Targeting A Readership Part 15 Why Readers Feel They Have Outgrown A Genre

Targeting a Readership

Part 15

Why Readers Feel They Have Outgrown A Genre

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

In Part 14, we noted in passing how resolving a subconscious conflict can change a reader's taste in fiction.

People grow up reading Romance genre, then just drift away once they have found their spouse.  Others, hitting hard going in marriage, drift back to reading Romance, but look for a different sort of setting, or problem or issue.

Romance novels used to serve only the young women who wanted wish-fulfillment fantasy come true.  Today's older women readers were once just such young girls, but now they want a different story.

One such popular new story is, the divorced or widowed heroine makes her own way in a tough world and becomes a kickass heroine in her own right -- then meets her Soul Mate.

Another whole panoply of stories have emerged in the Vampire Romance and other Paranormal creatures women are fascinated by.

Each of these sub-genres emerges, sells huge for years, then submerges, perhaps surviving with a smaller readership.

Why does this happen?  

As a reader (all writers are voracious readers)  you know you have times when you're not in the mood for this kind of book, but will leap into that kind.

Moods come and go, but through life the mood that predominates will shift from one kind of book to another, and yet another.

One theory seems to cover most all of the mysterious changes people undergo with age.  And it's all about Conflict.

We say that as you become old, you don't become different, but you become "more-so."  Whatever traits persist and dominate across the phases of life, from High School, to College, to first job, to Marriage, to kids, to empty-nest, become engrained, perfected, showcased as seminal to the personality.

Or put another way, every human has within both a Wolf and a Tiger fighting for their life.  Which one will win?  The one you feed the most.  It's up to you to choose which of your traits will predominate.

In other words, as we mature, the fight-to-the-death within us begins.  Everyone has an internal conflict, and as that conflict see-saws back and forth, we make irrevocable life-course choices, and sometimes have to ditch an entire decade or more of investment, and just take off in another direction.

As we wrestle with these decisions, mostly on a subconscious level, we search for clues in our real world environment, and we search for interpretations of our real world environment in our fiction.

Different genres specialize in different sorts of Conflict, but all genres of fiction focus "story" around a "conflict."

Conflict is the essence of story. 

We are fascinated by certain stories because the Conflicts that drive those stories are derived from the same Master Theme  that roils around underneath our real world lives.  There's a resonance, a harmony, that energizes the subconscious issues that discomfort us.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

Readers and writers discuss theme by sharing a story, walking miles in the Main Character's moccasins, and ultimately in addressing and resolving Conflict.

The fictional piece is energized and driven by a Conflict as ferocious as the conflict inside all humans.  Once fed enough, one element in that conflict will prevail, and the conflict will be over.  Peace, inner peace, and very often peace in the surrounding world will prevail.

It will prevail until a new conflict is joined, a new topic, a new problem in life.

Sometimes readers continue or resume reading a favorite genre, entertained by the predictable, reliable, firm resolution of the conflict.  But very often, readers will feel they have outgrown a genre because the conflict that genre specializes seems like something only a child or young adult would still be wrestling with.

Writers often come to writing late enough in life that they have resolved some conflicts, and experienced the peace that brings.  Such writers may want to share that peace with readers.

It doesn't work on a commercial level.  It can work with family and friends who have been associated with the writer through the fight and resolution, but it doesn't  "sell."

A personal story, a memoir, or autobiography is of interest only to those who have some knowledge of who this person is.  The main character in a world of fiction has to be introduced to the reader, all fresh and new, yet somehow familiar.

The "yet somehow familiar" (or 'give me something the same but different') part is the Conflict and the underlying theme that fires up that Conflict.

New writers, I have found, most often sidestep, duck, or ignore their Character's internal conflict.

I'm not the only one who has noticed this common issue among new writers.

Here is an excerpt from a blog I follow on Twitter about Screenwriting.

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/the-power-of-conflict-in-storytelling-178d09105c5b

--------quote------
A few years ago, I posted this question on my blog: Why do we find conflict entertaining? The responses were fascinating and informative:

• Conflict is interesting: In real life, we tend to socialize with likeminded people, so when we see characters in a movie who disagree, argue and fight, that is different and therefore stimulating.
• Conflict is speaking one’s mind: In our daily lives, we often have to bite our tongue, but movie characters can give voice to things we wish we had the opportunity and courage to say.
• Conflict involves risk: Whereas we may play it safe in our regular routines, we never know what could happen with characters involved in a conflict, an unpredictable dynamic implicit in every fight.
• Conflict requires stakes: Characters don’t get into conflict unless there is something of importance at stake.
• Conflict is about goals: One character wants one thing, another character wants something different.
• Conflict is a battle of wills: There is always the question, “Who is going to win” which makes for an intriguing scenario.
• Conflict is emotional: When characters are engaged in a struggle, it is not a mere exercise in logic, but charged up with feelings.

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

Notice how superficial these answers are, but every one of them would satisfy a professional Editor at a traditional publishing house.  They are not, however, useful from the writer's operational perspective to answer the question:  How do you DO THAT?

Think about each of those answers and about which sorts of Themes can best drive one of those conflict hooks.

Each of those reasons for being interested by conflict defines a Readership.

Which readership is naturally yours?

Feed the Readership you want to prevail in the real world Conflicts that are tearing you apart inside.

Ponder all that we've discussed about Theme, how to define it, how to use it, and how to blend it seamlessly, integrate it into a work of fiction to make that fiction a work of Art.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

Once you have your Theme you will not be conflict-shy, pulling back or tip-toeing around a Conflict your Characters must resolve.

