Writing - part xxx675 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Common Writing

05 May 2024, Writing - part xxx675 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Common Writing

Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the internet, but my primary publisher has gone out of business—they couldn’t succeed in the past business and publishing environment.  I’ll keep you informed, but I need a new publisher.  More information can be found at www.ancientlight.com.  Check out my novels—I think you’ll really enjoy them.

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21^st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.

I’m using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.

Today’s Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.

The four plus two basic rules I employ when writing:

1. Don’t confuse your readers.

2. Entertain your readers.

3. Ground your readers in the writing.

4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.

     4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.

5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.

6. The initial scene is the most important scene.

 

These are the steps I use to write a novel including the five discrete parts of a novel:

 

1.     Design the initial scene

2.     Develop a theme statement (initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action statement)

a.      Research as required

b.     Develop the initial setting

c.      Develop the characters

d.     Identify the telic flaw (internal and external)

3.     Write the initial scene (identify the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action movement)

4.     Write the next scene(s) to the climax (rising action)

5.     Write the climax scene

6.     Write the falling action scene(s)

7.     Write the dénouement scene

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

 

I finished writing my 34^th novel (actually my 32^nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.  The theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.     

Here is the cover proposal for Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment: 

The most important scene in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32^nd novel and 33^rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.

How to begin a novel.  Number one thought, we need an entertaining idea.  I usually encapsulate such an idea with a theme statement.  Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme statement.  Here is an initial cut.

 

For novel 30:  Red Sonja, a Soviet spy, infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.

 

For Novel 32:  Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.

 

For novel 33, Book girl:  Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.

 

For novel 34:  Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.

 

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

 

Here is the scene development outline:

 

1. Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)

2. Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)

3. Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.

4. Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.

5. Write the release

6. Write the kicker

          

Today:  Let me tell you a little about writing.  Writing isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime.  Writing is a habit and an obsession.  We who love to write love to write. 

 

If you love to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well.  We want to write well enough to have others enjoy our writing.  This is important.  No one writes just for themselves the idea is absolutely irrational and silly.  I can prove why.

 

In the first place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only purpose.  Writing is the abstract communication of the mind through symbols.  As time goes by, we as writers gain more and better tools and our readers gain more and better appreciation for those tools and skills—even if they have no idea what they are. 

 

We are in the modern era.  In this time, the action and dialog style along with the push of technology forced novels into the form of third person, past tense, action and dialog style, implying the future.  This is the modern style of the novel.  I also showed how the end of literature created the reflected worldview.  We have three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected, and the created.  I choose to work in the reflected worldview.

 

Why don’t we go back to the basics and just writing a novel?  I can tell you what I do, and show you how I go about putting a novel together.  We can start with developing an idea then move into the details of the writing. 

 

Ideas.  We need ideas.  Ideas allow us to figure out the protagonist and the telic flaw.  Ideas don’t come fully armed from the mind of Zeus.  We need to cultivate ideas. 

 

1.     Read novels. 

2.     Fill your mind with good stuff—basically the stuff you want to write about. 

3.     Figure out what will build ideas in your mind and what will kill ideas in your mind.

4.     Study.

5.     Teach. 

6.     Make the catharsis. 

7.     Write.

 

The development of ideas is based on study and research, but it is also based on creativity.  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.

 

If we have filled our mind with all kinds of information and ideas, we are ready to become creative.  Creativity means the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form.  Literally, we are seeing the world in a new way, or actually, we are seeing some part of the world in a new way. 

 

The beginning of creativity is study and effort.  We can use this to extrapolate to creativity.  In addition, we need to look at recording ideas and working with ideas.

 

With that said, where should we go?  Should I delve into ideas and creativity again, or should we just move into the novel again?  Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we know, will result in a new novel.  I’ve got an idea, but it went stale.  Let’s look at the outline for a novel again:

 

1.      The initial scene

2.     The rising action scenes

3.     The climax scene

4.     The falling action scene(s)

5.     The dénouement scene(s)

   

The initial scene is the most important scene and part of any novel.  To get to the initial scene, you don’t need a plot, you need a protagonist.

 

My main focus, at the moment, is marketing my novels.  That specifically means submissions.  I’m aiming for agents because if I can get an agent, I think that might give me more contacts with publishers plus a let up in the business.  I would like to write another novel, but I’m holding off and editing one of my older novels Shadow of Darkness.  I thought that novel would have fit perfectly with one potential agent who said they were looking for Jewish based and non-Western mythology in fantasy.  That’s exactly what Shadow of Darkness is, but they passed on it.  In any case, I’m looking for an agent who will fall in love with my writing and then promote it to publishers.  That’s the goal.

Let’s keep writing to entertain ourselves with the knowledge that what will entertain a great reader, like we are, will entertain other readers.  That’s our only hope.

Let’s look back at entertainment and writing.  As I wrote before, writing is communication.  What we imagine is that we simply communicate words from one person to another, but the reality, especially in writing, is we are communicating word pictures.  Here’s the problem. 

I imagine the world structurally in my mind.  This is where my reality lies and this is where my imagination lies.  Until someone invents a mind viewer, you will never know what is really going on in someone’s mind or thoughts.  In fact, the Greeks, as well as most real philosophers would argue that even then, you will never really know a person’s thoughts.  Thoughts live in the realm of the unreal world.  Let’s look at little at the Greek worldview—that’s the worldview basis for Western civilization.

The very idea of writing and especially fiction writing represents the areas of logic and the historical method.  You can also toss in the scientific method and harm, but they are less critical and important in writing. 

The very important part about writing and especially entertaining (successful) writing is that it comes from the part of the world (kosmos, creation) that is not measurable and not physical.  I’m repeating myself, but this is very important.  An author creates a novel (story) in his or her mind.  The mind might be physical, but the concepts within the mind are not physical.  These ideas (concepts) need to be turned into description, narrative, action, and dialog in the mind of the writer.  Then the writer turns these ideas into word pictures.  Finally, the author turns these word pictures into symbols.  We happen to call these symbols writing. 

The reader takes these symbols and turns them into word pictures and finally ideas in their own mind.  The author’s hope is that his or her word pictures are dynamic and understandable to the reader.  Most specifically that the reader can imagine the ideas the writer presents in some degree of similar color and comprehension.  The better the author can accomplish this, the better the reader can experience the ideas of the writer.  This is what entertainment is all about. 

As authors, we need to understand we aren’t simply recording in symbols description, narrative, action, and dialog.  We are presenting word pictures, word paintings, if you like, of what we imagine.  The better and more effectively we can express then word pictures and paintings to our readers, the more entertaining and exciting our writing will be.  However, we can never lose sight of the fact that we are representing the unreal and nonphysical in symbols.  We are presenting logic and ideas and projecting them to another mind—the tool just happens to be language and writing.  They are different, just as we saw in looking at the evolution of religion and culture.  These are connected by the hip in history.

Here’s an idea to really wrap your mind around—the literate think in word pictures—that is words, and not in terms of pictures.  Since we use words so often in speech, and we understand these words in terms of symbols, it should not be surprising that we think and see the world in terms of works in the symbols we understand.  Preliterate people don’t do this at all.  In fact, archetypes can’t exist without a written language.  For example, what is a chair?  The literature see the word chair—that’s an archetype.  The nonliterate can only visualize a chair they might have seen in the past—they have no way to develop an archetype because there are some many types of chairs, but all those many types of chairs are all chairs.  If you can’t imagine the word for chair, you can only imagine a type of chair.  Things become even more difficult when the word is not a noun or verb that can be visualized—like love.  Love is a noun and a verb, but you can’t take a picture of love—not a concrete picture.  You can have a euphemistic picture of love, but which type of love and what love and any picture like that might be mistaken for something else. 

Love is a term that can’t exist without literacy.  You can’t have something that can’t be drawn or pictured without a word to describe it.  There are many of these types of words in English (as well as other languages).  Here’s the kicker, love only exists as a symbol representing a sound (word) in English. As a written word, it has reality, but as an idea, it is not part of the physical world.  More, next.

I guess most people don’t think about this.  Most are wrapped up in the empiricist view of the world and have completely neglected or ignored the unreal parts.  Yet, they had to have heard about and studied these ideas in math. 

In math, there are real numbers and unreal numbers.  There are imaginary numbers.  These are real things that don’t exist in the physical.  They are not empirical in many cases, they can’t be written without a symbol, like pi or the natural log.  The reality is that all mathematics is not physical but rather from the place outside the physical world.  Yet they are part of the world humans can understand and know.  This is the realm of logic and reason.  What I find fascinating is that a huge component of the writing community would call themselves part of the empiricist army, but they use non-physical stuff like words and ideas every day.  Is that an irony or what?

Knowing about this philosophical stuff is important, but the big deal is imagination and where that comes from.  Authors don’t just write, they develop ideas within their imagination space and then they write those ideas down on paper in symbols.  That’s what is important to know.

Just as I mentioned that in the ancient world, writers developed their thoughts completely before they hired a libraus, the same is true of the modern author.  They need to fully develop their ideas in imagination before they try to place them on paper.

So how do we get our imagination going?  I’ll look at that, next.

You don’t need to understand that imagination exists in something other than the physical to be able to use it properly.  All you need is imagination, right?  Yes, you don’t need to understand it to use it, but you can enhance your use of it.  That’s the point. 

If imagination resides in the non-physical, then the non-physical is the way we can jump start it.  Let’s look at things that move ideas into our imagination sphere, or rather into the non-physical place where our thoughts reside.

So, what things move into idea space?  The first is symbols.  In fact, we can enumerate those physical or empirical inputs into a person—those are seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, and tasting.  These all go in as sensory inputs, but are converted into ideas as they move into the brain.  To be most specific, these are not symbols at all and require little processing.  You can just experience them and let them go.  There is more to turning them into ideas and using them in the information sphere. 

To be sure, the sensations are cataloged and processed by the mind, and then saved in some fashion, but we want to put them to use in the idea sphere.  To do that means we must take them in as symbols first.  Which and how do the experiences of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell become symbols?

We already have been writing about reading which is the act of taking in symbols as letters and words into the mind, and doing something with them.  That is actually decoding the words formed by letters, and that is one of the main ways we bring in symbols. 

Another means of symbol input and decoding is music, singing, or speaking.  I already wrote to you that as a literate person, you see language as word pictures.  This means that all speaking must bring symbols into the mind.  These symbols are decoded and turned into thoughts. 

Touch, smell, and taste are not quite the same as sight and hearing.  A symbolic language doesn’t really exist for them.  We can use them directly and should.  I’ll look at symbols in the idea space, next.

I don’t know about you, but when I use my imagination to develop characters, a plot, or a dialog, I don’t use symbols like words, I imagine the setting, actions, and dialog in a mind picture.  Now, the dialog will take the form of symbols, but the rest won’t.  The basic form of imagination is pictures or video running through your brain.  Eventually, we must categorize and turn these ideas into symbols.  That process is writing.

Here's what I’m thinking.  Usually, I imagine the entire scene or at least parts of the scene and then turn the scene systematically into symbols (words).  This is what I advocate in the scene outline.  I develop the scene, but use specific steps to turn the pictures from my mind and imagination into words on a page.  This is the creative process in a nutshell. 

I’m not advocating a piecemeal approach to writing from your imagination as much as a disciplined process or method.  As I’ve written before, start with scene setting.  Set the stage of the scene first.  This only makes sense because it grounds the reader and the scene.

I find it highly frustrating and confusing when a writer immediately jumps into the action or dialog in a scene without setting the stage.  I do understand the presumption of place and setting if it hasn’t changed from a previous scene, but that’s not what I’m writing about.  The problem is coming in cold to a scene without any setting.  This should make any and all of your writing better—just set the scene.

As I noted, moving the pictures in your mind to the page as words is the creative process.  I’ll repeat what I wrote before.  If you have imagined a scene, writer’s block is impossible because all you need to do is move the picture to the words.  That’s the process of writing.  There is a step beyond this one, the crafting of the writing or as most call it, editing.  I’ll look at this, next.

Crafting comes with editing—that’s my opinion.  Yes, you can craft your writing as you write, that is, as you turn your imagination into words and then into symbols, but the real power for crafting your writing is with editing.

I’m not a real fan of outlining perse, but writing a first draft might be considered akin to making a detailed outline of your imagination.  Usually, I like to craft a large amount of my draft as I write it.  This is especially true of the dialog.  Usually, for me the dialog comes out as a wholistic piece.  Many times when I need to craft it to add in new ideas or connections, it becomes very difficult.  The reason is that for me, dialog is tightly wound, so tightly wound that unraveling a single strand affects the whole.  That to some degree is my problem and part of my style of writing.

As I started and stated in this section, when you put the first blush of your description, narration, action, and dialog on paper from your imagination, you can craft all you want, but the most important point is to get it on paper.  Once your imagination has form, then we can craft.

Crafting is the editing for completeness, great writing, and entertainment.  Focus on entertainment.  In the crafting process, we don’t really care much for grammar, punctuation, or spelling—we are going for entertainment and great writing.  The details can wait.  You might call this the first edit, but it’s really more than an edit—this is the place where the heavy lifting really begins.

As I wrote, you might be able to craft very well as you write the first draft.  You might use little tricks like I do when you put together the first draft.  For example, when I need a description, I usually stop writing and research the object or person I need to describe.  For me, the description produces setting elements that I can use for the rest of the text.  On the other hand, if I’m writing a tight dialog, I usually skip description until the first edit.  That’s because I don’t want to break the train of thought in the writing.  Dialog is that way for me.

Perhaps I should write more about crafting in editing and what it means, next.

When I was a younger writer, I understood that editing was all about improving the writing, but I thought that was all about spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  I didn’t understand the concept of crafting the writing.  I’m using these two terms editing and crafting to delineate between editing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation and improving and fixing the story and plot. 

Yes, you need to have the best and most perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation possible, but it will never be perfect.  More important is the action, description, narration, and dialog.  This will never be necessarily perfect either, but we are aiming for entertaining and not perfection. 

Once you get the first draft on paper (or aether), you need to go through the text to improve the description, first.  That’s the easiest and If you didn’t get it in the first draft, do it now.

Description is easy and will provide more setting elements to improve the rest of the writing.  Next, look at the action and narrative.  Action and narrative can always be improved by addition of creative elements from the setting elements.  This can also be applied to the dialog.  As you bring in setting elements, use them in the rest of the document to increase entertainment and excitement in the writing.  This is crafting.  Also, as you work through the text figure how you can fit the scene into other scenes and other plots and characters in your novel.  These are generally creative elements you can use to improve your scene.  Of course, all of these improvements are driven by the imagination of the writer.  This is perhaps the most important point of both editing and crafting.  We’ll look at this, next.

In using imagination in crafting your writing, you must read the symbols your placed on paper and turn them into words and then word pictures.  In other words, you put yourself in the place of the reader as you read your own writing.  This isn’t editing in the normal sense at all.  When we are editing, as I’ve defined it, we are looking intently at the test to determine the proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  These are the trees, we need to look at the forest when we are crafting.  Yes, at some point you will need to edit, but crafting is much more important for the early work—that is the early drafts.

Most critical for the writing is getting the entire development of the text right.  It’s very difficult to determine good examples, but let me give it a try.

You might write in a first draft:

Jane woke.  She dressed, and stepped down to breakfast.

Crafting the text, you might write:

The brilliant sunlight finally touched Jane’s window and flooded over her slumbering eyes.  She woke gently but dazzled by the light.  She stretched under her warm covers for a moment, yawned, and finally threw them off. 

