Announcement: I heard from my publisher that my Aegypt novels will continued to be titled Ancient Light and that the next two books will be called Sister of Light and Sister of Darkness. These were the original titles. They will be released individually and as a 3 in 1 volume. I saw the proposed cover. I'll keep you updated.
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.
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.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
All novels have five discrete parts:
1. The initial scene (the beginning)
2. The rising action
3. The climax
4. The falling action
5. The dénouement
The theme statement of my newest novel, Valeska, is this: An agent of the organization becomes involved with a vampire girl during a mission, she becomes dependent on the agent, and she is redeemed.
Here is my proposed cover for Valeska:
The question then is how do we approach writing the storyline in an action scene? First, set the scene, second, set the characters, third, introduce the characters into the action. Obviously, if you has characters, you can also use dialog in the scene and then you have a "dialog" scene. If you have a single character, now you need to be very careful about how you write. You don't want to tell too much, and I assure you, most authors can't help telling a little.
Without dialog, you must use tricks to "reveal" without dialog. You might ask, why reveal at all. Here is the example, I won't write it out. I will leave it as an exercise. Write an intimate scene between two people using dialog only. If you are any kind of experienced writer, you will find this very easy to do. You can exclude every piece of description and write a wonderful and sensual intimate scene with only dialog. For those who don't get intimate, I mean sexual. You can be incredibly explicit with only conversation. If you read back in Aksinya, I wrote just such a scene depicting Aksinya's wedding night. Note, that you can approach this type of scene in more than one way. You can write with little conversational revelation about the thinking of the characters, and you can write it with extensive conversational revelation of the thinking of the characters. You can't write such a scene without directly or indirectly revealing the feelings of the characters.
Now, write a similar scene with a single character--no dialog. First, you can't reveal any thinking without "telling." Second, you can't reveal any feelings directly. Third, if you use the trick of soliloquy, you can give us a lot, but you've suddenly turned the scene into a dialog. Sometimes, the third idea doesn't work very well--sometimes it does. My point is to show you how action is dependent on description and not "telling," and how dialog opens so much more possibility for the author.
More tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
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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