Showing posts with label Strong Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strong Character. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

Soul Mates And The HEA Real or Fantasy Part 2

Soul Mates And The HEA Real or Fantasy
Part 2
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Part One of this series on the plausibility of the HEA and Soul Mate premises of Romance novels is:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/03/soul-mates-and-hea-real-or-fantasy-part.html

We have discussed the plausibility of the Soul Mate hypothesis and the Happily Ever After goal hypothesis in many different contexts.  Here are some:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-14.html

If the HEA is implausible, how come it happens?
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/if-hea-is-implausible-how-come-it.html

The Cheating Woman
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/03/happily-ever-after-life-patterns-part-2.html

Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other (building the foundation of a series)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/index-to-believing-in-happily-ever-after.html

And What Does She See In Him?
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

So all of this gets very abstract for the writer, while necessarily very concrete and visual for the Reader.

To find a book to be a "page-turner" or immersive or just a whopping good read, the reader has to be able to sense a congruence between their everyday life and the implausible, whacky, zany or soapy life of the Characters.

So the writer must translate a world view the writer just makes up into a story the reader can recognize in real life.

The Soul Mate and HEA hypotheses fail with certain readers because the writer failed to translate the writer's "Love Conquers All" assumptions into a language (symbolism) the reader can recognize.

People don't reject the Romance Genre because they don't believe in Romance.  They reject the Romance genre because the writers assume the readers share the premise.

That is one difference between Romance and Science Fiction.

In science fiction or fantasy genres, the writer assumes the reader is a trained skeptic grounded in real-world logic and with a personality structured on thinking in dependently and never taking authority's word for anything.

In Romance, the writer assumes the reader yearns for romance in her life, has seen it happen to others, expects it, wants to find a way to achieve it, and knows beyond doubt that finding Romance will solve most of the irksome problems of her life.

In science fiction romance the reader is looking for an argument to prove Love Conquers All.  "Show me!" is the attitude of the scientist looking to define Romance.

Science fiction is not escapist literature.  It is literature for those who want to reshape their reality not escape from it.

Show your reader how to create Romance, define and identify Souls, and understand the disciplines of the HEA, and you have cross-connected the two genres.

To do this, the Science Fiction Romance writer has to create an understanding of the nature of Reality (actual, real, everyday reality -- e.g. the Headlines from which we rip our stories).

The writer does not have to create a correct understanding of Reality, but does have to identify and define the precise parameters of the Soul and HEA hypotheses in the World the writer is building.  This defines the edges, the shape of that world, and thus defines what choices the Characters have before them.

In other words, the Soul and HEA hypothesis the writer chooses generates the plot, and integrates that plot with the theme.

THEME: Souls Are Real
THEME: Life has a purpose; each individual is rewarded for achieving that purpose.

The HEA is a reward for a Soul achieving a purpose.  How is the purpose assigned, by whom, why, and how is that purpose made possible to achieve -- and what choices does a Soul have, and when does the Soul make that choice (before or after birth?)

THEME: Rebirth does not have to involve reincarnation

THEME: The HEA is equivalent to retirement on a cushy pension or Veteran's Benefits.

In a previous post, we discussed crafting the Soul Mate of the Kickass Heroine:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/07/theme-character-integration-part-13.html

We examined the nature of character, what people call "strong character" -- we all know when we meet a "strong" person, but sometimes we don't really know why we think that person is "strong."

So we looked deeply at the concept of character, trying to find the way to telegraph to a reader that this Character (this artificial person who runs through your story) is a Strong Character.

We created one (of hundreds of possible) idea of what the concept "character" might be in real life, and explored some fictional uses for the concept.

Character, we puzzled out, might be defined as the mechanism that connects Soul and Body.

Character is not soul.  Character is not body.

Soul is the non-material spirit we feel is our Self.  Body is the purely animal carcass that Spirit inhabits.  The Kabbalah indicates the Soul enters our manifest reality through the dimension of Time.  So we have questions that generate themes: what is Time, what is Soul, what is a human body, what is character?

Humans can be more animal than spirit, or more spirit than animal -- or a nice, firm, buffered, flexible-but-unbreakable balance.

Character is the style, manner and method by which a Soul inhabits a Body.

A "Strong Character" is one where the Soul tames and domesticates the Body, making friends with the animal spirit the way a good dog trainer tames a dog.

For those into Tarot, consider the STRENGTH CARD.

That's why character (real life people), and Character (fictional people) are so complex.  We are composed of two variables and the relationship between them -- all 3 factors are nothing but pure energy.

THEME: the real world is continuous.

THEME: the real world is discontinuous.

Take the attributes of the "real world" your readers live in -- 3 spatial dimensions + time.

Over the last hundred years or so, theories of the structure of Space-Time have gone from "The Space-Time Continuum" to a model in which space, time, matter and energy are discontinuous -- e.g. Quantized.

The quantized model of reality raises a lot of questions and allows for a wide range of themes for Science Fiction Romance, a science that depends entirely on the reality of the Soul (since we write about the search for Soul Mates).

Science has been grappling with the issues of where a soul hypothesis could fit into modern physics and psychology -- life after death, ghosts, out of body experiences, precognition, prophecy -- some considerable research funding goes to projects searching for the how and why of the human sense of Self.

The Fantasy genres have been digging deep into the science behind fantasy -- why does the human brain fantasize?

Each answer to these questions generates a fertile master theme for a series of Science Fiction Romance novels.

But in 2018, this article appeared
http://cengor.com/science/the-soul-fits-into-quantum-mechanics-according-to-physicis-tutrt-vytrfyt-hgfyt.html

-----quote-----
Belief in the soul is scientific, according to Stapp. Here the word “soul” is used to describe a consciousness or personality which is independent of the brain or the rest of the human body. This consciousness transcends the physical body and does indeed survive death. In his paper, “Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory With Personality Survival,” he wrote: “Strong doubts about personality survival based solely on the belief that postmortem survival is incompatible with the laws of physics are unfounded.”

Stapp noted of his own concepts: “There has been no hint in my previous descriptions (or conception) of this orthodox quantum mechanics of any notion of personality survival.”
------end quote---

This article is about "life after death" which, if proven even provisionally, could generate many wonderful Themes about the nature of life before life (i.e. the Soul choosing a Body and a Birth Time generating challenges of certain kinds are certain ages.)

As we have noted in the Astrology Just For Writers series,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html
"Romance" is a condition which happens during certain kinds of Neptune transits.  This means that when you are born determines what age you will be when you experience Romance, and it also determines if there might be future encounters with Romance (opportunities for infidelity or second marriages after widowhood).  Astrology can not reveal when you'll die -- the solar system goes right along spinning even after you die, and surely spun steadily before you were born.

But Romance happens at Neptune challenges.  Those exact transits can also generate monumental (soap opera style) life-failures, stupid choices, vast mistakes, drug-dependency or addiction, and/or complete changes in your life (job, residence, marriage, children, religious affiliation).  Neptune dissolves reality -and after the transit (often a year or more of melt-down) life reforms around new parameters.

Paranormal Romance deals with Life After Death - but Life Before Death is as yet largely unexplored.

If Time is quantized, perhaps the Soul is actually discontinuous, too?  Or its presence in the body may be discontinuous (theory is that the soul leaves the body during sleep),

Perhaps Souls have "energy levels" akin to those of electrons and other particles?

Perhaps different Souls are composed of different Soul Particles?

The same article, Page 2
http://cengor.com/science/the-soul-fits-into-quantum-mechanics-according-to-physicis-tutrt-vytrfyt-hgfyt.html/2

gives us an animated tutorial on the double-slit experiment which seems to demonstrate the importance of INDIVIDUAL CHOICE and OBSERVATION.

That is the rudimentary level of the Kabbalistic emphasis on the importance of human choice in determining the outcome of any situation.  The HEA is the archetypal case in point -- what choices guarantee an HEA?  Is belief in it enough to generate it?

In reality and fantasy, in science fiction or science fiction romance, the reader is looking for a Character to become, to inhabit like their Soul inhabits their Body.

That is the experience of the "good read" we all search for - to walk in someone else's moccasins, to work on their problems thus strengthening our ability to solve our own.

When it comes to finding a Soul Mate, we grope our way to an understanding of who we are by trying to understand what "who" means.  Fiction gives us hypotheses to entertain, possibilities to explore, and theories to test in real life.

Are the brain and mind two separate things?  Does that question even make sense?

–––––quote--------
The quantum explanation of how the mind and brain can be separate or different, yet connected by the laws of physics “is a welcome revelation,” wrote Stapp. “It solves a problem that has plagued both science and philosophy for centuries—the imagined science-mandated need either to equate mind with brain, or to make the brain dynamically independent of the mind.”
-------end quote)

THEME: The brain is the animal human.  The mind is the soul human.

In a strong character or Character, brain and mind are so "strongly" connected, harmonized, and balanced, attuned and functioning that the person moves through the world leaving a spreading wake of peace.

Such a Strong Character has many internal conflicts but resolves them with targeted and well orchestrated actions.

THEME: A Kickass Heroine can not be a Strong Character because she solves problems by kicking ass.

THEME: Monkey sex illustrates weakness of Character because it satisfies only the Body not the Soul.

Think about it a little and you will find dozens of themes that have not yet been explored deeply in Science Fiction Romance, many of which could convince atheists that the Soul is real.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, March 06, 2018

Theme-Character Integration Part 12 - Creating A Kickass Heroine

Theme-Character Integration
Part 12
Creating A Kickass Heroine 

Previous Theme-Character Integration entries are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

Google Sexual Harassment and you get thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, maybe millions of online posts or tweets, on this topic of how many men, especially those who wield power in our society, will not take "no" for an answer.

This aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com blog is about Alien-Human Relationships - even if the "alien" is a ghost, magic user, creature from another dimension -- we scrutinize human relationships, dissect the emotional dynamics and create fictional worlds from the resulting pieces.

One of the prime aspects of human relationships is sexuality, and in the 21st Century the entire definition of "gender" is shifting fast and hard to something never envisioned or advised about by our ancestors.  We might be viewed as the Aliens by our ancestors visiting up this timeline.

The blogs by Jacqueline Lichtenberg posted here on Tuesdays are about how someone who wants to write (and sell) a mixed-genre Romance novel can process the observations of the reality surrounding readers to target a readership that wants to explore this alien-human dimension in Relationship.

Everyone knows what a good Relationship can, should, and ought to be.

And everyone recognizes (from kindergarten age) what a bad Relationship is.  Little kids don't have to be taught to hit back.  They have to be taught ways of handling conflict without hitting.  Humans are primates.  Primates hit.

In the Romance genre premise, Humans are also something else.

On this writing craft blog we talk about that "something else" a lot -- because we are all about Romance, and the envelope theme: Love Conquers All.

We explore (with suitable skepticism) the path from the here and now to the Happily Ever After.

And the crucial element in achieving a Happily Ever After (HEA) position in life, is bonding to your Soul Mate.  So the premise is that Souls are real.  That is one huge lump for some readers to swallow.

That overall purpose of this blog -- the writing craft techniques that can be used to cast the magical image of a life with a Soul where Love Conquers Obstacles and the Couple Arrives At The Happily Ever After situation -- makes the eruption of the issues of Sexual Harassment - especially in the workplace - a topic Romance writers must think about.

That is think -- not feel.

Yes, Romance novels are all about feelings.  The shift and change of feelings the Characters have for each other are the story.

In reality, the truth is that feelings are actually more important than facts in determining Character Motivation.

Character Motivation is derived from and explains the novel's theme.

So while theme is, as we have discussed in several series of blog posts, a very abstract and theoretical "take" on reality, very intellectual, cold, and even remorseless truth behind Reality, nevertheless theme is also where you explain the Character's emotions to the Reader.

"Explain" is an intellectual exercise, and "Emotion" is very non-intellectual -- in fact emotion may be thematically regarded as anti-Intellectual.

We see this in the explosive popularity of the TV Series Character Spock.

Star Trek presents the intellect vs emotion theme -- one or the other, a choice, a decision.

But it is a TV Show, and because of the medium it was created for, had to strip the issue down to the very basic, over-simplified truth.

Novelists have an advantage because we can explore nuances, and complex models of reality by creating Characters who look at the world in various ways.

A TV Series must limit the number of Characters, and how much time they spend just talking to each other about abstract matters.  Novelists, likewise, must limit the number of Characters (and pages of conversation), but our limits are much wider, much greater.

So while a TV show has to portray sexual harassment in a few seconds of screaming conflict or teeth-gritted, iron-faced acceptance, a novelist can spend more time -- and employ more tools (symbolism, description, internal dialogue, etc. ) and even plan long series of novels to bring the miscreant to Poetic Justice.

Poetic Justice, done in TV Series Brevity always looks contrived, artificial, and way too quick to be real.

A 2017 TV Series episode is a good case in point.  HAWAII 5-O revival, Season 7, Episode 16 (available usually on Netflix) is about a guy perpetrating a fraud by purporting to teach men how to approach and "get" "women" (note plural, women, not a woman, not your soul mate).  One student in his course is described as having been dumped by a woman, and being utterly crushed, so he got a course to build confidence.  The fraud is that the course-giver hires prostitutes to accept the student's pick-up line.  Note: "women" is the signature of success.

There are a few salient scenes where this fraud is holding forth before his class, and the dialog describes exactly how to integrate theme and character, and understand the ambient mentality (the unquestioned assumptions) of today's male population.  The exceptions among today's males are starkly noticeable to any woman.

In this 5-O episode, our woman officer (who is now married to a former gangster) voices the Kickass Heroine attitude toward this fraud and the "women" assumptions behind his pick-up lines.

There is a fascinating sub-theme/sub-plot in this episode about lost sun glasses.  Danny thinks a kid stole his sunglasses and pursues the kid, finds the sun glasses the kid wore and discovers (honestly) that these are not Danny's own sunglasses.  Then he sits down, and by accident crushes his own sunglasses which he left on a chair.  The Fraud Perp gets his poetic justice, and Danny gets his.

The two themes are joined at the point of "Assumptions" -- the Fraud makes a fortune playing on the unexamined assumptions of men, and Danny loses on the unexamined assumptions of teen kids.

Overall, it is a very solid, well crafted script.  It reveals the profile of the audience it is aimed at, and is a cautionary tale about Assumptions and Poetic Justice. (it takes place on Valentine's Day)

TV shows do deal with these giant, abstract themes -- but the statements are bald, truncated, and ultimately either a joke, or laughable in some way.  Life just is not like that.

Here is a further discussion of Justice:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/07/depiction-part-31-depicting-random-luck.html

14 Fat novels can make Poetic Justice natural, inevitable, and a long time coming.  Women prefer "long time coming"  -- at least a bit longer than men, generally speaking.

Poetic Justice is a revelation about the nature of Reality.

The advent of the Kickass Heroine coincides with the rise of the Independent Woman -- who, being independent, has the freedom to choose to bind her future to a man.

We love the image of that kind of freedom, and we are still fighting for it.

We still have few men who really like a world where women are free to say "NO" -- and kickass enough to make "no" stick, regardless of the man's opinion.

But there is a curious dichotomy here.  And a double-standard that most people are not consciously aware of.  Therefore, there could arise a whole new genre of novels -- which would use thematic worldbuilding.  This would be a world where Men accused of Sexual Harassment (or even women, for that matter), would have a way to prove (in a court of law) they did not Harass.

That proof used to be called a Marriage License -- valid even in arranged or forced marriages in any Historical Romance set, say 100 years ago or more.  Men were licensed to rape or beat a particular woman (or woefully, women).

Once married, a female had no personal sovereignty at all.

In various societies through the millennia that situation shifted -- in Ancient Rome women could inherit their husband's property (wow, motive for murder!)

As far as property is concerned, the Jewish marriage of today is a signed contract (often posted on a couple's bedroom wall) which obligates the man to give all his property -- even the shirt off his back -- to his wife.  She owns him in so many ways -- written often in huge letters on the bedroom wall. (in Aramaic).  It is called a Ketubah -- look it up.  Marriage is the incorporation of a business entity.

