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Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Writing - part xxx831 Scene Outline, Romantic Protagonist

 08 October 2024, Writing - part xxx831 Scene Outline, Romantic Protagonist

Announcement: I still need a new publisher.  However, I’ve taken the step to republish my previously published novels.  I’m starting with Centurion, and we’ll see from there.  Since previously published novels have little chance of publication in the market (unless they are huge best sellers), I might as well get those older novels back out.  I’m going through Amazon Publishing, and I’ll pass the information on to you.

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 the third edition of Centurion:




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)

   

Why not look at the most important building block for a novel—the scene.  When I first started writing I had no idea about scenes.  The concept only struck me after writing about fifteen or so novels.  This is one of the very important concepts that most writing and English teachers and professors don’t know and can’t teach.  As I’ve written before, if you want an educated and trained teacher about novels, ask how many they have had traditionally published—that’s the measure of success and, to a degree, of knowledge.  The knowledge comes with the experience of writing and proven success.

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

I’m not sure if you can get simpler than this outline to write a good scene.  This outline directs the writer in the proper way to design and write a scene.  Let’s look at it again and in detail.

I already covered the ideas of scene input and output as well as tied this to the tension and release in the scene.  To repeat, every scene must be highly entertaining.  If you write a boring scene, you will have a boring novel.  That’s a guarantee.  Let’s not have any boring scenes.  In addition, if you write from scene input to scene output, you can’t lose your way, and you can’t get writer’s block.  There is more to this, but let’s go back to the beginning.

Let’s presume we have a scene input.  This can be the initial scene or the output from the previous scene.  Step two is to set the scene.

I write specifically that you should write the scene setting.  Even if you are lost, you still must have a scene input from the output of the previous scene.  It would be impossible for you not to have an input.  All you need to do now is set the scene.  That’s enough for me.

How do we set the scene?  If this is scene two or greater, then you might be starting with a scene or a place.  What you need to do is set it.  If necessary, set it again and then clean it up (edit out what you don’t need).  I always set the scene.  This means, I ensure the reader knows the when, where, what, and who are on the stage of the novel at the beginning of the scene.  This is critical to writing the scene and not confusing your readers plus, setting the scene provides everything, or nearly everything you need for scene design and development.  I will write this, you don’t have to tell us everything, you need to show us what is on the stage of the scene (novel).  What can the reader see, smell, feel, taste, and hear when the scene opens.  You may increase the details of the descriptions as you go along, but start with description.  Yeah, use some of that writer’s brain to mix it up a little, but for major (new) characters give us at least 300 words and for minor (new) characters, give us 100 words.  Do the same for the places, stuff, and time.  Show us when and where.  I usually don’t start with the characters but with the when and where.  The when is the most obvious as well as the conditions of the when: dark, stormy, bright, sunlight, night, day, cloudy, raining, and all.  You must show us what the conditions, time, and season are.  Perhaps the most awful writing, in my opinion, is when I have no idea when and where we are in the description of the scene.  There are times when this is appropriate.  I’ll mention an example, but show you how to handle this.

In my novel, Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse, Shiggy wakes in a room on a table.  She describes where she is and what she can see, but there is no weather, no notion of time, or place—other than the room.  That’s okay.  We are showing from the point of view (PoV) of the protagonist and character.  This is perfect, and this is how we handle these circumstances.  The same is true for any other novel and scene.  Show us what the characters can see, hear, taste, feel, and smell.  This is the fundamental of description.  I’ll continue with more, next.

When we write any novel, here is my advice.  In the first place, every scene will have a Point of View (PoV).  You can’t go flipping this PoV all over the place in a scene.  A good editor will never let you get away with that, and a good publisher will reject it. 

Now, here is a little controversial advice.  I suggest not using first person.  The first person PoV and style of writing has produced some significant bestsellers, but I have some real problems with it.  In the first place, you can’t move the PoV.

