24 May 2024, this blog is about writing in scenes. I’m focusing on the tools to build scenes. I’ll leave up the parts of a novel because I think this is an important picture for any novelist. I’m writing about how to begin and write a novel.
- The initial scene
- The rising action scenes
- The climax scene
- The falling action scene(s)
- The dénouement scene(s)
Announcement: I need a new publisher. Ancient Light has been delayed due to the economy, and it may not be published. Ancient Light includes Aegypt, Sister of Light and Sister of Darkness. If you are interested in historical/suspense literature, please give my novels a try. You can read about them at http://www.ancientlight.com. I’ll keep you updated.
Today’s Blog: The skill of using language comes from the ability to put together figures of speech that act as symbols in writing.
Short digression: Back in the USA. I didn’t update you on all my travels, but I basically went all through Italy and Greece as well as a sidetrack to Malta. I’m back.
Here are my rules of writing:
1. Entertain your readers.
2. Don’t confuse 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.
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.
Scene development:
Here is the beginning of the scene development method from the 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
First step of writing—enjoy writing. Writing is a chore—especially if you don’t know what you are doing, and you don’t know where you are going. Let me help you with that.
Today:
These are the three novels I’m contemplating writing. I finished Seoirse, and I developed these protagonists and the protagonist’s helpers for the other novels.
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.
The first or initial scene is what we work hard to start out our novels.
A scene always starts with the setting elements. Look at 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
If you notice, the first thing we write is the scene setting. You can continue setting development through the scene, but every scene should start with the setting. You must set the stage of the novel with the scene setting.
In the first place, without setting elements, you can’t write anything. You must introduce setting elements to be able to have action and dialog. The setting elements usually come out of narration of some type.
Every creative element should also be a plot element. If they are not, you should not make them a creative element.
This means the plots must further the telic flaw resolution and nothing else. A plot element can become a telic resolution element. However, I should write, a plot element should always become a telic resolution element.
I’ve never put this completely together before. Here’s a chronological list of my novels:
The Second Mission (399 to 400 BC)
Centurion (6 BC to 33 AD)
Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon 1917 – 1918 (1920)
Aegypt 1926
Sister of Light 1926 – 1934
Sister of Darkness 1939 – 1945
Shadow of Darkness 1945 – 1953
Shadow of Light 1953 – 1956
Antebellum 1965 (1860 to 1865)
Children of Light and Darkness 1970 – 1971
Warrior of Light 1974 – 1976
Warrior of Darkness 1980 – 1981
Deirdre: Enchantment and the School 1992 – 1993
Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors 1993 – 1994
Hestia: Enchantment of the Hearth 2000 – 2001
Essie: Enchantment and the Aos Si 2002 – 2005
Khione: Enchantment and the Fox 2003 – 2004
Blue Rose: Enchantment and the Detective 2008 – 2009
Dana-ana: Enchantment and the Maiden 2009 – 2010
Valeska: Enchantment and the Vampire 2014 – 2015
Lilly: Enchantment and the Computer 2014 – 2015
September 2022 – death of Elizabeth
Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse 2025 – 2026
2026 death of Mrs. Calloway
Rose: Enchantment and the Flower January to April 2028
Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment August to November 2028
science fiction
The End of Honor
The Fox’s Honor
A Season of Honor
Athelstan Cying
Twilight Lamb
Regia Anglorum
Shadowed Vale
Ddraig Goch – not completed
What’s the point? I just wanted to list all my novels in chronological order. I’m not sure where I’m going from this, but I thought it was a fun idea. I didn’t put in the dates of the science fiction because although it is possible to figure them out, they are pretty esoteric. All the other novels are connected in history and time.
I’m going to move back to the beginning and imagination. Writing is not about writing, it’s ultimately about imagination. As authors, we imagine something, an exciting and entertaining idea, hopefully a story, we develop it in our minds, and then we commit it to symbols on paper.
Yes, the actual writing part can expand the ideas and the writing, but ultimately, we need to turn what we imagine into words and then into symbols. The symbols are the only thing the reader ever sees—everything else happens in their imagination space.
I know we live in the age of Empiricism. This is a terrible thing because it cripples the mind and especially the mind of the thinker. All thinking happens in unreal space. You may think it is within your cranium, but think about this: all the pictures, the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the sounds, tastes, smells, visuals that occur within your thoughts come from without your thoughts and many times are experiences that you never saw before. Where are they really? They exist only within the parameters of the physical world because they presumably are inside your physical brain, but your imagination and the imagination of writers always expands well beyond the bounds of their physical brains. Just look at science fiction and fantasy. All outside the realm of the real, the physical. I’ll look more into this.
Most people have no idea about the ages and really the history of the ideas and philosophy of productive civilization. In fact, most people aren’t familiar with history and civilization at all. I’m not a fan of how history is taught by the illuminati, that is the main educational system or universities. My main problem with how history is taught is that the educational systems have rejected the three Greek methods or ways to prove truth: historical method, logic, and the scientific method.
The main problem is empiricism. Empiricism can only be used to prove the truth of the physical world. The method is the scientific method, and the scientific method can only be used to prove things that can be repeated. Empiricism can’t be used to prove history or those things which lie outside of the physical. This is a serious problem for writers.
All fiction writing comes out of the unreal and not the physical. Fiction comes from the imagination which is no part of the physical world. In addition, the author turns ideas into words and then symbols. You do realize that words and the symbols that represent words are two different things entirely. Words exist in ideas and outside of the physical—they are turned into the physical by turning them into symbols.
Until the invention of the dictionary, the symbols defining certain words were not even critically defined. Different writers spelled the same word in different ways until the reckoning of Webster and Johnson. Even then, the culture than followed Ben Johnson still spells the same words differently than the culture than follows Webster.
We must turn the words into symbols, but there is more, next.
We can’t ever forget that words are ideas. Words are also sounds, but words are not independent of ideas and the symbols that form words represent the words and the sounds but they are not the words or the sounds. For example, if I say was. The sound is wuz and not was at all. The symbols we use for the word was happen to be was, but the word does not sound that way at all and it means something specific to itself, but not from the word symbols rather a meaning.
The symbols represent the words and this is what the reader sees on the page. As I noted before, the reader turns these symbols into words and the words are ideas. These are what the author wants the reader to see—or at least some facsimile thereof. This goes directly back to ideas. Ideas are imagination, and the imagination is what an author develops. I’ll continue, next.
Imagination is the basis for all writing. That’s it. That’s perhaps the most important point about creativity. That’s pretty much what I’m coming for—creativity. The reason is that creativity is the most important part of the writing, in my opinion, and perhaps the most lacking.
When I read novels from others, I’m looking for creativity. I measure that by how much I enjoy the characters and the story. I’m looking for pathos development through the characters and the plot. To me creativity is the pathos—to be very clear, pathos is the emotions generated in me by the characters and the story. That’s what I look and gauge for creativity.
Most specifically, I’m not looking for a high imagination with all kinds of twists and turns, although that’s a great approach and idea, I’m looking for high pathos designed and developed in the story that moves me. I want to be moved. Great story and great characters development is okay, but great pathos that moves the reader is much more powerful and effective. That’s what I aim for. More about how we achieve this, next.
Aristotle defines pathos as pity and fear for tragedy. Pity and fear are the emotions of the readers (viewers) and not necessarily the characters. I’m not sure I agree that pity and fear are the main emotions I want or I acknowledge in great writing. Aristotle thought that pity and fear were the main pathos type emotions for Greek tragedy. This is what he said moved the audiences the most and had the greatest effect on judges and the people.
I’ll mention here that all Greek plays were religious and they were judged based on tragedy or comedy and for the religious festivals of the time. Only the winning plays were presented for the festivals, and the judges were usually the priests.
The pity and fear Aristotle presumed the authors were going for was based on moving judges and the people—it was a part of their religious expression, even if the plays were not very religious at all.
For Greek tragedy, I’d recommend pity and fear, but I’m not sure that’s what the average modern reader is looking for. What we want is the emotions for great pathos today. That’s next.