You can keep going.  This would be a great time to describe Jane, the room, and her toilet as she prepares to step down to breakfast.  The difference between the first writing and the second is crafting the action, narrative, and description.  This is exactly what I mean when I write, you put down your first draft which might look like the first example, and craft it into something that really creates word pictures in the minds of our readers.  Alternately, you should craft while writing the first draft.  The point is to get to a beautiful rendition that will entertain and excite your readers.  This requires imagination, to see the world from the reader’s viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the writing itself.  It also requires crafting to develop the words that form the word pictures.  I should address this next—that is crafting to develop the word pictures for the minds of the readers.

Perhaps being a poet first is a major requirement for an author.  I write this because in the past, it seems many of the greatest authors were also poets.  In the middle past, that is after the invention of printing and before the modern era, many long works of literature were also works of poetry.  I point out Shakespeare, Milton, and many others of that time.  The reason this is important is that the poetry in many of these works enhanced the power of the imagination and the work itself. 

For example, the poetry moved these works from simple description, action, narration, and dialog to metaphor and euphemism.  I’m not sure you can do poetry without figures of speech—and that’s the main point of crafting.

Some people just naturally think in terms of figures of speech.  Every word they put on the page fits into that mold, however, for the rest of us, we need to work on figures of speech.  Our brains need to be attuned to it to be able to write this way, and we need to write this way—that is with and through figures of speech.  I’d almost say the more the better, but someone is certain to take it to too great an extreme.  Remember the rule: don’t confuse your reader, and then apply as much figure of speech as you wish.  Even better if the figures of speech drive an undercurrent in your plot while the main plot flows at the top of the writing.

When I was young, I used to think in terms of multiple overlapping plots similar to the type of writing in Shakespeare where you find many overlapping ideas that give similar but not the same conclusions in the writing.  I’m not sure I agree with this anymore.  It’s just too complex.

In the main, I think great authors write in allegory or parallel structure.  Parallel is the more common mode—there may be multiple plots, but they all support the main plot—the parallel structure comes out of the figures of speech.  Likewise for the allegory although an allegory is usually tied more closely or tightly to the plots and the narrative.  I suspect you want an example:

Jane went to the zoo and saw many animals.

Parallel with figures of speech:

Jane went to the zoo and was amazed at the menagerie that only Noah could fully appreciate.

We have two distinct figures of speech here: the menagerie and Noah.  To continue these as parallels, all I need to do is express another figure of speech connected to Noah, the flood, and anything else from the Biblical account or about a menagerie. 

This is the kind of thing an author needs to expand and write for every single idea in the writing.  This is crafting the writing.

Crafting in writing is all about figures of speech as well as connections within the overall writing.  This includes, for example, foreshadowing, parallels, allegory, plus every other means of providing references and connections in the text.  Figures of speech happen to be the means that include all of these.  There are a number of types of figures of speech in English, as well as every other language. 

There are over 100 different types of figures of speech in English.  Many get used by authors and in common speaking without the speaker or writer even realizing they are using a figure of speech.  They are super common in English primarily because English is a highly euphemistic language.  What I mean by that is that, by comparison, with ancient Greek for instance, which is highly concrete, English requires both context as well as many adjectives and adverbs to keep nouns and verbs straight.  How can that be in a language with more than a million words?  Let’s go back to the word love.

The definition for love, in English, covers multiple pages in the Oxford dictionary.  I don’t know if love is the word with the most definitions, but it is pretty close.  In English, you can love your dog, your children, your spouse, your food, your house, your job, and all, and each of these loves is much different than each of the other loves.  By contrast in ancient Greek, you can agape the gods, but not any person, and the gods can agape you.  You can phileo your shield warrior friend, but you can’t phileo your wife or your children.  You can epithumia the sacrifice or other inanimate objects, but not any people.  I could keep on going—the Greeks have about ten words that can be defined or translated as love, but they have distinct meanings and objects.  This is why we call ancient Greek a very concrete language.  On the other hand, in English, the object defines the context of the love, we hope.  The writer must either use adjectives or adverbs or figures of speech to explain the context of the love that is meant—especially if that context is not normal or is outside of the common understanding.  While we are here, let me bring in an example of the Greek words usually translated say or said in English.

The only ancient Greek word (Classical Greek) that can be adequately translated as said is eipen.  This word is a verb in the past tense and doesn’t designate the manner or context of the speaking only that such and such was said.  On the other hand, there are approximately nine other words that are commonly translated say or said from Greek to English, but all of them specify what and how the words were said—the context of the speech.  For example, phemi means to give an opinion.  Rehme means to tell a story.  Logos means to make a logical argument.  Mythomai means to express ideas of a supernatural basis like a myth.  Lealo means small talk.  Kladon means to speak for the gods.  And so on—there are a lot.  Each Greek word needs to be defined in context to understand what the writer or speaker is saying. 

In English, we have some words we can use to define the context of the speech, but usually we simply leave it up to the context or we use figures of speech.  English isn’t the most euphemistic language in the world, but it’s pretty close, especially compared to the number of words and forms of grammar available.  I will mention that the most euphemistic language is Japanese with ancient Hebrew a close second.  Japanese and ancient Hebrew share certain characteristics with other old languages which cause euphemism: limited number of words and highly structured language.  English, by contrast has many words and a highly structured language.  Highly structured means the form of the language is dependent on the position of the words.  Greek and other languages depend much less on the position of the words due to the ways they indicate the tense of the verb and the part of speech of the noun.  For example, a noun can be normative, accusative, dative, or genitive.  In English, we call these the subject, the object, the indirect object, and the possessive.  So, what does this all mean?

This means that English is highly context and position dependent and to make sense as well as to communicate properly, the writer must use figures of speech.  We’ll keep on this topic.

English is a highly euphemistic language.  This makes context and the use of euphemism very important.  Just by speaking or writing in English, you are participating in the great euphemistic spread of information, even if you didn’t know. 

I mentioned the use of the word love and the word said in English as compared to ancient Greek for example.  The problem is that almost every word in English has similar issues, and it isn’t just the words—certain phrases are very specific to English and are built in figures of speech that are used in common speech.  English itself as a language is so filled with figures of speech as well as contextual based language and vocabulary, it is impossible to not write without figures of speech, however, it is equally possible, in English to express ideas completely contrary to the author’s intent by the use of more direct forms, and it is very possible to create soulless writing without any trace of nuance or feeling. 

All fiction writing is supposed to be entertaining, and I’ve written about this before.  There are authors who write with figures of speech and such eloquence that the writing itself is a thing of beauty.  The plot and the characters take a back seat to the writing. 

Then there are writers of the Hemmingway school whose writing is blunt and without any embellishment.  Don’t look to Hemmingway for glittering prose.  Such writing is still filled with figures of speech, but on a level of pure communication and not one of structural delight.  Most of us authors fill a space between glittering prose and pure communication.  At least, that’s what I aim for.

As an author, you might as well try to write within these three forms.  I suspect you will find yourself most comfortable at some point and usually not an extreme.  I’ve read and known the glittering prose types.  They are few and far between, and I’m not certain how much time it takes them to craft their sterling production.  On the other hand, I’ve known many accidental Hemmingways.  Their writing was embarrassingly without embellishment, and that didn’t help their writing at all. 

Hemmingway might be very direct and blunt as a writer, but he knew how to write and how to properly compose in English.  It’s easy to make fun of his style, but he still got across his message, and in English, he couldn’t help move the ball with euphemism.

I mentioned that there are over 100 forms of figures of speech.  There are also thousands of indirect speech and direct euphemisms in English.  Part of the problem in English is the number of verb forms and tenses as well as the number of words.  I guess I should get into that a little, next.  

English has an almost unique simplicity compared to most other modern languages.  It has almost zero gendered nouns and no gendered verbs.  It has a simple direct and indirect article noun formation.  It has a limited number of nominative, dative, and accusative indicator pronouns and instead uses noun position in the sentence to indicate these cases.  And, it uses almost exclusively s and es to indicate plural forms and ‘s and s’ or of to indicate the genitive.  For these reasons we’d expect English to be a very simple language to learn and to speak, but it isn’t so at all.  Many consider English to be one of the hardest languages to master.  The main reason is the verb forms.

English is a hybrid language.  It started as Germanic as in Anglo-Saxon but picked up French as a key part of it.  Like the Germanic languages, English has a very similar verb structure with be and have as indicators of verb tense.  It also has what in English are called helper verbs like should, can, may, would, as well as have and be.  Germanic languages are similar.  However, English also has do form verb tenses as well as every kind of odd verb tense formation for the formation of questions and nuance.  That’s what makes English difficult.  The nuance that can be developed in a sentence is pretty awesome, and this is what trips up many English learners.

Here are some examples.  This isn’t meant to be all inclusive, but I’ll try to get most of them.

John runs.

Joun is running.

John ran.

John has run.

John was running.

John has run.

John had run.

John did run.

John may run.

John might run.

John should run.

John will run.

John will have run.

Did John run?

And so on.  You get it, right.  This isn’t all the forms this simple sentence can take about John and running.  Each of these sentences are different.  Each has a specific and very nuanced difference in the language.  I’m not sure any other language has as many verb forms as English.  I do know the other feature of the language is the number of words.  For as euphemistic as English is, it has over a million words.  This is good and bad.  I’ll explain this next.

Because English has so many words, you might expect to just pick the exact word for what you mean.  This is much more difficult than your think.  For example, if you mean love, you should use love or you might use a synonym.  The problem with almost all the synonyms for love is they are simply synonyms for love.  There might be a distinct word in English for friendship type love, but there isn’t—you are required to write love with either some phrase or an adverb to distinguish the type of love you mean.  You could also use the Greek or Anglo-Saxon term, but you would need to explain it in context.  That’s basically what I did in one of my novels Dana-ana: Enchantment and the Maiden.  You can also develop a euphemism or a figure of speech to describe and explain the type of love you mean.  If you do find a word in English for what you need, you should use real caution.

I get a couple of words of the day on my email feeds.  My students signed me up.  Some of the words of the day are reasonable and useful, but most are unusable.  The reason is that many of the words are outside of the normal vocabulary of your readers.  The idea of the normal vocabulary and how far the author can go with word usage is very important.  I actually received significant complaints about my novel Centurion because of the vocabulary, and that’s in spite of the fact that for the Latin and more esoteric terms, I defined them at least three times, and then redefined them when I brought them up again.  There is a great plan for introducing new and esoteric words.

I was bringing words like gladius and scutum into the novel.  The gladius is a short sword and the scutum is a type of shield.  Most readers of history and people who know about the Roman Empire would know these words, but I brought a short description and explanation into the text so my readers would understand what the words meant.  As I noted, this is very important, and yes, we can use figures of speech to help understand and define these words.  I’ll write a little more about vocabulary and Standard English, next.

If you’ve never heard of Standard English, you need to.  Standard English is broadly described as the normative English that is spoken in a region such as the United States.  What is non-Standard English?  This is any English usually characterized by slang, non-Standard grammar, non-Standard vocabulary, non-Standard spellings, and non-Standard usage.  Most specifically, non-Standard English is slang. 

Peppering some dialog with slang for a specific character can be a reasonable technique in characterization, but a wise author brings up a little bit of slang then switches back to Standard English from that point on.  A little slang can make a character, too much is just too much. 

My favorite example of a novel ruined by non-Standard English is The Little Witch.  This is a very fun novel written in the 1950s and filled with 1950s slang.  The slang destroys the continuity and longevity of the novel.  It sounds and reads terrible in the modern world.  If the author had just written the novel in standard English, it might be a still beloved novel.  Unfortunately, there is just too much slang in it.  You should take a look at this novel and see exactly what I’m writing about. 

The main problem with non-Standard English is that when society outgrows the slang, no one knows what is going on anymore.  You can’t understand what the characters are saying or what the author intended.  It’s like trying to understand a completely different language.  The same goes for accents or uncommon speech forms.  A little can set a scene, too much is just too much.  Not to mention, that no one will translate your novel back into Standard English in the future, so it will be lost forever.  No one might be able to translate it.  I also recommend limiting your vocabulary.  That’s next.

Children’s authors should really understand a limited vocabulary, and I’m not advocating a simplistic or extremely limited vocabulary for adult or even youth novels.  There are just words available in English you should not use.  Most of those are in the batch of unusual, generally unused, and those that don’t sound anything like what they mean.  That’s not to say you can’t introduce historical or necessary words.  Just don’t use words that are really uncommon.

What are common words?  Those words you routinely hear is spoken English are great for use in your novels.  If you run in a specific professional crowd, like lawyers or scientists, some of those words common to their usage might require explanation in your text—and that’s a real test of your vocabulary. 

If you throw in a word that 90% or greater of your readers won’t recognize, it really requires explanation.  If you aren’t going to use that word every again, just use another word.  Use a better word.  Here’s an example.  In my novel Centurion, I use many uncommon words in today’s English, gladius for example.  A gladius is a Roman short sword used by the Roman Legions.  I use it extensively in my novel.  When I first bring it up, I describe it.  In the first three uses, I ensure the description is clear to the reader.  I do use it through the novel.  On the other hand, I would never use the word jentacular, but I might use oorlich. 

Jentacular means “pertaining to breakfast.”  You can just say breakfast or some regular synonym.  Most people have never read, used, or will ever use jentacular.  Why put it in your novel.  Now, to put jentacular in the mouth of a snob or a lout—that might work, but it becomes a cultural joke at that point.  It’s just not a common word.  I certainly wouldn’t use it in a novel.  In addition, you can’t figure out what it means from the word itself.  Let’s look at the other word I mentioned, oorlich.

Oorlich is Scottish and means dreary and wet weather.  I can almost see the conditions just by saying the word.  If I was going to use it, and I did in one novel, I’d put it in the mouth of a Scotsman, and I’d describe the conditions beforehand.  For example:

The day was cold and wet.

“Oorlich stated Rose,” while raising her arms.  “The day is oorlich.”

That’s how I’d use it, and it would stick with the reader.  If I used that term again in the novel, they would know exactly what I was writing about.  The word almost speaks for itself, and with some description and definition, it’s something you can use and use well.

To conclude with this idea of vocabulary.  Use common English and don’t bring in words that most readers won’t have a clue about.  Write for understanding.  Unless you are writing for children, don’t limit your vocabulary, otherwise, but use synonyms of words common in spoken English.  You can bring in esoteric and uncommon words if you define them or they are self-defining.  It also helps to use simple and common grammar and phrasing, but that’s another subject entirely.

About common grammar, phrasing, and unconfusing writing, I’m not certain these people write fiction.  I hope they don’t.  The people I mean are those who write dissertations in the humanities.  I can get along with the writing of most scientists, but much of the writing that comes out of the humanities in the university is not readable or understandable.  The so-called Sokal hoax was when three academics published 20 faked papers in humanities journals using the jargon of academia to argue ridiculous points.  The journals and the academics never figured it out until they revealed the truth.  That the writing of academia could be so filled with BS that even their own couldn’t figure it out shows us how not to write.  In fact, if you write this way, you will never be published.  The second rule is: don’t confuse your readers.  The first rule is to entertain your readers.  If you write like those in humanities in academia, you will break both rules.  So, don’t do it.  You might ask, how do I know my own writing is bad?

This is the perennial problem for all writers.  The usual answer is get feedback, and that is great advice.  Get feedback whenever and wherever you can.  The other point is read your own writing.  Here’s what I do.  I fight for feedback.  When I write a novel, I send it to my primary prepublication reader.  I’m not looking for editing, but rather for quality and cohesion.  I also want to know how the reader likes the writing.  If they can actually read it, I know it’s legible and if they get through it, I know it’s readable. 

Now, listen or read closely.  Every comment I get back from my readers, I make some change in the document.  Even for silly or unconstructive advice.  The reason is that I value the comments and the time the reader took to read my novel and make a comment.  The only time this hasn’t been true is when I received an almost 50 page diatribe on why my book was not worth reading.  I really appreciated the comments, but what can you do with that.  It wasn’t the specifics or details, it was the entire book they didn’t like.  Go figure.

