Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Relief

16 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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  Ancient Light has been delayed due to the economy, and it may not be published.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 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.

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
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise
• Anticipation – the main pathos development in comedy

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.     

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Pity

15 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Nostalgia – moderates pathos from more powerful emotions
• Pity
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise
• Anticipation

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.  Fear is next.

Fear

Definition: Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, or a state marked by this emotion

Yes, fear is an emotion and therefore a feeling.  This is something we really want to use and engender in our readers.  It can also be used for characters, but it’s true power is when it shows up in our readers as pathos and not necessarily in our characters.   In fact, in many cases, fear reflected as an emotion in our characters may create the opposite of pathos in our readers.

For example, let’s say our characters are going to war.  It is a common thing for soldiers to have great fear when going to war.  There are many types of fears involved in this circumstance.  The Red Badge of Courage represents this fear and how the protagonist overcame it and eventually died.  On the other hand, when I read this book, I was slightly disgusted by the fear and the actions of the protagonist.  He didn’t shoulder his work and didn’t act responsibly.  This was a feeling the writer wanted to engender in the reader, but disgust is a very negative pathos to develop in your readers.  Such a pathos might make your reader put down the novel.

I aim to develop fear in my readers and not my protagonists.  A character might be overcome by fear or motivated by fear, but the only kind of fear I want in my protagonist is a fear that they might fail and not succeed.  I want the protagonist to overcome his or her fears and act responsibly.  There obviously is room for novels like The Red Badge of Courage.  However, note that this novel is a tragedy and also does not have a Romantic protagonist.  In any case, the development of fear in the reader is a powerful type of pathos.

Horror

Definition: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust:

Okay, what’s the difference between fear and horror.  I’m not seeing any.  Shows you just how stupid Berkly can be.  Horror is just an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.  Since shock isn’t really a feeling or an emotion, even the dictionary, at least this dictionary is a bit off. 

So, horror is just more intense fear or disgust.  I’m not so much in horror as disgust.  Horror is just plain fear, okay more intense fear.  So how do you measure that.  There is such a thing as a horror plot but not a fear plot.  Really, I should have written more about fear yesterday. 

Fear is the main emotion in pathos of tragedy.  This makes it very important.  It can also be used in comedy, but it isn’t quite as powerful.  Horror works for both tragedy and comedy.  Ehh, how’s that work?  Horror is a plot and a setting.  Fear is an emotion in those plots and settings.  Horror is also a pathos development.  We can have horror in comedy and in tragedy.  Horror in comedy is when we scare the reader with the plot or setting, but we still end up resolving the telic flaw.  The protagonist doesn’t die. 

Fun horror, or fun fear is where no one is really hurt and nothing is really harmful, but the circumstances and the place still make our hearts thump and our bodies shake.  Forget about the disgust part—that can turn off readers, but the fear and horror part really attracts them and excites them.  It builds their pathos.  Horror is an excellent emotion and feeling to develop pathos, or I should write fear is.  Intense fear is just better.  I’ll see if I can do something with interest, next.

Interest

Definition:  the state of wanting to know or learn about something or someone or a sense of concern with and curiosity about someone or something

I don’t feel any feeling or emotion in this definition.  Well, there is some but it’s hidden.  I’m not suer we can call interest an emotion.  If it’s not an emotion, it can’t develop pathos, but we do know that interest is an important part of writing and especially reader involvement. 

If a reader isn’t interested in the writing, they most likely will toss the book.  They usually won’t read it or buy it.  Both tragedies for the author and the publisher.  We can establish that interest is of great importance in writing, but it’s not pathos building and we can’t do much with it in terms of emotions.

Interest is the underlying motivation that pushes the suspension of disbelief.  You might be such an astounding writer that your writing holds the reader in the suspension of disbelief, but that’s not true of most writers or readers—the excitement, protagonist, and plot (to a lesser degree) is what keeps the reader engaged, not so much the writing.  Bad writing will toss a reader out of the suspension of disbelief, but some really bad writing with a great protagonist or plot will usually engage the reader no matter what.  You really have to screw it up to dump most readers to the curb. 

So, in conclusion, interest is not pathos building—it is an important feature of every novel, and it is mainly driven by the protagonist and the setting then the plot, in that order.  Next is joy.

Joy

Definition: a feeling of great pleasure and happiness

Yes, joy is an emotion—it’s a feeling.  This is indeed a type of feeling we would like to build in a comedy especially.  In my opinion, I’d like to get my readers to actually experience and evidence the pathos they feel.  I want them to cry, shiver, laugh out loud, and display other emotions while they read my novels.  Sadness and fear are very common emotions, but genuine joy—the kind of joy that causes a reader to laugh and smile and perhaps beam with interest and, yes, joy, is difficult to develop.  It tends to be a post climax type of pathos. 

In other words, to get to this type of pathos, you need to have a significant buildup to the climax where the ending is so perfect and joy-filled, the reader can’t help but laugh, cry, and otherwise show just how beautiful and powerful their joy with the character is.

I’ve read a few books that really achieve this, but very few.  The Dragonsong novels, most specifically, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are like this.  The third novel in the series isn’t worth reading, but the first two are my examples of excellent Romantic protagonist, Romantic plot, and a perfect climax.  It is a joyful climax where the reader can’t help but be filled with exuberance, joy, and relief.  They are also great examples of non-action filled climaxes.  This is very rare for modern novels.  They are almost a through-back, but not to the Victorian.  They are the type of novels, I’d like to read more of—a very rare type of novel.

Joy is indeed a great pathos to engender in your readers.  It’s a difficult type of pathos, but can be achieved.  I use it often in my novels as part of the tension and release in the scenes.  These tend to work well with joy as a pathos.  Next, we will look at nostalgia.

Nostalgia

Definition: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations  

Okay, is this a feeling.  Yeah, by definition a longing or affection is a feeling and an emotion, but there are problems with nostalgia.  I would officially state that it is very difficult to develop nostalgia without a basis of emotion in your reader.  In other words, you need to touch existing nostalgic notions in your readers to effectively use nostalgia as a pathos.  This is, but the way, why school makes such a good plot and setting.  Almost every person in the modern world has experienced some type of organized schooling, therefore, this can be a source of nostalgia.  It can also be a source of fear, hate, and discomfort, but that’s nostalgia too.  Actually, it isn’t nostalgia at all by the definition.  It has to be sentimental longing or affection about happy associations. 

Nostalgia will not work for tragedy.  I guess you could use it as a basis and then spring the tragic parts at the end.  Tough, but perhaps useful.

I think the idea of nostalgia is a great one, but one difficult to give strong pathos.  Nostalgia is wistful, sentimental, and happy.  You can work with the happy, but the other two are too dimorphous.  For pathos, we want strong emotions and powerful experiences.  For example, I use nostalgia in one of my novels, Antebellum, to drive the setting and the story, but not really the pathos.  The pathos was raw about the South and the interactions of the people, but underneath was nostalgia that drew them all together.  It was a different kind of fear and horror balanced on the ideas that drew people together in perhaps not positive ways.  In this case nostalgia didn’t build pathos at all, but rather moderated the pathos from other more powerful emotions.  This is how I’d use nostalgia—I’m not sure it can really develop strong pathos by itself.  Pity is next.

Pity

Definition: the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others  

Now, pity is moving into the true force of the power of pathos.  The two great emotions for pathos development in tragedy are pity and fear.  For comedy, I’d say the two great pathos developing emotions are joy and anticipation.  Anticipation isn’t on our list, but we shall get there.

Back to pity.  The power and the trick in pity is it can’t be for ourselves—pity is always for others and about others.  In fact, pity is a type of anticipation.  We project the suffering and misfortunes of the protagonist and other characters in anticipation of the actual events and the actual effects on them.  This is what drives the fear in pity and fear. 

In great Greek tragedy, the expectation of pity through fear is one of the most powerful generators of pathos.  In Oedipus Rex, we, the audience knows when he kills his father and marries his mother, we feel the expectation of his sorrow and yet have compassion because he was fated to these events.  Our fear and pity is realized when he blinds himself in reaction to his own sins.  Pity anticipates everything and so from the beginning, we feel foreboding and fear in anticipation of the actual events.  This is true in modern tragedy as well.  Pity drives these very powerful emotions, not in the protagonist or in the characters, but in the audience. 

As I noted, pity is this greatest of tragedy emotion—it is the pathos emotion of tragedy.  Fear is simply the anticipatory emotion that drive home the pity.  Pity is power for tragedy, and I’m sure you can see how it might work in comedy as well.  We’ll move to relief, 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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Nostalgia

14 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Nostalgia
• Pity
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Fear is next.

Fear

Definition: Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, or a state marked by this emotion

Yes, fear is an emotion and therefore a feeling.  This is something we really want to use and engender in our readers.  It can also be used for characters, but it’s true power is when it shows up in our readers as pathos and not necessarily in our characters.   In fact, in many cases, fear reflected as an emotion in our characters may create the opposite of pathos in our readers.

For example, let’s say our characters are going to war.  It is a common thing for soldiers to have great fear when going to war.  There are many types of fears involved in this circumstance.  The Red Badge of Courage represents this fear and how the protagonist overcame it and eventually died.  On the other hand, when I read this book, I was slightly disgusted by the fear and the actions of the protagonist.  He didn’t shoulder his work and didn’t act responsibly.  This was a feeling the writer wanted to engender in the reader, but disgust is a very negative pathos to develop in your readers.  Such a pathos might make your reader put down the novel.

I aim to develop fear in my readers and not my protagonists.  A character might be overcome by fear or motivated by fear, but the only kind of fear I want in my protagonist is a fear that they might fail and not succeed.  I want the protagonist to overcome his or her fears and act responsibly.  There obviously is room for novels like The Red Badge of Courage.  However, note that this novel is a tragedy and also does not have a Romantic protagonist.  In any case, the development of fear in the reader is a powerful type of pathos.

Horror

Definition: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust:

Okay, what’s the difference between fear and horror.  I’m not seeing any.  Shows you just how stupid Berkly can be.  Horror is just an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.  Since shock isn’t really a feeling or an emotion, even the dictionary, at least this dictionary is a bit off. 

So, horror is just more intense fear or disgust.  I’m not so much in horror as disgust.  Horror is just plain fear, okay more intense fear.  So how do you measure that.  There is such a thing as a horror plot but not a fear plot.  Really, I should have written more about fear yesterday. 

Fear is the main emotion in pathos of tragedy.  This makes it very important.  It can also be used in comedy, but it isn’t quite as powerful.  Horror works for both tragedy and comedy.  Ehh, how’s that work?  Horror is a plot and a setting.  Fear is an emotion in those plots and settings.  Horror is also a pathos development.  We can have horror in comedy and in tragedy.  Horror in comedy is when we scare the reader with the plot or setting, but we still end up resolving the telic flaw.  The protagonist doesn’t die. 

Fun horror, or fun fear is where no one is really hurt and nothing is really harmful, but the circumstances and the place still make our hearts thump and our bodies shake.  Forget about the disgust part—that can turn off readers, but the fear and horror part really attracts them and excites them.  It builds their pathos.  Horror is an excellent emotion and feeling to develop pathos, or I should write fear is.  Intense fear is just better.  I’ll see if I can do something with interest, next.

Interest

Definition:  the state of wanting to know or learn about something or someone or a sense of concern with and curiosity about someone or something

I don’t feel any feeling or emotion in this definition.  Well, there is some but it’s hidden.  I’m not suer we can call interest an emotion.  If it’s not an emotion, it can’t develop pathos, but we do know that interest is an important part of writing and especially reader involvement. 

If a reader isn’t interested in the writing, they most likely will toss the book.  They usually won’t read it or buy it.  Both tragedies for the author and the publisher.  We can establish that interest is of great importance in writing, but it’s not pathos building and we can’t do much with it in terms of emotions.

Interest is the underlying motivation that pushes the suspension of disbelief.  You might be such an astounding writer that your writing holds the reader in the suspension of disbelief, but that’s not true of most writers or readers—the excitement, protagonist, and plot (to a lesser degree) is what keeps the reader engaged, not so much the writing.  Bad writing will toss a reader out of the suspension of disbelief, but some really bad writing with a great protagonist or plot will usually engage the reader no matter what.  You really have to screw it up to dump most readers to the curb. 

So, in conclusion, interest is not pathos building—it is an important feature of every novel, and it is mainly driven by the protagonist and the setting then the plot, in that order.  Next is joy.

