29 April 2024, this blog is about writing in scenes. I’m focusing on the tools to build scenes. I’ll leave up the parts of a novel because I think this is an important picture for any novelist. I’m writing about how to begin and write a novel.
- The initial scene
- The rising action scenes
- The climax scene
- The falling action scene(s)
- The dénouement scene(s)
Announcement: I need a new publisher. Ancient Light has been delayed due to the economy, and it may not be published. Ancient Light includes Aegypt, Sister of Light and Sister of Darkness. If you are interested in historical/suspense literature, please give my novels a try. You can read about them at http://www.ancientlight.com. I’ll keep you updated.
Today’s Blog: The skill of using language comes from the ability to put together figures of speech that act as symbols in writing.
Short digression: Back in the USA. I didn’t update you on all my travels, but I basically went all through Italy and Greece as well as a sidetrack to Malta. I’m back.
Here are my rules of writing:
1. Entertain your readers.
2. Don’t confuse your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.
4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
6. The initial scene is the most important scene.
Creativity is the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form. It is a reflection of something new created with ties to the history, science, and logic (the intellect). Creativity requires consuming, thinking, and producing.
Scene development:
Here is the beginning of the scene development method from the outline:
1. Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
2. Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
3. Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.
4. Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
5. Write the release
6. Write the kicker
First step of writing—enjoy writing. Writing is a chore—especially if you don’t know what you are doing, and you don’t know where you are going. Let me help you with that.
Today:
These are the three novels I’m contemplating writing. I finished Seoirse, and I developed these protagonists and the protagonist’s helpers for the other novels.
For novel 34: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
For novel 35: Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.
The first or initial scene is what we work hard to start out our novels.
A scene always starts with the setting elements. Look at the scene development outline:
1. Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
2. Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
3. Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.
4. Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
5. Write the release
6. Write the kicker
If you notice, the first thing we write is the scene setting. You can continue setting development through the scene, but every scene should start with the setting. You must set the stage of the novel with the scene setting.
In the first place, without setting elements, you can’t write anything. You must introduce setting elements to be able to have action and dialog. The setting elements usually come out of narration of some type.
Every creative element should also be a plot element. If they are not, you should not make them a creative element.
This means the plots must further the telic flaw resolution and nothing else. A plot element can become a telic resolution element. However, I should write, a plot element should always become a telic resolution element.
I’ve never put this completely together before. Here’s a chronological list of my novels:
The Second Mission (399 to 400 BC)
Centurion (6 BC to 33 AD)
Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon 1917 – 1918 (1920)
Aegypt 1926
Sister of Light 1926 – 1934
Sister of Darkness 1939 – 1945
Shadow of Darkness 1945 – 1953
Shadow of Light 1953 – 1956
Antebellum 1965 (1860 to 1865)
Children of Light and Darkness 1970 – 1971
Warrior of Light 1974 – 1976
Warrior of Darkness 1980 – 1981
Deirdre: Enchantment and the School 1992 – 1993
Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors 1993 – 1994
Hestia: Enchantment of the Hearth 2000 – 2001
Essie: Enchantment and the Aos Si 2002 – 2005
Khione: Enchantment and the Fox 2003 – 2004
Blue Rose: Enchantment and the Detective 2008 – 2009
Dana-ana: Enchantment and the Maiden 2009 – 2010
Valeska: Enchantment and the Vampire 2014 – 2015
Lilly: Enchantment and the Computer 2014 – 2015
September 2022 – death of Elizabeth
Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse 2025 – 2026
2026 death of Mrs. Calloway
Rose: Enchantment and the Flower January to April 2028
Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment August to November 2028
science fiction
The End of Honor
The Fox’s Honor
A Season of Honor
Athelstan Cying
Twilight Lamb
Regia Anglorum
Shadowed Vale
Ddraig Goch – not completed
What’s the point? I just wanted to list all my novels in chronological order. I’m not sure where I’m going from this, but I thought it was a fun idea. I didn’t put in the dates of the science fiction because although it is possible to figure them out, they are pretty esoteric. All the other novels are connected in history and time.
I’m going to move back to the beginning and imagination. Writing is not about writing, it’s ultimately about imagination. As authors, we imagine something, an exciting and entertaining idea, hopefully a story, we develop it in our minds, and then we commit it to symbols on paper.
Yes, the actual writing part can expand the ideas and the writing, but ultimately, we need to turn what we imagine into words and then into symbols. The symbols are the only thing the reader ever sees—everything else happens in their imagination space.
I know we live in the age of Empiricism. This is a terrible thing because it cripples the mind and especially the mind of the thinker. All thinking happens in unreal space. You may think it is within your cranium, but think about this: all the pictures, the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the sounds, tastes, smells, visuals that occur within your thoughts come from without your thoughts and many times are experiences that you never saw before. Where are they really? They exist only within the parameters of the physical world because they presumably are inside your physical brain, but your imagination and the imagination of writers always expands well beyond the bounds of their physical brains. Just look at science fiction and fantasy. All outside the realm of the real, the physical. I’ll look more into this.
Most people have no idea about the ages and really the history of the ideas and philosophy of productive civilization. In fact, most people aren’t familiar with history and civilization at all. I’m not a fan of how history is taught by the illuminati, that is the main educational system or universities. My main problem with how history is taught is that the educational systems have rejected the three Greek methods or ways to prove truth: historical method, logic, and the scientific method.
The main problem is empiricism. Empiricism can only be used to prove the truth of the physical world. The method is the scientific method, and the scientific method can only be used to prove things that can be repeated. Empiricism can’t be used to prove history or those things which lie outside of the physical. This is a serious problem for writers.
All fiction writing comes out of the unreal and not the physical. Fiction comes from the imagination which is no part of the physical world. In addition, the author turns ideas into words and then symbols. You do realize that words and the symbols that represent words are two different things entirely. Words exist in ideas and outside of the physical—they are turned into the physical by turning them into symbols.
Until the invention of the dictionary, the symbols defining certain words were not even critically defined. Different writers spelled the same word in different ways until the reckoning of Webster and Johnson. Even then, the culture than followed Ben Johnson still spells the same words differently than the culture than follows Webster.
We must turn the words into symbols, but there is more, next.
We can’t ever forget that words are ideas. Words are also sounds, but words are not independent of ideas and the symbols that form words represent the words and the sounds but they are not the words or the sounds. For example, if I say was. The sound is wuz and not was at all. The symbols we use for the word was happen to be was, but the word does not sound that way at all and it means something specific to itself, but not from the word symbols rather a meaning.
The symbols represent the words and this is what the reader sees on the page. As I noted before, the reader turns these symbols into words and the words are ideas. These are what the author wants the reader to see—or at least some facsimile thereof. This goes directly back to ideas. Ideas are imagination, and the imagination is what an author develops. I’ll continue, next.
Imagination is the basis for all writing. That’s it. That’s perhaps the most important point about creativity. That’s pretty much what I’m coming for—creativity. The reason is that creativity is the most important part of the writing, in my opinion, and perhaps the most lacking.
When I read novels from others, I’m looking for creativity. I measure that by how much I enjoy the characters and the story. I’m looking for pathos development through the characters and the plot. To me creativity is the pathos—to be very clear, pathos is the emotions generated in me by the characters and the story. That’s what I look and gauge for creativity.
Most specifically, I’m not looking for a high imagination with all kinds of twists and turns, although that’s a great approach and idea, I’m looking for high pathos designed and developed in the story that moves me. I want to be moved. Great story and great characters development is okay, but great pathos that moves the reader is much more powerful and effective. That’s what I aim for. More about how we achieve this, next.
Aristotle defines pathos as pity and fear for tragedy. Pity and fear are the emotions of the readers (viewers) and not necessarily the characters. I’m not sure I agree that pity and fear are the main emotions I want or I acknowledge in great writing. Aristotle thought that pity and fear were the main pathos type emotions for Greek tragedy. This is what he said moved the audiences the most and had the greatest effect on judges and the people.
I’ll mention here that all Greek plays were religious and they were judged based on tragedy or comedy and for the religious festivals of the time. Only the winning plays were presented for the festivals, and the judges were usually the priests.
The pity and fear Aristotle presumed the authors were going for was based on moving judges and the people—it was a part of their religious expression, even if the plays were not very religious at all.
For Greek tragedy, I’d recommend pity and fear, but I’m not sure that’s what the average modern reader is looking for. What we want is the emotions for great pathos today. That’s next.
What type of pathos (emotions) do I want to excite in my readers? Mainly, I want delight. Delight really isn’t an emotion as much as a response. I’d really say I want joy—let’s say unrestrained joy. I’d also like deep sadness—anything that gets my readers choaked up. The unhappiness should not be with my characters but for my characters. The readers are unhappy with the state of the characters. They feel a kinship and depth of emotion for them because of their situations. This is the pathos I’m looking for. Perhaps I should list emotions and see which ones I really want in my readers—not characters. Then we can figure out how to get those emotions in the readers. Here’s a list of emotions:
- Admiration
- Adoration
- Aesthetic Appreciation
- Amusement
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Awe
- Awkwardness
- Boredom
- Calmness
- Confusion
- Craving
- Disgust
- Empathetic pain
- 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. Admiration is next.
Admiration
First a definition: a feeling of wonder, pleasure, or approval for someone or something.
Well, well, well. There is feeling in this definition, but that feeling is wonder, pleasure, or approval for an object of some type. You might say a focused wonder, pleasure, or approval.
I’ll accept that this is an emotion and a potential for pathos development. It isn’t pity or fear and most likely, we’d see this pathos in a comedy. How could we set up our readers for admiration? Generally some achievement, great or small would produce this result for us. You definitely can’t force this on a reader. You can’t just state: Joe was admired by all. You must show what makes Joe admired. Self aggrandizement won’t cut it. You must show the circumstances and the situations that make Joe admirable. This needs to be done with humility and power to build pathos in the reader, but that might be true of every positive emotion. In other words, you can’t just have everyone at the end clap and applaud the characters while they receive medals. That’s just gratuitous. The power of the events and the circumstances of success should drive the recognition in the mind and heart of the reader.
Adoration
Let’s define it: very strong love or worship for someone:
There is no feelings in this word definition. I guess we could state the feeling of very strong love or worship for someone. That places adoration in the realm of an emotion and the possibility of use for pathos. I’m not sure this is much different than love. Notice that love isn’t in the list of emotions. That’s because the word and idea of love is subsumed under the other types of emotions, and adoration is just one type of love. However, the actual type of love represented by adoration isn’t clear. Although adoration could include sexual, romantic, friendly, familial, or other personal types of love, we usually consider adoration to be in some degree platonic and not necessarily sexual or romantic. The second term is the crux of the definition: worship. To worship means to hold the other person on the level above normal humanity or the physical.
I’m not sure I concede adoration as an emotion. It is a type of love reserved usually for God or the gods. It can be applied to another human, but the real question, for me, is can adoration be used effectively to develop pathos? I’m not so sure. The Greeks weren’t either. They revered but really didn’t adore their gods. Irony was the main point with Greek gods, and not adoration.
You might try to use adoration to develop pathos, but I’m not sure how effective this can or will be. I can generally see how adoration might be set up for pathos development. You would have to use something similar to admiration with great success for the protagonist or other character. Next, aesthetic appreciation.
Aesthetic Appreciation
Let’s define it: the admiration of beauty, such as valuing the fine arts of music, literature, dance, and visual art. And An experience that stirs up emotions, senses, and thoughts.
This is most likely not an emotion or feeling of any kind. The second part of the definition, does give some degree of emotion, but is the admiration of beauty really an emotion? It seems like an idea or concept to me. The big question is this, can I develop this as pathos in a reader. That might be possible, but it gets really complex as an idea.
In many of my novels, I have my protagonist and characters going to aesthetic events like operas, plays, and ballets. The point is to excite the minds and hearts of my readers with these presentations. The presentations always relate directly back to my plots and characters. This is just one way of presenting an aesthetic into a novel, but can it really develop pathos or not. I think it may be possible, so I’ll leave it in, but this is a tenuous type of pathos. If you try for it, I recommend you use a real aesthetic type event to evoke it, and realize it is a limited type of pathos. Amusement is, next.
Amusement
Let’s define it: a feeling of being entertained and happy.