Other ways to check your writing is to run it through a grammar and reading level checker.  If you find your novel is way up there in hard to read territory, you might want to revise it a bit.  High reading levels don’t mean your work is more erudite, it means your work is hard to understand. 

You don’t need to write like Hemmingway, but short simple sentences, well developed paragraphs, less phrases in clauses, all of these will make the writing easier to understand.  That’s the entire point of all fictional writing—easy to understand.  You can have great vocabulary, very complex grammar, and all, but if your writing is clear and concise, you will have writing that is easy to understand. 

I’ll point out that science fiction went through an entire era in the 1970s of intentionally confusing novels.  I’m not sure why they were published, but I’ve got them in my library.  They remind me every day how not to write.  At nearly the same time, great novels like Dune where coming out.  I think you will notice that almost all the Dune follow-ons are not easy to understand or even to read.  They aren’t much like their origins.  I think almost all of Herberts early works are awesome.  Then came the powerhouse, Dune, then oblivion.

Heinlein is similar.  His early novels are wonderful, fun, entertaining, and appeal to the aged and youth.  His later novels, especially after Time Enough for Love are overly confusing and poorly written, in my opinion.  Panshin tried to tell us—he didn’t like Heinlein following Starship Troopers, and we have been denied the completion of the wonderful Anthony Villiers novels.  So it goes. 

In any case, write for entertainment.  Write for understanding, not yourself, not others, but so others can understand what you are communicating.  Just follow the two main rules of writing:

Write to entertain.

Don’t confuse your readers.

Those are the main points. 

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

 

More tomorrow.

For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:

http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com  

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

Writing - part xxx674 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Vocabulary

 04 May 2024, Writing - part xxx674 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Vocabulary

Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the internet, but my primary publisher has gone out of business—they couldn’t succeed in the past business and publishing environment.  I’ll keep you informed, but I need a new publisher.  More information can be found at www.ancientlight.com.  Check out my novels—I think you’ll really enjoy them.

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21^st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.

I’m using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.

Today’s Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.

The four plus one basic rules I employ when writing:

1. Don’t confuse your readers.

2. Entertain your readers.

3. Ground your readers in the writing.

4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.

     4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.

5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.

6. The initial scene is the most important scene.

 

These are the steps I use to write a novel including the five discrete parts of a novel:

 

1.     Design the initial scene

2.     Develop a theme statement (initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action statement)

a.      Research as required

b.     Develop the initial setting

c.      Develop the characters

d.     Identify the telic flaw (internal and external)

3.     Write the initial scene (identify the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action movement)

4.     Write the next scene(s) to the climax (rising action)

5.     Write the climax scene

6.     Write the falling action scene(s)

7.     Write the dénouement scene

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

 

I finished writing my 34^th novel (actually my 32^nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.  The theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.     

Here is the cover proposal for Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment: 

The most important scene in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32^nd novel and 33^rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.

How to begin a novel.  Number one thought, we need an entertaining idea.  I usually encapsulate such an idea with a theme statement.  Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme statement.  Here is an initial cut.

 

For novel 30:  Red Sonja, a Soviet spy, infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.

 

For Novel 32:  Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.

 

For novel 33, Book girl:  Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.

 

For novel 34:  Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.

 

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

 

Here is the scene development outline:

 

1. Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)

2. Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)

3. Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.

4. Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.

5. Write the release

6. Write the kicker

          

Today:  Let me tell you a little about writing.  Writing isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime.  Writing is a habit and an obsession.  We who love to write love to write. 

 

If you love to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well.  We want to write well enough to have others enjoy our writing.  This is important.  No one writes just for themselves the idea is absolutely irrational and silly.  I can prove why.

 

In the first place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only purpose.  Writing is the abstract communication of the mind through symbols.  As time goes by, we as writers gain more and better tools and our readers gain more and better appreciation for those tools and skills—even if they have no idea what they are. 

 

We are in the modern era.  In this time, the action and dialog style along with the push of technology forced novels into the form of third person, past tense, action and dialog style, implying the future.  This is the modern style of the novel.  I also showed how the end of literature created the reflected worldview.  We have three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected, and the created.  I choose to work in the reflected worldview.

 

Why don’t we go back to the basics and just writing a novel?  I can tell you what I do, and show you how I go about putting a novel together.  We can start with developing an idea then move into the details of the writing. 

 

Ideas.  We need ideas.  Ideas allow us to figure out the protagonist and the telic flaw.  Ideas don’t come fully armed from the mind of Zeus.  We need to cultivate ideas. 

 

1.     Read novels. 

2.     Fill your mind with good stuff—basically the stuff you want to write about. 

3.     Figure out what will build ideas in your mind and what will kill ideas in your mind.

4.     Study.

5.     Teach. 

6.     Make the catharsis. 

7.     Write.

 

The development of ideas is based on study and research, but it is also based on creativity.  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.

 

If we have filled our mind with all kinds of information and ideas, we are ready to become creative.  Creativity means the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form.  Literally, we are seeing the world in a new way, or actually, we are seeing some part of the world in a new way. 

 

The beginning of creativity is study and effort.  We can use this to extrapolate to creativity.  In addition, we need to look at recording ideas and working with ideas.

 

With that said, where should we go?  Should I delve into ideas and creativity again, or should we just move into the novel again?  Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we know, will result in a new novel.  I’ve got an idea, but it went stale.  Let’s look at the outline for a novel again:

 

1.      The initial scene

2.     The rising action scenes

3.     The climax scene

4.     The falling action scene(s)

5.     The dénouement scene(s)

   

The initial scene is the most important scene and part of any novel.  To get to the initial scene, you don’t need a plot, you need a protagonist.

 

My main focus, at the moment, is marketing my novels.  That specifically means submissions.  I’m aiming for agents because if I can get an agent, I think that might give me more contacts with publishers plus a let up in the business.  I would like to write another novel, but I’m holding off and editing one of my older novels Shadow of Darkness.  I thought that novel would have fit perfectly with one potential agent who said they were looking for Jewish based and non-Western mythology in fantasy.  That’s exactly what Shadow of Darkness is, but they passed on it.  In any case, I’m looking for an agent who will fall in love with my writing and then promote it to publishers.  That’s the goal.

Let’s keep writing to entertain ourselves with the knowledge that what will entertain a great reader, like we are, will entertain other readers.  That’s our only hope.

Let’s look back at entertainment and writing.  As I wrote before, writing is communication.  What we imagine is that we simply communicate words from one person to another, but the reality, especially in writing, is we are communicating word pictures.  Here’s the problem. 

I imagine the world structurally in my mind.  This is where my reality lies and this is where my imagination lies.  Until someone invents a mind viewer, you will never know what is really going on in someone’s mind or thoughts.  In fact, the Greeks, as well as most real philosophers would argue that even then, you will never really know a person’s thoughts.  Thoughts live in the realm of the unreal world.  Let’s look at little at the Greek worldview—that’s the worldview basis for Western civilization.

The very idea of writing and especially fiction writing represents the areas of logic and the historical method.  You can also toss in the scientific method and harm, but they are less critical and important in writing. 

The very important part about writing and especially entertaining (successful) writing is that it comes from the part of the world (kosmos, creation) that is not measurable and not physical.  I’m repeating myself, but this is very important.  An author creates a novel (story) in his or her mind.  The mind might be physical, but the concepts within the mind are not physical.  These ideas (concepts) need to be turned into description, narrative, action, and dialog in the mind of the writer.  Then the writer turns these ideas into word pictures.  Finally, the author turns these word pictures into symbols.  We happen to call these symbols writing. 

The reader takes these symbols and turns them into word pictures and finally ideas in their own mind.  The author’s hope is that his or her word pictures are dynamic and understandable to the reader.  Most specifically that the reader can imagine the ideas the writer presents in some degree of similar color and comprehension.  The better the author can accomplish this, the better the reader can experience the ideas of the writer.  This is what entertainment is all about. 

As authors, we need to understand we aren’t simply recording in symbols description, narrative, action, and dialog.  We are presenting word pictures, word paintings, if you like, of what we imagine.  The better and more effectively we can express then word pictures and paintings to our readers, the more entertaining and exciting our writing will be.  However, we can never lose sight of the fact that we are representing the unreal and nonphysical in symbols.  We are presenting logic and ideas and projecting them to another mind—the tool just happens to be language and writing.  They are different, just as we saw in looking at the evolution of religion and culture.  These are connected by the hip in history.

Here’s an idea to really wrap your mind around—the literate think in word pictures—that is words, and not in terms of pictures.  Since we use words so often in speech, and we understand these words in terms of symbols, it should not be surprising that we think and see the world in terms of works in the symbols we understand.  Preliterate people don’t do this at all.  In fact, archetypes can’t exist without a written language.  For example, what is a chair?  The literature see the word chair—that’s an archetype.  The nonliterate can only visualize a chair they might have seen in the past—they have no way to develop an archetype because there are some many types of chairs, but all those many types of chairs are all chairs.  If you can’t imagine the word for chair, you can only imagine a type of chair.  Things become even more difficult when the word is not a noun or verb that can be visualized—like love.  Love is a noun and a verb, but you can’t take a picture of love—not a concrete picture.  You can have a euphemistic picture of love, but which type of love and what love and any picture like that might be mistaken for something else. 

Love is a term that can’t exist without literacy.  You can’t have something that can’t be drawn or pictured without a word to describe it.  There are many of these types of words in English (as well as other languages).  Here’s the kicker, love only exists as a symbol representing a sound (word) in English. As a written word, it has reality, but as an idea, it is not part of the physical world.  More, next.

I guess most people don’t think about this.  Most are wrapped up in the empiricist view of the world and have completely neglected or ignored the unreal parts.  Yet, they had to have heard about and studied these ideas in math. 

In math, there are real numbers and unreal numbers.  There are imaginary numbers.  These are real things that don’t exist in the physical.  They are not empirical in many cases, they can’t be written without a symbol, like pi or the natural log.  The reality is that all mathematics is not physical but rather from the place outside the physical world.  Yet they are part of the world humans can understand and know.  This is the realm of logic and reason.  What I find fascinating is that a huge component of the writing community would call themselves part of the empiricist army, but they use non-physical stuff like words and ideas every day.  Is that an irony or what?

Knowing about this philosophical stuff is important, but the big deal is imagination and where that comes from.  Authors don’t just write, they develop ideas within their imagination space and then they write those ideas down on paper in symbols.  That’s what is important to know.

Just as I mentioned that in the ancient world, writers developed their thoughts completely before they hired a libraus, the same is true of the modern author.  They need to fully develop their ideas in imagination before they try to place them on paper.

So how do we get our imagination going?  I’ll look at that, next.

You don’t need to understand that imagination exists in something other than the physical to be able to use it properly.  All you need is imagination, right?  Yes, you don’t need to understand it to use it, but you can enhance your use of it.  That’s the point. 

If imagination resides in the non-physical, then the non-physical is the way we can jump start it.  Let’s look at things that move ideas into our imagination sphere, or rather into the non-physical place where our thoughts reside.

So, what things move into idea space?  The first is symbols.  In fact, we can enumerate those physical or empirical inputs into a person—those are seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, and tasting.  These all go in as sensory inputs, but are converted into ideas as they move into the brain.  To be most specific, these are not symbols at all and require little processing.  You can just experience them and let them go.  There is more to turning them into ideas and using them in the information sphere. 

To be sure, the sensations are cataloged and processed by the mind, and then saved in some fashion, but we want to put them to use in the idea sphere.  To do that means we must take them in as symbols first.  Which and how do the experiences of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell become symbols?

We already have been writing about reading which is the act of taking in symbols as letters and words into the mind, and doing something with them.  That is actually decoding the words formed by letters, and that is one of the main ways we bring in symbols. 

Another means of symbol input and decoding is music, singing, or speaking.  I already wrote to you that as a literate person, you see language as word pictures.  This means that all speaking must bring symbols into the mind.  These symbols are decoded and turned into thoughts. 

Touch, smell, and taste are not quite the same as sight and hearing.  A symbolic language doesn’t really exist for them.  We can use them directly and should.  I’ll look at symbols in the idea space, next.

I don’t know about you, but when I use my imagination to develop characters, a plot, or a dialog, I don’t use symbols like words, I imagine the setting, actions, and dialog in a mind picture.  Now, the dialog will take the form of symbols, but the rest won’t.  The basic form of imagination is pictures or video running through your brain.  Eventually, we must categorize and turn these ideas into symbols.  That process is writing.

Here's what I’m thinking.  Usually, I imagine the entire scene or at least parts of the scene and then turn the scene systematically into symbols (words).  This is what I advocate in the scene outline.  I develop the scene, but use specific steps to turn the pictures from my mind and imagination into words on a page.  This is the creative process in a nutshell. 

I’m not advocating a piecemeal approach to writing from your imagination as much as a disciplined process or method.  As I’ve written before, start with scene setting.  Set the stage of the scene first.  This only makes sense because it grounds the reader and the scene.

I find it highly frustrating and confusing when a writer immediately jumps into the action or dialog in a scene without setting the stage.  I do understand the presumption of place and setting if it hasn’t changed from a previous scene, but that’s not what I’m writing about.  The problem is coming in cold to a scene without any setting.  This should make any and all of your writing better—just set the scene.

As I noted, moving the pictures in your mind to the page as words is the creative process.  I’ll repeat what I wrote before.  If you have imagined a scene, writer’s block is impossible because all you need to do is move the picture to the words.  That’s the process of writing.  There is a step beyond this one, the crafting of the writing or as most call it, editing.  I’ll look at this, next.

Crafting comes with editing—that’s my opinion.  Yes, you can craft your writing as you write, that is, as you turn your imagination into words and then into symbols, but the real power for crafting your writing is with editing.

I’m not a real fan of outlining perse, but writing a first draft might be considered akin to making a detailed outline of your imagination.  Usually, I like to craft a large amount of my draft as I write it.  This is especially true of the dialog.  Usually, for me the dialog comes out as a wholistic piece.  Many times when I need to craft it to add in new ideas or connections, it becomes very difficult.  The reason is that for me, dialog is tightly wound, so tightly wound that unraveling a single strand affects the whole.  That to some degree is my problem and part of my style of writing.

As I started and stated in this section, when you put the first blush of your description, narration, action, and dialog on paper from your imagination, you can craft all you want, but the most important point is to get it on paper.  Once your imagination has form, then we can craft.

Crafting is the editing for completeness, great writing, and entertainment.  Focus on entertainment.  In the crafting process, we don’t really care much for grammar, punctuation, or spelling—we are going for entertainment and great writing.  The details can wait.  You might call this the first edit, but it’s really more than an edit—this is the place where the heavy lifting really begins.

As I wrote, you might be able to craft very well as you write the first draft.  You might use little tricks like I do when you put together the first draft.  For example, when I need a description, I usually stop writing and research the object or person I need to describe.  For me, the description produces setting elements that I can use for the rest of the text.  On the other hand, if I’m writing a tight dialog, I usually skip description until the first edit.  That’s because I don’t want to break the train of thought in the writing.  Dialog is that way for me.

Perhaps I should write more about crafting in editing and what it means, next.

When I was a younger writer, I understood that editing was all about improving the writing, but I thought that was all about spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  I didn’t understand the concept of crafting the writing.  I’m using these two terms editing and crafting to delineate between editing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation and improving and fixing the story and plot. 

Yes, you need to have the best and most perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation possible, but it will never be perfect.  More important is the action, description, narration, and dialog.  This will never be necessarily perfect either, but we are aiming for entertaining and not perfection. 

Once you get the first draft on paper (or aether), you need to go through the text to improve the description, first.  That’s the easiest and If you didn’t get it in the first draft, do it now.

Description is easy and will provide more setting elements to improve the rest of the writing.  Next, look at the action and narrative.  Action and narrative can always be improved by addition of creative elements from the setting elements.  This can also be applied to the dialog.  As you bring in setting elements, use them in the rest of the document to increase entertainment and excitement in the writing.  This is crafting.  Also, as you work through the text figure how you can fit the scene into other scenes and other plots and characters in your novel.  These are generally creative elements you can use to improve your scene.  Of course, all of these improvements are driven by the imagination of the writer.  This is perhaps the most important point of both editing and crafting.  We’ll look at this, next.

In using imagination in crafting your writing, you must read the symbols your placed on paper and turn them into words and then word pictures.  In other words, you put yourself in the place of the reader as you read your own writing.  This isn’t editing in the normal sense at all.  When we are editing, as I’ve defined it, we are looking intently at the test to determine the proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  These are the trees, we need to look at the forest when we are crafting.  Yes, at some point you will need to edit, but crafting is much more important for the early work—that is the early drafts.

Most critical for the writing is getting the entire development of the text right.  It’s very difficult to determine good examples, but let me give it a try.

You might write in a first draft:

Jane woke.  She dressed, and stepped down to breakfast.

Crafting the text, you might write:

The brilliant sunlight finally touched Jane’s window and flooded over her slumbering eyes.  She woke gently but dazzled by the light.  She stretched under her warm covers for a moment, yawned, and finally threw them off. 

You can keep going.  This would be a great time to describe Jane, the room, and her toilet as she prepares to step down to breakfast.  The difference between the first writing and the second is crafting the action, narrative, and description.  This is exactly what I mean when I write, you put down your first draft which might look like the first example, and craft it into something that really creates word pictures in the minds of our readers.  Alternately, you should craft while writing the first draft.  The point is to get to a beautiful rendition that will entertain and excite your readers.  This requires imagination, to see the world from the reader’s viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the writing itself.  It also requires crafting to develop the words that form the word pictures.  I should address this next—that is crafting to develop the word pictures for the minds of the readers.

Perhaps being a poet first is a major requirement for an author.  I write this because in the past, it seems many of the greatest authors were also poets.  In the middle past, that is after the invention of printing and before the modern era, many long works of literature were also works of poetry.  I point out Shakespeare, Milton, and many others of that time.  The reason this is important is that the poetry in many of these works enhanced the power of the imagination and the work itself. 

For example, the poetry moved these works from simple description, action, narration, and dialog to metaphor and euphemism.  I’m not sure you can do poetry without figures of speech—and that’s the main point of crafting.

Some people just naturally think in terms of figures of speech.  Every word they put on the page fits into that mold, however, for the rest of us, we need to work on figures of speech.  Our brains need to be attuned to it to be able to write this way, and we need to write this way—that is with and through figures of speech.  I’d almost say the more the better, but someone is certain to take it to too great an extreme.  Remember the rule: don’t confuse your reader, and then apply as much figure of speech as you wish.  Even better if the figures of speech drive an undercurrent in your plot while the main plot flows at the top of the writing.

When I was young, I used to think in terms of multiple overlapping plots similar to the type of writing in Shakespeare where you find many overlapping ideas that give similar but not the same conclusions in the writing.  I’m not sure I agree with this anymore.  It’s just too complex.

In the main, I think great authors write in allegory or parallel structure.  Parallel is the more common mode—there may be multiple plots, but they all support the main plot—the parallel structure comes out of the figures of speech.  Likewise for the allegory although an allegory is usually tied more closely or tightly to the plots and the narrative.  I suspect you want an example:

Jane went to the zoo and saw many animals.

Parallel with figures of speech:

Jane went to the zoo and was amazed at the menagerie that only Noah could fully appreciate.

We have two distinct figures of speech here: the menagerie and Noah.  To continue these as parallels, all I need to do is express another figure of speech connected to Noah, the flood, and anything else from the Biblical account or about a menagerie. 

This is the kind of thing an author needs to expand and write for every single idea in the writing.  This is crafting the writing.

Crafting in writing is all about figures of speech as well as connections within the overall writing.  This includes, for example, foreshadowing, parallels, allegory, plus every other means of providing references and connections in the text.  Figures of speech happen to be the means that include all of these.  There are a number of types of figures of speech in English, as well as every other language. 

There are over 100 different types of figures of speech in English.  Many get used by authors and in common speaking without the speaker or writer even realizing they are using a figure of speech.  They are super common in English primarily because English is a highly euphemistic language.  What I mean by that is that, by comparison, with ancient Greek for instance, which is highly concrete, English requires both context as well as many adjectives and adverbs to keep nouns and verbs straight.  How can that be in a language with more than a million words?  Let’s go back to the word love.

The definition for love, in English, covers multiple pages in the Oxford dictionary.  I don’t know if love is the word with the most definitions, but it is pretty close.  In English, you can love your dog, your children, your spouse, your food, your house, your job, and all, and each of these loves is much different than each of the other loves.  By contrast in ancient Greek, you can agape the gods, but not any person, and the gods can agape you.  You can phileo your shield warrior friend, but you can’t phileo your wife or your children.  You can epithumia the sacrifice or other inanimate objects, but not any people.  I could keep on going—the Greeks have about ten words that can be defined or translated as love, but they have distinct meanings and objects.  This is why we call ancient Greek a very concrete language.  On the other hand, in English, the object defines the context of the love, we hope.  The writer must either use adjectives or adverbs or figures of speech to explain the context of the love that is meant—especially if that context is not normal or is outside of the common understanding.  While we are here, let me bring in an example of the Greek words usually translated say or said in English.

The only ancient Greek word (Classical Greek) that can be adequately translated as said is eipen.  This word is a verb in the past tense and doesn’t designate the manner or context of the speaking only that such and such was said.  On the other hand, there are approximately nine other words that are commonly translated say or said from Greek to English, but all of them specify what and how the words were said—the context of the speech.  For example, phemi means to give an opinion.  Rehme means to tell a story.  Logos means to make a logical argument.  Mythomai means to express ideas of a supernatural basis like a myth.  Lealo means small talk.  Kladon means to speak for the gods.  And so on—there are a lot.  Each Greek word needs to be defined in context to understand what the writer or speaker is saying. 

In English, we have some words we can use to define the context of the speech, but usually we simply leave it up to the context or we use figures of speech.  English isn’t the most euphemistic language in the world, but it’s pretty close, especially compared to the number of words and forms of grammar available.  I will mention that the most euphemistic language is Japanese with ancient Hebrew a close second.  Japanese and ancient Hebrew share certain characteristics with other old languages which cause euphemism: limited number of words and highly structured language.  English, by contrast has many words and a highly structured language.  Highly structured means the form of the language is dependent on the position of the words.  Greek and other languages depend much less on the position of the words due to the ways they indicate the tense of the verb and the part of speech of the noun.  For example, a noun can be normative, accusative, dative, or genitive.  In English, we call these the subject, the object, the indirect object, and the possessive.  So, what does this all mean?

This means that English is highly context and position dependent and to make sense as well as to communicate properly, the writer must use figures of speech.  We’ll keep on this topic.

English is a highly euphemistic language.  This makes context and the use of euphemism very important.  Just by speaking or writing in English, you are participating in the great euphemistic spread of information, even if you didn’t know. 

I mentioned the use of the word love and the word said in English as compared to ancient Greek for example.  The problem is that almost every word in English has similar issues, and it isn’t just the words—certain phrases are very specific to English and are built in figures of speech that are used in common speech.  English itself as a language is so filled with figures of speech as well as contextual based language and vocabulary, it is impossible to not write without figures of speech, however, it is equally possible, in English to express ideas completely contrary to the author’s intent by the use of more direct forms, and it is very possible to create soulless writing without any trace of nuance or feeling. 

All fiction writing is supposed to be entertaining, and I’ve written about this before.  There are authors who write with figures of speech and such eloquence that the writing itself is a thing of beauty.  The plot and the characters take a back seat to the writing. 

