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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Writing - part xxx632 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Logic

23 March 2024, Writing - part xxx632 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Logic

Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the internet, but my primary publisher has gone out of business—they couldn’t succeed in the past business and publishing environment.  I’ll keep you informed, but I need a new publisher.  More information can be found at www.ancientlight.com.  Check out my novels—I think you’ll really enjoy them.

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.

I’m using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.

Today’s Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.

The four plus one basic rules I employ when writing:

1. Don’t confuse your readers.

2. Entertain your readers.

3. Ground your readers in the writing.

4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.

     4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.

5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.

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 31st novel, working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors.  The theme statement is: Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events.

 

I finished writing my 34th novel (actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.  The theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.     

Here is the cover proposal for Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment




Cover Proposal

The most important scene in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29th novel, working title Detective.  I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32nd novel and 33rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.

How to begin a novel.  Number one thought, we need an entertaining idea.  I usually encapsulate such an idea with a theme statement.  Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme statement.  Here is an initial cut.

 

For novel 30:  Red Sonja, a Soviet spy, infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.

 

For Novel 32:  Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.

 

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

 

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

 

For novel 35: 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.

Let’s keep writing to entertain ourselves with the knowledge that what will entertain a great reader, like we are, will entertain other readers.  That’s our only hope.

Let’s look back at entertainment and writing.  As I wrote before, writing is communication.  What we imagine is that we simply communicate words from one person to another, but the reality, especially in writing, is we are communicating word pictures.  Here’s the problem. 

I imagine the world structurally in my mind.  This is where my reality lies and this is where my imagination lies.  Until someone invents a mind viewer, you will never know what is really going on in someone’s mind or thoughts.  In fact, the Greeks, as well as most real philosophers would argue that even then, you will never really know a person’s thoughts.  Thoughts live in the realm of the unreal world.  Let’s look at little at the Greek worldview—that’s the worldview basis for Western civilization.

In the Greek and Western worldview, the human being is made up of sarx, psuche, and pneuma.  Things get a little complicated from here, but in Greek thought, sarx is the flesh—that’s easy, the physical body.  Psuche is the mind or thoughts.  In the Greek worldview a human can’t stop thinking—if they do, they are just an animal.  The psuche is the unconscious breath—there is no thinking to take an unconscious breath, but in the Greek worldview what makes a human different from an animal is that humans always think.  They think, therefore they are.  Then there is pneuma.

Pneuma is the conscious breath.  This is freewill to the Greeks.  The unconscious breath is automatic and thinking—the conscious breath is accomplished through freewill, and action of the mind.  All this is very interesting to me, and should be important to any thinking person—two-thirds of our being, according to the Greeks is not found in the real world—although the conscious and the unconscious breath are physical things, they represent very nonphysical ideas—thoughts (reasoning) and freewill.  I guess I’ll look at the unreal in the real world, next.

So, what is real and what is unreal?  If you are familiar with classic philosophy and theology as well as Western Civilization, you should know, but let me remind you.  The Greeks invented the three ways to know truth.  There is a forth that came out of the legal system, but it’s not effective in knowing truth as much as defining harm.  In any case, the three methods to know truth are, in order of invention, the historic method, reason or logic (philosophy), and the scientific method.  These were the bread and butter of knowledge and education until about 1900, but they have fallen by the wayside, mostly because they are absolutely true.  Let’s define them a little.

In the first place, the historical method is used to prove as well as define things that can’t be repeated.  Historical events and occurrences cannot be repeated, they are defined by time.  We could write that the historical method is used to prove and define things that are bound by time—this would be absolutely true.  The Greeks notably invented the historical method to record history.  Their purpose was to record historical events for the future.  Now, even the Greeks, with tongue in cheek, argued the Hebrews actually started the historical method, however, their purpose was different, and so the Greeks made the claim in history and it stuck. 

The Hebrews purpose was to record the revelation of their God in the fabric of their world and history and not to record human history necessarily.  That’s one of the main reason the Greeks get the claim of the invention of the historical method.  However, the Greeks honored and venerated the Hebrews for their very ancient historical writings. 

What can you do with the historical method?  In the first place, the historical method is the only method to prove history.  Usually, we write about evidence and the best evidence is the eyewitness source in history.  There are three levels of historical witness, primary (eyewitness), secondary (hearsay), and tertiary (anything else). 

A primary witness is one that directly observes something in time and place—then they record it in some fashion.  Usually the recording in the past has been writing but in the modern world we have videos, pictures, and other recordings. 

A secondary witness is one that takes the record or account of a primary witness and writes or records it.  This is usually a newspaper or other account where the secondary writes down the report of the primary witness.  As an example, in the assassination of Lincon, the written or recorded account of his wife, a primary witness would be a primary source.  The account by a journalist from an interview of Lincoln’s wife would be a secondary witness.

In the historical method, a primary witness always trumps any secondary or tertiary witness unless there is any direct and obvious discrepancies between the accounts.  We don’t mean simply things a person decides not to believe, but rather falsifications based on real data.  Even this is difficult to define because primary source witness is always accorded the benefit of the doubt in the eyewitness to an account.  If you happened to have a multiple of eyewitnesses and the account of one significantly differed from the others, you might consider dropping the one, but this is usually a problem of modern jurisprudence and not history.  I guess I’ll get into this, next.

Yes, the historical method is also called the legal method—it’s used to convict people in a court of law and to punish them if they are found guilty.  It specifically determines guilt in the judicial system, and it therefore one of the most important parts of law and society.  The historical method is also notably used to prove history.

As I wrote, in the historical method, we have eyewitness, secondary or hearsay witness, and tertiary or other witness.  Obviously, in normal jurisprudence only an eyewitness or eyewitness and direct evidence is allowed.  Hearsay (secondary) and tertiary is never supposed to be allowed in a judicial trail. 

In historical evidence, we can’t be quite as picky.  In history, the number of eyewitness accounts is increasing, but in the past, we only have so many—still plenty, but only so many.  Let’s get to the meat of the matter.  No historian uses tertiary sources for history.  They only use primary (eyewitness) and secondary sources.  A tertiary source is a history book.  Historians do write all kinds of history books meanwhile making money off sources that might be questionable—because, you see, history isn’t about opinions.  History is about facts.  The facts are wrapped up in the binder called witness and evidence.  Let’s look at witness and evidence.

We did already see the three levels of witness: primary (eyewitness), secondary (hearsay), and tertiary (everything else).  Safe to say, in historical proof, the primary always trumps the secondary which always trumps the tertiary.  That’s the way it works.  This is the prime directive.  No tertiary or secondary is ever held above a primary.  No tertiary is ever held about a secondary.  That’s the main and basic rule.  An eyewitness always trumps, and it really doesn’t matter is the historian agrees with the account or not—the account, in history is the account in history.  There are a couple of other tests we use to determine historical value and proof within the three categories of witness.  I’ll look at those, next.

Okay, I haven’t hit logic yet, but we will get there.  At the moment, I’m looking at some advanced ways to understand the historical method—you know, the method we use to put people in prison as well as the means to prove nonrepeatable events.

When we look at historical evidence, we have two tests we apply.  The first is the bibliographical tests.  These relate to how well especially historical records (writings mostly) have been passed down to us in history.  We look at when the work was written and the earliest copy we have—that’s the elapsed time test.  You need to know, if you don’t, we have no original documents from antiquity.  Antiquity is actually dated at around 600 AD.  So, we have zero originals with a few exceptions of historical documents from before 600 AD.  600 AD is the mark because we have a couple of copies of the Koran that are reputed originals.  There are problems with these documents, but that’s another account.  Plus, the Koran is not history at all—it’s a quartiery document of a person’s opinions about their god.  I brought up a forth witness I like to call quatriery because with primary you have an eyewitness, with secondary, you have the account of an eyewitness from a secondary source, tertiary is history, but everything else—except opinion.  Quatriery, is my term for opinion or really fiction writing.  There is no history in quatriery.  For example, the Book of the Dead, which we have five very different copies from Egyptian tombs are a quartriery source.  Why?  They are spells you use after you are dead.  There is zero history in the Book of the Dead.  There are only spells, written by the living, for dead mummies.  This is a quatriery document.  Now, back to the elapsed time test.

Most historical documents in antiquity have a lapse of about 1000 years from the original to the first remaining copy.  That’s because someone took the time to copy the original and then make other copies until our last and latest copy.  I do need to point out some of the best historical lapse times are found in the New Testament documents.  Less than 100 years elapsed between the originals and the earliest copies.  Alas, they are still copies.

The second bibliographical test is the test of the number of extant copies.  It’s just statistics to figure out that the more copies you have, and the shorter the lapse time, the closer the copies you have will be to the originals.  I’ll point out that for most works in antiquity, the best we have is one copy.  Some few have more, like three copies.  A few, like the Odyssey, have up to 600 copies.  The Odyssey isn’t history, alas.  For the New Testament, we have 24,000 copies, and that’s the best of all historical documents in all of history—thought you’d like to know.  I’ll look at the other two tests, next.

We have the bibliographical tests we use for historical evidence they are the number of copies which tells us how well the text was conveyed (copied) and the lapse from the original to the earliest copy which assures us of the accuracy of the text.  The next two tests look at other literature (writings and other evidence) to tell us about the accuracy of the history in them.

These are the internal and the external tests.  The internal test looks at the claims and quality of the text.  For example, I mentioned The Egyptian Book of the Dead.  These don’t claim to be history.  They claim to the spells used by the dead when they are dead.  They are not history.  We have five copies found in tombs, mostly mummy’s wrappings.  The five are significantly different.  They don’t come close to passing any internal test at all.  In fact, they are, as I mentioned quatriery documents because they are not history at all, and can’t really tell us much about the history or times of the Egyptian people.  Unfortunately, there are quite a few documents like this in history. 

