03 May 2024, Writing - part xxx673 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Standard English
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.
Here’s an
idea to really wrap your mind around—the literate think in word pictures—that
is words, and not in terms of pictures. Since
we use words so often in speech, and we understand these words in terms of
symbols, it should not be surprising that we think and see the world in terms
of works in the symbols we understand.
Preliterate people don’t do this at all.
In fact, archetypes can’t exist without a written language. For example, what is a chair? The literature see the word chair—that’s an
archetype. The nonliterate can only
visualize a chair they might have seen in the past—they have no way to develop
an archetype because there are some many types of chairs, but all those many
types of chairs are all chairs. If you
can’t imagine the word for chair, you can only imagine a type of chair. Things become even more difficult when the
word is not a noun or verb that can be visualized—like love. Love is a noun and a verb, but you can’t take
a picture of love—not a concrete picture.
You can have a euphemistic picture of love, but which type of love and
what love and any picture like that might be mistaken for something else.
Love is a
term that can’t exist without literacy.
You can’t have something that can’t be drawn or pictured without a word
to describe it. There are many of these
types of words in English (as well as other languages). Here’s the kicker, love only exists as a
symbol representing a sound (word) in English. As a written word, it has
reality, but as an idea, it is not part of the physical world. More, next.
I guess most
people don’t think about this. Most are
wrapped up in the empiricist view of the world and have completely neglected or
ignored the unreal parts. Yet, they had
to have heard about and studied these ideas in math.
In math,
there are real numbers and unreal numbers.
There are imaginary numbers.
These are real things that don’t exist in the physical. They are not empirical in many cases, they
can’t be written without a symbol, like pi or the natural log. The reality is that all mathematics is not
physical but rather from the place outside the physical world. Yet they are part of the world humans can
understand and know. This is the realm
of logic and reason. What I find
fascinating is that a huge component of the writing community would call
themselves part of the empiricist army, but they use non-physical stuff like
words and ideas every day. Is that an
irony or what?
Knowing about
this philosophical stuff is important, but the big deal is imagination and
where that comes from. Authors don’t
just write, they develop ideas within their imagination space and then they
write those ideas down on paper in symbols.
That’s what is important to know.
Just as I
mentioned that in the ancient world, writers developed their thoughts
completely before they hired a libraus, the same is true of the modern
author. They need to fully develop their
ideas in imagination before they try to place them on paper.
So how do we
get our imagination going? I’ll look at
that, next.
You don’t
need to understand that imagination exists in something other than the physical
to be able to use it properly. All you
need is imagination, right? Yes, you
don’t need to understand it to use it, but you can enhance your use of it. That’s the point.
If
imagination resides in the non-physical, then the non-physical is the way we
can jump start it. Let’s look at things
that move ideas into our imagination sphere, or rather into the non-physical
place where our thoughts reside.
So, what things
move into idea space? The first is
symbols. In fact, we can enumerate those
physical or empirical inputs into a person—those are seeing, touching,
smelling, hearing, and tasting. These
all go in as sensory inputs, but are converted into ideas as they move into the
brain. To be most specific, these are
not symbols at all and require little processing. You can just experience them and let them
go. There is more to turning them into ideas
and using them in the information sphere.
To be sure,
the sensations are cataloged and processed by the mind, and then saved in some
fashion, but we want to put them to use in the idea sphere. To do that means we must take them in as
symbols first. Which and how do the
experiences of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell become symbols?
We already
have been writing about reading which is the act of taking in symbols as
letters and words into the mind, and doing something with them. That is actually decoding the words formed by
letters, and that is one of the main ways we bring in symbols.
Another
means of symbol input and decoding is music, singing, or speaking. I already wrote to you that as a literate
person, you see language as word pictures.
This means that all speaking must bring symbols into the mind. These symbols are decoded and turned into
thoughts.
Touch,
smell, and taste are not quite the same as sight and hearing. A symbolic language doesn’t really exist for
them. We can use them directly and
should. I’ll look at symbols in the idea
space, next.
I don’t know
about you, but when I use my imagination to develop characters, a plot, or a
dialog, I don’t use symbols like words, I imagine the setting, actions, and
dialog in a mind picture. Now, the
dialog will take the form of symbols, but the rest won’t. The basic form of imagination is pictures or
video running through your brain.
Eventually, we must categorize and turn these ideas into symbols. That process is writing.
Here's what
I’m thinking. Usually, I imagine the
entire scene or at least parts of the scene and then turn the scene
systematically into symbols (words).
This is what I advocate in the scene outline. I develop the scene, but use specific steps
to turn the pictures from my mind and imagination into words on a page. This is the creative process in a
nutshell.
I’m not
advocating a piecemeal approach to writing from your imagination as much as a
disciplined process or method. As I’ve
written before, start with scene setting.
Set the stage of the scene first.
This only makes sense because it grounds the reader and the scene.
I find it
highly frustrating and confusing when a writer immediately jumps into the
action or dialog in a scene without setting the stage. I do understand the presumption of place and
setting if it hasn’t changed from a previous scene, but that’s not what I’m
writing about. The problem is coming in
cold to a scene without any setting.
This should make any and all of your writing better—just set the scene.
As I noted,
moving the pictures in your mind to the page as words is the creative
process. I’ll repeat what I wrote
before. If you have imagined a scene,
writer’s block is impossible because all you need to do is move the picture to
the words. That’s the process of
writing. There is a step beyond this
one, the crafting of the writing or as most call it, editing. I’ll look at this, next.
Crafting
comes with editing—that’s my opinion.
Yes, you can craft your writing as you write, that is, as you turn your
imagination into words and then into symbols, but the real power for crafting
your writing is with editing.
I’m not a
real fan of outlining perse, but writing a first draft might be considered akin
to making a detailed outline of your imagination. Usually, I like to craft a large amount of my
draft as I write it. This is especially
true of the dialog. Usually, for me the
dialog comes out as a wholistic piece.
Many times when I need to craft it to add in new ideas or connections,
it becomes very difficult. The reason is
that for me, dialog is tightly wound, so tightly wound that unraveling a single
strand affects the whole. That to some
degree is my problem and part of my style of writing.
As I started
and stated in this section, when you put the first blush of your description,
narration, action, and dialog on paper from your imagination, you can craft all
you want, but the most important point is to get it on paper. Once your imagination has form, then we can
craft.
Crafting is
the editing for completeness, great writing, and entertainment. Focus on entertainment. In the crafting process, we don’t really care
much for grammar, punctuation, or spelling—we are going for entertainment and
great writing. The details can
wait. You might call this the first
edit, but it’s really more than an edit—this is the place where the heavy
lifting really begins.
As I wrote,
you might be able to craft very well as you write the first draft. You might use little tricks like I do when
you put together the first draft. For
example, when I need a description, I usually stop writing and research the
object or person I need to describe. For
me, the description produces setting elements that I can use for the rest of
the text. On the other hand, if I’m
writing a tight dialog, I usually skip description until the first edit. That’s because I don’t want to break the train
of thought in the writing. Dialog is
that way for me.
Perhaps I
should write more about crafting in editing and what it means, next.
When I was a
younger writer, I understood that editing was all about improving the writing,
but I thought that was all about spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I didn’t understand the concept of crafting
the writing. I’m using these two terms
editing and crafting to delineate between editing for spelling, grammar, and
punctuation and improving and fixing the story and plot.
Yes, you
need to have the best and most perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation
possible, but it will never be perfect.
More important is the action, description, narration, and dialog. This will never be necessarily perfect
either, but we are aiming for entertaining and not perfection.
Once you get
the first draft on paper (or aether), you need to go through the text to
improve the description, first. That’s
the easiest and If you didn’t get it in the first draft, do it now.
Description
is easy and will provide more setting elements to improve the rest of the
writing. Next, look at the action and
narrative. Action and narrative can
always be improved by addition of creative elements from the setting
elements. This can also be applied to
the dialog. As you bring in setting elements,
use them in the rest of the document to increase entertainment and excitement
in the writing. This is crafting. Also, as you work through the text figure how
you can fit the scene into other scenes and other plots and characters in your
novel. These are generally creative
elements you can use to improve your scene.
Of course, all of these improvements are driven by the imagination of
the writer. This is perhaps the most important
point of both editing and crafting. We’ll
look at this, next.
In using
imagination in crafting your writing, you must read the symbols your placed on
paper and turn them into words and then word pictures. In other words, you put yourself in the place
of the reader as you read your own writing.
This isn’t editing in the normal sense at all. When we are editing, as I’ve defined it, we
are looking intently at the test to determine the proper spelling, grammar, and
punctuation. These are the trees, we
need to look at the forest when we are crafting. Yes, at some point you will need to edit, but
crafting is much more important for the early work—that is the early drafts.
Most
critical for the writing is getting the entire development of the text
right. It’s very difficult to determine
good examples, but let me give it a try.
You might
write in a first draft:
Jane woke. She dressed, and stepped down to breakfast.
Crafting the
text, you might write:
The
brilliant sunlight finally touched Jane’s window and flooded over her slumbering
eyes. She woke gently but dazzled by the
light. She stretched under her warm
covers for a moment, yawned, and finally threw them off.
You can keep
going. This would be a great time to
describe Jane, the room, and her toilet as she prepares to step down to
breakfast. The difference between the
first writing and the second is crafting the action, narrative, and
description. This is exactly what I mean
when I write, you put down your first draft which might look like the first
example, and craft it into something that really creates word pictures in the
minds of our readers. Alternately, you
should craft while writing the first draft.
The point is to get to a beautiful rendition that will entertain and
excite your readers. This requires
imagination, to see the world from the reader’s viewpoint and from the
viewpoint of the writing itself. It also
requires crafting to develop the words that form the word pictures. I should address this next—that is crafting
to develop the word pictures for the minds of the readers.
Perhaps
being a poet first is a major requirement for an author. I write this because in the past, it seems
many of the greatest authors were also poets.
In the middle past, that is after the invention of printing and before
the modern era, many long works of literature were also works of poetry. I point out Shakespeare, Milton, and many
others of that time. The reason this is
important is that the poetry in many of these works enhanced the power of the
imagination and the work itself.
For example,
the poetry moved these works from simple description, action, narration, and
dialog to metaphor and euphemism. I’m
not sure you can do poetry without figures of speech—and that’s the main point
of crafting.
Some people
just naturally think in terms of figures of speech. Every word they put on the page fits into
that mold, however, for the rest of us, we need to work on figures of
speech. Our brains need to be attuned to
it to be able to write this way, and we need to write this way—that is with and
through figures of speech. I’d almost
say the more the better, but someone is certain to take it to too great an
extreme. Remember the rule: don’t
confuse your reader, and then apply as much figure of speech as you wish. Even better if the figures of speech drive an
undercurrent in your plot while the main plot flows at the top of the writing.
When I was
young, I used to think in terms of multiple overlapping plots similar to the
type of writing in Shakespeare where you find many overlapping ideas that give
similar but not the same conclusions in the writing. I’m not sure I agree with this anymore. It’s just too complex.
In the main,
I think great authors write in allegory or parallel structure. Parallel is the more common mode—there may be
multiple plots, but they all support the main plot—the parallel structure comes
out of the figures of speech. Likewise
for the allegory although an allegory is usually tied more closely or tightly
to the plots and the narrative. I
suspect you want an example:
Jane went to
the zoo and saw many animals.
Parallel
with figures of speech:
Jane went to
the zoo and was amazed at the menagerie that only Noah could fully appreciate.
We have two
distinct figures of speech here: the menagerie and Noah. To continue these as parallels, all I need to
do is express another figure of speech connected to Noah, the flood, and anything
else from the Biblical account or about a menagerie.
This is the
kind of thing an author needs to expand and write for every single idea in the writing.
This is crafting the writing.
Crafting in
writing is all about figures of speech as well as connections within the
overall writing. This includes, for
example, foreshadowing, parallels, allegory, plus every other means of providing
references and connections in the text.
Figures of speech happen to be the means that include all of these. There are a number of types of figures of
speech in English, as well as every other language.
There are
over 100 different types of figures of speech in English. Many get used by authors and in common
speaking without the speaker or writer even realizing they are using a figure
of speech. They are super common in
English primarily because English is a highly euphemistic language. What I mean by that is that, by comparison,
with ancient Greek for instance, which is highly concrete, English requires both
context as well as many adjectives and adverbs to keep nouns and verbs
straight. How can that be in a language
with more than a million words? Let’s go
back to the word love.
The
definition for love, in English, covers multiple pages in the Oxford
dictionary. I don’t know if love is the
word with the most definitions, but it is pretty close. In English, you can love your dog, your children,
your spouse, your food, your house, your job, and all, and each of these loves
is much different than each of the other loves.
By contrast in ancient Greek, you can agape the gods, but not any
person, and the gods can agape you. You can phileo your shield warrior friend,
but you can’t phileo your wife or your children. You can epithumia the sacrifice or
other inanimate objects, but not any people.
