06 May 2023, Writing - part xxx310 Writing a Novel, Cassandra, Editing
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 30th novel, working title, Rose,
potential title Rose: Enchantment and the
Flower. The theme statement is: 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 cover proposal for Rose:
Enchantment and the Flower.
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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. Writing number 31, working title Shifter. I just finished 32nd novel, Rose.
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.
For novel 33, Book girl: Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they
are both attending Kilgraston School in Scotland when Morven loses everything,
her wealth, position, and friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to
befriend and help her discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family
and existence.
For novel 34: Seoirse
is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with
five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately Seoirse has fallen in love with
Rose.
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. Writing is the abstract communication of the
mind through symbols. As time goes by,
we as writers gain more and better tools and our readers gain more and better
appreciation for those tools and skills—even if they have no idea what they
are.
We are in
the modern era. In this time, the action
and dialog style along with the push of technology forced novels into the form
of third person, past tense, action and dialog style, implying the future. This is the modern style of the novel. I also showed how the end of literature
created the reflected worldview. We have
three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected, and the
created. I choose to work in the
reflected worldview.
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.
With that said, where should we go? Should I delve into ideas and creativity
again, or should we just move into the novel again? Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we
know, will result in a new novel. I’ve
got an idea, but it went stale. Let’s
look at the outline for a novel again:
1.
The initial scene
2.
The rising action scenes
3.
The climax scene
4.
The falling action scene(s)
5.
The dénouement
scene(s)
The initial scene is the most important scene and part of
any novel. To get to the initial scene,
you don’t need a plot, you need a protagonist.
At this point I want to finish editing Casandra:
Enchantment and the Warriors and produce the marketing materials. I intend to show you the marketing materials
before I’m willing to begin writing Seoirse.
I also need to work harder at getting a publisher—basically submitting manuscripts
to potential publishers and agents.
Cassandra is
a fun novel although perhaps not the best one I’ve written. It follows the adventures and next assignment
for Deirdre and Sorcha after they are expelled from Wycombe Abbey.
At the moment, I’m working on the editing in Cassandra. This isn’t about grammar and spelling
although I’m finding some—the main thing I’m working on is cohesion and
reason. We fix our novels by finding the
untied and uncompleted thoughts in it and then connect, remove, or just fix
them. The most important part is interweaving
the ideas from front to back in the novel and thus making it mor cohesive and
logical.
Cassandra is
about Sorcha and Deirdre’s assignment to be finished and to find and interact
with Cassandra. In the novel, they
gather a group of young women to fight to protect the city of Saint Malo in France
as well as the province of Brittany.
Let’s look at editing.
In the first place, every document needs help with the basics. You will never find any published novel or
book where every word is correctly spelled, every piece of punctuation is in
place, and every word is correct. It is
always the ultimate fault of the author, but the publisher, the publisher’s
editor, the publication process, and just accidents, mistakes, or oversights
can leave any book or novel with problems.
And, as I wrote, there is no novel or book in history without something
you can find.
In my published works, when I discover or my readers discover
a problem, I write it down in a file for future editions. They might get fixed, but I know no document can
ever be perfect. Why? Because in a 100,000 word work, there is
always the possibility of problems.
There are also problems that some critics will complain
about. I use the Chicago Book of Style
for my writing. There are other sources
for style and style guides. For example
the New York Times (I think that is correct), White and Strunk, and there are
others. I had a reader of my published
novel Centurion complain that they didn’t like the fact that the number
were not spelled out for example Twenty-One instead of 21. In the Chicago Style Guide, numbers up to ten
are spelled out but above ten, they are not spelled out. I think I have this rule correct. Usually, I leave these niceties to my
publisher’s editor. The publisher’s
editor determines the style and the standardization of the work in alignment with
their publishing. My reader was
complaining about something that my publisher decided on. There is literally nothing you can do with
that.
Another example from Centurion. When do you capitalize the word, Centurion? In general, when do you italicize Latin words? Do you italicize Latin words that have the
same English spelling? These are
problems I had to work out with my publisher’s editor. Who was a fantastic editor, but the way. We decided based not on a style guide, but
based on what we expected the reader to like and that would prevent confusion. Still, we went through that manuscript many
many many times and readers still found some misspellings, lack of punctuation,
and like I mentioned, style issues. If
that’s all that’s wrong with your document, then praise the Lord.
The real problems, and they might not be as real as you
think are issues of logic and cohesion.
Let me give an example. My novel Sister
of Darkness was on contract for publication from Oaktara and
Broadstreet. It had been through
multiple reviews by me and my prepublication readers. In addition, my usual publisher’s editor had
been through it multiple times. Then the
Broadstreet editors got a hold of it.
They noticed a potential time issue between historical events.
It took me a week to find it, but there was a missing year
in the document. The novel follows World
War Two and there was a missing year. It
was nearly undetectable. Someone was
very meticulous at Broadsteet, in fact, I think they just had a feeling. My prepublication readers just scoffed. They couldn’t find it. To fix this little problem, I just put in a
paragraph that made the time move properly.
The time was corrected with a simple, and the war went on, etc. This fixed the issue, but my publisher,
Oaktara went out of business before the novel was published.
My point with this is that small or even large issues with
cohesion and logic might not be easy for your readers to find, but these are
certainly the problems we should be looking for in our editing process. The example I gave you was one my editors,
readers, prepublication readers, and professional editos couldn’t see, but it
was there. The fix was easy and
quick. In most cases, the fix is like
this—even for complex issues and problems.
What I’m mostly looking for in Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors
is cohesive and logical problems that are more obvious than a missing
period of time. I do have a means to
prevent these issues in my novels, because most of them have a historical basis. Let’s look at this, next.
I’m editing Cassandra and I’ll cover some of this before
I get to the marketing materials.
I’ll repeat. I just
finished up Rose, and I want to finish up Cassandra. I’m moving in that direction.
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
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