As I wrote, the Greeks make the claim of the invention of the historical method and we mark their writing from about 500 BC as the beginning of historical writing and evidence.  In reality, the Greeks acknowledged that the Hebrews really started the historical method with the writing of the Torah and the Tanakh.  Internally, the Torah and the Tanakh claim to be history and record the history of the times.  This leads us to the second test, the external test.

With the external test, we compare evidence and other historical documents from the same time, place, and witness.  Notice, with some documents this is impossible because there is just nothing else to compare it to.  It’s work noting that the degree of witness always trumps any other document.  Therefore, an eyewitness always beats out a secondary or tertiary witness.  With documents of similar internal claims, witness claims, external claims, the documents with the most copies (usually the most accurate transmission) and the least lapse time (also the most accurate transmission) beat out those that have fewer copies and more time of transmission.

That’s the historical method in a nutshell.  This is the first means to know truth.  Before I move to the second means, logic, I should explain why the average person and you likely weren’t taught this wonderful method of knowing truth and also putting criminals in prison.  That’s next.

They used to teach every person in school the historical method until about 1900.  In 1900, the historical method was taken out of many of the schools.  Because it wasn’t taught in the general government controlled schools, the private schools generally stopped teaching it too.  The reason they stopped teaching the historical method is that it proves certain history—in fact, it proves history, and some people didn’t like that.

Let’s go ahead and move to the second method to know truth—that’s reasoning or the logical method.  The historical method came with writing and literature, however, the logical method came with philosophy.

In the first place, you must understand there are things that can’t be proven using the historical method or the scientific method.  Those things age math, thoughts, emotions, the supernatural, and other things that are not usually found in the ge.  Let me explain the Greek worldview.

In the Greek view, there is the Plenum of Everything, within this is the Kosmos (that which was created).  Within the Kosmos is the philosophia (what man can know), and within the philosophia is the ge.  The ge is what can be measured using the scientific method.  We will get to this and that, next.

The philosophia includes everything that man can know—understand and comprehend.  It also includes the ge (the real world).  There are parts of the philosophia that are not real and that are not measurable in a scientific sense. 

Most obviously, philosophy and reason are not measurable or real in the same way that the laws of the natural world are.  Philosophy and reason follow rules, but they represent ideas, and ideas are not real until they are real.  Here’s an example, in 1984, I invented the electronic book.  It was in one of my novels, but I took it further and attempted to get an electronic book developed and patented.  Unfortunately, you can’t patent what you can’t make.  In 1984 and even later, the capability to make an electronic book didn’t exist.  It was an idea, my idea, but it could not be made real with the technology of the time.  Today, almost everyone has an electronic book.  The electronic book is a real thing and exists in the ge.  This is just one example of an idea that exists in philosophia but not in reality (the ge). 

There are many other things that don’t exist and will never exist in the ge that are part of the philosophia.  One of these is logic or reasoning.  I also called it philosophy, logic and reasoning fall into this category and most specifically what we call math in all its varieties are part of the philosophia but not part of the ge (reality).  How can that be. 

Let’s start with logic and reasoning in math.  Logic is used to prove mathematical theorems.  If you remember from geometry and trigonometry, theorems are provable using symbols and symbolic logic.  They exist in philosophia, but they don’t really exist in the ge or reality.  They are a logical proof that proves a mathematical concept based in symbolic concepts or ideas.  It might be difficult to conceive that all math is unreal, but you should be able to grasp that there is no perfect right angle or triangle.  The idea is a mathematical symbol and construct.  It doesn’t exist in reality.  All math is like this.  For example, the equation for the gravitational acceleration of an object gives a perfect answer every time, but it is impossible for this to happen in reality.  No matter how perfect your experiment, you can’t get an answer for any of the equation for gravitational acceleration to come out better than some standard deviation of the actual answer.  Logic, reasoning, ideas, math, equations, numbers…there are irrational numbers like pi and the natural log.  There are imaginary and irrational numbers.  Are these numbers real?  They are real in mathematics, that is, they are real in the sense that they exist in the philosophia, but they don’t really exist except as symbols in the ge.  They can’t be measured.  They can kind of be observed.  You can see pi every time you look at any perfect or unit circle, but there has never been a perfect or unit circle in the world.  Oh well.  I hope you are getting it.

There are some other things obviously in the philosophia but not also in the ge.  One is emotions and the other is the supernatural.  We need to be careful here.  The supernatural I am writing about is not God or those being and creatures who are supposed to be eternal and outside of the creation.  Those are beings in the plenum of everything.  I am writing about the supernatural beings who are within the creation.  These are created beings.  Quite perfectly, in the Greek worldview all the gods where created somehow.  That’s part of the problem with the Greek pantheon as well as the pantheon of most religions.  Their god or gods were created.  They exist within the Kosmos and at least within the philosophia—otherwise humans couldn’t understand them. 

We’ll move on from here about logic, but that’s what I want you to understand, the Greeks felt like they needed logic to understand the concepts in the philosophia that were not also in the ge… and indeed they did.   

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  

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

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