What type of pathos (emotions) do I want to excite in my readers? Mainly, I want delight. Delight really isn’t an emotion as much as a response. I’d really say I want joy—let’s say unrestrained joy. I’d also like deep sadness—anything that gets my readers choaked up. The unhappiness should not be with my characters but for my characters. The readers are unhappy with the state of the characters. They feel a kinship and depth of emotion for them because of their situations. This is the pathos I’m looking for. Perhaps I should list emotions and see which ones I really want in my readers—not characters. Then we can figure out how to get those emotions in the readers. Here’s a list of emotions:
- Admiration
- Adoration
- Aesthetic Appreciation
- Amusement
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Awe
- Awkwardness
- Boredom – not useful
- Calmness – not useful for pathos
- Confusion – not useful for pathos
- Craving – perhaps the most powerful for pathos
- Disgust – very useful used indirectly
- Empathetic pain – empathy in general is pathos
- Entrancement – the suspension of disbelief
- Excitement – a general and powerful state for all good writing
- Fear – main pathos development in tragedy
- Horror – more intense fear
- Interest – an overall characteristic of a novel and not a pathos development
- Joy – the master pathos for comedy
- Nostalgia – moderates pathos from more powerful emotions
- Pity – the master pathos for tragedy
- Relief – main means of scene development as in tension and release, relief is just another term for release
- Romance – not a pathos emotion by itself, mystery and excitement caused by love
- Sadness
- Satisfaction
- Sexual desire
- Surprise
- Anticipation – the main pathos development in comedy
- Mystery
Let’s start with these. They are from a Berkley study, by the way. I’m not certain these can all be defined as emotions, and I am a little surprised they don’t include some of the most fundamental and basic feelings. Aren’t emotions feelings and feelings emotions? Where is pain, happiness, or jealousy. I can see why they didn’t include love, for example, but where is pity. Even though the Greeks wouldn’t have thought of love of any kind as an emotion by itself, pity is on of the most powerful of the emotions, and marked by Aristotle as the main point of tragedy, as producing pathos.
Let’s use this list even if it might have some issues. I’ll start with the first emotion, define it, and see how we might use it for pathos, or better yet, evoke it in writing to produce pathos in our readers. Relief is next.
Relief
Definition: a feeling of reassurance and relaxation following release from anxiety or distress
As you know, if you’ve read much of my writing on writing, the scene is all about tension and release. In the definition of relief, we have release. It’s a very specific release from anxiety or distress and not a general release as from some general tension, but I think this points to the overall use of relief in writing. In fact, almost any emotion can be viewed as a type of tension.
Just for grins, let’s define tension: mental or emotional strain
There you go—tension is not any specific emotion or feeling. Tension is the strain caused by any thought or emotion. This gives us a very direct use for tension in a scene, and indeed, in any part of writing, but scene is the focus for tension.
Take any of the emotions we have discussed, and any we have not. The list we have been using is long, but it’s not everything. These are the main and best emotions, plus it’s a start. The point of all of these emotions is to introduce some tension and then give relief. We call this tension and release. Release is the term for removing the tension of the emotion in some way. Let’s look at comedy. I think tragedy is too easy and obvious. Let’s look at tension in joy with release (relief).
Some tension must be developed that will eventually result in joy. This is any obstacle that once achieved will bring joy to the reader and not necessarily the protagonist. Let’s say the protagonist is studying for a test. A positive result will mean the protagonist can continue with their education or in some way continue with their life in a positive way. Perhaps, the protagonist can achieve some long term goal, not with the test, but through the test. Our protagonist takes the test, and waits to hear the result. Instead of the result, our protagonist gets called in by the teacher. The test was perfect with a 100% grade, but the teacher wonders how this is possible—the test was made to be intentionally difficult. Few others passed, and no one else came close to 100% correct. The student agrees to a new test given directly by the teacher. The teacher agrees and gives a very difficult oral test. The result is our protagonist does very well on the oral test, but not quite as well as 100%. The teacher applies the lower grade, which is still much better than the rest of the class. In the end, the protagonist passes the test, gets a great grade, and should be filled with joy. It is muted by the accusation of cheating, the redo of the test and all, however, the release was the redo of the test. The student achieved. The student might not be joyful, but the reader should be filled with joy. The success was not as straightforward as expected, but the result drove release (relief) for the reader. That’s the point. In fact, the author must build this joy and relief (release) into the writing. The protagonist might not be as encouraged or excited, but the reader should be. This is how we incorporate the release into comedy and into scenes. A simple example, but a good one. Next, on to romance.
Romance
Definition: a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love
This is what we mean by romance. Romance is definitely pathos developing, but it’s really not an emotion we want to engender in our readers. We do want them to feel excitement and mystery about love in terms of the characters and specifically the protagonist, but the feeling is not really romance as much as it is the feelings about love. This is a little different than the other emotions, and this may be why either writers screw up the whole romance thing or why romance really seems to be a different and almost wrote concept in writing.
I mean the genre of romance as opposed to the emotions in romance. Romance is very common in most adult books. I mean by that, that I’ve advised that most novels including and about adults should include some degree of romance. Most of my novels do include romance, but the romance is not projected on the readers as a concept of anticipation as noted, excitement and mystery. This excitement and mystery are exactly what we project to the reader—this is the type of emotions that works with them. I’m trying to explain, you can’t really project romance as a pathos, but you certainly can project certain emotions related to romance. That’s the trick and that’s what we must do. The trick is to figure out exactly how to do this. Perhaps I should expand on this, next. I’ll try to pull examples from my writing.
Now, if you notice, mystery and excitement caused by love are not listed in the emotions. Excitement is, and I placed it as a general emotion and not a specific one for pathos. I added mystery—I think mystery is worth looking at, even if it is not an emotion. For romance, the two pathos bearing emotions are excitement and mystery associated with love. In other words, the writer wants to build excitement and mystery associated with love in the reader. We can’t even attempt to make romance in our readers. How can we have the reader fall in romantic love with our protagonist (or another character). This isn’t even a choice. Just like the more basal emotions for example, joy, fear, pity, anger, adoration, and all. Notice I chose some of the most powerful and some of the emotions aligned the strongest with romance. You could add to these emotions jealousy and a few others, but we can call jealousy in the reader anger and fear at the character trying to steal the love away from the protagonist.
Now, the question is how do we engender these emotions in the reader through romance? The answer is pretty basic in writing. We present a situation that builds a budding romance. Along the way, we provide obstacles and suffering by the protagonist in terms of love. The protagonist might not experience the emotions our reader does, but with romance, these emotions are usually shared in some degree. As you’ve heard over and over, show and don’t tell. It is much better and effective for pathos to show and not evaluate (or tell) at all. The reader who experiences the pain and suffering of the protagonist longing for his love or not is much more powerful than any explanation.
For example, in my latest novel Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment Seoirse is obviously in love with Rose. He doesn’t worry about it, much. He doesn’t have conniptions about it, much. I don’t play their romance that way. I have done this in other novels—it’s a typical play that is jealousy, competition for love, attention and all that. I like to play the more subtle aspects of love. I presume, to some degree an acknowledgement of love or like from one side to the other—we don’t need to say it aloud. The other side is secretive, we know less about the characters than the protagonist. There is always a presumption from one side about love, but we never know exactly what the other thinks—we can only observe their actions and hear their words. This is what drives romance in a well written novel. This is what causes the pathos in the reader. Uncertainty about the relationship, just like the real world, drives the pathos. In Seoirse, Rose drives the relationship. She demands that Seoirse follow her requirements. When he doesn’t, she punishes him. We know a little about Rose. She has been trained by Shiggy and indirectly, Sorcha. We know Seoirse is smitten and driven. His reactions are easier to read than hers. Still, we know how she and he sill respond. Part of the pathos development is this lack of mystery and yet understood expectation. When Seoirse doesn’t follow Rose’s exact decrees, we know he will pay in some way. She is tempting him, but he will not succumb and yet she dos seduce, knowing he will not and wishing that he would. The tension in the reader is produced exactly by the tension between the characters. This is one of the types of tensions I like to develop. I know it exists in real life. It isn’t sometimes so obvious and many in the modern world just ignore the idea of temptation and succumb, but that doesn’t develop powerful pathos, and that’s the goal in the reader. To be clear. Romantic tension between characters is very powerful with there is temptation without sexual release. In other words, if you have your romance couple hopping into bed every time the mode hits them, you have destroyed all the pathos you could have built in your readers. We are looking for excitement and mystery, sexual release and debauchery are a type of literature, but not one that develops pathos or much pathos. Build romance relationships designed around chastity, temptation, and control, and you will see powerful pathos in your readers—it’s the excitement and the mystery of love that builds pathos in readers not anything else. Next is sadness.
