Showing posts with label plot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plot. Show all posts

Friday, February 25, 2022

Karen S. Wiesner: Arrested Development

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Arrested Development 

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner 

Character Plot Relationship Developmental Signs of Life 

Animated

Evidence of functionality, breathing, heartbeat, the spark of life. 

Living

Not simply existing and going through the motions but possessing fully developed external and internal conflicts. 

Interacting

Dynamic, realistic, and believable relationships. 

Vitality and Voice

Three-dimensional character attributes. 

Engaged

Definable objective and purpose of being along with goals and motivations. 

"I misjudged you. You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development." ~Harvey to Cohn in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 

In the field of medicine and psychology, the term "arrested development" means a premature stoppage of physical or psychological development, or the cessation of one or more phases of the developmental process resulting in a lack of completion that may produce potential anomalies. Arrested development can be applied to many situations, including writing. It's something that happens often in fiction with the three core elements of every story--Characters, Plots, and Relationships (CPR)--becoming arrested in their development.

We live in a publishing era that can easily be viewed with growing concern given that the absolute requirement of developing CPR in a story is being sorely neglected in books made available for purchase. In the ideal, a reader wants to immerse himself in a glorious story that pulls him into a fictional world so realistic and populated with three-dimensional characters, plots, and relationships he never wants to leave. He's paid for that, after all, so why shouldn't he get it? Instead, he's saddled with a story that starts bad and only seems to be getting worse. Why would anyone keep reading? The author obviously didn't care to do it right. Despite the time and money invested in this endeavor, it's just easier to walk away. Whether subpar writing is done out of laziness, a lack of skill in crafting, or simple ignorance, having a reader drop a bad book and never come back to it (or to the creator) is the last thing an author should want or allow.

USING CPR {DEVELOPMENT} ON DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION 

Deep, multifaceted development of characters, plots, and relationships can only be achieved through three-dimensional writing, something I've written in-depth about in my writing reference Three-Dimensional Fiction Writing (formerly titled Bring Your Fiction to Life: Crafting Three-Dimensional Stories with Depth and Complexity). All of those concepts are crucial to character, plot, and relationship (which I'll call CPR often from this point on) development.

What makes a person alive? According to WebMD, the three organs that are so crucial to life that you'll die if they stop working are the lungs (breath), heart (blood and oxygen), and brain (functionality). The three work together and without them (or life support), a person is either comatose or deceased.

I would add a fourth component that may not bring around true death to live without: A person needs a soul to live and do more than simply exist--and that means there's an objective or purpose in being. Arguably, a lack of soul can steal all the joy out of living and/or never provide the "spark" that exemplifies life.

If you noticed the CPR Signs of Life Acronym Chart I included at the beginning of this article, we can certainly say that it's possible to see the animation in a character that provides evidence of functionality, breathing, heartbeat, and the spark of life. To truly be living, characters aren't simply existing and going through the motions. They possess fully developed external and internal conflicts. They're interacting in dynamic, realistic, and believable relationships. They have three-dimensional character attributes that give them both vitality and voice. Finally, they're engaged in what makes life worthwhile with definable goals and motivations.

Characters, plots, and relationships need to be breathing, blood and oxygen flowing through their veins in order to function, or they're in a vegetative state or just plain dead. The soul of the character is what turns an ordinary paper doll into a vibrant, memorable personality.

In fiction, the potential for zombies is only too common, and I don't simply mean zombie characters. Plots and relationships can be just as zombie-like. Who wants to read about something that's alive (i.e., not dead) but not really living either? Even in books about zombies, it's the heart-beating, breathing, functional characters, plots, and relationships that make the story come to life. (By the way, if your zombie is living--as in iZombie style--and not simply alive, it's not a true zombie by definition.) As we said, a soul--providing unforgettable character traits, conflicts, and interactions with a very definite "life spark" that makes a reader care and immerse himself in a story--is imperative to make the characters, plots, and relationships compelling.

CPR development is a two-step process:

1) Establishing: Foundation begins in plotting and planting the seeds of development for the CPR process right from the very first scene in a book. You wouldn't just plunk down a plant you want to flourish in an area where it won't get sun, rain, or the nutrients it needs to survive, would you? Plotting and planting are all about properly setting up before setting out, anchoring and orienting readers before leading them with purpose through your story landscape. That's something that needs to be done in every single scene of a book with the basic grasp of setup. The longer it takes for a reader to figure out where he is and what he's doing there, the less chance he'll engage with the story and agree to go along for the journey.

2) Progressing: The one thing a story can't and should never be is static. Development isn't something that stops with the foundational introduction or establishment of threads. Development keeps happening throughout a story. Every single scene that follows the first must show a strong purpose in developing, revealing and advancing characters, plots and relationships in a wide variety of facets. Progress must be made to push past the point of plotting and planting seeds to cultivating the core element "blooms" that pop up into the landscape in every scene. The only way to achieve three-dimensional development of characters, plots, and relationships is to actively take each opportunity to establish and advance the elements that--if properly sketched--should appear in an organic way along the path to telling the story. 

If your characters, plots, and relationships that make up each scene in your story are truly three-dimensional and properly developed and advanced, your book will be so vivid, readers will be haunted by the unforgettable, vibrant world conveyed through your words even after they finish reading.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html 

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Friday, February 18, 2022

Karen S. Wiesner: Deep, Multi-Faceted Development and Progression of Romantic Relationships

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Deep, Multi-Faceted Development and Progression of Romantic Relationships

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}  

"Character is not created in isolation or repose; it’s forged through interaction with others and the world." ~The Art of Character: Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and TV by David Corbett 

Human beings tend to live in groups, whether because one person has the limited ability to live by himself or because we like to be dependent on each other--and of course we like and care about each other as well. This is how societies, communities, and relationships are born.           

All relationships must have purpose in the story or there’s no reason to include them and, quite frankly, what's the purpose in even writing a story without relationships? While there are interesting stories about hermits, survivalists or loners who have little or no contact with other human beings (Island of the Blue Dolphins, Hatchet, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!), most characters are social people in some degree--and that's where things get really interesting because there are rules in in a society that simply don't exist in isolation. People need people more often than not, and nearly all stories need incredible relationships that are completely cohesive with the characters and conflicts. What purpose do the relationships have in light of the plot?

Writing a Romantic Relationship 

Writing a romance story is the hardest category that exists. Nothing can convince me otherwise. Let me tell you why. First, I'm not a romantic in any sense of the word. That's true, and I'd be the first person to tell you that. But I do write deep, rich, realistic love stories. Realism is the most important thing to me as a writer. If it doesn't feel real, like I could step into someone's lives with these characters and their relationship, it doesn’t interest me. I want the down-and-dirty, gritty, excruciating pain and joy that could be actually lead to blood flow or shouts of exhilaration, the so-deep-I-can-feel-and-hear-the-heartbeat, so intense I can't breathe and my hands are actually shaking, I can't gulp because I'm paralyzed waiting restlessly for the next move. That's romance at its best, most ideal. That's what I want with every story that categorizes itself as a romance. 

I'm a strong believer that the things two people who become lovers go through together right from the start to the bitter end need to develop unbreakable affection and commonality, one step after the other, leading to an iron bond. I call them links in the chain of romantic relationships. Especially in a romance story, you can't rush ahead, skipping links, without leaving the reader behind, wondering what's going on and just not feeling anything between the two people you want to bring together romantically. 

Unless she's extremely talented, most romance writers can't hurtle from a couple's first meeting or meeting again (where they may already seem to be falling in love instead of simply being attracted to each other) to the middle of what's generally considered a romance (in which expectations are already in place and both want and need each other--too much, too soon). This forces a romance to never feel quite well setup enough to come off as justified, warranted, believable, and realistic. It also assumes the supernatural is in control, which is sappy and silly. Build each link in the chain steadily, providing the proper setup for every development. Readers won't accept anything forced or unprecedented. 

Mystical developments in a fictional relationship are nothing more than cheating. Basically, nothing has been set up in advance to produce a compelling reason for the characters to feel the way they suddenly (i.e., one minute it doesn't exist, the next it's there and in spades) do about each other, but they'll go from barely knowing each other to feeling strong affection or love in the course of two back-to-back scenes. Maybe some people believe that something magical happens when two people who are destined to fall in love and spend the rest of their lives together meet (those are the kinds of romance novels that make me and those with strong aversions to the genre as a whole want to puke!) but in fiction and I believe in real life, something has to warrant development in a relationship (any relationship--romance or otherwise and if you take the sexual component out of it, the chain of romantic relationship development links can be used for any relationship in your story) to make it authentic and believable. Usually, this amounts to a steady progression of things that help the two people to get to know each other better and actually develop strong feelings for each other. Again, links in the chain. Without steady development of one link after the other, the reader might never be brought to the place where she feels ready for anything overt that happens between a couple, or she'll feel frustrated and even disgusted, maybe even actively hoping they'll break up.

In a romance novel, romantic/sexual tension is essential, although novels in other genres may also develop the same tension between romantic interests. It’s like cake and frosting. Take away one, and what’s the point? This kind of tension refers to anything that brings the romance to the fever pitch of anticipation for the reader. It’s also been described as an exaggerated awareness between the hero and the heroine. You want to start this tension as early in the story as you possibly can. If you don’t start the suspense promptly and keep it intense, the reader will be disappointed--or worse, embarrassed--during moments she should be temporarily relieved or exalted. Just as with plot tension, a romance novel without romantic/sexual tension leaves the reader uninvolved and unemotional toward the focal relationship happening.

A romance story has to have a specific chain of development that can't be rushed, and it doesn’t matter in the least what genre of romance it is. The steady progression of sexual tension, emotional culmination, and physical demonstration is required to bring the couple to the place where they've believably fall in love and can justify declarations of monogamous love, sex, along with a commitment of forever. Even in a Christian or "clean" romance, sexual tension and physical romantic development are required and vital to making the romance genuine and believable. In the sweet romances, how strong or sensual the tension and romantic developments are may be somewhat muted with any heavy intimacy taking place off-screen.

What your characters are experiencing is what your reader should experience. But if the characters are chagrined or want to escape, that's what your reader will want to do, too. The point of writing a romance is to make the reader fall in love (an emotional and physical reaction) with your characters one scene to the next, escalating into the payoff you've promised, and experiencing bliss and joy at the culmination. Readers may even shed tears. I'll tell you this, if you've gotten a reader to weep, she'll never forget the story, the characters and their romance for as long as she lives, and she'll read that story over and over again in her lifetime. A romance author wants that scenario. Otherwise, what's the point of writing a romance story? No point. And that's why I believe writing romance is the hardest genre on the planet. Because, if you write a bad romance, it's not worth having told the story at all. It's failed on all levels instead of simply on one.

Only with the steady establishment and buildup of sexual tension and romance development--fully meshed with a logical resolution--will allow your reader be left satisfied and smiling upon closing the book.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html 

Happy writing! 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor


Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Plot-Character Integration Part 2 - Finding Your Opening Scene

Plot-Character Integration
Part 2
Finding Your Opening Scene

Previous Parts in Plot-Character Integration are:

Part 1 - The 3/4 Point Pivot Part 1 - The Worm Turns
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/plot-character-integration-part-1-34.html

Part 3 - The Starring Character For A Series
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/plot-character-integration-part-3.html

And this is Part 2 of Plot-Character Integration - Finding Your Opening Scene

Chances are you have had your sizzling Science Fiction Romance novel simmering in the back of your mind for years.  You know the Characters and you know when your Starring Character gets a grip on his life and acts to change everything.

You know these people so well, you just gibber when you try to tell someone about them and their influence on each other and on the World they live in.

It is a huge story, so you believe you have a Series of novels to write that story in.  It is an intimidating prospect - spending 20 years writing a 25 year series with many short stories, novellas, and contributions to other people's universes sandwiched in between personal appearances.  Can you handle it?  If you're not quivering at the prospect, there is something you don't understand.

I couldn't begin to guess what you, in particular, are missing about understanding yourself or the world you live in.

However, I have a long-running Series of novels now with an anthology of stories by other writers, and novels I've collaborated on written by two other writers.  The Sime~Gen novels are a series structured like a future history, and the Starring Character changes from one novel to the next (unbeknownst to the reader, there are a handful of Souls re-incarnating every few hundred years).

In between, I've sold several other universes, trilogies, and contributed to other writers' universes, shared universes, and so on.

And I've taught writing craft at workshops across the country, read a lot of beginning writers' first attempts, heard other professional writers and editors analyze why a manuscript could not be published, and learned much from all that.

One very common mistake beginning writers make is starting the manuscript with the wrong scene, at the wrong time in the Starring Character's life-arc, and usually at the END of the Star's story, not the BEGINNING.

Start at the beginning is the advice I've heard given many times, and the teary-eyed young writer stars in numb bewilderment utterly certain that they did start at the beginning.

The contact with the young writer usually ends there, so most of these earnest young people never make it to print unless they self-publish and become more bewildered about why their work doesn't click with their intended readership.

The reason new writers make this error in starting-point, and subsequent plot-errors is that they know their Starring Character and his or her entire LIFE is well known, so well known, so real, so involving, that none of the plot-alterations suggested by the editor or teacher in a workshop are acceptable.

"He wouldn't do that!" is the stock response signaling you are dealing with an amateur who will never sell anything.  "She couldn't bring herself to do this!"  "That can't happen in this world!"

The reason you can't find the "correct" (e.g. commercially salable) opening scene, thus middle and ending scenes, is that the alternate reality in which these Characters "live" and the destiny of the Characters is already known to you.  It just has to be the way you've already imagined it - because that' just plain the RIGHT story you have to tell. It's right. It just is right, and so it can't be changed.

Why have you created an entire story, a universe, which is commercially non-viable, or seems so to professionals?

It could well be that you have not spent enough time training your subconscious to recognize the shape and rhythm of real life, and how that reality becomes symbolized, condensed, and portrayed rather than related by writers creating fiction.

There is a relationship between a fictional Character's life-arc and story-arc, and the "Arc" humans live.

Lives have shapes - not everyone's life is shaped just like another's life, and even those with lives shaped very much the same will have vastly different outcomes because the PERSON living the life is unique.

Nevertheless, everyone who knows a lot of people, engages in gossip or social chit-chat, and/or reads lots of biographies, knows a lot of life-shapes that are real.

To get your reader to suspend disbelief and enter your Science Fiction Romance universe, you need to convince them (on page 1) that your made-up universe is REAL.

The writing tool that conveys that conviction is what I've called in these blogs "verisimilitude"  -- some element in your made-up world is just like the reality in the reader's real world (or what the reader of that target readership believes is reality).

One tool for injecting verisimilitude into Page 1, is Character Arc.  The Character must be moving along a trajectory and with a velocity that the reader immediately recognizes as something they have seen in reality.

Everything else in your opening scene can be purest Fantasy, utterly impossible, and definitely not-real, as long as there is one anchor point for the reader to recognize and accept.

Verisimilitude and Symbolism can be used to create that anchor point.

Here are some discussions of the use of Verisimilitude.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/soul-mates-and-hea-real-or-fantasy-part.html

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

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-16.html

And using symbolism to explain why we cry at weddings:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

When the Starring Character's Character Arc is fully integrated with the Plot, (and I mean fully), the verisimilitude of the Character's movement from one Place in his Life-Story to another Place in his Life-Story will pull the reader into your novel.

This fully integrated Plot-Character element is often referred to as a "narrative hook" -- which, to a beginning writer, is a meaningless term. It is a meaningless term not because the writer is a beginner, but because the term doesn't actually mean anything at all -- it just sounds like it does.

You already know your Characters, the story of how they meet, how they get involved, what outside forces end the Honeymoon, who gets in what trouble and has to be rescued by whom.  You know how they embark on their Series of Potent Dramas (as Detectives for NYPD or Scientists for NASA, or CIA operatives).

You know who your people are and what story you need to tell.  So what narrative?  What quality of "hook" (twisted?  What hook?) does the term Narrative Hook refer to?

You look over the whole life-history of your characters and find nothing nothing twisted and no narrative in sight.

Anything you invent as the opening will be made-up on the spot in the workshop, and just too unreal to work for your novel.  Right there, your well known, vibrant Romance morphs into something else entirely, something unsatisfying and uninteresting to write.

The opening words, the opening sentence, the first line of your novel is just that integral to the entire rest of it.  Everything depends on the opening words. Everything.

It is so much the cornerstone of the work, contains all the rest of the words in that one single (hopefully short, declarative or interrogative sentence) that when a workshop finds a problem with the Middle or 3/4 point or even the ending, the writing teachers will tell you to rewrite THAT scene they find problematic, but nothing you can do will fix the problem they see.  Nothing!

Why? Because the problem is not in the scene they trip over.

The problem on page 312 is on page 1.

It is Page 1 that has to be rewritten, not page 312.

Trust me. It is always the case.

I thought it was a special case with my first novel, House of Zeor,

Read the "Look Inside" to see the opening I'm talking about here.

https://amazon.com/House-Zeor-Sime-Gen-Book-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004N3AZJG/

House of Zeor is the foundation novel for the Sime~Gen Series which is still running.

I ended up rewriting that opening page a couple dozen times, and moving the opening scene up and down the timeline of the Plot about 5 times.  I was trying to craft a "narrative hook" -- after studying the term and its applications for many years.

It took a long time after I sold House of Zeor to Hardcover until I understood there is no such thing as a "Narrative Hook."

But that's what I learned crafting that opening - and since the novel stayed in print for 20 consecutive years, maybe I figured something out.

After that 20-year run in print, a short hiatus, and it came back into print from a publisher doing Omnibus editions - then moved to Wildside Press where it is in print as paper, audiobook, and e-book in all formats.  Something went right in that opening -- people still recommend House of Zeor as a first Sime~Gen novel even though there are 14 other volumes to choose among.

They say, "Write something interesting."  What's interesting to you isn't interesting to anyone else in this world because you are unique.  What matters to you doesn't matter to anyone else.

They say, "Write your main character in the fury of Action, make the Character MOVE."

That's good advice, but ruins everything in a "Love at First Sight" opening.  The shock of first sight paralyzes all movement, which is the tell-tale signature of the Plot Event "First Sight."

I used Character Movement as the opening line in House of Zeor, pacing impatiently, worriedly, annoyingly, but pointlessly back and forth.

Pacing doesn't really work too well as an opening, but the Starring Character who is pacing is impatient to be off on horseback to rescue his Soul Mate.  So it does the job of establishing verisimilitude.

The story I wanted to tell is about the Starring Character's future incarnations.  I had several incarnations at different points in History (from circa 1700 to 3700 level technology) after this lifetime.

The Soul's soul-lesson of the House of Zeor lifetime is about his HEA with his Soul Mate being thwarted by the torrential forces of History. His Soul's Destiny was what interested me - couldn't sell that back then.

I used pacing back and forth because movement was touted as a requirement of the Narrative Hook.  Pacing is a show-don't-tell for the invisible tension of impatience.

Pacing, and being snapped at for it by your boss, leads the reader to ask why this Character is impatient.  The reader doesn't need to be told what impatience is.  This is a Character at a point in his Character-Arc where an anticipated Event is not-happening-now.

Everyone has experienced this Situation - some pace, some snap at people, some twist paperclips. Everyone knows impatience - it is verisimilitude.

