Theme-Character Integration Part 2 - Fire Up That Love Life

Theme-Character Integration Part 2 - Fire Up That Love Life
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg


Part 1 of this skill integration sequence is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

Previously we discussed What Does She See In Him (an essential ingredient in firing up a love life)

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

So today we'll discuss the TV Series VAMPIRE DIARIES and the Science Fiction/Fantasy pulp classic image of the Warrior Woman in a Brass Bras which stirred public controversy (again) in June 2013 when used as the cover of a SFWA Bulletin issue (#200).

And all of this relates to choosing and targeting an audience for your Science Fiction Romance, an essential part of raising the profile and respect granted to SFR by the general public (that probably doesn't read any SFR). 

Note the underlying assumption here that the general public is convinced that it is appropriate to hold fast to an opinion on a topic without researching the facts personally.

Note the title of this piece includes the word THEME -- and we've discussed theme individually and at length in combination with plotting.  Theme is the underlying, barely revealed, almost never stated in so many words, philosophical ARGUMENT which generates the plot, characters, story, conflict, and most importantly the resolution of that conflict.

Any number of "endings" are possible for most Romance stories, as long as it seems the new couple will live Happily Ever After -- HEA.

The choice of which ending your story will have is not arbitrary once the beginning, the opening scene, is crafted.  And new writers, beginning writers, often don't know where to start in telling the story that's popped into being with, "I've got an idea!"

As discussed at length in previous posts here on Plot, the Beginning, Middle, and End are a set, a collection, and they must match. 

One way new writers become aware of stories they want to tell is by having the ENDING pop into mind all rounded and fully colored in with emotions resolved.  And many failures to sell a novel happen because the writer opened the story at the ending.  (the opposite is often true, too, the story may be opened way before the beginning of the story).  And some failures to sell happen because the writer just kept on writing long, long after the story ends.

Choosing any one of these three points or what are termed,  in SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder, "beats" of your story determines the content of the other two.

We've discussed crafting openings, and crafting middles that don't "sag" -- now let's look at starting a novel by choosing the ENDING. 

The resolution of the conflict may be the first thing about your characters that you become aware of.  Recognizing that it is an ENDING involves an entire orchestrated set of skills being brought to bear on your problem.

Here let's look very deeply (themes are deep, abstract philosophical ideas) at bringing together theme and character in an explosive love life (life is character).

What's in an ending? Define Ending.

Your choice of ending bespeaks the thematic statement of your novel.

In a Romance, that statement has to allow for or include -- or at least imply -- that Happily Ever After is possible in real life, even though it's rare and difficult, a heroic achievement.

We've noted previously that there is a huge audience for Romance that simply can not accept the HEA as part of their real, everyday reality.  Happily For Now is the very most they see as real, and even that is ephemeral.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/gene-doucette-discusses-his-novel.html

The very existence of the HEA is a philosophical statement of huge proportions, and it is a topic which is heated and controversial in the general readership of all novels -- especially self-published novels!

Definition of Ending

The ENDING situation of your characters is the point where the main Point of View Character, the Hero that the reader has been rooting for -- i.e. protagonist, -- understands the theme of his/her life.

This understanding can be:
a) Aha, I never knew that!
b) Aha, JUST AS I ALWAYS THOUGHT!
c) Aha, she was right all along and I was wrong.
d) Aha, I was right but it would be wrong to rub it in.

The key ingredient is the AHA part -- something has changed, and here at the ending it is perfectly clear to the protagonist what changed and what it means.  The change that constitutes an ending is the dispelling of confusion, the lifting of a fog, the purifying of a philosophy, the clarity of understanding in the light of experience. 

ENDING is defined as the point where the protagonist understands the theme, and so does the reader.

Targeting an audience.

The EMOTIONAL impact of that understanding of the theme that the reader gains by riding inside the protagonist's head defines the audience targeted.

For the HEA to work, the audience must experience the emotion of PLEASURE that the Starring Couple in the novel has achieved an HEA.

Readers who are living in a world they see as streaks of darkness marbling grayness have their "suspension of disbelief" broken at the HEA and they do not experience that as a pleasure.

Readers who have glimpsed flashes of light in their real life experience pleasure at the HEA.

Two different readerships, each to be targeted with different themes.

No matter how good your craft skills at characterization may be, no matter how well you lure your anti-HEA reader into living in your character's skin, if your THEME violates their beliefs, they will not experience pleasure at the character's AHA! 

New writers tend to focus on arcane writerly skills such as characterization.  New beta readers, and even professional editors, tend to give feedback in terms of "the character is not likeable" or not believable.  And that sends the new writer on a quest to master 'characterization' when in fact the failure was in THEME.

So what do you do?  Change your philosophy so you can sell novels?  No, I don't think so.

What you can do is tell exactly the same story that has occurred to you (in that flash vision of The End Scene), tell it with the same protagonist and same point of view character, but move the time-frame backward or forward in that character's life to a point where a THE END situation occurs that drives the lesson into the character in a way that the targeted readership would enjoy.

In other words, you can still write about that character, but at a different point in their life.

Or you can choose a different target audience.

This blog series focuses on the audience that can accept the HEA, however leery they might be of such a radical departure from reality.

This blog is about writing Alien Romance, exotic Romance, Paranormal Romance, Futuristic Romance -- writing about things that don't actually exist.

The writer's task is to convince the reader, if only for the few hours, that these things which don't exist, which can't exist, actually do exist for these characters.

That is, to suspend disbelief long enough to make a point -- a particular type of point native to the science fiction genre.

Science Fiction is defined by 3 story parameters:

a) "What if ....?"
b) "If only ...."
c) "If This Goes On ..."

Fill in the blanks, and for this Romance Genre dealing with the imaginary future, what you fill in those dots with is HEA. 

a) "What If I could live Happily Ever After?"
b) "If Only I COULD live Happily Ever After, I would ...?" (do what? believe what?)
c) "If This Goes On, we will create a world where everyone lives Happily Ever After."

Those story parameters filled in that way take ROMANCE GENRE and meld it seamlessly with SCIENCE FICTION GENRE.

The Best SFR is built out of all three statements, just as the best SF is built from all three simultaneously. 

SFR is built on the premise that our emotional lives can be studied scientifically, and what we discover from that study can be used to deal with Life just as we use science to deal with our environment.

The "science" in Romance becomes the science of EMOTION.  The study of emotion.

What?  That's idiotic, you say?

Well, yeah, but so was the vision of a galactic civilization back in the 1930's and 1940's.  Back then we had no idea if there were other planets around other stars.  Then a few decades passed when accepted science told us (with mathematical clarity) that it was idiotic to think there were earth-like planets around other stars.  This last few years, a single telescope has been studying a very tiny slice of ONE little galaxy, and found so many planets (large and small and earth-like too; now termed exoplanets) I can't keep track. 

Look at the second image in this article:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/05/saving-kepler-the-mission-that-changed-our-view-of-the-probability-of-life-in-the-universe.html

That image shows how little we've explored and how much we've discovered. 

Neuroscience has likewise been studying brains of various animals, including human cognition.

During this time-span, mostly before your primary readership was born, two major philosophies (thematic source material for stories) have been waging Armageddon over the heads of your readers, and even inside their minds all the way down to the subconscious level.

There is an old saying, "There's No Accounting For Taste" -- but I maintain that there actually is a way to account for taste if you understand not only the science of what a human being is and what world a human inhabits, but also understand that humans consist of two major parts each living in a different environment, Soul and Body.

That's the theory behind the HEA -- which depends entirely on the assumption that humans have Souls. The HEA happens when Soul Mates meet and unite in this life. 

Here are index posts (updated) to my set of posts on Astrology and Tarot exploring methods of thinking about these abstractions in a way that can generate concrete story ideas.

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

Tarot Just For Writers:
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.html

These are not topics to "believe in" -- but to study looking for philosophies that explain how and why people develop a "taste" for this or that in art or friends.

These are the topics that answer the questions "What Does She See In Him" and vice-versa.

You can read up on all this, and learn these topics, and come up with wholly different conclusions than anyone else who has ever studied them.

That is what science fiction authors do for a living: study up on a science and come to a different conclusion than the professional scientists working in that field.

Which brings us to the SFWA controversy of June 2013.

Science Fiction Writers of America, the organization of professional science fiction writers (fair disclosure, I'm a life member), publishes a magazine called The SFWA Bulletin.  Issue 200 ignited a controversy that exploded with issue 202 which was discussed in a blog post that posted several SFR novel covers and then talked disparagingly about SFR.

The cover image of the Bulletin was simply yet another Science Fiction/Fantasy cliche, the Warrior Woman complete with brass-bras style fighting gear. 

The thesis that triggered eruptions on many confused topics of tangled philosophies was that Science Fiction Romance is not legitimate Science Fiction because it violates the tropes and the writers seem to ignore (or be ignorant of) classic Science Fiction ideas.

Usually, SFR is excoriated for violating science as it is now known.  This time we got excoriated for not knowing imaginary science.  Isn't that delightful?  It must be progress. 

Read here for the blog post that re-ignited (according to the writer of this blog, Stuart Sharp by accident) this old argument:
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/

And here for opinions about that post:
http://evacaye.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-take-on-sfwa-controversy.html

And here for one of my favorite writers, Ann Aguirre, whom I've reviewed here whose book was included in that first post.
http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

Do check out the lightening that struck Ann Aguirre -- she posted at the end of her original post, some email responses she got (hate mail) as an immediate response to her post. 

Squint your eyes almost closed before looking at that hate-mail section of that post, and STUDY IT.

Here is a discussion by another author, Gini Koch one of my favorites whose ALIEN series I keep talking about here -- and who had a book cover highlighted on talking-sci-fi-romance
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/06/06/its-time/

And here is a later post (one of several) where the author of talking-sci-fi-romance answers
http://www.starlahuchton.com/this-is-not-the-post-you-were-looking-for/   --

Stuart Sharp comments there that at the time he posted his accidentally inflammatory post, he hadn't heard of the SFWA Bulletin cover controversy.

Here is a response from the President of SFWA (in 2013 that was still John Scalzi) (who almost gets it right, and that reveals something important you need to understand in order to craft your novel-endings where a character absorbs a theme with an AHA!)

http://www.sfwa.org/2013/06/presidential-statement-on-the-sfwa-bulletin/

-------quote -----------
We could spend a long time here discussing whether the offense was intentional or accidental, or whether it is due to a generational, ideological or perceptual schism. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, too many of our members have felt their contributions and their place in the industry and within the organization belittled; too many of our members see other members being treated so. If we believe that we represent and serve all our members and not just some of them, then we need to listen and address those member concerns.

That begins with recognizing the problem. And here is the problem: SFWA, through the last few issues of the Bulletin, has offended many of our own members.

As president of the organization, I apologize to those members.
---------end quote-------------

Note he didn't say "If we've offended you, we apologize." 

But the apology is FOR OFFENDING -- not for what was done wrong.  If he admitted what was done wrong (sexism advocated as a high standard of art and behavior, but advocated "off the nose" and by assumption, by force of cultural custom) - then he would offend the other half of the members!

He's a good president, and a good politician -- and generally, a good guy.  This world doesn't produce people who are very much better than this guy at being a good guy. 

So we need to look at the WORLD more than at these particular individuals, and analyze why these swirling currents of philosophical disagreement are forming into a tornado right here in the Science Fiction Community.

*my opinion* Resnick and Malzberg are also good guys, great writers, very representative of the SF world in general. 

So our problem solving attention has to be devoted to the context, not the individuals.  This process, raising your focus from the trees to observe the forest, is an essential exercise in training your inner eye to be the eye of an artist.  We need to observe the patterns, then reveal them to our readers.

That's hard, and takes a lot of exercise to make our inner-eye-muscles strong. 

So one more quote from out-going SFWA President Scalzi:

---------quote----------
5. I am aware that my apologies here will be taken any number of ways, depending on who is reading them and their opinion of events. That is the nature of an apology. Be that as it may, I believe that apologies matter, if they are sincere and they are followed up by right action. It’s what we are trying to do.
---------end quote--------

Let's focus on apology and the nature of apology just for a moment, where it comes from and why we do it, what it means, and how the definition has morphed in our culture over the last few decades. 

The modern apology has appeared out of thin air in just a few decades, and the change has never been remarked on that I know of.

Read some historical novels -- novels written say, in the 1930's or 1940's, and study apologies.

Today we apologize for hurting other people's feelings, for making them feel bad, for embarrassing them, or for OFFENDING.

We express SORROW (an emotion) for triggering someone else's emotion, and that ends the matter.

"If I offended you, I'm sorry."  That's not an apology.  Why? (thankfully the SFWA President didn't say that!)

It's not an apology because it does not in any way indicate that the apologist has any idea what they did wrong or why it is wrong to do that.  It's not a story-ending where the apologist has had an AHA moment where the theme has been driven all the way into the subconscious so the person would experience unbearable self-loathing if they should even consider doing that again.  It does not indicate that the person knows why the deed was wrong. 

The only thing that's wrong is the way someone else reacted, and that was an accident!

In other words, there is no reason for the apologist to change their behavior, except to avoid offending the other person again.  There's no internally driven reason to change. 

It's become "wrong" to offend others, but the offending behavior itself is not inherently wrong.  Therefore, if you do a right thing, and it offends someone, you have to apologize for doing right! 

This is a subtle point and difficult to follow but it is just one symptom of a major change in our culture (better or worse, you judge that!).

In apologizing, we are taking responsibility for the emotional reaction of others, but not for the error in our (subconsciously held) philosophy that generated the action.  There has been no AHA ending.

Actions no longer have inherent, absolute, objective and measurable "rightness" or "wrongness."  As a result, other people's emotional reactions to actions don't have to make sense, and do not indicate to us that we have an error in our own internal value system that must be corrected so it will not generate another action which is wrong.  As far as the apologist is concerned, there is no rhyme or reason to other people's emotional reaction -- it's random, and therefore irrelevant. 

Apology used to be an admission of an error in whatever it is inside us that generates our actions.  Apology indicates we have corrected our error in our Value. 

Without external, objective Values against which to measure ourselves, we can not possibly apologize, because you can't ever be in the wrong in your own eyes.

It's more important to avoid offending others than it is to do the right thing -- because there is no thing to do that is more "right" than any other thing to do -- because all Value Systems are equal.

But people still have emotions, and emotional lives inside themselves, as do story characters.

Think again about the SFWA Controversy.  What exactly is the problem people have with Science Fiction Romance?  What's "wrong" with Romance that it is so OFFENSIVE?

Perhaps it's a Story/Plot thing?

Science Fiction has been traditionally all plot, almost no story.  If characters learn anything in SF, it's a scientific principle, or that some trusted principle isn't true.

But Romance is all about Story, usually with very little plot (Gini Koch's ALIEN series is an exception which could be why it got nailed in that blog post
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/ 

Now we are into the THEME part of theme-character integration. 

So firmly fix this frame into your mind as you read on:

Novels have both PLOT and STORY.  As I've defined these terms in my previous posts on each of these skills independently, plot is the sequence of external events started at the beginning, generated by the conflict, and ending in a resolution. 

Plot = External Events on a BECAUSE LINE.

Story is the sequence of emotions, issues, concerns, thoughts, and INTERNAL EVENTS that define what the external events MEAN to the POV character.  (i.e. the plot events have to happen to someone for them to have meaning to the reader, so the story is what the plot is "about")

Story = Internal Events on a philosophical development line (or an emotional line).

Theme-Character Integration is about Story

That's right, we're talking story here, not plot or the usual structural elements we discuss here.  We discuss plot and its structure at such tedious length because plot is the most prominent feature of Science Fiction (though not of Romance). 

To drive a lesson, a moral of the story, an Ineffable Truth, into a Character's Soul at the climax of the Story, your story needs a structure as disciplined and precise as the plot's structure.  Astrology provides that structure with all the precision you could ever want.  (you just don't let the reader know you're using astrology). 

The thesis presented in the links to Astrology and Tarot I offered above boils down to the idea that Emotion is generated by Philosophy, and Philosophy resides in the subconscious.  You can't change your emotions or actions without changing your philosophy -- apology means you've changed your philosophy because you understood you were wrong. 

Religion and ideas about Souls and Life After Death (such as is dealt with in ghosts and Paranormal Romance) likewise is rooted in the subconscious, entwined with our Culture.  Culture resides in the subconscious -- that's why you don't know you have a culture until you run into someone from a different culture who discombobulates you.

Over the last several decades we've seen the fruits of the Women's Lib movement shifting our culture faster than a human being can adjust at that subconscious level.  At the same time, the internet has changed communications, and the family has disintegrated.  That shifted culture defines your potential readership, a culturally confused readership.

