30 September 2022, Writing - part xxx093 Writing a Novel, Bibles
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.
For Novel 32: Shiggy
Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization
gives her for her latest assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and
needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.
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: Let me tell
you a little about writing. Writing isn’t
so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime.
Writing is a habit and an obsession.
We who love to write love to write.
If you love
to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well. We want to write well enough to have others enjoy
our writing. This is important. No one writes just for themselves the idea is
absolutely irrational and silly. I can
prove why.
In the first
place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only purpose. If you want to write for yourself, you need
to invent your own writing and language that no one can and will
understand. It would be better if you
can’t understand it either.
The purpose
for writing is communication. It really
has no other purpose. You can give it another
purpose just as I can use your head as a hammer. A head as a hammer will do little for the
nail, the head, or the accomplishment of the work and the work of writing is
communication.
If you aren’t
using writing to communicate, you are using your head as a hammer—not good. In fact, irrational.
Writing is
literally the communication of ideas in the brain of the writer to the brains
of others. This process begins with speaking,
but speaking is very different than writing.
I hope that’s something you already got out of this discussion.
I’ll get to the
communication of the non-real, but let’s continue with history.
We have
symbols and archetypes when we have literacy.
Unfortunately, with the beginning of literacy, all writing is mnemonics. They are used to ensure the “reader” gets the
memorized text perfectly. The reason for
this is that all early writing deals with religion.
Religion was
still a powerful driver of the book and literacy because everyone learned to
read from and for the Bible. Every
family had to have a Bible. Every church
and every library had to have a Bible, and that led to something else.
So, we have
the cost of books going down precipitously.
People who never had access to books suddenly could and every family
could own a Bible. By 1826, the British
Foreign Bible Society had a very important decision to make. They wanted to print Bibles for the world as
cheaply as possible—the problem was cost, mostly the cost of paper. The Bibles needed to be the smallest font
possible on the lowest grade paper possible with the cheapest binding. They wanted Bibles for the world, and this
was the chance. The British Foreign Bible
Society was Anglican, but they figured that taking the Apocrypha out of the
Bible would be okay. The Apocrypha was
not considered God-breathed like the other books in the Old and New Testament. They pulled it out. After almost 2000 years and no Bible not
having the Apocrypha (most Bibles just put it into the regular stream), they
pulled it out because of printing costs.
I’ll not hold it against them, but Bibles to everyone in English without
the Apocrypha caused some very interesting problems.
In the first
place, it led to anti-creedal denominations.
Why have any creed when you could just point to the Bible as your
creed. Since every family and everyone
could have one, there was no reason this couldn’t literally be true. The problem is that the creeds did provide a
means of understanding in a simple format what a Christin believed. With a Bible in hand, you had to know it
well. The problem is that the Bible is
originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. When people routinely read Greek and perhaps
Hebrew, this wasn’t such a problem. When
everyone had a Bible in an English or other translation, well, there were
problems. There still are problems. Most
of these problems aren’t especially harmful, but giving a person with no creed
a Bible in a translation and expecting full comprehension is like giving a
person a translation of War and Peace and expecting them to understand the
entire Russian Court and history. It’s
impossible.
When Bible
scholars and others who knew Greek could read the original works, people
understood. The new denominations didn’t
and that’s one of the reasons for so much crazy in modern Christianity. There were other problems.
People who
can’t read the original and have no idea about history can’t understand why the
Apocrypha, which was in every Bible published until 1826, isn’t in the
Bible. It should be. They think the Apocrypha is gone for
theological reasons, and that just isn’t so.
A simple act of cost saving took the Apocrypha from most modern
Bibles. Now, try to bring it back—that’s
almost an impossible act even for the creedal churches.
Then there
is the problem of literacy. Before the
Bible was so ubiquitous, the average educated person could read Greek and
Latin. Today, it’s difficult to find a
person who knows how to speak, read, and write in English when educated by the
modern school system. Literacy means you
understand words and languages. People
who can read Greek usually read the Greek in the New Testament as their
study. Shazam, the understand the ancient
documents and their ideas well. Modern
people going from translations have little clue about the power and the depth
of the originals in Greek. Hebrew is
even more interesting, but you need your Rabi to help you with that.
In any case,
we traded knowledge for access. That
might be a good thing in the long run, but the best effect of the sudden lowing
of the cost of books is the spread of knowledge. I’d personally say the spread of Christianity
and its principles. That has truly transformed
the world, but the entire power of the western world is incapsulated in literacy. That is the power of literacy.
The reason
this is so important is that with literacy, we can communicate ideas that are
fully outside of reality to others.
Writing is the
abstract communication of the mind through symbols.
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.
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.
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
fiction, theme, plot, story,
storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book,
writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic
