Seoirse and others. 

 

By the way, I also want to show Rose and Lady Wishart’s reconciliation in this novel.  I’d like to have Eoghan and Aine bring them together.  Lady Wishart is a wild child and a wild heart.  She is independent.  Rose is very similar.  In my previous novel, they had a huge falling out, caused by Rose to achieve her goals.  I want to show how Rose was thwarted and how she gained back some of Lady Wishart’s trust.  That same change will show trust to Eoghan and Aine.

 

There is another point about antagonists I’d like to make and express.  It’s the Christmas Carol conundrum.  I’ll get to that, next.

 

A Christmas Carol is an interesting novel.  I’m not sure if it is the first novel that has a positive antagonist, but it’s one of the first.  Just what is a positive antagonist?  In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, the protagonist is not a nice person.  He requires redemption.  The antagonists (enemies) are the spirits of Christmas past present and future with the overall antagonist being good will, but really God Himself.  It’s a type of allegory.  Now, the point is that the antagonists in A Christmas Carol are all good and not bad at all.  They have no negatives and no ill will about Scrooge—they are all about helping Scrooge reach and resolve the telic flaw.  This is a new idea in literature.

 

In almost all literature prior to this novel, the antagonist, by definition, attempted to prevent the protagonist from achieving the resolution of the telic flaw.  In A Christmas Carol, this is turned on its head.  Yet, everyone knows this is a very effective and entertaining novel.  For this reason alone, I think it might be one of Dickens best novels.  He set the standard.

 

That means you can have an antagonist who is or is not actively opposing the resolution of the telic flaw, but who isn’t really an enemy or directly opposed to the protagonist.  It give the writer a sliding scale of the antagonist.  This also means you can have an antagonist who means well and hopes for the best for the protagonist, but at the same time opposes the resolution of the telic flaw.  This is what I’m likely going to put in Aine.

 

The antagonist(s) are likely the Organization and Stela along with others who believe they are helping Aine and Eoghan.  The end result will be something different than any of them can imagine, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t friends or working together.  The point, for the writer, is the telic flaw resolution.  The antagonist causes opposition or as we see can actually aid in the telic flaw resolution (A Christmas Carol) the point is to develop the storyline and the characters in an entertaining fashion.  That leads us to how we achieve this.  That’s through the tension and release in the scenes and directly through the plots.       

d.     Plots required for the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw – this is where it gets easy and complicated.  First, let me tell you about plots. 

 

We generally think of plots in novels as singular, as in, Harry Potty’s first novel has a plot, but that’s not true at all.  To be able to actually define the singular or overall plot of any novel is nearly impossible.  I write nearly impossible, because I’m sure many have tried and think they achieved some success, but if you look at any novel in all of history, you will find many plots at least as many plots as scenes in the novel. 

 

Now, the idea of scenes isn’t a new one, but it’s one most people and many writers don’t fully comprehend.  Novels are made up of scenes.  Basically, scenes are the final building block of the novel.  A scene incorporates a plot that leads to tension and release within the scene (or it should).  A novel is usually of this form (99% of them):

1.     Initial scene

2.     Rising action

3.     Climax scene

4.     Falling action

5.     Dénouement

 

The novel has many plots involved in the development and expression of the novel.  One means of novel development is to pick plots to put into the novel.  I wrote that a scene has at least one plot, but it can have many plots.  You can stack plots on plots.  In fact, that’s what most really great and classic novels do.  They are plots on top of plots.  There might be an overall plot, like the resolution of a mystery or a crime, but that’s just part of the many plots in the novel.

 

I mentioned mystery or crime specifically because this is one of the easiest telic flaws to understand and describe.  The telic flaw of a mystery or crime novel is the resolution of the mystery or the crime.  How the mystery or crime gets resolved incorporates the many different plots in scenes that all move toward the resolution.

 

For example, the detective (crime) or mystery plot is based on the resolution of the telic flaw or a mystery or a crime.  One of the other plots you will certainly see in such a novel is one or most discovery plots.  Each scene might have a discovery plot that drives it.  The protagonist discovers some clue or clues that help lead to the resolution of the overall plot. 

 

In detective and mystery novels, the reason plot is almost always a part of the scenes.  The protagonist discovers something and makes inductive or deductive conclusions or at least reasons about the discovery.  Reason is a type of plot.  A scene with reason incorporated includes a reason plot.  I think you can see a single scene could easily incorporate both these plots.  In fact, some writers call this scenes and sequels although I just call them all scenes.  A scene, in this view, incorporates a plot that leads to a clue (discovery is just one type), while a sequel is where the protagonist thinks and perhaps makes a new discovery through reason, a mental expression. 

 

I don’t see scenes this way at all.  I write scenes that include the discovery as well as the reasoning al the time.  They aren’t separate events or pieces in my novel.  I do think the scenes and sequels concept is a good way of thinking about writing novels.  It gets the writer into the idea of scenes.  Scenes are where it is.  Next, I’ll list the potential plots form the list of classics, and discuss them.

I evaluated the plots from the list of 112 classics and categorized them according to the following scale:

Overall (o) – These are the three overall plots we defined above: redemption, achievement, and revelation.

Achievement (a) – There are plots that fall under the idea of the achievement plot. 

Quality(q) – These are plots based on a personal or character quality.

Setting(s) – These are plots based on a setting.

Item(i) – These are plots based on an item.

Let’s write about the overall plots a little.  In the first place, a novel is never a single plot, and not even a single overall plot.  You can find some plots sticking out further and stronger than others, but except for the three great overall plots of redemption, revelation, and achievement, you can’t really get any more detailed.  Well, with simple novels, perhaps you can, but most novels are not simple, let’s hope, and few of the classics could be considered simple.  I’ll look at the overall and the other plots in detail, but the critical point for a writer to understand is the scene.

Plots take place in scenes and scenes define the novel.  With about two to three scenes per chapter and about twenty chapters in a full length novel, we can expect about forty to sixty scenes with, let’s say an average of fifty in a novel.  Each scene is defined by a plot with tension and release.  I should go back to the overall makeup of the novel to compare, and to make this relationship of plot to the novel very clear.  Here’s the outline for most classics and about 99% of all novels:

1.      The initial scene

2.     The rising action scenes

3.     The climax scene

4.     The falling action scene(s)

5.     The dénouement scene(s)

This is how we write novels, and it’s all about scenes.  No single plot covers the entire novel.  In other words, there might be an overall plot, for example redemption, revelation, and or achievement, but there is usually no singular plot that defines the entire novel, other than these overall plots.  What you find is that in each scene, there is some plot.  That plot leads to tension and release in the scene and that scene forwards the overall telic flaw resolution in the novel.  Let me take a step back and define the novel itself.

To write a novel, we require a protagonist with a telic flaw, an antagonist, and a setting (at least initial).  The telic flaw is the telic flaw of the novel, it is not necessarily a flaw in the protagonist, but rather the flaw in the world the protagonist must resolve, not solve, but resolve.  Let me give my favorite and the easiest telic flaw to understand—the mystery telic flaw.

We have a mystery that needs to be solved.  In a Romantic novel, the only person in the world who can solve this mystery is the Romantic protagonist.  In the classics or a non-Romantic novel, the protagonist is usually one of the few in the world who might have a chance at resolving the telic flaw.  Usually, the telic flaw is exclusive to the novel and to the protagonist.  There is some connection between the two, but that’s getting into the complexities of the novel itself. 

The reason we say to resolve and not solve is that, for example, the mystery might be a murder.  It is usually impossible to bring back the dead, so the resolution will usually be determining the mystery, catching the criminal (murderer), and resolving the issues around the crime.

Now, if you look through the type of plots, there is no murder plot.  Murder isn’t a plot as much as it’s a crime, immorality, or betrayal.  It can fit into all or any of these, plus others.  The reason for the murder can also be fit into many plots: money, miscommunication, love triangle, vengeance, escape, rejection, and all.  There are many many basic plots that can be the cause the and result of murder. 

So, we expect our protagonist to determine the criminal, bring them in to justice, and resolve the telic flaw.  The question then is how and why.  There must be a how, to the murder and the resolution as well as a why.  The murder could be justified or it could be accidental.  The resolution could be very positive or very negative.  When the protagonist resolves the telic flaw, that is a comedy and when the telic flaw overcomes the protagonist, that is a tragedy. 

In any case, we stack plots in scenes to resolve the ultimate telic flaw of the novel.  In most cases, we only want and allow a single telic flaw in a novel, but many of the short story type novels, like Game of Thrones and The Martian Chronicles have made multiple telic flaws with multiple protagonists popular.  Usually there should be only one telic flaw per protagonist per novel.  That’s not a hard a fast rule, but a good one.  Messing with one telic flaw effectively is enough for most writers, and to tell the truth, short story type novels with more than one protagonist and potentially more than one telic flaw is exhausting to the reader as well as to the writer.  I find Game of Thrones to be unreadable although it fits for a motion picture or television series.  Go figure.

Now, let’s start with the basics: a single protagonist with a telic flaw, an antagonist, and a setting.  The telic flaw is a mystery.  We start with an initial scene, and I guess, I’ll continue from there, next. 

The initial scene introduces the protagonist, the telic flaw, the initial scene, and the antagonist or the protagonist’s helper.  I like to use a protagonist’s helper in my novels because I write Romantic novels with a Romantic protagonist.  Usually, the initial scene is the meeting of the protagonist and the antagonist or the protagonist’s helper.  Notice that in Aine, this is the exact initial scene I’m developing.  There are other ways to develop the initial scene, but none quite as effective. 

If you notice, most initial scenes will have a plot entirely different than the overall plot of the novel.  For example, in a mystery novel, the characters can’t just start looking for the resolution of the mystery, well I guess they can, but usually, you need to introduce the mystery—the telic flaw.  Depending on the type and storyline of the novel, the introduction of the mystery might be through a discovery plot, a travel plot, a money plot, a legal plot, or a mix of any of the plots.  For example, the impoverished protagonist might inherit a house, travel to the house, and discover there is some mystery in the house.  That’s a money, legal, travel, and discovery plot all in the initial scene and we are only introducing and unveiling the mystery. 

Once the protagonist, the antagonist (or the protagonist’s helper), the telic flaw, and the initial setting are introduced, the novel can move apace into the next scene.  These scenes form the rising action.  In the rising action, the expectation is that every scene will support the movement toward the climax and the resolution of the telic flaw, but many of these scenes incorporate different plots in themselves.  I’d say that most of these scenes will incorporate multiple plots to move the novel to the resolution.  For example, the next scene might include travel to the city to research in the library and the protagonist might meet his or her girlfriend or boyfriend.  The plots for the scene are then travel, discovery, and romance.  There might be more.  Then the author might just pick some plots to increase the excitement in the novel.  The librarian might be secretly trying to solve the mystery too.  That gives a potential betrayal plot as will as a possible vengeance plot.  In one scene the protagonist might be injured or get sick—that gives an illness plot in a scene or more than one scene.  The librarian might break into the house to find more clues—that’s a crime plot.

Here's the point, every scene includes a plot, many times multiple plots, all of these plots combining to move the rising action to the climax and the telic flaw (mystery, in this case) resolution. 

Novels are not about a single plot or even a single overall plot—they are a bundle of plots held together by scenes—the scenes incorporating plot(s) that all lead to the climax and resolution of the telic flaw.  For this reason alone, we can look at the list of plots and choose them to incorporate, or not, into the novel we intend to write.  That’s just what I want to do with Aine.

I looked at each novel and pulled out the plot types, the telic flaw, plotline, and the theme of the novel.  I didn’t make a list of the themes, but we identified the telic flaw as internal and external and by plot type.  This generally gives the plotline. 

Overall (o) – as I wrote, when we converse about plots in a novel, we generally mean an overall plot, but in reality, novels usually don’t have an overall plot, not in the sense we usually mean.  We want to find some physical plot that defines the novel, but I really challenge you to do that.  In reviewing the classics, I found no such singular overall plot, but rather many plots in every novel.  I did find three general overall plots in every novel with subplots of these that then form the novel itself. 

These overall plots are very interesting.  They do define the novel, and they are historically defined and show an evolution with novel design.  That is, we find early novels with the overall achievement plot followed by the revelation plot and finally most modern novels with some degree of a redemption plot.  That’s not to say there are no early examples of a redemption plot, but the history of novels and of writing fiction, in general, follows an evolution of ideas and writing skills and styles.  It shouldn’t be surprising that Robinson Caruso is all about achievement (escape from an island) while Harry Potty is all about redemption (from the evil Voldermort and his evil wizards)--and Harry Potty is just one hack example.

Now, about overall plots.  These are definitely something we should evaluate and choose for our novel.  Many times the specifics of the telic flaw and it’s resolution will define the overall plot.  For example, stuck on an island or solve a crime or solve a mystery.  These types of novels almost always devolve into achievement plots, although they can rise to a more details and internal plot. 

When I write detailed and internal, I don’t mean that as a pejorative.  You find great novels that are all about achievement, but the really great and indeed the modern classics are all about redemption as well as achievement.  Whoops, I wrote it.  Almost all novels start with an achievement premise and telic flaw, but the overall telic flaw usually becomes one of redemption.  I’ll get into the idea of redemption when we address it next.  It may not be exactly what you are thinking.   

1.     Redemption (o) – 17i, 7e, 23ei, 8 – 49% - I should start with achievement as a plot, but I’ll go for the best, but latest first—redemption.  Redemption means to be redeemed from something—this might sound overly simple and repetitive, but the point is that many might imagine redemption is about the soul or spirit, in the sense of being religiously redeemed.  Religious redemption isn’t necessarily what redemption means—that is only one type of redemption.  A person can be redeemed from their abusive lifestyle or from sickness or from poverty.  The most important part of redemption, however, is that the person, the protagonist changes mentally.  That’s the point of redemption of any type.

You can have a redemption plot where the protagonist finds his or her place with God in a spiritual sense, but usually, and in most literature, that’s not what we are writing about.  We are writing about the change of heart and mind of the protagonist that propels them out of whatever bad place they happen to be.  This is why redemption is such a powerful and popular plot type, and especially an overall plot type.  The redemption plot is really the bread and butter of overall plots.  In fact, we pretty much expect these types of plots. 

It isn’t enough that Harry Potty overcome his enemies in whatever version of the seven novels about him, what really matters is how he has changed inside that allows him to overcome his doubts, fears, and problems so he can be redeemed by the end.  Now, Harry Potty is obviously an overall redemption plot, especially the first novel.  The others are all redemption to some degree or other.  They just aren’t as powerful as they should be, even as redemption plots.  What we really want in a novel is an full on redemption of the protagonist.  That’s what I plan in Aine.

Eoghan needs to find himself.  He really isn’t from an abusive background.  His parents are kind but controlling—that’s still not enough reason for redemption.  What Eoghan needs is to find what he really wants and to achieve it.  What I’m going to build is that Eoghan needs Aine and Aine needs Eoghan.  I want to put them together in a romance and helping relationship where they are both changed for the better.  Aine integrates into the modern world and Eoghan finds his place.  He will have to change mentally, emotionally, and intellectually to be achieve this—that’s a type of redemption.

2.     Revelation (o) –2e, 64, 1i – 60% - the revelation plot broadly precedes the redemption plot in history.  In this type of plot, the novel reveals usually a character but many times some other aspect in the world.  Because the protagonist is the focus of the novel, the revelation must be part of the protagonist and the telic flaw, but you can see the revelation can be a mystery or a crime the protagonist must solve. 

Revelation plots are still very popular and successful, but the revelation plot turns easily into a redemption plot.  Revelation very quickly turns to a need to be redeemed plot or the redemption premise becomes part of the redemption.  I’ll point out A Christmas Carol as an example  That’s a revelation plot with a redemption premise.  Another example is the Harry Potty books.  They are all redemption plots wrapped around revelation plots.

This is perhaps the best modern type of novel—it keeps the level of excitement high through revelations and the overall plot balanced with the redemption plot and the end or telic flaw.

That’s not to say you won’t find many purely revelation novels or redemption novels without a high degree of revelation, but revelation is a very powerful type of plot and overall plot.

What we can see already is that the overall plots are mixed up with each other in the same way the other plots are all mixed up with each other.

I intend the revelation plot to be a very large part of Aine.  From the first moment of the novel, the world of the supernatural and of the Scottish National Park system as well as certain aspects of British intelligence system.  That’s what my novels are all about.  Did I have to mention Eoghan’s and Eva’s family.  All these and more are revelation targets in the novel.     

3.     Achievement (o) – 16e, 19ei, 4i, 43 – 73% - notice all the classic with an achievement plot.  That’s because achievement was one of the first overall plots.  It fits very well into the scheme of the novel, but it was pretty quickly eclipsed by the revelation and the redemption plots because those are much more important once people get out of a starvation culture.  The achievement of certain overall goals still make a great overall plot, but once people have food in their bellies, a job, and purpose or at least entertainment, they become more interested in the whys rather than the whats.  When they have achieved, they are more interested in the reveling and the redeeming. 

This is also why young adult and children’s novels are usually about achievement rather than revelation and redemption.  Perhaps we should explain about achievement. 

Achievement, as a plot, is about achieving some goal.  Robinson Caruso is considered the first novel in the English language—it’s overall plot is all about rescue and survival.  Rescue and survival are obviously achievements.  There are some touches of revelation in the novel, but not many any there is no redemption.  Robinson Caruso didn’t need to change at all to achieve his goals—he needed to survive.

Then we get into the true Romantic Era with Sir Walter Scott.  One of his greatest works is Ivanhoe.  Ivanhoe is about achievement—the achievement of peace and success for the Saxons in Norman French England.  There are also touches of revelation, but achievement is the goal and the main point of the novel. 

That brings us into the Victorian Era and let’s pick one of those dead male writers academia shears to hate like Jane Austin, George Elliot, or maybe the Bronte sisters.  Oh, they are female authors in their own right and the crowns of the Victorian Era.  We should pick at least a male, like Dickens.  Look at Oliver Twist, for example, there is a novel about achievement with a huge touch of revelation.  The Moonstone is the first detective novel, and all about revelation.  Don’t forget Dracula, also all about revelation.  Then back to Jane and Pride and Prejudice, that is a novel almost entirely taken up with revelation with the final act the revelation of the affections of the antagonist for the protagonist.  The end is an achievement, matrimony, but everything else is all about revelation.  That then brings us up to the modern Romantic Era—the Modern Era for writing.  That’s the Era of redemption.  I won’t go over it again.

Back to achievement.  The achievement plot is the basis for all other plots.  Readers expect some achievement basis that then has a revelation and redemption component. So, what will be the achievement basis for Aine?

I think I’ll start with the idea of Eoghan becoming integrated into the Organization and the Stela part of the intelligence structure.  He has skills they could use as well as leadership skills from his mother.  Eva can also tag along with this basic achievement.  Aine herself wants to integrate and she wants the love of Eoghan.  That’s a great achievement. 

Achievement (a)

1.     Detective or mystery (a) – 56, 1e – 51%

2.     Revenge or vengeance (a) –3ie, 3e, 45 – 46%

3.     Zero to hero (a) – 29 – 26%

4.     Romance (a) –1ie, 41 – 37%

5.     Coming of age (a) –1ei, 25 – 23%

6.     Progress of technology (a) – 6 – 5%

7.     Discovery (a) – 3ie, 57 – 54%

8.     Money (a) – 2e, 26 – 25%

9.     Spoiled child (a) – 7 – 6%

10.  Legal (a) – 5 – 4%

11.  Adultery (qa) – 18 – 16%

12.  Self-discovery (a) – 3i, 12 – 13%

13.  Guilt or Crime (a) – 32 – 29%

14.  Proselytizing (a) – 4 – 4%

15.  Reason (a) – 10, 1ie – 10%

16.  Escape (a)  – 1ie, 23 – 21%

17.  Knowledge or Skill (a) – 26 – 23%

18.  Secrets (a) – 21 – 19%     

Quality (q)   

1.     Messiah (q) – 10 – 9%

2.     Adultery (qa) – 18 – 16%

3.     Rejected love (rejection) (q) – 1ei, 21 – 20%

4.                     Miscommunication (q) – 8 – 7%

5.                     Love triangle (q) – 14 – 12%

6.                     Betrayal (q) – 1i, 1ie, 46 – 43%

7.     Blood will out or fate (q) –1i, 1e, 26 – 25%

8.     Psychological (q) –1i, 45 – 41%

9.     Magic (q) – 8 – 7%

 

10.  Mistaken identity (q) – 18 – 16%

11.  Illness (q) – 1e, 19 – 18%

12.  Anti-hero (q) – 6 – 5%

13.  Immorality (q) – 3i, 8 – 10%

14.  Satire (q) – 10 – 9%

15.  Camaraderie (q) – 19 – 17%

16.  Curse (q) – 4 – 4%

17.  Insanity (q) – 8 – 7%

18.  Mentor (q) – 12 – 11%       

Setting (s) – the first stop in Greece was Olympus.  The tour was great, but the lunch okay.  I could have used a Greek salad and a Mythus beer, but there was an okay buffet.  I’ve been to Greece many times before and to Olympus more than once.  I set a couple of my novels in Greece.  I really like Greece.  I’ve even had my characters go to Olympus.  It was just as I described it and just as I remembered it.  However, they have a new entry and gatehouse.  Here’s where we write about setting and the setting plot.

Just by picking Greece and places in Greece as a setting, I’ve enacted a setting plot.  It happens to be Greece as a setting, and the reality is that Greece is a setting while a setting plot is a setting that automatically starts a type of plot based wholly on the setting, so, no, Greece is not a setting plot.  Greece is just a type of setting, and a great setting.

In a setting plot, the setting itself determines the plot.  This will become clearer as we develop the idea of a setting plot.  A great type of setting, like Greece, makes for a great setting—a great place to launch a plot.  This is why I choose very specific places or setting for my novels and my plots. 

If you haven’t noticed, I choose settings based very specifically on my protagonist and my characters.  The novels I set in Greece are there because of the protagonist and the characters.  Setting plots are similar, but different.  In general, a setting plot is a setting plot because of the type of plot as compared to the type of setting.  I really won’t get deeply into the details of building a setting, but suffice to say, the initial setting of the novel is critical to the novel.  It comes from the protagonist and the setting of the initial scene.  From there, the scenes build on their input and output sequences.  We’ll see how we might use setting plots in Aine.  

1.     End of the World (s) – 3 – 3% - I don’t intend to use any type of this plot although I think you can use a limited end of the world plot.  I want to explain how the setting creates or develops the plot.  In this case, if you have an end of the world setting, you will have an end of the world plot.  You can’t get away from it.  This is true of most (all) setting plots, and this is the problem with the setting plot.  If you have a certain type of setting, you pretty much must include that setting plot.  This is especially true of the end of the world plot.  In fact, I can’t imagine how you can’t have the end of the world plot without an end of the world setting and visa versa. 

Now, the bigger question is can you set up an end of the world plot that isn’t really about the end of the world—the answer is, yes.  As a matter of fact, Harry Potty is a limited end of the world plot.  How’s that?  Harry Potty is a limited end of the world plot.  The end of the world is the end of the wizarding world and the Harry Potty world.  Really, who cares?  That is, who cares about the end of the wizarding world that no one except the magic folks can even know?  The end of Harry Potty’s world doesn’t mean any negative affect on the rest of the world, but it gives you an understanding of how to write a limited end of the world plot. 

If it is the end of something important like a business, an era, a nation, an idea, a philosophy, a theology, or anything like that.  Anything that is valuable and that will change people’s lives or existence can be developed into an end of the world type plot, and used very well. 

I’m opposed to the end of the world plot because since Noah, it has been stale.  There really was an end of the world, the rest are just facetious and silly.  I mean really, the closest humanity has come to the end of the world is a nuclear war, but it hasn’t happened and even the couple of nuclear events that we know affected humanity, didn’t come close to destroying the world.  However, such an event, like the bombing of a city or destruction can be a limited end of the world plot. 

In the case of Aine, I could present an end of the world she knows, but that would only affect her and no one else.  An end of the world plot of any size must affect a large number of people.  One or two isn’t enough.  A business might be enough, but it should affect more than a few.  It should really affect a community.  So, I don’t think an end of the world plot is suitable for Aine.  A limited end of the world plot might be a great fit in some novels.  I don’t recommend an all out end of the world plot.

2.     War (s) – 20 – 18% - the war plot is perhaps the most useful plot in all literature.  It was totally misused and not used enough during the Victorian Era.  For some reason the Victorians were embarrassed by sex, sickness, toilet work, basics of work, household stuff, and war.  Why they didn’t like to write about war is silly to me.  Then the few war plots you get are real classics from the era, like Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.  The few war plots from this era are usually classics.  So, how can you use the war plot?

You can obviously go for the full-on war plot—you can place your novel in a war.  That setting can be either in the midst of the fighting, in support of the fighting, the home front with the soldiers, the home front with non-fighters, or about anything else you can think of.  This variety is what makes the war plot and the war setting so powerful.  It also brings up the question why the Victorians didn’t use the war plot when there were wars going on all around them and during their times.  They just didn’t like the war setting, I guess.  I love the war plot.

In my writing I use the cold war concept to develop my novels.  Not all of my writing has a war plot or setting, but much of it does.  Almost all of my published science fiction has a war plot and setting.  Much of my other fiction is set either during wars or in cold wars.  The intelligence setting (which is a war setting) makes for a great war plot.  Let me give you some ideas and write about it.

In the intelligence business, there is overt and covert operations.  Both of these support a war setting and a war plot—they aren’t about hot wars, usually, they are all about cold wars.  This was the basis for my work in the military.  I use the war setting in many if not most of my writing, and if it isn’t a war setting or plot, the novels or characters have a connection to the intelligence business and therefore to the war plot and setting.  For example, in Essie: Enchantment and the Aos Si, the Aos Si is characterized as being at war with Ceridwen and therefore with England.  In addition, in the same novel, Mrs. Lyons is the wife of Lt Col Lyons who runs the Organization a language intelligence service and operation under the MI structure (it used to be MI-19).  So, even this novel that is only loosely connected to a war setting is really a war plot with a war setting.  Who would imagine.

The intelligence structure and operations make for great war settings even when they are not full-on war settings.  This is the type of environment (setting) I like to work with and in.  Aine will be like this, too.

In Aine, Eoghan and his family are connected to the intelligence structure through the Organization (MI-19) and Stela, a branch under the Organization that protects Britain from the supernatural.  This automatically places the setting in a type of war setting—it is an intelligence and cold war type setup, but the challenge is from the supernatural as well as the other political and hegemonic enemies of Britain.  The intelligence agents and operatives are working to protect and help protect Britain even if there is no hot war going on.  I’ll describe more about how I’ll use this plot and setting, next.

We have Eoghan who is an agent for Stela—even if he doesn’t fully understand what Stela is.  Steal, I’ll remind you is the British intelligence agency under the Organization that is the past MI-19.  I guess I’ll write about the MI structure just for kicks and grins. 

In WWII, the MI structure included MI-1 through MI-19 excluding MI-13 and MI-18.  They just weren’t used.  All the MIs except MI-5, MI-6, and MI-19 were absorbed into MI-5 and MI-6 or other military and civilian government agencies.  We know what happened to MI-5 and MI-6—they are still around.  The big question is what happened to MI-19.  I have no real idea, but MI-19 was the prisoner interrogation arm of the MI structure.  It handled mostly Germans, but obviously all the other prisoners.  To do that, you need to be able to speak the languages of the prisoners.  Every military intelligence system or structure must have a foreign language group attached to it.  A foreign language group handles three levels of language intelligence. 

1.     Basic language intelligence – this is the detailed knowledge of a foreign language for the purpose of training, translations, and education.  These are operatives who may be first language speakers of the foreign language.  These people understand, for example, English and their primary language very well, their language perfectly, but may have accents and not a perfect understanding of English.  They can’t pass as a British citizen in their appearance or their English pronunciation.

2.     Mid-grade language intelligence – these are British citizens whose primary language is usually British English, but their secondary language is good, but not perfect.  Their appearance usually doesn’t matter.  They don’t need to look or sound like a perfect British citizen, but they usually need to seem like a British citizen.  These are the operatives who usually accomplish prisoner interrogations and expatriate and defector debriefings.  They can additionally occasionally be used as basic language operatives, but usually their secondary language skills aren’t good enough to be basic language operatives.  Usually, they have accents in their secondary language that makes them unusable in the highest classification of language spies.

3.     Language intelligence agents—these are British citizens whose primary language is British English, who have one or more secondary languages that they learned in the country of question, and who look undoubtably like a British citizen.  Their language skill in English is perfect with no foreign accent and their secondary language skill is street level with no British accent.  These are your covert agents.  I should note that there is a subgroup of these agents who might understand a secondary language perfectly, but have some accent.  These are less useful, but can play a role as an agent.  The characters I usually write about are these agents.

Let me explain a little bit about language intelligence.  I guess I’ll do that next.

Where is MI-19?  Nations don’t get rid of their most powerful intelligence organizations.  That’s why in my novels, MI-19 became, the Organization.  They support foreign language operations and provide foreign language operatives and agents to the system.  Their agents and operatives are found in the other military intelligence agencies, MI-5 and MI-6, and specifically in the foreign office.  Most of the Organization’s operatives are in the Organization, but some are shared with other intelligence and government offices.  The greatest use of agents is in the foreign office and in MI-6.  Here’s why.