I could keep on going—the Greeks have about ten words that can be
defined or translated as love, but they have distinct meanings and objects. This is why we call ancient Greek a very
concrete language. On the other hand, in
English, the object defines the context of the love, we hope. The writer must either use adjectives or
adverbs or figures of speech to explain the context of the love that is meant—especially
if that context is not normal or is outside of the common understanding. While we are here, let me bring in an example
of the Greek words usually translated say or said in English.
The only ancient Greek word (Classical Greek) that can be adequately translated
as said is eipen. This word is a
verb in the past tense and doesn’t designate the manner or context of the
speaking only that such and such was said.
On the other hand, there are approximately nine other words that are
commonly translated say or said from Greek to English, but all of them specify
what and how the words were said—the context of the speech. For example, phemi means to give an
opinion. Rehme means to tell a
story. Logos means to make a
logical argument. Mythomai means
to express ideas of a supernatural basis like a myth. Lealo means small talk. Kladon means to speak for the
gods. And so on—there are a lot. Each Greek word needs to be defined in
context to understand what the writer or speaker is saying.
In English, we have some words we can use to define the context of the
speech, but usually we simply leave it up to the context or we use figures of
speech. English isn’t the most euphemistic
language in the world, but it’s pretty close, especially compared to the number
of words and forms of grammar available.
I will mention that the most euphemistic language is Japanese with ancient
Hebrew a close second. Japanese and ancient
Hebrew share certain characteristics with other old languages which cause euphemism:
limited number of words and highly structured language. English, by contrast has many words and a
highly structured language. Highly
structured means the form of the language is dependent on the position of the words. Greek and other languages depend much less on
the position of the words due to the ways they indicate the tense of the verb
and the part of speech of the noun. For
example, a noun can be normative, accusative, dative, or genitive. In English, we call these the subject, the
object, the indirect object, and the possessive. So, what does this all mean?
This means that English is highly context and position dependent and to make
sense as well as to communicate properly, the writer must use figures of
speech. We’ll keep on this topic.
English is a highly euphemistic language.
This makes context and the use of euphemism very important. Just by speaking or writing in English, you
are participating in the great euphemistic spread of information, even if you
didn’t know.
I mentioned the use of the word love and the word said in English as
compared to ancient Greek for example. The
problem is that almost every word in English has similar issues, and it isn’t
just the words—certain phrases are very specific to English and are built in
figures of speech that are used in common speech. English itself as a language is so filled
with figures of speech as well as contextual based language and vocabulary, it
is impossible to not write without figures of speech, however, it is equally
possible, in English to express ideas completely contrary to the author’s
intent by the use of more direct forms, and it is very possible to create soulless
writing without any trace of nuance or feeling.
All fiction writing is supposed to be entertaining, and I’ve written about
this before. There are authors who write
with figures of speech and such eloquence that the writing itself is a thing of
beauty. The plot and the characters take
a back seat to the writing.
Then there are writers of the Hemmingway school whose writing is blunt and
without any embellishment. Don’t look to
Hemmingway for glittering prose. Such
writing is still filled with figures of speech, but on a level of pure
communication and not one of structural delight. Most of us authors fill a space between
glittering prose and pure communication.
At least, that’s what I aim for.
As an author, you might as well try to write within these three forms. I suspect you will find yourself most
comfortable at some point and usually not an extreme. I’ve read and known the glittering prose
types. They are few and far between, and
I’m not certain how much time it takes them to craft their sterling
production. On the other hand, I’ve known
many accidental Hemmingways. Their
writing was embarrassingly without embellishment, and that didn’t help their
writing at all.
Hemmingway might be very direct and blunt as a writer, but he knew how to write
and how to properly compose in English.
It’s easy to make fun of his style, but he still got across his message,
and in English, he couldn’t help move the ball with euphemism.
I mentioned that there are over 100 forms of figures of speech. There are also thousands of indirect speech
and direct euphemisms in English. Part
of the problem in English is the number of verb forms and tenses as well as the
number of words. I guess I should get
into that a little, next.
English has an almost unique simplicity compared to most other modern
languages. It has almost zero gendered
nouns and no gendered verbs. It has a
simple direct and indirect article noun formation. It has a limited number of nominative,
dative, and accusative indicator pronouns and instead uses noun position in the
sentence to indicate these cases. And,
it uses almost exclusively s and es to indicate plural forms and ‘s and s’ or
of to indicate the genitive. For these
reasons we’d expect English to be a very simple language to learn and to speak,
but it isn’t so at all. Many consider
English to be one of the hardest languages to master. The main reason is the verb forms.
English is a hybrid language. It
started as Germanic as in Anglo-Saxon but picked up French as a key part of
it. Like the Germanic languages, English
has a very similar verb structure with be and have as indicators of verb
tense. It also has what in English are
called helper verbs like should, can, may, would, as well as have and be. Germanic languages are similar. However, English also has do form verb tenses
as well as every kind of odd verb tense formation for the formation of
questions and nuance. That’s what makes English
difficult. The nuance that can be
developed in a sentence is pretty awesome, and this is what trips up many
English learners.
Here are some examples. This isn’t
meant to be all inclusive, but I’ll try to get most of them.
John runs.
Joun is running.
John ran.
John has run.
John was running.
John has run.
John had run.
John did run.
John may run.
John might run.
John should run.
John will run.
John will have run.
Did John run?
And so on. You get it, right. This isn’t all the forms this simple sentence
can take about John and running. Each of
these sentences are different. Each has
a specific and very nuanced difference in the language. I’m not sure any other language has as many
verb forms as English. I do know the
other feature of the language is the number of words. For as euphemistic as English is, it has over
a million words. This is good and
bad. I’ll explain this next.
Because English has so many words, you might expect to just pick the exact word
for what you mean. This is much more
difficult than your think. For example,
if you mean love, you should use love or you might use a synonym. The problem with almost all the synonyms for
love is they are simply synonyms for love.
There might be a distinct word in English for friendship type love, but
there isn’t—you are required to write love with either some phrase or an adverb
to distinguish the type of love you mean.
You could also use the Greek or Anglo-Saxon term, but you would need to
explain it in context. That’s basically
what I did in one of my novels Dana-ana: Enchantment and the Maiden. You can also develop a euphemism or a figure
of speech to describe and explain the type of love you mean. If you do find a word in English for what you
need, you should use real caution.
I get a couple of words of the day on my email feeds. My students signed me up. Some of the words of the day are reasonable
and useful, but most are unusable. The
reason is that many of the words are outside of the normal vocabulary of your
readers. The idea of the normal
vocabulary and how far the author can go with word usage is very
important. I actually received
significant complaints about my novel Centurion because of the
vocabulary, and that’s in spite of the fact that for the Latin and more
esoteric terms, I defined them at least three times, and then redefined them
when I brought them up again. There is a
great plan for introducing new and esoteric words.
I was bringing words like gladius and scutum into the novel. The gladius is a short sword and the scutum
is a type of shield. Most readers of history
and people who know about the Roman Empire would know these words, but I
brought a short description and explanation into the text so my readers would understand
what the words meant. As I noted, this
is very important, and yes, we can use figures of speech to help understand and
define these words. I’ll write a little
more about vocabulary and Standard English, next.
If you’ve never heard of Standard English, you need to. Standard English is broadly described as the
normative English that is spoken in a region such as the United States. What is non-Standard English? This is any English usually characterized by
slang, non-Standard grammar, non-Standard vocabulary, non-Standard spellings,
and non-Standard usage. Most
specifically, non-Standard English is slang.
Peppering some dialog with slang for a specific character can be a reasonable
technique in characterization, but a wise author brings up a little bit of
slang then switches back to Standard English from that point on. A little slang can make a character, too much
is just too much.
My favorite example of a novel ruined by non-Standard English is The Little
Witch. This is a very fun novel written in
the 1950s and filled with 1950s slang.
The slang destroys the continuity and longevity of the novel. It sounds and reads terrible in the modern
world. If the author had just written
the novel in standard English, it might be a still beloved novel. Unfortunately, there is just too much slang
in it. You should take a look at this
novel and see exactly what I’m writing about.
The main problem with non-Standard English is that when society outgrows the
slang, no one knows what is going on anymore.
You can’t understand what the characters are saying or what the author
intended. It’s like trying to understand
a completely different language. The
same goes for accents or uncommon speech forms.
A little can set a scene, too much is just too much. Not to mention, that no one will translate
your novel back into Standard English in the future, so it will be lost
forever. No one might be able to
translate it. I also recommend limiting
your vocabulary. That’s next.
I want to write another book based on
Rose and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s
my plan. 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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story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel,
book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea,
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