Showing posts with label HEA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HEA. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 06, 2020

Soul Mates and the HEA, Real or Fantasy, Part 11 - Soulmates Explained

Soul Mates and the HEA, Real or Fantasy
Part 11
Soulmates Explained


Previous parts in this series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

To convince a reader that, in your well-built world, Souls are real and it the components of reality necessary for two Souls to be "mates" are in existence, you have to take into account the target audience for your Romance novel.

This speaks to the topic of verisimilitude we keep returning to as a primary tool of the far-out science-fantasy writer.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

For many decades, Romance publishers and writers, and readers, didn't consider "Romance Genre" as a science fiction genre -- and if "Fantasy" it was somewhere beneath bad comedy in the prestige list even though Romance has always out-sold Science Fiction.

Now, Paranormal Romance and Science Fiction Romance are considered "mixed" or "cross" genre.

My contention is that there is no mixing involved. Romance has always been science-fantasy.

Romance is "science" because it investigates the formation of bonds, just like chemical bonds, that we don't fully understand but we know they "just work."

Romance is "fantasy" because the plots represent the highest aspirations of the readers looking for a life-turning-point.

Most fans of Romance either know from experience or believe from self-knowledge, that Soul Mates
are real.

We either know a couple that just clicks like that, or we have been part of such a couple.

Those who flatly disbelieve in the HEA, the Happily Ever After ending, still enjoy a good Romance novel simply assuming that the ending is an HFN and eventually something will happen to catapult the couple into renewed misery.

As a Science-Fantasy subgenre, Romance has the opportunity to convey to the skeptics a real-world theory of what, exactly, Soul Mates are according to supernatural scientific theory.

Many religions grope into the problem of conveying a model of reality that includes Souls, immortal and otherwise, always trying to make it simple for the average person to grasp.

And where there are Souls, there is the possibility of two of them belonging together, somehow.  Maybe it's unfinished karma from a previous life, or a Parent-Child relationship playing out, or some other theory.

Maybe, if you're doing Aliens on another planet, you'll need to invent one (probably more) religion that is substantially different from anything suited to humans. To do that in a way that human readers can grasp and learn from, you will need to know a lot about a lot of different religions and their take on Souls.

There are questions to ask.

1) How are Souls structured?

2) What kind of civilization would Aliens without Souls create?

3) What kind of civilization would Aliens with complete, whole, self-contained Souls create?

4) Can Soul Mates bond completely and still have one or  both lack Happiness?

You'll need a real-world theory of Soul Mates, and a set of questions that probe your Alien culture to reveal how and why the Aliens differ from humans. Then you need to design a human who can bond across that Soul-Gap, and a reason why that human would do that.

Google Soulmates Explained and pull up a wide perspective on Souls and Mates.  Keep the frame of reference we explored in "So What Exactly Is Happiness"
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

And keep asking yourself, as you read different philosophies, whether simply living with a Soul Mate, even bonding or marrying, produces Happiness.

Is meeting a Soul Mate a sufficient condition for the HEA?  Is it even a necessary condition of Happiness.

Then check out this 2-minute video explaining Soul Mates:

https://www.facebook.com/myJLI/videos/10159133735919411/

Notice the glancing reference to "life's purpose" or the purpose of life, and what that has to do with happiness.

To convince the skeptic that the HEA is real, in fact common, there is a lot of thinking to do about what Happiness actually is, if it even is a real thing.

Find out what your target audience thinks happiness is, find out why they think that, then challenge the roots of that belief. Disturb your readers and you will engrave your byline on their memories.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Verisimilitude VS Reality Part 5 - So What Exactly is Happiness

Verisimilitude VS Reality
Part 5
So What Exactly is Happiness 


Previous entries in this blog series:

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

Part 2 Master Theme Structure, The Camera, Nesting Plots and Stories
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

Part 3 - The Game, The Stakes, The Template
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

Part 4 - Story Arcs and the Fiction Delivery System
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-4-story.html

In Part 4, we looked at the Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System, where the audience meets the world building showcasing a Character.

Your Character, your MC or POV Character, is unique like all humans, but is living a "story arc" (a life lesson learned, mastered, and put behind them) that is recognizable to the audience.  That's what "verisimilitude" means - like reality, but NOT real.  Verisimilitude is not real, but realistic.

To slice a "novel" out of the MC's life in the built world, the writer has to find the point where the Character meets (and surmounts or succumbs to) a nemesis, a life-lesson, a force that is hell-bent on preventing the MC from succeeding at life.

The writer has to find the one conflict in that Character's life which, once resolved, forms the foundation of all to come.

A resolved conflict is resolved ever-after. A resolved conflict doesn't come back to haunt the character in future novels in the series. Resolving a conflict - internal and external together - puts an END to that conflict.

This is not to say a given Character might not have many other conflicts to resolve in the future, but having succeeding in resolving ONE - the Character knows how to tackle and resolve future conflicts.  A Character learns a coping strategy that works.

So by definition, the "ending" of a story arc is an ending, and what comes after is "ever after."

Plots, however, are sequences of Events, each event caused by the choices made during the previous event.  Plots don't have to end - usually even a death doesn't have to end the cascade of Events precipitated by a character's life.

One thing a study of Astrology makes instantly clear is that your life didn't start when you were born and doesn't end when you die. The stars and planets were going long before you arrived and will continue after you die.

Where you came from, your ancestry, has a lot to do with who you are, and what you do in this life has a lot to do with what happens to others after you die.

As conflicts get resolved, new ones (or if you don't study history, old ones recur) arise.  There is always a plot, always something going and something trying to stop it.

But your Story - your Main Character's Story - is internal and has a beginning and an end -- Story has an "ever after."  That is, a defining Event resolved by a decisive change of heart, is the one, single, discreet period of a Life, a pearl on a string.  There is a before.  There is an after.

So when we craft a "happily ever after" ending, a definitive resolution of a Soul level conflict, it really is an ever-after.

But is it Happily?

What exactly is happiness?

Is Happiness a gift from on high?
Is Happiness a fleeting emotion?
Is Happiness a goal?
Is Happiness a decision?

Answer any of those questions, and you have a Theme that fits neatly inside the envelope theme for the entire Romance Genre and all its sub-genres, such as Paranormal Romance, Science Fiction Romance, Fantasy Romance.

To tell such a story, you need a conflict, and it is ready made in those Themes.  Does one Character's achieving Happily Ever After destroy another Character's chances of any such outcome?

This  is two women after the same man, or two men after the same woman.  It is also a man and a woman vying for the same job, or changing the world in opposite directions.

It is Republican vs Democrat, or Progressive vs. Conservative.

Is happiness "beating" the opposition, "blasting" them with vile epithets, denuding them of their pretensions, assassinating their Character, destroying their reputation, kicking butt?

Does winning produce happiness?

The concept "win" can't really exist without the concept "lose."  Winning produces a loser.  It doesn't resolve a conflict; it perpetuates the conflict.

"Survive to fight another day," is happiness?  Some people in the midst of doing that might say so.  It certainly beats the alternative.  But it won't produce a "happily ever after," only a "happily for now."  And the ending isn't an end.

All ends are new beginnings, like a month or year's cycle.  We live in circles.  Well, spirals.

So it is reasonable to hold the position that the HEA is impossible - because there are no endings which aren't also beginnings.

Thus for those who see no chance for a stable life-arc, no chance for Happiness that continues smoothly, there is no way to craft a beginning of a Happy Life-Arc.

So perhaps a new definition of Happiness is what the Romance Genre can add to the world, and improve things.

To write such a novel that could become a Streaming movie, you need the contrasting story of a character doomed to misery, and perhaps blaming his condition on the happiness of others.

What would be the "fate" or "karma" of such a Character? Would he be a saboteur bent on destroying the HEA of the couple you are writing about?

Is he driven by envy or revenge, needing to destroy others to make himself happy (only to find it doesn't work? Only to find it does work? - whichever you choose, that is your theme.)

What such an Enemy discovers after "winning" is the show-don't-tell moment of your Theme.  The ultimate outcome for the entranced young Couple also illustrates without explanation, your thematic answer to those four questions about what Happiness is.

Is happiness a limited commodity which people must fight each other for?  Is that what life is all about?

What life is all about is a theme.

If life is about mortal combat to snatch happiness from others (who don't deserve it) so you can have your fair share, then it's small wonder some people think the HEA is ridiculous fantasy.  There will always be some who don't have happiness and are driven to steal it from you.

So whether Happiness is a commodity you can acquire, is a theme.

In everyday Reality, a lot of people make operational decisions on the basis of the view that happiness is a limited commodity to be acquired by winning it away from others, denuding them of the ability to contest the matter further.

So there are a lot of novels about Kick Ass characters who obliterate their opposition and, at the end of the book, think what they are feeling is happiness.

Is it?  Is triumph=happiness?

Is destruction necessary for happiness?

In everyday Reality, a lot of people make operational decisions on the basis of the view that happiness is not a commodity that can be acquired, but rather an energizing of the spirit producing a frisson of delight that cumulatively builds to happiness.

Resolving conflicts is a process of revealing truth, not a process of destroying enemies.

That is what the "Love at First Sight" moment is all about - the moment the clouds of incessant misery part and a shaft of ineffable sunlight warms the heart.

And Sunlight is a good analogy to explain what "happiness" is.  It makes your eyes tear.  It strikes the heart.

One theme about what Happiness really is could use the analogy of sunlight to explain that we are always happy - the sun is always shining in the daytime, but sometimes clouds dim the light.  At night, the bulk of the Earth dims the light, leaving only the reflection off the Moon.  But any astronaut coming down from orbit will insist the Sun is always shining.

Happiness is like that - always there, always shining, but sometimes something gets in the way.

We are "Happy Ever After" once that truth is revealed to us -- we really are always happy, but we are also other things that get in the way.

The truly happy know how to weather the dark-gray-stormy days of bereavement, derailment of expectations, losses of possessions, and just plain sadness and hopelessness.

These phases of existence are to be felt deeply, savored, admired, and stored up for future memories.

The dark days will be of great value once the clouds part and sunlight shafts down to illuminate the path to the next phase of life.

THEME: Happiness is being able to find the beauty in truth.

Happiness is an ability, often hard acquired.

We say we "get an education" but in truth, we "become educated."  Education is not a thing you can get (or get by taking it away from someone).  The school of hard knocks is always open for business, but they are hard knocks designed specifically to focus your attention on learning a truth.

THEME: Happiness is the result of graduating from the school of hard knocks.

That's one take on the twisty-windy path to the HEA.

There are many other themes amenable to treatment in Romance or its sub-genres.  Here is a video (less than 20 minutes long) discussing the magical formula for attaining true joy in life from a mystical perspective.

Argue against this video's premise in Characters and Show Don't Tell Themes, and you will produce a blockbuster novel.

https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/676143/jewish/Kabbalah-of-Happiness.htm

Just Google happiness and see how MUCH interest there is in the topic.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Worldbuilding For Fantasy Part 1 - Paranormal Detectives

Worldbuilding For Fantasy
Part 1
Paranormal Detectives

This Series on Worldbuilding for Fantasy is inspired by some very original worldbuilding in the Rivers of London Series (8 books as of 2020) by Ben Aaronovitch.  Book 7, Lies Sleeping brings together many of the mysteries we've been probing, "Love Conquers All," "Happily Ever After," and whether you need Magic or a Paranormal premise to understand Happiness?  Is Happiness supernatural?  What exactly is happiness?

One would expect building a world to house a fictional drama would be the same for Science Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Western, Historical, or Fantasy.

The process is, actually, mostly the same, at least at the beginning where the story Idea first blossoms.  The process diverges later, as you decorate with symbols, visuals, and plot-clues, foreshadowing, and then sketch out the whole rest of the world beyond the story-venue.

The most efficient way to build a world, destined for any (or all) genres, is to start by studying your audience's everyday existence, their "world" - the boundary between what they know to the point of boredom and all the "here be dragons" boundaries of their world.

Thus children's books are easy to world build for, but much-much harder to write.  You have to be careful not to talk down to children, while at the same time imparting a vision of what the next stage of their maturation is all about.

The same is actually true of adults.

The work-a-day adult actually lives in a fairly small world, associating with a few people, maybe a couple hundred, commuting the same route, shopping the same stores, grabbing fast food at the same stand-up counter.

That is changing rapidly now, as circumstances have boosted the use of work-from-home.  Working online both reduces the number of people you see daily, but increases the number you interact with.

The Romance Writer must change with the times.

Thus today's working-stiff population is trending toward having a larger view of the world, via Facebook etc., knowing what's going on in the lives of people they barely know.

Many read Romance mixed with almost anything - Victorian  Dukes, Cowboy Drifters, -- unexpectedly different but intriguing men attracted to women of strong character, driving ambition, determined to achieve a goal.

If you have a story to tell of Alien Romance -- meeting up with a VERY "different" sort of person from somewhere you've never heard of and can't imagine, Science Fiction is a natural choice.  But Fantasy, alternate-reality worlds where Magic is Real, is also a great venue to place a story of Impossible Love.

Love Conquers All.

The cliche is a cliche because it's true.

So if you want to tell the tale of an Impossible Love with a story-arc that transforms the impossible into the possible, that moves the border around your reader's life, that enlarges the known world, Paranormal Romance is a natural.

In other words, take our Real World, change something we take for granted, and build an entire world around that one difference.  And you'll have your alternate-reality where one of your characters grew up.

Now, bring that Character into the reader's reality and spur his adjustment.

This describes Gini Koch's ALIEN series,

and the feature film STARMAN - as well as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

Those are all technically science fiction.

What makes a World you Build into a Fantasy world?

When we insert a Paranormal element (ghost, magic, gnomes), the publishing establishment labels the result Fantasy.

But what, exactly, is Paranormal?

Google the word.
--------
par·a·nor·mal
/ˌperəˈnôrm(ə)l/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.
"a mystic who can prove he has paranormal powers"
-----

And further down the Google results, note:

---------

What is the difference between paranormal and supernatural?
The paranormal genre includes creatures like zombies, werewolves, aliens, and ghosts, as well as phenomena like telepathy and time travel. “Supernatural” refers to phenomena that are forever outside the realm of scientific explanation, such as god, the afterlife, and the soul.Jan 21, 2020

 ---------

Note how neither explanation of the word is useful to a writer attempting to craft a world that at least several publishers would buy to be published under a Paranormal or Fantasy imprint.

The vocabulary of the English language is under as much swift, drastic change as is our general lifestyle.

Wikipedia offers this modernized take on the word, Paranormal:

-----quote------
Paranormal
Description Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as beyond normal experience or scientific explanation.

------end quote------

Note the very non-dictionary choice of wording, prejudicing the reader before the definition is offered.  "Purported" and "non-scientific" both telegraph the writer's opinion that anything called Paranormal is in fact non-existent, non-sensical, or only uneducated people would be so gullible as to think any of those things could happen.

"Popular Culture" or just "Popular" also telegraphs the writer's opinion that such ideas are beneath notice, unworthy of the educated who would never be part of "the populace."

If you, as a developing writer, haven't yet studied semantics and the semantic loading of words, do so before attempting to craft a Paranormal Novel.

If you note how "Paranormal" is used to designate movies (study the movies with that label), you'll see how the meaning of the word is warped and reshaped by common usage.

You can do that with the World you build -- you can take everyday English words and redefine them with a different emotional impact, a different semantic loading.

The most easily available laboratory for learning to do that is today's News Headlines -- almost every one you see, including CNN and Fox News, contains some word that telegraphs to the reader how to evaluate and respond to the information in the item. Become sensitive to that and you will improve your Paranormal Worldbuilding ability a hundred fold.

Another way to explore how modern publishers are re-defining vocabulary is to read novels.

I want to point you to a very popular writer who has built a complex "Paranormal" world with science fiction-detective style plots, where the detective is a Magic User and able to detect where "magic" (which is never actually defined) has been used.

The RIVERS OF LONDON series by Ben Aaronovitch (set in an alternate but not very different London) is from DAW Books -- very prominent Science Fiction and Fantasy publisher I sold a few books to when it was under previous management.

The advent of DAW publishing is a whole phenomenon all by itself - the first publisher of its kind.

Aaronovitch has painted a picture of "reality" that includes the personification of a River who can have sex with the Main Character, a Detective who can detect magic traces after the fact.

The Magic specialty division of law enforcement is after an Arch Criminal who has given them a lot of trouble, and who is building a magic artifact, a giant bell.  It's unclear what the results of letting that bell ring might be, but the indications are that it would bring an entity from another dimension that would then "rule the world" (megalomaniac style, rule).

The Rivers of London Series is a huge best seller, but is structured like an ordinary Detective Novel.  The personality of the Detective is what carries the story, but the world he lives in holds many astonishing surprises for the reader.

The science fiction overtones come from the adroit handling of some of these astonishing surprises -- just like the Characters on Star Trek, the Characters in LIES SLEEPING just take the astonishing factoids for granted.

They use their magical tools to track down and thwart the villain.

But there is a sterility to the story telling, very much like a Colombo episode, rather than anything like the Decker/Lazarus series by Faye Kellerman (that I keep reviewing here -- a series you should study for the HEA depiction).


The Main Character has a "thing" going with a female avatar of a River, but there's no conflict or story advancement there.  The plot is all about chasing the Villain, unraveling his plot, putting the kibosh on his plans to use Magic.

There is no penetrating thematic argument asserting WHY this alternate Reality is essential to the well-being of our everyday reality.  There is no actual conflict having to do with the way the Characters are embedded in their reality.

Note, by contrast, how Jim Butcher, in his Dresden Files Series, has chosen a Character who is embedded in, irked by, shaped by, challenged by, his environment.  His identity as a Wizard gives him only one way to earn a Living - basically as a consulting detective, or Paladin for Hire. His work brings him athwart the Great Powers running his world.

He is very conspicuously a Native of that alternate reality.

Ben Aaronovitch's Detective, who actually works for a government agency, officially, floats apart from his world. It doesn't shape his character, even when he takes advantage of it.  He shrugs off the bizarre reality of having shacked up with a River (I mean a real one, flowing water and all -- with an Avatar that is never explained properly).

Now Lies Sleeping is part of a Series - and if you drop into the middle here, you wouldn't expect all the explanation that went before.  But there should be more than there is.  The absence of these connecting links leaves us with an interesting Character - who floats disconnected from his reality.

Note carefully -- RIVERS OF LONDON is an international best selling series. People keep buying installments for a reason.

There might be an appetite for stories about people just coping their way through a world that is irrelevant to them.

Paranormal Fantasy lends itself easily to this sort of novel - disconnected from our reality, with Characters as disconnected from their Reality as we feel we are from today's reality.

There are a lot of "magic using detective" novels selling very well these days - and that might be because Detective Procedurals are traditionally about an objective onlooker (the Detective) prying into affairs disconnected from their personal life.

Detective novels hold particular appeal for those who want a rest from drowning in "soap opera" reality with husband, kids, cousins, clashing personalities, demanding bosses, etc.

Solving a puzzle external to the Self provides a much needed respite from Reality.

Science Fiction as a genre usually pivots around a mystery -- a scientific mystery that needs explaining by a discovery, by learning that some impossible thing is actually real.

Science Fiction is about confronting The Unknown.

Paranormal is about confronting The Unknown.

Romance is about confronting The Unknown (hence the popularity of the Arranged Marriage, or governess-marries-Duke).

And all of them are about making The Unknown into The Known.

That's what "adventure" is -- going OUT into The Unknown, and learning it so it isn't unknown any more.

The Happily Ever After state of existence is more "Unknown" than "Here Be Dragons" ever was.  It is considered completely impossible.

The Paranormal Romance writer's job is to take the Reader on an adventure into a realm where the HEA is known, Normal, attainable, but perhaps at a cost, at a risk, with every high stakes.

A Magic using Detective - using paranormal powers to pry into affairs not his own (think about Apple refusing to hack into an Apple phone belonging to a deceased terrorist), is the perfect plot-vehicle to discuss how to discover and attain the HEA.

Does it take MAGIC to understand HAPPINESS?  Or do you, as a human, need to marry a River?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Mysteries of Pacing Part 8 - Pacing and the HEA

Mysteries of Pacing
Part 8
Pacing and the HEA

Mysteries of Pacing series is indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Anyone who has had sex, (good, bad or indifferent) understands pacing.  Pacing is the difference between good, bad and indifferent - and mind-glowingly awesome.

It is all about "the next thing" being revealed (mysteriously is best) at just the right point.

The problem with most couples is that one is ready when the other is not.

This is exactly the problem between writer and reader.

Sex is a "story," a sequence of RE-actions to stimuli, which form the "plot."  Each contact is a plot-point, and in optimized sequence, the points line up to create a momentum of re-actions, leading to a climax.

The climax of a novel is called a climax for a reason.

The culmination of good or indifferent sex is called a climax for the same reason.  (bad sex usually means no climax for at least one participant).

Both good fiction and good sex are all about energy transfer, or energy transformation, possibly by "induction."

So great mind-blowing body-ripping sex climaxes in a sequenced, and orchestrated (actually structured) way, just the way a good novel has to lead TO a moment where climax happens.

The HEA is what happens after the climax.
Slideplayer.com

Climax is the erupting and dissipation of a pure energy.

In Relationships, that "energy" is the momentum that keeps "life" moving.  We build a life, we have a work-life, and a home-life, and a social-life, maybe a sports-life, a hobby-life, we build these lives from the teen years onwards.

We pour energy into each of these structured lives we possess, and each of our lives has a "vector" (a direction and a magnitude) which when blended with all the other components, produces our "life" as the result.

Change any component, and life changes (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot).

A Climax is the point where the energy driving life in one direction suddenly reduces in magnitude, allowing the DIRECTION to change.

Life has momentum.  Humans have emotional inertia.  We don't so much resist change as simply ride our life-vector.

Life's momentum has a magnitude. Every single little thing you do as a teen, or college student, or twenty-something, is additive -- it gets your life moving, and once life is moving  fast, you don't have much choice of direction.

This is why the classic story of an addict's life usually includes hitting bottom.  There is a turning point where the person's life "hits" an obstacle and all no longer has direction or movement.  When everything stops, the person has a choice of direction.  While moving down into the abyss, there is no choice of direction because many small choices have built momentum to a magnitude that can't be overcome.

Likewise in sex, the "don't stop now" point is so crucial in generating Relationship Building pillow talk after climax, a good night's sleep, and productive planning over breakfast.

Pacing a novel is all about direction and magnitude. The direction the reader is looking for is progress toward the Climax (the new choices point).  The magnitude the reader is looking for is the clue to how intense, how satisfying, the Climax will be when that point is "hit."  How HARD will the characters be hit when they reach that final moment?

How hard the characters are hit is proportionate to how big a change they have to make in their life-direction, their life-vector.

If you're telling the story of addiction, Book One ends with the climax of hitting rock bottom, of realization, of knowing, and of being able to choose a new direction.

Whether the reader sees that this Character will succeed where most addicts fail depends on the writer's showing not telling the Character's character, the strength that can be summoned.  Often that depends on the Character's ability to visualize the ultimate goal.

The sequels in that series would then detail the step-wise climb in a new direction, the moments of temptation, the mistakes and backsliding and how that's handled, and ultimately achieving the goal.  Each of these points would come to a Climax where the Character must choose a slightly new direction, course correction on the way to triumph.

Like sex, life is all about energy.

Humans may find we have that in common with other, non-human, people we meet out among the stars.  It may be all we do have in common, and it might be enough to establish Relationships.

Here are some graphic illustrations of the structural lessons of literary climax applicable to stage, screen, and page.

Each genre has one or two favorites (which shift with generational fashion).  Your favorite will change with decades and decades of aging.

Action-Adventure Science Fiction favors this one.

 https://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsoffiction.htm


You'll find many Romances structured this way:




The wriggly line on the upsweep represent the ever-increasingly-intense sex scenes (graphic does not mean intense).

Both the Plot and the Story have diagrams like this.  The diagrams use up and down to symbolize potential energy increase and decrease -- sex is like climbing a mountain then leaping off to soar through space.

Seeing the similarities among different energy patterns is what artists do.

Showing that similarity to people who can't see it is what writers do.

Leave your reader with a wiser understanding of how energy patterns interact, plot and story, and how certain patterns of interacting patterns are in fact the HEA. 

The HEA is not a condition of zero energy, not "hitting rock bottom" or "crashing into the glass ceiling" of energy processes.

Happiness might be defined as collimated energy, harmonious energy transmission rather than turbulent and thus wasteful energy transmission.  Timing, pacing, is crucial to that harmony.
https://www.slideshare.net/guest6bbfe8d/elements-of-plot

The moments just after climax, the deep sigh, the loosening of tension, the relaxing into sleep, are "falling action."  Master rising and falling action by reading carefully and noting how famous novels use this technique.


Do this Google Search -- define climax in plot -- for more graphic illustrations and websites to explore them all.  Particularly note the diagrams by https://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsoffiction.htm

Take your favorite novels and graph them onto these patterns, to see which pattern you love the most, which you think in the most, and which your real life follows the closest.  Try writing in those patterns.

Just as there is no one right way to have sex, there is no one "right" way to structure a plot's climaxes.  The current best seller or blockbuster film becomes defined as "right" because it makes the most money for the publisher/producer (many times not for the writer).

Learn the common origins of all these graphs and why they apply, why they are useful.  Finding, or inventing, the best fit for the POINT your novel makes is the goal.  Getting the thematic match between the climax pacing of your story and the climax pacing of your plot is an art to be mastered.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com


Tuesday, July 07, 2020

Reviews 55 Walking Shadows by Faye Kellerman

Reviews 55
Walking Shadows
by
Faye Kellerman  

Reviews haven't been indexed yet.

The last few Reviews posts have discussed recent entries in long established (non-Romance) Series.  There is a reason for this focus that has to do with story structure.  It is a subtle point, and one you are not likely to learn by reading Romance genre - even series.

I have also brought Gini Koch's ALIEN series
to your attention, and though it's plot is mainly driven by a Romance that lasts right on through marriage and children, it is a hybrid genre series.  It's well done, fabulously entertaining, and a far reach outside the pure Romance genre.

Still, Romance fans love it (as do I).  The problem with trying to learn structure from the ALIEN series is simply that it is way too well done.  It's structure is buried under heaps of detail, texture, and everything-and-the-kitchen-sink plotting.

Historically, Romance genre novels did not EVER do "reprints" -- and thus were inhospitable to series writers.

To make it worthwhile to do a Series of novels, you must be able to keep reaching a wider and wider readership, while providing access to previously published novels.

Today, authors even of the SFWA Grand Master status, such as C. J. Cherryh, whose Foreigner series we discussed in Reviews 54



are providing their backlist titles as self-published or e-book only publisher items.  Kindle has been helpful for doing this.  Commercial, mainstream publishers simply can't do it because of the tax laws (which derailed many writers' careers) taxing warehouse inventory.

To drive a Series of novels to a satisfying and memorable conclusion, to the kind of payoff for reading so many books that makes the money-time-effort-attention worth while, a writer needs constant, continuous, reprint or availability of previous entries in the series.

The world has changed to where e-books can do this job.

During this shift, Romance genre, propelled by a handful of adventurous editors, managed to introduce Romance readers to that big-bang payoff that only a well crafted, long running (15 books or more), can deliver.

Because of ineptitude of series structure (it does take practice!), many series peter out instead of delivering that one, final, definitive bang that flings the Happily Ever After future right out before the reader's eyes.

It took Romance a while to grasp what Science Fiction had been doing for a couple of decades, and now I think we are seeing a transformation of the Romance field that will shift the views of the general public about the real-life possibility of the HEA.

Faye Kellerman (wife of the world famous Jonathan Kellerman, master of the Mystery Genre series), burst onto the publishing scene with a spectacularly different Mystery/Romance hybrid, Ritual Bath.  That novel won awards in spite of being far outside the bounds of what Mystery editors were looking for from a new writer.

The Ritual Bath,

the first in this long (so far 26 novels in the Decker/Lazarus series), introduced the Detective (Decker) to a witness to a murder (Rina Lazarus, a widow with 2 boys), they fall in love and over the course of 26 (so far) novels, Decker returns to his Jewish/religious roots because Rina is very observant (and may as well be an Alien From Outer Space from Decker's point of view), and they get married, have a kid, adopt kids (sort of) raise kids, send them off to college and marriage, move from one neighborhood to another, then retire to a different state, while Decker's daughter by a previous marriage is now a police Detective, too, and a valuable contact in another city.

Here is a list of the 26 novels:
https://amazon.com/gp/product/B07XX9XPGW

Meanwhile, Decker continues his career as a police Detective, retires to detect in a small town, and keeps on stumbling over stumper cases.

Rina, as always, sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong and solves a few of his cases, here and there (sometimes becoming a target of a murderer), drags him into her family's life, and generally is a stalwart, heroic woman.

Walking Shadows is #25 in this series, and #26 is Lost Boys, to be released in October 2020.

I have always given my highest (10 out of 5 Stars!!!) to the Decker/Lazarus series because it is one of the earliest examples of triple hybridization in publishing and broke ground for the mixed genre concept.

Isaac Asimov did lay the foundation with his Black Widow science fiction mysteries, and other writers have woven Paranormal elements into Detective novels, and fantasy worlds.  It took decades to achieve the conditions favorable to the Decker/Lazarus concept -- Mystery structure, Romance, and Religion.

Since fans seemed to object, the Religion elements get submerged in the later books, dissipated under the Mystery, and Romance per se does not burgeon into a big part of their family life.  It might have been more interesting to me if Rina had taken up the profession of the Match Maker, thus keeping Romance a hot element in each novel, while mixing it with Religion.  Also I'd have loved to see more novels drawing them into the religious life of other religions -- Los Angeles, the setting for most of the novels, certainly has enough variegated Religions.

My point is not that Religion is the important topic, but rather that the carefully balanced blend of all 3 genres in the initial novel, Ritual Bath, became distorted.

This happened because of reader feedback and editorial pressure, I'm sure (though I have no first hand knowledge).

The series is structured by the Life Cycle of the typical second-marriage couple, and that Life Cycle is optimized for a hard-working Los Angeles Detective (Vice squad to Homicide) by the addition of the third leg of Romance's footstool, Religion.

Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker are Soul Mates. That just glows out of the first novel in the series, they meet and parks fly.  It is intense, and artistically juxtaposed to murder.

They take several years to arrange life into marriage-and-a-kid.

That is how real life usually structures.

Compressing a life-cycle pivot point series into ONE novel spanning just a few weeks or months (or less) from First Sight to Wedding Bells reduces the real-life-cycle of actually lived events to a Comic Book.

It is a child's view of reality, of adulthood.

And that could be why so many people just can't accept the idea that there can exist such a thing as a couple "living happily ever after."

It's a childish view of adulthood, to them, and offering any single Romance genre novel as an example of how it is real just repels them more strongly.

Living life takes time.

Children just don't experience time the way adults do.

To a child, every endeavor is a one-step-process.  "Let's go to the park," says the child, and expects to drag Mom out the door.  But Mom first has to clean up breakfast, take dinner out of the freezer, answer the phone, go to the bathroom, change the kid's clothes, set the clothes washer going, pack toys and food for the kid, THEN go out the door, get into the car - oh, and on the way to the park, stop for gas, drop off the dry cleaning, and then head for the park, look for a parking spot, -- and by the time they are traipsing across the park, the kid has to go to the bathroom.  Go to the park is a multi-step procedure, and none of the regular parts of life can be neglected when you add Park to the list.

From the child's perspective, all that excess stuff is irrelevant.

Perspective may be the reason some people just can't grasp the reality of the HEA.  To progress from where that reader is to where the HEA is real is a multi-step procedure that includes many routine life-tasks plus a few special preparations, and requires some delayed gratification, some self-discipline, some heavy lifting, and long-tedious journeys between.

To the child who wants to go to the Park, getting there isn't real until he's swooping down the slides, deviling other kids on the playground, feeding the ducks, and fighting for a spot on the swings.

The child who has been to the Park before has building expectations, knowing there really is a Park, but it just isn't here right now.

The adult reading a Romance doesn't know there is an HEA, and has no idea what the connection is between this time-consuming, tedious, Romance, and the HEA.  Just as the child doesn't see the point of taking dinner out of the freezer before leaving, then stopping on errands along the way, the adult reading a Romance may not see the point of Romance.

Today's culture encourages people to confuse Romance with sex -- and that's another discussion.

There was a time when no publisher would publish a Romance novel that had even one sex scene.  Think about that.

In real life, Relationships are built over years, even decades. What a person means to you is the summation of thousands of interactions, of challenges met together, of favors done, of achievements admired, of movies watched together, and even children raised together.

Today, we are more keenly aware of what other people mean to us because of the sharp, sudden, unexpected loss of loved ones, co-workers, friends, distant relatives, neighbors, due to the Covid-19 virus, or due to lack of available treatment for a condition because of the focus on Covid-19.

People grow roots into each others' guts.  Loss of such a closely rooted person is like a tree falling over in a storm, leaving root system jutting into the air.  It's a ripping hurt.

A single novel, even a big, thick one spanning years of time, can't depict the growth of such a root system between people.

It takes a Series, maybe like the Decker/Lazarus series, spanning decades, to grow the Character's roots into the guts of the reader. To understand what the Characters mean to each other, the reader has to live their life parallel to that character.  It might take a week or two to read a long novel - and that just isn't long enough to feel, to believe, the evolutionary change of maturity the Characters have to go through between First Sight and HEA.

Ritual Bath was first published in 1986. I think it was 1992 that I first discovered a paperback of it at a book store.  It's 2020, and I can barely wait for the next installment!

Decker and Lazarus, Peter and Rina, are living the HEA - the real-life-kind of HEA, full of growth, change, challenge, and the application of the lessons learned at First Sight to the deeply entwined roots into each others' Souls.

If you want to argue the HEA with your readers, plan a long series, and be certain it has a firm structure built from the autobiographical bones of real people's real lives.  Then flesh out those bones with variations that bespeak the underlying themes you are dealing with.

Each individual novel in the Series has to open, and explicate, some sub-theme that is derived from that main envelope theme.

Note how C. J. Cherryh, in her Foreigner Series, treats the material of a single novel - an Event, a Problem, and the Solution - all focused around a theme - as a trilogy.  There is an overall theme to the series, and a sub-theme illustrated in each trilogy.

The series is structured around the life, and life-cycle, of Bren Cameron -- who is a father-figure to the young Atevi prince.

Bren stumbles from crisis to crisis -- yet he is living the HEA many readers say doesn't exist.

Think about that.  What is your vision of an HEA?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy Part 7 Is The HEA Balderdash

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy
Part 7
Is The HEA Balderdash? 


Previous parts in Soul Mates and the HEA are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

That index also contains links to posts discussing the HEA in the context of other subjects we've tackled here.

Today, let's look at some real-world views of the mystical element we call Soul.  Previously, we usually approach "Soul" as a binary proposition - either Souls are "real" in your built world, or there is no such thing as "Soul" in your built world.

In other words, as with entering a video game, you choose this or that trait, and throughout the game, stick with that choice.

But as we've noted, the readership most hungry for the payload a good Romance delivers, the HEA, is the very readership that thinks the HEA is balderdash, and thus the whole Romance genre is just balderdash.

I was in a casual discussion the other day with 3 men who were fans of the action-superhero-films, and devotees of Game of Thrones.

The shared, main complaint of this non-Romance reading audience was simple -- how come there is so little dialogue in action-superhero films?

One thought it was because dialogue is only exposition -- that's not the reason as you know if you've followed all the posts here on Tuesdays.

The reason that, over the last 15 years or so, the amount of screen time allocated to dialogue has steeply declined is simply that to afford the spiffy special effects, the film must hit it big in the non-USA market.  As someone on Twitter noted recently, you can't read subtitles while watching an action-film and enjoy the action.

Romance's "action" (plot-movement, change of situation, and character arc) all happens in words-spoken, in dialogue, and mostly in sub-text (dialogue that carries meaning other than what the dictionary says the words mean).

That's why we have a few heroic films like ROMANCING THE STONE,
and the Indiana Jones films, and so forth, and they do attract wider audiences, but Romance as such has a firm presence only in Comedy (which is, by the way, where Science Fiction started to break into wider audiences).

So there is a growing audience for the simple Romance where the guy gets the girl, and that's it.

To enjoy an action-romance film, the audience does not have to accept the HEA as either goal or distant possibility.

But the payload the disillusioned, cynical audience wants is the HEA-made-REAL.

We have discussed Believing In The Happily Ever After, and those posts are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/index-to-believing-in-happily-ever-after.html

Each subset of the audience is looking for their own, unique, convincing premise to let them revel in the reality of a Happily Ever After lifetime.

With more and more people living to and beyond 100 years, ...

See the Wall Street Journal

...today's writer has so much more material to work with, to illustrate what happiness in marriage is, and how things work out in the long-long run.

"Ever After" is not about your 30's or 40's -- it might be about your 80's but more likely you won't understand "Happily" at all until after 100.

Now why is that?  And what good is happiness if you don't understand you have it until you're about gone?

The concept of the HEA is built on the concept of Soul Mates, which can't exist unless you postulate Souls plus some sort of structure for the Soul.

"Mate" implies that all souls have something missing that can be supplied by the opposite-number, the mate, like a key in a lock, two parts that make a whole.

So already you see in your world building process that postulating A Soul is not enough to drive a Romance.  You have to create some sort of structure from your amorphous Soul.

Luckily, many mystics through all human existence have come up with many theories of what a human is, and what part of us distinguishes us from animals.

Most pet owners are convinced their animal has a Soul - or whatever awareness it is that humans have of Self.

This theory is part of the theory of Soul-structure you find in Jewish Mysticism.  Animals have Souls, yes, but the structure of the animal's soul is different, simpler, than the structure of the human soul.

In Jewish Mysticism, the human body all by itself has a Soul, the animal Soul, absolutely essential for a human to live and with the goal of staying alive, but we also have a G-dly Soul, with the goal of reconnecting with the Source of all Soul.

So humans are bifurcate creatures?  Mysticism goes on to theorize five distinct levels of our non-material (no length, no breadth, no depth, no mass, can't be detected by physical existence)  structure, and our Souls exist on each of these 5 levels.  Each level of Soul has a name.

Here's an article that sets this out with extreme simplicity.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm

As a writer building a world, you might not want to copy any particular, existing, mystical system.  Your Aliens might believe in some other system (which might be true for them, if not for humans).

But here is a quote to study from the article What Is A Soul Neshama.

--------quote-------
Five Levels

But it is the human soul that is both the most complex and the most lofty of souls. Our sages have said: "She is called by five names: Nefesh (soul), Ruach (spirit), Neshamah (breath), Chayah (life) and Yechidah (singularity)."2 The Chassidic masters explain that the soul's five "names" actually describe five levels or dimensions of the soul. Nefesh is the soul as the engine of physical life. Ruach is the emotional self and "personality." Neshamah is the intellectual self. Chayah is the supra-rational self—the seat of will, desire, commitment and faith. Yechidah connotes the essence of the soul—its unity with its source, the singular essence of G‑d. For the essence of the soul of man is "literally a part of G‑d above"3--a piece of G‑d in us, so to speak.

---------end quote------

So you see, merely establishing whether Soul is real in your built world may not give you the plot that derives from that theme.  Plot requires conflict, but mere eternal conflict isn't a Plot -- plots have structure, just like Souls, and the plot's structure demands a beginning, a middle, and an END.

Souls, we know by definition, are "eternal" and thus don't "end."

The Happily Ever After "ending" can't be an "ending" at all since it is FOREVER by definition.  Ever-after = forever.

Here's a question to answer to generate a theme.

"Is Ever After Unchanging?" 

As we've noted in previous posts, the mystical theory is that Souls enter manifestation through the dimension of Time.

As I said above, the reason science can't design an experiment to identify a "Soul" and thus prove or disprove the structure of the universe, is that Souls as described in mystical thought, have no height, depth, width, or mass.

However, mystical thought postulates that Souls enter manifestation through the dimension of Time, which means Souls Exist.

In this system, we know that G-d does not exist, since "exist" means ride along the timeline one moment after another, subject to the laws of Time.  The concept G-d includes the postulate that this primal Cause is not subject to anything, least of all the created universe.

G-d creates Time, from outside it.  This is a notion that is very hard for a creature subject to Time, counting the years to 120, too conceptualize.  Nothing is exempt from Time.  Well, yes, exactly - no thing.

This is a fundamental axiom in the Visualization of the Cosmic All used by many people to make decisions, even about what to have for dinner.

It is worth pondering just how abstract, how fundamental, these axioms are because when you build your artificial world, you must depict everything and everyone (human and Alien) in a way that is consistent with your most abstract axiom.

Conflict arises to drive plots when two Characters in your built world disagree about their axioms.  What is an axiom to some is a mere postulate to another, subject to disproof.  Wars have been fought over this - and in fact, are being fought right now over such notions.

You can create a Fantasy world, or an alternate-reality, using the Souls notion, and the different ideas about the structure of the Soul.

But once you have included Soul, and defined it with its structure -- not in your narrative or exposition but just in your worldbuilding so you can keep your world consistent, weaving an aura of verisimilitude for your readers, -- then you can create Soul Mates.