So we see older people who have not adjusted to these shifts, and we see older people who are actually ahead of that curve, still living in a future we haven't imagined yet.  Some older people offer wisdom, others offer complaints. 

Develop both types of older characters in your novel and bespeak both points of view eloquently - you'll have a best seller.

Now we reach back into pre-history to find the roots of this culture that has suddenly changed so that apology doesn't mean apology any more.

Egypt created a towering civilization, trading far and wide, dominating the Middle East and at least half of Africa, all the way to Morocco and almost to China.  The Jews weren't the only population they enslaved.  Conquering armies brought home slaves as booty, as wealth.  The Jews already lived in Egypt, so that was a no-brainer for Egypt's politicians. 

After the Jews left, Egyptian civilization fell, but passed the torch of light and learning to Persia (modern Iran mostly), thence to Babylon (Iraq, Syria parts of Turkey), whence that torch of light and learning passed to Ancient Greece (much of the geometry and math we attribute to Aristotle is actually rooted in the previous civilizations), and now we're approaching recorded history as the torch of light and learning passes to Rome.

The Rise And Fall of the Roman Empire is well documented, leaving Latin a language ingredient in every language-stew of Europe. 

Burning of the Library at Alexandria, Peloponnesian Wars etc. very significant events during Rome's reign.  If you haven't learned this history, go read up on it.  Lots of good ebooks real cheap!  Writers, especially of Romance, need to know more than is ever taught in school!  None of the really important stuff is taught in school now.  Most of what you learn in school isn't true anyway -- so go educate yourself. 

Of course, China likewise had rises and falls, and India, too, (Indus Valley or modern Pakistan is a big player in trade and learning), so don't forget them. 

But visualize for the moment, the way that science, learning, trade and innovation, pulsed over time, rising and falling alongside governments of slightly different, ever evolving governmental forms. 

The people who lived in those times were just like you, except for one significant point: Culture Shock.

Culture Shock is a documented form of mental derailment that occurs when someone is isolated in a culture that is foreign to them.  Read up on it if you don't know about it.  Classic example is the kid sent off to boarding school who cries all night every night for months but that is a phenomenon of the modern world.

Culture didn't CHANGE within the life-span of a person, and people passed on their craft and trade skills to their children unchanged from when they got them from their parents and grandparents.  Maybe they acquired one or two minor innovations, but the fundamentals of life and livelihood didn't change.

There was continuity.  A parent knew what a child had to master to be successful in life. 

That was true up until maybe 1920 or so. 

Cars, telegraph, radio -- the printing press took about 2-300 years to sink in and generate what we think of as industry and technology, the information explosion.

Now, assuming you know a couple thousand years of human history at least by trends and major turns, think about it as seen from high above, from an elevated perspective, as if you're looking down on Time the way we look at a map of the world.

Onto those swirling forces and tides of human events, we're going to project or superimpose another pattern.

Grasp this one point, and you will understand the SFWA controversy (and the concept of the Modern Apology) in a whole new light, and it won't disturb you.  It will excite you and trigger an explosion of creativity, and put real fire into your Love Story.  (Fire is Wands/ Love is Cups)

See the last 2,000 (or 5,000) years of human history as a War of Philosophies.

Let's call them Phil-1 and Phil-2. 

The Founding of the USA can be seen as a crescendo Battle of Philosophies to put the sinking of the Spanish Armada to shame -- eclipsing The Trojan War, making the two World Wars seem like peace. 

As I view the matter, I see the USA (and many other countries) as having two Natal Charts, one governing one population with one philosophy, and the other natal chart governing the other population with the other philosophy. 

Phil-2 won that epic Battle at the Founding of the USA over Phil-1.

Defeated, Phil-1 retreated, regrouped and infiltrated and undermined Phil-2's brave new world.  And now it's on top (again; has been on top a number of times). 

Phil-1 has been the world's dominant philosophy since the time of Noah.  Remember the story of Noah (and the Rainbow - don't forget Rainbow).  Noah was the most righteous man of his generation, but he wasn't much we'd admire.  He did have the guts to go against society (that mocked him) and build the Arc.  Vindicated, he landed the Arc, and planted a vineyard, made wine and got so blotto his sons had to walk backward to cover his nakedness. 

Noah's philosophy, expressed by that priority of getting drunk as soon as possible, might be stated as Phil-1, Emotion Rules Life. 

As we know now from modern science, most all emotion can be accounted for by neurons firing, by life's tendency to flee pain and seek pleasure.  Emotion is a thing of the physical body.  

Remember, STORY = EMOTION

Phil-2 comes into the picture of Western Civilization with Abraham being called by God to Walk In His Ways.  Abraham's priority (the story goes) was to Walk In His Ways.  The story that's been preserved about Abraham is that after offering the Covenant to all the other Nations of Earth, God came to Abraham and said "Come Walk In My Ways and .." and before God finished the sentence, Abraham was out the door WALKING, asking only which way?

All the other Nations, so the story goes, listened to the "...and I'll make of you a great nation." part and asked what they'd have to DO to get the REWARD -- they worked the risk/reward equation like shrewd businessmen, but God wouldn't bargain.  Abraham was not interested in any of that -- he just wanted to DO God's Will. (Plot = Do)

After some 80 years of life, having inherited his father's idol making shop in what passed for a city in those days, Abraham knew the little statues he sold were "empty" and curiosity gnawed at him about the REAL DEAL -- so when God came to him and offered Ways to Walk In, that was it for him.

Abraham is all about PLOT, all about DOING.  Remember, Abraham is the character who circumcised himself, a deed that elevates the Mind over Emotion.  The body seeks to avoid pain.  The mind has other ideas.  Abraham was of the mind. 

Remember, PLOT = ACTION

At Mount Sinai, after leaving Egypt, God gives the 10 Commandments and the Nation answers WE WILL DO and WE WILL LEARN -- DOING FIRST just like Abraham.

And then comes the whole Covenant, the Torah, the teaching.  The Torah is taught by Moses (a man about whom no story of drunkenness is recorded; a man very different from Noah).  And if you've read that teaching, you know it is ever so very intellectual.  There's lots of juicy scandal, misdeeds and sexuality, (lots of hot sex stuff in there, and it's very different from what the History Channel movie depicted).  But it's all about how to BEHAVE, what to DO and how to DO IT.

The prescriptions for misdeeds all involve doing something, but the misdeeds targeted by these remedies all involve doing something motivated solely by emotion, placing emotion above rational thought, the urges of the body above those of the mind. 

The emphasis is on keeping "apart" from the Nations.  What is being separated from what?

At danger of over-simplifying, let's call it Phil-2 is being separated out of and walled away from Phil-1, thus creating a counter-culture minority embedded in the whole of humanity.  Humanity is descended from Noah and operating on the supremacy of Emotion over Mind, just like Noah.  Abraham likewise is descended from Noah, but turns down a different path. 

It doesn't matter what religion you practice (or don't practice), and it doesn't matter whether you think the events depicted in the Bible ever happened or not. 

From our over-view of time, looking down on the history of the world, superimposing onto what we know of history this view of history as a War Of Two Philosophies, you can see where the first one is the majority, and always has been, and where in Time a counter-current was injected.

How that injection happened, and who did it, you can decide for yourself.  To understand the SFWA Controversy, you need only be able to See this Battle of Two Philosophies as very ancient, and very much the issue of our day mostly because it's ancient. 

Today, the two philosophies have inter-mingled and gotten mixed into one another, as the the Bible says must not happen.  

Like two galaxies colliding and inter-mingling their stars, then pulling apart again, leaving new stars, composite stars, and hungry black holes behind, the two philosophies are pulling apart again, each taking with it parts of the other.  What a mess.  What an opportunity for stories! Talk about the War of the Worlds!

You might be thinking that there aren't enough Jews in the world to matter, so who cares?  And that's true, except for one little problem.

Christianity and Islam are daughter philosophies of Judaism, thus composed mostly of Phil-2. 

I'm not sure if all together the adherents of Christianity and Islam constitute a numerical majority over Hinduism et. al., but after all these centuries of missionary zeal, all the rest of the world has been infused with some of the "stars" from the Phil-2 galaxy. 

Which brings us to Vampire Diaries (the TV show).



The object of these writing lessons is to show you what the world looks like from the eyes of a writer.

Writers don't watch TV the same way that viewers do. 

So in June, as I watched the season finale of VAMPIRE DIARIES, I saw within it this Phil-1 vs Phil-2 vision of the target audience (basically I'd say 14-30 yr olds for this show, but I love it!) exemplified loud and clear.

I'd also been watching Season 5 of Gray's Anatomy on Amazon Streaming video.  Really great without commercials.

Both these shows have a lot of plot, both are very well written (i.e. the plot and the story are integrated by solid and clear thematic statements). 

Vampire Diaries uses some wild variants on the Vampire mythos, but here's one element that is a great example of Worldbuilding, using show-don't-tell to make an abstract point.

Vampires can turn their emotions off.  And on again. 

When they turn their emotions OFF, Vampires become the Evil Scourge of traditional vampire myth, and have no compunctions about murdering humans, care only about self-gratification, and have little or no regard for other Vampires (thus very little Romance potential). 

When they turn their emotions ON, Vampires become just ordinary people, with their old human personality showing through, with whatever sense of respect for human life that they had during their own lives.  They're just very long lived, very durable, human beings, as bad or as good as humans usually are.

THEME: Absence of Emotion Is Definition of Evil.

Or put another way, the theme of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES is that the only thing that makes humans Good (however good any given human can be) is EMOTION.  All goodness is emotion.

That is a clean, bright, definitive show-don't-tell of Phil-1, the oldest philosophy, Noah.

Here's another example.  On Gray's Anatomy and on Vampire Diaries, couples are changing partners all over the place, trying out sex with this and that one, getting all deep and introspective over the question of whether they love this one or that one more (which you can determine only by whether the sex is better).  It's so important to find out who you love because you absolutely must do what your emotions lead you to want to do.

I Love You is a statement regarded as a surrender to an inevitability.  I can't help who I love.  It's just a mystery.  And if I love someone, I must be with him -- regardless of all other considerations.  And I can't help it.  Good common sense and solid reasoning have nothing to do with it.  "Forbidden" has nothing to do with it (such as if you fall in love with a cousin, or an under-age kid, you must have sex with them regardless). 

The Theme says, "We are victims of emotion."  Both those TV Series (ultra-popular TV Series) depict that philosophy -- how you feel determines what you must do, and doing anything else is unhealthy. 

Emotion dominates, emotion leads, action must follow emotion.  Thought is not allowed to enter into it, at all.  That is a clear statement of the core of Phil-1, Noah. 

Now, go back over the Tarot posts, where I lay out the "Worlds" of Kaballah according to one (of several) schools of thought.  Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles.  Idea, Emotion, Deeds, Results.  (Fire is Tarot Suit of Wands/ Love is Tarot Suit of Cups)

That is the sequence I explained in those Tarot posts, but there is another sequence taught by a different school of Kaballah. Idea, Deeds, Emotion, Results.  And I think that's a closer depiction of the Phil-2 explained in the Torah.  There are good arguments on each side, and that's what makes for a great novel! 