As you progress through life, you will evolve new Themes and new conflicts.  Literary critics define "periods" in a writer's life, and whether they know it or not, they are tracing that writer's personal resolution of personal internal conflicts.

When you're finished with a Conflict, you are finished.  You are at Peace.  And Peace is not Story.  Peace is what happens between Stories that happen to Characters.

Peace is not "Happily Ever After."  Many who disbelieve in the Happily Ever After ending think happiness is perpetual peace.  It isn't.  And that, in itself, constitutes a Theme Bundle -- an entire array of statements about reality.

If you, as a writer, want to share the experience of peace from conflict with your readers, learn to share the moment of resolution of a conflict.  That resolution-moment is the climax of your story and your plot (in the same Event, at the same moment, on the same page).  How and by what a conflict is resolved is your Theme.  The theme generates the conflict and resolves it.

Conflict isn't interesting for any of the reasons in the quoted list.  Conflict is interesting because of what/how/when it RESOLVES.  That's part of the reason viewers want a remake of Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

Here is a post on nesting Themes, creating a theme bundle that is large enough to support a long-running series (novels, TV shows, spinoffs).

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Targeting a Readership Part 14 - Readers Are A Moving Target

Targeting a Readership

Part 14

Readers Are A Moving Target

(but so are you)

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous posts in this series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

Here I am stating the "obvious" -- but it is so obvious, many writers just plain miss it.

Whatever topic you are interested in, say Romance, or Finding Mr. Right, or Playing the Field, or Rebuilding Life After Divorce/widowhood, it interests you because of something inside of you.

See my series on Tarot
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

And see my series on Astrology
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

And note how over time, humans go through experiences as individuals and also, at the same time, go through experiences with their age-group, (Pluto)  and at the same time as all that, go through experiences (major and minor) that challenge or destroy or build the ability to cope.

In other words, like is about experiences. When we have time to breathe, we (because we are human) either think about what has been happening and state it as a "word problem" or we try our best to shut the chattering-brain down so we can rest.

Some people use alcohol or drugs to shut the brain down -- some use fiction, and some use "activism" (e.g. getting involved in supporting a Cause, political or social).

Writers are no different from readers.  Writers live, sometimes survive, experiences that become major questions about the meaning of life.

Such major questions, generated  by the experiences the writer has had, generate a myriad answers, each of which can become the THEME of a novel.

Themes are ANSWERS -- not just questions.  But usually themes are posed as questions.

The science and art of posing a question involves knowing the secret of questioning -- that the answer is fabricated into the question itself.

The worst experience most people have of early education is running into the buzz saw of the WORD PROBLEM.  The trick of doing the math is to figure out how to pose the question, how to state the words in numbers, and after that, it's easy arithmetic.

Wrong answers are generated by incorrect statements of the problem.

And trick word problem questions are created by the way the words lead anywhere but the correct answer.

Themes are like that.  The writer lives through (sometimes by the skin of their teeth) an experience which is blended from the writer's generational experiences (Pluto, Uranus) plus the writer's personal individuality (natal chart, houses etc.)

The generational experience, woven into the theme, gives the resulting fictional work a resonance, like a musical Key or an interior decorator's palate of colors, with a vast number of people born when the writer was born, plus or minus maybe 20 years.

The personal experience woven into the theme gives the resulting fictional work a resonance that induces readers to recognize the Characters as real people such as the people they know.  Everyone knows a "social climber" or a "boot licker" or a "own drummer" type of person, and such types are recognizable far beyond the generational boundaries.  But those close in age know people of those types who have been hammered by similar experiences.

So the Eternal Truths of a Theme, the truths that make the novel potentially a Classic that speaks to far-future generations, come from the generational experiences the writer has survived.  These experiences are cyclical - repeating every 80 years, or every 250 or so years, and so those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

The Spiritual Truths of a Theme, the truths that make the novel potentially memorable, with a high-impact on guiding a reader's life-choices (choice of college major, choice of walking out on a deadbeat husband, choice of having an abortion) come from the individualized, nuanced, personal and internal experiences the writer has survived.

Thus the most popular fiction of one generation might not "speak" to the next generation or the next, but might connect with readers a hundred years later.

So when targeting a readership, you have to blend two (often competing) streams of emotional force, the generational and the personal, and add something else, something contemporaneous, to say something relevant to the people of book-buying-reading age at the moment the novel will be published.

Publishers now have computers to sift/sort/surface information on book-buyers and what titles sell.  There might be ten manuscripts being shopped around by agents, but only one will be chosen to be promoted with Big Bucks (yes, promotion, advertising, marketing, cost enormous amounts of money).  Being chosen doesn't mean being better, wiser, or more important.  Being chosen means being more like whatever is selling now.

Analyses of what sells are very shallow.  Publishers, being in business to make a profit these days (unlike 50 years ago when they were designed to lose or break even, but do important books) focus on the numbers.

It matters what it costs to produce and deliver a book, vs how many copies can be sold at what prices.  That equation is very complex now because of ebooks, audiobook, print editions all at different discounts.

Editors choosing manuscripts look at Plot, Setting, and sometimes Character, but rarely if ever at Theme to choose a book.

That trend is changing.  Certain themes are being excluded, others emphasized in fiction publishing as machine-learning and AI begin to dig deeper into what makes a Best Seller.  But keep in mind, there's a difference between a Best Seller and a Classic.  Classics don't usually sell well off the bat.

So Targeting a Readership means Targeting an Editor who knows a lot more about the readership than you do.

See my series on what exactly the job of an editor is.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/02/index-to-what-exactly-is-editing-by.html


Think of it this way.  

