09 May 2023, Writing - part xxx313 Writing a Novel, Cassandra, Basic 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.
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.
When I write basic editing, you’re probably thinking spelling,
punctuation, and grammar—yeah, sure we always look for these, but unless you
are terrible with the English language, these aren’t the main problems for most
writers. Well, perhaps I’ll take that
back, many people’s education in writing wasn’t good enough that their spelling
checkers can help them, but that’s another problem. What I want to look at now is the number of
times you need to go through your completed, or mostly completed document—the whole
thing.
I saw some book for sale about editing your novel in three
passes. Three passes aren’t nearly
enough. I’d say about ten and one vocal
pass are about enough, but you might need more.
In the first place, if your novel isn’t worth reading about ten times and
still remains worth reading, it probably isn’t worth trying to get a publisher. In other words, if you can’t stand it that
long, no reader will either—you might think about major revisions.
Second, it’s not just about the basic editing. It’s about
editing for cohesion, reason, and clarity.
I’ve written about these. You
really need to get tired of your writing before these will start to pop out to
you. Many writers recommend letting a
manuscript sit for a while to help you get away from it. That’s true too, but really never
enough. If your work isn’t worth
multiple reads, waiting won’t help it much.
In other words, you might fall in love with it all over again. That’s a great sign, but bad for editing. Until you get tired of the storyline and the plots,
you will never see the really bad parts.
Third, your reading needs to be completely serious reading. You need to get to the point where your are
really reading the manuscript and not just skimming. Yeah, this is what you are supposed to do
from the very first, but we get lazy and skim.
Don’t skim.
Fourth, the last edit needs to be an out loud edit. You will really find problems with clarity
and writing then. For some reason,
reading mentally just hides your errors, even spelling errors. Try to pronounce each word properly and see
what happens. When you find a funny
word, that’s usually misspelled.
Sometimes your spelling checking won’t get it because it can replace the
word you have.
Fifth, now after you are really tired of your own work, and
you’ve edited it out loud, you can set it aside. Now’s the time to write the marketing
materials. You will never be closer to
the work than at this moment. You should
know it through and through. With this basis
of knowledge, you and you alone can write the best and most effective marketing
information about your own novel. Wait
too long, you will never achieve the same knowledge and ability. Plus, in my purgative and catharsis method of
creativity, this is the time to vomit out on the page all the information you
can about your work in a creative way.
Now is the time.
I’m still 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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