If Souls have no structure in your world, there would be no mates, and no conflict. Each individual would be sovereign and in isolation, unable to Bond with others, and therefore unable to conflict.

Souls created for high drama will be dynamic, learning, growing, changing, both continuously and in leaps-and-bounds, discontinuously.  (like real people).

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

So once you've included Soul in your world building, you give your Souls a structure that allows for "mating" and a part that drives the Character to find a mate, allows a Character to identify a Mate, then you have a Theme and Plot-Worldbuilding integrated set of postulates.

Now, if you can get your skeptical reader to suspend disbelief and empathize with a Character for whom Soul is an axiom, you can tackle the next part of "Happily Ever After" that your reader has problems with.

Most people who reject the fictional worlds with a thematic structure that allows for an HEA, do so because the HEA itself is an idiotic notion.

HEA requires both an eternity (a Soul)
 and a specific definition of Happiness.

Some readers reject the HEA as realistic because they don't know anyone who has lived it, or found it, or even heard of someone who is persistently happy.

In fact, the absence of real-life examples of an HEA couple is the biggest stumbling block.  Only children, teens who haven't lived long enough to observe the real-life absence of happiness or ever-after-to-a-hundred-years, actually believe in the HEA -- in "if I could just find my Soul Mate all my problems would be solved and I'd be happy."

Many cynics choke on the definition of happy.  The lifestyle depicted in many novels, the hopes and dreams as stated by the young and inexperienced, would be unendurably boring.

Boring?  Happiness?

Well, yes, by definition it's all over, no conflict, no giant projects, no Cause To Die For.  What an empty, boring life.

Would you be happy if you never had to wash another dish?  Ironing.  Mending.  Planting, reaping, washing, churning butter -- we used to work so hard, and one by one these daily chores have been lifted off our tired backs.  But are we happy?  No, now it's carpooling, PTA meetings, office work, ever-available-by-cell-phone.  We are not happy doing nothing.  And we're not happy having nothing to complain about.

So what is happiness?  You can't craft an HEA without a working definition of happiness, but your Characters may "arc," may start out the novel with one definition and travel a curved trajectory through the plot to end up with another.

Readers who can't abide the concept of Soul often also have no concrete definition of happiness.  To convince such readers to enjoy suspending disbelief, the writer has to supply both, or risk the novel being labeled balderdash.

The same mystical source that defines the Soul as structured into 5 levels, also solves the problem of why, in our everyday existence, we can't nail down a definition of happiness.

We know it when we feel it, but it is always an emotion that just evaporates on impact with the next life challenge.

Romance is an interval (a Neptune transit to your natal chart) when Neptune casts a glamour over the world, blurs the rough edges, and softens the impact of events.  People remember it as the happiest time of life, but it is a defined interval, not "ever after."

The honeymoon will inevitably end, and reality come crashing in.

OK, so when building your world to exemplify a theme having to do with the HEA, how do you define happiness?

Does happiness exist?

What happens to people when they are happy?

Neuroscience is pursuing this, taking interesting photos of the brain's circuitry.  But is "happiness" just the stimulation of the pleasure centers?

Many reject the HEA simply because "ever after" implies unchanging, and thus, as noted above, boring.

Humans crave change.  We play videogames and keep score because we need to do better each time, we need to count how many times, and change things.

The mental condition dictated by brain development during the college years is the unstoppable urge to "change the world" because it's all wrong, it's not new and modern, and we have to make those old people change.

To that developmental stage, all change is good, whether it is an improvement or not.

You can't have human happiness unless there's change, which means happiness can't be "ever after."  Eternal happiness would be hell.

So what exactly is happiness?  

It is obviously not a property of the physical, human (primate) body which has a pleasure center in the brain, but gets addicted, or goes stark-raving-nuts if that pleasure center is CONSTANTLY STIMULATED.

So happiness is not necessarily pleasurable, at least not to the body.

Note again the linkage between Soul Mates and the HEA is what this series of posts explores.  And we have come to a nexus where the two must connect.

That connecting nexus is the definition of happiness.

Perhaps "happiness" is not a phenomenon of the physical body, but rather a phenomenon of the Soul?

Because Soul is eternal, and only part of the complex structure of the Soul is subject to Time, true happiness, once achieved, is by definition eternal, or "ever after."

Once you've got it, you can't not-have-it.

The definition of happiness may contain the notion of eternity.

Now consider the bifurcate structure of the Soul discussed in the article quoted above,
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm

--------quote--------
Two Souls

The Chassidic masters speak of two distinct souls that vitalize the human being: an "Animal Soul" and a "G‑dly Soul." The Animal Soul is driven by the quest for self-preservation and self-enhancement; in this, it resembles the soul and self of all other creations. But we also possess a G‑dly Soul"--a soul driven by the desire to reconnect with its Source. Our lives are the story of the contest and interplay between these two souls, as we struggle to balance and reconcile our physical needs and desires with our spiritual aspirations, our self-focused drives with our altruistic yearnings. These two souls, however, do not reside "side-by-side" within the body; rather, the G‑dly Soul is enclothed within the Animal Soul—just as the Animal Soul is enclothed within the body. This means that the Animal Soul, too, is vitalized by the "part of G‑d above" at its core. Ostensibly, the two souls are in conflict with each other, but in essence they are compatible.4

--------end quote-------

Suppose we can't figure out "what" happiness is because happiness is a state, or experience, or property of the "G-dly Soul."  Experiencing happiness, the G-dly Soul within the Animal Soul induces a vibrational response in the Animal Soul.  And that response is all we have to examine.

We are trying to figure out what happiness is, when all we have to examine is the effect of happiness.

The G-dly Soul fused to the Animal Soul is the source, and it is the G-dly Soul's experience that causes the Animal Soul to feel happiness.

-----quote-----
A soul is not just the engine of life; it also embodies the why of a thing's existence, its meaning and purpose.

------end quote------

Maybe happiness is the achieving the G-dly Soul's meaning and purpose, the reason that unique individual was crested.

Or maybe it isn't having achieved that creates true happiness, but the score, the tally, we rack up along the way, like in a video game or any other engrossing, immersive, enthralling endeavor.

This image of the Soul's Quest being an "ever after" dynamic, ever-changing yet perpetual happy experience is presented in an article here:

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1303062/jewish/Help-from-the-Past.htm

The article provides a useful notion for plotters:

--------quote--------
All the souls of these generations have been here before. And they come with their baggage—both good and not so good.

But there is a distinction:

The good the soul has collected is eternal. It can never be uprooted, it can never fade away, for it is G‑dly, and G‑d does not change.

But the bad is not a thing of substance. It is an emptiness, a vacancy of light. As the soul makes its journey, through trials and travails, through growth and renewal, that darkness falls away, never to return.

Know yourself only as you are here in this life, and the challenges of our times are beyond perseverance.

Tap into the reservoir of your soul from the past, and find there the unimaginable powers of millennia.

---------end quote ------

Think about that.  GOOD is eternal.  BAD is dispatched, never to return.

That is score-keeping, that is measurable progress, that is what humans are designed to become engrossed within.

We wash one dish, set it in the drainer, and wash another, and keep score by how full the drainer is.

Or today we load the dishwasher, wait for it to cycle, take the dry dishes out and put in the rest of the pots and pans waiting on the counter.  Little by little, the kitchen comes into order, ready for the next meal.

The futility of all that stems from the lack of a COUNTER on the wall, to count the number of meals served vs the number that must be served, so we can see progress toward a goal.

We do it in stitching quilts, each stitch permanent vanquishing of scattered bits of cloth, and the progress toward a coherent pattern.

Happiness for humans is scoring progress toward the G-dly Soul's objective, a score kept by the Animal Soul, and a celebration, a high-five, between the two.

Every good deed, every bit of goodness our Souls have brought into the world over many lifetimes is progress, measurable progress toward the goal because Goodness is permanent while the bad is ephemeral.

So all the good you did in previous incarnations is part of your score in this incarnation.  And what you do now, will be part of your score next time.

Racking up that score, continuing to increase it, to do good deeds every day, is happiness.  You can increase your score by teaming with your Soul Mate, raising kids, working toward good causes, helping the helpless, or serving the meals every day, keeping bodies alive.

That is one usable theory that generates whole bundles of themes.  The HEA is not about achieving a static state, but rather is about achieving the dynamic state of increasing the good in the world.

See if you can come up with a system of axioms and postulates - say for your Aliens to live by - that has the ring of verisimilitude this one does.

By using different definitions of "good" you can generate lots of themes, and many Characters in conflict with each other -- none of whom are villains!  Everyone is increasing what they consider good in the world -- they just disagree on what is good!

But before you launch that conflict, be sure you have a resolution of it in mind.  "Good" may be as difficult to define for the modern reader as "happiness" is -- and Soul, and ever-after.

Both plotters and pantsers ...
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/targeting-readership-part-16-plotters.html

...can use the method of knowing the resolution to the conflict before starting to write the novel.  As you write, using either crafting style, you will find that the resolution point itself may shift, change, and morph, requiring lots of rewriting.  Both styles require you to stop writing when the conflict has been resolved.

Consider that if happiness is, by definition, a property of the G-dly  Soul, then "mate" is likely also a property of the G-dly Soul.

Possibly, the Animal Soul's experience of cementing the Soul Mate bond is by sharing the G-dly Soul's happiness.

Now, if the reader's axiom is that there is no Soul, and thus no bifurcation into G-dly Soul and Animal Soul, and no structure of G-dly and Animal souls which could mate with another such bifurcate soul, then all of this is balderdash.

Your job, as a writer, is to make these notions real, tangible and immanent.  The best way to do that in fiction is to use symbolism.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com






Tuesday, June 04, 2019

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 21 - The Couple's First Fight

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 21
The Couple's First Fight 

Previous entries indexed:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Just because you're Soul Mates, does that mean you actually LIKE each other?

Science Fiction and Paranormal Romance writers may be able to avoid answering that question if they end off the novel at the first "I Love You."

But does Love=Like?

The HEA advocates promote the idea that you can't love someone without also liking them, that you two could get along with each other for all the decades ahead, and even prefer each-others' company.

The idea is that just feeling the sexual stirring at the sight of a person necessarily means you love them and therefore will never dislike them.  But more pragmatic HFN advocates sit through the blush of Romance expecting that First Fight at any moment.

Disliking the person you live with prevents any form of Happiness.

And that First Fight is a game-changer in a Relationship, setting up whether the two will LIKE each other after sexuality is no longer a factor (that is where the "ever after" part comes in.)

How can a Science Fiction or Paranormal Romance writer create that First Fight scene between Soul Mates and still leave the reader convinced (even if the Characters aren't convinced) that this is a Soul Mate match, and that Love will indeed Conquer the strife?

Can strife be vanquished by Conquering?  If your answer is yes, you have one set of themes to choose from, but if it is no, then you turn to another set of themes.  Does the application of Force cause humans (or your non-humans) to change their unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality?

The First Fight scene declares where the author stands on this obscure point.  The First Fight is the first time one member of the Couple attempts to use Force (yelling, stomping, throwing pillows, maybe breaking something, or even tactics like crying) to assert the preeminence of their own view of how things are and how they should go.  When the other member of the Couple responds with similar Force - you have a "fight."

Previous disagreements ... where to stop for lunch; which movie to see ... were settled without pyrotechnics, but this issue somehow hits a raw nerve and suddenly asserting preeminence is necessary for survival, for personal integrity, for Identity.  It is suicide to desist.

To engage the reader in this scene, so the Characters don't seem silly, immature, mis-matched, or headed for a murder-suicide scene, the writer must foreshadow all the elements of the argument.  Before the First Fight scene, the reader has to understand how deeply invested each Character is in the eternal truth of their assumption.  The writer has to show-don't-tell how the Character's Identity stands or falls on this pivotal issue.

With the reader thus waiting for the Characters to clash over this defining issue, the writer can frame that crucial, Relationship developing or dooming scene.

Scene Framing and development is taught very well in the SAVE THE CAT! series of writing books by Blake Snyder.

https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/

We discussed scene structure in these posts.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

Scenes, the building block of fiction, are plot elements, driven by "rising action" -- the increase in reader expectation of what will happen next.

In other words, each series of about 750 words must connect what just happened to what MIGHT happen next, and make the reader want to guess where we go from here.

In the typical action-fight scene, two people square off and go acrobatic, landing blows, throwing each others' bodies around and into walls, blood flows, and eventually one doesn't get up. The one left standing "wins."  Study fight scenes on TV (and chase scenes), take notes, observe how long each sub-sequence within the fight lasts.

The best fight scenes, in the longest running TV Series, engage the audience because they are graphic re-enactments of marital quarrels or fights.  Draw the connections between physical blows and psychological blows.

The opening clash in a fight scene defines the outcome.  Most "action" fight scenes define the outcome by defining the fight as a zero-sum-game -- I win; you lose.

We discussed how testosterone works in humans in a previous post.  As with many animals, a human male who has been conquered will not challenge that conquerer again. Testosterone levels of the loser of a fight plunge, while the winner rises.

Here are a few posts discussing that knuckling-under phenomenon, and how marriage and children can shift a man's testosterone profile:

Depicting the married hunk:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html

Depicting Alien History
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-21-depicting-alien.html

Depicting Brain To Computer Links - (online bullying prevention)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/09/depiction-part-32-depicting-brain-to.html

Soul Mate of the Kickass Heroine
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/07/theme-character-integration-part-13.html

As we noted in the previous post in this series, ...

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-20.html

...the reader is on a quest to solve the mystery, What Will Happen Next?

That's what keeps readers turning the pages, and buying the next book in the series.  It is what makes a book "interesting" --- not the topic, not the presence or absence of a love story, not the setting, or any of the elements readers point to when asked what interests them.  Any topic or setting, any Character, can be swathed in the cloak of mystery and lure any reader into turning a few pages.

LIFE is a mystery to be solved -- and a mystery every single living person is pursuing the solution to.  So all our "interesting" fiction hooks us with the mystery of  "Where do we come from?"  "Where are we going?" "Why are we here?"

These are mysteries leading us into the highest possible abstractions of theoretical thinking.  But the answers writers offer have to be applicable to everyday reality problems, such as "We just had our First Fight! Now what?"

While a couple is in the white-hot-heat of conflict (the essence of story is conflict), they rarely stop to grapple with the underlying philosophy of their own unconscious assumptions.

People fight over "do it my way" or "it's my turn" or "don't you dare" -- they don't fight over the definition of "I."

People fight over Who Is Right, not What Is Right.

If you want some examples of people actually arguing, not fighting, and arguing about what is right rather than who is right, check out the Talmud where each Rabbi's conclusions are carefully recorded with his name, preserved and studied.  Sometimes the issue is not resolved - and people choose to go with one or the other.

If nebulous abstractions such as right vs wrong enter the arena, it is generally only by powerful, screamed assertions not laying out of details of reasoning from the axiom behind the derived opinion.

So the fight becomes all about "Who Is Right" -- with nobody using the word "why" as anything but an accusation of malfeasance.

So to create that First Fight dialogue and make it convincing, the writer has to keep the actual issue over which the free flow of energy between the two lovers has become disrupted.

By keeping the dialogue "off the nose" (assuming you've read the whole Save The Cat! Series) you can inform the reader about the unconscious assumptions behind made by each Character, and you can display the essential incompatibility of the two different assumptions.

This pattern of unconscious assumptions gives the writer the opportunity to anchor the disagreement in everyday Reality -- even if the details of the issue being disagreed over have non-human, interstellar civilization, ghostly, angelic, demonic, origins.  The essence of Alien Romance is that each is alien to the other.

Each member of the Couple will be using a Visualization of the Macrocosmic All, a model of the universe, a model of reality, constructed in their minds, and the on-the-nose issue is really which model of reality matches actual reality closest.

NOTE: Consider the cliche argument between driver and map-reader when lost on unmarked country roads, where the map doesn't quite match what they are seeing out the windshield.  These days, imagine they have no cellphone bars way out there, and the car's built-in nav isn't working.

Should we stop to ask for directions? Who should we ask, the kid herding sheep by the side of the road?  The farmhouse over there?  The next gas station? The police station in the next town -- or the one behind us?

Both might agree that to get information, one should search where the information is likely to be.  But they might FIGHT over which option would be most likely to produce reliable information.

This type of argument (which comes in all guises) is really about two different assumptions about how the Universe is constructed.

The fictional universe which the writer constructs to convey the theme of the fictional work (Love Conquers All) has answers to those kinds of questions (where and how to get information most expeditiously.)