So through the ages women have fought for, and won to various degrees, a defined amount of personal sovereignty.

It is very possible that today, women in some countries have won more personal sovereignty than ever before in human pre-history or history.

But society has not had time to adjust to this change.  That Hawaii 5-O episode is a case in point, a stark caricature of the reality of today's workplace, but caricatures reveal much that is hidden.

In the USA, the tool "society" is an abstract, intellectual concept for something that does not actually exist.  Society uses Law to impose change on the laggard elements posing as members of that "society".

So whenever neighbors seem to be misbehaving (or in this case, workplace bosses, co-workers, customers, self-help fraudsters), the first tool we reach for is Law.

Long ago, there was a cartoon titled, There Ought To Be A Law -- which presented the case for using Law to squash egregious misbehavior with laws that were against the law to make, and which now are in fact laws.

But how do you know when something is illegal, especially some behavior that was legal and lauded when you were a child growing up?  Think about the fraudster teaching pickup lines and postures.  He was teaching what every teenage boy learns today without being told.

So we have a generation (or two) of men who know in their gut that targeting "women" is correct, proper behavior because male value is about collecting many women, scoring, not bonding.  They see sexy clothing, and feel, and react, and attack -- and consider themselves laudable for it.

Should you act on how you feel, or on what you know?  If you guess wrong, did you do something illegal or just crass?  It has been shown scientifically that anti-sexual-harassment sensitivity training does not work.

There has been, from the dawn of time, the profound thematic issue of whether Emotion or Cognition should dominate behavior.  21st Century America is opting for Emotion, so sensitivity training based on cognition (learn this - behave this way) will not work.

THEME: It Matters Most How I Feel

If you make me feel uncomfortable, I can throw you in jail.  (Potiphar's Wife -- to "Off With Their Heads" -- to inconvenient people dropping dead in Communist Russia).

We have now enshrined in LAW -- the validity of EMOTION (over facts).

https://definitions.uslegal.com/h/harassment/

-------------------
Harassment is governed by state laws, which vary by state, but is generally defined as a course of conduct which annoys, threatens, intimidates, alarms, or puts a person in fear of their safety. Harassment is unwanted, unwelcomed and uninvited behavior that demeans, threatens or offends the victim and results in a hostile environment for the victim. Harassing behavior may include, but is not limited to, epithets, derogatory comments or slurs and lewd propositions, assault, impeding or blocking movement, offensive touching or any physical interference with normal work or movement, and visual insults, such as derogatory posters or cartoons.
--------------------

THEME:  It Matters Most What The Facts Are

If you ignore the fact that 50 degree below zero F. winds can kill you, and walk out in summer shorts and a tank top, you die.  I don't have to do anything.  Facts prevail.

Long ago, there was a short story titled The Cold Equations about a stowaway on an orbital spacecraft whose weight would have caused re-entry to go awry killing everyone aboard -- so they spaced him.  This story was popular because the social argument at that time was roaring on about emotions being more important than facts.  It was argued that Christian morality requires one not to space the miscreant -- so what would "good" people do?  Science trumps Christianity.  Facts supplant morality.

It is the "lifeboat" dilemma that has generated many stories throughout time.

Marriage is another version of the "lifeboat dilemma."  When do you throw the bum out to save yourself and the children?  That 5-O episode depicted the violent rage of a twice-scorned man, and a prostitute's understanding of his Character.  When do you bail on a guy?

After WWII, women stayed in the workplace -- while many raised their children to school age, and returned to work.  Over decades, the trend accelerated as "labor saving devices" like clothes washing machines and dishwashers (and pizza delivery) built the current world we live in.

By gaining an income, women gained personal sovereignty -- and could bail on a guy.

Build your Alien's World with as much care.  Trends and the social changes to accommodate trends come about over generations.  How many generations has your Alien species been space traveling?  How many other species have they met up with?  How has their home world changed because of that?

Now look at how humans are handling "change" --- the emancipation of women?  The enfranchisement of the Independent Woman?  The Woman of Independent Means?  The Working Woman?  The Kickass Heroine.

Look at that legal definition of harassment.

How is a guy supposed to KNOW his behavior "offends" or "is unwelcome" or makes a person feel "threatened" or that his language is deemed "lewd" ??? 

If he didn't intend to do any of those emotional things, does that mean he didn't do them?  If he was sure he was welcomed then he was not unwelcome, right?  Scrutinize that 5-O episode!

How can a guy who is an Alpha Male, a winner, ever even consider that anything he does is not welcome?  By the very definition of Alpha Male, it is unthinkable to him.  That is what that fraudulent course was teaching right before our eyes, on TV.  A guy had to have his self-confidence restored, instead of learning his lesson about why he was rejected.  Who needs "a woman" when there are "women" to be had.  Plural.

To understand this mindset, if you are not an Alpha Male, you have to do your Character-Point-Of-View switch exercise.

We have discussed Point of View at considerable depth in various series of posts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

Getting inside the head of a Character so you can chart his/her moves through the plot starts with "people watching" at the mall, reading self-help books, and generally being someone who is not you.

Do that, and reconsider that legal paragraph.

Guys growing up in our world today are not given any chance to comprehend that they will be punished for winning.  

Sexually harassing a woman into compliance is winning.  How unfair is punishing winning? It is all in the point of view.

All sports is about winning -- winners get rewarded.

All academic test taking is about getting an A -- and teachers have been taught (most haven't discovered how false what they learned in school really is) that it is "right" (and therefore righteous) to grade on a curve.  After all, you can't fail the whole class and keep your job, even if the whole class fails.  So test taking is a competition, and winning is rewarded.  Somebody has to get the F, and it isn't going to be me.

All job-search endeavors are about winning -- competing against other applicants and winning.

Winning is about getting what you want by denying others what they want.

Want is an emotion.

Winning is about assuaging a desire for a particular emotion, generating endorphins.  Winning triggers a kind of pleasure response akin to orgasm. 

They still call it "The Battle of the Sexes" -- and battles must be won, no matter what.

We examined "The Battle of the Sexes" in this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/theme-conflict-integration-part-2.html
By winning, by defeating the female, you get pleasure, the more so if you defeat the female in front of other males, elevating your position in the pack by winning.

We write a lot about how sexy the Alpha Male -- the dominant one, the winner in the pack -- is, and how attractive Alphas are to us. 

Men read Romance novels, too.  Men learn early in manhood that we want an Alpha -- that being dominated by an Alpha is our wet dream.

Boys are not raised to be gentlemen (defined as one who takes no for an answer and is rewarded for knuckling under when a woman frowns at them).  A 5 year old, maybe.  A 15 year old, never.

Why is that?  Why isn't the image of the Alpha Male, the winner of all battles, an image of the one who takes no for an answer?

There is a reason that thousands of years of history have let men create governments, run armies, create businesses, and do dangerous things, but not women.  As a species we can afford to lose a lot of males, but not females or the species dies.  One winner-male can marry many women, keep them pregnant, and make more winner-males.

The reason men govern and fight is not, as many academics hold, that men are 'better suited' to competition, to wielding power of the throne, the sword, or the almighty dollar, but rather that men have created the mechanisms of the world to suit male emotions.

The mechanism of the world does not have to be configured to pander to male emotional satisfaction, but neither does it have to be created only by women and thus pander only to women's emotions.

Think about that when you create your Aliens. Study our recent history to find things to change about your Aliens.

The generation of men born in the early 1900's were dead set against allowing women into the workplace -- not because women could not do the work, but because to those men "the workplace" was not a place of work, but rather a place of DOMINANCE.

"Work" to the men of that generation meant "winning" and in particular, it meant winning in the "dog eat dog" world they had built. Not dog eat bitch.  Dog eat dog.

Fighting your way up the ladder meant proving you are stronger, meaner, more dominant, and in fact Alpha.  And you know you're an Alpha Male because you WIN -- and you know you are a WINNER when you get rewarded.  The emotional payoff is that others in the workplace yield to you, bow down, stop fighting and take your orders.

In other words, boys who start out "winning" in school, and keep "winning" get used to "winning" -- which means as reward they get whatever they emotionally want.  Refused, they are justified in using force -- any force at their disposal -- to take what they want, which proves they are winners and thus have the pick of the "women" plural (consider the High School Captain of the Team.)

In the workplace, that force can be the threat of firing the uppity person who does not acknowledge their Alpha position, or otherwise derailing that uppity person's career.

To be successful, you beat out the competition and win.

Enter women: they expect to be promoted for completing their assigned tasks properly.  No man would have expected such a ridiculous thing.  Every man knew promotions go to the dominant winner, not the good worker.  Women are usually better at the job, and we can't have them promoted over us or we won't be winners, right?

Now reread the blog entry on how being defeated reduces a man's testosterone levels (and winning elevates it).  Having a wife and children lowers testosterone levels, and thus aggression. Fathers become just a tad more risk-averse, but more dangerous for it because they become harder to kill, smarter, more reliant on cognition than emotion.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html

Being bested by a woman destroys a man's testosterone level -- just wipes him out (do get that 5-O episode and see what I mean here).  Thus the derogatory term "hen-pecked" is mostly leveled at men by men.

Our society -- (but not the Law) -- admires a winner, rewards a winner, but not if the winner is female.

Would all Aliens have that problem?  Maybe they had it and resolved it?  How?

What would your Aliens make of humans who reward winners?   I played with the human adulation of winners and heroism in two Mass Market paperback novels, now in Kindle-only editions.

https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Border-Dispute-Jacqueline-Lichtenberg-ebook/dp/B002WYJG0W/

To figure out what your Aliens would see in human obsession with winning, look at how we have elevated "winners" to the top decision making positions, at how we make celebrities from box office winners regardless of their acting ability, at how we choose who wins and who loses.

What qualities of Character guarantee a "Happily Ever After" point, somewhere in mid-life?

How do you "win" happiness?

Is Happiness always Winning?

Is it possible your readers don't believe in the HEA simply because it can not be "Won" - like a prize?  What good is the HEA if you don't get to WIN?

For millennia, governments, international affairs, tribal war, and business has been shaped and crafted by "winners" - who assume that winning is good because it feels good (to them, not the losers).

And the rest of the people stand on the sidelines and cheer on the winners.  We root for the underdog to become a winner, not stay an underdog.

Winning is all about creating losers -- being "better" than someone else, not being the best you can be.  Just make sure the other guy fails more than you did.

Well, after WWII, men of that generation did not want to see their women attacked by testosterone driven males who had to WIN a competition against women who wanted their jobs. Men want their women (plural) to themselves (singular) - conquered possessions won fair and square away from other males.  So women should not be exposed to other males playing to win, hence women do not belong in the workplace.  Right?  The times they are a'changin'!

Those former soldiers knew men went off to work geared up to win -- testosterone flooding, aggression maximized.

They also knew many women would be better at the men's jobs, which would mean being conquered by a woman (a hormonal disaster) or conquering the woman to make sure she stayed an underbitch.

And that is exactly what has happened.  Today women can get into any university, learn and get A's, and take any profession by storm.  We now have allowed women into front line combat jobs -- on the way to becoming Pentagon Generals, Admirals etc.  And even President.

When Gene Roddenberry put Uhura on the Enterprise Bridge, all hell broke loose.  In fact, the network execs (winners all, remember, dominant males) would not let him have Number One be female, so they combined First Officer with Science Officer.

The execs told GR you can't show men taking orders from a woman.  Nobody would believe it.  GR outsmarted them.  He was a winner. And he behaved like one -- just check out the behavior of top Hollywood Names today.  He was cut from that mold.



https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Trek-Secret-Creator-Roddenberry-ebook/dp/B00BPEJ84O/

Today, women are the bosses in a lot of workplaces where men are employed.

And even more (perhaps even smarter) women are climbing the ladder to those powerful positions.

Look again at the legal definition of Sexual Harassment.  Can you imagine a man feeling that way -- on the bridge of the Enterprise?

Think of the Hero in a novel you love so much you want to write one like it.

Would he lodge a complaint with HR about harassment from his female boss?

If he did lodge such a complaint, would it be part of a larger strategy?  Maybe he's trying to smoke out disloyal men in his work-group?

When his feelings are hurt, when someone does something he doesn't like, what does a guy do?

So what is the definition of a Kickass Heroine and why do we read those novels? (and love them!)

Is a Kickass Heroine a woman who behaves like a man?  Would a kickass heroine sexually harass men under her command just to WIN?

We admire the Kickass Heroine because she's a WINNER - whatever the situation and over whomever opposes her.  A Kickass Heroine is a STRONG CHARACTER (as defined by editorial standards in calls for submission.)

What does a WINNER, who is a STRONG CHARACTER (i.e. kickass) do when ...

--------------
...annoys, threatens, intimidates, alarms, or puts a person in fear of their safety. Harassment is unwanted, unwelcomed and uninvited behavior that demeans, threatens or offends the victim...
--------------

What does a Kickass Heroine do when "annoyed?"

One of the Character Traits of admirable people (not "winners" but truly Strong Characters) is that it is very hard to "annoy" them.  Strong Characters are slow to anger -- very slow -- and do not stop thinking strategically when angry (or when flooded with post-sex endorphins).

In other words, being annoyed, even all the way to being enraged, is an emotion, but in Strong Characters, Emotion does not oppose, conflict with, or impair, rational cognitive functions.

Weak Characters are characterized by volatile emotions, easily offended.

Our modern workplace environment has been crafted by thousands of years of men elevating to decision-making positions the other men who do not have volatile emotions (OK, we know of one exception, but we're speaking in general about crafting fictional aliens.)

A Strong Character can not be threatened.  Being secure in their "winner" personality, they ignore threats, deal directly with actions.  (Oh do watch that 5-O episode!)

A Strong Character can not be intimidated, because that's the definition of strong.  A strong character does the intimidating, in well-disciplined careful and deliberate, strategically sound measure.

A Strong Character may become alarmed, but the emotion barely moves the needle off dead center.

A Strong Character knows she can handle whatever is happening.  A Strong Character is secure in her preparedness but never overconfident enough to brag about it.  Weak Characters brag.

A Strong Character just does not fear, or contemplate failure.

A Strong Character has grown up as a winner, and thus projects a formidable aura.  Only a Stronger Character would dare challenge, especially using unwanted, unwelcomed and uninvited behavior that demeans, threatens or offends the victim.

In fact, a Strong Character is composed of such traits that it is not possible to demean, threaten or even offend them.  Anyone who tries is seen as laughable, or stupid, even pitiable.  But the true Gentlewoman does not let amusement show, because that might hurt or offend the Weak Character.

Here is a discussion of how the Hero, or Strong Character's inner dialogue might go.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/01/dialogue-part-13-writing-inner-dialogue.html
Feeling offended is a sure sign of a Weak Character (a beta not an alpha).

Appearing to be, or actually feeling like, a Victim is a clear, unique sign of a Weak Character.

To climb the corporate ladder, one must be a Strong Character.

Those on the rungs above you will test you to see if you are worthy of promotion, and fire you if you do not have the right stuff to climb that ladder (which right stuff does not include competence at the tasks).  Handling sexual blackmail with efficiency and dispatch is a sign of a Strong Character worthy of promotion.  (do please watch that 5-O episode).

Tattle-tailing to Authority claiming you've been victimized is a sign of Weak Character.

Emotional stability -- not impunity, not imperviousness or coldness, but stability -- is the first necessary (but not sufficient) condition for being allowed into the fellowship of winners.

Now, this is not always the case.  There is such a thing as "being kicked upstairs" (getting a promotion that shoves you out of the way of winners swarming up the ladder behind you.)

Incompetence also rises to the top -- but all the winners know who the loser is.  And they use that knowledge strategically, to compete.

So if women are to climb that corporate ladder in any workplace environment, they must be Kickass Heroines - of Strong Character.

So what does a Kickass Heroine do when some testosterone driven bozo behaves lewdly in semi-public so everyone is watching her react, and judging her accordingly?

The Kickass Heroine knows that the person behaving lewdly is a Weak Character, and reacts accordingly.

Power (decision making, budgetary, hire/fire decision power) in the hands of a Weak Character is far more dangerous than in the hands of a Strong Character who is a declared enemy.

Strong Characters with power are predictable.

Weak Characters with power are like 3 year olds with a loaded gun.

Strong Character is built, not born.

Here is an article from last December on raising kids to have Strong Character -- this article focuses on risk taking.

http://www.businessinsider.com/overprotective-parents-are-likely-causing-increased-anxiety-in-kids-2017-12

------------quote-----------
Difficult situations help kids foster self-assurance. Flickr/Blondinrikard Fröberg

Anxiety has become a widespread mental illness in children and teens.

Researchers have found a link between anxiety and the over-protection of children.

Parents should allow kids some level of physical and risky play.

Physical play helps children have hands-on experience with difficult or frightening experiences, and  fosters self-assurance for later in life.

Anxiety has become an epidemic, now eclipsing depression as the most common health disorder, particularly among younger people.

While several hypotheses exist which try to point blame for the increasingly common condition, Norwegian researchers have found that the overprotection of children may have something to do with it.
----------end quote-----------

So, the Winners on the higher rungs of the ladder got there through a lifetime of building Strong Character (or fooling others into thinking so).  They are the gatekeepers who prevent weakness from dominating.

They test the up-and-coming youngsters in school or workplace by figuring out the up-and-comer's weakest spot and attacking that to see what sort of response they get.  Volatile emotional responses are a sign of Weak Character -- a sign of a loser who must be eliminated from the team.  Or, if the Character has other Strong Character areas, the weak spot may be seen as the Character Flaw to be remedied by repeated hits -- to toughen the Character up.

Sexual harassers see themselves as doing the woman a favor by torturing her.  If she passes the torture test, she can join the team of winners.  If not, good riddance.  All of this is sex based behavior -- if your Aliens have differently configured biology (think Spock) they will solidify teams of winners differently.

One of the Characteristics of a Winner is accurate Risk Calculation.

Wrecklessness is a sign of Weak Character.

Winning long-shot risks because of sheer-grit-and-determination or other Strong Character Traits, is the sign of a Strong Character.

So our Kickass Heroine in the workplace becoming the office's favorite target for sexual harassment will not respond emotionally, or quickly -- no emotional volatility allowed.  But 10 years later, all those bozos are gone, and she rules the roost.  Long-range planning is a sign of a Strong Character.

To the men who built the business world, the office is a battlefield.  There is a reason football imagery became so dominant in describing business transactions -- a gentrified warfare with strategy and tactics where emotional volatility loses.  If your feelings can be hurt, you lose, good riddance.

The losing football team never sees themselves as the VICTIM.

The losing football team plots their comeback play.

Likewise, in the office -- the person who will be tagged for promotion will be the one who does not see themselves as a victim or their attacker as a victimizer.

The attacker may in fact be a bully.  We, as a society, tend to elevate bullies to winner status, so there is a hefty proportion of bullies in the daily workplace.

Yet, we all know the best way to handle a Bully is to out-Bully them -- bust their chops, kick their ass, best them at their own game.

That may be why, for thousands of years, men have allowed bullies into their fellowship of winners.  Bullies are cowards, underdogs, and very weak -- so power in the hands of a bully is very dangerous.  But they can make good underlings to a qualified Alpha who controls their power-use.

A Kickass Character proves they belong in a fellowship by besting the local bully - while keeping the emotional environment on an even keel and the fellowship intact.  (think of the prison stories you've read.) There were a few White Collar episodes that describe this process of beating people up to find out what they are made of and where they belong in the pack.  Teach the underdog his place.

Here is a post on the Hero Vs. the Bully

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/theme-character-integration-part-6-hero.html

And here is one on the Hero marries the Bully

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-6.html

To use your Theme to generate a Kickass Heroine and get the modern Romance Reader to believe the world you create contains a genuine HEA, study your readers.

QUESTION:  Why does a generation of women raised on Action Romances about the Kickass Heroine not kick ass in the workplace but see themselves as harassment victims?

Could it be that the "harassment" definition, enshrinement in law, and current usage as a weapon to bring down powerful men, is actually defined by winner-men, voted for by winner-men, judged in court by winner-men, reported in public scandal by winner-men -- as a strategy to bring down other powerful men?  Could those invisible winner-men be using women as weapons against the winner-men's opponents?

Or is the flood of harassment allegations actually the appropriate comeback to obviously egregious behavior.  Is the Harassment definition a tool for women to re-configure the nature of the business world, maybe warfare itself, and certainly sports?

Why do these real women, who are your readers, not manifest the courage, risk-management, and emotional stability of the Kickass Heroine (to yank the weapon from their attacker's hand and beat him over the head with it) when challenged by men who target their sensitivity to sexual harassment?

The "workplace" environment is a sex-based environment (still is, after thousands of years).  It is not a hostile environment when based on sexual jousting for dominance.  Jousting for dominance is fun!  Good, innocent, fun!!!  It's just winning, after all.

Work (bringing home the bacon) is about winning, and testosterone is the main ingredient in winning.

Beating down Beta Males and becoming the Dominant Alpha is not an act of hostility -- it is the primary act of the civilized male, the creation of a fellowship, alliance, and smooth functioning team, all for the purpose of feeding his children.

That's why "women don't belong in the workplace" -- because women just aren't aggressive enough.

Or if they are aggressive enough, they are worthy of derision not promotion.

The attempt to change "men" into gentlemen while on the hunt (which is what workplace environment is - a hunter's camp) may be doomed to failure.

Remember in the Victorian Romance novel, the gentlemanly behavior was adopted only in the Drawing Room -- not while off camping through India, fighting and subduing Natives.

He-men cleaned up nicely - but didn't respect the women who followed them on campaign.

The Workplace is their modern field of battle as well as hunting ground.

So instead of changing human nature, (which we can do these days with gene splicing etc) - we might consider changing the workplace.  How would your Aliens configure business?  Would only human women be able to win in the Alien workplace?

Or perhaps consider what changes will swamp out the workplace-battlefield when Artificial Intelligence (A.I. or robots, androids and other mechanicals) swamps out human labor.

The advent of A.I. in the workplace (already well in progress) is termed "The Singularity."  There will come a tipping point where A.I. is more crucial to human life than other humans are.

If we plan strategically, like any ordinary Kickass Heroine would, we can guide A.I. into workplace use, shifting the workplace from a battlefield where you win by dominance into an environment where we don't compete, but rather we complete good work.  In such a workplace, dominance behavior would be despised.

Is that the level of civilization your Aliens have reached?  Is their workplace environment devoid of sexual dominance?

Is that because they made laws about emotions, or because they evolved so that one gender is not dominant over another?

How would a sexual harasser human fare in that Alien workplace?

Remember, a Kickass Heroine is a Strong Character and would not be annoyed or the least bit disturbed by sexual harassment.

If the behavior is so far out of bounds (such as "service me or you're fired" ) that the job is not worth the trouble, the Kickass Heroine finds another job and quits.  Or quits and finds (or makes herself) another job.

A Strong Character can not be blackmailed.

The Kickass Heroine (human version) can not be intimidated by threatening her employment.

If she is intimidated (such as being threatened while she's being divorced while pregnant), she isn't a Kickass Heroine.

The Maternal Instincts, Cozy Mystery series by Diana Orgain is a great example of a Kickass Heroine whose livelihood is threatened -- though nobody tries to harass her sexually because she's truly Kickass.


https://www.amazon.com/Bundle-Trouble-Maternal-Instincts-Mystery/dp/B00BPBA65W/

So why have your readers not emulated the Kickass Heroine in the modern harassment-driven workplaces?

The answer to that question is your THEME.

What would be different for your Aliens?

Is your Alien Character Kickass material - or an ass to be kicked?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Reviews 22 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer Novels

Reviews 22
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer Novels 

I have not yet posted an Index to my reviews here, but this is #22 of the series of reviews about the field of Science Fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, and related genres and what you can learn by studying various novels "published as" various genres.

I particularly focus on "ingredients" in other fields that can be smoothly blended into a dynamic Romance plot.

The results of a smooth blend are clear in the Historical Romance field.

Historical Romance produced hundreds, maybe thousands, of titles over a span of a couple of decades, and then as those born in the 1970's became book buyers, Historical Romance writers blended Women's Lib into Historical periods -- with some justification, and sometimes as pure fantasy.  Women raised in the Victorian era were portrayed as undaunted feminists -- and sometimes that "worked" for modern readers, and sometimes not so much.

Growing up in an oppressive environment cripples and warps most Personalities, so that the occasional individual who weathers the storm of denigration and negative messaging becomes a social outcast among her compliant peers.

But such defiant individuals have existed in all epochs of human history.

Look to the Biblical story of Dinah, of Deborah, of the several named Yehudit.  Look to the female Saints.

It isn't womanhood per se that determines whether you are outstanding, exceptional, defiant, un-bendable, or in the parlance of the writing craft, A Hero.

The hallmark of most science fiction is that the central character, the Hero or Point of View Character, the protagonist is one of those Unbendable humans who marches to his own drummer.

I haven't seen any research on this, but just scanning the people I know and their life-stories, I can't see any difference in the percentage of those Unbendables who are male vs those who are female.

The Unbendables are rare.  Societies that treasure their Unbendables thrive.  Societies that trash their Unbendables perish quickly.

Parents of an Unbendable usually see they've spawned an Ugly Duckling very early in the child's life.  Some Parents are proud of that kid -- others keep trying to bend them.

To study the Unbendable as a Character, read (and it's a joy and a delight, not like a school assignment task) Karen Chance's series about her Unbendable character, Cassie Palmer.

It's Paranormal Romance, but the Romance plot develops very slowly over the story-arc of the novels.

The 7th novel in the Cassie Palmer series is titled REAP THE WIND.

Cassie Palmer Novels:
Touch the Dark
Claimed by Shadow
Embrace the Night
Curse the Dawn
Hunt the Moon
Tempt the Stars
Reap the Wind (2015)
Ride the Storm

Here's her page on Amazon where you can "follow" her and get an email when a new book comes out.
http://amazon.com/Karen-Chance/e/B001I9Q83A
All these novels are recommended, but they are so well written that you can dip into the series at any point and completely understand the action and romance.

The entire (long) novel is Cassie's increasingly desperate attempts to rescue the guy she loves, a Soul Mate from a very neat, (original) curse ripped from the Arthurian Legend headlines.

This fellow was/is the Merlin of Arthur's Kingdom.

Legend has it Merlin "lived backwards" -- a concept not explained in most Arthurian literature.

The science fiction part of this Fantasy-Romance is the precise, scientific way the Curse is explained and the way to lift the Curse is posited.

Karen Chance has used the best skills of Game Oriented Worldbuilding to create a Magic dimension that makes sense.

The Situation is that long ago the Greek/Roman gods were swept out of our Reality and walled away from us.

The project of building that magical wall was a team effort, spearheaded by one of those Unbendable types, a woman.

Now, another group of women, bent on siezing Power, have decided to bring back one of those gods.  Like most Sorcerer Apprentice thinking, they truly believe they can control the results of their initiative to their own advantage.

Cassie Palmer is more realistic, though almost totally ignorant of the  Magical skills involved.

Cassie has been "chosen" by some kind of Magical Power to fill the (always female) office of Pythia, a Seer who can transcend Time and implement various sorts of Magic, given enough training in youth.

Cassie has not had any of that training.  She's learning as she goes, beset by enemies who leave her no time to learn.

She was raised by a formidable crowd of Vampires, short tempered folks with way more Power than is good for the world.  She learned to become inconspicuous, quiet, un-noticed lest she set off a violent storm among those Vampires.  But she is an Unbendable.

Despite her up-bringing, or perhaps because of it, she arrives at adulthood with the habit of thinking for herself, charting her own course, making her own decisions, and not standing in awe of what appears to be Authority wrapped in Power.

In other words, she is your typical science fiction hero.

She asks pesky questions, finds her own answers, doesn't totally believe anything she's told until she verifies it, plunges ahead with action based on whatever theory she considers most probably correct, and in the process takes a lot of personal, emotional, and physical damage -- and comes back swinging, relying on her next best theory.

She's a Strong Character, in the definition of the publishing industry.

Here are some of my previous posts on publishing's oft-repeated demand for "strong characters" -- a demand most beginning writers mis-interpret.  Karen Chance has gotten it right, so study Cassie Palmer for the traits highlighted in these posts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/strong-characters-defined-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/strong-character-defined-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/theme-plot-integration-part-15.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/theme-symbolism-integration-part-1-you.html

And for Romance writers, I particularly recommend:

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

The Unbendables are only one sort of Strong Character.

The Unbendable Trait tends to generate fanfic about testing that character to destruction to find out what is inside the Unbendable shell.  That is the origin of much of the fanfic often called "Get Spock."  Or even, "Hurt/Comfort."

Before you can destroy (e.g. Bend) a Character with dramatic impact, you must first convince the reader the Character really is Unbendable, or Strong in some other way.  Towering, Formidable, perhaps justly Famous, or Great.  The Purely Strong Character invites the reader to destroy him.

This is why Superman collapses under the rays of Kryptonite.

But note that when stripped of his Powers, Superman adheres to his values.  How you regard Risk, and how you take Loss indicates whether your Character is Strong or Weak.  Adhering to values despite pain, loss or any other threat is Strong Character.

Every Unbendable Character must have a flaw, a crease, a crack, a weak spot.

Now look at Cassie Palmer's physical appearance.  She is short, built slight, -- wiry strength but no Titan.  She doesn't look formidable.  Physically, she is a mouse.

Then the Power chooses her to be Pythia -- which gives her access to Abilities Beyond Mortal Men.

But she has no clue how to use this Power.  To wield it as she would wish to, she would have had to be raised in the Pythia's household and trained to be the Pythia successor.

The girls who were so raised work to unseat Cassie from the Office of Pythia (i.e. kill her).

And the Pythia's Office itself has enemies out there who are not resting while Cassie learns the ropes. They do politics with explosions, spells, poisons.  They look for definitive solutions to the problem of Cassie Palmer.

The one ally she knows she needs is Merlin.  Her enemies win one by removing his Soul with a Curse that sends it backward in Time, skipping from one era to another, arriving to "inhabit" his own (somewhat immortal) Self, then skipping on --- a little like the 1989-1993 TV Series Quantum Leap.

Headlines are wondrous places to rip dramatic material from -- but old TV Series likewise provide grand opportunities.

Note how this theory explains the legend of Merlin "living backwards" and thus "knowing the future."

Cassie's current strategy in Reap the Wind is to remove the Curse on Merlin by time-teleporting back the one man who has the ability to cast a Curse-Removal-Spell.  The hitch is that she must go with him.

If they can catch up to Merlin at a moment when his future Soul is passing through backwards in time, and get that Curse-Removal-Spell thrown just exactly right, they can save Merlin's life and return to present time with a strong ally who knows a lot more magic than anyone else.

Cassie has limited energy for such Magic Stunts as transporting two people back thousands of years in time, or into the Realm of Faery.  She is kept scrambling and using more energy than she can afford by the former Pythia's students trying to derail her efforts to save Merlin.

REAP THE WIND is one wild time-travel-chase-scene liberally salted with mortal-combat and magic battles.

The action/battle scenes would make wondrous Indiana Jones style film material if this series is ever made into a TV Series or film.

As I've noted on many occasions in these blogs, the trend in novel publishing is toward the same structure that draws millions to theaters, as opposed to the few hundred thousand who buy any given novel in print, e-book or audiobook.

Romance Readers have an insatiable taste for Action today.  REAP THE WIND definitely provides a feast of action.