Joy

Definition: a feeling of great pleasure and happiness

Yes, joy is an emotion—it’s a feeling.  This is indeed a type of feeling we would like to build in a comedy especially.  In my opinion, I’d like to get my readers to actually experience and evidence the pathos they feel.  I want them to cry, shiver, laugh out loud, and display other emotions while they read my novels.  Sadness and fear are very common emotions, but genuine joy—the kind of joy that causes a reader to laugh and smile and perhaps beam with interest and, yes, joy, is difficult to develop.  It tends to be a post climax type of pathos. 

In other words, to get to this type of pathos, you need to have a significant buildup to the climax where the ending is so perfect and joy-filled, the reader can’t help but laugh, cry, and otherwise show just how beautiful and powerful their joy with the character is.

I’ve read a few books that really achieve this, but very few.  The Dragonsong novels, most specifically, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are like this.  The third novel in the series isn’t worth reading, but the first two are my examples of excellent Romantic protagonist, Romantic plot, and a perfect climax.  It is a joyful climax where the reader can’t help but be filled with exuberance, joy, and relief.  They are also great examples of non-action filled climaxes.  This is very rare for modern novels.  They are almost a through-back, but not to the Victorian.  They are the type of novels, I’d like to read more of—a very rare type of novel.

Joy is indeed a great pathos to engender in your readers.  It’s a difficult type of pathos, but can be achieved.  I use it often in my novels as part of the tension and release in the scenes.  These tend to work well with joy as a pathos.  Next, we will look at nostalgia.

Nostalgia

Definition: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations  

Okay, is this a feeling.  Yeah, by definition a longing or affection is a feeling and an emotion, but there are problems with nostalgia.  I would officially state that it is very difficult to develop nostalgia without a basis of emotion in your reader.  In other words, you need to touch existing nostalgic notions in your readers to effectively use nostalgia as a pathos.  This is, but the way, why school makes such a good plot and setting.  Almost every person in the modern world has experienced some type of organized schooling, therefore, this can be a source of nostalgia.  It can also be a source of fear, hate, and discomfort, but that’s nostalgia too.  Actually, it isn’t nostalgia at all by the definition.  It has to be sentimental longing or affection about happy associations. 

Nostalgia will not work for tragedy.  I guess you could use it as a basis and then spring the tragic parts at the end.  Tough, but perhaps useful.

I think the idea of nostalgia is a great one, but one difficult to give strong pathos.  Nostalgia is wistful, sentimental, and happy.  You can work with the happy, but the other two are too dimorphous.  For pathos, we want strong emotions and powerful experiences.  For example, I use nostalgia in one of my novels, Antebellum, to drive the setting and the story, but not really the pathos.  The pathos was raw about the South and the interactions of the people, but underneath was nostalgia that drew them all together.  It was a different kind of fear and horror balanced on the ideas that drew people together in perhaps not positive ways.  In this case nostalgia didn’t build pathos at all, but rather moderated the pathos from other more powerful emotions.  This is how I’d use nostalgia—I’m not sure it can really develop strong pathos by itself.  Pity is 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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Joy

13 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Nostalgia
• Pity
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Fear is next.

Fear

Definition: Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, or a state marked by this emotion

Yes, fear is an emotion and therefore a feeling.  This is something we really want to use and engender in our readers.  It can also be used for characters, but it’s true power is when it shows up in our readers as pathos and not necessarily in our characters.   In fact, in many cases, fear reflected as an emotion in our characters may create the opposite of pathos in our readers.

For example, let’s say our characters are going to war.  It is a common thing for soldiers to have great fear when going to war.  There are many types of fears involved in this circumstance.  The Red Badge of Courage represents this fear and how the protagonist overcame it and eventually died.  On the other hand, when I read this book, I was slightly disgusted by the fear and the actions of the protagonist.  He didn’t shoulder his work and didn’t act responsibly.  This was a feeling the writer wanted to engender in the reader, but disgust is a very negative pathos to develop in your readers.  Such a pathos might make your reader put down the novel.

I aim to develop fear in my readers and not my protagonists.  A character might be overcome by fear or motivated by fear, but the only kind of fear I want in my protagonist is a fear that they might fail and not succeed.  I want the protagonist to overcome his or her fears and act responsibly.  There obviously is room for novels like The Red Badge of Courage.  However, note that this novel is a tragedy and also does not have a Romantic protagonist.  In any case, the development of fear in the reader is a powerful type of pathos.

Horror

Definition: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust:

Okay, what’s the difference between fear and horror.  I’m not seeing any.  Shows you just how stupid Berkly can be.  Horror is just an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.  Since shock isn’t really a feeling or an emotion, even the dictionary, at least this dictionary is a bit off. 

So, horror is just more intense fear or disgust.  I’m not so much in horror as disgust.  Horror is just plain fear, okay more intense fear.  So how do you measure that.  There is such a thing as a horror plot but not a fear plot.  Really, I should have written more about fear yesterday. 

Fear is the main emotion in pathos of tragedy.  This makes it very important.  It can also be used in comedy, but it isn’t quite as powerful.  Horror works for both tragedy and comedy.  Ehh, how’s that work?  Horror is a plot and a setting.  Fear is an emotion in those plots and settings.  Horror is also a pathos development.  We can have horror in comedy and in tragedy.  Horror in comedy is when we scare the reader with the plot or setting, but we still end up resolving the telic flaw.  The protagonist doesn’t die. 

Fun horror, or fun fear is where no one is really hurt and nothing is really harmful, but the circumstances and the place still make our hearts thump and our bodies shake.  Forget about the disgust part—that can turn off readers, but the fear and horror part really attracts them and excites them.  It builds their pathos.  Horror is an excellent emotion and feeling to develop pathos, or I should write fear is.  Intense fear is just better.  I’ll see if I can do something with interest, next.

Interest

Definition:  the state of wanting to know or learn about something or someone or a sense of concern with and curiosity about someone or something

I don’t feel any feeling or emotion in this definition.  Well, there is some but it’s hidden.  I’m not suer we can call interest an emotion.  If it’s not an emotion, it can’t develop pathos, but we do know that interest is an important part of writing and especially reader involvement. 

If a reader isn’t interested in the writing, they most likely will toss the book.  They usually won’t read it or buy it.  Both tragedies for the author and the publisher.  We can establish that interest is of great importance in writing, but it’s not pathos building and we can’t do much with it in terms of emotions.