The best novels show how each Character's assumptions about their World are correct even while being mutually exclusive.  That is the resolution of any Conflict that generates plot and story -- you're both right and both wrong.  Here's what neither of you knew before.

Each scene, each chapter, and the book as a whole, starts with a specified CONFLICT, brings conflicting elements together releasing energy that drives the next developments.  The energy is released when the conflict of the page is resolved.

Many writers can specify a conflict nicely and neatly, but can't deliver a resolution that leaves most people delighted to have their assumptions validated or enjoying the partial validation that causes them to ask more questions.

So how does a writer resolve the map-reading controversy?

You look at the World you have built, at which elements differ from the reader's reality, how they differ, and what you want to say about that difference.  What you want to say is your Theme.

For example: Does God manifest in your fictional world? Would praying help the lost Couple find the farmhouse they are looking for?  Is there such a thing as ESP and does one of them have it?  Could the map reader telepathically pick the mind of the roadside shepherd?

Would the driver take the map reader's world for it?

If the driver takes the map reader's word for it, do they actually get where they're going?  The answer to this question is a Plot Development.

When they get more lost or arrive at destination, what has each learned?  The answer to that question is a Story Development.

Continuing the metaphor of a road map representing the Character's Visualization of the Macrocosmic All, the Character's notion of the shape, texture and moving parts of Reality, look at how closely the Character's map of reality represents his/her actual Reality (which is not quite the Reader's Reality).

The more your model of reality resembles your actual reality, the more successful your actions will be, the more accurately the results of actions will be predicted.  In other words, the mystery of life will be easier to solve, and thus the reader's quest for a solution to that mystery will be successful.

Remember, Romance is signified in astrology by the planet Neptune, and the blurring-of-reality effect Neptune transits have on people.  Neptune transits re-set priorities, generally bringing spiritual matters such as Souls into a higher priority than practical matters (Saturn) such as a paycheck (Venus).

Once the Neptune transit has wained, the Honeymoon is over, priorities revert and the new spouse is seen in a different light.  That's usually where the First Fight of memorable proportions occurs because each had set aside their ordinary priorities while falling in love.  Neither had been able to perceive the ordinary priorities of the other, didn't know they had differences or how crucial those set-aside beliefs were.

One reason so many people reject Romance as a Genre, reject the idea that Love can Conquer anything permanently, is that in our everyday world, we have observed very few examples of couples who have executed their First Fight smoothly.

Primate studies have shown the pure animal nature of the primate female has the odd property of having to LEARN to be a mother, to care for an infant. Female primates raised without a mother, without observing mothering, don't accept and nurture their offspring.

There are many basic human behaviors that we never think about having learned -- maybe because we learn them before we are verbally fluent, when tone of voice and posture speak more loudly than words.

Perhaps one of these behaviors that must be transmitted to our children early is about how to fight with a Soul Mate, and how to resolve conflicts.

Most likely, the First Fight scene happens before the couple has children to observe it, but how future fights progress to resolution (yes, it can take years to resolve some of these issues) will be determined by how the First Fight resolves.

https://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Enemy-Fight-Fair-Marriage/dp/0380003929/


Conflict Resolution is a huge topic in psychiatry, psychology, and every sort of life counseling and coaching.

One reason our everyday world is so fraught with strife, flame wars of vile language meant to inflict personal damage, and International flinging of bombs at each other, may simply be that these adults grew up without role models who fought and resolved personal conflicts.

On the most basic, psychological, level -- inside ourselves, between "Me, Myself, and I," we don't know what to do when challenged, contradicted, pre-empted, denigrated, set aside, ignored, or directly targeted (often by displaced anger or rage.)

From the point of view of the non-human, Alien From Outer Space, (the Spock Character, for example), our international disputes and the mud-slinging vitriol those disputes engender, seem utterly childish.

Look at some random international or political headlines -- the raw material you use for your novels.  Listen to the wording, and distinguish between the Journalist-headline-writer, the subject being quoted, and the target-audience for that headline.  Now go to the nearest K-6 school and watch kids in the playground during unsupervised or unstructured play.  Can you see a difference?

Watch some chimpanzee videos.  Look for similarities to headlines.

It becomes harder to imagine an Alien hunk falling in love with a human woman.

If the Aliens have matured past projecting their playground animosities onto the World Stage, your Hero would feel little but revulsion at the sight of a human.

If the Aliens have never had this behavior pattern, humans would be too alien to them for a Soul Mate bond to gel.

One good Conflict to build science fiction around would be genuine Soul Mates born so alien to one another that the natural attraction is more than countered by the innate revulsion.  It's been done several times and done well.

The Romance writer, of any sub-genre, looking to argue the anti-Romance readers into believing in the HEA, has to be able to argue both sides of the HEA issue.

If the HEA is possible, what conditions have to be met?

Is the HEA a "special case" in the World you are building?

Or is the HEA an inevitable consequence of that World's structure?

Assuming the HEA is an inevitable consequence of the structure of the world you have built, provided only that true Soul Mates meet, how do you live happily ever after if you discover you don't LIKE the person you LOVE?

Add an element to the world, the physics and spiritual reality of that world to answer the question of whether love=like.

Do Soul Mates always love each other? At first sight, or does love have to be built?

Is Love temporary (e.g. you can fall out of love because of a fight), or is Love  simply eternal, so live with it because you can't get out of it?

Your definition of Love, rooted in the premises of the world you build for your Characters, will determine how that First Fight comes out.  But whether they learn how to "fight fair" and how to apologize, and how to "make up" must grow out of the Characterization you've "depicted" prior to that first fight scene.

What you build into your Characters and their World also determines the outcome the fight.  If one wins, the other loses part of their Identity (which can become an open wound decades later).  If both win, or both lose, that sets up a process of compromise later -- leaving everyone unhappy over what was lost.

The "ever after" part of the HEA ending is the springboard into the expectation that the Couple will resolve every future conflict with the same firm, smoothness that the reader has seen in their First Fight.

To get that smoothness, there can't be winning and losing.  Compromise means each loses something, and that may seem fair and right to some people, but it won't seem HAPPY.  "Happy" is getting everything you need and most of what you want, with the prospect of getting the rest eventually.

Happy is satisfied.

How do you reach that kind of a resolution to a conflict?  By not having one prevail over the other.  No defeats, no sacrifices, no deprivations for the sake of the other.

As far as I know, the only disagreements that can be resolved without the win/lose, zero-sum-game paradigm of Reality are the disagreements about WHAT is right, based on the unconscious assumption that it will FEEL GOOD to discover any mistakes you've made in determining what is right.

Take the driver vs map-reader example.  They both want to get where they are going -- maybe house-hunting a rural farm.  It doesn't matter which of them made what mistake.  It matters only to discover the mistake and FIX IT, both adopting the best solution.

Most people HATE IT when their mistakes are on open display, especially before someone whose good opinion matters to them.

So if a spouse digs out a mistake the other spouse has made, that mistake has to be put on the table WITHOUT BLAME.

If the First Fight scene ends with uncovering a mistake, and the discoverer uses it as a club to bludgeon the other's emotions, or in some fashion uses some very private, very personal information to evoke EMBARRASSMENT, then from that moment on, there may be love (and even great sex) but the embarrassed one will not LIKE the embarrasser.


Perhaps the First Fight ends with both parties standing corrected.  They can share their chagrin.  And that would bond them more deeply.  Love and Like can come together.

And even stronger bond of liking the lover can be forged where there is real, palpable guilt, embarrassment, loss of self-confidence, in the one who made the mistake, and the one who had the correct answer responds to the instant defensive attack of the embarrassed one with a kind, gentle, understanding.

If the defense is met with a shift in perspective executed using intimate knowledge, the defense would come down and apologies wouldn't be necessary or even appropriate.  No winner.  No loser.  Just a correct course plotted to their new home.

The Relationship will then gel instantly when the embarrassed one watches as the correct one shields their PRIVACY by not letting anyone know what happened.

Readers will believe this Couple has won through to an HEA because privacy is guarded.

Be sure to note the difference between privacy and secrecy - huge topic, so here are a couple of places I mentioned it.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-5.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/09/depiction-part-33-depicting-privacy-by.html

And that may be the greatest key to the HEA -- both members of the couple build a wall of sacrosanct privacy around themselves.  They guard each others vulnerable spots so they trust each other to fight fair.

In our current culture, the very notion of Privacy is being challenged.  Could be that the Romance Genre's HEA will point us all to a better attitude.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com