You walk into a cocktail party, dressed to the 9's, full of news about your latest contract signing with a Big Publishing House, and just a little late.  You pick up a drink from a passing waiter and stroll into the room full of circles of people talking to each other (well, yelling by now).

You know some of the people, but not everyone, and hardly anyone recognizes you or pays you any attention.

So you drift into a circle of people having an animated discussion you can barely hear.  You listen intently, but the truth is you know nothing about the topic they are discussing, not because you're an ignoramus but because you just didn't see that New York Times Feature last Sunday.

Everyone has an opinion, and is trying to convince others.

This is your READERSHIP in symbolic microcosm.  The dynamics of selling a novel are the same as the dynamics of joining that conversation.

You might, after five minutes or so of being unable to get a word in edgewise, drift off to another group having a different discussion.

The publishing industry grinds out a steady stream of novels, trying to capture the attention of these circles of screaming, opinionated, intense and animated conversationalists.

Consider the Editors, who are your actual Readership, the first you must captivate, as the waiters at the Cocktail Party, circulating with trays of delights and noting what "everyone" is choosing.  They run back and forth to the kitchen getting more of what is being scarfed up, and less of what is just sitting there on trays.

You are in the kitchen, dispensing more of what the waiters pick up, and wondering what to do with the heaps of crates in the back room full of what nobody wants.

You have to choose from all the stuff on your catering trucks, and send out to the party what the guests are consuming.

In other words, you the writer have a million story ideas, and a lot to say about everything.  You have decades of life experience to distill into advice to those searching for a Soul Mate.  All that is in crates on your catering truck, backed up to the door of your kitchen.  You, the writer, run back and forth, selecting ingredients to grind, roll, and decorate into canapés or mix into drinks.

If you're listening to the roar of the crowd, sampling the conversations in the various circles (watching Twitter and Facebook?), you guess more accurately what topic this crowd is addressing right now.

What people are talking about is usually what they are interested in.  Anyone who intrudes into a conversation trying to change the topic will be regarded as socially inept or ignored.

But just because you're talking about the same topic doesn't mean your comments will blend smoothly into the conversation, be picked up, and generate further thinking.

There is an art to conversation, and most of that art is composed of the ability to listen, and to hear what is not-being-said.

Why do you write novels?

A) Are you writing novels to reinforce what everyone thinks?

B) Are you writing novels to refute and disprove what everyone thinks, to challenge established assumptions?

C) Are you writing novels to weave a soft, pleasurable, comfortable world for your reader to escape into?

D) Or are you writing novels to lend your erudite talents in language and symbols to express the heart and soul of your Readership, to give voice to their subconscious beliefs?

Why you want to write this particular novel is the reason the Readership would want to read this novel.  That reason is stated in your theme.

The 4 Basic Readerships read novels to achieve those 4 basic objectives:

A) to relax into assuredness that the world really is what everyone thinks.

B) to articulate what's wrong with the world, state the word problem so a clear solution can be visualized.

C) to escape the rasping noise of life's experiences, to rest and heal

D) to grow spiritually by walking in another's moccasins, experiencing a different life, a harder life, but culminating in triumph.

Each of those 4 Readerships can be served by any Genre, often by all the active publishers.

Each of those 4 Readerships tends to go to different cocktail parties, or end up in different rooms of the house at a family get together (where the men are in the living room, the women in the kitchen, the kids in the yard, the teens off in a bedroom gaming).

You will likely have the best chance of success joining a conversation (getting a book published) that is about what most interests you at this point in your life.

Readerships age.

Just like the family party separating throughout the house by age group, readerships do that, too.

You have often heard, and probably experienced, "outgrowing" a particular genre, author, or setting.

People who were Star Trek fans in their teens have set the whole space-adventure-dream aside to live in their "real" worlds, or gone on to read in other fields, often non-fiction, but also Romance, Historicals, Mystery, and so on.

People "outgrow" interests when the subconscious questions raised by some Generational or Personal Life Experience have been satisfactorily articulated and a working answer implemented in their lives.

Themes are questions with proposed answers, all of which are rooted in assumptions.

Whatever is the fiery torch of absolute, riveting fascination at one point in life is the scattered embers at a later point.  It's done.  Burned out, and either answered satisfactorily or simply abandoned as unanswerable or unimportant.  The next generation will rekindle that torch, but it might become an LED instead of a Flame.

There is an art to capturing reader interest, as well as a science, but both are rooted in the writer's ability to listen, to hear what you are listening to, and to understand the subconscious resonances the speakers don't even know are in them.

What you have to say, or what you want to say, or what you MUST say, might not be what the people you are talking to want or need to hear.

Your job, as a writer, is not only to have something to say, but to find the people who want to hear it and to say it in a way that facilitates their achieving whichever of the 4 Goals of a readership those individuals are pursuing.

The upshot of all this is simple.  The adage, "There is no accounting for taste," is wrong.  Taste can be accounted for.  Mood is not random, and people are not victims of their moods.

The art of fiction writing is the art of evoking a mood, and using the nuances of emotion to cast new light on the old drudgery of life's routines.  To do that, you have to become part of the conversation, and not boorishly intrude and change the subject.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Astrology Just For Writers Pt 6 - Targeting A Readership Pt 2

The topic here overlaps and synthesizes two threads I've been developing in the search for means to change the image of SF/Paranormal/Futuristic Romance

Heather did a fabulous summary post of where we are now and how to get where we're going with Romance at
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html?showComment=1255723748380#c6797085517666242508

And I do agree that the prevailing market wisdom indicates we need a new label or BRAND logo for SFR. I think it will be derived from the seminal work that changes the landscape, what she calls the ground zero. (Rock-n-Roll; Punk Rock; Steam Punk, Urban Fantasy, New Wave, etc) That seminal work must have a visual element with an evocative label.