If you go poking around for definitions of these emotions, make sure you take the ones that really are emotions. They need to talk about feelings otherwise the entire point of the emotion will be lost. We are developing pathos in the reader, and pathos is dependent on feelings (emotions).
I’ll go with amusement being a feeling (emotion) of being entertained and happy. It might be better to define amusement as being entertained and/or happy. Amusement can be happiness apart from entertainment, but I’ll accept it all.
Is amusement a good pathos developing emotion? I’m thinking that amusement is the basis for all writing and especially comedy writing. When I write comedy, I mean in the Greek and classical sense: the protagonist overcomes the telic flaw. We write solely to entertain, at least I hope you do. If you do not write solely to entertain, the chance of publication is very low.
Amusement comes to the reader through the success and spirit of the protagonist. As a protagonist accomplishes the goals or overcomes the impediments (same thing) in the scenes, the reader should feel amused and happy. This is pathos and can be a very high degree of pathos dependent on the difficulty and complexity of the goals or impediments. Especially powerful are those goals or impediments that occur in retrospect to the reader and surprise the reader with their intensity and accomplishment. I’m trying to think of a good example common to many. Let’s say the scene in Tresure Island where Hawkins is being chased up the mast and fires both pistols into the pirate. That is a tragically powerful scene for the pirate, but a great source of amusement in terms of success for Jim. Likewise, but on a softer note, when Sara Crew wakes to find her room completely changed, that produces a great amusement for the reader. Exactly an emotion of being entertained and happy. Notice, in both examples, there is no real amusement (that is entertainment) in the scene. The scene itself produces the emotion in the reader, not necessarily the protagonist. Next is anger.
Anger
Definition: feeling or showing strong annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.
The feeling part gives us the connection to an emotion, but I think most of us would consider anger to be an emotion. The big question is how do we want our readers to see and experience anger. We certainly don’t want them annoyed, displeased, or hostile to our protagonist, characters in general, or plot. Any of these are novel killers and not helpers.
Whatever you do, you can’t have your readers angry at your protagonist, characters, or plot. The anger needs to be displaced for the protagonist. At least that is my recommendation. In other words, your reader should be angry at the circumstances or the treatment of the protagonist. I recently read a popular novel that doesn’t follow this advice. The reader was stuck being angry with the protagonist, a major character, and the circumstances of the plot event. It’s a novel set in the Victorian Era, so I get the tension the author created. I’m just not sure the pathos was developed properly for the reader. I’d want the reader to be angry for my protagonist, and happy with those who were also angry for her. The author tried to take a middle ground, and I think that ruined it in some degree. If the author had shown us more than they told us, I think that might have helped build better and more pathos. Unfortunately, this novel was written in a journal style in the first person. A bad choice for showing—there is way too much telling. Next anxiety.
Anxiety
Definition: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome
This is good, the definition is definitely of an emotion (feeling). The type of feeling is worry, nervousness, or unease, and notice the focus of the feeling, for an imminent event of something with an uncertain outcome. In the first place, this is very good information for the author, on the other hand the emotions of anxiety, worry, nervousness, or unease are weak emotions. They aren’t the ones we usually aim for in pathos. I haven’t mentioned those which we really need for pathos. From what we’ve looked at so far, amusement (joy), anger, and love. These create very powerful pathos that can be very useful for our readers and in writing. On the other hand, as I wrote, worry, nervousness, and unease are weak emotions producing weak pathos. In addition, anxiety is a direct emotion expressed by the protagonist or other characters and not one that lives in the reader alone. What do I mean by this?
You can produce the pathos of anger in your reader by the circumstances of your protagonist while the protagonist feels no anger at all. The circumstances can produce anger in the reader, that’s what you are aiming for, while the protagonist is simply preparing to face a difficult circumstance. On the other hand, anxiety is usually an emotion we see in a protagonist that then moves to the reader. I suppose there might be some way to develop anxiety in the reader while not affecting the protagonist, but what’s the fun in that?
In any case, anxiety is a weak emotion which can be used for pathos development, but I’m not certain I want my protagonist to be filled with it. Awe 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.sisterofdarkness.com
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Zen of Scenes 