Interest is the underlying motivation that pushes the suspension of disbelief.  You might be such an astounding writer that your writing holds the reader in the suspension of disbelief, but that’s not true of most writers or readers—the excitement, protagonist, and plot (to a lesser degree) is what keeps the reader engaged, not so much the writing.  Bad writing will toss a reader out of the suspension of disbelief, but some really bad writing with a great protagonist or plot will usually engage the reader no matter what.  You really have to screw it up to dump most readers to the curb. 

So, in conclusion, interest is not pathos building—it is an important feature of every novel, and it is mainly driven by the protagonist and the setting then the plot, in that order.  Next is joy.

Joy

Definition: a feeling of great pleasure and happiness

Yes, joy is an emotion—it’s a feeling.  This is indeed a type of feeling we would like to build in a comedy especially.  In my opinion, I’d like to get my readers to actually experience and evidence the pathos they feel.  I want them to cry, shiver, laugh out loud, and display other emotions while they read my novels.  Sadness and fear are very common emotions, but genuine joy—the kind of joy that causes a reader to laugh and smile and perhaps beam with interest and, yes, joy, is difficult to develop.  It tends to be a post climax type of pathos. 

In other words, to get to this type of pathos, you need to have a significant buildup to the climax where the ending is so perfect and joy-filled, the reader can’t help but laugh, cry, and otherwise show just how beautiful and powerful their joy with the character is.

I’ve read a few books that really achieve this, but very few.  The Dragonsong novels, most specifically, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are like this.  The third novel in the series isn’t worth reading, but the first two are my examples of excellent Romantic protagonist, Romantic plot, and a perfect climax.  It is a joyful climax where the reader can’t help but be filled with exuberance, joy, and relief.  They are also great examples of non-action filled climaxes.  This is very rare for modern novels.  They are almost a through-back, but not to the Victorian.  They are the type of novels, I’d like to read more of—a very rare type of novel.

Joy is indeed a great pathos to engender in your readers.  It’s a difficult type of pathos, but can be achieved.  I use it often in my novels as part of the tension and release in the scenes.  These tend to work well with joy as a pathos.  Next, we will look at nostalgia.  

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Interest

12 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Pity
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Fear is next.

Fear

Definition: Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, or a state marked by this emotion

Yes, fear is an emotion and therefore a feeling.  This is something we really want to use and engender in our readers.  It can also be used for characters, but it’s true power is when it shows up in our readers as pathos and not necessarily in our characters.   In fact, in many cases, fear reflected as an emotion in our characters may create the opposite of pathos in our readers.

For example, let’s say our characters are going to war.  It is a common thing for soldiers to have great fear when going to war.  There are many types of fears involved in this circumstance.  The Red Badge of Courage represents this fear and how the protagonist overcame it and eventually died.  On the other hand, when I read this book, I was slightly disgusted by the fear and the actions of the protagonist.  He didn’t shoulder his work and didn’t act responsibly.  This was a feeling the writer wanted to engender in the reader, but disgust is a very negative pathos to develop in your readers.  Such a pathos might make your reader put down the novel.

I aim to develop fear in my readers and not my protagonists.  A character might be overcome by fear or motivated by fear, but the only kind of fear I want in my protagonist is a fear that they might fail and not succeed.  I want the protagonist to overcome his or her fears and act responsibly.  There obviously is room for novels like The Red Badge of Courage.  However, note that this novel is a tragedy and also does not have a Romantic protagonist.  In any case, the development of fear in the reader is a powerful type of pathos.

Horror

Definition: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust:

Okay, what’s the difference between fear and horror.  I’m not seeing any.  Shows you just how stupid Berkly can be.  Horror is just an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.  Since shock isn’t really a feeling or an emotion, even the dictionary, at least this dictionary is a bit off. 

So, horror is just more intense fear or disgust.  I’m not so much in horror as disgust.  Horror is just plain fear, okay more intense fear.  So how do you measure that.  There is such a thing as a horror plot but not a fear plot.  Really, I should have written more about fear yesterday. 

Fear is the main emotion in pathos of tragedy.  This makes it very important.  It can also be used in comedy, but it isn’t quite as powerful.  Horror works for both tragedy and comedy.  Ehh, how’s that work?  Horror is a plot and a setting.  Fear is an emotion in those plots and settings.  Horror is also a pathos development.  We can have horror in comedy and in tragedy.  Horror in comedy is when we scare the reader with the plot or setting, but we still end up resolving the telic flaw.  The protagonist doesn’t die. 

Fun horror, or fun fear is where no one is really hurt and nothing is really harmful, but the circumstances and the place still make our hearts thump and our bodies shake.  Forget about the disgust part—that can turn off readers, but the fear and horror part really attracts them and excites them.  It builds their pathos.  Horror is an excellent emotion and feeling to develop pathos, or I should write fear is.  Intense fear is just better.  I’ll see if I can do something with interest, next.

Interest

Definition:  the state of wanting to know or learn about something or someone or a sense of concern with and curiosity about someone or something

I don’t feel any feeling or emotion in this definition.  Well, there is some but it’s hidden.  I’m not suer we can call interest an emotion.  If it’s not an emotion, it can’t develop pathos, but we do know that interest is an important part of writing and especially reader involvement. 

If a reader isn’t interested in the writing, they most likely will toss the book.  They usually won’t read it or buy it.  Both tragedies for the author and the publisher.  We can establish that interest is of great importance in writing, but it’s not pathos building and we can’t do much with it in terms of emotions.

Interest is the underlying motivation that pushes the suspension of disbelief.  You might be such an astounding writer that your writing holds the reader in the suspension of disbelief, but that’s not true of most writers or readers—the excitement, protagonist, and plot (to a lesser degree) is what keeps the reader engaged, not so much the writing.  Bad writing will toss a reader out of the suspension of disbelief, but some really bad writing with a great protagonist or plot will usually engage the reader no matter what.  You really have to screw it up to dump most readers to the curb. 

So, in conclusion, interest is not pathos building—it is an important feature of every novel, and it is mainly driven by the protagonist and the setting then the plot, in that order.  Next is joy.

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Horror

11 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Pity
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Fear is next.

Fear

Definition: Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, or a state marked by this emotion

Yes, fear is an emotion and therefore a feeling.  This is something we really want to use and engender in our readers.  It can also be used for characters, but it’s true power is when it shows up in our readers as pathos and not necessarily in our characters.   In fact, in many cases, fear reflected as an emotion in our characters may create the opposite of pathos in our readers.