But in whom must it evoke what? Let's step back and take a longer perspective look at our market.

This look is founded in two of my previous posts here (plus all the others -- this is the phase of INSIDE THE WRITER'S MIND where bits and pieces get synthesized.)

Look again at:

1) Astrology Just For Writers Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html

2) Targeting a Readership Part One
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Now let's explore the use of Astrology over long, sweeping generations to look at what becomes popular among a given age group and why. Remember this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

To synthesize all this into something a writer can use, we have to consider the Essence of Amusement, which is actually a separate topic -- what clicks your pleasure button and why. This is very mystical stuff with a practical application.

Rowena Cherry tickled the edges of "Essence of Amusement" in her musings about what a heroic-devil could and could not do in a novel and retain reader sympathy.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html

There are several discussions going on in the Amazon Communities boards for Romance about which hugely popular authors you just mysteriously don't like, and another about which authors you've stopped reading lately -- very illuminating.

Those Amazon Community Boards readers (you have to have an amazon account I think to get there, but here's the link)
http://www.amazon.com/communities/directory/ref=sv__1
are not reviewing so much as recommending books to each other. For example, there's a thread about "If I loved TWILIGHT, what should I read next?"

Lots of action in the Romance communities there, but I think there's more in the Romance community at Goodreads.com where there are a lot of authors involved.

The Amazon discussions are mostly by readers for readers, which being a reader, I find fascinating and useful.

But they're discussing their personal reaction to this or that novel series (and series are actually as hot right now as publishers seem to think. Readers don't want "the end" -- they want "ongoing adventures of," which makes the HEA ending concept worth re-thinking.)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

If they like some characters or a fictional world, readers want more and more of the same, but they drop the series once it becomes more and more of the same. Just like TV viewers!

Being readers they don't know or care WHY they like or dislike, or gobble or drop, a story or even a writer's entire output. They just want their money's worth of amusement. That seems fair to me. And wise.

Harking back to Rowena's post on dialog snippets:

"Give me a good read!"
"What do you want?"
"How should I know? You're the writer. That's your job."

OK, roll up your sleeves and let's get to the dirty work.

The Essence of Amusement

Why are we amused?

What is amusement?

Why does a writer have to know?

Caution here -- some writers shouldn't know consciously what amuses their readers.

Other writers can't produce good amusement without knowing consciously.

Yet others need a little of this and a little of that to get it right.

Neurolinguistic programming is a scientific discipline trying to find the interface between brain cells and responses. Scientists long ago found a "pleasure center" which can be directly stimulated, even with addictive consequences.

Reading (fiction or non-fiction) either stimulates that pleasure center in some peripheral, possibly intellectual way -- or it turns off some pain center responses. It may do both on occasion to produce the books we "love."

That effect on engaging the imagination to stimulate or overcome some brain circuit signal would likely have remained the same since caveman days. Or maybe before that. 4.4 million years ago, at least, twice as long ago as previously assumed. I need to find out how long ago Pluto was "captured" by our sun, if that's in fact what Pluto is - a Capture.

THIS FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON HUMAN FOSSIL DISCOVERY - Oct 1, 2009
-------------
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
....
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
------------
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html

We are now learning how species shift and evolve abruptly and why -- two reasons: supervolcanos and magnetic polar reversals.

There's a lot of research on evolution of humans that traces a huge genetic shift to the eruption of a supervolcano 70,000 years ago from now. It's a genetic process called a genetic bottleneck, and I did a really short blog post on that at
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/toba-supervolcano-caused-genetic.html

This stuff about evolution and our ability to be amused is seriously primal, as Blake Snyder says (Save The Cat!)all screenplays that "open everywhere" just have to be PRIMAL.

PRIMAL is the key, and nothing is more PRIMAL than sex or violence (or both). Rowena Cherry just dropped a note on her own post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html

Saying:
----------
Recently (as I mentioned on Heather's blog) a study was published that suggested more than 50% of romance readers want more sex in the novels they read.

Also, from my own observations and email exchanges with my Dorchester editor, marketability standards are changing. Some of the traditional "No-nos" are now acceptable.
-----------

If it's PRIMAL it sells -- provided it doesn't totally shatter a taboo. If you don't know about taboos and human culture, study some anthropology.

"Politically Incorrect" is another term for taboo.

In the film world, the term "edgy" means getting up close to the edge of a taboo but just not quite crossing that edge, so the almost-pain of anticipation is titillating, exciting, subconsciously disturbing, but not "run for the exits" pain. Laughter is the response to almost-pain. And laughter is a pleasure in itself. It's the ultimate goal of "amusement." Who doesn't LAUGH at unexpectedly terrific sex?

Done right, an "edgy" film about some social issue or political commentary can titilate the same nerve that gets a tweak from sexuality. "Playing" an audience with symbolism is just like "playing" a sexual partner to a maximized experience.

Well written fiction is configured just like good sex, which is why the ending of a story is called a CLIMAX.

Since films have to have the largest audiences because they are the most expensive to produce and distribute, "primal" has to be the watchword -- so essential an amusement even a caveman could understand.

And with the increasing emphasis on for-profit fiction, writers face a situation where the "edges" of "edgy" are shifting.

What is publicly acceptable has changed for whatever reason: possibly the audience is jaded; possibly a generation drilled in political correctness and sexual openness of the 1960's; possibly other factors such as Astrology may be involved; possibly all of the above.

So as Rowena correctly points out, editors are very aware (via twitter, facebook, myspace, goodreads.com amazon communities boards etc) that half the readers find the amount of raw sexuality in novels does not satisfy their need for amusement. They want more. But half the readers want the same or less!

If you look at the current political polls on approval for some government initiatives, we're right back where we were before 2008; the USA is about equally divided pro and con any issue, with about 15% in the middle apt to lean either way.

That political divide oddly mirrors the "acceptability" for sex in novels. I don't know if it correlates at all -- if the same people who want this political policy want more sex and the people who are against this political policy want less sex, while 15% in the middle are basically satisfied. I doubt anyone has done a study on that question. (who knows what may turn up on the web tomorrow!)

People with a taste for cerebral fiction (like SF or Mystery) don't necessarily also have a distaste for sexuality in fiction.

Cerebral thrills are only going to be sought out by the top 10 percentile rank of human beings, maybe 15 percentile ranks. Movies have to get 100 times cheaper to make in order to turn a profit off the top 15% of humans. The current tech innovations are bringing that target within range but it's not there yet.

Meanwhile, you'll always make more money off a bigger audience, so a writer should ponder how to frame their artistic output to reach the largest possible number of people with whatever the writer has to give.

Remember my post here on Winning a big film prize by choosing the age of your protagonist which I cited above?

Choosing protag's age to win an Oscar
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

Audiences are grabbed by a protag they can understand and identify with.

Young people don't understand or identify with old people, and don't want to but old people were once young and understand, identify with, and yearn to BE young people. Old people have their own unique life-issues (remember the film COCOON? And it's precious sequel?) but the life issues of the young are not alien or irrelevant to the older consumer.

At the same time, YOUNG consumers can be swayed by advertising and peer pressure. Older people can not (waste of advertising dollars to target over 40 consumers.)

And that could be a problem we're having with SFR and author-advertising. SFR really targets OLDER people -- a ship's captain, for example, should be over 30 to be plausible, over 40 to be believable however sexy. The age of the protag determines the age of the core readership. You waste your money advertising to the over-40 crowd, but that's the target audience for most SFR. Now what do you do?

Alas, older people are not as easily swayed by peer pressure, either. The older reader doesn't read books because "everybody" is reading them - they read what they like. (odd factoid derived from reading Amazon Community).

In a post inside LINKEDIN I saw a publishing professional explaining to a beginning writer pondering self-publishing that publishing is not a "meritocracy" -- and books that deserve to be published don't necessarily get chosen to be published by the big houses.

That's a very good way to think about it because many working writers today were children reading voraciously when publishing WAS INDEED A MERITOCRACY!!! That's the model we've internalized - if my book OUGHT to be published, it will be. What a shock when it's not.

We've all read older books that became true lifetime favorites, cherished and re-read. Those books were published back when publishing was a meritocracy -- and publishing houses were the tax write-off wing of a larger enterprise. (really, that was the business model; publishing was supposed to lose money and if it didn't, the publishing house would get sold at a loss.)

Owning a publishing house was fashionable and an entre into the literati and higher social circles than mere CEO's could aspire to.

Yeah, snob appeal.

Editors were hired not for their commercial sense but for choosing books that "ought" to be published.

That was a different world. Today publishing has become a "for profit" business, cut-throat and thrashing in what seem to be death-throes (at least in paper publishing).

E-publishing and self-publishing have lowered the standards of the finished e-product so that you don't get that prestige factor just for "being an author."

"Authors" used to be in the top 1st percentile rank of the top 15 percentile ranks of all human beings.

Really, that's true. Way back in the early days of the Web, I took a "poll" thing about where I stand in the prestige ranks. As a writer, I hit the top. Professors weren't top. CEO's were top, writers just under.

Today it's different. With self-publishing, authors are maybe somewhere in the top 15 percentile ranks. Since that basically includes most all readers, readers don't flock to "authors" as they once did. Everyone knows a published author. It's not special or inaccessible. (working producers are still inaccessible but that's changing too)

Meeting an author is not the opportunity of a lifetime today.

The world has changed so we have a big opportunity to establish something new that could shape the world of the future.

But to achieve that, we have to get a grip on what is really going on as opposed to what all the financial decision makers assume is going on. That's the real work of a writer, a futurologist, an amusement vendor, knowing what nobody else suspects and using it to advantage.

There's a puzzle of the marketplace that has never been solved, and I can't say I have "the" solution. But by using a futurologist's thinking tools and worldbuilder's imagination, we might stumble upon a real clue specifically useful to Romance sub-genre writers, with this problem about spending personal advertising dollars to sway over-40 year old readerships.

The puzzle that bewilders editors and producers is simple.

"Why is this a hit, while that better thing isn't?"

Maybe it's not all entirely marketing?

The people who get rich are the ones who notice the first of the trend-setting leaders and flood in behind with imitations before the general public has heard of the trend.

Those trend-setting leaders are usually "accidents" -- mistakes editors made trying to pick a big winner, or little indie films that make it big at a festival.

Sometimes the trend setting author is a visionary, but sometimes the author is as bewildered by commercial success as the editor (Rowling comes to mind).

So successful editors and producers watch the fringes for something that has tweaked the pleasure-centers, clicked the Amusement Button and produced Amusement in a DEMOGRAPHIC SWATCH of the population -- a demographic with disposable income and the immaturity to be swayed by advertising.

In 2008, I did a series of columns (the first 6 columns of 2008) on Blake Snyder's approach to film structure using primal issues structured in a primal way.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/

And I followed that with a series of columns on the astrological effect of PLUTO being dramatic and "larger than life."

Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed is the series title of those columns.

Under Pluto, I discussed Noel Tyl's Signature of Fame, an astrological meta-pattern you can find in natal charts of the absurdly rich and famous.

That Signature of Fame pattern pivots on Pluto in the natal chart and requires a fairly experienced astrologer to sift out of the background noise. But Tyl's Signature hypothesis explains graphically why it is so many who are rocketed to stardom crash and burn on drugs, sexual dissipation, bad judgment, trusting the wrong people, or dying of some dramatic disease.

Pluto is a magnifier of drama (among many other things). Pluto is just power, raw power, sexual power, financial power, political power, power over OTHERS (as in the power to sell snow to the Eskimos).

Pluto is not the drama itself. Pluto mixes in to an ordinary life event and magnifies it, blows it up, exaggerates, makes melodrama. You don't just drive your car into a ditch, you rocket off the Golden Gate Bridge leaving shattered traffic barriers behind.

Some handy current examples of Pluto in action.

When the economy crashed and burned at the end of 2008, it was after a long, slow shuddering buildup showing symptom after symptom that the "experts" ignored, which is typical of Pluto.

"I knew that would happen! Why didn't I pay attention?" And the answer is that Pluto represents what is underground, hidden, what is infrastructure. Plumbing, bridges, highways, electrical grid. You never notice it until it collapses.

So finally (it wasn't the beginning; it was FINALLY) Lehman Brothers melted down.

That coincided with the contact of Pluto to the 8th House cusp of (one of) the USA natal chart guesses. (astrologers argue about which chart is the real birthchart of the USA and all the candidates have different degrees for the 8th House cusp).

Pluto rules the Natural 8th House which is Scorpio, so when Pluto in current real-time comes to a degree that is a natal 8th House, Pluto's normally exaggerated effect is exaggerated more than 100%.

So we didn't just have a recession, we had a financial foundation infrastructure melt-down which magnified the recession we were due for.

8th House and Pluto and Scorpio symbolize the resources of others, (for a country, that's taxes and borrowing from foreign governments)

Obama was elected President with Pluto transiting opposition his Natal Venus, which is just about conjunct the USA Venus. (Venus rules Taurus-finances and Libra-Relationships).

Obama also had Neptune transiting his Ascendant casting a huge, magnified (Pluto) glamor (Neptune) over all his relationships (Venus).

His ability to speak was also at a lifetime best (Venus rules the voice box) etc. The whole country resonated to his way of handling relationships, and will for a while yet.

Pluto magnifies. It's about POWER.

Put a raw electric feed from the grid directly into your house circuitry and your house will just about EXPLODE with sparks and gouts of flame. No step-down transformers between you and the power plant, and E-GAD! The rest of your natal chart is the step-down transformer network through which POWER from Pluto (yes and your Sun) gets configured to be usable for daily living.

In "The Celebrity" that step-down-transformer network does not bring the voltage down to usability all the time -- and the result is extreme fame followed by a melodramatic personal meltdown (marriages-divorces; drugs; drinking; diving a plane into the ocean; spectacular rare diseases that make headlines)

8th House is Scorpio, one of the water signs, and thus participates in psychic attributes. People with a lot of water sign points in their natal chart are psychically open on some level, often without knowing it. That can help a Celebrity read an audience.

The first 6 columns I've done for 2010 which will be posted starting in January 2010 are all about The Group Mind (the psychic bond among us all at the Scorpio/Pluto/8th House level). In those columns I examine the interactive effects of the Group Mind and the Media -- analyzing popularity at its source.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/ shows you the novels analyzed to reveal connections.

Hidden connections are Scorpio, Pluto, 8th House.

Pluto power can also manifest as a ruthlessness, obsessiveness devoid of conscience -- the perfect raw material for any arch-villain a writer might need. Secretive is a keynote of Pluto. 8th House, other's resources, plus secretiveness equals conspiracy. Wow, dynamite material for any writer.

Pluto is the upper octave of Mars that rules War (Aries, the First House, the supremacy of Ego). Mars is a cat fight, a squabble, a grab for some country's fertile fields. Mars is not violence but ego-energy, and if thwarted can use FORCE to impose the personal Will.

Pluto is war to total annihilation -- war exaggerated, with nothing personal in it. This is not war to possess the resources of another, but war to obliterate the other.

Pluto is capable of VIOLENCE with an iron clad will, an implacable purpose. But Pluto is not the violence itself, it's the magnifier that takes the violence erupting elsewhere in the chart and makes it implacable.

Pluto is the sexual "fun" derived from violence, especially the kind of violence perpetrated to control another (S&M) - games of sexual dominance played out on an international stage. (think THE GODFATHER). 8th House is also inheritance, the resources that are rightfully yours by inherent worth. Thwart that "rightful" possession and you get the explosive manifestation of Pluto. Pluto doesn't take what belongs to others. Pluto takes back what belongs to him. And everything belongs to him, by right of inheritance. Even if he has to kill to inherit. (fabulous villain material)

So why are we talking about Pluto while analyzing amusement?

We need a new theory of what amuses people for our New Electronic Age, and here's one I would like to explore.

Pluto is now making its last station on 0 degrees of Capricorn, just a bit past the USA 8th House cusp, and headed for a series of oppositions to the USA natal chart's most sensitive points.

We're in for a roller coaster ride, but if we can understand what makes Drama as Blake Snyder formulated it (2008 columns), and how the Group Mind interacts with Media (2010 columns), we can see what Pluto is magnifying.

If we then put all that together with the various other posts linked above, connect the dots and figure out what the NEXT most popular thing will be, we may trump Rowena's Dorchester editor (a great publishing imprint, BTW) and produce that Ground Zero work Heather's post on Galaxy Express talks about.

How can a writer come to understand their audience's "amusement" buttons?

The natural 5th House, Leo, ruled by the Sun, is usually considered the home of AMUSEMENT, the keynote of FUN. 5th House is where we play and recreate, procreate, speculate and gamble . 5th House is siblings and children and grandchildren, and all our love given to others. (it's opposite, 11th House is the love and appreciation we get back in return, the groups that accept us and appreciate our fun loving sense of humor.)

You'd think that to find out how to amuse people, to find out what amuses people in general, you should examine the 5th House.

But if you look at the explosive popularity of video games (based almost exclusively on violence, on KILLING opponents as a way of WINNING, of prevailing, of asserting dominance) and correlate with the demographic of the consumers of video games (teens at the threshold of sexual maturity) and then look at where Pluto was transiting during the years those teens were born, you might learn something startling about the nature of Amusement that can be sold in packages (8th House; other people's money).

In assessing any astrology problem, the hierarchy of planets is OUTER to INNER. First you look at the eclipse points, then PLUTO -- and everything else is commentary.

Most astrologers are taught to start with the Sun ruler of the Natural 5th. For our purposes, that won't work because it won't yield generational profiles.

What do generations have in common? The signs in which the outer planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, are placed. The Sun goes around once a year. Those outer planets keynote generations by their slow movement. The Sun position binds generations together (each generation has an equal number of Leos, Aries, etc.). The Outer Planets separate generations.

Since advertising dollar effectiveness depends on generational age-groups, we need to look beyond the Sun for the key to the puzzle, "What Amusement Can Be Packaged And Sold For Money?"

Individual natal charts have the planets and signs in different houses, all aspected differently by faster moving points such as the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus. Really, when it comes down to it, astrology almost shows us why we seem to have nothing at all in common! No two of us are alike!

But as marketers have discovered, generations do have something in common with regard to taste.

What each generation wants (thank you Rowena for the "What do you want?" line) is a mystery until one of those obscure products (like hula hoops) suddenly explodes onto the scene.

There is a theme to each generation born, something that will amuse them all their lives long, in various different forms and formats.

How long Pluto stays in a given sign changes because Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and it even cuts inside Neptune's orbit. That odd orbit, out of the plane of the ecliptic and slanting across another planet's orbit is what got Pluto demoted from planet status -- it's considered to be a captive from outer space rather than a planet formed from the plasma of our star. (BTW that is an old story, done to death in SF -- that Pluto is really a generation-ship, maybe with only dead or stasis passengers; the remains of a dead civilization out there somewhere).

So Pluto is an obsessively fascinating planet, but empirically you can see that as it changes signs, the world changes usually explosively or abruptly -- social mores change; civilizations rise and fall to the beat of Pluto (and maybe super-volcanoes and magnetic pole flips).

But on a very subconscious level, (and Pluto rules the subconscious values while the 2nd House ruler Venus rules conscious values) the Amusement Button for each generation may actually be best described by Pluto's sign in their natal charts.

What fascinates, obsesses, causes unbridled aggression -- what is it that marketers can use to get a handle on each generation?

It isn't what makes people laugh. It's what people of that generation simply can NOT take their attention away from. People will pay big bucks for what they obsess over subconsciously, bucks they won't pay for a quick laugh gone in an instant.

People would not pay $9/pack for cigarettes without nicotine (or a substitute that works as well.)

Consider these blocks of years and what topped the charts in music subjects, favorite actors, great political trends, shifting taboo lines, great-huge-magnified tsunamis of trends during these blocks of years.

Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun, but it's in each sign (or 30 degree swatch of the zodiac) for different lengths of time.

Remember to add say 15-20 years to see when these folks would have an impact on amusement markets because they have disposable income.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)

PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X)

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023)

Neptune Takes 165 years to circle the sun.

NEPTUNE IN LIBRA Oct 1942 - 1957

NEPTUNE IN SCORPIO 1957 - 1970

NEPTUNE IN SAGITTARIUS 1970 - 1984

NEPTUNE IN CAPRICORN 1984 - 1998

NEPTUNE IN AQUARIUS 1998 - 2011

NEPTUNE IN PISCES 2011 - 2026


Uranus 84.3 years, a lifetime.

The popular press uses the 20 year swatch for a "generation" usually, or a demographic bulge of kids all born within 10 years to define a "generation." But think about the list above and see if it doesn't make better sense than the popular press definitions.

LEO is the natural 5th House of Amusement, but also of sovereignty --

Pluto in Leo produced the Flower Children, fun on drugs, altered consciousness and "doing my own thing."

Pluto in Virgo produced Generation X, craving White Wine and monied elegance. The detail oriented upwardly mobile fashionistes. There weren't many of them because the Baby Boomers (1947-1960) and Flower Children didn't have their kids until later in life.

Pluto in Libra produced Gen Y.

Wikipedia says there's no set borders for Gen Y but they're the Boomer Echo generation, the Boomer's kids. You see The Boomers fit inside Pluto in Leo but don't take up all of it.

Gen Y was coming of age in a "liberated" world where political correctness is everything, intermarriage is the norm, and women have their children only in the last minute panic of the biological clock. Many Gen Y kids have older parents.

The last of Gen Y turned 20 in 2004, coming out of school into a crashed economy, desperately in search of social justice (Libra is Justice) in a world they believed they didn't owe anything to (unlike the Boomers who flocked to President Kennedy's Peace Corps). Gen Y is the first generation to have computers in HIGH SCHOOL classrooms, and pioneered video games.

The following is from Brookhaven History
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp

----------QUOTE---------
In 1982, Creative Computing magazine picked up on the idea that Tennis for Two might be the first video game ever and it published a story on the game ...
----------END QUOTE------

Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also noted in the above list of transits how the position of Neptune correlates to the position of Pluto in the generational charts.

Neptune is all about illusion; Neptune, ruler of the Natural 12th House, Self Undoing, rules all things having to do with imagination, with glamor (Hollywood), charisma and also Religion and Idealism, and oddly today with technology and engineering (Pisces folks make marvelous Engineers. Engineers blend science and mechanics into technology using IMAGINATION.)

Neptune dissolves and blends.

Neptune is very hard to get ahold of conceptually.

Neptune, as I've discussed in various blog posts, is the key influence in any Romance situation. Your very personality dissolves during that key Neptune transit where you fall in love. Your bullshit filters dissolve. Your critical faculties shimmer away.

Neptune transits put you (whoever and whatever you are) into your own most receptive (Scorpio is a water sign) state such as you've never experienced before. Neptune transits allow that soul-mate bond to form.

What forms and solidifies under Neptune can never be destroyed -- that's the odd paradox of Neptune. It dissolves everything concrete but solidifies the vision. Neptune is all about hope.

It's about Magic and fantasy, hopes, dreams and imagination and everything you wish were real but isn't -- and everything you hope to God isn't real.

The generation born with Pluto in Sagittarius mostly have Neptune in Aquarius. Aquarius is the natural 11th House, as we noted above, Love Received, appreciation lavished upon you. The Pluto in Sagittarius (Justice; different from Libra's brand of Justice) generation must, as a Group Mind, be dreaming of being loved, adored, appreciated, elevated.

Tom Baker, the actor who played The Doctor in Doctor Who for about 20 years, was himself a multiple Aquarius (yeah, I found his chart).

The way he portrayed The Doctor exemplified the footloose, fancy free innovator who formed only temporary but intense ties with people who passed through his life. He cared about humanity -- not actually so much about individual humans except as they represented humanity. It's a tough distinction to make without making the character seem like a villain. But it's there if you look..

Aquarius males have a very easy time getting married, and a very very hard time staying married. They exemplify the utmost in loyalty but can't see why that should tie them down. Freedom. It's all about personal freedom.

So synthesize Pluto in Sagittarius with Neptune in Aquarius and see if you can determine the configuration of Amusement Button for the whole generation now just beginning to turn 14.

There are a lot of them and they will have buying power.

Marketers know that teens have more discretionary spending money than their parents.

When they're in college, what habit will they have become addicted to? (Pluto is that sort of energy; addiction, habit, subconscious).

Here are a couple of addendum notes to mull over while trying to nail the Amusement Button for the current teens.

-----------------------
Article on why it is that Science Fiction authors just can't win in this world (not sure I agree with definition of "win" but this is good advice in the making.

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant.html

Is a very short post with the following link
http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html

So the core of the advice is that if you want a "genre" to gain respect, you have to drop the genre label and invent a new one.

Sylvia Louise Engdahl gives us a really explicit example of how this is being done today with her FLAME novels,
Stewards of the Flame and
Promise of the Flame,
stories of all-human societies but not on Earth, on Earth-derived colonies out there somewhere.

The setting demands the genre label SF, but the characters demand the label futuristic romance, and the plot (and huge, long, lazy expository lumps with the flavor of mainstream literary novels) demands the label philosophical fiction. Reading the FLAME novels is like reading early Heinlein but for modern readers.

So Engdahl has dropped both the YA label in which she became famous and the SF label.

------------------------------
Article on Women Horror Fans and film makers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html?_r=2&hpw

“Jennifer’s Body” was designed with both feminists and 15-year-old boys in mind, a seemingly eccentric blueprint that, as Ms. Kusama points out, is in line with the best movies of the slasher tradition. “It may be one of the best ways for a young male audience to experience a female story without feeling like they have been limited by a female perspective,” she said.

"It was an effort that often bedeviled Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama, who tried to balance brute violence and lesbian kisses with the film’s more substantial metaphors. “The tricky thing is if you’re going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there,” said Ms. Cody, whose script is a self-described “crazy, chaotic homage” to the horror films of her youth. “We were constantly bobbing and weaving. Karyn and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that’s appealing to a mainstream audience.”"

"Horror films have adapted with Darwinian fortitude over the years, allegorizing everything from cold war paranoia and eco-anxiety to the breakdown of families. And yet the success of slasher movies, which exploded with films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in 1974 and came to dominate what we now think of as scary movies, might have stalled cinema’s most resilient genre. "

The director Rob Zombie, whose recent release, “Halloween II,” revamps another 1970s proto-slasher (and one of the original “final girls,” the character Laurie Strode), says the genre’s indulgence has been its undoing.

“The ’80s are the decade that ruined everything for everybody,” he said. “The soul went away, and it became gore for the sake of gore, and kids were cheering at killings and yelling and screaming. It became a roller coaster ride. And of course once something becomes a roller coaster, all you can do is build a bigger, more extreme roller coaster. That’s where I think horror movies really got perverted.”

----------------------

There's a lot more to say on this topic of generational taste in amusement.

TAKE AWAY:
The important point is that people will pay more than they can afford for amusement that obsesses them, but not for amusement that merely entertains.

Those over 40 can't be enticed or attracted by advertising that costs money. Those currently over 40 were born with Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagitarrius. Go for it!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Romantic Times Award Winning Dushau Trilogy
NOW ON KINDLE