Theme-Character Integration Part 16 - Building a Hero Character From Theme

Theme-Character Integration Part 16

Building a Hero Character From Theme

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous Parts in the discussion of skills necessary for integrating Theme and Character into one, flowing, indivisible, continuous idea stream, are indexed here:

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

The posts titled Integration focus on doing two, three or even four things at once, so interpenetrating that even literary scholars can't tell there are several separate skills in use.

Attaining this level of integration in your story-thinking requires not just writing that proverbial million words, but thinking about the Events of the day, news events, personal developments, overheard in the elevator snatches, reactions to others being promoted around you, -- everything, moment to moment.

One way of knowing you ARE a writer before you've ever written an essay, never mind a story, is simply that you observe your world and create the missing pieces behind what you see.  Some people do this as young children, others learn even in their twenties.  It is how you amuse yourself.

You can always tell a person is a fiction writer because they are never bored, and never idle.  Sitting in the Mall people watching, stuck in a dentist's waiting room, trudging down the side of the road to get gas for the car that just stopped, -- anywhere and everywhere, the writer probes the people and situations for "Who" snd "Why."

"Who" is the Character for a story -- an artificial person composed of at least three conflicting attributes.  The Character's "story" is about how that specific individual resolves that impossible 3-way Conflict within.  The Plots of the Character's life-story (series of novels) are generated by the World (outside reality) reacting to the Character's efforts to resolve the Internal Conflict.

The Internal and External Conflicts are United by Theme.

In real life, the nested Russian Dolls motif manifests, not just in the lives of obscure individuals, but on and on, bigger and bigger until you come to the old adage, "People Get The Government They Deserve."

Or you study Primate Behavior on the Ph.D. level, and you see how humans default to the Primate Tribal structure in everything we do, including boss and bully each other around.

Part 15 of this series on Theme-Character Integration is about Bullies, and how to formulate a Bully Character:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/10/theme-character-integration-part-15.html

Ordinarily, one would think that the "Hero" is never a Bully -- that a "Bully" can not morph into a Hero.

Let's use the definition of Bully that pinpoints the behavior of intimidating or hitting someone weaker.  The Bully picks on weaker Characters -- psychology says -- because there's less risk of getting hurt (emotionally or physically).  In other words, the Bully shuns risk.  This behavior has been identified among Primates of all sorts -- other animals, too.

THEME: Bullies Are Necessary For Tribal Survival

The argument might move along the lines of how the weaker, injured, malformed at birth, elderly, are a burden on the Tribe's Resources and thus must be eliminated.  It has also been recorded that in some species the elderly or injured go off to die alone, without being forcibly rejected.

The counter argument in the Conflict would then focus on the Character Flaw that makes a Bully --- cowardice.

THEME: Heroes Are Necessary For Tribal Survival

What, exactly, is a Hero?

Bravery is often derided as stupidity -- and mostly, Hero type Characters will wade in where Angels fear to tread and die fighting.

A Novel Series could make the thematic case for the Hero being a creature who should be ashamed to show his face in public, and would never be chosen as a Mate.

I played with that idea as the basis Value System of an Alien Species the two novels, HERO and BORDER DISPUTE.

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

Those two books, now in one Kindle volume, were published in Mass Market (my first to be directly distributed in supermarkets), and are now posted in Kindle Unlimited and ebook.

Heroism is even more fascinating than bullying as a human behavior, and the attitude of the rest of the population (the population under the "norm" of the curve)  Both Heroism and Bullying are fringe behaviors.

But the most fascinating aspect is how the "ordinary" folks (usually under the "norm" of the distribution curve) become Heroes in extraordinary circumstances, and in such circumstances tend to survive more often than those who practice Heroism as a way of life from the early teens.

In other words, the person who "rises to the occasion" and performs Heroically, is more likely to survive to tell the tale, while the habitual-hero is more likely to be labeled a braggart for telling his tale or a stupid fool for getting himself killed with ill-considered action.

The difference lies in the Values espoused by the Tribe.  The Tribe's Values form the bare bones of the Theme from which you form the Main Character.

Oddly, a Bully may be regarded as a Hero for covering up his cowardice.

An ordinary person may become a Hero by being the only one of the Tribe who acts to resolve an Emergency.

It's one of the oldest campfire stories, The Hero's Journey -- Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars film, who thinks of himself as just another farm boy responds to the destruction of all the certainties in his life by taking action based on the rural-values and skillsets he perfected down on the farm.

THEME: You, Too, Can Conquer Any Challenge

These Hero Characters are just YOU (the reader/viewer) in some extraordinary (for your life) circumstance.  YOU CAN DO IT TO.  That's a theme that always resonates.

THEME: Love Conquers All

You can do it, too.  If you truly love, you can conquer.

What does it mean to "conquer?"

Conquering means vanquishing, putting some challenge or obstacle behind you, and facing smooth sailing ahead (Happily Ever After.)

The Hero Character is (unlike the Bully) never calculating the odds.

Read some self-help books on successful businessmen.  Most all of those books point our that successful people never consider what will happen if they fail.  The trick to being successful in business (which us Primates have structured as inter-Tribal warfare; or football) is to keep your eye on the goal and never "look down."

Brian Boytano, the Olympic Gold Medal figure skater in 1988, is an example (one among many) who explains in training for the Olympics, he kept visualizing himself on the medalist platform with the anthem playing.  It is an old technique, but is re-invented by many each generation -- visualize success, never let the inner eye waver from that goal.

The Hero thinks like that, inside the mind, but usually (for the ordinary person who rises to an occasion, maybe once in a lifetime) the Hero doesn't talk like that.

The Hero is not "self-effacing" or "modest," just uninterested in himself.

The Hero can't imagine that anyone else would be interested in what he's thinking.

The Bully, on the other hand, is just as focused on his/her goal, just as driven, just as ruthless, but defines success differently than the Hero.

The difference between Hero and Bully is about attitude toward personal risk.

The Hero and the Bully both manage risk, but to different ends.

The Hero doesn't worry about "risk" in the sense of visualizing or feeling how Failure would be.  The Hero calculates risk, and assumes some loss, some pain, will occur -- lost money or lost blood -- there will be losses.  Just minimize them, take the damage and move on toward the goal.

The Bully focuses on the pain of loss, tries so hard to avoid any loss at all that avoidance becomes the goal.  With that psychology of avoidance of a consequence, the Bully can never experience Winning.  Emotionally dead to the experience of life, the Bully can feel peak emotion only when inflicting the pain of loss upon another.

This contrast between Hero and Bully is an oversimplified description of complex and common attitudes.  For real humans, not fictional Characters, both the Hero and Bully psychology co-exist, intermingle, and often cause behavior (both good and bad) by their interaction.  (Mixed motives are common.)

For the sake of Building a Hero Character out of Theme, we have to simplify life into a statement.  That's how Fiction reveals truths that are stranger than Reality -- distill out a threat, an element, a component of "life" and showcase that Truth against black velvet with a single, pure white light sparkling off it.

Fiction is an art that uses emotion as its pigments and a carefully "staged" reality as the backdrop.  I suspect the reader/viewer supplies the light, which is why no two readers read the same book.  The book the writer wrote is not the book the reader reads -- because the Characters and Events are "seen in a different light."

Consider how the envelope THEME of Romance Genre is "Love Conquers All."  The THEME for your novel, to be Romance of any sub-genre, Paranormal or Science Fiction, has to be a sub-set of "Love Conquers All."

We all know and love dozens (if not hundreds) of novels using the THEME "Love Can Conquer A Hero."  Almost all the "Get Spock" sub-genre of STAR TREK fanfic is about how love conquers Spock.

Whatever the opposing force in conflict with the Main Characters - Love has to Conquer that force.

Which brings us to Worldbuilding.  To make an intangible like "Love" into a force to be reckoned with in everyday Reality, you must build a World where the physics, math and chemistry are designed (from the speed of light on up) for a human emotion to interact with manifest events.

THEME: Souls Are Real

So therefore Soul Mates can exist, meet, fight, recognize and merge to create new life.  If Souls aren't real, then that process can't happen.

So if souls aren't real, something ELSE is going on -- because we all know of the Great Loves that have moved History.

"What else is going on instead of the reality of Souls?" is the "light" in which the reader sees the story.

The reason "Happily Ever After" is so routinely scoffed at is simply that the reader is seeing the Romance story of Love (a tangible force) Conquering anything, "in the wrong light."

Creating your Hero Character (male and female) to be visible to the non-Romance fan Reader/Viewer in a light that reveals the reality of Souls means creating a Hero Character these readers are accustomed to becoming.

Remember, above we thought about the purpose of the fictional Hero as a vehicle to convince a reader, "You Can Do It, Too."

Literary critics call that "Identifying" with the Main Character.  "That Character Is Me."

Then the reader experiences the story as if it were real.

We call that, "A Good Read."

If you want to deliver "a good read" to the fans of the novel series we looked at in Reviews 45 and Reviews 46

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/reviews-45-military-science-fiction-and.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/02/reviews-46-private-eye-genre-progresses.html

- Military Science Fiction and Private Eye Detective fiction (both closely related fields to Romance), you need a Hero just like the main characters in those novels.

Those are the Characters the anti-Romance readers identify with.

So I recommended reading some of those novels, studying what makes them work, and how what's missing from those novels (Romance; though there's plenty of sex, plenty of hooking up) attracts a specific readership.

That is your virgin readership -- hit it off with that readership and double the sales of Romance Genre.

Those novels are set in Worlds crafted such that Souls Are Not Real.

Love is important, but life without Love (just with sex) is actually very livable and plenty rewarding enough --- and the theme of which these Action/Adventure Worlds are built is:

THEME: You Can Do It, Too

Even if your real life is a complete shambles, divorced, fired, penniless, rock-bottom, You Could Be A Hero If Only ...

We mentioned the long-running TV Series, NCIS, a few times, and the Hero Gibbs (widower, multiple divorces, current casual relationships, living only for his job).  The Star, the Main Character, hasn't 't "got a life."  And the team members he keeps on staff don't have lives, either.  They have hobbies and side-hustles (like writing novels), but they have no Love.  They have plenty of Emotion, and Bonding, but no actual Love as we mean it in Romance -- the Love that Conquers.

Captain Kirk, of Star Trek fame, likewise -- and Spock.

These screen Hero Lead Male Characters often "get the girl" but they are empty husks.  They may have some "buttons" (things that make them mad, or sad), and they may have some buried Angst just for decoration, but they are deliberately designed by the Producers of these shows to be cyphers.

These are empty-shell Characters any viewer (sometimes male or female) can pour themselves into and BECOME long enough to experience success at something.