For example, let’s say our characters are going to war.  It is a common thing for soldiers to have great fear when going to war.  There are many types of fears involved in this circumstance.  The Red Badge of Courage represents this fear and how the protagonist overcame it and eventually died.  On the other hand, when I read this book, I was slightly disgusted by the fear and the actions of the protagonist.  He didn’t shoulder his work and didn’t act responsibly.  This was a feeling the writer wanted to engender in the reader, but disgust is a very negative pathos to develop in your readers.  Such a pathos might make your reader put down the novel.

I aim to develop fear in my readers and not my protagonists.  A character might be overcome by fear or motivated by fear, but the only kind of fear I want in my protagonist is a fear that they might fail and not succeed.  I want the protagonist to overcome his or her fears and act responsibly.  There obviously is room for novels like The Red Badge of Courage.  However, note that this novel is a tragedy and also does not have a Romantic protagonist.  In any case, the development of fear in the reader is a powerful type of pathos.

Horror

Definition: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust:

Okay, what’s the difference between fear and horror.  I’m not seeing any.  Shows you just how stupid Berkly can be.  Horror is just an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.  Since shock isn’t really a feeling or an emotion, even the dictionary, at least this dictionary is a bit off. 

So, horror is just more intense fear or disgust.  I’m not so much in horror as disgust.  Horror is just plain fear, okay more intense fear.  So how do you measure that.  There is such a thing as a horror plot but not a fear plot.  Really, I should have written more about fear yesterday. 

Fear is the main emotion in pathos of tragedy.  This makes it very important.  It can also be used in comedy, but it isn’t quite as powerful.  Horror works for both tragedy and comedy.  Ehh, how’s that work?  Horror is a plot and a setting.  Fear is an emotion in those plots and settings.  Horror is also a pathos development.  We can have horror in comedy and in tragedy.  Horror in comedy is when we scare the reader with the plot or setting, but we still end up resolving the telic flaw.  The protagonist doesn’t die. 

Fun horror, or fun fear is where no one is really hurt and nothing is really harmful, but the circumstances and the place still make our hearts thump and our bodies shake.  Forget about the disgust part—that can turn off readers, but the fear and horror part really attracts them and excites them.  It builds their pathos.  Horror is an excellent emotion and feeling to develop pathos, or I should write fear is.  Intense fear is just better.  I’ll see if I can do something with interest, 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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Fear

10 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Horror
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Fear is next.

Fear

Definition: Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, or a state marked by this emotion

Yes, fear is an emotion and therefore a feeling.  This is something we really want to use and engender in our readers.  It can also be used for characters, but it’s true power is when it shows up in our readers as pathos and not necessarily in our characters.   In fact, in many cases, fear reflected as an emotion in our characters may create the opposite of pathos in our readers.

For example, let’s say our characters are going to war.  It is a common thing for soldiers to have great fear when going to war.  There are many types of fears involved in this circumstance.  The Red Badge of Courage represents this fear and how the protagonist overcame it and eventually died.  On the other hand, when I read this book, I was slightly disgusted by the fear and the actions of the protagonist.  He didn’t shoulder his work and didn’t act responsibly.  This was a feeling the writer wanted to engender in the reader, but disgust is a very negative pathos to develop in your readers.  Such a pathos might make your reader put down the novel.

I aim to develop fear in my readers and not my protagonists.  A character might be overcome by fear or motivated by fear, but the only kind of fear I want in my protagonist is a fear that they might fail and not succeed.  I want the protagonist to overcome his or her fears and act responsibly.  There obviously is room for novels like The Red Badge of Courage.  However, note that this novel is a tragedy and also does not have a Romantic protagonist.  In any case, the development of fear in the reader is a powerful type of pathos.

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Excitement

09 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Fear
• Horror
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Boredom is next.

Boredom

Definition: Boredom is a common feeling that occurs when you feel unsatisfied or uninterested in an activity

Okay, boredom is at least a feeling which means it is a type of emotion.  However, this is an emotion and feeling that all writers should be running away from.  You can’t write anything that is entertaining by including boredom, and trying to evoke boredom in your readers is a very bad idea—it might happen and it might stick.

I’ll be very clear about this.  Fiction is all about entertainment—if a reader begins to feel unsatisfied or uninterested, you’ve lost them.  You must seek the opposite satisfaction and interest.  Better yet, entertainment.

So, you do not want any boredom pathos in your readers.  I’d also not have any boredom in your characters either.  It might be reasonable to have a character, not a protagonist, experience or state boredom, but it should be resolved almost immediately by the protagonist or by the action in the novel.  The power and expectation of fiction is the opposite of boredom.  Don’t even get near this as a pathos development.  Next is calmness.

Calmness

Definition:  the state or quality of being free from agitation or strong emotion

You can discard this emotion just from the definition.  The purpose of pathos is the production of strong emotion in your readers.  If the emotion is the lack of strong emotions, this is the opposite of what we want.  Calmness might be a state we achieve between scenes or events, but it isn’t something we aim for in our writing.  In fact, the only way you can express calmness is as a state compared to the excitement of the action in a previous scene or experience.  In other words, to have calmness, you have to experience uncalmness to some degree.  The uncalmness is where we find the pathos and not in the calmness.  Next is confusion.

Confusion

Definition:  a state of disorder, bewilderment, or embarrassment.    

Although our UC Berkley study calls confusion an emotion, the definitions don’t necessarily agree.  Indeed, bewilderment and embarrassment are both emotions, but is confusion an emotion or just a mental state?  You might say a mental state is an emotion, but is it really?  The real question for the author is can you use such a mental state, that is one of confusion to build pathos in your reader?  Is this the type of pathos you wish to build in your reader. 

If you look at my rules for writing, number 2 is: don’t confuse your reader.  Certainly, confusing is confusing your reader.  For this reason alone, I’d not even contemplate using confusion as an emotion in a reader.  Perhaps in a character, but even that is iffy. 

Yes, there are times when you might use confusion or develop confusion in your characters, but not in your readers.  I conclude that confusion is not good for pathos development.  I’m not sure it’s an emotion anyway.  Next is craving.

Craving

Definition: a powerful desire for something:

A desire is an emotion or a feeling.  A powerful desire is something we can work with.  I’d say the main point of every novel, the telic flaw gives us plenty of desire or craving.  The protagonist craves to complete the problem expressed by the telic flaw.  The overall desire to resolve the telic flaw drives and motivates the protagonist.  This is all good, but a bit too general.  Although, I’ll go with this—the desire to resolve the telic flaw as an important craving, there is more to be built out of craving.