I didn't write something "interesting" -- I wrote something curious.

Science fiction is all about satisfying a scientific curiosity (which is why Spock became a Starring Character.)

So just as the term "atom" was invented to designate the smallest indivisible particle of matter, "narrative hook" was a term invented to designate the indivisible, rock solid formula opening for a story or novel.

And just as atoms have been split, and even the particles composing atoms have been split and analyzed, so too the "narrative hook" decomposes into small parts.

Atoms actually exist, but aren't indivisible.

Narrative Hooks actually exist, but aren't indivisible.

Narrative Hooks don't actually need any narrative in them at all.  And hooking is not a great idea if you respect your readers.  You want to invite your reader by displaying your sympathetic understanding of their life experience.

Thus, the Hung Hero (absolutely unsellable as science fiction) is an invitation to certain readers.  The Hung Hero is a Starring Character who has no options for acting to change the Situation.

Usually, beginning writers make a Hung Hero by choosing the wrong Character to Star in the story.

But in real life, most of us live long-long years as "hung hero" of our own story -- nothing we do seems to fix our problems. We know that feeling.  And in many well-known, famous lifetimes, we see how the hung-situation breaks only when the Hero "is forced to" do something out of character.

Many great Romance novels use the outside-forces forcing the reluctant Hero to do something -- but in Science Fiction genre, that won't work as an opening.  It often works as a Middle, which is the lowest point, or as the 3/4 Worm Turns point.

But your viewpoint characters, your Stars, have to be on the active pole, not passive. They have to want, decide, and act to achieve.

The paradigm for the Character on the Positive Pole is "Consider-Evaluate-Decide-Act."  As the Character does that sequence - the plot just happens, it just rolls on out as the Story drives the plot.  The Character Arc drives the Story.

When all these separate components are "integrated" into one single thing, the writing teachers throw up their hands and term it a "Narrative Hook."  "Once upon a time, ..." is a narrative hook.  It implies a Character in a different Time did something for a reason you need to understand.  It prompts the question, "What happened?"

"What happened?" is the hook, or more specifically, the Invitation.  Open on something that sparks curiosity in your reader. Open at the point where the Starring Character doesn't understand anything about the Life Lesson about to come smashing into his life.  Make the reader ask that question right there at the beginning sentence.  Make the Starring Character's quest for the answer into both Plot and Story -- integrated.

The opening scene presents the issue to be Considered and Evaluated by the Character whose actions will change the Situation.

Other Characters who merely influence or support the Star may have their own Stories - but those aren't the stories you are telling.  One novel - one story with one Main Plot and one crystal clear thematic statement uniting the work of Art.

Lives well lived in reality are also "works of art."  Living Well is an art form, and that is something the educated reader knows, but may not know they know.

The best open door invitation into a well built World will be fabricated from bits and pieces of what the reader knows but does not know she knows.

So how do you find the Character in your world who is crafting a work of art from his Life?

Look at real-life.  Look at life-stories of real people.  (and/or study Astrology).

Then look at the kind of fiction you prefer to read.

Sift out the Character Arc shapes.

Note the life-stages we are all familiar with.  Each stage has its specific readership you can target because they happen at 10 or 20 year intervals if you should live so long.  The HEA plateau is not notable on this list, but a phenomenon of the flat Character Arc interval.  More on that is in Part 3 of the Plot-Character Integration series.

A) Character is learning and/or being Trained

B) Character is venturing into using Training. (first solo drive, first solo piloting of a plane, first infiltration on a spy mission). First Testing.  Loss of virginity.

C) Having racked up a resume of failures, being fired, getting jailed, a lawyer who loses too many cases, Character goes on the bum, hits the skids, becomes homeless, hits bottom.

D) Character remakes himself - as arch criminal mastermind, business entrepreneur, or goes to police academy, gets other schooling, volunteers to be a pioneer settler on another world.

Science Fiction genre requires (usually, not always) a Hero on the way UP in life - deciding and acting to improve himself and others.

The downward spiral of failure is of interest in developing the Character's past - but is a series of novels in itself, and not amenable to use as Science Fiction or Romance.  A Romance for such a Character would be the turning point into another phase of existence.

The flat Character Arc - where the Character doesn't learn or change because of Plot Events - is the formula for the Starring Character in a long Series such as a Detective Series.

We discuss that flat-arc in Part 3, but for now search your fictional worlds for the Character Springboard where the Starring Character dives off a cliff or leaps to grab the skids of a rescue helicopter.

Find your Starring Character by finding the Character in the ensemble of the novel who is about to take a risk. Changing your life is a risk. Success requires a risk, but not all risks lead to success.  Both Science Fiction and Romance are about a Starring Character who achieves Success - an HEA or a scientific breakthrough that saves, heals, revives others.

Show that moment of risk evaluation, and make the reader ask what the stakes are, and what the opposing force is.

The Starring Character is the one who considers, evaluates, decides and acts -- and whose actions change the Situation.  Rate of change of situation = "Action."  Rate of change of Situation = Pacing. And pacing is an art.

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

Then open the door and invite your reader to explore the issues involved in why the opposing forces are opposing.

Pose the question in your opening line without actually asking the question.  Answer the question in your final line of the novel.  Then write what went between.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 08, 2020

Plot-Character Integration Part 3 - The Starring Character For A Series

Plot-Character Integration
Part 3
The Starring Character For A Series

Part 1 - The 3/4 Point Pivot Part 1 - The Worm Turns
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/plot-character-integration-part-1-34.html

Part 2 - Finding Your Opening Scene posted September 15, 2020

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/plot-character-integration-part-2.html

This is Part 3 of Plot-Character Integration.  The Starring Character For A Series

You'd think finding the opening scene should come AFTER designing your Starring Character, and BEFORE finding the epiphany moment in the Character's life where Events (Plot) trigger (not force) the Character to change his/her life's vector.  In truth, Creativity just doesn't work in logical order, and most often the Vector Impelling Moment pops into the writer's mind first, then maybe the writer backtracks to the Opening Scene (which we will look at next week on this Blog) and from the opening scene where the conflict is sketched in and the Life Vector shifting scene, the writer pursues a definition of the Character.

Beginning writers often make the mistake of not polishing (rewriting like crazy) these 3 moments or elements until they are one, inextricable, interlinked, fully integrated thing - a Starring Character.  In a well written book, no reader who isn't also a writer will see the separate elements that go into building a Starring Character.  Readers only see a Person walking a life-path, and love the book if they recognize a few bits of verisimilitude and much more to be curious about.

