9 March 2021, Writing - part xx523 Writing a Novel, the Big Setup
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 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 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 29th 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.
|
|
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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’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. This moves us on to plots and initial
scenes. As I noted, if you have a
protagonist, you have a novel. The
reason is that a protagonist comes with a telic flaw, and a telic flaw provides
a plot and theme. If you have a
protagonist, that gives you a telic flaw, a plot, and a theme. I will also argue this gives you an initial
scene as well.
So, we worked extensively on the
protagonist. I gave you many examples
great, bad, and average. Most of these
were from classics, but I also used my own novels and protagonists as
examples. Here’s my plan.
1.
The protagonist comes with a telic flaw – the telic flaw
isn’t necessarily a flaw in the protagonist, but rather a flaw in the world of
the protagonist that only the Romantic protagonist can resolve.
2.
The telic flaw determines the plot.
3.
The telic flaw determines the theme.
4.
The telic flaw and the protagonist
determines the initial scene.
5.
The protagonist and the telic flaw
determines the initial setting.
6.
Plot examples from great classic
plots.
7.
Plot examples from mediocre classic plots.
8.
Plot examples from my novels.
9.
Creativity and the telic flaw and
plots.
10. Writer’s block as a problem of continuing the plot.
Every great or good protagonist comes
with their own telic flaw. I showed how
this worked with my own writing and novels.
Let’s go over it in terms of the plot.
This is all about the telic
flaw. Every protagonist and every novel
must come with a telic flaw. They are
the same telic flaw. That telic flaw can
be external, internal or both.
We found that a self-discovery telic
flaw or a personal success telic flaw can potentially take a generic plot. We should be able to get an idea for the plot
purely from the protagonist, telic flaw and setting. All of these are interlaced and bring us our
plot.
For a great plot, the resolution of
the telic flaw has to be a surprise to the protagonist and to the reader. This is both the measure and the goal. As I noted before, for a great plot, the
author needs to make the telic flaw resolution appear to be impossible, but
then it happens. There is much more to
this. Here’s the list of plots I’ve
looked at already:
Here is the list of classics that
everyone should read. What I want to do
is evaluate this list for the plots.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR
Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury –
Best modern novel in English.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible – Most important book to
understand Western culture.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George
Orwell
9 We The Living – Ayn Rand
10 Great Expectations - Charles
Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles -
Thomas Hardy
13 Dune – Frank Herbert
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –
better to see as plays
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 The Cadwal Chronicles – Jack
Vance
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Green Pearl Novels – Jack
Vance
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret
Mitchel
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott
Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 Starship Troopers – Robert
Heinlein
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor
Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis
Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth
Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles
Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
37 The Tale of Genji - Murasaki
Shikibu
38 The House of Seven Gables
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
39 The Scarlet Letter
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 Dracula – Bram Stoker
43 Till We Have Faces – C.S. Lewis
44 Le Morte D'Arthur - Thomas Malory
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie
Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM
Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd -
Thomas Hardy
48 Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
49 Lord of the Flies - William
Golding
50 The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
51 What Katy Did - Sarah Chauncey
Woolsey under her pen name Susan Coolidge
52 A Little Princess - Frances
Hodgson Burnett
53 The Secret Garden - Frances
Hodgson Burnett
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane
Austen
55 The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
56 Kim - Rudyard Kipling
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles
Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 Beowulf – Unknown
60 The Odyssey – Homer
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
64 The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell
Hammett
65 The Count of Monte Cristo -
Alexandre Dumas
66 As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Robinson Caruso – Daniel Defoe
69 The Red Badge of Courage -
Stephen Crane
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
73 Heidi – Johanna Spyri
74 Hans Brinker - Mary Mapes Dodge
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 The Big Sky – Arlo Guthrie
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace
Thackeray
80 The Black Arrow - Robert Louis
Stevenson
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles
Dickens
82 Treasure Island - Robert Louis
Stevenson
83 The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn
84 The Miser – George Eliot
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest
Hemmingway
87 Tarzan – Edger Rice Burroughs
88 The Death of Socrates – Plato
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De
Saint-Exupery
93 Huckleberry Fin – Mark Twain
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan
Swift
96 Matilda – Roald Dahl
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre
Dumas
98 The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey
Chaucer
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
101 The Once and Future King – T.H.
White
102 The Deerslayer – James Fenimore
Cooper
103 The Black Book of Communism –
Various
104 Ben Hur – Lew Wallace
105 The Robe – Lloyd C. Douglas
106 The Pilgrim’s Progress – John
Bunyan
107 The Histories – Herodotus
108 Lives – Plutarch
109 The Call of the Wild – Jack
London
110 Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner
111 The Shockwave Rider – John
Brunner
112 The Aeneid – Virgil
This is what I did. I looked at each novel and pulled out the
plot types, the telic flaw, plotline, and the theme of the novel. I didn’t make a list of the themes, but we
identified the telic flaw as internal and external and by plot type. This generally gives the plotline.
We have a list of all the major
plots from this list of classics in literature.
The question is what can we do with it?
This is the first step in evaluating our results. I took a percentage of the results based on
the number of classics.
Modern writing is all about the
Romantic—both Romantic protagonists and Romantic plots. This is where we are going and this is the
focus of modern entertaining literature.
In the end, we can see there are
just a few baseline plots that are characteristics of most classics. These are the revelation, achievement, and
redemption plots. When I write these are
baseline, I mean that they are overall plots that might also have a different
plotline or other plots directly supporting them. Here’s what I mean exactly about each of
these plots:
Redemption: the protagonist must make an internal or
external change to resolve the telic flaw. This is the major style of most
great modern plots.
Revelation: the novel reveals portions of the life,
experiences, and ideas of the protagonist in a cohesive and serial fashion from
the initial scene to the climax and telic flaw resolution.
Achievement: the novel is characterized by a goal that the
protagonist must achieve to resolve the telic flaw.
I evaluated the list of plots and
categorized them according to the following scale:
Overall (o) – These
are the three overall plots we defined above: redemption, achievement, and
revelation.
Achievement (a)
– There are plots that fall under the idea of the achievement plot.
Quality (q) – These are plots based on a personal or character
quality.
Setting (s) – These are plots based on a setting.
Item (i) – These are plots based on an item.
All of the plots we looked at fall
into one of these five. Let’s do that:
Overall (o)
1.
Redemption (o) – 17i, 7e, 23ei, 8 –
49%
2.
Revelation (o) –2e, 64, 1i – 60%
3.
Achievement (o) – 16e, 19ei, 4i, 43
– 73%
Achievement (a)
1.
Detective or mystery (a) – 56, 1e –
51%
2.
Revenge or vengeance (a) –3ie, 3e,
45 – 46%
3.
Zero to hero (a) – 29 – 26%
4.
Romance (a) –1ie, 41 – 37%
5.
Coming of age (a) –1ei, 25 – 23%
6.
Progress of technology (a) – 6 – 5%
7.
Discovery (a) – 3ie, 57 – 54%
8.
Money (a) – 2e, 26 – 25%
9.
Spoiled child (a) – 7 – 6%
10. Legal (a) – 5 – 4%
11. Adultery (qa) – 18 – 16%
12. Self-discovery (a) – 3i, 12 – 13%
13. Guilt or Crime (a) – 32 – 29%
14. Proselytizing (a) – 4 – 4%
15. Reason (a) – 10, 1ie – 10%
16. Escape (a) – 1ie, 23
– 21%
17. Knowledge or Skill (a) – 26 – 23%
18. Secrets (a) – 21 – 19%
Quality (q)
1.
Messiah (q) – 10 – 9%
2.
Adultery (qa) – 18 – 16%
3.
Rejected love (rejection) (q) – 1ei,
21 – 20%
4.
Miscommunication (q) – 8 – 7%
5.
Love triangle (q) – 14 – 12%
6.
Betrayal (q) – 1i, 1ie, 46 – 43%
7.
Blood will out or fate (q) –1i, 1e,
26 – 25%
8.
Psychological (q) –1i, 45 – 41%
9.
Magic (q) – 8 – 7%
10. Mistaken identity (q) – 18 – 16%
11. Illness (q) – 1e, 19 – 18%
12. Anti-hero (q) – 6 – 5%
13. Immorality (q) – 3i, 8 – 10%
14. Satire (q) – 10 – 9%
15. Camaraderie (q) – 19 – 17%
16. Curse (q) – 4 – 4%
17. Insanity (q) – 8 – 7%
18. Mentor (q) – 12 – 11%
Setting (s)
1.
End of the World (s) – 3 – 3%
2.
War (s) – 20 – 18%
3.
Anti-war (s) –2 – 2%
4.
Travel (s) –1e, 62 – 56%
5.
Totalitarian (s) – 1e, 8 – 8%
6.
Horror (s) – 15 – 13%
7.
Children (s) – 24 – 21%
8.
Historical (s) – 19 – 17%
9.
School (s) – 11 – 10%
10. Parallel (s) – 4 – 4%
11. Allegory (s) – 10 – 9%
12. Fantasy world (s) – 5 – 4%
13. Prison (s) – 2 – 2%
Item (i)
1.
Article (i) – 1e, 46 – 42%
Starting with the protagonist makes
novel writing about as easy as it is possible to make novel writing. As I wrote, if we start with the protagonist,
I can’t guarantee you the next bestseller, but I can assure you it will solve
four problems common to novelists:
1.
What is the plot?
2.
Why is my novel so short?
3.
Why is my novel so simplistic and
uncomplicated in terms of plot and theme?
4.
Why do I get writer’s block when I
want to write?
Not every writer gets writer’s
block. I never get writer’s block. I get tired of writing. I sometimes want to change up my writing
(write something different). I never run out of something to write. How could that be? Doesn’t everyone get writer’s block? Only in the movies, and I would say only
non-professional writers.
Here’s some ideas to help you
prevent writer’s block.
1.
Nothing anyone writes the first time
on paper (or ether) is worth reading, publishing, or anything else.
2.
You gotta write to learn to write
well.
3.
If you don’t like it, dump it.
4.
If you are in over your head, just
stop and regroup.
5.
These are all helpful ideas for
getting your stuff together, but why don’t professionals have the problem of
writer’s block?
Writing paragraphs may be the most
powerful way to train up your writing skills.
None of the paragraphs I wrote as a seventh grader are worth reading
now, but they sure helped me learn to write.
We are writing about training.
Every paragraph looks like this:
1.
Topic sentence
2.
Body based on the topic
3.
Conclusion and transition
Every paragraph looks like this
except dialog paragraphs. These are
special paragraphs that are designed through the speaker rather than coherent
outline.
You must include tone and body language
in the dialog, or the conversation will go awry for the reader. There is more to dialog to make it sound
correct to the reader.
I’m repeating in synopsis all my
previous advice on writing dialog, but dialog is very important and most
beginning (and some experienced) writers seem to have problems with it.
So, we saw that dialog follows
normal human conversational order, lets the dialog flow, uses contractions,
doesn’t use direct address, expresses tone, body language, tags, and action in
the dialog. These are the most straight
forward and best way to correct most dialog.
Then you need to study and practice.
Dialog doesn’t always drive to the “big
talk.” Or, perhaps I should let you
decide how much of this is “big talk.”
What I want to show you as an example is sideways talk and secrets. I am still in my novel Essie: Enchantment and the Aos Si.
This novel is filled with secrets and revelations. This is a true protagonist revelation novel
wrapped in a redemption plot. I’m not
sure how much of this I will show you, but for now, we will see the arrival and
visit of Seasairdh and Claire.
Around
tea time, Essie went to the kitchen to get the tea things. When she returned to the garden, she
immediately caught a certain scent. She
ran the rest of the way to the center.
Claire no longer sat there. Their
book lay forlornly on the large stone at the very center. Essie took a deep breath and set down the
tea service. She picked up a sandwich
from the platter, deconstructed it, took out a piece of ham, and chewed on it
while she explored the world of the fae with her power. She knew she didn’t need to search, but she
did anyway—just to be certain. After a
few minutes, Essie picked up the tea service and walked back to the cottage.
When
she entered the guest parlor, Mrs. Lyons looked up at her, “Was something wrong
with the tea?”
Essie
paused not certain how she should respond.
If she told the truth, there might be more problems. If she bore false witness, she knew Father
Maddison and the Dagda would not be pleased.
Finally, she placed the tea service on the oriental table and stated,
“The fae have taken Claire, and I need to get her back.”
Mrs.
Lyons and Seasaìdh just stared. After a
moment, Mrs. Lyons lurched to her feet, “I’ll call the constable.”
Essie
lowered her head, “I am afraid of the constable still, but it won’t do any
good. The fae took her—the constable
will not be able to get her back.”
Mrs.
Lyons pressed her lips together, “I’ll still call the constable.”
Seasaìdh
put up her hand, “One moment, Aunt Tilly.
Let’s listen to what Essie has to say.
I think there is more to this than we imagine. For example, why did they take Claire?”
Essie’s
eyes opened wide, “They took her because they wish the White Lady to become
involved.”
It
became Seasaìdh’s turn for her eyes to widen, “How do you know?”
Essie
didn’t look at her, but she smiled, “I know you are her sister, and I know
Claire is her granddaughter. All the
land and the fae realize this. I hoped
to stay out of her sight for as long as possible. This is why you mustn’t call the
constable. That is just what they want
you to do.”
Mrs.
Lyons fell back into her chair, “Who are they, and what are they trying to do?”
Essie
did turn her glance to Mrs. Lyons, “They are the fae, and they wish to force a
confrontation between me and the White Lady.”
Mrs.
Lyons covered her face, “But why would they want that?”
“They
believe the White Lady will return me to my cage and to Morfran’s captivity.”
Mrs.
Lyons cried out, “I cannot and will not allow that…”
Essie
shrugged, “Then do not call the constable until I return. If I have Claire, then all is well, and we
may continue our visit. If I can’t get
her back, then you may call the White Lady, and I shall flee.”
Mrs.
Lyons thought a long moment. Finally,
she turned to Seasaìdh, “What do you think, Seasaìdh? What should I do?”
Seasaìdh
pulled back and sat with a slight hunch, “Let the girl do as she asks. At the best, she will return with
Claire. At the worst, we shall have to
call my sister.”
“What
if it isn’t the fae at all? What if a
kidnapper has taken her?”
Essie
sniffed, “No human took her. I know
their scent and their ways. I shall be
back in three days.”
“Three
days?”
Essie
moved closer to Mrs. Lyons, “Aunt Tilly, I must go and seek her out. Please give me leave…”
“Why
can’t you just go on your own?”
“I
swore, and you swore. You must give me
leave.”
Mrs.
Lyons nodded, “I give you leave Essie to do whatever you need to do to bring
Claire back safely.”
Essie
nodded. Her eyes gleamed. She began to move to the hall, then
stopped. She turned back toward Mrs.
Lyons, “To do this, I must assert my authority and take my place.” She twirled back and rushed to her bedroom.
Seasaìdh
glanced at Mrs. Lyons, “You know, you just gave her leave to kill—if
necessary.”
Mrs.
Lyons stared at her, “Should I change my instructions?”
Seasaìdh
stroked her chin, “I don’t think so—I just wanted to point that out…Essie is
not entirely what she appears.”
Mrs.
Lyons whispered fiercely, “You may soon see just how different she is…”
At
that moment, Essie ran back into the guest parlor. In either hand, she held her book and the
branch with the stone in it. Essie
handed the book to Mrs. Lyons, “Untie the leather strap.”
Mrs.
Lyons did.
Essie
instructed, “Now tie it around my neck.
Make sure you tie a double knot so it can’t come loose.”
Mrs.
Lyons tied the leather strip around Essie’s neck. The book depended just at the center of her
chest.
Essie
placed the branch in Mrs. Lyons’ hand and turned around, “Tie the branch in my
hair. Make certain it is tight.”
Mrs.
Lyons tied the branch in Essie’s hair.
When
this was done, Essie tugged on them both to make sure they remained
secure. She turned to face them. She unbuttoned her dress and slipped her arms
out of it. She stood naked before them
and straighter than Mrs. Lyons remembered her standing before.
Essie
walked to the door. Seasaìdh and Mrs.
Lyons followed. Essie took a few steps
toward the garden. She mumbled strange
words under her breath. In moments she
began to change. Mrs. Lyons and Seasaìdh
gasped. Essie’s bones and muscles
appeared to melt. The bones cracked and
her sinews snapped. Her black hair grew
to cover her. Her limbs and body
deformed and changed. In moments, before
them stood a black wildcat with a white mark on her chest. The book depended from its neck and the
branch remained tangled in the hair between its ears. The wildcat screamed and ran into the garden.
Seasaìdh
sat hard on the lawn, “I dinna expect that.”
She stared at Mrs. Lyons, “Essie is a wildcat.”
“She
is the Aos Si. A creature that is both
human and an animal.”
“No
animal that—she is a creature of the fae.”
“What
do you mean exactly?”
“There
are creatures created, formed, those made, and those born. The Dagda made the fae originally as
angels. He created the gods and
goddesses, just not wholly in His image.
He created animals that were afterward born. Humans and humankind are born as are the
unbound—the Dagda originally created them in His image. It has been rumored that there are creatures
formed in the image of the Dagda, not born, created, or made. As to whether the Aos Si was created, formed,
made, or born, that I don’t know, but she was not made, yet she is of the fae.”
“Perhaps
that is why the fae fear her so much?”
Seasaìdh
sighed, “What I would give to see the confrontation your Essie makes with the
fae. I suspect it will not be very
pleasant for them.”
We are seeing the foreshadowing and
development of great secrets at the same time we are seeing the revelation of
Essie.
This is a great turning point in
this novel. I guess you could say there
are many great turning points in this novel.
In fact, in all my novels, I think you can find many great turning
points, but this is the one I have been building you up to. This is the great reveal about who Essie
really is. There is much in this reveal.
The first big point is how much
Essie really knows about things. She and
I have given you and the other characters the impression that Essie is not completely
focused on the world at large. She calls
herself slow, but we have discovered she isn’t so much slow as she
intentionally hides what she understands. Suddenly, we see she must reveal her
own mind. I accomplish this through
dialog. Essie explains what has happened
to Claire and generally what she must do—then she does it.
The expression of the mind of Essie
comes directly from her lips and her actions.
We thought she didn’t understand about the book and the branch, but now
she shows us how they are used. We thought she didn’t understand about Claire
and Seasaidh’s relationship to Kathrin (Ceridwen), but suddenly, she tells us
just what is going on. Then we get an
expression that perhaps doesn’t clear up anything, but does give us some more
information. I’ll repeat it below:
“There are
creatures created, formed, those made, and those born. The Dagda made the fae originally as
angels. He created the gods and
goddesses, just not wholly in His image.
He created animals that were afterward born. Humans and humankind are born as are the
unbound—the Dagda originally created them in His image. It has been rumored that there are creatures
formed in the image of the Dagda, not born, created, or made. As to whether the Aos Si was created, formed,
made, or born, that I don’t know, but she was not made, yet she is of the fae.”
This comes from Seasaidh’s
lips. She shows a very deep apparent
understanding of Essie and the overall circumstances. I already wrote to you a little about
Seasaidh. She dabbled in magic, and it
burned her. Magic use resulted in the
death of her and Kathrin’s sister Sorcha.
We might expect Seasaidh to know something about these things, but like
Essie, Seasaidh keeps her mouth shut, and only opens it when there is something
important to say.
In this paragraph, we learn some of
the basis for the reflected worldview I am writing in. The worldview is based in Judeo-Christian
ideas. God created. We know God created the universe, world,
plants, animals, and humans. This is the
creation. Then I add a bit to it—this is
also Biblical, but perhaps a new idea to some.
God created the gods and goddesses, just not wholly in his image.
The gods and goddesses are a
projection of the worldview I write in.
In my novels, the gods and goddesses exist and were created by God to
stand in for him until the coming of Christ.
Whatever you believe about this, it is well supported by the Bible and
the ancient world—it makes a great reflected worldview.
Seasaidh also states that God made
the angels. We have no idea about angels
and their creation. In my reflected worldview,
I make a difference between that which was created and that which was
made. Made means that the origin was
within the fabric of the universe. You
might say this is splitting hairs, humans were said to be created. I place the angels on a lower scale. Then there is formed.
With the application of this term, I
am trying to draw an analogy to Christ.
Now, Christ was begotten. We
understand this as the projection of the four-dimensional God into the newly
created three-dimensional world moving in time.
Christ was not created, formed, or made—he preexisted and came into
being with the creation as a projection of God just as the Holy Spirit was a
projection of God as a four-dimensional being into the three-dimensional world. With Essie, I give God the latitude to form a
unique creature designed after His begotten Son, Christ. This is a reflected worldview, so why not?
The point about Essie is that she is
not born from any being. She is unique
and not a repeat or a reflection of any other being. She was not in the original creation. She was potentially made like the angels were
made, but the connotation of formed, in this worldview, is that she was formed
from the fabric of creation that made the angels. She was made a unique being for the angels
that became the Fae. This will be the
great revelation that I will show next about Essie.
We will see how these play out. This is what brings entertainment to a novel—mysteries
and secrets.
In the end, we can figure out what
makes a work have a great plot, and apply this to our writing.
Let’s start with the idea of an
internal and external telic flaw. Then
let’s provide it a wrapper. The wrapper
is the plot.
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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