Writing - part xx272 Writing a Novel, Make it Sense Setting, Still Visualizing

1 July 2020, Writing - part xx272 Writing a Novel, Make it Sense Setting, Still Visualizing

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 21^st 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 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.

     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.

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 29^th novel, working title, Detective, potential title Blue Rose: Enchantment and the Detective.  The theme statement is: Lady Azure Rose Wishart, the Chancellor of the Fae, supernatural detective, and all around dangerous girl, finds love, solves cases, breaks heads, and plays golf.  

Here is the cover proposal for Blue Rose: Enchantment and the Detective. 

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 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  I’m planning to start on number 31, working title Shifter. 

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 31:  Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events. 

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:  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. 

To start a novel, I picture an initial scene.  I may start from a protagonist or just launch into mental development of an initial scene.  I get the idea for an initial scene from all kinds of sources.  To help get the creative juices flowing, let’s look at the initial scene. 

1.     Meeting between the protagonist and the antagonist or the protagonist’s helper

2.     Action point in the plot

3.     Buildup to an exciting scene

4.     Indirect introduction of the protagonist

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. 

I’ve worked through creativity and the protagonist.  The ultimate point is that if you properly develop your protagonist, you have created your novel.  I should move back to the initial scene, but I’ve been writing about showing and not telling in my short form blog, and I want to expand that out a bit in this blog.  Let’s move on to perhaps the most important feature of the novel: showing and not telling.

Novelists are not storytellers.  Novelists are story-showers.  I hope you have heard the fiction writer’s adage: show and don’t tell.  This is the most important aspect of the internal construction of the novel. 

I will reveal that in reviewing a recent self-published author’s book, I was compelled by the wholesale telling in the book, I can’t call it a novel, that I had to address each area where the author failed to show.  That’s where I came up with the following list:

Show and don’t tell.

Omniscient voice is poop.

Only write what the characters saw, tasted, felt, smelled, heard, said, or any action.

Identity is a problem.

Don’t tell.

It’s all about dialog.

Perfect tense can be a problem.

It’s all about the senses.

Don’t be boring.

Eating is living and dialog.

Creativity and senses.

Start with scene setting.

Make it sense setting.

Visualizing.

So just what does it mean to show and not tell?  This seems to be a very difficult question for new writers as well as a source of contention for experienced writers.  It seems that many writers can’t agree or even concede on what showing vs. telling really means. Not to worry—I have the answer.

Visualizing.  Visualizing is the means to write properly with showing.  If you learn to visualize, you will be able to write well.  You don’t hear much about visualizing, but this is the means most great writers use to write especially their first cuts.  What does it mean to visualize?

Visualizing means the author pictures the scene, sets it, and then puts it into action before writing it down.  As the author writes it down, he or she pictures the action, dialog, and settings in his or her mind and puts them on paper.  Visualizing is basically using the imagination to picture the scenes first and then write them. You might ask, isn’t this the only way to write?

I’m not sure.  I read stuff all the time that seems impossible to imagine much less write.  As I noted, most authors don’t provide enough description.  Most of the time, when you ask for more description, you don’t get description, you get telling.  If you have telling, the author might be using their imagination, but they aren’t visualizing.  In fact, I shouldn’t call it visualizing.  I should call it visualizing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting—perhaps sensizing.  There really isn’t a word.  If you sensize, you imagine what you can see, hear, smell, taste, and physically feel in your imagination.  You write what you see, hear, smell, tasting, and can physically feel through your imagination.  This is basically imagination and visualization or sensizing.  If an author does this, they can’t tell.  If you are imagining what you see, hear, smell, taste, and physically feel and writing it down, you can’t tell.  You can only show.  On the other hand, the only way to tell isn’t visualizing, it is intellectualizing. 

This is why I don’t outline my novels or my scenes.  This is the reason I keep harping on sensizing or visualization.  Using the imagination to see, hear, smell, taste, and physically feel and writing it down is showing what you imagine and writing it down for another’s imagination. Intellectualizing is telling.  Intellectualizing is thinking about a subject, character, scene, place, time, and trying to express something deeper, more meaningful, and intellectual about those things and places.  Imagine how that movie would play or that play would do on Broadway.  Intellectualizing leads to telling instead of showing.  This is why we want to take our raw imagination and show it on a page.  Raw imagination results in entertainment.  When I write raw, I mean sensing and expressive not incomplete or unedited. 

If I intellectualize about a character, for example, I can build up an entire resume about that character.  These are your character notes.  I’m not unhappy with an author developing all kinds of notes about their characters, places, scenes, and stuff.  I’m just unhappy to read that kind of drivel in a novel.  As I keep writing, writing fiction is all about showing and not telling.  If you find you can’t visualize what you are writing, you should immediately stop writing.  If you can’t visualize it, your readers can’t either.  If you can’t visualize it, you are telling.

Let’s look at this a little deeper.  This is a very important idea.  As you write, if you can’t visualize what you are writing, then you are telling.  So, for example, if you are writing and telling all about the life and experiences of a character, like their past, their accomplishments, their personality, their life, their character—that is telling.  There is no way you can ever visualize these things in your imagination.  You can intellectualize them.  You can write them down like you would your resume, but you can’t imagine and visualize your resume.  An outline or a resume is not fiction writing. 

Well perhaps some people’s resumes are fiction, but not in the sense I mean.  We are writing about producing entertaining long fiction.  You can’t tell and produce entertaining fiction of any kind.  Back to visualizing or sensizing compares to intellectualizing.  If you can’t see it in your mind, don’t write it down in your fiction.  If you want to express some degree of explanation about a character use dialog. 

As I mentioned, I don’t outline my scenes.  I do make character notes, but my notes are usually descriptions and the descriptions I use in my writing.  Here are a couple of examples.  These are showing:

Major Dustin Easom

The two men moved toward them.  They both wore designer suits.  Their suits looked like a fine cut, but very conservative.  The first gentleman possessed strong thin features.  He looked older, perhaps nearer thirty, about the same age as Sorcha.  He was tall and appeared very competent.  His hair was dark brown and his features tawny.  He had a dimple in his chin and a slight permanent five-o’clock shadow.  He appeared immaculately groomed and well cultured.  His shirt and his tie were blue.

Captain William Cross

The other gentleman stepped forward.  He was shorter than the Major, but he stood still at least a head taller than Shiggy.  He possessed a boxer’s stance and build, but he appeared more wiry than bulky.  He wore an off-white shirt and a light brown tie.  His face looked rather young, perhaps near Shiggy’s age or a little older.  He looked very pleasant to Shiggy.  She especially liked the gentle appearance of his smile, as though he enjoyed life, but didn’t want everyone to know how much he did.  His hair was a burnt blond and his eyes grey.  He gave her a taunt and slightly self-conscious bow.  Shiggy could tell he wore a heavy pistol under his jacket and perhaps one in a lower holster at his waist.   

Here is an example of character notes.  This is telling:

Aife

Other Names:  Aoife.

Location:  Ireland, Scotland.

Description:  Goddess and queen of the Isle of Shadow.  She ran a school for warriors, but her school was less successful than her sister, Scathach's, school.  Aife was not vulnerable to magick, and commanded a legion of fierce horsewomen.  She stole an alphabet of knowledge from the deities to give to humankind.  For that infraction, she was transformed into a crane by the elder deities.  Supposedly, she was accidently killed by hunters but yet others say she still haunts the countryside in this form today.  She is associated with the three fold law and the crane.

Rules Over:  Protection, general knowledge, teaching, pathworking, lessons of the threefold law.

The Three Fold Law, in particular, states that what ever a person does comes back on them three fold.

Aife’s teahouse or shop: Isle of Shadow, a Teahouse

              The Caldron

       The Dark Horse

These are my character notes about Aife, a character in some of my novels.  I would never tell the reader this information.  I don’t think I even provide most of this information to my readers at all.  If my readers want to look up Aife on the internet or in books, this is some of what they would find, but it isn’t information I would share as an author.  The trick is to keep a little secrecy and hidden information after all.  The point of writing is the revelation, and Aife isn’t my protagonist.  My protagonists are much more complex than Aife, but I still would never reveal any information by telling.  Show and don’t tell.

As I noted before, I write by chapter.  Instead of an outline, at the end of each chapter, I include notes about where I think the novel and specifically the next scene should go.  These are notes from my scene development and from visualizing the characters next moves.  Perhaps I should expand on this, and I haven’t finished with visualizing.

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.    

    

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  

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