06 April 2024, Writing - part xxx646 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Proto-Writing and History
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.
The very
idea of writing and especially fiction writing represents the areas of logic
and the historical method. You can also
toss in the scientific method and harm, but they are less critical and
important in writing.
The very important
part about writing and especially entertaining (successful) writing is that it
comes from the part of the world (kosmos, creation) that is not measurable and
not physical. I’m repeating myself, but
this is very important. An author
creates a novel (story) in his or her mind.
The mind might be physical, but the concepts within the mind are not
physical. These ideas (concepts) need to
be turned into description, narrative, action, and dialog in the mind of the
writer. Then the writer turns these
ideas into word pictures. Finally, the
author turns these word pictures into symbols.
We happen to call these symbols writing.
The reader
takes these symbols and turns them into word pictures and finally ideas in
their own mind. The author’s hope is
that his or her word pictures are dynamic and understandable to the reader. Most specifically that the reader can imagine
the ideas the writer presents in some degree of similar color and
comprehension. The better the author can
accomplish this, the better the reader can experience the ideas of the
writer. This is what entertainment is
all about.
As authors,
we need to understand we aren’t simply recording in symbols description,
narrative, action, and dialog. We are
presenting word pictures, word paintings, if you like, of what we imagine. The better and more effectively we can
express then word pictures and paintings to our readers, the more entertaining
and exciting our writing will be.
However, we can never lose sight of the fact that we are representing
the unreal and nonphysical in symbols.
We are presenting logic and ideas and projecting them to another
mind—the tool just happens to be language and writing. They are different, just as we saw in looking
at the evolution of religion and culture.
These are connected by the hip in history.
We also saw
how we can prove truth. There is much
more to this subject, but just to know that there is truth and that you can
absolutely prove truth should make most people happy. As a scientist, I know this is true of the
physical world through the scientific method.
As a student and teacher of history, I know this is true of the
historical method. And, as a writer, I
know this is true of logic and reasoning.
Each of these tools are critical to cultures and societies, and in
writing, logic and reasoning are the most important tools. They all lead, by the way, to language and
especially writing. Perhaps I should
move to the history of writing next. It
fits directly into how to know truth as well as culture and the evolution of
religion. It’s also very important to
understand as a writer.
Let’s look
at the history of writing. Writing
begins with proto-writing. We don’t have
many examples of proto writing because there was little reason to make copies
and the originals just deteriorated. The
few pieces of proto-writing we have are on stone, clay, or ceramics. The only reason for proto-writing that we
have identified was for kings (leaders) to track what they were giving to the
priests for accountability. In the ancient
world, the idea of supplication of the spirits (animism) or the gods (patheonic
paganism) through sacrifice was critical to the religion and the society. I don’t think I mentioned before, but in the
ancient world, all meat was sacrificed.
The way the
world worked was that meat, land based animals were always sacrificed to the
gods of spirits—this was to placate the spirit in the animal. If you remember, the idea of animism comes from
the lack to understanding of physical laws with the idea of spirits that move
things. In the mind of the animist,
anything that moves on its own has something in it that causes it to be able to
move. To the ancients, this was a
spirit. That’s the animism and what
animism is all about.
For some
reason, the Greeks and other ancients didn’t see sea animals as animals that
required to be placated or that had spirits.
This is interesting in itself. Perhaps
this had to do with the idea that water was itself inhabited by some spirit and
the overall water had to be placated. What
we do know is that all animals with blood that breathed air were considered to
have spirits that required to be placated and also, the sacrifices to the gods
were these animals.
The way
sacrifice worked for the Greeks was that a person brought an animal or item for
sacrifice to a certain god. The animal
was killed on an altar outside the temple and prepared as a meal for the god. This meal was presented, by the priests, to
the god in the inner chamber where the statue of the god existed. After the god had a chance to eat, the priests
took their tithe (or gift from the owner of the animal). The tithe was usually about 10%. The gift might be more, but the one who presented
the sacrifice would get the remaining meal and meat. This is why the market (agora) was
right by most temples or Parthenon. The
owner either took the remaining meat home or sold it in the marketplace. This is how meat entered most ancient cultures
and societies. This also applied to the
festivals.
In a
festival, the priests would solicit sacrifices for the specific god and
sacrifice. Many times the wealthy or the
general populace would provide the money for the sacrifices or the animals (or
other commodities, like wine, for certain festivals). The sacrifices went the same as an individual
sacrifice, but the meat and food was usually distributed to the people. What does this have to do with proto-writing? I’ll show you, next.
Apparently,
in the ancient world, kings, the wealthy, and other leaders became concerned
that their sacrifices weren’t getting to where they should go—in addition, the
trade in meat and meat based products was very lucrative. It became a big deal both religiously and in
terms of wealth when, for example, a sheep or two were misplaced in transport
or during the sacrifice. These people
wanted an accounting. What they did was
invent proto-writing.
Proto-writing
was a means of making marks on some portable substrate such that the marks
always represented the same thing. You
can see how this started. Some king sent
five sheep and two cows to a temple for a sacrifice. The merchants reported that only four sheep
and a cow made it to the market after the sacrifice. The next time the king sent some animals, he had
a scribe draw pictures of four sheep and two cows, and asked for a receipt. You can imagine the pictures and the
arguments that went on between the king and the priests. They eventually reached a consensus on the
symbols (pictures) they would use to represent sheep and cows as well as the
numbers of sheep and cows. That’s
proto-writing. The symbols look similar
to what they represent and usually represent a noun, like a sheep. As I noted, we have very few examples of
proto-writing, but you can see where proto-writing went from here.
Some bright
scribe got the idea that every noun and even verbs should be represented in the
writing so the reports and the communication could be more direct and
better. I should mention that in proto-writing
as well as early writing, everything was mnemonics. I’ll explain this, next, as well as how we
got to realish writing.
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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