2 September 2018, this blog is about writing in scenes. I’m focusing on the tools to build scenes. I’ll leave up the parts of a novel because I think this is an important picture for any novelist. I’m writing about how to begin and write a novel.
- The initial scene
- The rising action scenes
- The climax scene
- The falling action scene(s)
- The dénouement scene(s)
Announcement: I need a new publisher. Ancient Light has been delayed due to the economy, and it may not be published. Ancient Light includes Aegypt, Sister of Light and Sister of Darkness. If you are interested in historical/suspense literature, please give my novels a try. You can read about them at http://www.ancientlight.com. I’ll keep you updated.
Today’s Blog: The skill of using language comes from the ability to put together figures of speech that act as symbols in writing.
Short digression: back in the USA.
Here are my rules of writing:
- Entertain your readers.
- Don’t confuse your readers.
- Ground your readers in the writing.
- Don’t show (or tell) everything.
4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.
- Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
Creativity is the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form. It is a reflection of something new created with ties to the history, science, and logic (the intellect). Creativity requires consuming, thinking, and producing.
Here is the beginning of the scene development method from the outline:
- Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
- Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
- Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.
- Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
- Write the release
- Write the kicker
First step of writing—enjoy writing. Writing is a chore—especially if you don’t know what you are doing, and you don’t know where you are going. Let me help you with that.
How do we gain the skills to write well? Let’s begin with reading. Reading allows us to understand the following:
- What a novel is.
- How a novel is constructed.
- How a novel is entertaining.
- How a novel is written.
- How novels have evolved.
- Different genre in novels.
Here is a list of genres that are reflective of the current market for modern novels:
- Action Adventure
- Science Fiction
- Speculative Fiction
- Young Adult
- New Adult
- Police Procedurals
- Family Saga
- Women’s Fiction
- Magic Realism
- Literary Fiction
I left up the list. It’s an okay list, but it could be improved. The point of the list isn’t necessarily to give you genre to pick between to develop your novel(s). The reason I gave you the list was so you could see the different genre areas that readers and publishers are really interested in.
To use the list properly, after you have written your novel, compare it to the list and appropriately pin on about two or three genres. See where if fits. I’ve never thought of the genre before I started writing, but setting a genre is both a marketing and a publishing decision. This is why you should understand genre.
Secondarily, your publisher might want to brand your novel with a specific genre. In addition, based on the current trends in genre, you might want to present your novel in a certain category to a potential publisher. As I noted about my erstwhile publisher, they called my historical suspense novel, dystopian. If I figured this out before, I might have pushed my novel as a dystopian novel.
Genre is very subjective—perhaps there is more to write about this.
I’ll write more tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:
fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic