Showing posts with label verisimilitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label verisimilitude. Show all posts

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Putting the Fact in Fantasy

I've just finished reading an essay anthology titled PUTTING THE FACT IN FANTASY, edited by Dan Koboldt. The contents, contributed by over thirty different specialists, explore a wide range of subjects writers of fantasy may need to know about in order to make their fictional settings feel authentic. The foreword emphasizes the importance of getting the mundane background right. Readers will accept the wildest flights of fantasy if they're grounded in a world that functions believably. Conversely, if errors appear in details supposedly faithful to how things function in the real world, the audience won't trust the author enough to suspend disbelief in the fantastic elements. As a famous line from THE MIKADO puts it, we need those realistic background features "to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." The introduction, titled “How to Ask an Expert,” contains practical advice on getting help from people with firsthand knowledge and experience.

Regardless of the depth and breadth of an author's research, flawless accuracy is seldom if ever attainable; minor goofs will inevitably crop up. Thus, the foreword bears the title "The Point Is to Screw Up Better." This book aims to help authors avoid errors in portrayal of environments, social structures, animals, weapons, etc. that might jar the reader out of the imaginary world. The anthology is divided into six parts, covering the broad areas of actual history as inspiration, languages and culture, world-building (e.g., money, food and drink, plants, ecology, politics, among other topics), weapons and warfare, horses, and wilderness adventure. Each category includes a wide range of sub-topics (aside from the horse section, which is more tightly focused). Entertaining as well as useful, the book could be picked up and dipped into in any order. The contents tend to consist of short, quick reads.

Therein lies its one drawback. Most of the essays comprise broad introductions to their topics. Some contain suggestions for further reading, but many don't. On the other end of the scale, some contributions list highly specific content such as popular myths about horses, fascinating material but touching on only one aspect of a wide field. Still, PUTTING THE FACT IN FANTASY, although subtitled "Expert advice to bring authenticity to your fantasy writing," includes information that could benefit authors in almost any genre. If nothing else, it's a fun read that may spark ideas for adding depth to the physical and social environment of your story.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Index to Verisimilitude vs Reality

Index
to 
Verisimilitude vs Reality




Here are blog posts about how to create fiction based on Reality using a similarity to reality, verisimilitude.

Verisimilitude --- from Wikipedia

Verisimilitude is the philosophical notion that some propositions are more true or less true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory. Wikipedia

What is "fiction" if not a "false theory" that is closer to Truth than another false theory?

Reality is True. Fiction is True. Neither is Truth without the other.


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

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

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

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

Part 5 - So What Exactly is Happiness?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

Part 6 - Show Don't Tell Theme
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/10/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-6-show.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Verisimilitude VS Reality Part 5 - So What Exactly is Happiness

Verisimilitude VS Reality
Part 5
So What Exactly is Happiness 


Previous entries in this blog series:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But is it Happily?

What exactly is happiness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does winning produce happiness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What life is all about is a theme.

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

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

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

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

Is it?  Is triumph=happiness?

Is destruction necessary for happiness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happiness is an ability, often hard acquired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Verisimilitude VS Reality - Part 4 - Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System

Verisimilitude VS Reality
Part 4
Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System 


Previous parts in the Verisimilitude VS Reality series are:

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

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

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

And now Verisimilitude used to create the dynamics of the Story Arc and what that has to do with what I term, The Fiction Delivery System (parallel to the Healthcare Delivery System).

Recently, I was a guest on a podcast by The Roddenberry Star Trek podcasts, titled The Trek Files.


Every episode features a Guest talking about one of the Archived documents in the Trek Files which they post a link to on their Facebook page so you can read, then listen to the Q&A.

https://www.facebook.com/TheTrekFiles/

You can subscribe on the Apple podcast store by searching for The Trek Files.  See Larry Nemecek's name and you know you're in the right place.

In the three short segments we recorded (audio-only), it was impossible to cover all the connecting links to how the impact of ST:ToS affected the way consumers find and obtain fictional entertainment they want.  Not just science fiction, or Romance, but all fiction and non-fiction distributed retail.

Eventually, ST:ToS eventually changed how "news" is distributed wholesale, as well -- "wholesale" being the News Services, AP, Reuters, etc. which used to be out of reach of the individual consumer, but now publish directly to individuals online.  When news wholesalers hit the individual retail consumer, they had to change the format and content of their reporting.

Same thing happened on various levels in the Fiction Publishing Industry -- and (with advent of Streaming) similar forces are disrupting video-format fiction distribution.

This disruption was one main topic I wanted to touch on during the podcast, but didn't have a chance to get it in.

Because of the change sparked by the original Star Trek and its fan-response, the current streaming TV offerings and self-published e-books, are substantially different from what they probably would have been had Star Trek not connected to Science Fiction fans.

It is difficult to see the connecting links, and we won't be able to reveal the chain of "because line" to this Event Sequence that has propagated through the decades.

Most readers of this will be able to figure it out, once convinced the links are there to find.  Researching the connections is like preparing to write a Regency Romance.

Many of the details would not interest casual listeners to The Trek Files podcast, but readers of this blog might find the view of Reality something they can use to build a Science Fiction Romance world.

As we've been discussing Verisimilitude in various series of posts because it is relevant to crafting a novel that draws readers into a world.

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

Now we return to Verisimilitude by looking at how our everyday world has changed from the impact of Star Trek in the 1960's.  Fictional worlds change, too.  Replicate that sense of "a changing world" for your Characters and the reader won't need expository lumps of explanation.

Worldbuilding, to have verisimilitude, has to be depicted as an Arc - like Story Arc and Character Arc and Plot Arc, the world behind the Characters you create has to change.

But change in a fictional world has to seem to be an "arc" to the reader.  The reader has to see (without being told) the connections of cause/effect between what the Protagonist does and what goes on because of her actions.

In real life, we rarely have enough information to discern those connections. Life often seems random and meaningless.  It may seem that way to your Protagonist, too, but the reader has to be able to understand what the Protagonist can't (yet), and then watch the Protagonist gain an understanding, even if it is a misunderstanding.

How your fictional world changes, and how that change also changes your Characters -- and how your Characters change their world -- depends on your Theme.

Romance has the master theme of Love Conquers All.  Science Fiction generally has a master theme of Science Conquers All.  Put them together, you've got a winner!

To have Verisimilitude, a novel has to show, not tell, how the World responds to the Characters, and how the Characters respond to their world.

Our world really does interact with us, but mostly we just don't see it.  "She's her own worst enemy," is a widely used theme.  Everyone knows someone like that.  It is especially  noticeable to those who are their own worst enemy.

The Tennis Match paradigm mentioned in Part 3 of this series, indicates how the fictional world integrates the real world's dynamics into the craft techniques.  The reader watches as the ball is volleyed back and forth between two Players or Viewpoint Characters.

"The Ball" represents "the initiative" -- or the action that advances the plot, the decision that alters the direction of events.  In the real world, no one person makes all the decisions. Everyone makes some decisions, even if to implement someone else's decisions. But some decisions change the world in a more obvious fashion once implemented.

You find the BEGINNING of your novel by finding the point in the Protagonist's life where she is making such a decision, or implementing it. The HEA ending happens when the results of implementing that decision (I'll marry you) are fully manifest.  In real life, most of us only get one such decision point to live through - survive it, (possibly a 10 year period), and it is smooth sailing ever after, either "up" or "down" or "level" in life.

Some decisions never get implemented.  The Character making such decisions is NOT the "Main Character" - not the character whose story you are telling.  You can't start Chapter One with that Character.  Such a Character re-acts instead of acting.

In our everyday world, we had one Situation before Star Trek: The Original Series, and another very different world that emerged during the 3-5 years after cancellation.

Pre-ST: nothing any viewer of any TV Series, no matter how erudite, vocal, or geekishly dedicated, could say anything in a letter (on paper) to the production's owners that would influence any decision the owners imposed on the Producer (whom they hired to package the show).  Fan opinion didn't matter.

Post-ST: Fan suggestions to enlarge content, add deeper texture, feature certain Characters, and fix plot-holes influenced the decisions of Producers staking their careers on multi-million dollar projects.

They learned (possibly from my book, Star Trek Lives!)

that being wildly enthusiastic, determined, and opinionated about a piece of fiction didn't imply inherent stupidity.

As a result, not only did Trek films incorporate items found in fanfic, but the commercials aired during ST (and other TV shows, too) became less condescending.

Producers and Traditional Publishing Editors learned to pay attention to what the end-user of their products (viewers, readers, audience) had to say about the product.

I call this change the establishing of a "feedback loop" -- it is the essence of good conversation, of increasing efficiency by successive approximations, of functioning in a chaotic reality.  Feedback, like "road feel" while driving a car, lets decisions target problems before they become problems.

We still have a real world where the business model of TV and even paper publishing requires the end-user to be "the product" not "the customer."

In TV that runs on advertising, it's obvious. In Streaming that runs on fees of subscribers, it isn't quite so obvious because you think you're paying for what you watch.  In fact, others are paying for what you watch, because these video stories are so expensive to make.  Thus what others prefer is what you have to choose from.  The mass-audience is the product -- those willing to chip in.

In book publishing, the publisher's actual customer is the distributor. That was a warehouse and trucking operation which would accept a certain number of copies of some but not all the titles a publisher put out in a month.  Then came book-chain stores which dominated, and developed their own distribution -- direct purchase from publisher.

The publishers started using computers to track sales of given titles, and editors had to guess (stab in the dark) why one title sold and another didn't.

In both TV and books, as well as in theater released movies, there was no direct feedback line from the end-user to the original commercializing producer to indicate WHY viewers or readers like this or that item.

Star Trek changed that because Gene Roddenberry took the Star Trek pilot to the Worldcon in Chicago and dropped it into the dry-tinder of Science Fiction fandom.  Typically, cons were not attended by "the general public" (as later Trek cons were).  Everyone there knew everyone else, if not directly then by a friend of a friend.  It was a tight-knit community.  Among them were connections to thousands and thousands of equally erudite, skilled, enthusiastic fans who couldn't make it that year.

Fans knew how to communicate and organize, but never before had anything much to say about a TV Series.

Before it's first air date, Star Trek was eagerly anticipated by many thousands, assiduously sharpening their critical faculties ready to tear the thing apart.  Turned out, being a TV show, it wasn't hard to rip the science to shreds, but it was FUN.

Star Trek was the first real science fiction on TV.  

Paramount, the owner-producer of the show, thought the letters (on paper) they were getting were the usual "fan" letters, from people who couldn't tell fiction from reality and didn't understand actors aren't the characters they play.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but it took years for the massive, experienced, production company nestled among yes-men of Hollywood to figure out that THESE people weren't the sort lost in a fantasy world, but rather science students, managers, professionals or professionals-to-be.  THESE people were out to make the world shown on STAR TREK into a reality.

And they did.

Students at two Universities connected two of the giant computers used in those days (with less computing power than your phone has today) to play a Star Trek game they invented.

In Europe, the idea of connecting universities and their libraries caught fire, and a way to access all that information became necessary.  Thus "the browser" was invented to read all the disparate sorts of code in use and present words you could read.

A kid dropped out of college and founded Microsoft.

There were many other such companies and computers designed around different architecture.  Microsoft and computers designed for Windows (descended from Microsoft's OS, which became Presentation Manager, which became Windows), plus Apple are all that's significantly left standing.

Unix, the university system, and its descendent Linux, now dominated by Red-hot Linux, are on the giant computer side.

A new architect, (client-server) has taken over and produced "The Cloud" while commercial applications of all this are erupting in every direction.

They wanted to play a game based on a TV show (one too few people watched).  Why should Hollywood or Manhattan Publishing giants listen to fans?

They learned.  They now listen - don't always do wise things, but they notice.

There is the beginning of the feedback loop necessary to get a society to function as a civilization.

That loop took shape decades before Star Trek -- in Science Fiction Fandom where all the writers were just fans who happened to write, and would sell to magazines and book publishers - then paperback mass market publishers.

One whole publishing house, DAW, was founded by Donald Wollheim to publish ONLY science fiction.  It still exists as an imprint under the leadership of his daughter.

Star Trek blew the lid on Science Fiction -- popularized it -- leading many into professional science fields who might not have been interested without that rocket fuel for the imagination.

We had N.A.S.A. and now we have SpaceX making orbital shuttles a commercial venture.  And there are others, and they have vision -- colonies in space, on the Moon, on Mars.  Self driving cars are the precursor to self-driving space ships.

All because of some people who were believed to be the sort who can't tell the difference between Fantasy and Reality.

Doesn't that describe the opinion some hold about Romance fans?

Give your novel's world an Arc like our real world's Arc and inspire your readers to make it so.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg

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, August 04, 2020

Mysteries of Pacing Part 10 - Show Don't Tell Character Arc

Mysteries of Pacing
Part 10
Show Don't Tell Character Arc 


Previous parts of Mysteries of Pacing are indexed at:

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

Note in that index post, at the top there are links to 3 of my Reviews of Series I've been following on this blog.  Assuming you have at least looked over the cover blurbs and first and last chapters of some of the novels in each Series, think now about the Main Character in each series.

If you don't like the Series I've highlighted, pick some others you do like.  The point here is to follow a single Character through years, and even decades, of life's vicissitudes and rewards.

I'm also assuming, if you've had the ambition to write novels for a while, you've also delved into a large number of biographies, both of famous people and of less well known who have lived through major world events (such as the World Wars, famine in Africa, adventures with the Peace Corps, etc.).

https://socreate.it/en/blogs/socreate-blog/posts/how-to-write-character-arcs/


Many people have lived interesting lives without making Headlines you can rip a story, plot, or setting out of.

Given that breadth of reading experience, and the ambition to write something as gripping and fascinating (maybe even instructive) as those books you love, consider the story you want to tell.

Now reconsider whether any of the books you have read actually TELL you a story.

If you're using the examples I've highlighted in Reviews, the answer is, "No, they don't tell the story."

The deepest, most gripping, thrilling, and informative books (novels and non-fictiion) SHOW you the story in such a way that you remember it as telling you the story.

The serious clue to what is happening when you remember a good book comes to you when you meet the author of that book and get into a conversation, not so much about the book but about life in general.

You come to realize one of the oldest bromides in the writing profession -- "The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote."

And the reason for that difference is the element in worldbuilding we've discussed at such length, Verisimilitude.

Making your world, your characters, your story into something resembling the reader's internal world (derived from but not identical to the real world around her) gives the illusion of verisimilitude because we all believe our own internal world is real, or very close to reality.

Verisimilitude is not about reality, but about resembling reality closely enough to "suspend disbelief" long enough to explore the validity of one's beliefs, to see reality from a perspective unavailable without suspension of disbelief.

One of the writer's tools for creating Verisimilitude in a Character, especially a Main Character, or Viewpoint Character whose story you reveal in the plot of his life-experiences, is Dialogue.

Characterization of a Viewpoint Character, one whose silent thoughts and reasoning, emotional reactions and subsequent evaluations, are revealed to the reader, requires that the Character's dialogue, words spoken aloud, be reflective of that Character's Arc.

As we discussed in Part 9, Character Arc is a vector quantity, having both magnitude and direction.  That makes it complicated, but extraordinarily simple to portray.

Here is a blog describing (as most writing tutorials do) what the ultimate goal of your crafting of a story should be -- but devoid (as most writing tutorials are) of exactly how to take your inner vision and make it into words other people will enjoy.  Nevertheless, if you're confused about what the goal is, read this

https://socreate.it/en/blogs/socreate-blog/posts/how-to-write-character-arcs/


Here are a few posts exploring creation of Verisimilitude:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html

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

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/depiction-part-14-depicting-cultural.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/alien-sexuality-part-3-corporate-greed_25.html

And here's the index post for the series on Dialogue which now has 15 entries.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

Dialogue is not real-speech-transcribed.  Characters don't speak like real people.  Dialogue is an art form designed to move the plot while incidentally leading the reader (or viewer) to create their own Character from the words spoken.

Dialogue is "Di" -- that is, two-fold, an interchange between at least two.  One might be an Alien, a Computer, a Pet animal, a working animal (the Cowboy's horse), and the speaking Character may infer or imagine the responses to suit himself.

Robert Heinlein famously characterized Mike, the Artificial Intelligence awakened on Earth's Moon whose job was to run the infrastructure of the habitation there.

Dialogue, likewise, must not be Exposition.  Exposition is the writer filling the reader in on "need to know" matters the Characters already know.

Beginning writers often use the line "As you know, ..." and proceed to insert Exposition into the spoken words of the Character.  This never works well because it stops the forward momentum (Pacing) of the plot developments.

In a Mystery, for example, you can show-don't-tell a Character lying by using Dialogue to relate an Event the Narrative went through step by step.  Describing that Event to another Character, but leaving out or inserting information can move the plot forward.

There are many other exceptions, but wherever you find yourself using Dialogue to explain something to the Reader, re-write it into plain Exposition. Then you can mine the Expository Lump for salient bits, sprinkle them elsewhere in Dialogue, and delete the fabricated lump.

Description, Dialogue, Exposition, Narrative, are the basic tools of the story teller.  Each has a purpose, and when used for that purpose, each one can be crafted into a method of advancing the plot.

The plot is the sequence of Events that happen TO the Main Character, impacting the Character's character, thus propelling the Main Character along an Arc.  Some Events hit hard and speed the Character to new Realizations that change the Character's decisions, thus affecting the plot-arc.  Some Events change the DIRECTION the Main Character is going in Life.

This year, 2020, we are striving to "get back to normal."  This concept "get back to normal" is an attempt to retain the DIRECTION our lives were going in while compensating for the speed-bump of quarantine which slowed down, delayed, and frustrated us.  Our life-Arc changed speed and now we struggle to keep direction.

Think about the world around you and find the "Arc" to understand how to craft a novel using Character Arc.

For a Character to "Arc" - the Character's life (inner and outer life) has to be in flux.  Finding where your Character's "novel" happens along that Character's life-path is one of the hardest techniques to learn. Romance is easy in that the novel happens between first meeting and happily-ever-after. Science Fiction is much harder, but generally the novel happens from before-the-Protagonist-knows to after-the-Protagonist-finds-out.  Science is the never-ending quest to figure the universe out.

Usually, we start a novel where two forces that will Conflict first meet, intersect, become aware of each other, or just plain collide.  Each of those forces are represented by a Character, and that Character (two Lovers-to-be or Hero and Villain) will CHANGE under the impact of the meeting.

Yes, both Hero and Villain, or both Lovers, have to change.

Romance is, as I've noted many times, something that happens in Reality under the impact of a Neptune Transit to the Lover's Natal Chart.  Neptune's effect is to blur, dissolve, erode, or confuse, mislead.

Neptune is also called Wisdom.  Neptune is about a method of cognition which is not logical, a data channel which streams information into the deepest part of the Psyche.

Neptune, Romance, doesn't usually cause Change or Arc in your character or life-direction.  It is other things going on while Neptune prevails that cause serious change of direction.

If such other direction-changing forces are acting on a Character, Neptune will move through and ease, smooth, lubricate the path of Change.

Romance makes falling in Love easy.  Without Neptune, falling in love can be a disaster because people resist the kind of change it takes to blend an innermost soul with another.

If a Main Character, Protagonist, Hero, is to undergo such a profound change of innermost character, how can a writer Depict that change without inserting long, boring, exposition lifted from Psychology Textbooks?

Here is the index to Depiction:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools for depicting a Character, with one caveat -- avoid trying to spell out an accent or dialect.

You can use spelled accents the first few times a Main Character encounters the Character who talks funny, but let the Main Character's "ear" become gradually accustomed to the dialect, and fade in a correct spelling, leaving only the rhythm and vocabulary of the accent.

And you can use that same technique with choice of vocabulary. You've seen it done (not really well) on Star Trek where Spock uses "big words" (even small ones may be obscure).  His dialogue is not laced with scientific jargon, but with precise English dictionary words where colloquialisms serve native speakers well.

In lieu of spelling out accented speech, a dialect or non-native-speaker, try altering choice of vocabulary, or phrasing.

Note how many older people use slang, old sayings, cliche or pop culture references from their teens and twenties, decades previous.  Note how today's young people have a whole new vocabulary, and new celebrities and movies to quote.

As an aspiring writer, you probably love words, and have a junk-pile of trivia in mind of words nobody uses much.

Find the etymology of words, old and new (easy using Google and Urban Dictionaries etc), and you will find the backstory of your Main Character depicted in the vocabulary of their youth.

Start the story with the Main Character's dialogue redolent of that epoch, and let the impact of a younger person's speech infect the older, let them discuss current events using non-current vocabulary.

Trying to explain the usage, connotation and denotation of unfamiliar words can be a Lover's Pillowtalk Device.

Love is about communication.  Use vocabulary to depict Character, and Character Arc as one absorbs the speech idiosyncrasies of another.

For example, one protagonist may start out hiding from emotional confrontations by sprinkling speech with "bromides."

Even if you know what a bromide is, and often use them yourself, Google "the bromide."  Check some of the "dictionaries" that come up and compare the entries -- they aren't all the same, and make wonderful ongoing conversational tag-games for Characters engaged in something more important.

A "bromide" can be identified as "...a comment that is intended to calm someone down when they are angry, but that has been expressed so often that it has become boring and meaningless."  This evolved from the wide usage of bromide compounds as sedatives.

The evolution of language describes a Culture Arc, which can be one of the Mysteries of Pacing, as one Character acclimates to an Alien culture.

See https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bromide  - and note the tabs at the top of the page that separate slanted definitions.

Over the course of your Series of Novels, let the Characters absorb each others speech patterns, whether it surfaces as on-the-nose discussion of words, usage and meaning, or as is more congruent with verisimilitude, just unconsciously imitate each other.

That's how we learn language, imitating.

Try doing a scene where a younger Character learns some word-usage, or a "bromide" saying, from an old TV series (like Perry Mason in B&W), from an older Character who uses such a phrase naturally.

The reader may absorb lessons in appreciating language and its accurate usage, while the Characters you are depicting learn how much they mean to each other.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Theme-Story Integration Part 5 - How To Change Anyone's Mind

Theme-Story Integration
Part 5
How To Change Anyone's Mind

Previous parts in the Theme-Story Integration Series:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-1-villain.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-2-villain.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-3-sexy.html

Part 4 - Rag-Tag-Band Ensemble Story
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/theme-story-integration-part-4-rag-tag.html

To sell Hollywood a script, you have to master Character Arc -- how much change can a human exhibit under the impact of how small a prompting, and after how short an interval of "processing" the new information.

Humans are elastic, to be sure, but have limits.

To sell science fiction, you have to depict scientifically plausible rates of change (and some of the scientists reading your science fiction are psychiatrists, sociologists, specialists in human behavior).

To sell Romance, you have to depict humanly plausible reasons for initial "attraction" (or "repulsion.")  You have to show-don't-tell what she sees in him, and what he sees in her.

Here is What Does She See In Him?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

The ability to "see" something in another person develops in the Teens, usually through those endless conversations parents have little patience with.  Seeing your own world through the eyes of another is a major breakthrough in maturation.

That is your starting point, when you realize that you understand where someone else is making a mistake.  "Don't date that guy. He's a loser."  And you try to change the other person's mind, change what they see -- usually, in the teen years, you try to change the other person's opinion without changing how they see, just what they see.

The assumption is that what you see is better, or more correct, than what the other person sees.

How do you change another person?

Many marriages start with the Neptune-fantasy induced idea that you can change the other person, rescue them from themselves, get them off drugs or whatever they are addicted to, alter their behavior.

It does work sometimes, but usually not for the reasons the marriage happened in the first place.  Most often such marriages end in divorce, which gives Romance writers the chance to explore the Second Time Around - where wisdom over-rides the urge to change another.

What you can do is change yourself to match the other person.

Find that a cringe-worthy idea?  Yeah, so do they!

But the truth is people change.  If people are too immature when they marry, and change-rates haven't settled down, they might grow toward each other, or might grow apart,  Apart usually leads to divorce.

Minds can be changed -- that is, the conclusions a person reaches can be questioned and discarded.  But how they reach those conclusions usually doesn't change after a certain level of maturity (reached at different ages).

The young/old couple pairing often gels nicely because the older person functions in a reliable manner, which relieves uncertainty, and stress for the younger who is still hunting for a thinking method.

We live in a world of professional (and well paid and well funded) mind-changers.

Profit seekers have weaponized psychological tricks for changing minds.

Can you get someone to love that which they currently hate?

Maybe.  Some people study this process for a living.

It is based on the assumption that what you are leading them to accept is better than what they currently accept.

Here is a 2019 non-fiction book detailing the results of many years of such well funded studies.

The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind Kindle Edition by Jonah Berg


https://www.amazon.com/Catalyst-How-Change-Anyones-Mind-ebook/dp/B07THCZ626/

Use these techniques, combined in different ways, and you can convince most readers that your Character is a real human being (or an Alien with enough in common with humans to make an excellent mate).

Today, people are accustomed to being targeted by these mind-altering weapons, and many ordinary people use them routinely.

Using this book as a checklist for making sure your Character doesn't arc to quickly, or too easily, or too slowly, to be believed will add verisimilitude to your Romance.

Now comes the thematic question of whether the user of these techniques is pristinely ethical -- or the blackest villain.

Who should be in charge of what others believe?  Teachers?  Children?  Authorities?

In Part 4 we looked STARS BEYOND...
https://amazon.com/Stars-Beyond-Uncharted-Book-ebook/dp/B07N5QJJFG/

...with an ensemble cast striving to survive in a world built on Genetic Modification for health and/or fun/art.  The Characters didn't arc - but their world did.

There was no thematic discussion (in show don't tell) of the issue of modifying another person on a basic level.  None of the conflicts involved who gets to say what you look like.  It was just, smoothly, assumed that in every case, the one being changed was totally in control of the outcome of their changes.

The one (intriguing) exception was when the Aliens saved a human's life by changing the eyes to a different visual spectrum, and incidentally and conveniently for them, changed linguistic center of the brain. Other humans, without objection, underwent the linguistic center modification.

Huge opportunities for conflict and resolution - for Character Arc and many other thematic discussions were overlooked, and I think it's because this gigantic story was compressed into one slender volume.

Here is the Theme-Character series, a jumping off place for constructing a Story Arc.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

Read STARS BEYOND and keep in mind the potential for applying the principles of "The Catalyst" to produce a long series of long novels which are all pure Romance.  Love Conquers All, but this novel is set after all the conquering so there is very little real conflict.  I think that's because they (the collaborators) started the story too late in the thematic arc.

Is it our genes that need modifying, or is it our minds?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Mysteries of Pacing Part 6 - How To Change A Character's Mind

Mysteries of Pacing
Part 6
How To Change A Character's Mind
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts in this series:

Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

Part 4 Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

Part 5 How Fast Can A Character Arc?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html


One of the top five glaring errors that beginning writers make in crafting a novel is to start it in the wrong place.  The usual mistake is to start the opening scene after the actual end of the novel.

How can that be?

The newest writers open the first scene with the Main Character already having learned the lesson the novel's plot events teach.

Remember, we established previously, that one reason readers read novels is page-one, the narrative hook.

On Page One, the main Character does something (Save the Cat!) that endears the Character to the reader, and at the same time lures the reader to see, "Oh, has that one got a lesson to learn!"

We read to watch Characters learn their lesson, -- both lessons we have learned (to validate our own understanding of the world), and lessons we have yet to face (to glimpse our future and reinforce our courage to face it heroically.)

If the Main Character has already learned the lesson contained in the Plot's challenges, the Main Character can not "arc" (or change in response to the blows the plot delivers.)  The Character's Arc is the story.

As discussed previously, there are two moving parts to a novel that have to be "paced" -- or move in a way that
a) keeps the reader enthralled, and
b) convey an element of verisimilitude.

Those tandem elements (called by different names by different writing teachers and editors) are Plot and Story.  All agree that there are two elements, and that they must work together.

Like two horses hitched to a wagon, they must move in concert, and render the most impressive, smooth ride when trained to keep to the same rhythm in the same direction.

Imagine one horse goes one way, the other charges off in the opposite direction, the wagon tree and tackle break, the wagon overturns.  That overturned wagon is a symbol for the rejection letter.

Here, I use "Plot" to mean the sequence of external events, what happens next, or what I call "the because line."  I use "Story" to mean the assessment of "Life, The Universe and Everything" which motivates the Main Viewpoint Character.

The plot is driven by the External Conflict 
Joanne vs Government.

The story is driven by the Internal Conflict
Joanne vs. "Go Along To Get Along"

This year, rumors are resurfacing that the US Government has possession of the wreckage of a UFO.  It hasn't been identified, so you can't say it's the ship of  alien from outer space or an experiment of some other Government on Earth.  There has been nothing about there being the remains of an occupant.

Since distrust of government and media is so very high, right now, it is very easy to believe Government has been lying about UFOs.

Another reason to disbelieve all government denials of the UFO rumors is that telescopes, orbital observatories, etc are mapping the galaxies around us and identifying many planets.  A few decades ago, mathematicians "proved" planetary systems around stars had to be so rare that our solar system might be the only one.

Also a few decades ago, the argument against the UFO rumors included scientific (mathematical) proof that even if some stars had planets, there just couldn't be many in the kind of "life zone" that Earth is in -- liquid water, etc..

Well, now math and astrophysics has produced evidence that there are many stars with planets - in fact, it's common.  Some of the stars not very different from our Sun even have planets in the "life zone" -- often too large or too small, but there are a lot we have detected so the "facts" have changed.

Here is a video - running a bit over an hour - about defining the core essence of a human.  What makes us human? What distinguishes us from animals?  This video suggests how we could identify Aliens who should be treated as we treat human beings (poor Aliens!).

https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/video_cdo/aid/2480059/jewish/Is-There-Life-on-Other-Planets.htm

The fellow in the video seems to me to be widely read in Science Fiction and understands how science fiction writers think.

What is your "mind" and how do you "make it up?"

If the facts change, does your Main Character change her mind?

We like to believe that sane people change their mind when presented with new facts.

We like to identify with characters who are sane, level headed, goal directed, and resilient.  Characters who can say, "Oh, I was wrong about that."

But the thing is humans discard ideas and attitudes readily only when they are not rooted in belief.

Just as plot and story are yoked in tandem, 
so are thinking and belief.  

Plot and Story pull the wagon of the novel.  Thinking and Belief pull the wagon of the Character Motivations.

In structuring your Characters, you as the writer must know not just what your Characters think, but what they believe, and how they came to believe it.

How the Characters came to believe it (the backstory) is important in Science Fiction Romance because there is a human tendency to believe in science.

You find both kind of humans - the born skeptic and the born believer - in the world of computer science.

The current push to recruit women into "STEM" majors will scoop up more and more of the True Believer mentality type (which type has hitherto been diverted).  Meanwhile, the social trend toward Secularism will predispose the True Believer type of human to "believe in" Science instead of Mysticism, God, Magic.

You can change a scientist's mind with a new peer-reviewed paper contradicting what the scientist was taught in school.

But you can't change a True Believer's mind with ONE simple declaration of a contradictory fact.

Could this be the definition of "human?"  Could the ability to cling to Belief despite facts be what we must identify in life on other planets - to decide if that life is to be granted "Human Rights Protections?"

All humans have a mental compartment where they store what they Believe. The contents of that compartment generally manifests in unconscious ways, motivating responses to situations that the person is not even aware of.  Illogical behavior may be mostly rooted in unconscious Beliefs, and be rigorously, logically derived from that Belief.

A mis-match between contents of the Belief Compartment and the contents of the Knowledge Compartment can tear marriages apart.  I know of some where that happened, even over Politics, not Religion!  We believe in our favorite celebrities, and favorite politicians, even when we "know" nothing about them but the public image.

What your Character knows is subject to abrupt revision as the plot unfolds,   but what the Character believes must never be called into question unless the Theme demands it.

Any opposing Character who attacks such a belief will meet with vigorous rejection, scorn used as a weapon, character assassination in the workplace, and so forth.

If your theme needs the kind of raging fire ignited by the Catholic/Protestant furor in Northern Ireland that gave rise to video cameras and gunshot detectors all over London, then let the Plot attack Belief.

One example of a collision of Beliefs with Facts would be the place and role of masculinity in the workplace.  The reason we still have very real sexual harassment, favor trading, career advancement  for sexual favors, and even forced sex as an act of dominance, is the cultural belief in the role of masculinity in society.

The knowledge regarding the role of masculinity has changed over the last few decades -- the belief has barely been touched.

So now we have a generation of men in charge of corporate offices who suffer a mis-match between what they know and what they believe.  Belief will dominate, for some of them, from time to time.  For others, it always dominates.

The exact same thing is going on with women, the core readership for Romance of all sub-genres.  The mismatch between what is believed and what is known may actually be growing.

The writer's job is to convince the reader that this Character has had a change of belief.  To be convincing, the writer must craft page one from a point at which the Action of the Plot begins, where the Main Character has not yet changed Belief, but does something that will rebound to teach them a lesson (the hard way).

We want to see the Bad Guys get their comeuppance and the Good Guys learn their lesson.  The "lesson" is your theme.  The Good Guys come to a brighter understanding of the truth of the universe.

Which brings us right back to Targeting An Audience.

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

Each specific genre has an audience that is selected for the distinctive process by which that audience routinely changes their Beliefs.

I doubt any Editor has ever looked at the target audience for an imprint in quite this way, but though it is dynamic, it is the coarse sieve through which the general public passes on the way to choosing what to read or view tonight.

We enjoy books about Characters who regard their beliefs the same way we do, even if the Characters don't believe what we do.

We enjoy stories about Characters who change (or don't change) their Beliefs and their Knowledge using the same method we do.  Those Characters seem real to us, people we can identify with, walk in their moccasins, and enjoy wondering, "What would I do faced with that problem?"

Would what I would do actually work in that Character's world and situation?

Ayn Rand pegged "Psychological Visibility" as a human need, vital to sanity.  We need people to validate our existence by understanding what we feel when we say certain things.

We enjoy fiction where the Character is internally visible to us, and what we see in that Character validates our own unique individuality, our hodge-lodge of contradictory Beliefs stored in that walled off mental compartment.

In humans, that compartment can not be empty.  Maybe you can portray an Alien (or an Artificial Intelligence) who has no belief compartment, or has the option of leaving it empty, but with humans, something will crawl in to inhabit and proliferate in that compartment.

That is why it is so important to limit and control what a young child is exposed to, and in what order they encounter information and situations.  The parent fills the Belief compartment, stuffed brim full, and then whatever facts come along may be known,  but likely not believed.

There is a segment of the population that wants (even needs) to control how parents dominate and control their children, feeding the children only certain beliefs, and not others. The old adage, "As the twig is bent; so grows the tree," is being used by people who don't want others to believe in bending twigs.

Another old saying, "Give me a child until he is seven years old, and you can do what you want with him after that - he will always be mine."  And that, too, has enough truth in it for writers to use constructing fictional Characters.

So, if you set out to Pace your Story - the development of the Character's internal conflict toward an internal resolution - advance both knowledge and belief in tandem.

As a writer, you need to know more about knowledge and belief, as well as the relationship between them, than readers do.

Learn a few theories extant - both the theoretical work done in universities, and the everyday practical usage of the general public, or at least your specific Target Readership - about how people internalize beliefs.

One good source of discourse on Belief is non-fiction autobiographies about religious conversion.  The "Come To Jesus" moment people talk incessantly about is worth your close study.

Understand your own Beliefs, especially the ones you don't know you have.  You will find them in your responses to non-fiction, to news, to TV Series.  You see them reflected in other people -- you generally approve of, and want to be friends with, people who share some of your beliefs.  You will find yourself repelled  by those whose beliefs are incompatible.

Usually, around college age, people choose which beliefs to internalize and found their whole lives upon.  Very often the set of beliefs are chosen so that the individual can "fit in" to a certain group.  Humans need that "psychological visibility" and the validation of their Group.  So some people, at college age, find their Belief Compartment enlarging as their views expand.  Humans (maybe not Aliens) can happily hold contradictory beliefs.

Contradictory knowledge, on the other hand, demands current, real-time, choices.

For example, we don't know if the US Government is holding a crashed UFO, but we do know that a reporter said that a government employee said that the US Government has possession of a "something" that might be extraterrestrial.

Since we know the reporter said that someone said, we will choose to believe it (or not) based on our current beliefs about the Government.  So some people will accept as incontrovertible fact that the Government has been hiding the truth about UFOs from the citizens for decades. Others won't accept that idea.

Why would some Characters reject the idea that the Government is hiding the facts about UFO's?

The reason the Character rejects the IDEA matters to the plot of your novel.

A) The U.S. Government is unique in the world, elected by a free people, monitored by a Free Press.  The U. S. Government doesn't lie, the way a Communist dictatorship does.  There's no reason to lie about UFOs.

B) Only crazy people with an ax to grind talk about UFOs as if there really is life on other planets. I don't want to be seen as crazy, so I won't believe in UFOs (but yeah, they spook me).

C) It's a scientific fact that planets like Earth are rare.  The ones we think we found are so far away nothing could get here - and probably wouldn't get near enough to us to notice it.  Math shows that two space-going civilizations wouldn't encounter each other because one would be extinct before the other emerges.  Forget the whole Idea - you're nuts.

D) My Religion holds that Earth is the center of Creation (if not The Universe), and humans are created in the Image of God, therefore any life out there won't be more than microbes, certainly not spaceship builders.

How would you change that Character to make it plausible to your readers that the Character now believes there's a UFO sequestered by the government?

How would you convince the skeptical reader that UFOs are real, so the Character the reader admires can accept them and still be admirable?

This is the essence of genre --
 not "a genre" but the very concept of genre.

Many (especially editors) think that if the novel is set in space, it must be science fiction.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The essence that binds science fiction writer to science fiction reader is the shared process of how we choose what we believe.

Among humans, the ability to choose what to believe, and the lifelong, intensive practice of actively editing, selecting and choosing the content of the Belief Compartment, is extremely rare.

Intelligence doesn't matter.  Anyone of any I.Q. might have this ability to edit their Beliefs, but among those rare individuals who are able to do it, very few choose to train and exercise to perfect that ability.

Writers, all sorts of Artists, especially performing arts specialists, do generally refine their ability to edit the subconscious to extraordinary levels.  The business of Art is the business of making visible or perceptible, the unconscious beliefs of a generation.

Each of the 4 categories of reasons why a Character might start Chapter One of a novel disbelieving in UFO's, and especially a wreck sequestered by the U.S. Government represent subconscious assumptions driving large swaths of the U. S. population.

Each of the 4 Categories could be fully realized in specific genres.

A) Political Intrigue (let the Character learn that the government lies)

 B) Romance (the Character falls for an Alien. Gini Koch's ALIEN series.)

C) Science Fiction (the Character follows a signal to the craft the government has sequestered)

D) Religious Conversion Romance (the Character falls in love with someone whose religion allows for Aliens but still holds Earth is the center of Creation)

We have discussed many aspects of how Theme connects these separate elements of fiction into a cohesive artistic work, a realistic world the audience can walk into.

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

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

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

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

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

Theme is the secret to pacing.  Theme is what you, the writer, are saying to the reader.  Theme is what the story is about.

Theme is the lesson the Character is about the learn, preferably the hard way, but just like the reader learned it.

Theme is the glue that holds Plot and Story together - or in terms of the above analogy, theme is the wagon tree that the pair of horses (Plot and Story) are hitched to.  The wagon is the novel, or whole series of novels, moved by Plot and Story.

Romance genre's overall theme is Love Conquers All.

Science Fiction's overall theme is nailed in Star Trek's opening, "...where no one has gone before."

Love Conquers All
 is definitely
 Where No One Has Gone Before

Many people (not me), believe, that our everyday existence belies the idea of love conquering, and the brutality of humanity's past illustrates clearly that Love Always Loses.

This connection between Love Conquers All and "...where no one has gone before," is a big reason why Science Fiction and Romance blend so easily into a new genre.

Both genres require the Characters and the reader to edit their Belief Compartment's contents, scrutinize the tangled mess of the subconscious and make conscious choices of what to believe and what to discard.

In other words, Romance pushes humans toward crafting a logical subconscious, a belief system that shifts and changes as new facts emerge.

Under the impact of Love, a human (maybe an Alien, too) can adjust what they know, and what they believe, to be just a little bit more in harmony with each other, a bit more harnessed in tandem to drive Character motivation.

Internal peace, the relief from internal conflict, is a critical ingredient in happiness, and thus in the Happily Ever After.

To live Happily Ever After, the Character must have a plausible, permanent and reliable reduction in internal conflict, and thus a realistic sense of being at peace within.

The esoteric theory is that our internal conflicts roil the external world into a furious tempest that resists our every move.  By increasing internal peace, we increase our ability to walk the world without being stomped on and trampled at every turn.

Romance and Science Fiction readers both accept this premise at least subconsciously and see the story finished when the Character's internal conflict is fully resolved.  This often takes a long series of long novels to accomplish, as true Hero material generally nurture a stubborn streak.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com