The desires of the protagonist are very important in the development of the overall plot and plots.  The pathos development in the reader should be engulfed by the desires and cravings of the protagonist.  Therefore, this idea of craving can and should drive much of the pathos in the reader.  For example, craving for a love interest, craving for training, craving for education, craving to succeed, craving to win—all of these can develop very strong pathos.  Just look at carving for a love interest—that is sexual or the desire of love in all it’s power.  I do like this idea of craving as a powerful motivator for a protagonist and for a novel.  Next is disgust.

Disgust

Definition:  a feeling of revulsion or strong disapproval aroused by something unpleasant or offensive

Yes, disgust is an emotion—it’s a feeling, but can we use it to develop pathos?  In building pathos, we want to draw our reader into the world and mind, perhaps thoughts, of our protagonist.  We aren’t about telling the mind of the protagonist.  We want our readers to get into the mind of the protagonist through our showing.  Disgust can do that potentially by rallying the reader to root with and for the protagonist.  For example, a disgusting situation or place might affect the reader and cause them to feel pity and fear for the protagonist.  Pity and fear are our tragedy pathos strong points.  On the other hand, a disgusting situation might cause the reader to push away from the protagonist. 

I see disgust as a two edged sword.  It can work for pathos, but it might cause the opposite.  In that case, I recommend standing back from disgust.  In fact, let’s just not use disgust in that manner.  What I mean is this—we should use disgust as Hemmingway did.  In the short story Great White Hunter (I think that was the title), the hunter is accidentally shot by his wife with a high caliber rifle.  Hemmingway doesn’t describe the disgusting mess, he rather describes the reaction of the wife and the guide.  This, better than any description of the results affects the reader and produces great pathos.  Here is how we should handle disgust.  Next, empathetic pain.

Empathetic Pain

Definition: Empathetic pain is a psycho-social reaction to seeing someone else in pain

It would be too easy to discard this one as just pure drivel.  It isn’t an emotion, it really isn’t a feeling, it’s a psycho-social reaction.  You might call this a feeling.  I say it is drivel.  Having really experienced pain, I can tell you, the moment you are out of it, you can barely believe it really was as debilitating or bad as it was.  You just go on with your life.  There isn’t enough empathetic psycho-social reaction to go around—unless you give the other person as much pain as you had.  That’s a real psycho-social reaction.

As an author, I’ll tell you this: any psycho-social reaction in a character or your protagonist is worthless.  What you need to create pathos is a psycho-social reaction in your reader.  How do you nourish pain and suffering in the reader, and perhaps as a reaction from the protagonist or other character?

In fact, although pretty much filled with psycho-babble, the idea of empathetic feelings, not just pain, is the entire scope of pathos.  We don’t want our readers to feel our protagonist’s pain and suffering as much as the emotions around that pain and suffering.  As I wrote, you can write about it all you want, but pain is pain.  Others can’t understand why you can’t stand or sit or lay down—such pain is inconceivable when you are upright and feeling well.  You might not be able to get another to feel the pain, but you can certainly reflect the suffering and emotions on your readers.  Next, entrancement.

Entrancement

Definition: a feeling of delight at being filled with wonder and enchantment. 

Well, entrancement is a feeling and therefore an amotion.  That’s great, but the definition is slightly recursive.  I do like the definition, but isn’t this exactly what we are attempting to develop in the reader with pathos?  Another definition of entrancement might be the suspension of disbelief.  That’s exactly what a novel is supposed to create in the reader, a suspension of disbelief.  Further, that suspension of disbelief is really entrancement—or so it seems to me.  In fact, I would love to use the word entrancement for the suspension of disbelief. 

The real question on the table is this: how do we cause entrancement (suspension of disbelief)?  If I could give you a short answer to this, I’d be the most successful writer in history.  This is all about what I write about writing.  How to create entrancement in your readers.  I can only show you how I accomplish this in my writing. 

For now, let’s simply put entrancement into the overall category similar to empathetic pain.  Entrancement is a state of great writing and not a simple emotion or feeling.  Next, excitement.

Excitement

Definition: a feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness

Well, excitement fills the bill for an emotion—it is a feeling.  However, the real question about excitement is the generic nature of the emotion and the point of fiction writing itself. 

I’d like to write that all fiction writing should cause some degree of enthusiasm and eagerness in the reader—this excitement is akin to the suspension of disbelief.  It’s the expression of the reader that keeps them entranced and holds their interest in the writing itself.  The problem is that not all situations in a novel can be described as producing enthusiasm or eagerness, or can it?  I mention, for example, death, sadness, or illness.  These might not create excitement in the characters, but can it create excitement in the reader?

I just happen to be reading the unselected journals of Emma M. Lion.  In these journalistic novels one of the major themes is Emma’s love for Maxwell who died during the British foray into Afghanistan in the 1880s.  The reminiscing of Emma about her lost love is indeed sad and in some ways desperate.  On the other hand, the author conveys a real excitement in the saddest circumstances.  The events and the people around Emma tend to support and help her quirky personality.  The saddest scenes are filled with a type of enthusiasm and eagerness as well as secrets that drive the writing.  And, by the way, I’m not super impressed by the writing or the works.  They are a fun read, and show off a certain style of writing very well. 

My point is this, we can develop excitement even in non-exciting scenes such that the reader is driven by that current pathos.  The circumstances and characters help drive this excitement.  I think that’s great writing.  For this reason, I declare excitement to be a basic type of goal and emotion of pathos in every scene.  However, as an author, we can drive for this specific feeling of pathos in our readers.  Notice, it’s not necessarily dependent on the characters, but on the readers feeling of excitement.  Next, we’ll look at fear.  

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Entrancement

08 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Fear
• Horror
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Boredom is next.

Boredom

Definition: Boredom is a common feeling that occurs when you feel unsatisfied or uninterested in an activity

Okay, boredom is at least a feeling which means it is a type of emotion.  However, this is an emotion and feeling that all writers should be running away from.  You can’t write anything that is entertaining by including boredom, and trying to evoke boredom in your readers is a very bad idea—it might happen and it might stick.

I’ll be very clear about this.  Fiction is all about entertainment—if a reader begins to feel unsatisfied or uninterested, you’ve lost them.  You must seek the opposite satisfaction and interest.  Better yet, entertainment.

So, you do not want any boredom pathos in your readers.  I’d also not have any boredom in your characters either.  It might be reasonable to have a character, not a protagonist, experience or state boredom, but it should be resolved almost immediately by the protagonist or by the action in the novel.  The power and expectation of fiction is the opposite of boredom.  Don’t even get near this as a pathos development.  Next is calmness.

Calmness

Definition:  the state or quality of being free from agitation or strong emotion

You can discard this emotion just from the definition.  The purpose of pathos is the production of strong emotion in your readers.  If the emotion is the lack of strong emotions, this is the opposite of what we want.  Calmness might be a state we achieve between scenes or events, but it isn’t something we aim for in our writing.  In fact, the only way you can express calmness is as a state compared to the excitement of the action in a previous scene or experience.  In other words, to have calmness, you have to experience uncalmness to some degree.  The uncalmness is where we find the pathos and not in the calmness.  Next is confusion.

Confusion

Definition:  a state of disorder, bewilderment, or embarrassment.    

Although our UC Berkley study calls confusion an emotion, the definitions don’t necessarily agree.  Indeed, bewilderment and embarrassment are both emotions, but is confusion an emotion or just a mental state?  You might say a mental state is an emotion, but is it really?  The real question for the author is can you use such a mental state, that is one of confusion to build pathos in your reader?  Is this the type of pathos you wish to build in your reader. 

If you look at my rules for writing, number 2 is: don’t confuse your reader.  Certainly, confusing is confusing your reader.  For this reason alone, I’d not even contemplate using confusion as an emotion in a reader.  Perhaps in a character, but even that is iffy. 

Yes, there are times when you might use confusion or develop confusion in your characters, but not in your readers.  I conclude that confusion is not good for pathos development.  I’m not sure it’s an emotion anyway.  Next is craving.

Craving

Definition: a powerful desire for something:

A desire is an emotion or a feeling.  A powerful desire is something we can work with.  I’d say the main point of every novel, the telic flaw gives us plenty of desire or craving.  The protagonist craves to complete the problem expressed by the telic flaw.  The overall desire to resolve the telic flaw drives and motivates the protagonist.  This is all good, but a bit too general.  Although, I’ll go with this—the desire to resolve the telic flaw as an important craving, there is more to be built out of craving.

The desires of the protagonist are very important in the development of the overall plot and plots.  The pathos development in the reader should be engulfed by the desires and cravings of the protagonist.  Therefore, this idea of craving can and should drive much of the pathos in the reader.  For example, craving for a love interest, craving for training, craving for education, craving to succeed, craving to win—all of these can develop very strong pathos.  Just look at carving for a love interest—that is sexual or the desire of love in all it’s power.  I do like this idea of craving as a powerful motivator for a protagonist and for a novel.  Next is disgust.

Disgust

Definition:  a feeling of revulsion or strong disapproval aroused by something unpleasant or offensive

Yes, disgust is an emotion—it’s a feeling, but can we use it to develop pathos?  In building pathos, we want to draw our reader into the world and mind, perhaps thoughts, of our protagonist.  We aren’t about telling the mind of the protagonist.  We want our readers to get into the mind of the protagonist through our showing.  Disgust can do that potentially by rallying the reader to root with and for the protagonist.  For example, a disgusting situation or place might affect the reader and cause them to feel pity and fear for the protagonist.  Pity and fear are our tragedy pathos strong points.  On the other hand, a disgusting situation might cause the reader to push away from the protagonist. 

I see disgust as a two edged sword.  It can work for pathos, but it might cause the opposite.  In that case, I recommend standing back from disgust.  In fact, let’s just not use disgust in that manner.  What I mean is this—we should use disgust as Hemmingway did.  In the short story Great White Hunter (I think that was the title), the hunter is accidentally shot by his wife with a high caliber rifle.  Hemmingway doesn’t describe the disgusting mess, he rather describes the reaction of the wife and the guide.  This, better than any description of the results affects the reader and produces great pathos.  Here is how we should handle disgust.  Next, empathetic pain.

Empathetic Pain

Definition: Empathetic pain is a psycho-social reaction to seeing someone else in pain

It would be too easy to discard this one as just pure drivel.  It isn’t an emotion, it really isn’t a feeling, it’s a psycho-social reaction.  You might call this a feeling.  I say it is drivel.  Having really experienced pain, I can tell you, the moment you are out of it, you can barely believe it really was as debilitating or bad as it was.  You just go on with your life.  There isn’t enough empathetic psycho-social reaction to go around—unless you give the other person as much pain as you had.  That’s a real psycho-social reaction.

As an author, I’ll tell you this: any psycho-social reaction in a character or your protagonist is worthless.  What you need to create pathos is a psycho-social reaction in your reader.  How do you nourish pain and suffering in the reader, and perhaps as a reaction from the protagonist or other character?

In fact, although pretty much filled with psycho-babble, the idea of empathetic feelings, not just pain, is the entire scope of pathos.  We don’t want our readers to feel our protagonist’s pain and suffering as much as the emotions around that pain and suffering.  As I wrote, you can write about it all you want, but pain is pain.  Others can’t understand why you can’t stand or sit or lay down—such pain is inconceivable when you are upright and feeling well.  You might not be able to get another to feel the pain, but you can certainly reflect the suffering and emotions on your readers.  Next, entrancement.

Entrancement

Definition: a feeling of delight at being filled with wonder and enchantment. 

Well, entrancement is a feeling and therefore an amotion.  That’s great, but the definition is slightly recursive.  I do like the definition, but isn’t this exactly what we are attempting to develop in the reader with pathos?  Another definition of entrancement might be the suspension of disbelief.  That’s exactly what a novel is supposed to create in the reader, a suspension of disbelief.  Further, that suspension of disbelief is really entrancement—or so it seems to me.  In fact, I would love to use the word entrancement for the suspension of disbelief. 

The real question on the table is this: how do we cause entrancement (suspension of disbelief)?  If I could give you a short answer to this, I’d be the most successful writer in history.  This is all about what I write about writing.  How to create entrancement in your readers.  I can only show you how I accomplish this in my writing. 

For now, let’s simply put entrancement into the overall category similar to empathetic pain.  Entrancement is a state of great writing and not a simple emotion or feeling.  Next, excitement.