When you walk and chew gum, you are "integrating" two actions.  When you plot a novel, you are doing one action, and when you create the Characters (or depict the Characters) you are doing another action. When you "integrate" these two actions, the reader (even accomplished English professors) can't tell the difference between Plot and Character.

That's why, once you've finished a novel, you stumble and dither through trying to describe the novel in a cover letter.

Your dithering tells you that you have, in fact, integrated the Plot into other elements, Character, Theme, Setting, etc.

A cover letter needs to display the PLOT, and do that by tracing the decisions and actions, pro-active actions (not "being forced to") that get his/her fanny caught in the bear trap of the plot.

So the blurb, the pitch, and the cover letter should be written BEFORE picking the opening scene, before creating the Characters, before even "I've got an Idea" -- lay down the plot in terms an editor can identify clearly.

Then rummage through the stockpile of ideas in your subconscious and come up with one that just naturally fits that plot.

The Science Fiction Romance novel is one about the Science of Romance.  The bear trap for either Character in the Romance is the Other Character in the Romance -- once two Soul Mates first come in contact (even without physically meeting) - they are each trapped into a plot.

Their efforts to pry their way out of the bear trap are the events of the plot -- the things they do to avoid fate.

The "I love you" moment, or the "I do" moment, (or "why the hell not" moment) ends that struggle to avoid the fate of joining with a Soul Mate.

These Tuesday blog posts are about crafting a convincing argument for the Happily Ever After Ending.  The famous HEA is so adamantly disbelieved, a thing that never can happen in "real" life, that those who know it is real, those who are living it, those who intend to live it for themselves, just can't communicate that reality to the disbelievers.

So the Romance writer venturing into Science Fiction has to lull the veteran science fiction reader into suspension of disbelief.

Willing suspension of disbelief.

One powerful tool the science fiction romance writer has for setting up suspension of disbelief is the Character who Stars in the show which is the novel.

The other most powerful tool in the writer's toolbox for delivering the gut-punch of the HEA-as-Reality is the Character who stars in the show.

Character is depicted via Character-Arc.  How many events, how much pressure, how much evidence the reader needs in order to believe the thematic statement the Character is making, and the Life Lesson the Character is learning, -- i.e. the Character Arc -- constitutes Pacing.  We explored Character Arc and pacing in the Mysteries of Pacing Series, indexed here.

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

A Starring Character is shown (not told) in the opening scene to "be" at a life-intersection-point akin to what the Target Reader expects to face, is facing, or has recently faced but not yet resolved.

Thus, novels aimed at Teens are generally set in High School or early University - because that's where Teens are in life.  (usually -- Science Fiction Hero Characters generally drop out to launch Microsoft, or get swept away from school because their father is the new Ambassador to Mars).

Aiming at the 30-something readership, the writer can choose a Starring Character who has just been fired from a job and is job-hunting.  Or in a Regency Romance, left destitute and becoming a governess.  That is the starting point, the pivot point in life for many Romance readers who happen to love Science.

Novels need a Starring Character to "Arc" or change his mind about something deeply philosophical because the reader's experience of reality is that "Life" does indeed "Arc" in a ballistic trajectory.  Aging has a PATTERN, and everyone who has elders in their life understands that pattern, even while refusing to identify with it.

So for verisimilitude, your Starring Character(s) must Arc, must change internally as external life is impacted by Events that result from their actions.  The reader must be able to see the cause-effect chain, the because line, between what the Character does and the Plot Events that happen to him.  It has to make sense in some way -- even if the thematic statement is that life is random and nothing makes sense (a valid philosophy).

Poetic Justice reigns in fiction.

So what has the Starring Character's Arc to do with arguing for the HEA?

Life Arcs have different shapes.  Some swoop upward in a parabola, then crash straight down.  Some are a shallow-angle straight line, steadily upward.  Some seem to start on an upward path, then crash way down and never recover, the Star ending up dying homeless.  Some gain prominence almost from birth, then steadily maintain huge Public Figure Status despite scandals and losses ( Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis ).

Some Life Arcs have a long-long extended flat top, going up steeply through adventurous youth, then flattening.

The Starring Character of a Long Series of Novels has to be living the long-long flat Arc (either at the top or the bottom of the curve).

The Series we examined in previous posts ...

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/06/reviews-53-fenmere-job-by-marshall-ryan.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/06/reviews-54-resurgence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/reviews-55-walking-shadows-by-faye.html

... show some examples of the flat-arc portion of Character's lives.

Marshall Ryan Maresca avoids the "boring" effect of the flat-arc portion of a life well lived by skipping about among Characters and setting groups of novels among different ensemble casts of Characters, with a long-arc for the government of a large city.

C. J. Cherryh takes her Star of the Foreigner Series from the very steep rising part of his life (being appointed to represent his human people to an alien government), where he has to learn that he wasn't taught everything there is to know about the Aliens, all the way to becoming the steadying hand behind the blending of the governments of the respective peoples because they face an external threat (or two).

Faye Kellerman's Detective Novels display the HEA most prominently - because her Detective character meets his Soul Mate in Book 1 (which won Kellerman awards), then goes on to the business of holding a stressful job (as Homicide Detective in Los Angeles) and keeping a family together, raising kids, and then retiring to an "easy" job with more mystery-mahem-menace than LA ever provided.  Yet all the mysteries he solves don't change him in any essential way -- which is very likely due to the steady influence of his wife, his anchor in reality (and often the catalyst plunging him into new mysteries.)

To star in such a long-running series the Character has to attain a solid, steady, disruption-proof, stable point in life, and in life-philosophy.  The flat part of the Character Arc is the HEA.

All these series throw searing, explosive, life-shattering bombs at these Starring Characters, and though the Star does feel it, does react to tragedy and danger, the impact doesn't derail his Life.  He adjusts his Life to suit the new circumstances and moves right ahead, actually enjoying living.

That is the HEA -- not Happily for Now, but seriously stable to the grave long-lived stability.

It is Stability that your reader doesn't believe in because their own lives are not Stable.

Stable doesn't mean unchanging, or unresponsive, or bored.  Stable means having the deep resources to meet every challenge -- but meet that challenge you must.  That sort of resource well can be filled to the brim only with a Soul Mate, and usually with children (born, adopted, or students taught - a next generation).

Lives can reach that plateau, that long, level path to the future, with or without a Soul Mate.  Level stability doesn't mean Happiness.

Lives can stabilize in a miserable state, in a numb state (consider people from war-torn countries), in depression, or in happiness.

What the modern audience lacks is the sense that stability is possible.  This may be in part because of the News of the World flying at us all day from the Web, or in part from the wild ride up the Technology Curve, with every 3 years having to learn whole new software.

The rate of change in this modern world, as Alvin Toffler predicted, stresses the basic human animal brain beyond the ability to adjust.  So many people feel blinding, blazing, change whipping this way and that, and have grown up without the feeling of stability that previous generations see as the norm.

Here is an example of a 21 book private detective series upon which so many current series have been based.

It is the Travis McGee Novel series by John D. MacDonald.

This one, The Long Lavender Look, was published #12 in the 21 book series (all of which have a color name in the title).  The series is about a third of the total output of John D. MacDonald. I suspect it is the one he is the most famous for.

Here are a quotes from the erudite introduction by Lee Child:

-----quote------
MacDonald, John D.. The Long Lavender Look: A Travis McGee Novel . Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

From A Deadly Shade of Gold, a Travis McGee title: “The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.” From the stand-alone thriller Where Is Janice Gantry?: “Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.” These two angles show up everywhere in his novels: the need to—maybe reluctantly, possibly even grumpily—stand up and be counted on behalf of the weak, helpless, and downtrodden, which included people, animals, and what we now call the environment—which was in itself a very early and very prescient concern: Janice Gantry, for instance, predated Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking Silent Spring by a whole year.

  ----

McGee is a quiet man, internally bewildered by and raging at what passes for modern progress, externally happy merely to be varnishing the decks of his houseboat and polishing its brass, but always ready to saddle up and ride off in the service of those who need and deserve his help. Again, not the product of the privileged youth enjoyed by the salaried executive’s son. So where did McGee and MacDonald’s other heroes come from? Why Florida? Why the jaundiced concerns? We will never know. But maybe we can work it out, by mining the millions of words written with such haste and urgency and passion between 1945 and 1986.

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

Go on Amazon and read this whole introduction, even if you remember reading the novels.

https://amazon.com/s?k=travis+mcgee+series+paperback+in+order

Now, consider this:

The Character arc captured in this introduction is relatively static and flat, which is why the series endured for so many decades.

McGee is a Hero who will go out of his comfort zone to save others, but whose inner conflict keeps him spiritually static, just like all good anthology-format TV heroes.

He sees his long-arc life conflict as un-winnable, but is compelled to fight that battle anyway.  This is the opposite of Star Trek’s Kirk, who doesn’t see a battle, but rather an adventure to be lived with zest, humor, and joy.  McGee has become the archetype drawn on by many writers.  Despair seems more realistic than joy to the modern reader.

Note how McGee is seen as bewildered by the lightning pace of change in the world around him.  But 1950's to 1980's is seen, today, in retrospect as stable relative to modern change (Zoom swoops in to save the day for work-from-home necessity during Pandemic).  Vaccine developed via genetic analysis at a dizzying pace, using tools not even dreamed of in 1970's.

Yet, McGee is the stable Star Character of this series, in a stable part of his life, with his attitude toward life solidly established and unchanging.  He responds to each challenge, each case (even in The Long Lavender Look where he, himself, is a suspect in a murder) from that solidly planted, interior orienting point.

Compare McGee to Bren Cameron of C. J. Cherryh's series.

Then contrast with Gini Koch's ALIEN Series -- where the ensemble of Characters rally round the Starring Character with the common intention of creating Stability -- and step by tiny step, they achieve that goal as a team.

If you want to write a Series long enough to convince the modern reader that the HEA is an achievable goal for the shape of the life that they want to live, Show Don't Tell a Starring Character who learns, step by step, one tiny step in each novel, how to stabilize himself and others in a whirlwind of challenges.

The forlorn belief that only the Happily For Now (temporary, not stable) the best one can expect has to be transitioned into the concept that Life can be Stable and not boring!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Mysteries of Pacing Part 9 - Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Mysteries of Pacing
Part 9
Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Previous entries in this series are indexed at:

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

People make mistakes.

So, therefore, a Character in a story who makes a mistake (thus advancing the plot, NOT delaying it), is entirely plausible, sometimes lovable, easily identified with, and a true candidate for Husband of the Year -- eventually -- when that mistake arises from a foible.

See the entry on What Does She See In Him
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

It is the core of the HEA plausibility study we've been doing. How does one human assess another's Character?  How inflexible is that human in changing the criteria by which Character is to be assessed?  How important is Character in a Romance?  Does a Romance need two sterling Characters to progress to an HEA?

Does Happily Ever After ending plausibility depend entirely on two Characters having internal strength of character?

What is character, exactly? What constitutes "strength" in Character?  Can one strong Character be the Soul Mate of another Strong Character, or does a Strong Character require a Weak Character Mate?

All these questions have one valid answer.

"Probably."

Somewhere, some-when, on some fantasy timeline, each of those questions has a yes, and each has a no, and where there is a sliding scale (how important?) every single value on that whole scale, plus-to-minus, works perfectly in some alternate universe.

Your job as a writer is to take your reader on a journey across the border between here and now and there and then, and insert your reader into the head of a native of that otherwhere.

At the end of the story, the reader should return to reality with a new METHOD of assessing data about the nature and value of a person, maybe about what constitutes person-hood.

To be the tour-guide into that otherwhere, the writer has to create that otherwhere, and all its non-human Characters, if not from scratch, from a template.

The best template to use to create a fictional World is one of the many your target readership already knows.

See the following Index lists for posts on these intertwined and related topics on Worldbuilding, Theme, and integrating theme and setting ( where setting = world).

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

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

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

Actually, "Setting" is a tiny slice of a "World" - but to write science fiction, the writer needs a sketch of the whole world around the Characters.

To end up with a Science Fiction Romance novel, you start by envisioning (not necessarily building in detail) the World the Characters must cope with.

The one decisive element the writer needs to know to avoid endless rewriting is what-and-where the imaginary world diverges from the reader's reality (or the reader's notion of reality).

What your reader KNOWS is key to targeting a readership.  Publishing mostly regards assumptions about the reader's pre-existing knowledge base as the key to deciding the label to put on the book, Children's, Juvenile, Adult, Cozy, Chicklit, etc.

Readerships are regarded as divided by age, and thus "life-experience" -- and aspirations.  "When I grow up, I want to be  ... " or, "I want my newborn grandson to grow up to be ..."

What the reader will learn from the book depends on how old that reader is, or alternatively what their live-experience is.  For example, the children growing up in a war-torn region of the globe will be fully Adult at maybe 10 or 12, maybe having shot and killed an attacker, or an enemy who isn't attacking (yet).

Maybe that child learns hate, and grows up to un-learn it, as so very many things learned in childhood are discarded in the twenties.

Alternatively, the majority of Romance readers probably are growing up in sheltered homes, being pushed through schooling they don't want (yet), and having their lives planned by their grandparents.

These readerships have overlap points, but Publishers still prefer to divide humanity by age.

See these posts on Targeting a Readership:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So your job as a Science Fiction Romance Writer is to be the tour guide to a gaggle of tourists of mixed backgrounds all arriving in your world with different expectations.

As in the film AVATAR,
https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Sam-Worthington/dp/B00AVF8USS/
you have to give each of the tourists in your gaggle a persona, an avatar, inside which they can safely tour your world, and still bond with and empathize with the issues at hand.

The cultural rejection of the HEA as inevitable, or even possible, may reside in the scarcity of Avatars tailored for the segment of the readership that flat disbelieves.

Your job is to usher them into a world where things are different than their current reality, where the singular difference makes the HEA possible, or even very likely.

For the firmly convinced anti-HEA (maybe amenable to the HFNow ending), the transition in belief system is truly gigantic.

It is existential.

It is a transition that threatens the very foundations of conceptual reality.  Change in such fundamental beliefs can feel like being suddenly plunged into a nightmare.

In other words, for some people a realistic Romance Novel is actually Horror Genre.

To ease such a reader into your World, you need a Character to be their Avatar.

To deliver a satisfying good read, you need that Avatar to Arc from where the Reader is in their life at that time, to where the Reader can envision a world where SOMETHING is different than in her real world, and that difference makes the HEA either possible or inevitable.

The place in "life" and the parameter of reality blocking the reader's life progress, are items you glean from your view of the world (yes, rip this from the current headlines).

To build your fictional world, a simplified, stripped down, version of Reality, you target a problem in real Reality, and figure what about that target has to change (and into what it must change) to cause the HEA to be the normal life-arc of the characters in your world.

To make rabbit stew, first catch your rabbit.

In this case the rabbit is the problem making people frustrated or miserable, or maybe excited and ready to leap into adventure, never mind the danger.  The stew is your theme.

Identify the problem, hypothesize a solution, run an experiment.

The essence of science fiction is encapsulated in three question formats:  "What if ...?" " "If only ..." and "If this goes  on ..."

Focus on that, and you find it applies perfectly to Romance.  These are not two separate genres, as publishers still believe, and when you use both in a single novel or series, you aren't "mixing" genres, but rather revealing the hard-core practical reality at the center of your World.

The mystery of pacing is likewise revealed by what you choose as your hard-core, practical, inescapable attribute of reality that is so very different from what your reader thinks reality revolves around.

Consider, maybe our individual (and collective) "view of reality" is somewhat like a Galaxy -- with a black hole in the center, and our beliefs like a spiral scattering of stars being pulled down that drain just like water sucked down a drain by gravity.

It's the inexorable gravity of the black hole that gives spiral galaxies their shape.

Study your black hole.  Study your reader's black hole.  Measure the distance between them, and consider if one passes through the other at an angle, what "beliefs" (e.g. stars) will be changed in orbit, or possibly gather substance or planets?

The belief system of a person can be reshaped by an encounter with a black hole from another system of belief.

One won't be turned into the other, but there will be a morphing into something else.

Nothing remains unaffected by such major encounters.

Reading a novel can be a view through a telescope, or a close encounter, or an interpenetration.

The interpenetration happens when the Main Character of the story is an amenable Avatar for the reader who then experiences not just the story, but the arc of the Character.

The reader's real, personal, character will arc in response just as two galaxies passing through each other leave change in both.

The pacing the writer needs to pull off this non-destructive but morphing encounter depends on the initial distance between the core beliefs of the reader and the core beliefs of the Avatar, the main character to whom the plot happens.

A core belief is like that black hole that shapes the position and vector of each of the suns in the galaxy spiral.  A core belief shapes and determines the direction of change of all the other beliefs.  Beliefs are not static, and they have gravity of their own, and pull planetary beliefs into orbit, all forever moving through reality, each shaping space around it.

Dynamic motion.

Beliefs are not static things.  They arc.  They arc around a central gravity-point like that black hole, and they become organized through life into recognizable shapes.

An interpenetration with another character can add, subtract, and re-organize the substance of the beliefs, or rip them away sending them off into the deep.  Romance can do that to a Character - just reshape reality.

In dramatic writing, "pacing" is the rate of change of Situation.  It can also be the rate of change of the Character's understanding of what the Situation really is.

In other words, pacing can be increased or slowed by the rate at which a Character learns either information or a method of interpreting information.  Having to pause to re-interpret everything that's happened so far can slow pacing.

Pacing is a vector.  It has both direction and speed.

Once you've lured or seduced your reader into occupying the Avatar character, you can manipulate the Avatar's understanding of your World.

The best way to captivate and show-don't-tell is to start your Avatar out at a point where his/her beliefs match orbit with your reader.  Then send a challenge of current beliefs flying at your Avatar knocking him out of orbit.

Like billiards.  

It is what happens when two Soul Mates meet.  The core beliefs of each, the black hole at the center of Soul, is knocked, deformed, and rung like a bell.

The Love At First Sight Romance is a direct collision of the black holes at the centers of your pair of Characters.  It sets the whole galaxy of belief system of each of them ringing like a bell.

Each of the Characters must arc, or change their beliefs to accommodate the new gravity pattern around their central, core belief.

In a Romance, the core beliefs either don't have very far to go, or if they have far to go, they change in very tiny increments, very slowly, which takes an entire Series of novels, a long series, 20 books or more sometimes.

Pacing, in drama, is a vector quantity.  It has speed and direction.

If you have to change your Character's direction in life, by a lot, do it slowly.

Science Fiction Romance is one genre that, in a Series, allows your plot to be fast-paced while your story (Romance) is slow-paced enough to have verisimilitude.

Using the definition of Plot as the sequence of events caused by the Main Character's initial action, each event causing the next, you can start the series where the Main Character, the Avatar, makes a mistake.

However, it can't be just a random mistake.  The Avatar's action has to be an illustration of an innate foible, a character flaw, that throughout the coming series of novels, will be hammered to destruction, the source revealed, and the remedy encountered, resisted, then accepted.

The HEA, in real life, is usually the result of such a developmental arc, where events cause self-examination and reassessment, gradually (over years) revealing and eliminating a foible.

Some foibles are not worth the effort to eliminate -- they just make the person individualistic, one of a kind, charming, interesting or just a character.

Other foibles can cripple a person's life, preventing career advancement, diverting energy to unproductive channels, and just being mistakes to regret.

The foible is the key ingredient in a Character formulation, in Characterization, that allows that Character to be the Main Character and the reader's Avatar.

Look up foible (Google it) and study the word and its ever changing meaning.  Identify your own foibles, which you still have and which you've vanquished.  Think about how the vanquished ones were knocked out of you.

Identify that pattern of foible-remediation in other people you know, and then maybe on Facebook Friends postings.

Find some headlines about people undergoing remediation of their foibles.

Find the foible pattern common to humanity, and build your Aliens around a different pattern.

The Aliens will be more plausible if they have foibles, but a different pattern of them, and a different mechanism of remediation.

Your Alien will be more lovable with a recognizable foible.

Really study the word foible.  It is the black hole at the center of the Character Arc spiral.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series Part 6 - Confronting Change

How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series
Part 6
Confronting Change

Previous parts in How to Use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Series are indexed at the bottom of the index post about Astrology

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

In 2020, we are up against the forces of change focused on governments, country sovereignty, borders being moved, annexation of lands, ousting of Kings, plus the looming promise of major shifts in how management decisions are made -- Big Data plus Artificial Intelligence.

Privacy seems gone as facial recognition (however flawed) is deployed.  The recent Coronavirus mutation brought scenes of people marching down airport corridors, outlined by a camera that revealed their body temperature (looking for those running a fever).

The world has already changed -- most haven't noticed it yet.

Humans are averse to change.  Just ask a two year old!

Humans want "the world" to function the way they think it does.

On the other hand, people also want to change the world to make it function the way they want it to function, not as they think it does right now.

On the third hand, people change their opinions throughout a lifetime.

In Part 5 of this series, we looked at "The Story of a Life" -- biography.

The closer a fictional narrative resembles the form and shape of a real life, the more informative and thought-provoking it will be for readers.

The Generational Novel or Series, or Vampire Romance, novels with settings that span long story-arcs, centuries in Time, can put the reader's current world into a new perspective, suggesting new solutions to a reader in a quandary about their current life.

The narrative selected and spun by current news media is not the only narrative in dynamic play at any given moment because generations overlap, interpenetrate, and blend through transitions.

2020 is one of those blending times -- and it could be this whole decade that reveals the swirling dynamic change.

People living through this see it from the perspective of their own generation, and each sees a portion of the truth (like the Blind Men And The Elephant -- though I'd expect the Blind Women and the Elephant to reveal a different story).

Right now, the media portrait of the world appears to be ramming many countries, including the USA, into civil war or some semblance of blood in the streets.

People living through this, people who are your audience looking for you to escort them one an adventure into a different world, are disturbed by the daily confrontation with CHANGE in their everyday life.

In January, 2020, during the Trump Impeachment trial in the Senate, the following article was sited on Facebook:

https://www.newsweek.com/us-showing-many-genocide-warning-signs-donald-trump-expert-very-worried-1483817

-----quote-------
Politically though, Tannehill noted the U.S. trend towards divisive rhetoric and policies under President Donald Trump, who has been repeatedly accused of various forms of racism and has pursued a nativist agenda.

"The politicians enacting it are populists who benefit from stirring Us vs. Them narratives, placing blame for the woes of the nation on others who are somehow less worthy," she wrote. "They yearn for a mythological past [without] these people. It's a highly viable tactic for shoring up support."

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

Writers who study these broad trends are seeing a slide toward genocidal wars -- not just in the USA but world-wide.

This awkward trial of a sitting President is just one component of the thrust of CHANGE at the deepest level of government -- Constitutional level change.

The consensus seems to be that if what he did wasn't a crime, then it ought to be.  We have to do something about this -- that's the Pluto in Capricorn manifestation in the spotlight of media attention.

So how can a Romance writer approach the audience living through having the rug pulled out from under them?

On Facebook, I commented on a thread generated by that Newsweek article posted by someone who sees it as driving the USA toward a genocidal war, thusly:

If we accept a straight line extrapolation, yes, but humanity lurches ahead in a zigzag, often reversing course for a few centuries.

Consider this LONG PERSPECTIVE article from a Time writer.

https://time.com/5770140/millennials-change-american-politics/

That article traces the interactions between generations as Millennials sweep the reins of power from the Baby Boomer generation (as usual ignoring the Silent Generation).

I collect articles like that one on Millennials in one of my Flipboard Magazines, Pluto in Capricorn

https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg/pluto-in-capricorn-national-narrative-so8cs2k4y

Pluto in Capricorn is the "magazine" where I collect articles of the far-far past of Ancients, current events, astronomy, astrophysics (FTL drive foundations, plus what we might discover and what we have to go explore), and space travel. That magazine also includes some genetics (most of which I put in a different magazine), Volcanos and other items that might destroy this current Ancient civilization.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN is where we are now, and it is about CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT, shifting borders (we did that in Channel's Destiny, moved the Territory border to make room for Householdings).

This item on generation gap, shifting views, is related to a Blog post on writing craft I did a long while back:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

About halfway down that blog post is a list of what signs Pluto was in at various points in history and how that played out in "generation gap" thinking.

Get a good grip on this principle, and the spectacle of NEWS today will suddenly make sense.

OK, maybe not less alarming sense, but a kind of sense that clues you in on where to dodge the falling hammer of generation shifts.

It is a double-pattern, an 84 year cycle superimposed on a 248 years, with a transition superimposing one on the other every 165 years (or so).

Kids are born continuously, not usually in waves (like Baby Boomers), so the concept of "generations" all moving in the same way is nonsense, but where the outer planets are when a kid is born indicates a predilection for an affinity to a particular generation's response to life.

All that is modified by that individual kid's own characteristics then reshaped and maybe hammered by environment. None of this is cut-and-dried. Living life is an art-form.

A writer who understands how the portrait of a civilization morphs with the cycles of Pluto can build a world that seems real to people living today.

Consider, the USA is approaching the first Pluto return (to where Pluto was in Capricorn when this nation was born) in history.  With Pluto in mid-Capricorn, we created a NEW FORM of government by blending two old forms (democracy and republic) while firmly excluding the concept of Monarchy or any other form of dictatorship.

People are thinking about Civil War, but it could be an actual Revolutionary War complicated by the advent of the Internet, Artificial Intelligence, and Apple's War For Privacy From Government Intrusion (even if you're a dead criminal.)

Even science fiction writers may not be thinking "big" enough.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com