This novel leaves you eager for #8 in the series titled RIDE THE STORM -- a title that promises more breakneck action between love scenes.  "Follow" Karen Chance on Amazon to be notified when it is available.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Why Every Novel Needs A Love Story - Part 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Why Every Novel Needs A Love Story
Part 2
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Part 1 of this series
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html
we noted how the signature of a Strong Character is that the Character "arcs" -- or changes their emotional responses to situations because of some life-lesson learned "the hard way" in the "school of hard knocks."

Characters get pummeled by Events you create.  They learn from the Events (the plot) and they do not necessarily learn the best or most correct lesson the first time you hit them with an Event.

Characters that are strong at the beginning of the story get pummeled with Events until they break  -- think of Spock crying alone in the briefing room.  Leonard Nimoy knew Spock's strength had to be broken in order to engage viewer interest. 

Granite strength all by itself is not interesting.  So writers break their strongest characters.

Start with a weak character, someone gripped by the "I can't" or "I'm doing all I can, so how can you expect more of me?" attitude, hammer that character to pulverize them, and chronicle their path to becoming a strong character.  That's Character Arc.

So, Strong Characters can be weak at the beginning of the Arc, and the strength is revealed as you hammer them into becoming Strong.

What exactly is it that writers hammer at in either the strong or weak character that changes them, that morphs them along an Arc?

What causes people to change in real life?  What causes people to start to behave differently, and seem "out of character" for a while, until friends and family get used to the new person? 

What changes in life that re-formulates a person's behavior? 

I submit that the easiest attribute of a Character for a writer to depict as Arcing, or changing in a way that readers can see as realistic, is the ability to Love.

That is the "wall" that Events hammer at to Arc a character.

It is the ability to establish and maintain Relationships that distinguishes the Happy person from the miserable person.  We draw our strength of character from our "stance" among our people, our family, our co-workers, our buddies, our spouse, our children, our distant relatives, and just friends made via organizations.

How many times have you seen the story of the lone-gunman who shoots up a crowd and nobody expected it because "he kept to himself" and "he seemed like a nice guy" but he had no close friends (or the ones he had were likewise disconnected.)

As humans, we need to belong, to connect, to be surrounded by layers upon layers of people who know intimately, less well, distantly, and just feel general kinship with because we share a fandom, a reading taste, a craft etc.  We speak of "the Music World" and "the Golf World" -- and we say, "Welcome to my world." 

We live in "worlds" composed of layers of associates.

The entre into such a "world" is via the close, immediate, intertwined, personal Relationship.

Enemies, Adversaries, a policeman's quarry (think TV Series THE FUGITIVE), relationships can be incredibly intimate and even replace true love for a time.

Social networking has leveraged that layered-worlds structure of human life into a profitable business where you are their product which they sell to advertisers.

We are creatures of Relationship, embedded in a physical world composed of intricate layers of interlaced relationships.  Think of the way genetics has evolved -- almost all life on Earth shares basic building block genes.  (almost since there are non-carbon single-cell life near hot vents in the bottom of the ocean) 

Most all life on Earth is genetically related, which is why we can use animals to test new drugs and why we shudder at the mere thought of doing that!  We are all of one piece.

But we don't see that, at least not at the surface of our awareness.  We don't see into another person's emotional life, the internal structure of another person's decision making process, their most dearly held values, their unconscious assumptions about what is right and what is wrong.

That realm of the unconsciously held Value System is where the writer works.

Writers probe, explore, learn, and map their own unconscious minds, especially the Value System they imbibed with Mother's Milk.  We acquire our first values from our parents, but as life goes on, we acquire more layers of values around those.

Sometimes the later value acquisitions logically contradict earlier ones, but we hold onto all of them as our OWN -- we identify with the wild and incompatible mix of values we have created and call it our Identity.

Thus when a person's Values are attacked by another person (who may or may not have different values), it feels like a threat to LIFE ITSELF.  It feels like a threat to existence.  People will tolerate starvation or being shot at by hostiles better than they will having their unconscious Values contradicted.

Yes, mere words can trigger a counter-attack as if life and existence were at stake.

Politics and Religion are two topics that are rooted in that first learned, unconscious value system that most likely has been overlaid by Values acquired in college, which have been overlaid by Values acquired on the job. 

That's why they are explosive topics for family gatherings (and wondrous sources of Conflict that can advance a Plot). 

Today, in our modern world, Politics and Religion are mixing at depths not seen since the Middle Ages when The Church basically ran the Governments of Europe.

The Crusades were a show-don't-tell manifestation of the mixing of Politics (Kings) with Religion (The Cross). 

Today, the explosive mix is Science vs. Religion.  What sane person could possibly reject Evolution or want to teach Creationism in schools?  See?  "sane" -- "If you don't share my Values, you are not a Person." 

In other words, we tend to work on the assumption that the only people whose opinions count are the people who share our Values.

But nobody shares anyone's Values.  As described above, each individual person accumulates layers upon layers of different values and morphs the disparate mess into some kind of ball of wax which they use as their Identity. 

Each of us is unique -- but we want to associate only with those who are identical to us, at least in our intimate relationships. 

As noted in Part 1, look closely at the TV Series SUITS.  Suits works via the way the senior (Harvey Specter) sees himself in the junior (Mike Ross).  When Mike doesn't do what Harvey would do, Harvey is uncomfortable and acts out.

Now back to the Romance Novel, which is what this blog is all about. 

Consider the various ideas of what Love is. 

You will find Romance depicted as about co-dependence, as about feelings only, as about bodily functions only, as about paying attention only to me.  And all of these variations are real, and all matter, and all of them are necessary ingredients in Romance.

It is very true that you can have amazing Romance without a trace of Love at all.

"Love" (with a capital L) is a spiritual thing that transcends our innate insanities.  Love with a capital L is an experience of the Soul that changes the Soul -- i.e. that causes Character to Arc.

Real change happens when channels of the Personality open to Love.

That happens under different circumstances for different people at different times of Life.  Sometimes it is religious conversion, sometimes encountering a senior mentor, sometimes the birth of your first child, sometimes it is finding your Soul Mate.

People (and Characters) change not by becoming someone else, not by losing or gaining abilities or Talents, but by re-arranging their characteristics.

Thus a Character Arc Event causes an aggressive person who is likely to solve any problem by putting out a Hit on the opposition into someone who behaves more like Harvey Specter in SUITS and leverages the other person's emotional weaknesses.

The Aggression is still there, but the channel is different.

An alcoholic might morph into someone who eats or smokes too much, but holds a job and is kind to his kids.

All the traits remain, but the emphasis and utilization changes. 

Why does that happen? 

One of the key ingredients that forms our crazy-quilt pattern of Values is our Relationships.  There is a well studied trait of human perception (see the TV Series Perception) that causes us to see ourselves in others.

When you hate someone, when someone just plain drives you crazy, and you go around with an inner dialogue counting their failings and what they should do about it, then very likely (not always, but most of the time) you are seeing yourself in that person.

Other people are the mirror in which we see our own reflection.

But like with a mirror, you see a reversal of the image, and you can see what is behind you (e.g. in your subconscious).  You see deeper into yourself, into the dark underside of yourself, because the other person is so very different from you.

You see their faults, and their faults are visible because they are different.

Writers leverage that common human perception by creating Characters who are so very different from the reader that the reader is barely aware of the similarity.  When it strikes the reader just right, that difference allows the reader to identify with the character and walk in their moccasins. 

So people react emotionally to other people according to how they love or hate themselves.  But as noted above, Identity is a pearl composed of layers of contradiction accreted around a sharp-grain of pain that caused the acquisition of a Value.

That pain might be a parental smack, a deprivation from a toy, a forced-sharing with a sibling, and rewards of kindness, love, joy, celebration. 

Right and Wrong and what is more important than what (i.e. Values) are absorbed from parents via what the parents do, not what the parents say -- so Values are non-verbal and conveyed with a Sharp Pain that forces the pain to be wrapped by a Value that will henceforth prevent that Pain. 

So when we see someone who is Wrong -- we react to that wrongness.  How we react, what we do about Wrong People, is influenced by our ability to Love our own Self -- to admire our pearls that encase our Pain and create Values.

If we Love ourselves because we know how we have just barely managed to cope with our Pain, we are able to see others struggling (and sometimes failing) to cope with their Pain.  We know that sometimes a Pain does not get encased in a Pearl of Values - a lesson is not (yet) learned and successfully applied to life.

Lessons can be rejected, maybe never learned, because of some other Belief that is in the way, that contradicts or conflicts and thus causes Truth to be rejected. 

People who do not (yet) love themselves, see nothing but their own reflection in the mirrors of the people around them, and thus are in effect isolated, alone, unloved, and frustrated.  Such people may compensate by narcissism, which others interpret as self-love. 

How does a writer depict people caught in a House of Mirrors life where all they can see in those around them are hateful traits? 

Dialogue is the answer.  How a Character speaks, what opinions so desperately need airing, what opinions (and the vocabulary to express them) burst out with loud urgency, and to whom those opinions are expressed (with what collateral damage), depicts the Character's inner conflict, inner story, and subconscious Values.

A Character's emotional life is revealed in Dialogue. 

Here is an example to study, from a piece of non-fiction analyzing our current real world situation. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/16/1371324/-Adelson-and-Kristol-attempt-the-first-Liberum-Veto-in-US-history

The author is
 arendt 

-------quote from opening line----------
As the GOP sabotage and sedition continues, the US appears to be going the way of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (P-LC) rather than the way of the Roman Empire.

If you know your history, this is not an insult; but, rather, a tragedy in progress. The P-LC was a powerful and progressive state during the early Reformation era, reaching its Golden Age in about 1575.

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

Note the sidling up to the chosen audience by characterizing an entire group of people "the GOP" as if they are all identical to one another.  This is a valid representation of what a person who lives a House of Mirrors existence actually sees in those around them -- no difference one to another, because they are all reflections of him/herself. 

The opening sentence here is brilliant in that it instantly and efficiently says, "Listen to me because I'm just like you." 

The rest of the historical thesis in this article is a brilliant analysis, considering the point of view. 

Take a Character who shares this writers contempt and disdain for those who see things differently and create some Events that would shatter his certainty that his view is the only laudable view.

It doesn't matter what views your Character holds, or opposes.  The writing exercise is to Depict a Conflict of Values and its Resolution. 

It will work better as a Novel if you choose some vast conflict of World Shattering importance that is utterly unrelated to the headlines of today.  Just lift out of this article the attitude of this writer -- not the content.

Your task is to create a Character who views Others with such contempt, then discovers that what he hates in them is actually inside himself, that he never perceived them at all.  As he comes to resolve his inner conflict, he begins the journey to being able to Love himself.

Where does that lead?  It will lead him to his Happily Ever After, but not in one or even a thousand steps.  Along the way, he will discover how those he held in contempt are actually struggling as he was.  He will find Love for them, and his way of speaking of them will change (his Character will Arc).

The changed attitude will not change the facts of the Situation, but it will open vistas of opportunity for different sorts of actions to change the facts.  (yes, it's a series of novels)

Once your Character understands how lovable his opposition is, even though they are flat out wrong, his actions will begin to be instructive rather than destructive, and solutions will appear that were never visible before.

The key to Character Arc is the introduction of Love which penetrates the Mirror Effect so that one Character can actually perceive what is inside another Character.  Thus begins all Relationship.

So every novel needs a love story, even if there is no Romance.  And every Romance, to create a realistic Happily Ever After needs a Love story -- the story of learning to Love yourself so that you can see through the mirror-surface and into the people around you.

That Love Story gives the fictional world the necessary verisimilitude to draw a reader into the Fantasy world.

Here are more posts on Alien Romance discussing verisimilitude, story arc, and Romance.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/plot-subtext-integration-part-2-ruining.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 1: You Can't Fight City Hall by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Symbolism Integration
Part 1
You Can't Fight City Hall
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous post on Symbolism:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Is fighting City Hall romantic?  You bet it is! 

But first I want to point you to a short post by Margaret L. Carter here on Alien Romance.  She surveys the effect of going back in Time by watching very old TV Series and how those series depict characters.

The dissonance she refers to measures the sudden change in social norms.  It's too sudden for humans to adjust without psychological stress, according to Alvin Toffler in FUTURE SHOCK change in social norms.  I think we are still in the midst of that change, and therefore Romance Writers can leverage the chaos into massive commercial success bigger than mere destruction-derby, action, raw sex, or violence.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/values-dissonance.html

So let's journey back in time, then apply what we can learn.

One of the hottest hunks of an era was the guy who brought down the mob-corruption in Chicago when the mob had total control of "City Hall."  And the actor who portrayed that sexiest guy was likewise a heart stealing, larger than life, ultimate target for any woman worth her salt.

Here is an Amazon Video page with some of the titles available for a refresher course in that era.


The Untouchables Instant Video

And here is a Kevin Costner remake of that story:


The background theme in the mob story is "corruption."  Corruption is the way to "do business" and/or "Corruption is Dishonorable" and/or "Corruption is a figment of the imagination of those who want to control you."

The themes of Corruption are a theme-bundle, a set of independent but related themes that can be used to drive the stories of a whole set of characters who are in external conflict (plot), but each learning different lessons from being opposed.

Outside of a mere dictionary, the term "corruption" will be defined in a myriad different ways.  "This is corrupt."  No, nonono! "THAT is corrupt!"  "No actually neither is corruption at all." 

"Corruption" is a term with a huge, negative semantic loading (like EVIL, and we all admire the kickass Heroine who fights EVIL and protects our world from invasion and domination by Evil), but unlike Evil Corruption doesn't doesn't come in "Black" vs. "White." 

So with the shift of Generations, as time marches on, we see our very language morphing, words taking on new connotations, new definitions, and being used in new ways. 

Compare that Kevin Costner remake of The Untouchables with the earlier version from 1959 and watch that difference:




Now, consider "Corruption" in the abstract.  The concept lends itself handily to Thematic Statement -- what particular action in which situation actually equals "corruption" and what action does not qualify.  This is potent stuff, and crazy-sexy stuff, too because it makes or breaks Relationships. 

A woman looks for a "strong" man, a man who will stand for what she believes in, fight to the death to protect her and his children, never break his promises. 

Marriages founder on such broken promises, even if "Oh, that's not what I meant" comes into play when accused of breaking a marriage vow.

You see this argument unfolding in today's headlines, all the dodging and weaving to redefine what an oath actually means, what the US Constitution actually means (nevermind meant long ago) and what that has to do with "reality." 

Nobody knows how to resolve such an argument.  The internal parameters are fuzzy, foggy, blurred, and there's no concrete definition of what's right and what's wrong, nevermind what's legal and what's illegal.

This befuddlement affects people of different ages differently and thus your Target Audience is divided by age group.  To capture more than one age-group, you need characters of different ages bespeaking the attitudes and values of their own generation.

Remember how we broke down the Generations among your target audience according to what Sign of the Zodiac Pluto was in at their birth? 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

---------quote from that Part 6-----------
Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.

PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.

There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.

That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)

The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.

Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)

The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.

But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.

Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!

YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.

TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.

Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.

That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.

The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).

The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!

Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreign published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).

Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)

The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.

When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)

The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.

If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?
----------end quote-------

Yes, it's a long post, and that is a tiny slice out of the middle.  It was posted in 2009.

I still think understanding the generations, and the attitudes they have toward Government (what it should be used for, what it can do effectively, what it must never do, etc) is a vital key for writers who are aiming at a particular Demographic which is seen by publishers or producers as currently gobbling up a certain type of fiction.

The full effect of a generational obsession is not seen until that generation has a) money they earned, and b) power over others (e.g. getting promotions to management positions).  The effect is not seen in politics unless there is a significant portion of the total population born in that time-span.

For commercial purposes, industry (Public Relations Firms mostly) have named the generations and assigned them boundaries in years, then attempted to parse the statistics of the mass-behavior of these people.

Forbes Magazine did an article in July 2014 examining the breakdown of generations, and highlighting individual biographies to illustrate a point.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/07/30/the-recession-generation-how-millennials-are-changing-money-management-forever/

And it contains the key graphic writers can gain from, a chart defining the generations in percent of population, and their behavior at different life-stages.