27 March 2021, this blog is about writing in scenes. I’m focusing on the tools to build scenes. I’ll leave up the parts of a novel because I think this is an important picture for any novelist. I’m writing about how to begin and write a novel.
- The initial scene
- The rising action scenes
- The climax scene
- The falling action scene(s)
- The dénouement scene(s)
Announcement: I need a new publisher. Ancient Light has been delayed due to the economy, and it may not be published. Ancient Light includes Aegypt, Sister of Light and Sister of Darkness. If you are interested in historical/suspense literature, please give my novels a try. You can read about them at http://www.ancientlight.com. I’ll keep you updated.
Today’s Blog: The skill of using language comes from the ability to put together figures of speech that act as symbols in writing.
Short digression: Back in Wichita.
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.
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.
I’m currently writing a novel that is a little difficult to explain. It’s a reflected worldview novel so it includes fairy creatures, British mythical beings and gods, and a vampire. It is an adult novel, but is set in a girl’s boarding school in Saint Malo France. The initial scene was based on another novel titled Deidre: Enchantment and the School.
What I’ll do now is focus on the details of words, sentences, paragraphs, and scenes on entertainment. I can assure you if these are right, the other parts will be too.
I’ve been looking at scenes and especially themes for scenes and themes for novels. The point of all of this is entertainment. The question now is how to develop a novel length idea—this is the ultimate question I’ve been trying to help you with.
Below is the question for the current novel I’m writing.
What would happen if a royal heir was banished from England for having a supernatural heritage and kept imprisoned in a convent was released in the modern era?
Here is the theme statement:
Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events.
You can see there are real differences between the question and the theme statement. I really can’t show you how to write a question per se. The question is just a question. It’s directly related to the plot. I can show you how to write a theme statement.
The theme statement sets you up to write the initial scene, but here is where real creativity must prevail. The initial scene more than any other scene in a novel is the most important and creative. I always start the creation of my novels, now, with an initial scene.
I completed an entire section about showing and not telling. Remember show and don’t tell. That makes me feel better. At the moment, I’ve personally been focusing on writing a very complex non-fiction book length work, finding a publisher for my novels, and trying to write cohesively about showing instead of telling. I think I have this part down well in my novels, and I’m constantly trying to discover ways to help others figure this out too.
Today:
The point of the rising action and of the overall novel is to reveal the protagonist as well as the action of the protagonist in resolving the telic flaw. They are basically the same thing. This is all about secrets.
If you remember, fiction writing is all about entertainment. That’s all there is. We make secrets and relationships entertaining by creating tension.
Every scene has some degree of a tension buildup (rising action) and release (climax).
Okay, we want to develop a Romantic plot. The trick is that we need a Romanic protagonist, and we need a good telic flaw. Now, I’ve written over and over, the telic flaw comes with the protagonist. The only way to show this is really through examples. Perhaps that’s what I need to do.
If I give you examples of my protagonists and show you their telic flaws (the telic flaws from their novels) perhaps that will help with understanding. I’ll start with my first novel and move to the last.
In my yet unpublished novel, Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse, Shiggy is my proud protagonist. In my Enchantment novels, I’m looking at redemption for people and beings we would never think could be redeemed. In the case of Shiggy, I give you two in one. Shiggy is a nearly hopelessly clumsy, ill bred, and irresponsible person. At the same time, she is cursed. Part of the reason for her incompetence is her curse. So, the redemption of Shiggy has two parts—training and responsibility, and understanding her curse. I like this kind of dichotomy.
We initially see Shiggy after she has brought doom and destruction down on numerous intelligence branches of MI6. She has been given to Sorcha to train. You can tell what Shiggy’s telic flaw is—or rather, the telic flaw, Shiggy brings to the novel.
The telic flaw is Shiggy needs to become responsible and be trained. At the same time, she needs to understand her curse—which is basically the same thing. I make no real difference in the novel. Shiggy brings this telic flaw with her. She brings numerous other little details with her, but that is part of the setting and the character development.
I might mention Sorcha as well. Sorcha is not the protagonist, but rather the protagonist’s helper—I named the novel after Sorcha because she is the reason for Shiggy’s change.
The most important thing for the scene is developing the entertainment in the scene.
I’ll write more tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
http://www.sisterofdarkness.com
fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic
Zen of Scenes 