There are many uses for language intelligence assets, but the highest use is the covert surveillance of foreign actors.  This usually happens around the embassies and foreign dignitaries like ambassadors.  The most common overt and covert operations are just listening through all kinds of means to foreign actors.  For listening, in this sense, you don’t need the really high end level three language intelligence agents—you just need operatives at the first level.  However, for covert operations, you must have level three agents.  What exactly does a level three agent do?  In language intelligence, these are listeners who, look like they could never be listeners.  This is the backbone of covert language operations.  In the main, these are the young and totally British looking secretaries, guards, muscle, and lower level people who are full-on language experts with intimate understanding of the targeted language or languages.  They might accompany an ambassador in all kinds of capacities, and they act in these capacities, but their real reason for being is that they can surreptitiously listen and report on conversations around them.  They are rarely known to the ambassador or British secretary.  They never let on their language skills because that would compromise their covert positions and the effectiveness.  If an enemy sees a lower level pure British looking subject in a group, they are very likely to communicate openly with other members of their own group in a way that might give up great intelligence.  Plus, these agents can check translators and translations.  The reports go secretly through the intel system and come back to the ambassador or secretary via classified means.  Meanwhile, no one expects the lower level secretary to the ambassador or secretary.  The enemy feels like they can speak plainly around them.  This is also why guards and muscle make great covert language agents—who would expect the MI-6 muscle protecting an ambassador or secretary to know the language?  Especially those who don’t look like the culture or society in question.  That’s why looking like a common British citizen is important.  Remember the first language and covert agent of the Brits in India?  At least the first written about in a novel.  Don’t you remember Kim by Rudyard Kipling? 

Kim was a child who was brought up and lived on the streets of India.  He was the child of a Brit and an Irishman.  He looked nothing like the Indians around him, but he knew their languages at the street level, and he knew the people and their culture at an intimate level.  He was, for all practical purposes, an Indian person in the body of a British citizen—this is the perfect language intelligence asset and agent (spy).  How do you get a person like this?  I’ll show you that, next.

Like Kim, language spies and agents, in general, came and come from those children born of British citizens who grew up in foreign environments.  These are many times the children of foreign secretaries, ambassadors, and military people.  As the British empire wound down and caved in on itself, another and better source became more prevalent—missionaries.  The children of foreign secretaries and ambassadors are only a small resource and tend to be of the class that doesn’t need much employment.  The British military has been reduced to mostly embassy assignments.  Missionaries go to very exotic locations, live there, and have children.  Their children grow up learning the languages on the street—they are the main modern source of the level three language agents.  The only other source comes from mixed families, however, there are a couple of problems with these.  The first is that a great language agent looks completely British and not like they could ever understand the language.  That allows covert actions and operations.  The other is accent and street wise understanding of the culture.  Unless properly trained, many mixed families don’t pass the necessary accents and street understanding of their own cultures as well as the British culture.  Both are necessary.

There are also infiltration operations and covert operations within groups as agents, however, these are less common and there is an obvious tendency to use local people and not citizens in these operations.  A British citizen caught in covert operations within another country faces exposure, punishment, and potentially death.  On the other hand, a foreign national caught operating either legally or illegally in their own nation can be tried for treason, but usually such indirect connections, especially in the third world, are difficult to expose and more difficult to prosecute.  The fact a citizen is selling or discovering information for Britian in their own nation usually has a commercial reason, however, if a little military or other information happens to make it into the briefing, who’s to say it wasn’t just for commercial reasons.  So, how do you use these language experts, and how will I use them in Aine?  That’s next.

I’ve used the language experts, operatives and agents from the Organization and Stela in my novels as embassy secretaries and muscle as well as operatives in the Organization.  I follow the main tenants of the language intelligence structure.  Many of my characters are shares from the Organization.  They work in MI-6.  I haven’t written about MI-5.  I’m not as familiar with their operations.  You might ask why I write about the French and British language intelligence and intelligence operations when I’m not British or French.  The reason is easy.  I used to work for the US government in Special Missions and Special Operations.  I can’t write about those operations, but I can write about the similar British and French operations because they are similar. 

In Aine, I will use the Organization and Stela as the main agencies of Eoghan and his family.  In my finished novel, Deirdre: Enchantment and the School Dierdre and Sorcha met Elaina who is the mother of Eoghan.  Elaina was recruited by Luna Bolang for Stela.  She has issues and powers.  I already mentioned about this, and they directly affect Eoghan and his sister. 

Much of the novel will be about the problem of Aine which is that she is a goddess and Stela would be very interested in her is they knew about her.  That’s the secret and one of the mysteries.  The readers and Eoghan will know who Aine is from the beginning, but the fun use of the reveal of this secret will be a driver in the novel.  Both the reveal and the threat of revelation will be the fun and entertaining part of the novel.  This will have a lot to do with Stela and the Organization.  Stela because of the supernatural, but the Organization because of the language.  This is where we get the language intelligence and the war plot. 

Eoghan is trained in modern English, Celtic, Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon, the Fae language, and maybe other ancient British languages.  These are his language skills for the Organization.  These re his intelligence skills, and he will need them. He will have to be the communicator and translator for Aine.  His sister, Eva, will be about to communicate in these languages as well.

The war will be a cold one that threatens to become a hot one.  The war will be the silent one between the supernatural forces, the gods, goddesses, Fae, and other creatures and the humans.  There is some degree of conflict between humans and the Fae because of land.  Other creatures have their disputes with humans as well—that is Eoghan’s job, to make things right with the Fae.  Aine is supernatural, so she will fit into the bailiwick of Eoghan and his sister.  The problem will be that Eoghan and Eva will want to keep Aine’s existence and being on the down low.  There will be many reasons for this, but if you can imagine that Aine is not just a goddess, but a Fae Queen, as well as a symbol of the power of Ireland, then you might be able to see some of the real issues she could cause, or that her presence could cause.  This will be the war setting and the war plot.  It’s not a full on setting or plot, but it’s like the cold war with secrets and secret actions.  We’ll see how this all works out, but that’s about it for the war setting and plot.         

3.     Anti-war (s) –2 – 2% - if you notice there are only two classics that have an anti-war plot—the reason should be obvious to the most casual observer.  Anyone who has any knowledge of history knows that anti-war is much more dangerous for humans than war.  History shows that a war can completely end not just a nation but a society and a culture.  The Carthaginians, for example, were completely eradicated as a people, a culture, and a nation.  They were about the most evil culture known to man—infant slaughter (sacrifice) and other atrocities, and the Romans finally got tired of fighting them.  In the third war against them, they annihilated their people, their capital, tore it down and salted the ground.  It was a great day for humanity, but a lesson for the ages that war can indeed solve a problem and end real evil. 

The trite claim that war doesn’t solve anything is haunted by the ghosts of the Carthaginians—war did, indeed solve all their problems.  So, you might think that we should promote anti-war so we don’t end up like the Carthaginians.  Not so, we should promote security like the Greeks and Romans so we don’t end up like the Carthaginians.  That’s the lesson of history.  Anit-war is considered an irrational idea and plot, and although many have used it, there are only two classics and they are basically worthless, in my opinion.  Plus anti-war doesn’t provide a great setting or plot anyway. 

If you want to use an anti-war plot, I’d recommend it as a satire.  I don’t intend to use the anti-war plot in Aine.  I might introduce a little satire about anti-war because of just who Aine is, but I don’t know how I might introduce or use it at the moment. 

4.     Travel (s) –1e, 62 – 56% - it’s pretty ironic that three of the most important and earliest novels are based on a travel plot: Genji, Don Quixote, and Robinson Caruso.  The reason this is ironic is that many if not most of the novels between the earliest and the modern tend not to include travel plots.  As the Victorian Era came to an end and in Romantic plotted and protagonisted novels we see them take off with many travel based plots.  For example, almost everything Robert Louis Stevenson wrote has a travel plot.  Stevenson was a Romantic writer and one of the Victorian Era breakout writers.  Some of Dickens’ novels include travel plots, however, most of the Victorians didn’t change their settings much or move their characters.

If you remember, one of the major characteristics of the Romantic protagonist is travel—usually from their rural roots to the urban, at least at first.  What the modern world brought, along with all the other conveniences was the ability to travel quickly and easily.  In England, the train started this general ability to travel, but the automobile, plane, and others brought about the revolution in travel.  I already noted Romantic characters tend to move away from their rural roots to the urban, they also travel a lot.  The travel plot isn’t just the initial plot, like Robinson Caruso that starts the novel, it can also be like Don Quixote, and propel the entire plot.  What is interesting is we see this penchant to travel in the earlier epics just think of The Odessey, The Iliad, as well as the Arthur, Parzival, and Osorio epics.  Even Beowulf includes a travel plot.  It’s funny that writing seemed to settle down a little in a certain period.  In any case, we see the travel plot well used in the classics. 

My novels all have a Romantic plot and Romantic protagonists, you can guess, there must be travel plots in all my novels.  I love travel plots, and you should too.  Travel plots are primo just because we want to start our Romantic protagonist in the rural and then move them to an even more interesting and unfamiliar urban setting.  The urban setting allows them to really use their special skills—those generally developed in their original setting.  Harry Potty runs this a little backward, which is a great use of the travel plot.  Her characters generally start in the urban, but then move to the rural, which is Hogwarts.  Intermittently, we get movement back and forth rural to urban and urban to rural.  The use of the travel plot is especially well developed in Harry Potty.  If you notice, this is the most proper use of the travel plot, plus, a novel doesn’t really include a travel plot unless something happens during the travels.  Harry Potty’s travel plots usually use the primary travel to introduce new characters, introduce plots, do a little foreshadowing, and all.  A terrible use of a travel plot is where your characters just take a bus somewhere, the bus, train, plane, automobile ride are all opportunities for dialog and communication.  Dialog from the writer’s standpoint, and communication from the character’s standpoint.  There are many other things you can do during the travel.  In my novel, Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment, Rose sets up training for Seoirse during their helicopter trip from Monmouth to the Isle of Shadows.  At the same time, Rose trains her cadets, but we don’t get to see this, we just know of it from the dialog between Seoirse and his instructor.  Great use of a helicopter trip, that’s just what Rose thought, and one of her tools to continue to encourage and seduce Seoirse.  Now, about the use of the travel plot in Aine.  I’ll write about that, next.  

Aine starts with a travel plot.  Eoghan is traveling to a Scottish National Park to get rid of a Fae issue.  When I write get rid of, I mean to negotiate and accommodate.  The Fae are too powerful for even some other Fae to handle, so unless we are writing about Rose or one of the Fae royalty, there is little chance to defeat the Fae.  This traveling gets Eoghan in the vicinity of Aine and her place of incarceration. 

The second travel plot is when Aine and Eoghan head back to his place.  Then there must be a third and perhaps a forth travel plot when Aine and Eoghan go to Stela HQ and then to the training points as required.  I’m not sure at all how I’ll work this last part out, but the rest is pretty clear.  All the circumstances of this novel point to the need and development of travel plots to resolve the telic flaw issue.  Recognize that Eoghan is a Romantic protagonist.  He must move from the rural to the urban or close enough. He will eventually go from Scotland to London, definitely a movement from rural to urban.  In addition, Eoghan will need to move around more than that to accommodate and work with Aine.  Aine is an especially troublesome girl.  That’s what makes things fun. 

The travel plots will be introduced as plots or developments for Eoghan, Aine, and Eva to prosper and to grow.  They will be happy to get out from under Eoghan and Eva’s parents.  Their parents are nice, but ewww.

That’s not eww in a nasty sense, but eww in a parental overcontrol helicopter mother sense.  I think I’ll play the father as helping, but I’ll be careful about it.  We don’t need father to get on the bad side of mother, especially with her powers.  Aine is pretty powerful too, but she won’t want to use her powers against her declared boyfriend’s mother.  She’s not stupid.

We will have and develop a fun travel plot based on all of this, but they will be supporting and not overall plots.  Remember, the overall plot is a redemption plot based on Eoghan’s needs.  We’ll work toward that. 

Here’s my conclusions about the travel plot.  I’m not sure you can write any good modern novel without some travel plot.  A Romantic protagonist demands a good travel plot, at least moving from the rural to the urban.  You might put this plot ahead of the initial scene, that’s possible, but difficult to work out.  Even if the protagonist mustn’t travel to get to the urban, there are more reasons for travel and especially in the modern world and with a Romantic protagonist.  Travel is just a good common plot in all modern novels—use it when necessary.      

5.     Totalitarian (s) – 1e, 8 – 8% - the totalitarian plot is a very modern plot.  In the Victorian Era, everyone except the USA was under a monarchy—wait for it, a monarchy is always a totalitarian regime therefore all Victorian and other novels under a government with a king was a totalitarian plot.  In the Victorian Era, no one knew or cared about being in a totalitarian regime.  Today, we know better, I guess. 

Look, a totalitarian plot is a plot that involves the government as a non-republic.  You might even say non-democratic, but many democratic governments in history have been considered tyrannical and totalitarian.  The totalitarian plot is about a plot where the government extends its power into the realm of normal human operations.  This is why most Victorian and other plots aren’t considered totalitarian.  The monarch might have been dictators, but they mainly left the people alone.  If the kings or queens got involved with the people, negatively, that’s a totalitarian plot. 

In modern Britian, I think there is scope for an easy totalitarian plot, but most people don’t see the British government that way so it is hard to make that argument.  On the other hand, I have used in novels, the Soviet regime, the Chinese Communist Regime, the German National Socialist (Nazi) regime, and the Vichy French Regime—and these are definitely totalitarian.  Additionally, I have used a science fiction world setting in Escape from Freedom which is also a totalitarian regime. 

As I noted, I don’t intend to put a totalitarian plot in Aine.  I could, but I don’t think it would resonate or be very worthwhile for the novel.  That’s about it.  I’ll move to the next plot.  

6.     Horror (s) – 15 – 13% - ho ho, this is one of the best plots ever because it can reside in almost any novel from comedy to whatever.  You don’t have to have a horror novel to include a little horror. 

All horror is, is a little fear, scaring, or disturbing.  Hey, there are many definitions for horror, but I think you get the idea.  If you can understand this about fear, scaring, and disturbing, it’s all about feeling and pathos.  It’s the pathos of the reader not the characters—or rather, the pathos created by the author fills the reader and not the characters.  We want our readers to feel fear, be scared, or be disturbed.  I’m not so much into disturbed because we aren’t about grossing out our readers, but pulling them a little out of their comfort zone is what horror is about.  How do we invoke horror?

I’d say it’s all about setting, feeling, and style.  In this case, I’m going to ask you to change up your style.  You might like to write unicorns and rainbows—that’s great, but a few dangerous unicorns or ominous rainbows can move the tension in the scene to horror—okay a little fear.  This is what I’m aiming for.