Sadness
Definition: affected with or expressive of grief or unhappiness, or causing or associated with grief or unhappiness
Talk about recursive definitions. Most definitions of sadness are “the state of being sad.” That’s pretty worthless. The definition I found above is better, but really doesn’t express the full on pathos we are looing for.
We need to make our readers feel sadness. This means really sorrow, unhappiness, grief, and perhaps suffering. The way to do this is not through the emotions of the protagonist, but rather the state and circumstance of the protagonist. For example, if we can make our protagonist hungry, put upon, abused, taken advantage of, unfairly punished, bullied, and so on, this can make our readers sad for the protagonist. Even if the protagonist isn’t sad at all, the reader will be—for the protagonist. This is a great power and a great means to bring strong pathos to the reader.
Notice, there are different actions to excite different types of sadness. For example, we can excite grief in a reader through some loss in the protagonist’s life. The loss of an important thing or a loved one or anything of importance might not affect the outward emotions of the character, but can affect the reader significantly.
I’ll mention this because it is the easiest means to develop sadness as pathos—suffering. If the protagonist is suffering, even unspoken or unobvious suffering, the reader will be suffering—as long as the author has developed the protagonist as a loved or admired character to the reader. Ah, that’s the rub. I should look at this, next.
To develop pathos, the reader must feel some connection with the protagonist. Without connection, there can be no pathos, and therefore no feeling from a positive or negative standpoint. I’d argue that negative is always bad—we never want a negative attitude from the readers to a protagonist, for no other reason than there is no positive pathos development.
Pathos means a reader feels emotions for and caused by the actions and experiences of the protagonist. To feel emotions about the protagonist, the reader must have some connection with them. I’d like to say they love the protagonist, but that term “love” is almost meaningless in English because it means too many things.
The connection isn’t one of romance, relation, friendship, community, or any normal type of relationship. In fact, there is no relationship. At most, the reader watches the protagonist from afar and doesn’t have any type of connection with the reader at all. The connections between the reader and the protagonist have everything to do with an acceptance of their heart and mind.
To make this as simple as possible, let’s go from the idea of heart and mind. This means thoughts and emotions. The reader must in some way connect with the protagonist through their ideas and their emotions. The emotions part is in large measure all about pathos, but not entirely about pathos. Pathos is build by these connections of ideas and emotions, but the emotions in question are not necessarily those causing pathos and the ideas are what builds connections in the first place. This is something we must evaluate, next.
Connections with the protagonist? I’d like to write, your reader needs to love your protagonist. I think this is absolutely true. In fact, I’m becoming more and more enamored with the idea as I focus on it. In the past, I’ve not written this strongly on this point. I’ve written about connections before and wrote that the reader didn’t need to necessarily love the protagonist. I guess it depends what you mean by love. I mean specifically that the reader needs to really like and admire your protagonist. They definitely need to agree with their reasoning and to some degree their decisions. I think to agree with decisions and with reasoning is less important than liking or loving the protagonist. I’m coming to an almost different position than in the past. The real problem is how do we develop a protagonist our readers love.
I think a pathos bearing or building protagonist makes a protagonist that is hard for a reader not to like. I also assert that a Romantic protagonist always creates a protagonist the reader loves. The cross between a pathos bearing and a Romantic protagonist is the best and more lovable protagonist. I should probably get into both or at least some details about both. That will be, next.
I’ve written about both concepts for a protagonist. I’ll give an abbreviated description of both, or maybe not. I’ll try to recollect everything I wrote before. To start with the idea of pathos development in a character. Here’s the basic idea, anything that immediately creates pathos in a reader about the protagonist is what I term pathos bearing. So, what does this look like?
What makes the reader feel sorry (sadness) for the protagonist. If the protagonist is young and helpless and has the following characteristics: hunger, abuse, poverty, lack of resources, lack of things, lack of education, lack of availability, pain, suffering, lack of support, lack of parents, there’s more. Each of these properly developed can produce pathos (sadness, feeling) for the protagonist in the reader.
Now, how the author handles the situation makes a huge difference in the potential pathos. In other words, the author can really harm the pathos or accentuate the pathos. Much of this is related to how the protagonist reflects the lack or issues. For example, if abused, like Sara Crew, the acceptance and attitude of how the protagonist accepts the abuse makes a very large difference in pathos development. Age and capability makes a large difference as well. A character who has the ability to change their circumstances has less pathos capability than a character who can’t change their circumstances. In almost every case, people who are dependent on others makes for better pathos development than those who do not. I’ll look at more of this, next.
Dependency, and especially positive dependency makes for wonderful pathos development. It also makes readers love a protagonist. On the other hand, negative dependency can also build pathos. How does that work? Negative dependency is abuse or hunger or poverty, all those negatives that draw a reader to a protagonist—a dependent protagonist. By the way, dependency is not just a negative or positive reliance on a person—it can be a dependency on a critical element or a conflict in the life of the protagonist. For example, in my novel Lilly: Enchantment and the Computer, Lilly feels like she is confined by her skills and her scholarships. She intentionally goes to a school where her scholarship will not cover her room and board to prevent her mother from making any claim to the money. That unfortunately leaves her on the street, dumpster diving, and stealing food to survive. This is a negative dependency which creates pathos. Lilly can’t see any way around her problem—she is dependent on it, and can’t see any solution, so she lives on the street and eats what she can find.
In this same novel, Lilly meets Dane and falls in love. This creates a new and positive dependency for her. In that dependency, Dane can provide her with a place to stay, food to eat, and motivation to change herself for the better. This is a positive dependency.
Now, to pathos in Lilly. The negative dependency creates an emotion in the heart of the reader—they like Lilly and don’t want her to be hungry, homeless, dirty, and constantly in danger. This is automatic pathos created by her situation—the negative dependency caused by her situation. On the other hand, when Lilly meets Dane and is rescued by him, she naturally wants to change. Dane is too nice a guy. He’s the kind of private and isolated person who is successful, but not necessarily popular. By saving Lilly, she moves her faith and trust to him. This has ramifications through the novel, but the most important point, from a pathos standpoint, is that Lilly’s positive dependency creates pathos in the reader. Dane provides for Lilly—he really doesn’t want to. He sees Lilly’s attraction like a puppy’s both because she is young and because he is not looking for a girlfriend. Still he provides for her.
In writing, this positive and negative dependency is exactly what we want to use to create pathos in the reader. Notice, there is no real emotion or that type of effect on the protagonist, all the emotion is on the reader. The changes in Lilly, the protagonist, a small but important to her and to the reader. Notice, these are not just feelings of sadness. Although sadness fits in this category, we are developing all kinds of thoughts and feelings in the readers, and not necessarily in the protagonist.
Here is where we are. We want to create negative and positive dependency in the protagonist that is reflected as pathos to the reader. Negative pathos are those characteristics of the protagonist that automatically produce emotions in the reader just by the existence of the protagonist.
For example, if I give you a protagonist who does not feel at all sorry for themselves, but who is hungry, impoverished, abused, and neglected, like Lilly, my example, or say, to some degree, Trish, in my friends’ novel, or like Nikita in my novel Regia Anglorum, All three of these characters would say they are totally in control of their lives and without any fault. Still, they have nothing, have little hope in the world, and are literally the dregs of their society. Trish has a house over her head, but she has nothing, no friends, no education, no love, no real hope or freedom. She is an astounding character.
Lilly has an education and hope for the future, but she is hungry, cold, dirty, barely dressed, and friendless. Nikita has a secret place to stay, but she is constantly hiding from those who might imprison and abuse her in the city of Carnival. She is hungry and has nothing and no hope unless she will join with one of the houses in Carnival.
I should mention Rose. Rose is alone, neglected, very special, hungry, and has no hope for the future. What I want you to realize about all these characters is that they are all unaware of their own problems and lack. They are happy, in general, with who they are and their circumstances. This is negative dependency. In every case, I provide them a character who reveals their circumstances and problems and excites them to change—that is positive dependency. Perhaps I should look at this, next.
Perhaps I’ll move over to my science fiction novels. I need to write a new one of them.
The most important thing for the scene is developing the entertainment in the scene.
I’ll write more tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
http://www.sisterofdarkness.com
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Zen of Scenes 