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:
In writing action scenes, description is obviously your friend. Most reasonable writers can cobble together an action scene. To make an action scene both powerful and well done, the author needs to write strong and clear description. Clarity is very important when writing anything, but especially action scenes. I've found action scenes to require very close attention to words and details. If you don't know what I mean, then try to write an action scene of any real length. You will find that confusion will reign without careful attention to pronouns, identification of characters and objects, and precise (clear) verb use.
The who and what and how those move in the scene are everything an action scene is about. This is another reason I like to write action scenes with more than one person. Dialog can be a universal clarifier. You might be astounded to see how much clarity in an action scene you can get from a single character's statement.
I've written about this before. Tags and other identifiers for characters immediately provide the reader an identification of a character and many times much more information. In other words all the description and character development you have provided in the novel comes into play with appropriate identification of the character. In any case, you will always need to write action scenes. I think they are more difficult to write than dialog, but most beginning writers seem to handle them better than dialog. That is, the final product is usually less stilted.
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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