In either case, Idea (thought, intellect, mind) leads, emotion comes in between, results come last.

Phil-2 from the Torah commands that men put a blue thread in the fringe of their garment to see it and REMEMBER (mind) the Commandments and NOT FOLLOW YOUR HEART that you yearn to follow, not follow emotion, but REMEMBER what you've promised to do and do it. 

Judaism also encompasses the concept of the Tzadik, the truly righteous man, who has completely harmonized Mind and Heart, thought and emotion flowing smoothly into deed and result -- so smoothly it seems like Magic.  Remember any technology that's advanced enough will seem like magic.  With Astrology and Tarot you are looking at a technology just that advanced. 

Which brings us back to the SFWA Controversy and whether it is actually about sexism, or not.

Phil-1 says if you feel something, if you want to do something, you must do it.

Phil-1 says people are best off, healthiest, when they understand that they are just smart animals with an animal body.  Male animals are attracted by female beauty, and when that happens it is the male's duty to the species to attack the female. (in many species, females don't put up with that)

Phil-1 says males can't help (you are helpless before your emotions and the body rules) being aroused by feminine beauty, and when that happens, it's unhealthy and morally wrong to resist your emotions. 

Phil-2 says put a blue thread on your garment, and gaze upon it and THINK FIRST.  Remember your promises, keep your word of honor. Blue, oddly enough, is considered the "cool" color, emotionally low-key. 

Phil-2 says humans have a Soul breathed into the flesh by God, and the Soul is infinite (most of it resides "above" and only part inhabits the body).  The human Soul is the Fire of God's Love.  Because of that Soul, humans have Free Will and may choose their course of action.  The Soul rules the body and its emotions, not the other way around, but since you have Free Will, you can allow the body to rule the Soul, you can allow emotion to rule action.  It is your choice.

Phil-2 says women are closer to God. It's pointed out in the Torah and the Mishna any number of times that when the People as a whole sinned, the women did not participate.  So therefore, many of the remedies for the propensity to allow Emotion to rule action, are not incumbent on women (such as the blue thread).  (Honest!  Lots of maligning rumors have been promulgated about Judaism, many of which are believed by Jews who thereupon find Judaism revolting.  The idea that Judaism is sexist is one of those lies.  I didn't make that up.)

Phil-1, the older philosophy of Noah, subjugates women because men can't help attacking them.

Phil-2, the newer philosophy of Abraham, elevates women because men can control their bodies. 

OK, that's way oversimplified, but we're looking for a way to extract a simple framework from what passes for "reality" and use it for what publishing considers "fiction." 

The counter-arguments abound.  There's the whole issue of Biblical Commandments that treat women as chattle (a man buying a wife, making contracts for women who are living in their father's house or married, testing the woman for adultery but not the man).  Each of those could make the basis for worldbuiding an entire alien culture.  And of course, these Commandments were directed specifically at Jews.  Everybody else is responsible only for the 7 Noachide Laws:

---------quote-------------
THE 7 LAWS

1
Acknowledge that there is only one G-d who is Infinite and Supreme above all things. Do not replace that Supreme Being with finite idols, be it yourself, or other beings. This command includes such acts as prayer, study and meditation.

2
Respect the Creator. As frustrated and angry as you may be, do not vent it by cursing your Maker.

3
Respect human life. Every human being is an entire world. To save a life is to save that entire world. To destroy a life is to destroy an entire world. To help others live is a corollary of this principle.

4
Respect the institution of marriage. Marriage is a most Divine act. The marriage of a man and a woman is a reflection of the oneness of G-d and His creation. Disloyalty in marriage is an assault on that oneness.

5
Respect the rights and property of others. Be honest in all your business dealings. By relying on G-d rather than on our own conniving, we express our trust in Him as the Provider of Life.

6
Respect G-d's creatures. At first, Man was forbidden to consume meat. After the Great Flood, he was permitted - but with a warning: Do not cause unnecessary suffering to any creature.

7
Maintain justice. Justice is G-d's business, but we are given the charge to lay down necessary laws and enforce them whenever we can. When we right the wrongs of society, we are acting as partners in the act of sustaining the creation.
----------END QUOTE--------------

So Noah was never expected or tasked with putting thought or intellect above emotion, not directly, but it seems to me it's the easiest way to accomplish those 7 goals.  Since when do humans elect to do things the easiest way?

Look around at this world today, and you see both of these philosophical attitudes expressed in a tangled up, mixed up, confused mess, without regard for ostensible religion, creed, color, or culture. 

In fact, you probably think my summary of Phil-1 and Phil-2 with regard to women is nonsense because of the criss-crossing and conflicting assumptions in your subconscious.  Take this idea I'm presenting here and go around observing the world with writer's eyes for a while and see if you can tease apart some of these tangles and find the two warring philosophies (regardless of what you call them). 

Humans are capable of absolutely, solemnly and really believing two mutually exclusive things at once.  So Phil-1 and Phil-2 can both be held in the same human mind at the same time. 

The resulting tangle of motives and deeds produces a similar tangle of mixed results that are very confusing to analyze.

Which brings us back to the confused fulminating about the SFWA Bulletin cover being sexist, and comments on the objections just adding fuel to the fire leading to disparaging comments about SFR.

SFWA is supposed to be home to those who train to think "outside the box" and to "go where no man has gone before." 

Science is the fearless and systematic examination of all ideas, and the organizing of the results of experiments into a reliable and repeatable body of knowledge.  These are the people who are supposed to be the best trained imagineers in the world.

And they are very confused, which accurately reflects the confusion in this society as a whole (which accurate reflection makes a professional writer, professional.)

If you've ever written a melee battle, or just watched a movie with a good melee depicted, you understand what happens when two huge armies interpenetrate, just as when two galaxies collide. 

The sequence of events (plot) gets lost in confusion, and all there is left is the story -- the subjective impressions and personal meaning to the individual fighting for life, for mere survival. 

That's what we are living inside -- the interpenetration of the army of Phil-1 with the army of Phil-2, formations dissolved, one-on-one combat to the death, and the battlefield is inside our subconscious minds where the story of our life happens where we can not see it.  But we smell the smoke.   

Myth depicts this as Armageddon, or the final battle of the gods. 

Judaism sees it as the prelude to the arrival of the Messiah.  (Maybe some Islam sects do, too). 

Christianity sees it as Good vs. Evil.

I see it as the collision of two galaxy sized philosophies. 

Or maybe more accurately, the MATING of two philosophies -- fired, violent, messy, sweaty, grunting, and utterly ferocious. 

So take this multi-thousand year perspective of a battle between philosophies, one extracted from the older, larger other, and see if that vision yields a new perspective on today's headlines.  Then take that new perspective and generate your screenplay or novel and see if there's a fired up love life in there. 



by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Can Serials Work Via E-publishing?

I Retweeted a post on twitter and got into a discussion of the Question titling this post.

First a quick primer on basic Twitter which, if you know how twitter works, you may skip. If you don't "do" twitter, please read this.

-------Writer's Tutorial On Twitter -------------

Even if you don't plan to join twitter, you should be aware of the potential use of tweets in your narrative writing to shatter your Expository Lumps. Tweets work in drama because you can optionally set twitter to tweet to your phone, not just in a browser. News Services and TV News Shows twitter breaking news and even Amber Alerts and CDC alerts. Twitter is THE bulletin source for moving plots fast forward.

People in different parts of a theater can tweet or text during a show and discuss dialogue lines, or plan dinner, or plot an assassination (because tweets can be "private" and even coded.

On Twitter, RT means "re-tweet" meaning that you copy a tweet from someone you follow, paste it into your 140 character tweet box at the top of your page, put RT and an @ sign in front of the person's handle, and trim to 140 characters, then send it out. Your own handle gets auto-added so people who follow you and thus get your tweets will see that you are forwarding what someone else said. Only the tweeple who follow you will see what you posted. The tweeple who follow the person you're RT'ing will NOT see your RT unless they follow the person you're RT'ing too.

Twitter is one-way communication unless you make it two-way. But tweets are "public" and can be sorted by keyword, so strangers can converse.

If a RT is interesting, the people who follow you might follow the person you RT'd.

So when you "talk" by tweeting on twitter you have to be aware that readers will see only what you said, not what you're responding to. Like listening to half a telephone conversation. There's an art to including kibitzers gracefully and your Expository Lump suffering readers are kibitzers.

On Twitter, clicking a twitterer's handle (@something) sends you to their homepage where you can find out who they say they are and what they've been tweeting lately.

That's on the crude interface supplied by Twitter. There are "clients" you can download that present twitter data more neatly.

I wrote a long post about Web 2.0 recently,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html
and Twitter is just one of the newer and more popular components of Web 2.0. Twitter can be RSS "syndicated" so you can follow your twitter traffic on friendfeed.com or just follow me on friendfeed.com (scroll down the right sidebar of this post for my friendfeed box). And you can put your tweets in a box on your blog, so your blog always shows what you've just been talking about, with links). Simplify and organize your web-life.

-------END TUTORIAL ON TWITTER---------

So I (who follow KFZuzulo and "hear" all her tweets) retweeted a retweet sent by KFZuzulo where she starts with her own comment, then supplies the comment she's Retweeting.

It looks like so:

@KFZuzulo Or by "episode"=Serials!! ->RT @kriheli prediction on where publishing is heading chapter by chapter publishing #followreader

So KFZuzulo was answering kriheli's comment that publishing is headed for chapter-by-chapter presentation, and KFZuzulo said that means "episode" or "serials" which I know is in fact already successful with certain readerships online.

The hashtag #followreader was in @kriheli's original post. These hashtags are used to let strangers sort the whole twitter feed by subject and find people saying interesting things in order to follow more interesting tweeple.

Frankly you might want to follow @kriheli if you're interested in the E-book business model that Margaret Carter discussed here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/business-model-of-e-publishing.html

So in response to my RT of her RT, @KFZuzulo asked me a question that looked like so:

KFZuzulo @JLichtenberg Do you think serials can work via e-publishing?

And I replied with a #followfriday hashtag because it was Friday and thus the hashtag was "allowed" by protocol. #followfriday means I recommend that other Tweeple should follow @KFZuzulo who is Kellyann Zuzulo who supplied us with a Guest Post here on this blog
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/living-with-fatal-flaw.html
My reply to her looked like this:

@KFZuzulo Serials working in E-publishing? THAT's a blog topic not 140C's I'll try to cover it #followfriday @KFZuzulo

Another feature twitter has is that you can sort the feed so you can see any post with your handle in it. I'm @jlichtenberg and you can find me at
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Though twitter allows for private Direct Messages, all these posts I've mentioned went to all our followers, in aggregate, probably over 3,000 tweeple.

So my answer is much more than the 140 characters limit on twitter.com

1) My answer is related to the difference between Knowledge and Wisdom (oy, she's waxing metaphysical again!)

2) My answer is related to the history of the media in all its glorious forms.

3) My answer is related to the 4-generation rule (unto the 4th generation); it takes 4 generations to effect a basic cultural change.

4) My answer is related to my blog post here "I Love Web 2.0"
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

Let's do those points in reverse order.

