Writing - part xxxx362 The Novel, Historical-Legal Tests

24 March 2026, Writing - part xxxx362 The Novel, Historical-Legal Tests

Announcement: I still need a new publisher.  However, I’ve taken the step to republish my previously published novels.  I’m starting with Centurion, and we’ll see from there.  Since previously published novels have little chance of publication in the market (unless they are huge best sellers), I might as well get those older novels back out.  I’m going through Amazon Publishing, and I’ll pass the information on to you.

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 two 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.

6. The initial scene is the most important scene.

 

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 31^st novel, working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors.  The theme statement is: Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events.

I finished writing my 34^th novel (actually my 32^nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.  The theme statement is: 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 cover proposal for the third edition of Centurion:

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 finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32^nd novel and 33^rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.

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 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.

For novel 35: Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

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. 

I want to start with these definitions as a premise for writing.

1.     Write to entertain

2.     Write using the common outline for a novel

3.     Develop a telic flaw, a protagonist, an antagonist, and plan to resolve the telic flaw.

4.     Start with an initial scene.

5.     Develop and define a modern protagonist: you get a telic flaw, a potential protagonist’s helper, and a potential initial scene from the development.

6.     Write to reveal the protagonist.

 

And here is the scene:

 

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

 

I’m going to move into a more technical subject this time.  I’ve addressed this subject before, but I haven’t in a while, and most of the time, I’ve looked at it in the context of other writing ideas.  This is the subject of technology.

 

Why is technology important?  The most critical point, in my mind, is accuracy from the standpoint of the time and place of the novels we write.  I’d say, technology is perhaps the most important compared to history.  Why is that? 

 

The obvious answer for the modern era is the change of technology.  If you write a novel set in the 1990, and every character has an iPhone, you have done a great harm to your technology and the historical and technical accuracy of your novel.  The iPhone was first introduced in 2007.  There are a lot of these traps especially for the young and inexperienced who didn’t live through these times.  In other words, to a person who spent their entire life with an iPhone (or other, so called, smart phone), the idea of not having one is almost impossible to imagine.  Likewise, the aircraft was invented in 1903.  If you have an heavier than air aircraft in your novel before about 1910, you are breaking an historical fact.  Now, you could be like some of the creepy and silly movies and novels written in the modern era that have all kinds of impossible historical technological anomalies.  For example, one of the latest Sherlock Holmes movies in the last ten years has an aircraft in the late 1890s or so.  Now, it could be late Sherlock in about 1920, but it’s hard to tell with the way movies are produced, and who can tell what time they are really in.  In any case, these types of craziness defy reality and technology, but it gets worse.  These are easy examples from the centuries of knowledge and documentation.  What about the very early times in history and prehistory?

 

This is something I’d like to explain and explore.  My real expertise is in early languages, cultures, and societies especially those that are early Mediterranean and early British.  These are some of the times I’ve written about and that I use in my writing.  Plus, I translate Anglo-Saxon and Athenian Greek.  These are both dead languages so they aren’t going anywhere. 

 

Here's my plan.  I’m going to start with early technological history like the seven basic machines and other major technologies and apply them to writing about history.  We’ll investigate foods, cooking, warfare, agriculture, horses, husbandry (farming and animals), crops, furniture, architecture, and so on.  The point is to begin to understand the past and past technology so we can write historically correct and enlightening novels.  In addition, we will eventually move to the modern eras and then to science fiction.  Science fiction is all about predicting and extrapolating technology.  We’ll make a sweeping study of technology such that we can write realistic and historically correct fiction.

 

I have to include this example for you.  With one of my first published novels, Aegypt, the publisher’s editor asked about my use of a lighter in the novel.  I had researched this, the lighter was invented about the time of the aircraft, and was used extensively as the eternal match or as trench lighters in World War One.  My protagonist, an officer and soldier from World War One who smoked cigarettes, would have had at least a trench lighter and also an eternal match.  My novel was set in 1926, well into the period of the early lighters.  Case closed and technology not incorrectly used in a historical context.  This is how every such story should end?, begin?, be? 

 

Thus we will start in the past and look at the history of technology so we can write better and correct novels.  I should mention, as an aside, many times the climax or the telic flaw resolution (same thing) of our novels depend on technology, especially new technology.  Let’s keep it all historical and reasonable, shall we?

What about the past?  I tell my classes all the time, the things that didn’t get recorded in history are those we really want to know—the mundane and the extraordinary.  The mundane didn’t get recorded because of the cost of writing and materials.  I’ll get to that.  The extraordinary didn’t always get recorded because everyone knew it.  Why record what everyone already knew.  So much for history. 

 

For historical knowledge, we have to look at the literature, the archeology, other ancient societies and cultures we see in the modern era, and interpolation with a little reverse extrapolation.  I should write this as a list:

 

1.     Writing

2.     Archeology

3.     Modern cultures and societies that reveal ancient practices

4.     Interpolation

5.     Reverse extrapolation

 

What about writing?  Writing from the ancients can be trusted as long as it passes the bibliographical tests.  In fact, we use the bibliographical tests for all things historical to prove their veracity.  If they pass the tests sufficiently, we can trust them as documents of history (artifacts of history).  This is technically called the historical-legal method because it is used in a court of law to determine witness and to prosecute criminals.  We also use the exact same methods to determine the witness of history.  So what are the bibliographical tests:

 

1.     Document (number and state)

2.     Internal

3.     External

 

The document (number and state) is the first test.  Before the printing press (even after the printing press) all documents were handwritten.  This went on until about 1450 AD.  What is important to note is that we have no original documents from before about 600 AD—that means every one we have was hand copied from either another copy or the original.  That doesn’t mean these documents are not verifiable or not accurate.  It simply means we need to use the historical legal method to determine their veracity.  The first test is the number of copies we have of the document.

 

For most of antiquity, the number of documents is about 1 for a text.  Having more than one is automatically a great boon.  I should point out some of these works in history and I will, next.        

 

Author	Written	Earliest Copy	Time Span	Number of Copies
Catallus	54 BC	1550 AD	1600	3
Pliny the Younger (History)	61-113 AD	850 AD	750	7
Plato (Tetralogies)	427-347 BC	900 AD	1200	7
Euripedes	480-406 BC	1100 AD	1500	9
Caesar (Gaelic Wars)	100-44 BC	900 AD	1000	10
Aristotle	384-322 BC	1100 AD	1400	49
Sophocles	496-406 BC	1000 AD	1400	193
New Testament	50-99 AD	130 AD	80	24,633
Matthew	70-90 AD	200 AD	130
Mark	50-70 AD	225 AD	175
Luke	70-90 AD	200 AD	130
John	90-99 AD	130 AD	40

 

This is just a short example of some works that compare the number of manuscripts and the time span between the earliest copy and the original.  I’ll get to that soon.

 

As I wrote, there are no originals for any document from antiquity (about 600 AD).  The main way we begin to look at the veracity of any document in antiquity is by the number of copies we have.  The greater the number of copies, the greater the chance we know what the original writing actually was.  How’s that?

 

The greater number of copies allows us to compare the copes and determine the possible textual differences.  You must understand this about ancient documents.  They are all mnemonics.  They are meant to be memorized and the text is used to remember and know the exact verbiage in it.  There are no spaces between the words, no sentences, no paragraphs, no punctuation, no chapters, no breaks.  In some cases dependent on the language, there are no vowels.  Only the Greeks and the Koreans invented vowels, thus the other earlier languages that are written hove zero vowels.  This makes reading without prior memorization almost impossible. 

 

The ultimate point is that all these ancient scrolls (there are no books until about 300 AD), were never meant to be read cold.  They are read like Torah scrolls today.  The reader memorizes the text and uses the text to recite the exact words when they are read.  Also, in antiquity, all reading was done out loud.  People did not read on their own or silently.  The purpose of reading was an active and potentially an entirely public concept.  That’s not to say some scholars might not read alone, but the very idea was nearly impossible.  We’ll look at the history of the scroll, but I need to get back to the historical-legal means of proving the veracity of the text.

 

With the number of copies, we can accurately say we have the original text.  One isn’t enough, but it’s good.  Many are great because we can compare the differences in the text from one copy to another and ensure we have the accurate and correct text.  That’s when we apply the second part of the bibliographical test of the accuracy of the transmission of the text.  This is the span between the original and the earliest copy.  I’ll get to that, next.

 

There’s more.

 

I want to write another book based on Rose and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s my plan.  Before I get to that, I want to write another novel about dependency as a theme.  We shall see.

 

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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