Part of the power of a great novel is the ability of the writer to move the PoV around and still hold to a strong protagonist.  Yes, I also advise a single protagonist.  More than one just dilutes the writing and the story.  Yes, I realize Martin has a bazillion protagonists in Thrones, but it’s simply silly and overkill.  He and you should just write multiple novels.  In any case, I suggest third person, singular protagonist, past tense, implying the future or at least implying the times of the novel.  We could also add to that list, showing style and Romantic protagonist. 

The entire reason I’m writing this is for the scene.  The real problem with the first person is that it is all telling.  You don’t want to move to the omniscient voice in any writing, but in third person, you can provide a description from the PoV of any character and still ring true with a single romantic protagonist.  In fact, you can write the entire novel from the PoV of another character and still have a Romantic protagonist—Wuthering Heights is just that kid of novel.  I’m not really a fan of Wuthering Heights as an example of good writing technique, but it shows that this concept of PoV from another character with a separate protagonist is possible—and a Romantic protagonist at that.

When you begin your novel, you need to determine the person, tense, and a few other details.  For most, the concept of the person of the text is self-determining.  The author just starts writing in a specific person and that’s that.  The tense should always be past tense, while dialog is present tense and moving as necessary for the specifics of the dialog. 

Let me explain even better why I advise against using the first person—except in some very key types of novels.  In every novel, the protagonist becomes the center-point is not the focus of the novel.  In my opinion, the only time you should use the first person tense is when the protagonist is the focus and the most important person in the context of the place.  For example, the king, queen, prince regent, or crown princess.  In a republic, the president, in a parliamentary system, the prime minister, in a tyranny, the dictator, and so on.  If the character of the person is the prime mover and focus of the worldview and the novel, then by all means write in the first person.  This is exactly what I did for part of The End of Honor.  Lyral Neuterra was the crown princess whose death led to the Human Galactic War, thus her portion of the novel is in the first person.  This is a slightly experimental novel because she isn’t the protagonist, but she is the focus of the novel.

So, in writing and developing a novel, we first need to determine the tense, the person, and then the other details—or perhaps start with those details and then apply the person and tense.  I’ll get to that, we are all about writing scenes.

Whatever person you decide for the Point of View (PoV) of the novel, I recommend third person and you should always go with past tense in narration and action and present tense (moving to the proper tense for the conversation) in dialog.  If you have questions about this you need to realize that this is the foundation of modern writing.  I guess I should go through the history of fiction (novels) again.  Let’s go.

The first novel in the English language is usually considered Robinson Caruso by Daniel Defoe.  There are older novels in other languages notably the first ever novel, Genji in Japanese and Don Quixote in Spanish.  All these novels’ titles should tell you something about early novels—they are names of their protagonist.  What is interesting about Robinson Caruso is that it is written in first person.  The reason for this is that it is put together as a journal and the first person fits this journal style.  In addition, because it is a journal style, the implication is that the events happened in the past and are being recorded and recollected.  This is shown with the past tense.  Because of this, for most all novels, the past tense has become the standard for writing fiction.  You will occasionally find a novel in present tense, and I’ve never heard of one in the future tense.  In most cases, any of these novels are not best sellers, or classics, and not successful.  The implication of time (past, present, or future) of most writing comes not from the tense but from the setting.

For most writers and writing, the past tense makes sense.  However, the implication of time in the setting (past, present, or future) are all choices of the topic and the style of the writing.  For example, Robinson Caruso implies the past because it appears to be a recording in a journal of events that happened in the past.  I’ll make the assertion that you will find in most early novels, they are all mostly journal style, implying the past, in the first person, and past tense.  This is what you will find with all three of Danial Defoe’s novels and many of his somewhat contemporaries.  You will also find this to be true of the non-novels from slightly earlier in English literature.  I’ll move on the what happened in these aspects of English literature, next.   