The empty-husk Hunk is a requirement for TV Series because it widens the audience.

By the time in the story-arc where enough is known about the Character that he is not an "empty husk," the viewership drops off and the show is cancelled.  There are too many in the audience who don't find the Character interesting.

In other words, in formulating your Hero Character from your Theme, be sure that you know what makes that Character's Soul strive to live, but the less of that the reader knows, the wider your readership.

Television Characters (and best selling novel Characters) are built around a theme:

THEME: No Human Is Significantly Different From Any Other Human.

In other words, people are all alike.  Or in historical or time travel novels, human nature never changes.

A sub-theme might be, "All Humans Are Empty Husks" -- or "Everyone Is A Failure; some are just better at hiding it."

Study the main Characters in the Military and PI fiction I have been highlighting in the Reviews posts.  They won't seem realistic or real to anyone who perceives the World as inhabited by Soul Mates.  Figure out what the difference is between a World these action Characters are native to and a World potential Soul Mate Characters are native to.

That difference is your Theme.  It is of the form: "Souls Don't Matter."  Or maybe: "Not Every Human Has A Soul."  Or possibly, "A Person Can Seem Normal But Barely Have Connection To Soul."

Using what you've learned of Story Arc and Character Arc, start your Main Character at a point where his life is like the NCIS Hero, Gibbs, or like Dev Haskell Private Investigator.

Then change some parameters, the certainties of his/her existence, as in the opening movie in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker loses everything, including the Identity he thought he had.

Cast your Empty Husk Character loose into a continuum where Love is real, tangible, and clearly affects Events (not just character motives, but what seems to be Luck, or random Events).

Be extra sure not to let the reader know even 10% of what you know about that Character - keep him Empty and lure the reader into becoming that Character.  Fill your Empty Husk with details that show-don't-tell how this Character is just like your reader -- and therefore, your reader can flow along on the Character's journey to repossess his Soul, cleve to his Soul Mate, and create a full, rich, colorful and individualized life.

In other words, to convince the fans of Destroyermen Novels that they, too, can bond with their Soul Mate and celebrate the uniqueness of every individual human, take them on a Hero's Journey from where they are now to where you envision we could all be.

The more detail you add to your Empty Husk Character beyond the requisite Three Main Traits to create a Character, the more distant he becomes from your reader.  By the point where you reveal your Character's Soul to the Reader, the array of traits you have revealed is vast, and define's your Character's essential uniqueness.

THEME: All Humans Are Unique

THEME: All Humans Are Alike

What is "the truth?"

Is it that no two Souls are alike, and therefore the signature of Love in this reality is the uniqueness of human individuals?

We breed dogs to conform personality and talents to a breed's recipe.  We have retrievers who play fetch, and Pit Bulls that defend territory, sheep dogs that herd.  Can you breed humans like that?  Have we done such breeding without knowing it?

Maybe you have a Character who succeeds by applying the adage: All Humans Are Alike  -- and you pit that Character against another whose whole life is founded on artistic fascination with human uniqueness.  Can they be Soul Mates?

Would they have to resolve this disagreement, prove once and for all that no two humans are alike (or no human differs in any way that matters)?  What experiment, bet, etc. would settle the argument?  Having children together?  Adopting and raising children together, apart, with other partners?

A secret experiment raising isolated groups of human children in environments designed to determine if they are "all the same" or "each unique" and what environmental forces "cause" conformity or divergence.  What happens when the experiment is discovered?  How is it discovered (a child escapes?).  What if all the children were embryos created from the two experimenters' DNA?  What if they were all clones, with identical DNA (we can't do identical copies yet, so it's really Science FICTION.)

Would the identical children find Soul Mates among themselves?

Could Souls "Walk In" to such cyphers?

Is there a war among disembodied Souls for "possession" of certain humans?

Are all Souls either "in" or "out" of body?  Or, are there intermediate states of habitation -- partially in or out? 

Answer those questions and generate whole lists of themes from which to fabricate your Worlds and Hero Characters.

Remember, the general reader can't accept the Happily Ever After ending as realistic -- but being unique humans, those readers each has a different reason for not accepting what seems obvious to us.  These are often the very readers who will either insist that all humans are alike (and any ordinary person can be a Hero given the right circumstances), or they will insist the Soul Mate concept is nonsense.

Is Soul real?  Does Soul make a difference in the real world?

The answers to those questions are Themes.  Each answer can be used to generate Characters who are Heroes or Bullies -- and pit them against each other.

The end of the novel, the Happily Ever After, requires the two Soul Mates each, individually, arrive at answers that satisfy them, as individuals -- not answers that are cosmically correct.

If you, the writer, have done your job well, the skeptical reader will experience the Characters' sense of satisfaction vicariously.  That experience could be the opening which will allow in the notion that Love does indeed, and in reality, Conquer All.

You know you've delivered that emotional wallop when you cry your eyes out writing the last few paragraphs.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2: Ruining The Romance With Words by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2:

Ruining The Romance With Words 

by 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Today we'll examine a terrific novel in a picture-perfect series from Ace Science Fiction  which I just absolutely love -- but find myself gritting my teeth over certain brief scenes that are actually the core of the matter for me.

I will include "spoilers" -- we're talking here about the 11th novel in a series, and no way can you discuss that without revealing where those previous 10 have been leading. 

These scenes score an "epic fail" for me because of the sour note in the Romance thread of the plot. 

Why? 

What could a writer do about it? 

A lot, and it would be easy and not make the book longer. 

Previously in this blog series on writing craft, we've discussed Dialogue with special focus on invective.

Here is a post from 2009 which opens the issue of dialogue with a broad overview.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/expletive-deleted-tender-romance.html

It refers to a previous series of posts on Verisimilitude vs. Reality where we examined how "dialogue" differs from the way people just talk in real life.  Dialogue is not "real speech." Writers watch a lot of television and/or movies to develop an "ear" for the difference.

We have also discussed dialogue from other angles. It is part of characterization, pacing, plotting, foreshadowing, choosing a title, description, narrative, and of course conflict.  In fact, dialogue integrates all the techniques we've discussed here separately.

Here are some previous posts about dialogue:

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

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

The magnificent writer whose work I'm going to criticize here is Mike Shepherd, a military Science Fiction writer I admire.  He has replicated, in modern writing, the style and rhythm of the 1940's science fiction writers.  This is a tremendous feat!

I read a lot of these very old novels as I grew up, and saw nothing wrong. 

As a teen, I hated "Romance" genre novels because they were about stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.  Romance has GROWN UP since then, and now we have the kick-ass heroine who won't take "no" for an answer, and we also have women who are hackers, gamers, research scientists, and even military commanders.

Mike Shepherd has created a character for an interstellar war era who comes from a line of military leaders who have risen to be crowned "King" of multiple star systems.

This family line is surnamed Longknife. 

Shepherd has created a galaxy-spanning human civilization which, as humans will do, has split into human vs. human to hold a war or three. 

In the meantime, this civilization has encountered aliens, conducted long and complex war against them, and settled the conflict (maybe not permanently, but things are looking good at the moment.)

Shepherd has extended the human life-span and created artificial intelligence computers and a material for warcraft hulls he has TRADEMARKED the name of "Smart Metal" (so other writers can't use this term.)  This is magnificent work. 

Shepherd has several series set in this vast universe, and today we are focusing on the 11th in the series, the 2013 release, Kris Longknife: DEFENDER by Mike Shepherd from Ace Science Fiction.

The previous titles in the Kris Longknife Series are, in order:
Mutineer
Deserter
Defiant
Resolute
Audacious
Intrepid
Undaunted
Redoubtable
Daring
Furious
and in 2013, Defender

Slated for October 2014 is Kris Longknife: Tenacious, followed by another novel that takes up the doings of one of Kris's main foes who became an ally, then a filling in of the backstory of the war fought by Kris's father and grandfather. 

These other three people are tremendous, colorful characters -- but they don't grab my interest as Kris Longknife does.  I'll give them a try, though, because Shepherd is a great writer.

Kris Longknife starts out in Mutineer as a slip of a girl, just out of school and taking the stage in her life.

Her ancestors are Kings, her whole family has a reputation for making trouble, for getting people killed, for doings that have the massive signature of Pluto Transit Events.

Natal Pluto position in a birth chart is one of several signatures necessary to produce Fame, Infamy, A Place In The History Books (not a footnote size one either).  Pluto magnifies whatever it forms an aspect with -- hard aspects produce vast results that get noticed.

If you've followed my discussions on how a writer can use Astrology to structure a character or plot that readers can grasp at a glance, you know that these natal chart formations actually form family-signatures -- yes, astrological charts show family tendencies.

I used that well known (but unnoticed by most people) fact to create the Farris Family Reputation ("Every Farris Makes Headlines At Least Once In Life") for the Sime~Gen Series. 

Said another way, "The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree." 

This inheritable factor is the subject of all kinds of folk-sayings, and is just common knowledge.  So writers can use this to plot multi-generation tales.

I doubt Mike Shepherd has studied Astrology, but he has portrayed that Pluto driven natal chart feature of The Warrior-King perfectly. 

Kris Longknife starts out at the beginning of this series with people trying to kill her -- assassinate might be a more accurate term, considering she's scion of this Royal family.

Along the way, she develops a sizzling-hot relationship with her bodyguard who routinely saves her life -- she does her share of saving, too.  In fact, she saves planets, civilization, humanity, even aliens -- big things. 

The point of view stays nicely inside Kris's head, and we see all these problems through her eyes -- we see how she muddles through, assesses and takes risks, congratulates herself when she makes a good call, and aches all over when she gets people killed.

But that's the "Longknife" pattern -- people standing anywhere near her get killed, but she survives (without doing anything to make that happen.)

The few people who do stand near her and survive with her become our friends and win our affections, too.  They are well drawn characters with depth, focus, and values we can admire.

So though this series is mostly about battle strategy and tactics, about politics, revolution, (or revolution thwarted), assassinations, face-saving, and engineering miracles on the fly, all these larger-than-life things are happening TO very real, very deep and sensitive Characters. 

And all of this magnificence is accomplished despite really bad dialogue writing.

What's bad about it?

It is what Blake Snyder labels (in his SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting) "on the nose" dialogue. 

"On the nose" is the opposite of "sub-text."

"On the nose" means when you "hit the nail on the head" or say something explicitly, in spades, flat out factual recitation.  "On the nose" means no allusions, allegories, symbolism, misdirection, sarcasm, white lies, but just meaning exactly what you say.

"Subtext" on the other hand means that the utterance contains vocabulary, subject matter, and perhaps plot references (i.e. references to actions under consideration) that have absolutely nothing to do with what the Characters are actually discussing and they both know it.

Good romance is rife with "subtext" and resorts to only one on-the-nose utterance -- which is that final, angst-ridden admission of a by-then-obvious truth, "I love you."

The writing craft term "subtext" means that the "text" (what is actually being said) is "sub" or under that which seems to be the subject under discussion.

Here's a snatch of subtext dialogue from the screenplay BASIC INSTINCT:

---------quote-------------

INT. THE HOUSE

It is beautifully done in a Santa Fe motif.  She goes to a
bedroom of the living room.

                         18.


Nick sits down on a couch facing the bedroom she's walked
into.  Gus sits across from him, his back to the bedroom.
There is a coffee table between them.  She leaves the
bedroom door halfway open.

An old newspaper is on the coffee table them.  Nick reaches
for it.  The headline says:  VICE COP CLEARED IN TOURIST
SHOOTINGS.  A headline underneath says:  GRAND JURY SAYS
SHOOTINGS ACCIDENTAL.  There is a photograph of Nick.

He stares at the paper.

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    How long will this take?

Nick puts the paper down on the coffee table.  He is lost
in his thoughts.  Gus picks the paper up.

        NICK
        (looks up)
    I don't know.

Nick, facing the half open bedroom door, sees a mirror near
the wall of the bedroom.  The mirror reflects her in the
other corner of the bedroom.  She is taking her clothes
off.  He stares.  She strips down.  He sees her back. She
has a beautiful body.  Naked, she puts a dress on.  She
doesn't put any underwear on.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    Do you always keep old newspapers
    around?

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    Only when they make interesting
    reading.

And she is suddenly out of the bedroom.  She stands there,
smiles.  They look at each other a long beat.

        CATHERINE
        (finally)
    I'm ready.

They get up, head out.

        GUS
    You have the right to an attorney.

        CATHERINE
    Why would I need an attorney?

INT. THE CAR - DAY

They sit in the front; she is in the back.  The car goes
over the winding, two-lane Mt. Tamalpais road.
                         19.


The fog is heavy.  It's starting to rain.  We see the beach
far below.

        CATHERINE
    Do you have a cigarette?

        NICK
    I don't smoke.

        CATHERINE
    Yes you do.

        NICK
    I quit.

She smiles, looks at him.  A beat, and he turns away.
Another beat, and she lights a cigarette up.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    I thought you were out of
    cigarettes.

        CATHERINE
    I found some in my purse; would you
    like one?

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    I told you -- I quit.

        CATHERINE
    It won't last.

A beat, as she looks at him, and then he turns away.

        GUS
    You workin' on another book?

        CATHERINE
    Yes I am.

        GUS
    It must really be somehtin' --
    makin' stuff up all the time.

He watches her in the rearview mirror.

        CATHERINE
    It teaches you to lie.

        GUS
    How's that?
                         20.


        CATHERINE
    You make it up, but it has to be
    believable.  They call it
    suspension of disbelief.

        GUS
    I like that.  "Suspension of
    Disbelief."

He smiles at her in the mirror.

        NICK
    What's your new book about?

        CATHERINE
    A detective.  He falls for the
    wrong woman.

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    What happens to him?

She looks right into his eye.

        CATHERINE
    She kills him.

A beat, as they look at each other, and then he turns away
from her.  Gus watcher her in the rearview mirror.

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

You can get the whole screenplay (which showcases this technique throughout, as do almost every movie or TV Series episode today) at
http://sfy.ru/?script=basic_instinct

Notice how they're talking about smoking, and a book she's writing -- but that's not what they're talking ABOUT.  The subtext is all about Relationship -- about flirting -- about what they might be or become to each other. 

The REAL conversion is off-the-nose.

Now, back to the military Science Fiction novel with a bit of a love-story squeezed in between battle scenes, or frantic preparation for battle.

In this 11th book in the series about Kris Longknife, the issue that has kept Kris and her bodyguard apart during 10 novels is solved by a woman thought to be dead a long time ago, Kris's grandmother, also a ship's captain, thought lost in action.

Turns out, she led her battle squadron off in a chase across a galaxy, managed to escape her pursuers, just barely, and couldn't get home.  So she set up a colony on a world already occupied by some bird-like aliens with whom she hacked out a treaty of sorts. 

The issue Kris and her bodyguard have been dealing with is Navy Regulations against "fraternization" -- that is an anti-bullying regulation that is there to try to prevent a "superior" officer from trading good will and privileges for sexual favors from someone of lesser rank.

So those in the same chain of command who are (whatever) number of ranks apart aren't allowed to have a Relationship.

Kris's grandmother points out that because of shifts in titles and appointments, there were a few hours when Kris and her bodyguard were not in the same chain of command, and that the grandmother is empowered to conduct weddings.

They throw together a wedding ceremony using borrowed clothing, and well rehearsed wedding participants, and take off for a honeymoon at a coastal resort on the planet.

The romantic interlude is (appropriately) mostly nudity and sex, in very high contrast to the usual scenes in these 11 novels -- all very well written sex fantasy that keeps the characters in character.  But the dialogue lacks that "subtext" technique illustrated above.

Then the novel continues into another mission, more space-battle-tactics, arriving home to more frantic battle-preparations as great-big-bad-alien-killers approach, and a final battle where Kris dredges up some old Earth sea/air battle tactics.

Between long narrations of how they can stretch their resources to defend this solar system from the approaching aliens, Kris and her new husband have several scenes alone.

The issue of "fraternization regs" is raised, and Kris calls a conference of her staff leaders.  They rewrite the regs for the sake of morale, so there are a couple more sex interludes and a few times on the space station they build in orbit, they go out to a cafe for dinner. 

On page 316, near the end of the book, before the aliens arrive to try to take the planet, they go out to a restaurant on the space station (which now serves food that's mostly native to the planet).

Jack is the bodyguard/husband, Kris has 3 titles, one of which is Admiral.  Sal is Jack's A.I. computer and Nellie is Kris's A.I. computer.

---------quote---------

I'm having dinner with my husband. Right!

"Do you know what's special about today?" Jack said, reaching across the table for her hands.

"Besides the cavalry arriving to either rescue us or go down in our defeat?"

"Forget the job," Jack growled.  "Today is our second anniversary.  It's been two months since we let Granny Rita talk us into taking the plunge.  Do you regret it?"

"Never," Kris said, squeezing Jack's hand.  "Two months.  I totally forgot about it.  I can hardly keep track of the time.  How'd you do it?"

"I had Sal do it for me."

"Nelly, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know it mattered to you.  I know it's a very romantic thing for you humans.  I just didn't know if it would include you, Kris."

"Yes, I'm human, and yes, I'm romantic, at least for Jack, and Jack, why are you doing all the girl things and me doing all the stupid boy stuff?" 

"You're the admiral," he said with a shrug.

Kris let out a sigh.  "I don't like that, Jack."

"But you have to.  That's what Longknives do.  They do what they have to dol."

"Well, I want to do more.  Stuff I want to do as well as what I have to do." 

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

Dinner arrives, and they talk about the food and then ...

------quote---------
"You amaze me, Jack.  You remember our anniversary and do it enough ahead of time to talk my granny ut of the fruits of her garden."

"Oh, I didn't talk her out of anything, it was pure horse-trading.  My Marines will deliver a truckload of fish offal to her and all her neighbors' gardens.  Nobody gets anything free from your granny."

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

Note how dialogue is substituted for narrative, and information is conveyed in TELL rather than SHOW.

Yes, it's fun banter, and yes I do love the styling -- and yes, after all these years of reading these novels, it's fabulous to "hear" them speak to each other so frankly -- but the dialogue is stilted, stiff, servicable, filling an interlude between lovingly detailed, subtly crafted battle scenes with some "words" that indicate they're still in love after all they've been through. 

Off-the-nose dialogue is show-not-tell -- it illustrates rather than states, allowing the reader to deduce what it means, and therefore the reader comes to participate in the story.

OK, so what CAN a writer do to finesse around these awkward moments, creating engrossing dialogue, quotable quotes, and

Why is there no way I can just rewrite that dialogue sequence, changing some words, restyling it, and bring it up to snuff for a modern Romance reader?

Here's why: the problem does not lie within this dialogue itself.  The writer is in a corner, there's a word-length limit, there has to be room for that final battle scene preceded by Kris sweating out what kind of battle plan might give her out-numbered force a chance.

The problem with this dialogue scene lies way back on page 66 to 86.

The problem here lies in the honeymoon scenes.

For this scene to be "off the nose" that honeymoon scene had to have additional "plants" inserted, images, symbols, and other devices that this scene could be fabricated from.

That inserted material had to be alluded to in other snatched moments -- perhaps gifting Kris with a certain flower on her access screen when she gets up in the morning, playing games with the calendar, etc. 

Since this is military science fiction, and this volume consists of more "logistics" problems than it does battle-tactics problems, the sexual innuendo and metaphore material has to be fabricated from shared combat experience (scenes missing here -- they don't work-out together, they don't fight each other, (they do shower together), they don't have a hand-to-hand-combat scene where the two of them are fighting an enemy.

There was opportunity for such together-scenes as their survey of the planet found other races of the natives who were not-so-friendly.  They could have found themselves in hand-to-hand-combat against unfriendly natives that they contrive to befriend.

This volume does have the more combative natives accepting positions in the space Navy to defend their planet, and Kris does consider promoting one of them to her personal staff.  So that story is there, in the background -- and was just passed over as a tell not show. 

The honeymoon scene could have been sliced in half to make room for a side-by-side or back-to-back combat scene which would provide the text to cover the sub-text in this 2-months-anniversary scene. 

There is the sub-genre of Action Romance, and this series of novels fits the description perfectly. 

The Longknife series is about combat, and Kris achieves results in combat that are ostensibly pure luck. 

There is a reason we have the term Sexual Politics and Battle of the Sexes.

This volume of the Kris Longknife series is about sexual politics.

But that issue is told not shown.

Kris's battle-commander results are LUCK.  Some characters resent her for that, others admire her, and the sensible ones stay as far away from her physical person as they can -- but they know which is the winning side in any conflict before it happens.

Watch this video of a veteran attributing combat results to luck:

VIDEO - IT'S ALL LUCK
http://youtu.be/iJsB2Xifq8c


Read Kris Longknife: DEFENDER, and watch for ways to restructure the early parts of the novel so that this crucial Romance Dinner Scene comes out with all the most powerful part of the content in subtext. 

Now find where you can use that same technique to restructure your work so that the dialogue stays "off-the-nose." 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Constructing The Opening Of Action Romance

Story openings are difficult to construct and even harder to troubleshoot once constructed.

Information must be coded, compact, subtle, "off the nose" and at the same time explain to a totally disinterested reader why they should read (or viewer why they should view) this story.

I've discussed openings and how to construct them in the context of many other posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com -- posts on theme, character, plot, and the other working parts of story.

Here's some posts on structure which reference the skills of constructing an opening.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

And here's one on first chapters by Linnea Sinclair

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/first-chapter-foibles.html

And my usage of the words "story" and "plot" just to be clear about that.  Theme is what glues them together.

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


If you've been trying to apply these techniques, I now have a really great example to illustrate them. 

Here is the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette - a writer I met via twitter and #scifichat #scriptchat and others.

Immortal

The structural issues make this a very borderline book, and it may not make it into my professional review column for that reason alone.  However, there is a compelling resonance here that makes this a "can't put it down" read.

The structural issues that are a put-off for me might well be the real source of interest to others.  Structure is not absolute.  There are elements of taste involved.

So I have to say that the structure chosen to tell this story seems unnecessarily involuted to me.  It's too complex for the material.

What is this structure?

The first-person narrative does hold to the POV of first person (an Immortal born so long ago language was only grunts).  So I have no complaints there.

The structure is clever. 

Each chapter is introduced by a few paragraphs set in italics that are happening while the main character is a prisoner (hung hero) in a laboratory setting where they are obviously investigating his immortality and immune system.

If the novel were told starting with his capture and going through his escape attempts until he succeeded, it would be a drag, long, boring hung-hero dealing with distractions rather than advancing the plot.

The plot is not about him escaping prison. 

The actual narrative tells the story of this Immortal discovering that someone is after him.

This "someone" is rich and powerful and hires "demons" as hit men tasked with taking him alive.

Other people, though, die all around him. 

So the straight-through plot is this Immortal being chased by humans, hit-men, demons, (actually some online gamers being used as dupes) and there are vampires, and a female who may be as old as he is (or older) he isn't sure.  There's another woman involved, too, so you have a sort of "triangle" situation which isn't made clear even at the end of this volume.  But the ending leaves us eager to read the next installment in this guy's Relationship problem. 

He's been playing tag with this Immortal woman for millennia.  (I told you this is good stuff.) And in the end of this novel, he learns some things about her, and his Relationship to the woman he meets in this novel changes substantially -- so the plot is advanced and there is a solid "ending" leading to a sequel. 

At JUST THE RIGHT POINT (I told you the structure is well done for what it is) we get to the event where he gets captured at just the point where he hatches a successful escape attempt.

All the elements (characters and tools) to create this escape have been properly introduced in prior scenes.  The possibility that he can die permanently has been made real. 

So what's "wrong" here?  This plot rumbles along like a well oiled machine.  Why is it a chore to read? This is a good writer with a solid track record.  What happened here?

There are 2 very abstract technical problems with this absolutely fascinating novel (don't worry, there's a sequel in the works that'll be better).

#1) The point in time chosen for Chapter One is wrong.

#2) The innate "character" of this character may be either badly presented or actually formulated wrong. 

OK, let's start with #1 because that's easy to fix once you understand why it doesn't work.

------SPOILER ALERT -----

As often stated in this blog, I don't believe a good story can be "spoiled" by knowing what's going to happen in it.  If it can, it's not a good book.  If you understand that, read on fearlessly.  You'll still love reading this book.  In fact you may love it more after reading this discussion.  

The first characters introduced after the main character wakes up out of a drunken stupor end up dead right away. 

It is established that this dissipated and dis-likeable main character telling the story actually holds this pair of unlikeable college men in some affection -- mostly because they enjoy getting drunk and watching ballgames on TV with him.

This is a portrayal of college students that does not "work" for me.

What rule is violated by this portrayal? 

Many 1940's SF novels elevate and laud drunkenness as a means to accessing higher consciousness or even one's innate intellectual skills.  I used to like those novels.  I know too much now to find such an attitude laudable. 

Opening a story with a guy (apparently homeless bum) crashing in a college student's apartment and supplying beer and liquor to keep them drunk just doesn't work for me.  I feel no sense of identification with this main character and couldn't care less what happens to him.

The information fed into the story-line by this opening situation is that this guy is not homeless, not poor, is capable of affection for these young men, and is -- ta-da! Immortal. 

He ended up in the apartment having been brought there to a party by a friend (not-human not-magical iifrit) who also plays dissipated drunk convincingly. That friend later returns to move the plot forward, solidly and convincingly.

So I don't like this immortal character because he gets humans (who can be harmed by drunkeness) drunk while he drinks to a stupor but can't be harmed by it.  He stays drunk for centuries just for the fun of it. 

We see a portrait of an individual blessed with long life, not invulnerable but Immortal (so far). 

I dealt with this problem of being immortal among mortals in my Dushau Trilogy, but my immortals there were aliens (I do vampires in other universes such as Those Of My Blood.)

Dushau (Dushau Trilogy)

My Dushau Immortals studiously avoid close personal relationships with mortals because they have perfect memories and too many bereavements can lead to insanity.

Doucette saw this problem as well, but handles it differently and with some intriguing twists.

In the course of the opening set-up chapters of this novel, we see this Immortal experience affection and friendship for a number of humans.  His heart opens and he bonds easily with all and sundry (even vampires). 

This makes him, to me, an irresistible character.  Could not put this book down.

But at the same time, there's the "gritty realism" that this character has murdered -- over thousands of years, for many reasons, causing death has become no great big deal.  And we see him murder mercilessly.  Maybe with some justice, but with a callous attitude. 

Now here we come to the Information Feed issue.

Go back to SAVE THE CAT! (the 3 books by Blake Snyder on screenwriting).

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

What does the title say?

To engage your viewer INTO bonding with the main character whose story you are about to tell, you MUST first reveal something about him that will arouse viewer sympathy, empathy, identification or a yearning to become "like that."

The first thing we learn about the dingiest, dirty-harry character you want to present has to be LAUDABLE, universally laudable.

So Blake Snyder says -- show your hero SAVING THE CAT.  Taking a risk for the helpless, or otherwise revealing an admirable character trait BEFORE you reveal the gritty traits that make the 6 problems the character has to solve.

Nothing in the introduction to Doucette's Immortal is in any way "saving the cat" -- drunkenness itself which is not a real PROBLEM for the Immortal but which harms those humans he associates with is not laudable.  Bumming around among college parties with an Iffrit with dissipated habits is not laudable.  That this is done by choice because he has nothing else to do is cause for reader disinterest.

So, while there are many traits about this Immortal character that are absolute grabbers, what we learn first are put-offs.

The put-offs will eventually become the problems that establishing Relationships will solve.

But as depicted in the opening, this Immortal has no conflict (internal or external) in forming friendships. 

The first real plot event is the news that the college students who hosted him have been murdered by a demon -- and the assumption that the demon had been aiming at the Immortal while the college students just got in the way.

The structural problem with this plot event is simply that the Immortal was not in the apartment when the demon killed the students.  The event happened off stage.

The Immortal actually feels a little sad and maybe miffed that the humans he felt affection for (briefly, in passing, without depth) had been murdered because of his presence in the apartment.

If not for that feeling, he'd have just blown town.  But the murder of the humans made it more personal. He wants to fight back. 

So from there on, the story gets interesting.  The plot advances, and you begin to see where things are going with the bits at the beginning of chapters showing he's going to be captured.

The next structural innovation that is unnecessarily complicated is a shift in the narrative voice at the point where the two narratives (the chapter headings during captivity and the chapters leading up to being captured) come together.  The standard first-person past narrative suddenly becomes first person present.

This is unnecessarily jarring, a real put-off.

In a different sort of story, it wouldn't be a put-off.

In fact, the entire structure could be the best artistic choice for some stories.  Stories that involve say, time-travel, could work this way.  Or stories about known historical events -- a King Arthur legend, The French Revolution, etc. 

But in this particular narrative, the device seems like an erroneous choice because the material itself is strong enough to carry the reader straight through the plot.

So what we seem to have is a story-concept, a very intriguing character, that needed introducing to a readership.

There is a huge over-burden of background to work in.  This character is 10's of thousands of years old and his development as a human being has direct relevance to how he relates to the modern century.  He admits that at first his people were barely self-aware.  He still has long-distance running skills from running down game for days at a time.  He has trouble relating what happened to him in his life to the various calendars that have come and gone. 

There's a lot of background to work in.  A lot of information to feed.

The Immortal's story is being picked up when two women come into his life and that changes things significantly.  But that means the story has to portray how things were for him "before" so that how things become "now" and will be "after" these relationships start to affect him. 

How can you plot that when it's all information feed.

How can you avoid expository lumps? 

The story and the plot are totally stationary in this Immortal's life all through this novel. 

He's a "hung hero" on two levels -- being captured and imprisoned to be studied, and being chased down to be captured but he doesn't know by whom or why until the last third of the novel.

So the author cleverly structured the two stories against each other to give the illusion of movement.

Without the headings at the beginnings of chapters, we wouldn't anticipate him being imprisoned or why or how hard it would be to escape.  It's foreshadowing by expository lump, cleverly translated into show-don't-tell (yes the chapter headings read very well, no mistakes there).

Without the story of his being chased down and captured, the story of escaping from prison wouldn't carry the novel.

So given that you have this terrific character with a huge exposition needed to introduce him, and NOTHING HAPPENING in his life to make a story, what do you do?

The solution to clever-up the structure is actually a work of genius. 

But for me it just doesn't "work" because the story there is to tell about this Immortal does not require artsy-craftsy tricks of structure.

This Immortal's story actually begins when he meets the woman who will change his life, his self-concept, cause him to become involved in the modern world, in humanity and humanity's future by using all his past experience in the service of a greater good.

For any man, that change is always caused by a MATE - a SOUL-MATE (for most it's female, but not always). 

The element is LOVE.  The journey is from today's misery to "happily ever after." 

When that story starts to move, the novel begins.  All the rest is throat-clearing. 

The story starts where the two elements that will conflict first come together. 

So for this Immortal, that point is where he meets this human woman who will become significant forevermore.

But the story of his being captured and escaping is an incident, an excuse for action scenes, not the story, not the path to resolving the conflict.

Taking Blake Snyder's advice, the story starts where SHE sees HIM "save the cat" -- i.e. do something that endears him to her, that makes her willing to RISK something to save him.

Do you see where this is headed? 

We have a classic PASSIVE HERO - he fights, he takes action, but his decisions do not actually make a real difference.  This very clever, very skilled author has hidden this salient fact under some virtuoso writing, but the fact itself spoils everything in this novel.

What do you do to solve a PASSIVE HERO problem?  What do you do to avoid expository lumps?  What do you do to find a new opening for the novel that does not focus on a hung-hero who can't do anything about his problems and about whom the only important facts are odious to the very readers who would most enjoy the novel? 

The solution is excrutiatingly simple. Think hard. It is a tried and true classic any seasoned editor would toss at a writer who sent in a chapter and outline like this.  Why is this writer fumbling to tell this story when he obviously knows how to write novels?

See my 7 part series here on editing -- here's the 7th which has a list of links to the previous parts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Now, think-think-think. 

If you've read the novel now, you may see the obvious solution. 

This whole thing is not the Immortal's story.

The expository lumps cleverly avoided by having the first person narrative allude to events in past millennia (a literary device that works) are filled with information we don't need to be TOLD -- on the nose. 

And though these allusions are cleverly phrased to appear incidental, they are "on the nose" data-dumps.  The data is mostly irrelevant to the Immortal's story.

How do you avoid that?  What do you change? 

I loved reading this Immortal's "voice" -- but that didn't change the fact that the expository lumps disguised as clever narrative that carried characterization just don't "work."

Why don't they "work?"  Because the information in each memory is not something I wanted to know before I read it.  No suspense.  No revelation.  I didn't have to work for it.  I wasn't asking the question "what happened to this guy in Egypt?"  I didn't NEED TO KNOW in order to solve the mystery of who's after him. 

Because of that I didn't care who was after him or why.  He felt it was ho-hum, being chased another time -- yawn.  So it bored me.

At the opening, in the college student's apartment, this Immortal wakes up from a drunken stupor. 

If ever you are tempted to start a story (and yes, I've done it!) with the main character "waking up" in some improbable circumstance or confused -- STOP WRITING and go back to the drawing board.  Something is wrong conceptually with the structure or the character. 

The story opens where the two elements that will conflict to generate the conflict which will be resolved in the last chapter first come together.

What happens in the last chapter of this novel?

The woman the Immortal meets pretty well into this novel finally gets what she wants, positions herself where she wants to be. 

The Immortal succeeds in achieving NOT ONE THING that he SET OUT TO ACHIEVE in the opening.  He wasn't either setting out or achieving.  He was stationary in his life when SOMETHING HAPPENS TO HIM. 

The two types of plot that go with this kind of material are:

1) Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out

2) A likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal.

In the opening to this novel, the Immortal does not DO ANYTHING, decide anything, take any action, learn anything, or even pray for anything that CAUSES anything else to happen.

Thus the Immortal (Johnny) does not GET his own fanny caught.  That is he does not take an action that initiates a because-line. 
In this novel the Immortal is not introduced by any trait that is even remotely likeable by any substantial audience-demographic.  He is by any measure no hero and most importantly, he has no goal. 

All of these fatal flaws are totally hidden by the superb writing craftsmanship. 

And hereby hangs a cautionary tale.

When you are writing a story that has hold of you by the guts, a story you just have to get others to read, a compelling story -- and you find that you have to HIDE THE FLAWS, then STOP RIGHT THERE and go back to the drawing board.

Readers may not know how to tell you what's wrong, but they will sense something wrong and many of the very readers who should read the book just won't finish it.

Don't use your skills to hide flaws.  Use them to eliminate the flaws.

The flaw in the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette is the very most common flaw I see in manuscripts (and even published novels in Mass Market), and I see the very readers who would enjoy the novel most putting it aside.

It's a simple flaw and it's easy to fix.  You know it's there when you face pages of utterly essential expository lumps. 

YOU ARE TELLING THE STORY FROM THE WRONG POINT OF VIEW.

Now re-imagine this novel, IMMORTAL, from the woman's point of view.

She is the online gamer.  She has an eclectic education, a vast imagination, an embracing nature.  Her story starts when she gets the first inkling that such a thing as "an Immortal male" exists.

Her goal, which she pursues as relentlessly as the Immortal once ran down game animals, is to meet a living Immortal man. 

When she meets him, her GOAL shifts to getting him into bed. 

Her goal shifts when her heart opens to embrace this Immortal as a person, not just an icon. 

Her goal shifts again when she realizes she wants this guy, she wants to be with him. 

And that final goal, at the end of this novel, seems to have been achieved.

She is the one whose life changes, by her own actions, by her own determination, by her own will, by her own heroism.  And that change is a WORTHWHILE GOAL that can be achieved only over SEEMINGLY OVERWHELMING ODDS. 

She is the likeable hero who struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal - one she only sees dimly when she takes that first, fateful, step. 

This novel is her story.

Here is a marvelous post by Linnea Sinclair on Point of View.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/heading-into-danger-choosing-point-of.html
Now from within her point of view, FINDING OUT, or discovering, or unfolding, or digging up the information about how The Immortal interacted with the ancient past, what his opinion of it is, and any relevant detail of his past experiences, becomes the main story-imperative.

As we sink into her point of view, we adopt her urgent need to know, and feel sparks of triumph every time we worm some new tidbit out of the Immortal.

All the expository lumps disappear and we learn his story through her eyes.  What we don't know becomes spice, incense, and erotic triggers. 

Saving him from the laboratory (which she does very cleverly) becomes the plot which culminates in conflict resolved and if not an HEA at least an "off into the sunset" ending leading to a sequel where we chase the HEA which is now suddenly possible - but maybe not going to happen.

So this opening novel, the introduction to the Immortal as a character, is not his story because his life is static at that point. 

Yet through her eyes, we can enter into his life, understand what makes him tick better than he does himself, and see what he needs to do to learn what he must learn in order to change and grow, i.e. to be alive in a real sense, not just immortal.

Sometimes a character's story can be more compelling, more dramatic, easier to write and easier to read when that character's story is seen from outside.  Remember Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. 

Always turn your material around and around, looking at it through the eyes of various characters before writing. 

Notice here the power of THE OUTLINE.  Given an outline of the plot, it would be immediately clear that the ending does not match the beginning and the middle doesn't hit the right "mid-point" tension note.

Once you see that the ending happens where one character achieves a goal, and the other character acquires a goal, you will know where the story starts.

Maybe you'll read this book and totally disagree because the character revealed in the smart-ass inner dialogue is just too interesting to lose by switching points of view.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com  

ps: in a few weeks we'll walk through the step-by-step process of stitching all these disparate techniques together and invent a world bursting with story-potential. That'll be at least a 7-part series of posts.

Failure of Imagination Part III: Education

We're going to look at an article that surfaced in July 2010 in Newsweek Magazine, of all places, that unintentionally reveals a lot about the fiction marketplace and how that fiction market is morphing as we begin this new decade.

Who would think Newsweek would give writing lessons?

The overall general topic I've been tackling in these posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is how to improve the general reader/viewer's opinion of the Romance Genre - particularly SFR and PNR.

Part I of this sequence on Failure of Imagination is not labeled Part I because I had no idea the topic would spread so far:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html
Part I is about professional romance writers unable to imagine the HEA is actually a real part of everyday mundane life.

Part II is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/failure-of-imagination-part-ii-society.html
Part II looks at our failure as a society to imagine solutions to some problems -- and therefore we must suspect we fail to imagine and actualize solutions to other problems. It's not a failure to solve A problem - it's a failure at problem-solving-methodology. I wrote this before the Newsweek article came out.

Part III is this post where we will look at why Americans are wearing such blinders on the Imagination.

We put blinders (those leather cups around the outside of the eyes) on race horses to help them concentrate on running where the jockey points them and not spook at every movement close by, especially when being put into the starting gate stall. They also protect the horse's eyes from flying mud kicked up by a horse next to them.

It's a kindness to the horse, and a way of getting the horse's best out of him/her.

But should humans be treated that way?

When some of our data-input channels (mental and emotional bandwidth?) are blocked by "blinders" do we perform "better?"

Well, if you prevent certain sorts of human behavior before the behavior is even conceptualized, the human might become more tractable, more easily directed into certain group coordinated activities like running in a herd.

How can you put blinders on a MIND???

I don't mean how can you get up the nerve, the gumption, the chutzpah to do that -- but rather how can a mind be "blinded?"

Well, it's psychological of course.

And isn't psychology what fiction is about -- while Romance genre specializes in microscopic examination of the psychological?

You know me and cliches. Here's another old one I haven't harped on before. "As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows The Tree."

People can be bent psychologically if you can get at them early enough in life. The rule of thumb is give me a child until he's 7 years old, and you can do anything you want with him after that. (Is that from the Jesuits?)

We know this from child-abuse studies. A person abused in childhood turns out to be an adult with "issues" -- if overcome, those issues can be a strength, but if not overcome then they can cut swaths out of the individual's total potential.

People are bendable. Thus humans can "adjust" culturally, physically, psychologically, to almost any environment and circumstance.

Humans inhabit this world from the Arctic to the Tropics, on tundra and in deep forest. Humans live packed into cities, and spread onto prairie. Humans live under dictators and alone in single families or tribes. Humans can do anything if they start young enough.

This is what gives us the scope to postulate human-alien Romances, galactic civilizations, lost human colonies on worlds peopled primarily by Aliens (Examples: C. J. Cherryh's fabulous FOREIGNER series and my own Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends. Find free chapters of my novels at http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com )

This bendable trait of human beings gives fiction writers much fodder for character development, story arc, plot and worldbuilding.

There's the story of overcoming childhood trauma -- the story of frigidity being overcome by Love -- the story of a weakness becoming a strength as someone takes their trauma and say, founds an organization to fight that issue in the general public.

Say a kid witnesses their elder sibling being killed by a drunk driver and grows up to found a National Chain of Bar & Grill joints which fight alcoholism and drunk driving, hiring real Psychologists to be bartenders?

There's no such thing as a life-event that is inherently ALL BAD. But there is trauma that changes people in ways they would rather not be changed.

As I've detailed in my series of posts here on Tarot and Astrology, all these life-events are just made of ENERGY - and it's how we bring that energy into manifestation and make choices which put the energy to use that determines whether the energy does more damage than good.

That's the essence of the "Beat Sheet" -- a "beat" is a BANG made by ENERGY - kinetic energy turned into sound. Or in the case of a story: emotional energy turned into action. It all has rhythm. The energy builds, the energy is released in a BEAT.

The rhythms of the world these fiction-beats are derived from are well depicted in Tarot and Astrology (and dozens of other fields of psychology) in a way that writers can use them to create characters, life stories, and plots.

Find the series of posts on Tarot and Astrology listed in these posts:

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html (this one lists a group of very esoteric essays I did for my professional Review column on Snyder's Beat Sheet - and Snyder agreed).

So people (humans and most of the aliens we write about) can be "bent" as children, and very often, without warning and at great inconvenience to the "benders" they can, as adults, "snap back."

And those snaps can be used by writers as beats for fiction -- beats that mirror the rhythmic drumbeats of real life.

So what has all this to do with Newsweek Magazine?

Well, Newsweek featured a story which came out of scientific research.

The importance of this article is largely in the fact that it is a subject taken up by Newsweek. People will read this who would not read the peer reviewed articles in a Journal.

Read this article on Creativity Quotient if you missed it in your dentist's office:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

----Quote From Newsweek--------
Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
----End Quote From Newsweek------

Go read that article.

Creativity Quotients had been steadily rising, just like IQ, until 1990 when among American children, the CQ scores suddenly bent down, and kept dropping.

For this CQ test, they target 8 year olds, 3rd graders.

Kids who were 8 in 1990 were born in 1982.

See my blog entry on the character of generations as described by the position of Pluto in their Natal Chart, and what that means for writers looking to target an audience.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html
followed by
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

I just got an advertising email for a seminar on screenwriting about how to pitch your screenplay to producers. The pitch for the pitch-course asks, "Do you know how to answer the most common first question producers will ask in a pitch session?" If you can't answer it, you won't even be considered.

Q: What demographic does your screenplay target?

See my series on WHAT EXACTLY IS EDITING -- 7 posts in a row, Tuesdays starting August 3, 2010.

This Producer-pitch question is the editor's and agent's primary question.

Several tweets from Agents on twitter have pinpointed the first sentence of the query letter as crucial, and the information in that sentence has to be WHAT this novel is, meaning the demographic it's aimed at.

That doesn't mean you should write "This Novel is aimed at girls 8-14 years old" -- but it does mean that whatever you say has to IMPLY STRONGLY that you have a direct bead on a specific demographic and what that demographic is.

In fact, the first sentence of your pitch or query letter is an opportunity to show-don't-tell that you have the ability to "show don't tell" as well as that you know the demographic, can hit the demographic, and can specify that demographic.

Marketing is all about demographics, and today everything is so advertising supported that demographics is the be all and end all of saleability.

So in 1982 where was Pluto?

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?)

Those born in 1995 were 8 years old in 2003.

The Newsweek article points at video gaming and the TV as babysitter (a 1970's 80's phenomenon) as possible culprits in blunting American creativity.

But then it looks at the various attempts to "reform" our education system, and the current "teaching to the National Tests" format.

People born in 1984 are raising kids now. In fact many may have 6 year olds now. That critical first 7 years of bending the twig is in its second generation.

The Newsweek article makes some assumptions that writers working in Contemporary settings need to take into account.

The most glaring to me is the assumption that kids are the product of the school system, and how school is taught determines how the kids turn out.

Well, it's a big part, to be sure.

And perhaps in today's world, the current 20-somethings raising kids with both parents working 40 hour weeks (they should be so lucky these days), perhaps the school and daycare center is in fact the biggest influence on a child's direction of growth.

How many parents teach their kids to stand up to the teachers and show the teachers where the teachers are just plain wrong to teach "what to think" rather than "how to think" -- and just how far would the poor kid get with that? In fact, would it do the teachers any good? Teachers must do exactly what the Principle and Board and so on tell them to, not what they believe is right. Kids don't understand "the system."

How much face-time do you have with your 8 year old (and younger).

Will that sparsity of face-time with their parents make them turn out to have different "issues" than you do when they grow up?

Cruising the web, I saw an article about education advancements. Kids in K-8 grades are using handheld devices to interface with classroom servers. Teaching is high tech because the jobs these kids will eventually need to do will be even higher tech.

Even car mechanics work with "chips" now -- and if they don't do it right, your car stalls or accelerates out of control.

With all of these factors shifting in less than the span of a mere 20 years or so during which a person can go from being a child to being a parent, which way should we bend our children to give them the best chance in the world we can't even imagine?

Because our imagination fails, we don't know how to bend and blinder our children for their success - or even survival.

With the torrential information explosion, overload, blasting at us all from every direction, do our kids need to have "blinders" installed to protect them from the flying mud kicked up by the kid next door inventing something in their garage that will change the world?

Do we need more information, or less, or someone "up there" in authority controlling our information?

Do we need totally free access to anything anyone wants to put up on the Web (including things we'd rather our pre-adolescents not be exposed to?)

Do we need blinders so we don't see those things that would spook us and distract us from our job?

Or would such blinders "bend" our imaginations so that we can't even imagine that we might imagine a solution to a problem that nobody has ever imagined existed?

What if we imagine a solution to a problem that nobody has ever solved before?

Isn't that the beginning of a Ph.D. thesis?

Those questions each can be morphed into a Theme and used to generate incredible fiction very relevant to today's demographics.

But the writer needs to look at that Newsweek article from another perspective, the demographics of the writer's intended audience.

Pitch a "concept" at a producer who was 8 years old somewhere between 1990 and 2000, and if that "concept" is in the youngster's imagination-blindspot he/she won't be able to see it as a commercially viable concept.

You might have the best idea ever for a High Concept novel-film-TV show, a potential multi-media empire seething through the worldbuilding you've done. If the producer, agent, editor can't "see" it because their imagination has failed - then they won't buy it from you.

And that producer would be correct to pass over your property.

Why?

Because your property would fall into the imagination blindspot of the audience demographic that producer is aiming for. It would mean nothing to that audience, certainly not what it means to you.

So a writer must know what blinders her audience is wearing, blinders the audience is not aware exist. The writer must know the limits of the audience's imagination.

What happened when Star Trek first went on the air - say 1967?

It set off an explosion of imagination among young college students - 20 year olds born in the baby-boomer years.

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

Pluto in Leo folks have a magnified emphasis on being leaders, commanders, examples that others follow. Pluto is a magnifier and Leo represents "The King" - the chief. Gene Roddenberry had Sun in Leo.

And Leo rules the natural 5th House, so it's associated with entertainment, and children and siblings, with personal CREATIVITY in general.

Star Trek dropped into the minds of 20-somethings who already had an excess of creativity. That generation, fans and non-fans, produced the Internet, the Web, home computers, satellite, GPS navigation, genetic engineering, even matter-transmission and the discovery of planets around other stars, all in the last 40 years or so.

That didn't happen worldwide. It happened in the USA. But then it started, and is now continuing to happen in other countries where Star Trek has reached. It's slacking off in the USA, and many patents corporations have filed are actually in the names of folks born and raised, even educated elsewhere.

Star Trek may not be the "cause" -- but its popularity, its appeal, is to the imagination. It energizes imagination that already exists. It can't be popular where that imagination fails.

But now the USA is not producing such imaginative people though other countries are.

So the position of Pluto in natal charts and other factors that exist worldwide doesn't account for the change the Newsweek article notes in creativity in the USA as opposed to creativity in other countries.

So where are these blinders on the imagination of USA youth being implanted? In school, by daycare, in sports and other group activities, or in the home, in TV, Internet, and gaming hours?

And what will happen when this generation, or two generations, snap back, rip off the blinders and look at the world again?

Did we implant these blinders on our children to protect them from the excess amount of change the information age has created?

Again, each of these (unimaginable) questions could lead to blockbuster novel sales, films, TV series. Who knows? Can you imagine that?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Worldbuilding For Science Fiction Romance

As I've pointed out in many posts on this blog, the sift-sort screen a writer uses to pull a second draft out of a first draft is built on the warp and woof of composition.

Composition is the essential ingredient that transforms Reality into Art.

Composition is created differently in different art forms, but the principles are always the same. If you know one art form, you can at least appreciate if not practice the others. And you have a leg up on learning the others.

"Business" and "Marketing" are two other art forms that today's writers really need an appreciation for.

Healing or Medicine are art forms where the medium is actually "science," or as in oil painting, the pigment is science and the canvass is the unique human being.

In say, interior decorating (something a writer must do with every interior scene) you choose a key color and come off that key color with compliments, contrasts, and tones to create a palette. Colors are associated with emotions and with various mystical functions. So what's happening in the scene, the subtext and plot movement dictate the choice of color of carpet and drapes.

The room's decor all stands or falls on the exacting relationships between the key color and everything in the room. You can (as a writer) choose color combinations to convey the mood of the scene set there. For example, if a main character is conducting a conversation in his living room, you can dress the main character to match or clash with his room's decor to convey a subtle mood to keep the visitor off balance.

In say, figure skating or ballet, choreography is composed to fill the display arena or stage, and costumes are colored to underscore the mood of the music.

In photography, an angle is chosen to follow the "perspective lines" you've seen oil painters trace in charcoal on a bare canvass -- to draw the viewer's eye precisely to a given focus spot. The good photographer will hang upside down from a tree limb to get that view.

In music, "scales" are created by the relative pitches of a set of notes, while other notes are excluded. From those notes on the scale, the composer creates a mood and plays the emotional tension up and down to thrill the audience.

Human emotion is rooted in the perception of the relationships of things to other things - sensory input to other sensory input. Pattern recognition is our survival mechanism.

The term "black velvet" for example calls forth color perception and tactile perception - add "voice" for sound, "A voice like black velvet" -- in truth such a phrase makes absolutely no sense. In Science Fiction Romance, it conveys a world of meaning, very precisely.

How you as a writer arrange things in relationship to other things in your fiction conveys your theme -- and the most powerful themes are the ones that are never stated in words.

The theme of a story is the key color, the key note of the scale, the defining edges of the skating arena or stage, the universe of discourse and all its unconscious assumptions.

The theme of a story is not just repeated. A motif is repeated, but the motif is chosen from the theme -- it is not the theme.

The theme is echoed or exemplified in every single element, every relationship of one element to another -- in the composition of the worldbuilding.

If something doesn't fit the theme of the story, fit into the arena or stage, inside the edges of the photograph, or onto the scale, the writer must delete that thing or change the "angle" (for example, choose a different main character or combine two characters, or separate one character into two.)

Sometimes, the element that's been deleted must be replaced by something to perform a plot function. The replacement must be chosen from the theme to complete the composition.

The deleted element may (in fact usually does) belong to some other story the writer has incubating in the subconscious. Usually what must be deleted is just plain GOOD, sometimes even GREAT -- very often the scene or character that has to be deleted is the one which first popped to mind bringing along with it the story that is now being told.

Just because it came to mind pulling this story with it - does not mean it belongs to this story.

A story has a composition that the reader will be looking for.

An element the writer feels is important might actually betray the reader's trust that this universe has a composition. That betrayal of trust will throw the reader out of the story, leave them bewildered and disappointed.

Writers Need Editors

Testing the "composition" and searching for any intrusive element (character, plot twist, ending point, beginning scene, mid-point, setting, McGuffin, backstory, background exposition) is a job for another pair of eyes besides the writer's eyes.

That's why writers need beta-readers, preferably not friends but acquaintances the writer knows have an appetite for the kind of story this is supposed to be.

Beta readers don't necessarily need a conscious mastery of composition.

That's really the writer's and editor's job. The beta reader however will squirm or point at something that doesn't work. "I didn't like this character" or "I just didn't understand this." "It would be better set in Italy." "This is boring." "The ending isn't satisfying."

Beta readers untrained in composition and the craft of writing will squirm and use non-quantitative (and very unhelpful) language. They will use subjective measures of how "good" a story is, not the objective measures I've been focused on in these posts. They don't know what they like, they just know the feeling of liking. (which is fine if they'll pay you!)

The writer's business is to know that what the beta-reader is pointing at may not actually be the source of the reader's problem.

What's being pointed at is not necessarily the source of the problem in the manuscript.

If a writer is professional enough to know this about beta-readers, a bad opinion from a beta reader won't "hurt" or dismay or evoke any particular emotional reaction. It will merely trigger an alert re-evaluation of the composition, searching for the source of the reaction (without asking the beta reader any further questions). Composition is always the source of the reader's reactions -- almost nothing else, really, but composition speaks directly to the reader's innermost nerve.

The reader may say the ending was unsatisfying while the writer knows that what made the ending unsatisfying was a missing scene that should have formed the middle of the story. But during writing, the writer didn't know what to put there in that scene, so didn't write it (or maybe cut it because it seemed to corny).

How do you compose that missing scene? Look at the composition as a whole, and check everything against the theme, and the bit that punches up the ending will be apparent.

This is much easier to achieve when you are not mixing genres.

But my favorite stories are all mixed-genre!

What Makes Science Fiction Romance into both Science Fiction and Romance without ruining either genre's punch?

Composition. That's it in a word, and Linnea Sinclair has noted that it's a hard struggle to get that balance right. This editor says that, that reader says something else, this audience wants more this, that audience wants more that.

Linnea and this phalanx of brave new writers are creating A NEW COMPOSITION.

Once created, other artists will be able to use that composition to hit the mark every single time.

At the moment, both readers, writers and editors are groping. Readers have to have their tastes expanded and the expectations trained. Writers have to learn a whole new set of no-no's. Editors have to understand the risks of exploring new territory also come with rewards.

So let's look more closely at the problem of composition with two genres, equivalent to jumping double-dutch, and see if we can find some rules to test.

Science Fiction has never been adequately defined, but for our purposes think of it as fiction about the scientific way of investigating the world, "going where no man has gone before." Think of Roger Bacon's "scientific method." Think of empiricism. Think about hypothesis, theory and fact. Think about well proven facts suddenly being demonstrated to be untrue.

ITEM: Evidence is mounting about Dark Matter and the Big Bang theory. The universe is actually not behaving as if there had been a Big Bang, at least as far as we can see now. NEW HYPOTHESIS has it that this is due to the Dark Matter strewn about the universe. But wait - it was an old hypothesis that Einstein came up with and then decided couldn't be true.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0106/New-findings-on-dark-energy-back-discarded-Einstein-theory

So "Science" is all about doubting what you know to be true, and the scientific method is all about knowing that you don't really know what you actually know for sure. In fact the more positive you are, the more likely you are to be wrong. But wait! Once you figure out that you were wrong, you know for sure that what you think now is also probably wrong!

That's the scientific method. Doubt, investigate, prove, and doubt some more. Never cease questioning.

Remember my blog post on Theodore Sturgeon's ASK THE NEXT QUESTION. That's the scientific method.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/theodore-sturgeon-ask-next-question.html

And so that's the plotting method of SCIENCE fiction.

Take something that is so relied upon that it is never questioned. Question it. What if? If only...? If This Goes On ..." Create a world based on something we know for a fact turning out to be not-true.

Romance is a story about the initial phase of forming an idealized and permanent relationship.

Science Fiction Romance is a Romance (primarily) that occurs during, in spite of, or because of, some "built world" which exemplifies the scientific way of looking at things by discarding a belief that has been well proven and well supported.

In SFR, the SF should be the background and the Romance the foreground (in artistic composition terms).

That means all the worldbuilding has to be shown not told as background elements.

BACKGROUND vs. FOREGROUND

"Background" and "Foreground" are composition concepts

We've discussed back story, background, and foreground at length in previous posts here. So let's simplify the definition we'll work with.

Think of a painting or photograph.

We see a tennis player, wearing pristine whites, positioned in the front of the frame, racket raised, ball standing still in front of the player, free hand under the ball. Off to the right is the suggestion of a net. Off to the left is the suggestion of people in the stands. Beneath the player's feet is astro-turf. Way back is a woman on a tall chair painted white. Behind her is some blurry greenery. Above is bright blue sky. The shadows are long to the left of everything.

Can you tell what's foreground and what's background?

If I did it right, the player is obviously foreground. The player is described FIRST, and in great detail. You should be able to tell that the player is about to SERVE THE BALL (it's an action in progress which is where you always start a story). You can tell it's pretty formal by the player's dress and the referee. You don't see the opponent at all. Everything else is "suggested" at varying degrees away from THE PLAYER. Everything that's described is positioned RELATIVE TO THE PLAYER.

The player is the foreground, the rest is background.

You do the same thing when you write any story. What you put first, what you describe in detail, what you describe everything in reference to, is the foreground.

The foreground is the focal point, the point the artist wants to draw the reader/viewer's eye to. It's the important thing. The thing ABOUT WHICH this story is. Everything else is chosen to support that focal point.

The PLOT is the development of the Relationship in the foreground.

The COMPLICATION to the plot is the development of the scientific puzzle in the background.

In ROMANCE, the foreground is the lovers and their relationship.

In SCIENCE FICTION the foreground is the single scientific principle that has been called into doubt, and the resolution of that doubt by investigation.

So how do you compose a blend of Romance in the foreground with Science Fiction in the background?

What works best, because the Romance readership is not totally composed of those trained in the rigors of the scientific method (or who are not wholly bemused by scientific thinking processes) is what's often called SOFT SCIENCES.

Sociology, psychology, parapsychology, politics, religion, economics, archeology, anthropology (maybe not paleontology which is mostly hard science).

But those are still sciences and make dandy SF backgrounds for real Romance.

So let's watch how a composition of these two genres can be created from scratch using the principles of composition so familiar in all artforms. This principle works for any genre combination.

For Example

Think of the art of fabric weaving and putting a pattern into a weaving.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weft

The whole universe is often referred to as the product of a goddess that weaves the tapestry of events.

When you start out to build a "composition" you won't succeed if you apply your creativity to the principle behind the construction. Creativity has to be applied to the part of the composition that shows, the part that varies from one universe-fabric to another.

So look at the illustration of fabric weaving. The principle is that a warp is constructed of parallel strings that are made of a strongly spun yarn, and a softer, maybe weaker yarn is twisted between the verticle strings, over and under, now you see it now you don't.

The creativity of the artist is in the pattern, not in the concept of over-and-under.

The craft of the artist is in the clever way this thread and that thread are chosen for strength, for "hand" or for size. Make those choices wrong, and the "fabric" won't be a fabric -- it'll just unravel or fall apart.

The seamstress won't be able to make garments from the fabric because the seams will unravel if the craft of fabric-weaving isn't well applied.

You can, however, weave a wondrous fabric by combining different types of yarn, or making yarn out of more than one kind of fiber. Still, ultimately, over and under, strength and flexibility, are matters of craft.

How is that analogous to a story?

The Theme is the warp of the fabric you are weaving with your craft skills.

You choose what theme you want to use via your art, but you do have to have one or the fabric will fall apart.

A short story can have a theme and 1 sub-theme, the over and under of the warp, now it shows now it doesn't, to make a pattern.

The story's Setting is the weft or woof of the fabric you are weaving with your craft skills.

The theme is what your story says. The setting is how you say it.

You can use the same theme in different settings: a historical, a Regency Romance, a Roman Legion Romance, a Western, a Contemporary, a Paranormal, or Futuristic.

You can use the same warp with different woofs to get totally different fabrics.

The Setting is woven through, around, over and under the Theme of the fabric until they are of one piece.

The writer tamps the theme and setting down snug so the viewer/reader/audience can't tell the difference between Setting and Theme. Well tamped, the two together form a single, solid whole upon which the pattern is visible.

But the warp and woof of the fabric MUST NOT ATTRACT ATTENTION, or you spoil the effect for that "beta reader" type of reader (the ones who pay you).

The reader is the seamstress, cutting and sewing a garment from your fabric and its pattern for her own pleasure. If a seamstress likes working with your fabric (it holds shape, doesn't bunch when sewn, doesn't fade or pill) she'll buy more from you in a different color.

As Marion Zimmer Bradley quoted often, "The story the reader reads is not the story the writer wrote."

The reader creates their own story by turning the material this way and that, cutting, pasting, (editing mentally).

The writer's job is not to impart the writer's story to the reader but rather to incite the reader's imagination to create their own garment from the material. The writer's stock in trade is fun, enjoyment, pleasure.

To test my analogy, just ask someone who has read the same book you have read to describe what they read. The book you read will likely be barely recognizable in the description.

Ever seen a post on a forum asking if anyone can identify "A book where ..." because they can't remember the title?

Each reader remembers something different about the story and fills in the gaps with their own creativity.

So in our example, first let's choose a theme (sometimes in actual writing, the theme is the last thing you discover about the story you've written -- it doesn't matter as long as the finished product holds together good and tight).

THEME

"Only Age Brings Wisdom." A corollary of Experience Teaches in the School of Hard Knocks.

We could tell the story of acquiring Wisdom in any Setting.

Acquiring Wisdom makes a great Romance theme because it is a logical extension of "Love Conquers All."

Since this is SFR, let's say our Setting is The Near Future -- a futuristic sociological SF Romance.

It's a Romance, so IN THE FOREGROUND (Tennis Player) we have two Classic Characters refusing to fall madly in love with each other because they are on opposite sides (over and under) of the thematic proposition, Only Age Brings Wisdom.

Our Hero is an advertising writer. He thinks up those annoying commercials that pitch products you don't want and makes you want them even if they're too expensive.

He's a Confidence Man at heart. He makes you do foolish things because you don't have Wisdom (yet). And he's proud of that ability.

He's spent lifetimes perfecting the ability to make anyone do anything. (BACKSTORY THE READER DOES NOT NEED TO KNOW: In past lives he ran the racket on rich widows, or he's done heiresses out of fortunes.)

But in this life, he's gone straight. All he's ever done in this life is to pick up women in bars and get them into bed. So he has absolute confidence in his ability to make any woman groan "I love you" within 3 days of meeting her. His ad campaigns are famous. They work.

And so he has no respect for women.

Our Heroine is one tough broad with an attitude.

She's spent lifetimes (as man or woman) building and holding a family together against all odds, often violent odds. She has decided that The Government is the enemy of The Family because of 18, or even 21 being the voting age. Youth has bad judgment. (Illustration - all the young people who fell for Country Wide's 0-down mortgages.) They marry the wrong people mistaking infatuation for love; they don't save enough money; they choose the wrong majors in college; they party before studying; and are apt to try drugs from peer pressure. She feels law shouldn't grant that much freedom before the age of Wisdom because it weakens society.

Betty Friedan is her heroine. An individual can cure the ills of society.

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE: recent NEWSWEEK ARTICLE
http://www.newsweek.com/id/230061
shows that the Baby Boomers who tried drugs in the Woodstock Summer of Love are now coming down with Hepatitis C which takes 30 years or more to incubate.

So instead of getting married and raising boys to march off to war, she's a career woman who has finally been appointed CEO of a Polling Organization that's made a name for itself using a computer algorithm she has created.

Contracted by an online Match Making Service, her company has been doing statistics on marriage and divorce, and the life-courses of children through variations of the situations of their parents. She's investigated (maybe won some kind of prize for?) the grandchildren of divorced parents, and the grandchildren of unhappy marriages (that should have ended in divorce), and how to match up people with such a history to create a solid marriage that will last. She has statistics on children pushed out on their own too young.

It's Election Year. She's out to change the world because all this family pain she's been researching is just too much to bear (echoes of past life stresses). She applies for and gets a contract to do political polling for, say, a major online presence - or possibly a TV network.

She's going to prove, scientifically, that advertising chooses the winning candidate, regardless of the real heartfelt views of the voters.

In other words, she's going to prove that the world is being run by advertisers -- like Our Hero, people who are only grifters twisting people's minds against their will.

The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on political advertising damages families by pitting the opinions of youth against those of the family elders, splitting families with acrimony.

And now, at last, she has the computer power, the surveying power, the money and corporate power to achieve her goal of scientific proof and present her personal solution.

She wants to get Congress to raise the voting age to 45, which has been scientifically proven to be the upper limit of the effectiveness of advertising. People over 45 do not change their buying habits in response to seeing a commercial or online advertisement.

(That's why TV, movies, and even books are aimed at younger people.)

Her objective is to remove advertising from all political campaigns since it would be a waste of money if those who can be influenced by advertising are not allowed to vote.

Our Hero is of course hired by one of the political parties to create the best, most persuasive political ads ever.

If she succeeds and the voting age is raised to 45, he will essentially be impoverished because his only clients would be makeup and Slimfast manufacturers, maybe jeans makers. Maybe government anti-drug use commercials. He's scared of her. He likes his Manhattan penthouse and chauffeured limo lifestyle.

So as the campaign develops, her polling reveals the upper limit to the effectiveness of his ads. He desperately brings online more and more unproven jazzy techniques trying to push his effectiveness age higher, succeeding a few months at a time in persuading older folks to believe whatever nonsense he's peddling.

Worldbuilding

Think of every sort of change that will be wrought on our society as digital TV enters the market. We have a 3-D set coming onto the market this year, and a 3-D channel being launched. On Demand movies, series episodes, and anything you can find online now will be on your living room set (along with all the games that are online, probably console games too).

All the data sites like Google collect on you will make you the target for ads specifically crafted to make you do things against your better judgment, and these visuals will be very, very powerful because they really are aimed directly at your weakest spot.

Nothing like that exists today.

This is SFR. You can be manipulated and the technique does not even involve "subliminal advertising."

The hardware is evolving to where you'll even do email, twitter, Facebook etc on TV screens hung on various walls around your dwelling -- you'll never be out of eye-shot of such a device, and much of what it does may be 2-way interactive, tracking your behavior and feeding you advertising tailored to your behavior. Think of images that project into the air in front of you.

Think of how many of the changes in society sparked by cell phones were completely missed by futurologists of the 1950's (except Robert Heinlein; he got it).

Now, build a world, warp and woof, Theme and Setting tamped down to make one solid pattern. Build it out of the changes that computers, polling, and advertising psychology will have created in society by -- oh, say 2025. Add in human nature's never-changing traits (like the age of Wisdom; and question what age that might be.)

Polling and Advertising are natural allies against the you as a member of the population. Already, polling and advertising's single biggest client is government in the form of political campaigns.

Polling and Advertising are all about mass movement among people, all about crowd control and predicting and directing the majority of people to do this, think that, believe the other. Polling is the eyes and ears of Advertising, just naturally so.

But the internet, Web 2.0, social networking, are all about communication between individuals with no third orchestrating party, no gatekeepers.

At the moment, the third controlling orchestrating parties are struggling mightily with every scientific tool to get on top of this unruly population of social networkers. (Think e-publishing, self-publishing, blogging the news.)

Human nature is winning in the world where your readers live.

A very controlled and well edited, fact-checked world of journalistic ethics hard won in the early 1900's has suddenly turned back into the world of rumor-driven news as people talk directly to each other instead of through an editorial filter of journalists and fact-checkers. People hardly know the difference between opinion and fact already, and cell-phone-video and YouTube are confusing the issue even more. Seeing is believing, right? (That plane never crashed into the Pentagon -- see the video?)

What will happen next?

Well, the major theme of all Romance is Love Conquers All, and in our example here we're exploring Wisdom being gained only with Age. Romance is normally the business of the very young. The thrice divorced are not so susceptible to being swept off their feet.

Our Hero and Our Heroine, one in Advertising and the other in Polling, are at each other's throats with opposing views and equivalent computing power.

It's war.

What happens after they fall into bed for one wild night of carnal sexuality? (that's the PLOT)

Will they form an alliance, expose the winners of the election for the incompetents they are? Show how they were chosen by a manipulated youth vote? Will they split the country into a generation-war? (Think Star Trek: TOS's "genetics war" of the 1990's.)

Or does the choice of the over-45's win the election, then prove to be incompetent demonstrating that age has even less judgment of character?

Does the choice of the under-45's prove to be wiser?

Or do we find proof that young and old voters alike are insightful judges of character who are able to ignore commercials, given some special training in grammar school?

Or will one destroy the other's business, humiliating their own Soul Mate?

How can Love conquer the Pollster vs. Advertiser face-off?

The answer to that question lies in the Worldbuilding, in the warp and woof, and the answer is the Plot of this story.

In today's world, as things stand for your reader, there is no solution, and so there's no way this story could happen now. It's a Futuristic.

You, as writer, must artistically and creatively choose what changes to make this plot resolvable. (and plant that element in chapter one)

The world you build is the Setting or soft, flexible woof of the fabric that weaves around the warp or inflexible Theme revealing then concealing the ultimate statement about reality, thus asking the seminal question your Theme addresses -- is Wisdom only available to a human beyond age 45? Or are younger people wiser?

This is SF Romance, so the science of the worldbuilding has to provide a solution that could not exist now, that could not work the way things are now, that stretches the imagination of the reader and astonishes and delights with surprise, that provokes thought, that shakes the reader's certainties in unexpected ways, but also delivers the satisfaction of a plausible Happily Ever After ending.

Take the condition of Advertising (and the psychological research behind it) and the condition of Polling (how accurately it predicts outcomes of elections even now 11 months before the actual vote), add the condition of Politics (the show-don't-tell of a President addicted to his Blackberry so the company had to invent a new security protocol so he could keep it!) and extrapolate into our future.

In building your world, don't forget the force of Religion (think about those Mega-churches and the financing behind them as well as the social forces creating them). Then there is international politics, and the explosive effects of terrorism on old-form established governments (Yemen brewing up a storm while Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran hold world attention -- anyone noticed how close Yemen is to Sudan? Is there a power-axis brewing there?) Given the political instability, unemployed scientists and engineers are racing to supply tech solutions to "Security" at airports and elsewhere.

What will those unemployed brains come up with that will change the world our children will live in? Maybe change them? (don't forget genetics modifications to cure diseases)

And then there's China desperately trying to keep its people off the internet, and Iran choking off access to twitter.

There's class warfare (it's OK to tax the rich because they're a minority and it's majority rules -- and the rich can't have lobbyists advocating for them in Congress because it's wrong to go against the will of the majority even if the majority wants to destroy you) -- and generational warfare (youth that doesn't see the point of buying health insurance when old people get all the benefits.)

Look at the whole picture here, not one issue at a time but as a whole pattern, and extrapolate a result of all this churning change when mixed with the person-to-person communication revolution.

You can use astrology or any other tool you prefer to create your extrapolation rules.

If the theme is "Only Age Brings Wisdom" -- then you need an ending where one or the other or both protagonists reach that age and gain Wisdom, or gain Wisdom without reaching that age and disprove the proposition.

Youth growing up swimming in high-powered advertising has a much better chance of becoming immune than their forebears ever had against advertising when it was a new technology. But that doesn't seem to be happening today.

Turn the issue around backwards, and visit an alternate universe where only those under 45 are allowed to vote? How would that work? How did it start? Who could overthrow it? Should it be overthrown? Argue all sides of the issue, each side with a character exemplifying the point of view.

If the majority of voters were under 45, they could pass a law against lobbying and then pass a law (Constitutional Amendment maybe) with a voting-age ceiling.

As you build your world, warp and woof, you need to consider all the different beliefs your readers might hold and create a powerful (and plausible) spokesman for each of those beliefs.

That means you must be able to understand and explain a belief that you, personally, think is utter blithering nonsense. And you have to do it with a straight face because some of your readers take that nonsense as gospel.

Before you can expect your readers to believe six impossible things before breakfast, you have to be able to do it yourself -- and convince the world that you believe them!

How do you organize all those characters that exemplify the sides of an issue you're writing about and their different beliefs?

COMPOSITION. That's it. That's the whole trick of this entire profession.

You anchor the composition in your foreground character (the Tennis Player) and describe and portray each of the other characters from that central reference point. Everything in your composition is relative to your central reference point, just like notes in a scale or colors on a palette.

In a Romance, typically, there are two "central reference points" -- your lead couple. Their center-of-gravity (a point somewhere between them, perhaps closer to the more vivid or powerful one) is your central reference point. Everything in the composition is measured, described, formulated, colored, keyed to that central reference point.

From that central reference point, you choose the fiber, dye lot, and gauge of your theme to form the warp, and the time, place, social level, and details of your setting(s) to form the woof. Tamp them together until the reader can't tell the difference, and the rest will unfold naturally.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com