Then there are writers of the Hemmingway school whose writing is blunt and without any embellishment.  Don’t look to Hemmingway for glittering prose.  Such writing is still filled with figures of speech, but on a level of pure communication and not one of structural delight.  Most of us authors fill a space between glittering prose and pure communication.  At least, that’s what I aim for.

As an author, you might as well try to write within these three forms.  I suspect you will find yourself most comfortable at some point and usually not an extreme.  I’ve read and known the glittering prose types.  They are few and far between, and I’m not certain how much time it takes them to craft their sterling production.  On the other hand, I’ve known many accidental Hemmingways.  Their writing was embarrassingly without embellishment, and that didn’t help their writing at all. 

Hemmingway might be very direct and blunt as a writer, but he knew how to write and how to properly compose in English.  It’s easy to make fun of his style, but he still got across his message, and in English, he couldn’t help move the ball with euphemism.

I mentioned that there are over 100 forms of figures of speech.  There are also thousands of indirect speech and direct euphemisms in English.  Part of the problem in English is the number of verb forms and tenses as well as the number of words.  I guess I should get into that a little, next.  

English has an almost unique simplicity compared to most other modern languages.  It has almost zero gendered nouns and no gendered verbs.  It has a simple direct and indirect article noun formation.  It has a limited number of nominative, dative, and accusative indicator pronouns and instead uses noun position in the sentence to indicate these cases.  And, it uses almost exclusively s and es to indicate plural forms and ‘s and s’ or of to indicate the genitive.  For these reasons we’d expect English to be a very simple language to learn and to speak, but it isn’t so at all.  Many consider English to be one of the hardest languages to master.  The main reason is the verb forms.

English is a hybrid language.  It started as Germanic as in Anglo-Saxon but picked up French as a key part of it.  Like the Germanic languages, English has a very similar verb structure with be and have as indicators of verb tense.  It also has what in English are called helper verbs like should, can, may, would, as well as have and be.  Germanic languages are similar.  However, English also has do form verb tenses as well as every kind of odd verb tense formation for the formation of questions and nuance.  That’s what makes English difficult.  The nuance that can be developed in a sentence is pretty awesome, and this is what trips up many English learners.

Here are some examples.  This isn’t meant to be all inclusive, but I’ll try to get most of them.

John runs.

Joun is running.

John ran.

John has run.

John was running.

John has run.

John had run.

John did run.

John may run.

John might run.

John should run.

John will run.

John will have run.

Did John run?

And so on.  You get it, right.  This isn’t all the forms this simple sentence can take about John and running.  Each of these sentences are different.  Each has a specific and very nuanced difference in the language.  I’m not sure any other language has as many verb forms as English.  I do know the other feature of the language is the number of words.  For as euphemistic as English is, it has over a million words.  This is good and bad.  I’ll explain this next.

Because English has so many words, you might expect to just pick the exact word for what you mean.  This is much more difficult than your think.  For example, if you mean love, you should use love or you might use a synonym.  The problem with almost all the synonyms for love is they are simply synonyms for love.  There might be a distinct word in English for friendship type love, but there isn’t—you are required to write love with either some phrase or an adverb to distinguish the type of love you mean.  You could also use the Greek or Anglo-Saxon term, but you would need to explain it in context.  That’s basically what I did in one of my novels Dana-ana: Enchantment and the Maiden.  You can also develop a euphemism or a figure of speech to describe and explain the type of love you mean.  If you do find a word in English for what you need, you should use real caution.

I get a couple of words of the day on my email feeds.  My students signed me up.  Some of the words of the day are reasonable and useful, but most are unusable.  The reason is that many of the words are outside of the normal vocabulary of your readers.  The idea of the normal vocabulary and how far the author can go with word usage is very important.  I actually received significant complaints about my novel Centurion because of the vocabulary, and that’s in spite of the fact that for the Latin and more esoteric terms, I defined them at least three times, and then redefined them when I brought them up again.  There is a great plan for introducing new and esoteric words.

I was bringing words like gladius and scutum into the novel.  The gladius is a short sword and the scutum is a type of shield.  Most readers of history and people who know about the Roman Empire would know these words, but I brought a short description and explanation into the text so my readers would understand what the words meant.  As I noted, this is very important, and yes, we can use figures of speech to help understand and define these words.  I’ll write a little more about vocabulary and Standard English, next.

If you’ve never heard of Standard English, you need to.  Standard English is broadly described as the normative English that is spoken in a region such as the United States.  What is non-Standard English?  This is any English usually characterized by slang, non-Standard grammar, non-Standard vocabulary, non-Standard spellings, and non-Standard usage.  Most specifically, non-Standard English is slang. 

Peppering some dialog with slang for a specific character can be a reasonable technique in characterization, but a wise author brings up a little bit of slang then switches back to Standard English from that point on.  A little slang can make a character, too much is just too much. 

My favorite example of a novel ruined by non-Standard English is The Little Witch.  This is a very fun novel written in the 1950s and filled with 1950s slang.  The slang destroys the continuity and longevity of the novel.  It sounds and reads terrible in the modern world.  If the author had just written the novel in standard English, it might be a still beloved novel.  Unfortunately, there is just too much slang in it.  You should take a look at this novel and see exactly what I’m writing about. 

The main problem with non-Standard English is that when society outgrows the slang, no one knows what is going on anymore.  You can’t understand what the characters are saying or what the author intended.  It’s like trying to understand a completely different language.  The same goes for accents or uncommon speech forms.  A little can set a scene, too much is just too much.  Not to mention, that no one will translate your novel back into Standard English in the future, so it will be lost forever.  No one might be able to translate it.  I also recommend limiting your vocabulary.  That’s next.

Children’s authors should really understand a limited vocabulary, and I’m not advocating a simplistic or extremely limited vocabulary for adult or even youth novels.  There are just words available in English you should not use.  Most of those are in the batch of unusual, generally unused, and those that don’t sound anything like what they mean.  That’s not to say you can’t introduce historical or necessary words.  Just don’t use words that are really uncommon.

What are common words?  Those words you routinely hear is spoken English are great for use in your novels.  If you run in a specific professional crowd, like lawyers or scientists, some of those words common to their usage might require explanation in your text—and that’s a real test of your vocabulary. 

If you throw in a word that 90% or greater of your readers won’t recognize, it really requires explanation.  If you aren’t going to use that word every again, just use another word.  Use a better word.  Here’s an example.  In my novel Centurion, I use many uncommon words in today’s English, gladius for example.  A gladius is a Roman short sword used by the Roman Legions.  I use it extensively in my novel.  When I first bring it up, I describe it.  In the first three uses, I ensure the description is clear to the reader.  I do use it through the novel.  On the other hand, I would never use the word jentacular, but I might use oorlich. 

Jentacular means “pertaining to breakfast.”  You can just say breakfast or some regular synonym.  Most people have never read, used, or will ever use jentacular.  Why put it in your novel.  Now, to put jentacular in the mouth of a snob or a lout—that might work, but it becomes a cultural joke at that point.  It’s just not a common word.  I certainly wouldn’t use it in a novel.  In addition, you can’t figure out what it means from the word itself.  Let’s look at the other word I mentioned, oorlich.

Oorlich is Scottish and means dreary and wet weather.  I can almost see the conditions just by saying the word.  If I was going to use it, and I did in one novel, I’d put it in the mouth of a Scotsman, and I’d describe the conditions beforehand.  For example:

The day was cold and wet.

“Oorlich stated Rose,” while raising her arms.  “The day is oorlich.”

That’s how I’d use it, and it would stick with the reader.  If I used that term again in the novel, they would know exactly what I was writing about.  The word almost speaks for itself, and with some description and definition, it’s something you can use and use well.

To conclude with this idea of vocabulary.  Use common English and don’t bring in words that most readers won’t have a clue about.  Write for understanding.  Unless you are writing for children, don’t limit your vocabulary, otherwise, but use synonyms of words common in spoken English.  You can bring in esoteric and uncommon words if you define them or they are self-defining.  It also helps to use simple and common grammar and phrasing, but that’s another subject entirely.    

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

 

More tomorrow.

For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:

http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com  

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