So, the earliest novels in English were first person, journal style, implying the past.  What happened next?  Novels moved from the journal style to the narrative style, and with that change came a great change in person.  The narrative style fits perfectly and is the natural style of the third person, and the third person took the stage in almost all novel writing from then on.  We rarely see the first person in novels again until the end of the twentieth century.  We’ll eventually get to this, but the first person doesn’t work at all with the narrative style.  We’ll have to wait for a new style of literature. 

In any case, from the advent of the novel in English, we get a pretty gradual and yet quick change from journal style to narrative style and with this a move from the first person to the third person.  This lasted into the Victorian Era, but not much past it.

We do move through various movements in writing and most specifically the Romanic style or really the Romantic protagonist.  This movement and change in literature was critically important and then died out in the Victorian Era.  This is very important to us now, so I’ll explain it, next.

The Victorian Era was a high point of literature, but a low point for humanity.  The reason was the decline of the Romantic protagonist and the rise of the aristocratic protagonist.  Most specifically, this was the fate or blood will out plot. 

Now, the fate or blood will out plot had been around since the beginning of literature, but the Victorian aristocracy and society saw the Romantic idea that the common man was as great and capable as the noble, that they had to do something to save it.  The result in the UK was the fate or blood will out plot.  The protagonists roll like dogs in this type of plot, just look at every Dickens’ novel that was ever published, except perhaps A Christmas Carol, and even that one has touches of it.  Look at the seminal novels, Oliver Twist with a noble child accidentally born into penury.  In a Romantic novel, the protagonist would climb out of poverty by the skin of his own teeth—in Oliver Twist, blood will out, so the protagonist is found and taken out of the riffraff back to aristocracy.  Likewise, David Copperfield and most notably, Bleak House show what happens when the poor get their comeuppance and are dashed back to poverty.  It’s not just Dickens.

Many of the great ladies of the Era show similar appeals to blood will out or fate.  The main point of blood will out is that aristocracy and wealth will always overcome the poor and common.  What is interesting about this is that the Romantic Era just before the Victorian was all about the common and the special, not blood or wealth, becoming great through hard work.  This was the American Dream, which by the way ended the nobility, aristocracy, and poverty.  The Victorians were overcome by the new Romantic Era in literature.  This Era isn’t called Romantic, but it is. 

In this new Romantic Era, we see the common man and woman achieving and beating the nobility and wealth at their own game.  The protagonists move from the blooded to the common.  The poor scholarship students are the heroes and the nobility are suddenly the antagonists and vile characters.  The change was quick and reflected society and culture as well as literature.  The common people could read and wanted to see themselves as the valiant winners, and so they were—that was the American Deam that became the world’s dream.  This concept of the Romantic protagonist is very important for writers to understand, I’ll move into that next.

The Modern Era from about 1905 or so on, the end of the Victorian Era goes by a host of names and appellations.  I call it the new Romantic Era or just the Romantic Era because in my mind, only the great Romantic novels, that is novels with Romantic protagonists are worth reading.  As I wrote, the Victorian Era of writing ended with the realization that the market was no longer the aristocracy and the wealthy—it was the common person, and that common person was not just buying novels, they were writing them and showing up all the nobility and wealthy.  The era of the common man and the American dream had taken over literature. 

This new Romantic Era was in some ways similar to the past one, but in some ways peculiar as well.  The Romantic protagonist took the forefront in most of these new novels, and this protagonist was the one that people loved.  You can read many of the Modern Era novels, but you won’t love their characters or their protagonists.  I mean, of course, Hemmingway, Falkner, Steinbeck, and the whole host of modern realist that everyone pretty much hates to read, but that get billed by the literatcy as great authors.  Still, for every one of these novels, ten from ERB (Edgar Rice Burroughs), Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Jack Vance, Alexi Panishin, plus many others is purchased and read.  I’ll go further, even with some of the greats of the Victorian Era, the throwback, or throw forward Robert Louis Stevenson is still more popular than many other Victorian authors—the reason is that he was an early advocate for the Romantic protagonist and the Romantic plot.  He was the vanguard for the Romantic movement that swept literature at the beginning and through the Twentieth Century. 

The main mark of this movement was the Romantic protagonist.  If you wondered why you loved the protagonists of your youthful reading, look no further than this.  Indeed, I point to all if not most protagonists who are loved as this type of protagonist, and you can see them all through the previous and this centuries protagonists.  The only problem today is the rise of the wimpy, pimply, failure protagonist, of whom, Harry Potty is a great example.  Still loved and lovable, but really an anti-Romantic protagonist in a Romantic protagonist wrapper.  I think this is pretty funny, but we are seeing more and more of these wimpy protagonists, and I think it will be the potential death of a whole generation of writing.  We need more Romantic protagonists, not less.  I guess I should explain about the Romantic protagonist, next.

Unfortunately, there are too many presuppositions and presumptions to call the Modern Era of writing the Romantic Era number two.  I’d like to, however, because most successful modern writing is Romantic.  The protagonist is Romantic and the plot is Romantic.  The few successful works in the Realistic Era are just throwaways with little of the power of enduring popularity of the early Romantics or the Victorian Era.  People will still be reading Ivanhoe until the end of the English language, and the Bronte Sisters and Dickens will still be around when no one reads Hemmingway or Steinbeck because they are boring and miss the entire point of writing—entertainment.

Many of the Realist novels are boring.  They script and show the underbelly of life that most of us know is dark, lost, and unimportant to human reality.  They are also ironic since, except for the highly entertaining and enlightening Down and Out in Paris and London by Goerge Orwell, the other realists produced works, not about what they experienced, but what they observed.  The observation is cute, but how can you know what the bird is thinking by bird watching.  You gotta be a bird to understand a bird.  Orwell lived the life he wrote about and showed us a world that he found disgusting.  So disgusting, he rose above it just like we should expect everyone in the same circumstance to do. 

So, where are we?  I want to explain to you the most successful type of protagonist and the most successful type of plot.  If you can reproduce this type of protagonist and plot in your own work, you will have succeeded in entertaining your readers.  I can assure you, at least from the protagonist and plot standpoint.  There are other factors in writing.  With that written, let me get to the Romantic protagonist, next.

The Romantic protagonist is the protagonist you love to love, and you love to read about.  I’ll mention this as a prologue—novels are not just about the protagonist, the antagonist, the telic flaw, the plot, and the resolution of the telic flaw in the climax.  Novels are the revelation of the protagonist. 

I imagined for a long time, as I was taught, that the novel was the revelation of the plot, but writing novels and reading many many novels has led me to better thinking. 

You can and I’m certain have read novels with a terrible, or better written, weak climax, but you loved the novel and the protagonist.  My prepublication readers have stated they never wanted the novel to end.  It wasn’t the plot or necessarily the telic flaw that influenced their enthusiasm—they were excited and enthused and loved the protagonist.  As a writer, I find this true as well.

I find that I love my protagonists.  I and my readers love them so much, that when I give them an adversarial or an antagonistic role in another novel, my readers get a little irritated with me.  I realize their feelings, but what is funny is that I write the same character in the other novels, its just that they aren’t the protagonist and they aren’t the Romantic protagonist anymore—their actions, emotions, and reactions are the same, they are just not able to show their minds anymore to the readers.  Without knowing the mind of your Romantic protagonist, their actions many times become harsh and ill advised, but they were the same responses and actions as before.  They just lack some context from the previous novel.

This context is specifically, showing the mind of the Romantic protagonist.  This is one of the main and key features of the Romantic protagonist, and one that we love about them.  Their actions and reactions by expression of their minds is what makes us love them.  That’s not the only characteristic of the Romantic protagonist, but it’s perhaps the most important one.  I’ll give you the whole list, 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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