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, New Novel, Imagination, Emotions, Empathetic Pain

07 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.

1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action scene(s)
5. 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 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.

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
• Excitement
• Fear
• Horror
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Relief
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Surprise

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.  Boredom is next.

Boredom

Definition: Boredom is a common feeling that occurs when you feel unsatisfied or uninterested in an activity

Okay, boredom is at least a feeling which means it is a type of emotion.  However, this is an emotion and feeling that all writers should be running away from.  You can’t write anything that is entertaining by including boredom, and trying to evoke boredom in your readers is a very bad idea—it might happen and it might stick.

I’ll be very clear about this.  Fiction is all about entertainment—if a reader begins to feel unsatisfied or uninterested, you’ve lost them.  You must seek the opposite satisfaction and interest.  Better yet, entertainment.

So, you do not want any boredom pathos in your readers.  I’d also not have any boredom in your characters either.  It might be reasonable to have a character, not a protagonist, experience or state boredom, but it should be resolved almost immediately by the protagonist or by the action in the novel.  The power and expectation of fiction is the opposite of boredom.  Don’t even get near this as a pathos development.  Next is calmness.

Calmness

Definition:  the state or quality of being free from agitation or strong emotion

You can discard this emotion just from the definition.  The purpose of pathos is the production of strong emotion in your readers.  If the emotion is the lack of strong emotions, this is the opposite of what we want.  Calmness might be a state we achieve between scenes or events, but it isn’t something we aim for in our writing.  In fact, the only way you can express calmness is as a state compared to the excitement of the action in a previous scene or experience.  In other words, to have calmness, you have to experience uncalmness to some degree.  The uncalmness is where we find the pathos and not in the calmness.  Next is confusion.

Confusion

Definition:  a state of disorder, bewilderment, or embarrassment.    

Although our UC Berkley study calls confusion an emotion, the definitions don’t necessarily agree.  Indeed, bewilderment and embarrassment are both emotions, but is confusion an emotion or just a mental state?  You might say a mental state is an emotion, but is it really?  The real question for the author is can you use such a mental state, that is one of confusion to build pathos in your reader?  Is this the type of pathos you wish to build in your reader. 

If you look at my rules for writing, number 2 is: don’t confuse your reader.  Certainly, confusing is confusing your reader.  For this reason alone, I’d not even contemplate using confusion as an emotion in a reader.  Perhaps in a character, but even that is iffy. 

Yes, there are times when you might use confusion or develop confusion in your characters, but not in your readers.  I conclude that confusion is not good for pathos development.  I’m not sure it’s an emotion anyway.  Next is craving.

Craving

Definition: a powerful desire for something:

A desire is an emotion or a feeling.  A powerful desire is something we can work with.  I’d say the main point of every novel, the telic flaw gives us plenty of desire or craving.  The protagonist craves to complete the problem expressed by the telic flaw.  The overall desire to resolve the telic flaw drives and motivates the protagonist.  This is all good, but a bit too general.  Although, I’ll go with this—the desire to resolve the telic flaw as an important craving, there is more to be built out of craving.

The desires of the protagonist are very important in the development of the overall plot and plots.  The pathos development in the reader should be engulfed by the desires and cravings of the protagonist.  Therefore, this idea of craving can and should drive much of the pathos in the reader.  For example, craving for a love interest, craving for training, craving for education, craving to succeed, craving to win—all of these can develop very strong pathos.  Just look at carving for a love interest—that is sexual or the desire of love in all it’s power.  I do like this idea of craving as a powerful motivator for a protagonist and for a novel.  Next is disgust.

Disgust

Definition:  a feeling of revulsion or strong disapproval aroused by something unpleasant or offensive

Yes, disgust is an emotion—it’s a feeling, but can we use it to develop pathos?  In building pathos, we want to draw our reader into the world and mind, perhaps thoughts, of our protagonist.  We aren’t about telling the mind of the protagonist.  We want our readers to get into the mind of the protagonist through our showing.  Disgust can do that potentially by rallying the reader to root with and for the protagonist.  For example, a disgusting situation or place might affect the reader and cause them to feel pity and fear for the protagonist.  Pity and fear are our tragedy pathos strong points.  On the other hand, a disgusting situation might cause the reader to push away from the protagonist. 

I see disgust as a two edged sword.  It can work for pathos, but it might cause the opposite.  In that case, I recommend standing back from disgust.  In fact, let’s just not use disgust in that manner.  What I mean is this—we should use disgust as Hemmingway did.  In the short story Great White Hunter (I think that was the title), the hunter is accidentally shot by his wife with a high caliber rifle.  Hemmingway doesn’t describe the disgusting mess, he rather describes the reaction of the wife and the guide.  This, better than any description of the results affects the reader and produces great pathos.  Here is how we should handle disgust.  Next, empathetic pain.

Empathetic Pain

Definition: Empathetic pain is a psycho-social reaction to seeing someone else in pain

It would be too easy to discard this one as just pure drivel.  It isn’t an emotion, it really isn’t a feeling, it’s a psycho-social reaction.  You might call this a feeling.  I say it is drivel.  Having really experienced pain, I can tell you, the moment you are out of it, you can barely believe it really was as debilitating or bad as it was.  You just go on with your life.  There isn’t enough empathetic psycho-social reaction to go around—unless you give the other person as much pain as you had.  That’s a real psycho-social reaction.

As an author, I’ll tell you this: any psycho-social reaction in a character or your protagonist is worthless.  What you need to create pathos is a psycho-social reaction in your reader.  How do you nourish pain and suffering in the reader, and perhaps as a reaction from the protagonist or other character?

In fact, although pretty much filled with psycho-babble, the idea of empathetic feelings, not just pain, is the entire scope of pathos.  We don’t want our readers to feel our protagonist’s pain and suffering as much as the emotions around that pain and suffering.  As I wrote, you can write about it all you want, but pain is pain.  Others can’t understand why you can’t stand or sit or lay down—such pain is inconceivable when you are upright and feeling well.  You might not be able to get another to feel the pain, but you can certainly reflect the suffering and emotions on your readers.  Next, entrancement.

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.ancientlight.com

www.aegyptnovel.com

http://www.sisteroflight.com

http://www.sisterofdarkness.com

www.centurionnovel.com

www.thesecondmission.com

www.theendofhonor.com

www.thefoxshonor.com

www.aseasonofhonor.com

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic