21 May 2024, Writing - part xxx691 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Creating Ideas from Protagonists
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 two
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.
I’m back to
my main point—we are looking for entertaining ideas to write about. I covered some real territory in the last few
blogs, and I’ll pull this information together is a cognizant way.
The last
point I made was about experience. I
really think an author needs a broad level of experience in something, and I
don’t think writing is enough by itself.
If you look at our favorite authors from the Twentieth Century, you’ll
find a huge number happened to participate in the fighting in World War I and
World War 11. This seems to be a
favorite history fact for the World War I authors, but ignored in the World War
II authors. I find this fascinating in
itself.
When I
researched the lives of my favorite authors, I found many had military or at
least government connections into the fighting in some way. Even the great women writers of the time
participated in some way. The same is
true, to a lesser extent in the modern era.
We find many authors, especially of political and topical novels to have
experience in the military. Perhaps the
publishers are keeping their histories an intentionally secret, which I think
was the plan for the World War II authors.
In any case,
experience is a critical element of the writer both for their depth of
knowledge and their depth of understanding.
I think we perhaps see less of this in authors and less quality works
because of the obvious prejudice against certain types of writers, settings,
and plots. Yes, there is something wrong
with the world when exciting and true tales are buried by the surreal and
silly. When the makeup of ones
chromosomes are more important than one’s writing skill or thoughts. This is a real problem for art and
literature. It’s an even worse problem
for society and culture with the loss of true knowledge and skill.
You can see
it in the writing as well as the stories.
I wonder all the time, where is the next Frank Herbert and where is the
next great movie? Jack Vance made a
great mark on the world of science fiction, but none of his novels have been
turned into movies. Instead, we get the
insipid Star Trek dreck and Star Bores both written by the clueless without any
idea how to entertain.
There is
still hope. We see the movie industry
turning out redo after redo. Star Trek
and Star Bores are into their multiple renditions still without much
entertainment. Plus, without much
reality either—they need an experienced scientist or real astronaut to write
for them. It doesn’t help when the
imaginations of the mentally crippled become the surefire fantasy worlds of the
media. It also leads the stupid and
youth to think the world is much different than their experience—babes in
libland.
So, you
might ask—why not write exactly what the market wants? That’s a great idea, but really more attune
to the nonfiction market. You can indeed
write a book about contemporary events and have a nearly surefire work—well
especially if you are already recognized and known, ouch. You can also break into the nonfiction
marketplace and establish yourself. I
have a great writer friend who is building his brand in writing about
writing. He’s also moving into other
fields in the nonfiction space. I’m watching
closely.
Unfortunately,
my skills and knowledge aren’t exactly in the popular nonfiction areas. I could move outward into some areas, but
maybe not. I work in a couple of dead
languages, ancient Greek and Anglo-Saxon.
I could pull a Tolkien with a translation of some Anglo-Saxon text, but
without students who are forced to buy your textbook or tome, that’s usually
not very lucrative. I could and have
written essays and historical accounts of my flying experiences. They might have some traction. I have tried to get some movement there, but I
was hoping to get reestablished with a publisher and then move out a
little. Then there is the muse.
What are you
excited and inspired to write? I get
inspired every time I design a protagonist for this writing blog. The inspiration isn’t nonfiction—the
inspiration is fiction and something that is unique and new, hopefully in the
world. And, that’s that.
What I mean
is this. As fiction writers, we hope for
our Harry Potty or Sparkly Vampires.
Really both the Harry Potty novels and the Sparkly Vampire novels are
not the best written works in literature.
They both ended with movie adaptations that brought in buckets of
cash. Count the Throne Game among those
as well. A boring and mendicant fantasy
novel that spawned a thousand copiers and mucho audiences. That’s all we want as writers, and I can
assure you—you won’t achieve these levels by writing to the market or even by
following the herd. Whatever you write
must be new, exciting, entertaining, and somehow touch the market and needs of
people all over the place. That’s exactly
what the novels I mentioned did. They
were real breakouts. Harry Potty
especially. Who could imagine that those
novels for kids would put magic realism on the map. Who could imagine a kid’s novel could set the
world ablaze in more than one way.
So, this is
my advice, and this is what I’m going to continue to do. Keep writing what inspires you. Gain your experience as a writer. You need to write eight to ten novels to
really be there. Continue to write and
write what is exciting, entertaining, and interesting to you. Especially if your day job isn’t writing. Maybe even if your day job is writing. You know someone out there will love your
writing, other than your mother. You
know as long as you gain the skills, and you write what you love to read, you
will also be writing something others will want to read. You just have to find a publisher who also
love and believes in your writing. I did
find that, and then my publisher went out of business. Oh well.
So is life. I’m looking for
another publisher. Until I do, I’m going
to continue to write about writing and keep up my search for a publisher. I’ll work on my other writing until I get
back to novel November or earlier. I
really do need to write a fun novel.
I’ve even outlined it for you—so to speak. Until then, I’ll see what I can do to help
your and my writing.
In any case,
let us continue with entertaining ideas.
That’s what leads to entertaining writing.
I get most
of my ideas from other writing, stories, and shows. That’s not to say I borrow the plots or
characters wholesale. In fact, I usually
don’t use any of the plots or the characters at all. The ideas I get are usually the circumstances
or the situations. Sometimes the
circumstances and situations of the characters.
In fact, one of the most memorable ideas I got from another’s writing
was from a fellow author under my previous publisher. I think the book was The Least of These. The character who intrigued me was a child. I think she was named Trish or something like
that. Trish was left, by her mother in
an empty house and given a small allowance to buy food. She subsisted on cereal and milk—that’s about
it. Trish eventually went to school
where a teacher noted her poverty and issues.
I based my character Nikita an abandoned child in a science fiction environment
on Trish.
Nikita was
nothing like Trish. Nikita was a Freetrader
child whose father abandoned her and whose mother died. She lived on garbage on the planet El Reshad
in my world of The Chronicles of the Dragon and the Fox in a later time
with novels called The Ghostship Chronicles.
Nikita was
an entirely different kind of character.
She was an abandoned child like Trish, but in an entirely different
environment and with very different characteristics. She was a telepath which brought her to the
attention of Den and Natana Protania, the primary characters in my Ghostship
novels.
So, here’s
the point. This is how I get ideas and
incorporate them in my novels. I found Trish
in a friend’s novel. I made Nikita a
similar, but very different character.
This is how we develop ideas.
Notice, the means is through reading and study.
I consider
reading and study to be the main means of idea development. This is how you get ideas and how you develop
stories. The ideas might come from a
mundane or a very esoteric source, but the point is to make them your own.
The
development of a protagonist from Trish is a direct example of using an idea to
build an entirely new concept or character.
Usually, I don’t have such a direct or specific line of development from
one to the other. Most of my characters and
plots are composites of many characters and ideas not just from one. Then much of my characters come from history.
For example,
Hestia from my novel Hestia: Enchantment and the Hearth, is the goddess
Hestia. She isn’t the protagonist, but
she comes directly from myth and history.
Likewise, in Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon, the demon
Asmodeus comes from history and historical sources. A few other characters and people come from
history, and all the settings come from history and are real places. Let’s look deeper at this and especially how
we might develop and borrow characters and settings from history.
I’ve written
before, “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.” This
is where ideas and especially new ideas come from, and, yes, there can be
completely new ideas, but we must realize that even completely new ideas are
only made possible by the ideas that foreshadowed and came before them.
For example,
every new aircraft comes from the design, knowledge, and experience of every
previous aircraft. Every piece of
electronics comes from the design, knowledge, and experience represented by every
previous electronic device. The next
great invention will come about because someone is experimenting with previous
ideas and previous inventions. Then
again, there is always the possibility of an accidental discovery.
Science
fiction authors were enamored with the idea that FTL (Faster than Light) travel
came as an accident rather than an incremental change. Let me tell you a secret. The universities and the epoch of modern
education and research are all about incremental and not revolutionary
change. If you have a revolutionary idea,
you are better off in industry. In
industry, if it works and can make money, it’s welcome—it doesn’t matter if it’s
incremental or revolutionary. Almost
every great and new idea, by the way, comes out of industry and not out of the
university. Incrementalism is the reason. If a professor can’t fully comprehend it, it
doesn’t exist. Oh well.
In science
fiction, it’s more likely that an industry or a scientist in industry will accidentally
or intentionally invent something wonderful in the future—like a DVD player, an
iPhone, or something else that will completely blow the world away
(figuratively). In fact, the DVD player
was incrementally destined to be blown away by streaming. Many scientists and knowledgeable leaders
predicted this years ago. It just
required time and development. The
iPhone was inevitable as well. As computers
became smaller and smaller, a pocket computer is just an incremental design.
You can interpolate and extrapolate technology pretty well if you know
shat you are about.
Ideas and
creativity are no different. We as
artists and writers study the ideas of the past and present to create the ideas
of the future. That’s what we are
writing. How can we do this? That’s next.
I develop
characters, plots, and settings from history and studying other art. That’s the way all artists create their
art. It isn’t by copying or reproducing
past art—it’s through the study of art in the past and reflecting it in
something new in our art. This is the
way all creativity works. Creativity,
like science and engineering is built on the shoulders of the inventors of the
past. How do we accomplish this in real
time, and how do we reflect this in our work.
Let’s
develop a setting. I like to research a
setting for my works by finding some place and time to match my protagonist and
plots. Which comes first: protagonist,
plot, or setting. It really
depends.
I like to
start with the protagonist but each of the main elements, characters, plots,
and settings are connected together. If
you can’t start with anything else, begin with a setting. (I like to start with the protagonist first,
but a setting is easy).
Find some
exciting, interesting, and exotic place, or perhaps just some place you have
been or that interests you. Let’s say
you took a trip to Britain. I lived in
Britain and speant lots of time working with the Brits and flying in the
nation. I use Britian as a setting for
many of my novels, for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that it fits
my worldview in myth and history. I’ve
also used parts of the USA.
I’ve set
novels in the places I went to university in the USA: Tacoma Washington and
Boston. I also set one of my earliest
novels at the Whitesands Range, that is in the beginning. It went to ancient Greece later on. That novel was The Second Mission.
Why these
locations? I’d been there. I knew them intimately. I knew some of their excitement and they were
interesting. I could make them fit my
needs and they were fun. That’s also why
I use Britain and also France. Perhaps
we should look at some other aspects of developing settings, characters, and
plots from what we know and understand.
I usually develop
a setting from a protagonist. Starting
with the protagonist is the easiest, for me, method of developing ideas. From my standpoint, the protagonist is the
most important element of any novel, and indeed, the novel itself is the
revelation of the protagonist. I mean
this in every sense.
Every
protagonist comes with all the elements necessary to make a great novel. Or, I should write that theoretically, every
protagonist comes with enough baggage (information) to produce a great
novel. In fact, as I noted, I like to
start with the protagonist because they give a setting as well as all the other
information required for a novel.
You might
ask: where does the setting come from?
The answer is directly from the protagonist. In the background and development of the
protagonist, the question is always, what is their history? Where do they come from? Who are they?
These questions answer exactly the setting. Where is the protagonist and what part of
their life and experience are they? In
the case of Aine, the protagonist still lives at home with his father, mother,
and sister. That means the setting is
where he lives. This makes setting
development and setting design easy. We just
take the real world setting I the time period defined and produce a
setting. I won’t go into the details
here—I already have gone into great detail on this specific subject. The importance is that you see how I can take
a protagonist and develop a setting. The
same is true of the plots and all.
Now, then,
the question becomes how do we develop a protagonist, and especially a
protagonist who will fill, fulfill, and create a novel? This is the real question, everything else falls
into place from this.
I have
answered the question, more than once on how to develop a protagonist, but I’m
not certain I’ve covered enough, how to get a basic idea for a
protagonist. Perhaps the easiest way
would be to describe how I came about my protagonists from my novels. Here’s a list:
The Second
Mission (399 to 400 BC) – I wanted to write a novel about Socrate’s writing. The reason is there is a continuing conflict
in historical thinking and historians about the accuracy of the observations
and recorded accounts of witnesses to history.
I wanted to address this in my novel.
I posed it as a problem, but my answer was that the records were
completely accurate, so I went about putting together a novel that showed that
from the standpoint of a modern person.
The way I got a modern person back into the time of Socrates was with
time travel. My protagonist was an
accidental time traveler. He was in the
wrong place at the right time and accidentally was pulled back with the actual
time traveler. My protagonist happened to
be a nuclear physicist who would eventually invent theory that led to the
invention of time travel. He’s a totally
made up character. I named him Alan
Fisher, and chose the name using my normal naming methods. The setting was easy as was the character
development. Where else would you find a
nuclear scientist in a remote place where future people might be making time
travel experiments—White Sands of course.
My character, Alan Fisher, happened to be on the monument that marks the
first nuclear blast. The future scientists
chose this as isolated and unpopulous enough that they shouldn’t have the
problem they did of an accidental time traveler. That’s just what happened to Alan.
The initial
setting is White Sands and the nuclear monument. The next scene is in ancient Greece 400
BC. The setting is specifically north
and east of Athens with the actual time traveler. So the novel moves on. Alan Fisher is very important in the overall
scheme of the novel, and he came out of the idea for the novel itself. I noted already how and why I came about the
idea. By the way, the first mission in
time was to observe the life and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
Centurion (6
BC to 33 AD)
Aksinya:
Enchantment and the Daemon 1917 – 1918 (1920)
Aegypt 1926
Sister of
Light 1926 – 1934
Sister of
Darkness 1939 – 1945
Shadow of
Darkness 1945 – 1953
Shadow of
Light 1953 – 1956
Antebellum
1965 (1860 to 1865)
Children of
Light and Darkness 1970 – 1971
Warrior of
Light 1974 – 1976
Warrior of
Darkness 1980 – 1981
Deirdre:
Enchantment and the School 1992 - 1993
Cassandra:
Enchantment and the Warriors 1993 - 1994
Hestia:
Enchantment of the Hearth 2000 - 2001
Essie:
Enchantment and the Aos Si 2002 - 2005
Khione:
Enchantment and the Fox 2003 - 2004
Blue Rose:
Enchantment and the Detective 2008 - 2009
Dana-ana:
Enchantment and the Maiden 2009 - 2010
Valeska:
Enchantment and the Vampire 2014 - 2015
Lilly:
Enchantment and the Computer 2014 - 2015
September
2022 – death of Elizabeth
Sorcha:
Enchantment and the Curse 2025 - 2026
2026 death
of Mrs. Calloway
Rose:
Enchantment and the Flower January to April 2028
Seoirse:
Enchantment and the Assignment August to November 2028
science
fiction
The End of
Honor
The Fox’s
Honor
A Season of
Honor
Athelstan
Cying
Twilight
Lamb
Regia
Anglorum
Shadowed
Vale
Ddraig Goch
– not completed
I’ll look at
the origin of the protagonists and the ideas for these novels, 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
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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