When you present a scene—set a scene that is supposed to be scary and tense, set it to be scary and tense.  That’s all that horror is.  My point is that there is no reason to shy away from a little horror.  Some people even make a living and write horror based novels.  My novel, Escape from Freedom could be considered a horror novel.  I’ll go with that—it’s about a communist totalitarian state in a science fiction world, and it’s pretty horrific.  In my other novels, I feel for the scene and interject a little fear when it feels right.  The point there is to incite the emotions of the reader.  I’d like my readers to feel emotions like fear for my characters.  A little horror is just the thing, and when I write horror, you are supposed to understand: fear, scared, and possibly disturbed.  There is even room for your characters to be disturbing.

I don’t mean disturbing in the sense of morality or ethics or crime, there are many things in life that can be disturbing but not be wrong—like the five second rule.  I don’t think I’ve used this before, but a character from a starvation culture would never waste food no matter the problem.  A little dirt, muck, sand or whatever, they would eat it.  That might be disturbing to many readers.  How about eating insects or grubs.  It’s disturbing—it’s by definition horror.  As long as it doesn’t kick the reader out of the suspension of disbelief, it’s a great means of producing pathos.  I’ll look at how I might use horror in Aine, next.

This is the ultimate question about writing—when can I just throw in a plot I’d like to use?  Okay, perhaps not the ultimate question, but it’s one of the main questions I like to think about in writing.  When we write, we want to interject plots into a scene so we can use them for entertainment and excitement.  In this case, we want interject a horror plot into the scene or perhaps a few scenes for exactly that purpose.  We want some entertainment and excitement.  The question then, is how do we get some of this into Aine?

The first scene in Aine is basically pretty creepy.  We have Eoghan in an ancient Anglo-Saxon cemetery.  This is horror without any other actions.  We want to keep this going.  We will build the scene with more and more horror.  This isn’t a horror novel, but the beginning is filled with horror.  I think this is the perfect use of the horror plot in a horror scene.  This horror is produced by the circumstances and the setting.  As the scene progresses, the action and the narration in the scene develops this horror.  What can be more horrific than a person held captive for thousands of years and finally released.  That’s maybe more of a tail of salvation and rescue, but the point is this.  Aine who has been held captive for thousands of years is released into the world.  She is dirty, naked, confused, upset, and very happy.  Who wouldn’t be if they were released from that kind of prison.  This is the situation and circumstances Aine and Eoghan find themselves in.  We have Aine, and we have Eoghan.  We have a scary setting and scary circumstances.  The point is to use these in a horror plot to entertain our readers—that’s my point.  I want to use the circumstances and the setting to build the plot into a horror plot.  In this way, we have chosen a plot and a horror plot, at that.

This is the point.  I can’t always and everywhere interject a horror plot, but there are many times when I can.  In this case, the circumstances fit the idea and situation of the horror plot.  In this case, I want to accentuate and use the plots involved to build a horror plot.  The point is to make the writing more exciting and entertaining. 

So, we can see that in this novel, the horror plot is a natural fit especially for the beginning.  It will get harder and harder to interject such a plot in the later points of the novel, or it should.  Perhaps it shouldn’t.  The main idea here is that in writing in we pick and choose scenes to increase the tension in the scene—horror is a natural tension.  I suspect there are other opportunities to use horror in Aine.  I just have to get to them.  That’s part of the power of writing.  We build scenes and add plots to support them.  Horror is a powerful and easy to use type of plot.  I will use it through Aine, and perhaps more than I’m expressing at this moment.    

7.     Children (s) – 24 – 21% - here is a great plot but one I’m not certain I can use in Aine.  I might be able to fit it in, but it might be difficult.  The children plot is a very modern plot.  It has been used, not so much as a plot, but as a pathos developer in older novels.  You can pretty much see the evolution of the children setting to a plot in the Victorian Era.  Dickens introduced children in A Christmas Carol, but there is really no children’s plot.  The plot is adult with children as part of the setting to provide some pathos—think Tiny Tim. 

Where the children’s plot comes into its own is as the Victorian Era gives way to the modern and the modern Romantic.  The idea of real children in a plot comes basically from the very important novel What Katy Did.  This was a seminal novel for children and about children.  The children were the focus and they weren’t handled like young adults.  They were children with the thoughts and feelings of children.  Perhaps some of the most interesting novels out of this period of great change are Mark Twain’s novels for boys and girls as well as Robert Louis Stevenson and The Wind in the Willows.  Once the bridge had been crossed, the concept of writing novels for children drove the further idea of novels wholly about children.  We move from Robert Louis Stevenson’s and Mark Twain’s children being pushed into the adult world with little help from adults to the novels of Brazil and others where the children are children facing real but not adult problems.  These are uniquely children’s plots. 

It is still a children plot when children are introduced into an adult novel either as students or as wards and just kids in a family.  I did this in my Aegypt (Ancient Light) novels.  There, the Bolang Children became a necessary part of the novel and drove plots and scenes that led directly to saving their mother and father.  Again, I don’t see this in Aine, but I will write, next, how Aine could include a children’s plot.

To build a children’s plot, we need children.  Youth will work, but the characters must be handled like children and not like adults.  The best ways to do this is first, make children.  I did this for Aegypt.  The Bolong’s had four children and the children were children for two novels and grew up.  The second is to train children.  This is using a training or teaching plot with children.  I’ve incorporated these types of plots in my novels but not usually with children.  In Essie: Assignment and the Aos Si, I had the childlike person Essie being raised by Mrs. Lyons.  This was a great and entertaining novel and plot.  Third, you can bring in children in other ways—usually not as the protagonist’s children or as students, but as walk-ons.  This is perhaps the best way to introduce a children’s plot. 

How could we develop this in Aine?  I could make her a preschool teacher, ha ha.  Don’t think so.  This might take too long to build for Aine, but it is an interesting way to write the novel—at least bring her into a special class for special children.  That might be a fun show and tell.  That is have Eoghan bring Aine for show and tell.  This is worth thinking about.  I could use Aine as a show and tell for many other classes and training involving the Organization and Stela. 

I’m not sure I want to have Aine and Eoghan have a child this quickly, we are moving in that direction.  Most of the time, I present the first blush of love (meeting and romance).  I sometimes play the second stage of love (marriage).  I love to build on the third stage of love, that is after marriage sometimes with children and many times without. 

Perhaps the way I’ll do this is with bringing in other people’s children.  This is a great method and one I’ve done a few times.  In fact, I should have mentioned in the last paragraph that I routinely bring in the first stage of love in a novel and then use the protagonists later after they have had children and been married as side characters.  That seems to be very successful.  In the case of Aine, I’m certain I have a host of children and youth I could being into her life and Eoghan’s life for this novel.  In addition, there is the Ceridwen in this generation who happens to be about two years old.  I wanted to being Rose and Seoirse in as her adopted parents for many reasons.  As a sideline, this is how I develop long term stories and storylines in my novels.  I wrote about Rose because she was a very interesting and powerful protagonist, but in the back of my mind, I’ve had a need to bring in the foster parent for Ceridwen.  This is a foreshadowed and active theme deep in the novels since I brought in Kathrin, the last Ceridwen and included her in multiple novels as a protagonist and as a side character.  This is the way of building worlds for your novels and not just stories.    

8.     Historical (s) – 19 – 17% - it’s all historical, baby.  Actually, for many novels that’s not true, but it’s a character and author’s issue and not an issue with the historical plot.  I assert that every novel that isn’t science fiction or created fantasy must be or should be historical in nature. 

I don’t use made up places.  I don’t use made up history.  I don’t use made up people (who really exist).  I do modify information based on potential history, but all my made up stuff is based in history and might be true.  I do change places to meet the needs of the novel.  I make up all the main, major, and protagonists.  My novels are all reflected worldview—so they all include the history of the times and the world and the place, but they also include those ideas that things people think might or have faith could exist.  My novels are historical to the highest degree I can make them.

This is kind of a difficult subject to address because I understand exactly what I am expressing, but I’m not certain many people understand the idea of plotting a novel in history and reality.  I’ll try to give some examples.  In the broadest sense, my novels include a British intelligence agency I call the Organization.  This agency is based in MI-19 from World War II.  Anyone in the business knows language intelligence is one of the foundations of national security.  Where did MI-19 go?  I give it a new name and some new work, and I fit it into the world of my novels.  Is there the Organization in Britain?  I’m sure something is still there, it’s classified.  That’s what the Organization is like.  It’s a step above the highest classified levels of MI-5 and MI-6.  In fact, it supplies shares to both, and to other intelligence organizations like the Foreign Office.  All this is based on history and the historical.

Then I also have Stela.  Stela is the part of the Organization that protects Britian from the supernatural.  It’s not really based on real history.  This organization is based on the history I developed in my novels.  It happens to be in the Organization because it was founded by Bruce Lyons who ran MI-19 at the end of World War Two.  Bruce was a major character in many of my novels.  This is all based on the reflected worldview from my novels.  That reflected worldview is completely based on history.  How can that be? 

The reflected worldview is based on what people believe and not what is necessarily real.  For example vampires.  Everyone knows about vampires.  Are they real?  In some ages most people believed in vampires.  Today, everyone knows what a vampire is, but do they really believe in vampires?  A reflected worldview allows vampires to exist in the world of the novel.  In a real worldview, there can’t be vampires, but in a reflected worldview there certainly can.  Think about any supernatural creature or being you know about.  They can exist in a reflected worldview.  In fact, a great reflected worldview can give reasons why and how such creatures can exist.  It also provides reasons how such creatures might coexist with humans in the real world and yet normal humans have no idea such creatures are around them.  There is much more to this.  I’ll write about it, next.

The historical is more than just what really happened in the world.  The historical includes the real, the imagined, and the supernatural.  How do I know?  Today, every Sunday, along with other days, Christians go to church.  On Shabat, Jewish people go to synagogue.  Likewise, others of other religious groups go to their own services and ceremonies.  Much of their creeds and theology is based in history.  For example, Christianity and Judaism are both historically based religions—they are wholly based in historical events.  Others not so much, but the focus of all of them are aspects of the supernatural in the world and in history.  This is a part of the reflected worldview. 

In addition, the feelings and perceptions of people may not be real—they may be caused and affected by emotions and imagination.  These are still real, and they are historical, but they aren’t like historical events, however, they can be recorded and, as I noted, they are real parts of history, they just aren’t the kinds of things you can take a picture of. 

Here’s the main point.  In my novel, Aine, if someone searches for information about Aine, the world of Aine, the world of Eoghan, and their times, that’s history, they will find exactly the world I will describe.  In addition, I will include all the historical reflected worldview stuff in a cohesive fashion that will interact with and interweave the real and completely historical.  I’ll also provide reasons and show how this reflected world coexists with our own, but we don’t usually see or perceive it.  You all know the drill.

Only the sensitive can perceive the world of the Fae or the creatures of the supernatural.  Occasionally, people get a glimpse through some revelation of the supernatural, but usually, we assume it is there around us, we just don’t know.  Here’s an example.

I know of a great restaurant in New Mexico that is in an old hacienda mansion.  One of the rooms is reputed to be haunted by a maid with whom one of the sons of the house fell in love, but they were never allowed to marry.  The ghost of the maid supposedly haunts this room.  We always tell the story and then tell our fellow diners to sit in each corner of the room and see if they can feel the presence of the ghost.  Many if not all will say one of the corners is colder than the others.  Great story, fun test, is it real or Memorex.  I’m not telling, I think it’s a perfect image of the reflected worldview.  I’ll look closer into the historical and the reflected, next.

What I want to do and what I recommend in all writing is to ground your writing in the real world.  In fact my third rule of writing is this:

3. Ground your readers in the writing.

This is a very general statement for something that to me is very specific.  What I mean and what I do is to set my writing in the real and the reflected world, and most specifically the history and places of the real world. 

My characters don’t just go to some place in some town.  My characters live in a real place (as real as possible), in a real town, where the streets, places, and spaces are all real, and where the insides of the buildings are all the real insides with the same furniture, if I can get to that level.  In other words, I don’t ever make up what I don’t have to make up.  Let me explain.

When I need a place for a setting, for example, I research that place.  In the case of my novel, Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, I looked for a possible haunted house in the Orkney Islands.  I wanted the Orkneys for the isolation and the place because I was going to use a nuclear smuggling operation by the Chinese and the Russians as the main reason for both Shiggy and Robyn’s parents being assigned there.  My research gave me Viera Lodge, which is luckily on the market for sale with all kinds of pictures and a house plan.  I could use this place for my setting and my character, Rose.  I didn’t need to make up a place, I just needed to use a real place.  Some of the details had to be made up because not all the information we need to write is in the descriptions and such.  I know exactly what I’m adding and what I’m doing with the information.  I can get details for travel and for streets and for places from the satellite maps and other map information.  There is so much more to this.

If I need a place, like a lake or a river or a creek or a forest or a building or a clearing, guess where you can research and find this information?  In the past, I had to find maps or visit these places or at the extreme just make it up.  The specific was hard to find, but the general was always there.  Today, I can get all this information, and I can provide it in the settings of the novel.  My characters no longer just travel, they go on Gooseberry Street to the A901 to their destination, and so on.  In addition, my characters wear real clothing.  An example.

When one of my prepublication readers provided comments on Sister of Light, he mentioned that I should specifically say the clothing designers and more details.  I took this to heart.  I have a character, Rose, who is playing an act as a debutant and aristocrat.  Her clothing is not just the best, it is designer clothing.  She rarely wears less than 10,000 pounds worth of clothing at any time, and that’s including her handmade French knickers.  I guess I’ll explain more about this, next.   

With the research tools available to the writer today, it is very easy to include specific and exacting details in our writing.  I do just that.  As I mentioned, I research all my settings.  Sometimes this is just looking at a satellite map.  If I can, I’ll get to the street view.  I’m doing research with the tools available that would require travel and experience to write about.  Let me tell you how I did it in the past.

All my novels include extensive and extensively researched settings and history.  For Aegypt, I took out every map I could get from the library and from atlases.  I studied the places and read books on my setting (Tunisia) as well as the French Foreign Legion that was the basis for this novel set in 1926.  I additionally read hundreds of books on hieroglyphics and ancient Egypt.  With this information, I was able to set, describe, and write about the subject, Tunisia, Fort Saint, the people, my characters, the Foreign Legion, as well as all of the other places around Fort Saint.  I wasn’t able to travel there for professional and diplomatic reasons, but a great novel, Aegypt and the first novel in the Ancient Light series was birthed.  Today, instead of two years worth of research, I could have written Aegypt in about a month.  I took five years to research and write Centurion.  All my novels are filled with complete historical accuracy, at least the best I could achieve.  As I’ve aged and gained experience, the novels have become better and even more detailed and accurate.  This is what I wanted to express about clothing and especially woman’s clothing.

As I noted, one of my author friends who also provided me some great comments about Sister of Light, the second Aegypt and Ancient Light novel, recommended I give very specific details about the clothing Leora Bolang wore.  Here’s what I wrote:

      Leora provided a striking vision in pale-blue silk.  She wore a dress Paul had bought for her the day before.  Although the gown came from a rack on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, it flowed over her body as though its designer had only her in mind.  The modestly slit hemline floated on air; it just kissed the top of her petite, high-heeled Arnoult slippers.  A thin silken cord encircled her neck and allowed the teasing neckline to accentuate her gentle bosom.  To complete the ensemble, she grasped a small gold colored clutch with three-quarter length gloves that matched the azure of her dress.

At the time, the ability to accomplish research on women’s and men’s clothing wasn’t as good as it is today, plus I had to work with fashion and fashions from 1927 and not today.  That required a little more in depth study, but I think you get the point, right. 

For my more modern novels, I can simply research on the internet the clothing styles and designer fashions I want my characters to wear.  Yes, much or many of the outfits my characters wear are ready made, but still, to cloth them in each scene, I look at fashion and I describe the clothing from the real world.  They are wearing clothing that is from the real world.  They are wearing it in settings from the real world.  Here’s an example from Rose: Enchantment and the Flower:

By that time, Bob was taking away the last of the empty trunks.  Robyn rummaged through her clothing, “Hey Rose, what kind of stuff should we change into?  She held up a frock.”

Rose went over to her, “Do you have jeans and a nice top?”

“Do you think they’ll be wearing jeans?”

“I can promise you they all will be.”  Rose went to her drawers and pulled out a pair of Dolce & Gabbana jeans.  They were slightly distressed and faded with embroidered butterflies. The Dolce & Gabbana logo was engraved in gold on the front left pocket while a pink patch marked the back pocket.  She also pulled out a white embellished Gucci woolen top with a slight nautical flare.

Alice couldn’t help herself.  She towed Leora out of the door of the room, “Leora, did you realize Lady Tash is planning to wear a thousand-pound pair of jeans to supper in a catered girl’s school cafeteria?”

Leora tapped her chin, “The top cost a bit more than that, but who can tell the aristocracy what they can or can’t wear.”

Alice grabbed her hand, “I thought she was one of yours.”  She whispered, “This is not the girl from Rousay.”  Then louder, “How is this Lady supposed to look after my Robyn?”

Leora held back her laughter, “Lady Tash is Lady Tash.  You need not worry a single bit about her or your Robyn.  I can assure you of that.”

Alice took a concerned glance back into the room. 

This is the level of detail I’m able to provide my readers.  I hope I’m giving sufficient description for the general reading crowd, but anyone who recognizes the designers and the brands will understand even more.  That’s what I tried to show with the dialog surrounding the clothing.  This is how I balance the clothing description, the clothing specifics, and the understanding of the readers.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak in placing history and realism in a novel.  I’ll look a little more at the setting, next.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll go over it again, because this is all about how to interject the historical, real, and reflected into your writing.  When I need a place, like a restaurant, I go researching just the place I need in the place I need it.  For example, in Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse, I needed a place for my characters to have a nice dinner in Edwinstowe near Nottingham Forest.  I just found the perfect place for my characters to eat and have a little discussion.  I used descriptions of the place enhanced with a little fiction and the actual menus to describe the meals.  With all of this, I didn’t have to make up anything, I just used what existed in the real world to reflect the real world.  There, I used reflect in the exact sense of the reflected worldview because that worldview is pretty much the same in the sense of the real world. 

I use this concept of research for all my novels.  When I need a place, I don’t make up fiction, I use a real place.  If you think this is unusual or in some way not kosher in writing, think about the bigger types of images and places writers use.  If I included New York, London, Dublin, or any other main city in the world, no one would bat an eye.  If my characters visited Times Square or Trafalgar Square or the Spanish Steps in Rome, no one would think that odd.  So why would it be odd to use the Denny’s down the street in some Podunk town for a place or some swanky steak joint in Tulsa?  It isn’t and you should.  You should interject the real and real places throughout your writing.  You should give directions and street names.  You should put in real dates and real people and places as well as real brands and stuff—at least in the West.  Don’t do it in Japan—mentioning a brand or some real places can get you in jail there, but not here. 

If you do get jittery about it, you can just make up the name and use the place—that’s always an option, but I think you dilute the power of the historical.  Here’s what I don’t do.  If I’m going to have some negative experience, I don’t use the real.  My characters might have some terrible misadventure in some real place, but if it will be a negative, I don’t use a real brand or a real company.  I suspect this is an important topic to write about, next.

If you need to go negative, go fiction.  Most of my writing isn’t about the place as much as it’s about the characters, but if I did need a negative company or brand, I’m not going to make a social statement.  With all the criticism in the world, you might ask, why not?  Novels are not about social statements.  They aren’t about political statements or science statements.  Novels are about entertainment.  I have had my characters make reasoned statements about what I think are obvious problems in the world, but I’m very careful about these. 

For example, German National Socialists make a great enemy.  That’s Nazis if you didn’t know.  Nazi is an acronym for National Socialist in German.  They are everyone’s most evil creatures.  Another is the International Socialists—that is the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists.  There are other International Socialists.  They are all evil and criminal—they make great criminals and bad guys.  Terrorists are also fair game.  There are other really bad groups and nations that are worth using as the “bad guys” in your novels.  This keeps you away from the potential for not holding to a universal enemy. 

Now, you might say, but there are those who support terrorists, Nazis, and Communists.  I say, most of them can’t read and won’t read my novels anyway.  I don’t want them for my readers unless they want to change—I guess there is even hope for Nazis and Communists.  However, from a writer’s standpoint, if you need a bad guy, they are your bad guy.

As I noted, I stay away from brands and companies.  I’ll tell you why.  Every company I’ve ever worked for has wanted to make money.  If you harm or kill your customers, you don’t make money--in fact, you go broke.  I worked in the aviation industry on every side.  In aviation, the individuals, the company, and all the management would do anything to prevent any kind of problem, accident, or issue.  I’ll give you an example, when maintenance accidentally dropped a drop tank and put a small dent in it, the company spent thousands to fix the dent.  In the Air Force, the tank would have stayed dented and been used forever.  Governments don’t really care about people, but companies really do.  As I noted, a single problem by a customer can break a company, a government has no other competition.  Are there bad companies and people out there?  Sure there are, but there are many more bad governments, and governments can take your life, liberty, and property from you—a company can’t, not unless they are a criminal cartel.

So, if I need bad guys, I do go for criminals, terrorists, and governments.  There are plenty enough of these to go around.  If you really want to go for a brand or business, I’d advise you to work for them for a year before bad mouthing them.  Realize, most of your readers are people with jobs and some degree of education.  You can fool some like journalists and perhaps those in certain industries, but you can’t fool your core readers.  Plus, as I wrote, novels are all about entertainment.  Next, I’ll look at putting real people in your novels.

Yes, by all means place real historical people in your novels.  If they are alive, I would recommend not defaming or vilifying them, but under some circumstances, you might.  I’d be cautious. 

In my novels, Queen Elizabeth plays an important walk-on roll occasionally.  I definitely don’t show her in a negative light.  In fact, she is a good friend and help to my characters.  Part of this comes from the interaction and influence of the Fae and the gods and goddesses of Britain with the government of Britain. 

In my novels, since they are reflected worldview, I have the Queen, now, the King as responsible for the human side of the courts of the land.  While Ceridwen is in charge of the Fae and courts of the gods, the King or Queen is in charge of the human courts.  These two worlds interact through the office of the King.  I also have a very important character, the Keeper of the Book of the Fae who works for the King and who oversees the Laws of the Fae for the Courts.  Yes, this is all reflected worldview, so it could be true.  The King isn’t saying.

In addition to important people, I also include the less important.  Many times I’ll change the names, but keep the look.  I’ve written before that real people don’t make great protagonists, but they do make great general characters.  When you need a character, there is nothing wrong with looking for a picture and going for a description.  Just change the names.  Unless there is some positive need.  For example, I use the names of real royalty in my writing.  Why not?  I’ll also use the names of real people who are dead as a part of the history of the place.

Now, the question at hand is how will we use history in Aine?  I’ll cover that, next.

Aine isn’t just about history—Aine is history.  Aine is a bring out of history.  She is a person from the Gaelic world and times.  She had a place and that place has moved through time and place to the new and modern world. 

My point in using Aine, I want to show her world and her understanding of the world in contrast to the modern.  The modern world will give reality and life to Aine and her history, and her history will come out in her own revelation.  Indeed, Aine is a revelation of the protagonist, Eoghan, but Eoghan’s purpose is to express the reality of Aine.  Aine is the focus while Eoghan is the protagonist.  Aine must learn to live in the modern world, and through this, her world will come out. 

Eoghan will be revealed and Aine be revealed in his wake.  This is one of the most powerful ways to represent history—we bring a person from the past into the modern and through contrast show off their culture, history, and world.  So, what is Aine’s history like?

I’ve mentioned some of the most salient facts about Aine, but not much about her world.  Aine comes from a place where there is little writing and a lot of Feudal waring.  They are times without any modern conveniences and the beginnings of the use of metal and the seven basic machines.  She lives in a real building and progressive age for her world, but it is nothing compared to the modern world.  Food is scarce and security scarcer.  In myth, she was either raped or under the threat of rape all her life long.  I intend to not change her history as much as cut it off with some of the features of her times and her story. 

Is that it?  Nope, there is so much more, but most of it is embedded in the development of the plots and the story itself.  I’ll try to update you as I put the actual story together, but at the moment, I’m developing, and not writing.  Not yet.  I guess I’ll move to the next plot type.

9.     School (s) – 11 – 10% - I’ve really fallen in love with the school plot.  Ever since I wrote Children of Light and Darkness which includes a very strong school plot, I’ve been intrigued and excited about using it when possible.  It helps that my prepublication writer really enjoyed this plot in the context of the novel.  Because of the characters, I did include a school plot in the next novel in the series, Warrior of Light.  Since then, I’ve looked for opportunities to have a school plot although I’ve really not set the novel on the plot as much as the plot on the novel.  In other words, I didn’t start with the idea of a school plot, it just came out in the writing of the novel. 

For example, Essie: Enchantment and the Aos Si didn’t start with any kind of school plot, but as I developed the novel, the entire idea about Essie attending a boarding school just leapt from the storyline.  Essie was really my first foray into a boarding school.  There are reasons for using this type of plot and setting, but mostly, it is classically British, but pretty much dying as we speak.  The idea of putting together young people for the purpose of education and life is a powerful setting with both positive and negative features.  You can see them all, to a degree, displayed in the Harry Potty novels.  The idea of isolating youth to educate them in magic is as appealing as educating them in other subjects. 

Since Essie, I’ve used school as a setting and a plot in numerous novels, and it’s not just for youth.  In many of my Enchantment novels, I’ve used a university setting for the school plot.  Indeed, in Rose, I’ve used a school plot for youth as well as a military school plot.  Bet you didn’t think of that.  The military school plot or a training school plot is just as useful as a regular school plot—it just can apply to older individuals.  In fact, the training plot is a school plot.

I’ve used the training plot almost as much as a dedicated school plot.  The training plot can be much more individual and between fewer characters.  Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse is a full-on school plot set in a training situation and almost entirely one on one.  These are powerful plots and great tools for the writer.  In spite of the fact that the school plot is only found in about 10% of the classics, don’t let that fool you.  Dedicated training and schooling is a relatively new idea in history.  It was accomplished early in human history, but it is still a pretty new idea to be applied to large groups and the whole of humanity.  Just think about the basis for most education and learning in the past and you should get my meaning. 

I do plan to involve Aine, the novel in a school and training plot.  I’ll get to that, next.

I have a few options for Aine and school plots.  The main and most obvious is the training that Eoghan must accomplish to help Aine integrate into modern society.  I’m not sure how I’ll play this.  The main question is how much Aine will fight being educated and trained into the modern world.  If you remember, novels are all about entertainment and part of entertainment is some satire and irony.  It is ironic for a person who obviously needs help and education to neglect and ignore it, but like I wrote, I’m trying to determine just how much of this I want to push in the novel.  Eoghan is the protagonist while Aine is the focus.

Eoghan as the protagonist must get Aine to accept the training and education he will provide her.  Because Aine really wants Eoghan to love her, I don’t think that will be much of a problem—especially, since Aine wants to learn and wants to please him.  The training scenario will move a pace with the initial revelation of Aine in the world, plus with their travels and her integration.  There is another opportunity that I’ve contemplated for this novel from the beginning.

The telic flaw in this novel is about Eoghan’s lack of integration in his place and time.  That has much to do with his own training and education.  He didn’t go to school, that is university, like most of his peers.  He didn’t go to the military for education and training like most of his peers in his business.  This is a real problem for him, and one I’ve contemplated from the beginning.  I originally wanted Eoghan and Seoirse to meet each other at Sandhurst or Cranwell, but I don’t think that’s an option with the way the novel development is going. 

I also have the Isle of Shadows for training female warriors and the other Isle for training male warriors.  I had a hankering to bring Aine to the Isle of Shadows and Eoghan to the other Isle.  This provides a training and school situation.  The Isle of Shadows was developed by Rose to train her little goddesses.  Since Aine is a goddess herself, it would be the perfect place for her.  The question is then, how to get Eoghan integrated into this process and education.  The novel is foremost about him, Aine is just the focus. 

So, you see there are places to use this school plot in Aine, and the school plot is perfect in this training sense.  I’ll move on to the next plot.

10.  Parallel (s) – 4 – 4% - the parallel and the allegory plots are similar, but not the same.  In fact, I consider them to be significantly different, but their differences are somewhat subtle.  It can help to define the easiest of the two, an allegory:

An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

The typical allegory for example in literature is Pilgrim’s Progress.  It’s an allegory of the spiritual life.  I don’t think I’ve defined a parallel before in simple terms.  Here, I’ll try:

A parallel is a story, poem, or picture that mirrors an existing story, poem, or picture for the purpose of reference or expression.

This is really what the parallel is about.  It is not intended to reveal a hidden meaning at all, although the original piece of art could mirror that.  So what is a parallel, and how can we use them.  I can give an couple of examples.

If your novel mentions, for example, Noah and the flood, that is a reference to the account about Noah in the Bible.  You could use this as a figure of speech, the rain was falling like the time of Noah and the ark.  You could incorporate all kinds of figures of speech about Noah, the ark, animals, and so on.  The use of these continued metaphors or figures of speech would constitute the use of a parallel plot.  The use of and reference to Noah in  novel would produce a reference in terms of the basis for the novel and an expression of the ideas and concepts about Noah.  In other words, the proper use of the parallel about Noah should produce ideas in the reader that expand the expression of the novel in question.  This is the use of a historical figure of speech as a reference back to another piece of art or literature.  I hope you can see how powerful this idea is. 

Another example, I wrote my novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon as a parallel to the Apocryphal book of Tobit.  It’s not an obvious parallel, unless the reader is familiar with Tobit.  I personally think everyone should be familiar with all the Bible including the apocrypha as well as all the Greek myths.  The reason is that all Western art and literature is based on these first the Bible and second Greek myth.  If you aren’t familiar, you are at a great disadvantage in understanding literature and art. 

