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:
Writing requires a great deal of skill. It is not something you simply pick up. It is not something you take a class in and singularly learn. You can imagine that everyone in most first world nations has at least 12 years of writing training. If you are a college graduate, you have at least another couple of years of training in writing. Do you realize, that this is a small beginning, but not enough to make anyone a competent writer. Writing competence begins with learning the basic skills in writing--the rules of words, sentence structure, paragraph development, scene development, and novel construction. If you go to most K-12 and college, you will be trained in the rules of words and sentence structure. You might get some experience with paragraph development. In English and American literature, you might get some training in novel construction (for the purpose of evaluating novels, not writing them). In general, you may learn most of the functional pieces required to write a novel. The part you certainly won't get is scene development. You also won't get much help with actual novel construction.
This is why I focus on developing the theme, plot, and then storyline, in this blog. It is also why I write extensively about scene construction and development. These are the pieces of writing a novel that are not generally taught in schools anywhere. Plus, when I was a student, I thought that people who taught writing, especially in college, had to be published authors. Boy was I wrong. Many if not most writing teachers in standard schools haven't published anything, and if they have, it is in college literary magazines of their own construction. You know, the kinds of literary magazines that are given away for free or that have no commercial basis. In other words, their work has not be chosen by the commercial marketplace for real people who will pay money for the writing. I learned this the hard way.
In writing, the skills must be learned one way or another--there is only one way to get experience in writing, however.
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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