In any case, I based Aksinya on Tobit.  The parallels are obvious to anyone familiar with Tobit, even the name of the Demon is the same, and the resolution of the telic flaw follows the resolution of Sara’s problem with the demon in Tobit.  Why Tobit?  It builds an historical and literary foundation around a subject that hasn’t been written about much, escaping the clutches and contract with a demon.  There are plenty of works, well a few, about humans contracting with demons, but very very few about humans getting out of a contract with a demon.  It’s just not done.  Tobit was the first I know of, and Aksinya is a parallel of Tobit. 

Next, I’ll look at possible parallels in Aine.   

The explanation above is probably my best for a parallel plot.  The big question is how will I use this in my proposed novel, Aine?  I see two ways plus the most obvious—I guess you could say three ways. 

The most obvious is the parallel plot built into the idea of Aine, the character herself.  The history and myth of Aine is a parallel in itself.  Just brining in the story of Aine is a parallel plot and that’s why I picked it.  The incorporation of a historical based or a reflective worldview is a parallel, and that’s exactly why I like using them.  Let me tell you why.

Although most people aren’t familiar with Aine and her history, readers are generally familiar and knowledgeable about the basic ideas of the Gaelic and Celtic worlds.  Yes, explanations and information will be necessary to help the reader understand the world of Aine and Aine as a mythical person, but the parallel exists.  This is also what I did with Aksinya to a degree.  No matter the subject of the parallel, you need to explain some parts about it.  Now, for Aksinya, I didn’t do much of that, the story and parallel plots for Tobit are obvious in the novel.  I just mentioned the focus a few times in context and that was it.  With Aine, I’ll have to do more than that.  Although most people know generally what Gaelic and Celtic mean, they don’t know much about the cultures and the history of the cultures.  What I will do is explain them in context and from Aine’s mouth.  That will make it even better.  The first parallel in Aine is the basic story of Aine and her world, her culture.  This, by the way is one of the reasons I’m writing the novel. 

I’m not into education or educating through a novel or any fiction.  Fiction and novels are all about entertainment.  The reason I’m using the Gaelic and Celtic culture is because it’s a new and interesting culture to most people.  The revelation of the culture is a huge part of the novel and a huge part of the entertainment.  That’s what makes novels and fiction fun to me—that’s what I want to give and express to my readers.  I guess I’ll get to the next potential parallels in Aine—the less obvious ones. 

The other two ways to bring a parallel plot into Aine is through figures of speech, as I wrote before in general, and through intentional analogous events related to myth or history. 

The first is basic good writing technique.  I know this has really fallen by the wayside in modern writing, but it’s literally the bread and butter of great writing.  A writer who doesn’t understand the use of figures of speech and especially the use of deep and involved figures of speech is just not going to be considered beyond their lifetimes.  The lack of figures of speech in general writing will just lead to not being published, while the lack of in depth figures of speech will lead to being forgotten.  Hey, we just want to be published, who cares about creating a classic. 

Frankly, a classic is a classic because of the depth of the parallels and the integration of the novel into the classic world of literature, art, and poetry.  This seems to be an area that is wholly missed in modern writing and publishing, but hey, no one will remember most of what people memorize or understand today: celebrities, political figures, sports teams, most artists, and all.  Think about those whom you can remember from 100 or 200 years ago—there are a few standouts, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Edison, Shakespeare, Dickins, but I bet you can’t name a single musician (other than composers), actor or actress (maybe Booth, but not because of his acting), or any sports figure.  Nobody cares because their lives were basically meaningless—they created nothing and left nothing behind.  That may be harsh, but literature is the means to remember and parallel their existence.  This is one of the reasons I recommend the use of the parallel.  Not to remember the meaningless, but to remember the people, places, and events of the past.  I’m certain other writers in the past felt the same way.

By referring to Noah, you remember the historical account of Noah.  By referring to Daniel, you remember the historical account of Daniel.   By mentioning Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, to name just three, you remember the golden age (so to speak, of Greece).  It really isn’t the classical golden age.  In fact, to throw in the phrase, golden age of Greece or Golden Age of Greece, you are building on a parallel, not a strictly historical parallel, but a real and reflected world parallel.  The same is true with Noah or Daniel.  The historical source is somewhat questioned, but the reflected for both is real—to express their parallel in a figure of speech or in an in depth parallel, you are expressing and handing off a knowledge of the past and of humanity that needs to be continued.  In other words, there is more than just history or the historical account that is important in the expression of a parallel.  In the example of Aine, until I mentioned and wrote about Aine, you probably didn’t even know such a myth or a possible historical person existed.  If you did, you might have pushed her away as just some myth or ancient person. 

In the novel, Aine, I want to bring Aine alive.  At the same time, there are all kinds of people, events, places, and reflected world ideas and realities (said tongue in cheek) that come with Aine.  All their stories and their existence is worth remembering and exploring.  If anything, within the confines of entertainment, fiction is all about remembering and revealing a story.  My goal with Aine is totally entertainment, but within that fabric of entertainment, I want you to see the story of Aine and Eoghan.  The parallel will be all the history surrounding Aine and the history from the time of Aine.  At the same time, I’ll bring in figures of speech that reflect Aine and her times as well as from other places, myths, and sources.  Even if you don’t get them or fully understand them, they are expressed and remembered in the context of the novel—when you see them again in art or literature, you might remember and realize a deeper context about that piece of art of literature.  Although fiction is all about entertainment, I never said literature is self-contained or isolated.  The exact opposite is true. 

So, the other two, less obvious types of parallel in Aine will be figures of speech and the use of other myths and history to bring out the story of Aine.  These aren’t details as much as an overall plan.  I could try to drag up some details, especially about the other myths and history I’ll include as parallels. 

Those other myths are broadly what I call the reflected worldview.  My point in using a reflected worldview is to provide a universal connection between all the major and minor myth and supernatural structures.  There is a true universal connection found specifically in Christianity.  If you are unfamiliar with this, I’ll try to explain it in basic terms.

If you recognize the great truth in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity where he notes that the supernatural either came from within the creation or without the creation.  If it comes from without, it’s God.  If it comes from within it’s not God but the creation of God.  Now, about God.  I do need to point out that the three means to know truth: historical method, logic, and scientific method proves that God must exist.  Specifically, Emmanual Kant’s philosophy proves the not God can’t exist (you can’t prove a true, you can only prove a not false); the big bang proves the telic cause of the universe must exist (a telic cause is defined as God); and finally, the historical method relates in the New Testament the interaction of God in the process of humanity.  As Lewis writes, this evidence of God’s interaction comes from without the creation.  This is what we usually term miracles.  Now, about the supernatural from within creation.

The main point about the supernatural from within the creation is that it proves God.  This was what Bram Stoker the author of Dracula and a very dedicated Catholic was attempting to show with his character and his novel.  Dracula is the most abbreviated and expurgated novel in common use to remove all the prayer and God language—not to improve the novel, but because the SAS felt they needed to keep all that God and Christian stuff from its young readers.  They are the same book haters who abbreviated and expurgated Fahrenheit 451 a book about governments burning and expurgating books.  Go figure.  The point is that as Lewis notes, the moment we bring up the supernatural in the creation, we are expressing the actions not of God but of the forces God allows in the creation and those forces naturally point to God.  I use this in my novels as the reflected worldview.  I’ll explain how they fit into the world and the novels.

In the first place, gods and goddesses could exist in the world.  The typical explanation, from the Old Testament is that they were created by God.  In my novels, I acknowledge their creation by God and note that they were put in charge of helping humanity and eventually pointing to the God of creation in the future.  I’m not alone in this view.  Tertullian writes in his philosophical works about the commonality of Christian imagery in pagan cultural antiquity.  The cross and other symbols as well as the components of the mysterium such as baptism, renaming, robing, meal with the deity, and many others.  These components were already features of Judaism, but made Christianity look much like a mysterium and led to many Greeks coming to the new variant of Judaism in the first Century and later.  In any case, I take the standpoint that gods and goddesses exist in two varieties, the bound and the unbound.  All of their purpose was to point to the God in the future, but now to follow that God and to do the same in this time.  There are those who do follow the God and those who do not.  In addition, there is much turmoil in the world caused by the remnants of the old and those god and goddesses caught up in incidents from the past—Aine is just such a being.  This is the undergirding philosophy I use in the reflected worldview, but it is an undergirding idea and not a focus of the novels.  This is how I resolve the question of how gods and goddesses can exist in the modern world.  There is also the issue of the Fae as well as other beings.  I’ll address this next as well as explain about the bound and unbound.

Yes, I’ve been developing my reflected worldview and novels’ supernatural structure for a long time.  The point is to put together a focus of physical structural and logic to build the world where gods, goddesses, dragons, the Fae, and other beings can exist.  One of the ideas I had to confront was the concept of the bound and unbound gods and goddesses.  I built these from the concept of the gods and goddesses who were born, lived, and died within certain cultures.  This came from my Aegypt (Ancient Light) novels where I posited that the Goddess of Light and Darkness were twins and chosen from their children after their deaths.  I actually waffled a bit on this information and didn’t provide any complete details until my later novels.  In any case, the idea of a goddess or god who was born then lived and then died comes from the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic ideas of the primary earth goddess who controls the seasons.  In Anglo-Saxon culture this was Ceridwen.  The seasons were spring, the maiden, summer, the woman, and winter, the crone.  Ceridwen supposedly lived and died in a cycle of generations.  The bound gods and goddesses were confined and held to a certain place of land.  That sometimes meant they couldn’t leave their areas of authority.  The bound gods and goddesses were stuck in their places and are immortal.  The unbound are more like normal humans but have skills, abilities, and powers beyond human kin. 

So, my point in creating these unbound deities was to build my dynasties in Ancient Light.  The characters and protagonists who populated these novels from the first Leora Bolang.  This produced a great series of novels, but I had other ambitions especially based on Kathrin (Ceridwen) from Children of Light and Darkness.  She was the protagonist of this novel, but an important person and character in the other novels.  This made for an interesting and entertaining series, but that didn’t end.  In fact, Aine is a novel about Eoghan but with the focus of a bound and regular goddess, Aine.  This isn’t the first novel I’ve written with a bound goddess as the focus, but it may be the second.  Anyway, the point is to create this reflected worldview that can fit in all these supernatural creatures and characters.  The point is allowing them to exist.  The only creature I haven’t been able to fit in is ghosts.  Ghosts are just a little outside the ideas and especially the logic of the normal, real worldview as well as the reflected worldview.  Ghosts are something many think exist, but there is no or little basis for their existence.  I haven’t run across a reason for ghosts, yet either.  In any case, I should move on to the allegory plot.   

11.  Allegory (s) – 10 – 9% - I think the parallel plot is one of the most powerful and useful plots.  You can use it almost everywhere will all kinds of degrees and details.  You can go from a figure of speech as a part of a plot to a full-on parallel to define a scene or a novel.  A parallel can just exist to enrich any plot or story—it doesn’t have to have a reason as much as a presence.  Unfortunately, the allegory must have both: reason and presence.  Here’s a good definition of an allegory:

An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

The main problem for me with an allegory is that it is indeed hidden teaching or proselytizing.  For that reason alone, I’m not a fan of the allegory.  That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a good allegory or that I can’t appreciate both the parallel and the historical basis of the allegory—I just think we should leave fiction for entertainment.  The moment a writer tells me he or she wants to change the world, I want to ask—why?  Most people can barely write a decent paragraph.  Of those few who can, most can’t write an entertaining paragraph.  Perhaps one in a million can write an entertaining paragraph, but how many of those can write an entertaining paragraph that also includes some hidden meaning?  One in a billion?  One in a trillion?  Why, with the million novels and books published every year should I have to put up with a single one that isn’t entertaining, but that’s good for me.  You may read those.  I’ll go for the entertaining ones. 

We read fiction to be entertained.  My readers and students ask me all the time: why don’t you write more technical works about history?  The answer is simple: most people are bored by technical writing of any kind.  I’ve written about 100 papers—you can see them on the internet.  When I sit down to write fiction, I’m writing 100% to entertain.  I want to entertain myself first, and I hope that also entertains my readers.  Is there any hidden meaning in my writing—I hope not.  I didn’t put it there.  I don’t want to put one in there and I don’t want to have to tease one out. 

Now about non-hidden meanings.  There shouldn’t be any special messages in the plots or the text.  I will mention educating.  The novel may have some notes of education.  If I want to express an idea in science, spy craft, or history to you, I’ll have to show it to you or explain it to you in a dialog.  This is necessary for the entertainment to come through.  If I want to explain to you about the reflected worldview, I surely need to show that reflected world to you—you might meet a dragon or a member of the Fae Courts.  That’s just good writing. 

On the other hand, I don’t include any extraneous information.  Novels are not about education or informing although some education and informing must go one—just read my published historical novels Centurion, The Second Mission, or Aegypt and see what I mean.  History is something the novelist shows you, and that’s entertaining and entertainment.

So, about the allegory—I don’t intend for there to be any allegories in Aine.  We’ll look at fantasy world, next.     

12.  Fantasy world (s) – 5 – 4% - this is the bread and butter of my writing.  Let’s look at the fantasy world as a plot just a little.  It’s obvious that this is a setting plot, but even more, for years and years, I imagined this was a created worldview.  It’s not, but that took me a long time to understand.  Let me go through the three basic worldviews.  These are overall settings for any novel or writer.

The first is the real.  The real is the real—this is the worldview and world that most people perceive as real.  That doesn’t meant there might be disagreements or even conflict about what is real, but the real is generally grounded in science and a normal understanding of history and existence.  The real is where most novels live or die.  It’s where most writers go to and come from.  It’s the normal for most writing. 

Then you have the created worldview.  This is a world and a worldview that is in no way tied to history, science, or the real.  Don’t get the wrong idea.  The created can be based wholly in science, but it isn’t known or existing science.  It can be based in created or future science.  The created worldview is created.  It can be a projection or an extrapolation, or just made up.  Science fiction is all a created worldview.  Full on fantasy is usually created worldview.  For example, Harry Potty is a created worldview.  It is fantasy.  I know it’s called magic realism, but that is usually just another type of created worldview.  The created worldview is a great worldview.  I used it for my science fiction, but not for my usually or supernatural fiction.  The big difference between the real and the created is the created includes stuff the author made up about the world, science, the supernatural, and all.  It’s created.  That doesn’t mean it can’t or doesn’t include elements of the real.  As I wrote, that’s just an extrapolated or a projected world from the real into the future.  However, the reflected worldview is where my novels lie, and where I think most of the best part of the world exists.

The reflected worldview reflects what most people or some people think exists in the world.  In fact, this is the worldview most people hold but have no idea they hold.  The supernatural and things that go bump in the night can exist in the reflected worldview.  They are just imagination in the real worldview.  All those wonderful ideas about faith, worship, God, gods, angels, and other supernatural beings are all part of the reflected worldview.  It is a worldview that most people hold to be fact, kind of.  I’ll explain more, next. 

This might not be the best way to explain the reflected worldview, but it will be a different way.  Let me go over the three and only three means to know truth: historical, logical, scientific.  These are based in the historical method, logic, and the scientific method.  The historical method is also called the evidentiary method and is used to prove non-repeatable events (like those in history).  The scientific method is used to prove repeatable events.  It can’t be used to prove non-repeatable events.  If you don’t know about these two basic methods of proving truth, you really need to.  The modern world depends on the scientific method and the historical method is how you know what is true in history as well as it’s used in the courts to take away your rights (or return them to you).  In any case, most people need to be familiar with the historical and the scientific methods; however, there is also logic.

The Greek, who invented these three means to know truth, realized that many things in the real or physical world are not measurable or normally knowable.  What? You might ask.  The Greeks were interested mainly in mathematics.  Math is perfectly repeatable, but it is not repeatable.  Math is not like scientific phenomenon.  You can’t repeat a math equation and get a statistical average based on the results.  For normal math equation, there is a single answer or a set of answers.  Math is not a real world phenomenon.  Math is a concept only existing in logic or reason.  There are other things like this in the world.  The Greeks noted that thoughts and emotions are both not provable by the historical or the scientific method.  They are not measurable in any normal sense.  In the modern world math, emotions, and thoughts are all similarly unmeasurable and fit in these categories, but we’ve found other similar problems mainly workload, but even in science certain events are considered non-repeatable or only repeatable on a grand scale.  Then there is the supernatural.

If you go to church or you believe in a god or in the God, you accept there is a supernatural.  The supernatural can’t be proven with the scientific method—that’s not to say certain elements in the world don’t point to the supernatural.  You might begin to touch the supernatural with the historical method.  People have reported supernatural events since the beginning of human history.  However, the real proof of the supernatural comes from logic and from philosophy. 

If you didn’t know, the entire purpose of philosophy until Emmanual Kant was to prove God exists.  Emmanual Kant produced a philosophical proof that has yet to be disproven.  In it, he proved the not God can’t exist.  In logic you can’t prove a true—you can only prove a false, a not true.  Kany proved the not God can’t exist therefore logic proved God must exist.  What does this have to do with the reflected worldview?  It shows what we always knew, the supernatural must exist because God must exist.  There is more, and I’ll give it, next.

You could argue the reflected worldview is the real worldview.  I won’t go that far, at least from a writing standpoint.  The world of the supernatural is filled with great things to write about some could be and likely are true, but many others aren’t true and are likely not true.  The big question, especially for the writer, is what is reflected and what is real?  I’d say for writing it doesn’t matter.  What matters in writing fiction is entertainment. 

I write using the reflected worldview because it’s fun and entertaining to me.  To find the supernatural in unexpected places or to see the secrets of the world around the supernatural, that is fun and entertaining.  Further, to invoke the ideas we have about our normal world, but then to overlay those ideas with new ones that fit into the reflected world—that is really powerful and wonderful.  In other words, to imagine a dragon who knows his place and why he was created, or a dragon who knows his place but not why he exists.  These are epic. 

The supernatural world has rules.  In The Golden Bough Sir James Frazer tried to define the supernatural for the purpose of dispelling that it could ever exist.  He really failed, but he produced a wonderful work that shows the basis for the supernatural.  His writing really defines the basis for the reflected worldview.  Unfortunately, he didn’t provide us any real helpful guidance because in the reflected worldview, we aren’t looking for proof, we are presenting the world as humans understand it.  The reflected worldview is reflected because you can find so much data and writing about it.  I’m not writing about fiction perse.  I’m writing about the information you might find by making any library or internet search.  For example about Asmodeus.

What about Asmodeus?  Asmodeus is my demon from Aksinya: Enchantment and the Deamon.  The only problem, is Asmodeus isn’t my demon.  If you do a little searching, you will find he is the demon from Tobit, the apocryphal book and there is a lot of information about him from Tobit on.  In addition, for his name to be used in Tobit, you know it must have existed before then.  Is Asmodeus real?  He exists in history, in literature, in art, and in my novels.  He is a great representative for the reflected worldview.  The same can be said for the Fae.  I’ll get to the Fae, next.

The Fae are a little most complex, but we need to fit them into the reflected worldview.  In the first place, all supernatural beings have an origin and a reason.  That origin and that reason may be clouded in myth or lost in word of mouth, but usually, you can find the origin stories (myths) and pull together the history of such beings.  Then there are the regular supernatural, those deities and ideas we know very well from history and writing.

Back to the Fae.  In British myth from the Christianization Era, the idea of the neutral angels became some idea in the myths surrounding the Fae.  The Fae are the fairies and fairy creatures.  It’s likely the Fae existed as an idea well before the Christian Era in Britian, but the Christianization provided some explanation for their existence and like many ancient ideas in Britain, they became associated with Christianity. 

In the British myth, the Fae were originally the neutral angels in the battle between Satan and God.  Yes, no neutral angels are mentioned in the Bible or the Apocryphal documents, but the British have a long history of many cultures Picts, Welsh, Celtic, Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon, Vikings, and Normans that were against each other, allied with each other, or neutral to each other.  These were important and defining characteristics of the overall British culture and society from the ancient times.  The idea of the neutral angels appealed very strongly in this cultural soup. 

In this myth of the Fae, the demons were cast into hell, only to be seen occasionally, the good angels who supported God kept their positions of authority in the heavens and continued to be messengers of the God, while the neutral angels were cast down to the earth to await either repentance or damnation.  This particular idea that the Fae are a type of fallen angel is what drives the Fae myth.  There is much more to this.  I guess I’ll look at these details, next.

The world of the Fae is immense in British myth.  It goes well beyond the simple idea of small beings flitting around a garden.  The Fae comprise four groups and courts.  The courts being rulers of certain areas in the British Isles.  There are three Seelie courts and one Unseelie court.  The idea of the Seelie and the Unseelie are generally that the Unseelie is evil or opposed to humanity, but the reality is much more complex than that.  I use my novels to look in depth at these very peculiar beings and groups.  The Unseelie are supposed to be evil, but the Seelie are equally cruel and capricious to humans.  The Unseelie have there own problems.  Most do live by preying on humans.  That is likely the biggest difference, but the Seelie are equally harmful to humans.  Here is the list of the Fae courts and their leaders:    

Seelie - Daoine Sidhe – General Britain and Scotland

            Oberon

            Titania

The fae of the Tylwyth Teg Tylwyth Teg are Welsh Fae

            Pryderi fab Pwyll

            Cigfa

            Rhiannon

            Manawyadan

Irish Aes Sídhe (singular Aes Sídh) Tuatha Dé Danann

            Art Óenfer

            Achtan

Unseelie – all of Britain, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland

Morgan le Fey

Madoc Morfryn

The overall leader or queen of the Fae is Essie, the Aos Si.  That comes from my novels, and I developed this character and idea as the physical being made by God to help the Fae find their way in the world.  This gets very complex since if you note the name of the main or head Seelie court is the Daoine Sidhe, the children of Dana-ana.  Dana-ana is the name of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic goddess of the spring and the manifestation of the maiden.  She was also the main goddess of the Fae and the supposed bound god leader of the Fae.  It gets more complex in the mythology.

Ceridwen is the unbound goddess who represents the maiden, the mother, and the crone in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and Gaelic mythology.  She is the sovereign goddess of all, but is reborn in each generation.  She is born, lives, and dies.  I use her in many of my novels.  Ceridwen rules the courts of the gods, man, and the Fae.  She’s not that good of a goddess, but I give her some improvement in my novels. 

The main point of this is that the idea of the Fae is very deep in British mythology.  It has legs.  As authors we sometimes have to bring all the ideas of myth together and the myths themselves allow us to do this and see these relationships.  What is really very interesting is the connection of the myths to Christianity and the old pagan beliefs.  They provide some connection from the ancient past to the more modern and then into the modern world.  This then is the reflected worldview.  You don’t have to believe in the Fae to be enraptured by the Fae.  You don’t have to believe in anything to want to see the ideas of ancient peoples in the modern world.  We call this magic realism and, as I note, the reflected worldview.  We can also look at other mythical/historical creatures.  That’s next.

So, what about other creatures and beings.  For years, I wrote, don’t write about vampires, but then I wrote a really fun novel about a vampire.  Not your usual vampire, but I think the main point was what I was exploring in my Enchantment novels—the redemption of beings whom we don’t think can be redeemed.  That was the entire point of my vampire novel—I was writing about a vampire who could be redeemed and how she could be redeemed.  Or perhaps, you could say.  I was writing about how a vampire of any kind could be redeemed.  That was the idea. 

Again, also, how can a vampire fit into the reflected worldview from a logic standpoint?  I concluded that a vampire was missing a key element of the human construction of sarx, psuche, and pneuma.  A vampire doesn’t have a physical or sarx presence in the world.  They are intellect, psuche and freewill, pneuma, but not physical.  They must renew themselves monthly at the full moon by taking on the essence, blood of a human.  That renews their sarx existence.  That’s why they can’t be seen in a mirror or in silver as in normal photography, but in electronic photography.  They also will be destroyed if the sunlike hits them.  That’s my idea of a vampire from the myth and historical notions of a vampire. 

This is the fun part of the reflected worldview—the author can create logical extensions and reasons why a supernatural being can exist in the world, and build around that supernatural being a reality that means they must exist.  This is what I did with the Fae and with my vampires—yes, I wrote about another vampire, but not in detail. 

The entertainment comes from the development of such beings and introducing them and building them into the real world—the reflected worldview.

I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the main points of the reflected worldview is that the reader should be able to make a search for your supernatural being and find a whole slate of information about them.  They should be able to have a background based on the creature that submits to scrutiny and that fits into the real world.  This is very different than the created worldview of Harry Potty that is not found in myth or in history.  If you notice, the author can produce a real world with a sufficient suspension of disbelief that results in a world that is created, but not based on a reflected worldview.  Some would state that the Harry Potty worldview is a hybrid.  It does indeed incorporate elements of the real, the reflected, and a created worldview.  This is okay, but the problem is that it isn’t based on the strength of history or myth.  That’s what I’m aiming for, a worldview based on history and myth that intrigues my readers.  That’s what I want in Aine.

Aine herself is based on a real (mythical and historical goddess).  She has a history and a reality from history.  Is she real?  She is reflected.  There were large cultural and societal groups who believed in and worshiped her.  There are people today, I’m sure, who accept her as history and or as myth.  Some might still say they believe in her.  You could ask who believes in Zeus today?  The actual answer might be astounding to you.

Basically the entire educated world believes in Zeus as a mythical and historically based being.  That’s the absolute and correct answer.  How many still believe in him as a god and a real being?  That is an entirely different question.  The answer is many less than those who know he is a mythological and historical being.  Still, Zeus stands in history and in myth.  The belief and religion of Zeus spans thousands of years.  His myths are indisputable, but mythological.

Aine in some ways is similar.  Her mythology came out of a less literate and later society.  Her religion, pantheon, and history were purged away by Christianity and other religions.  She had much less affect on the world than Zeus, but she sits as a real mythical being in the pantheon and history of time.  There is more about Aine that I want to use.

Aine is one of the Fae queens.  This is an important and interesting concept in itself.  I wrote already that the idea of the Fae were contained and explained as the neutral angels.  Aine herself predates Christianity in Celtic and Gaelic culture.  However, the fact she is revered in history as a Fae queen means the Fae predated Christianity (we knew that), it means Aine was seen as both positive and negative in her culture.  It also means she was seen as worldly and unworldly—having a foot on the earth and one in heaven, but banished to the earthly lands.  Fae also presumes glamour as opposed to magic or sorcery.  I should mention about both before we continue to the next plot type.

The world of the supernatural is filled with magic and miracles.  Magic comes from within the creation and miracles comes from outside the creation.  Magic is based on faith in the creation while miracles comes from God. 

In the reflected worldview, I developed the concept of glamour, which is the miracles of the Fae and the gods and goddesses in the world and magic which is the action of the belief in the world.  This is a very important idea in the real world.  The reason for this is that in some way you need to define magic in a reasonable way.  In addition, you should define the action of miracles in the world.  Why is this important?

In the first place, magic needs some explanation in the world.  You can have a totally illogical and unreasonable magic system like the one in Harry Potty or you can have a well researched one.  Personally, I use the magic system defined by PEI Bonewitz based on The Golden Bough. 

This system uses the “laws of magic” as described in The Golden Bough.  This is completely different than glamour which is inherent in beings from outside of creation or whose powers come from outside of creation.  The neutral angels who were exiled to earth are obviously beings from outside of creation.  The gods and goddesses gained their power from the God who made them.  They also have glamour.

In general, I don’t write positively abut magic, but rather do about glamour or miracles.  I find this to be natural in the reflected worldview.  I’m not adverse to seeing magic as positive in some ways, I just usually don’t.  My main point is that you must have and present some method based in reason and logic about how your magic system works.  I really don’t care how it works—it just needs to be logical in some fashion.  I personally use a real magic system based on the reflected laws of magic.  The question of “real” is illusive just as I discussed before—so, you can see that based in reason and logic, you can develop a system based on whatever you want.  The trick is reason and logic—it has to make sense to your readers.  I do suggest actually blocking out such a system.  As I wrote, I haven’t really dug into a positive magic use or system in my writing, and if I did, I’d use the system I described to you generally. 

I would give you the full frontal on this system, but it is complex and detailed.  You need to study it yourself to be about to integrate it in your worldview.  You will find that some of the systems of magic in gaming systems can be adapted to a novel and to a magic system.  It’s a much better start and state than what Harry Potty uses which is basically nothing.  I just advise not having a magic system with no rules or no basis for operating.  That’s how you get to Harry Potty and silliness.  Silliness is right out, although most readers might not notice it unless you have a bestseller.  Ha ha.

So, you do have a choice—magic or miracles.  Magic works under certain rules and concepts controlled by human beings.  Miracles come from God and are miracles.  They don’t have to have any basis in rules or laws—except those rules or laws put in place by the miracle makers.  This is an important point I make in my novels, and this is a very important point in writing either a reflected or a created worldview.  You do see this expressed in various novels. 

In other words, magic can be unlimited as miracles are, but then you need some means of restricting the power or use.  Having a natural system of operation like laws an rules for the magic self-limits the magic.  Not everyone can do it, and not everyone has the power—it requires some degree of skill and study.  On the other hand, those who can do miracles can just do them.  They might need some degree of training and study, but they are basically unlimited except through their power and skills or through other limitations. 

In my novels, the humans can’t use glamour except through special items.  The glamour users are all the Fae, gods, and goddesses.  This places very specific limitations as well as controls on the users.  Further, the powers of all these beings is limited by their purpose in the world.  They don’t have unlimited power or capability.  In any system you develop or that you reflect in your worldview, you need to figure all this out.

I guess I’ll conclude with how I’ll use all of this in Aine.  That’s next.

As I mentioned, Aine is a goddess and a bound goddess at that.  That means she is immortal, and her purpose just as all goddesses and gods is to eventually point to the God of creation—the God who created her.  This is her purpose just as every human has a similar purpose.  The problem with humanity and with goddesses is that both have freewill.  The object of freewill is what makes the main problems for humanity.  Goddesses are supposed to be a little different, but as myth shows us, they really aren’t.  The other problem with Aine is that she is a Fae queen and can use glamour.  I’ll add that she can also turn into a red horse.  What’s the point? 

The Fae are fallen (neutral) angels.  Gods and goddesses are made or created beings.  They are different than human beings, but they were made by God.  I don’t think Aine was mistakenly made a Fae queen, she was declared a Fae queen because of her position and power in the world.  I think it was her acts against her actual position that led to her downfall and her situation, thus she was declared a Fae queen even before her end in the crypt.  Aine has more problems than the normal god or goddess.  She is somewhat indifferent to her responsibilities and her world.  That’s what makes her like the Fae.  Instead of acting like her peers in submitting to the work of the people and the work of God, she confounded God and didn’t act to the benefit of the people.  She ended up where she is because she was too much in the world and not enough into her responsibilities. 

Thus, Aine has some real problems that could cause her trouble in the modern world.  Luckily, she is paired with the one person who could really help her, Eoghan.  Eoghan is gentle and kind.  He’s very responsible and controlled.  He just doesn’t know fully what he wants to be or do in the world.  Aine will help him and he will help her.  That’s the soul of the novel.

Now, about fantasy world.  My fantasy world is the real world with the reflected thrown in just as it is in this world.  People believe in the supernatural as they desire and as they approach life.  Many who would never accept the idea of a dragon, the Fae, gods or goddesses, or a vampire, will readily accept the God and Christianity or other religions.  This is the supernatural, and this isn’t to make God or Christianity equal to the other elements of the supernatural, however, logically, they all have a similar basis.  That’s the point, and that is exactly why the supernatural appeals to so many people.  In addition, I want to point out again, Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as well as his other novels on the supernatural to prove the existence of the God.  C.S. Lewis would agree.  The supernatural in literature should point to the real supernatural in the world, and that means God.

This is ultimately what Aine shows in the world, and I think that’s a very good and entertaining thing.  I’ll move on.

13.  Prison (s) – 2 – 2% - the prison plot is one of the best plots you can use to build entertainment and excitement.  I’ve used it many times in all kinds of flavors.  The full-on prison plot is like that in The Count of Monte Christo and The Man in the Iron Mask.  In these the protagonist faces and experiences long term prison supposedly for false reasons.  Getting there, being there, then escaping or getting out are all drivers of the overall plot and the scenes.  If you haven’t read these novels, you need to, but the full-on prison plot isn’t the only way to use the prison plot.  Sara Crew in A Little Princess has a type of prison plot. 

Sara is stuck in the school and a type of prison as the forced teacher and a maid for the household.  She eventually is helped to escape her prison in the attic.  There are other ways to play this scenario.

One of the best ways and the way I work this is with short term detention.  For example, if your characters are arrested and taken in by the police.  I’ve used this in many variants in many of my novels.  Even if your characters aren’t arrested, but if they are accosted by a criminal or see a crime, the police will want them to come and give a statement.  They will be kept in place for a while and that’s a type of prison.  I’ve used this too, and it’s a fun way to use the prison plot.  There are other means of having a prison plot.  I’ll get to that next.

Aine starts as a basic full-on prison plot.  We have Aine imprisoned in a crypt and Eoghan releases her.  That’s about as prison as you can get.  We have a lady who was imprisoned in a crypt.  She’s been there for a long time.  Because of her basic nature, she doesn’t have some of the real problems of the normal human prisoner, but she has been in there for ages, and Eoghan finds and releases her.  The end of this is that Aine falls madly for Eoghan. 

I really hate to say she falls in love with him.  Love and Aine are kind of foreign concepts because of her culture and her past.  Let’s just say she is smitten forever because he saved her from her continuous imprisonment.  Did I mention she’s been there a long long time? 

I’ve played this before in my novels, but not to this degree.  In my other novels, people might have been released from captivity, but not in this fashion and not really for this long of cogent imprisonment.  In other words, none of my other characters have been aware of their long term imprisonment, not like Aine.  You can guess how happy she is to be released, plus, Eoghan might be the only person in the world who can and world release her.

Many who might release her, would not release her.  That is the few who could even know or detect her, might not release her.  Eoghan is a kind and gentle man.  He would release Aine just because he is a great guy, but this will cause problems for him and for the world.  That will be part of the entertainment in Aine.

Now, about other prison plots.  I might throw one in.  Prison plots are just so easy to use and to get into.  For example, all I need is for Aine or Eoghan or Eva to do something a little illegal.  In general, they will be escaping justice, so to speak.  They will be hunted eventually by Stela and the Organization, or that’s my plan.  The police might be looking for them actively as in criminally, or for them generally, as in missing person.  I haven’t decided how I want to work this or how I want to present this.  That will come with the writing.  Still, the prison plot can be just tossed in when the author needs it or wants it.  I will mention this.

I’m not a fan of writing where the author places a tensioned scene with repercussions that suddenly disappear.  In other words, if the police or others are after your characters, don’t just let them shrug it off.  There needs to be a result and resolution based on the circumstances.  If there isn’t, why even bring in the peril in the first place? 

I think this is an important point of writing, but to really do it justice, I need to think about it, and perhaps make it the next topic under the prison plot.

Peril is like a Chekov’s Gun.  Perhaps I need to explain the Chekov’s Gun.  Chekov, the famous playwright wrote that if a playwright introduces a gun in act one, someone must shoot it in act two.  His point was that when a writer places a setting element in a play, he or she should turn it into a creative element in the next act.  This is true to a large degree in novels as well.  In a novel, not every setting element needs to become a creative element, but especially with important elements, we shouldn’t introduce them and not use them.  In a novel, because of the magnitude of the setting elements, not every single one needs to be promoted to creative elements, but why describe a setting element if you aren’t going to use it.  However, the main point here is not just the use of the setting elements, but rather, introducing peril.  Peril in a scene is the development of tension—tension without release is worthless.  In other words, let’s not build tension if we don’t release the tension.  In the previous example, don’t introduce a strained situation like an illegality or an incident without resolving it in a reasonable way.  Specifically, I find irrationality in shows or novels to be terrible writing.  A great author doesn’t necessarily clean up ever loose end and tie it up with a bow, but each incident of note needs a release.  I’ll try an example using the prison plot.

In Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, Rose goes out to find and rescue a couple of girls in her house.  She finds them in peril with a couple of women who are selling them beer and cigarettes.  When the girls are attacked, Rose fights back and using her very great skills stops their attack.  In the process, Robyn calls the police and the other girls from her house come to help.  The conclusion of the event is that Rose is injured and brought to hospital.  The others are picked up by the police.  The teachers and headmistress get involved.  My point is this, all of these situations need to be seen through to the end.  The incident of Rose in hospital.  The incident of the girls and Rose with the police.  The problem of the teachers, and finally, the criminals.  All of these need to be addressed and resolved to some degree.  This completes the peril with appropriate release. 

The point with the prison plot is that this is an appropriate release and circumstance in the appropriate situation.  For example, sending Rose to hospital is one example of the prison plot.  Placing the criminals in prison is another example of a prison plot.  The point is to reasonably and rationally complete an introduced peril.  This just makes sense to me.  In any writing, it really bothers me when a situation isn’t resolved effectively.  Perhaps this is just a problem for those who have complex circumstances, but it does seem to be a problem of many movies and some writing.  I suspect it causes a real problem for many unpublished writers.  

Item (i)

1.     Article (i) – 1e, 46 – 42% - I’ll move to the item plot.  This is a great plot and very easy to appropriately introduce to any novel.  You can just throw it in at will for a single scene, or build it carefully through scenes to act as a telic element.  I always say go big. 

I think I already wrote about the ring in Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors.  The ring moves on the down low through the entire novel slowly gathering more and more mojo until it becomes a telic element near the end.  That’s the best way to work an item in a plot.

With items, you have McGuffins as well as real items.  A McGuffin is an item that exists solely to move a plot.  It has no real value, worth, or maybe existence.  McGuffins are common in some modern novels, but I like items of real value and worth.  I like my magic items to be magical, and my other items to be used and usable.  For example, if you introduce a gun…  Now a gun can be used in many ways.  You can shoot it, the target is important.  You can also use it other ways.  The same is true of the knife or any other weapon.  It’s true, if you introduce a weapon, you should use it, but use means a lot of different things.  I’m going to stop here and move forward next about the different types of items and how you can use them in a plot.

So, there are McGuffins and real items.  A McGuffin could be an actual and real item, or it could be something just made up of even false or non-existent like the Maltese Falcon in the novel of the same name.  I’m not a fan of the McGuffin, but I do see their use.  A McGuffin can be very worthwhile in a real worldview novel.  It could also be used in a reflected worldview novel, but the question is why not give a real power or ability to an item?  I’m into that.  Perhaps the most interesting use of an item is the secret or secret capability of the item that the protagonist or other character discovers in the revelation of the novel.  This is just the case with Angelica’s ring from my novel Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors.  We have items of power whose capability or abilities are hidden or secret.

Then, there are items whose capabilities are obvious like a gun or a knife.  These have obvious capabilities, but potentially many abilities.  For example, you can shoot a gun.  That means a lot of things.  The gun can be shot at someone or just in the air.  It can be used to hunt or fired at a target.  These are the points that are most obvious about a gun, but a gun can be used in many other ways.

You can use a gun as a tool, in the sense of striking a person or a thing.  A gun can be mishandled—resulting in firing or misfiring.  It can be cleaned.  It can be used to threaten.  It can be a paperweight.  It can be an item that causes fear or that reduces fear.  In all, the gun is a very useful tool in every potential use from shooting to just an item to a threat or a positive.  Guns are highly versatile.  Knives are too.

Knives are very useful tools like guns, but their use and potential use is even more varied.  Plus a knife can’t usually go off unexpectedly although there can be accidents.  I’ll look at these items and their potential, next.

We don’t need to just write about potentially dangerous items, because most items are dangerous depending on their use.  A book, for example, could be used as a bludgeon, but you can also read it, tear it up, use parts for scrap, burn it, use it as a door stop, and all.  The point is that there are nefarious uses for any item, and items can be used in all kinds of ways.

I proposed a novel I call bookgirl where the main item is a book.  The point of the book was to include a clue in the margins or on a title page that led the protagonist and the protagonist’s helper to a mystery.  This is a normal use for such an item.  In this case, the book isn’t a McGuffin and it isn’t supernatural.  The book is an item with a real use to forward the plot through not just its existence but, rather, its contents.  Now, on to knives.

A knife is a very common item.  You could have an inscription on it.  You could use it to harm or just to cut your meat.  You could threaten or make.  The knife is an innocuous item until it isn’t.  Chekov could not have written, if you introduce a knife in the first Act someone must be stabbed with it in the second.  That’s because the knife has many more uses.  I guess you could write, if you introduce the knife in act one, someone needs to open a letter with it in act two.  Ha ha.  That’s the entire point.  For an author, the use of the gun might not be for it to fire.  Likewise, the use of the knife might not be to cause harm or to threaten.  The knife could include an inscription that moves the plot.  The other use of a knife could be supernatural.  It could have great real power like a spell or a capability or it could lend a capability to the user.  I’ve done this before too. 

I don’t just make stuff up about items.  I research items from myth and history to provide a basis for the item.  For example, I used Arthur’s dagger from history and myth in one of my novels. 

The point about items is that they have many uses in plots.  I’ll look at how I might use the item plot in Aine.

I’m not sure I’ll add a supernatural item into Aine, but I’m not sure.  I haven’t researched this enough, but there are four great items of the Celtic and Gaelic Seelie.  These would rightly be part of the supernatural items Aine might use and control, but the Gaelic Seelie, the Irish Aes Sídhe (singular Aes Sídh) Tuatha Dé Danann guard these as great treasures.  There would be little opportunity and little reason for Aine and Eoghan to seek them in Ireland or use them.  There are always possibilities.

I was mainly thinking about normal items that might really get Aine a go’n.  For example, some personal item that belonged to Eoghan that he gifted her.  The Gaelic aren’t as nutso about gifts and gift giving as the Anglo-Saxons, but they do have their craziness as a culture about gifts and welcoming.  If Eoghan were to gift her something, he would have a very difficult time getting it back.  Perhaps parts of his clothing which he gives to Aine when he finds her in the state of nature.  There are many more possibilities. 

Another fun one might be a gun or a knife.  A gun would be interesting because Aine would have to use it and learn about it.  That could provide great entertainment.  There are a host of items that could attract Aine.  Plus there is this thing about people who come from item poor cultures.  They tend to want to hord and get stuff.  You can see this in the World War Two generation. They had nothing, so as they gained wealth, they gained stuff.  People who have all the stuff they every wanted like some later USA generations tend to not see much value in stuff.  Some cultures, like the Japanese, want stuff, but have little room for that stuff.  All these are cultural, and Aine is one of those little stuff kinds of people.  She will want to have and own things.  Then there are other things Aine might acquire and desire.

Desire and acquire, this is a very interesting plot type in the item plots.  She wants things and things in the Gaelic culture mean wealth and power.  This includes stuff we usually don’t think much about like animals, land, titles, responsibility—all these are things, items, a person like Aine could and would want.  She would equally want this for Eoghan because she will assume Eoghan is hers.  Yes, this is a cultural thing mixed with an Aine thing.  Cultural because, Aine will want and desire him.  She will assume that he is hers and that he rescued her for himself. 

Yes, in the ancient world people did rescue others without much or any reluctance, but you have to realize the mind of the ancient world and the Gaelic people.  If I rescue a person of equal rank to me, that person owe me a wearguild.  Rescue places a burden of repayment on the rescued.  This is true of any rank.  If a person of greater rank rescues one of lower rank, the one of lower rank can be required to become a servant of a slave of the other.  This is called a thane in Anglo-Saxon society.  This is especially true if the rescuer is of noble rank and the other is common.  They might be a free thane or a slave. 

Aine is of a noble rank.  I’ll discuss her place in this rescue que with Eoghan next.         

Tomorrow, I’ll start with these plots and evaluate how and which I’ll use in this new novel Aine.

e.      Obstacles that must be overcome for the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw

 

     

e.      Obstacles that must be overcome for the protagonist to resolve the telic flaw

 

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.  Before I get to that, I want to write another novel about dependency as a theme.  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  

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