4) Technology is the natural place to start since this is a question about E-publishing, a new form of delivery system for fiction.

We've finally got handheld screens that are legible to most people, and not most but a lot of people are used to cell phones with some "features" like web access (called smart phones). I read e-books on a PALM TX which has wi-fi access to the internet if there's a hotspot. But it's not a phone and doesn't have wireless access to the internet. I have a phone that does have wireless access to the internet, but it doesn't have a download for mobipocket reader which is the one I use.

And of course, we now have the electronic paper display used by Amazon's Kindle that pleases a lot of other people. Sony and others are making readers, and building in wi-fi or wireless capabilities to make it easy to download e-books and newspapers.

Some new, lower-energy-consuming chips are revolutionizing the palm top market, (with more innovations on the market next year) so we are very close to solving the tech problems and dumbing down the machinery so anyone can use it. At the same time smart-devices like smart-phones are smarting-up the users. Generally, you like what you're used to and you like new things that are easier than you're used to.

I covered a lot of the Cloud Computing and interactivity on the web in my "I Love Web 2.0" post, so we won't go over that again. Just remember it and think about the rising tide of CHANGE sweeping over us. At the same time, think about why Science Fiction is a shrinking genre while SFRomance is a growing genre.

(Though I have to admit EUREKA's use of smart-roads and boson-clouds as a landing field for a crash-down of a space ship is pure SF at its best! TV Shows like EUREKA (on scyfy channel) are also smarting up the users.)

Smarting-up the users is where the 4-generation rule comes into play.

Here's where you should either read or remember Alvin Toffler's first book, FUTURE SHOCK. The point he made is still valid, and much of what he predicted has already come true (the rest seems on the way).


Humans are hardwired to tolerate only so much change. A person can make only so many "decisions" (a brain function as much as it is a mental function) per day. As you age, you can tolerate change less and less, make fewer decisions per day. Read Toffler's book for the full explanation. And trust me, to understand the e-book publishing potential, you need to read FUTURE SHOCK. It's not out-dated (yet).

The result of this purely physical nervous system limitation of humans to make major changes in the way they think and do things during a single lifetime is the 4-Generation rule. It takes nearly 80 years at the very least to make a major change to a culture.

A recent study revealed that multi-tasking (the tempo of the modern world) actually chips away at efficiency and productivity.

Here's an article:
http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

---------QUOTE-------------
The measurements revealed that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks, so it took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs also were greater when subjects switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar. They got "up to speed" faster when they switched to tasks they knew better, an observation that may lead to interfaces designed to help overcome people's innate cognitive limitations.

---------END QUOTE---------

So the last word on the tech underpinnings of the new Fiction Delivery System has not been posted! But the culture is changing.

3) The 4-generation rule (unto the 4th generation); it takes 4 generations to effect a basic cultural change.

In the last 20 years with the advent of the Web and now Web 2.0 and even 3 and 4.0 starting to show up, with the digitalization of TV broadcasts, and other fundamental infrastructure changes especially integration by "aggregators", we have made several of these fundamental changes in the whole way "the world" works, all at once within one generation.

As a result, there are those of you reading this blog who shudder and flee at the idea of opening a twitter account. You don't know what it is and you don't want to know. You want it to go away, and you can't see any reason why the TV News shows give it so much attention and credence.

Your grandchildren will cling to networks like twitter (it's losing money and may not survive, but microblogging probably will; there's now a micro-blog that lets you use a lot more than 140 characters) and those grandchildren will likewise shudder at the thought of opening a something-else-account.

Through the middle-decades of life, humans embrace these new tools or major changes, shift career direction, experiment with new brands etc. By age 40, advertisers have lost interest in you. By age 50, you've lost interest in advertisers with NEW NEW NEW things to offer. By age 70 you actively resent anyone changing anything.

That's not wrong, or evil, or anti-progress. It actually is progress to resist change! It's progress toward stability, and valuing what progress has already been made more highly than progress that might (or might not) yet be made.

The 70-something's aversion to rapid change is nature's way of stabilizing society because at a certain rate of change, all society will disintegrate. Humans can't tolerate it.

And, according to Alvin Toffler, we're right at the edge of that rate of change.

What happens when a society disintegrates?

WORLDBUILDERS LISTEN UP.

The portrait of a disintegrated society has been painted before our eyes by CNN in these last few decades. Bosnia. (Ireland almost got there) Afghanistan. Iraq. Everyone for himself and devil take the hindmost. Then non-combatants aggregate themselves under the protection of "strongmen" who bears arms to protect, to ferociously exact revenge so his group will be feared and left alone. (Hatfields and McCoys to the 4th or 5th generation).

When the social glue fails, there's blood in the streets (literally) and starvation at home. Foreign countries see an opportunity to seize the disintegrated region for its raw materials and labor resources. Conquest is the result of social disintegration. Starvation. Poverty beyond belief.

So "society" a nebulous, almost indefinable thing (try explaining "social networks" to someone who's not online!) has a use and a purpose, as well as a structure!

So where does society come from? How do we stabilize large groups?

2) That question brings us to the HISTORY OF THE MEDIA IN ALL ITS GLORY.

When society disintegrates, there is no education of the young except in how to scavenge enough to eat today, and build a fire for tonight.

Our vertical integration of generations is what stabilizes society. Lore. Campfire morality tales. Cave paintings. Faith. History. And maybe above all technology, and the science that goes behind it. Technology gave us flint knives and which berries are edible. Today it gives us e-books, a new medium, and "social networks" which are currently "destabilizing" society while they form a totally new platform for stabilization.

But all this change takes time if it's not to be destructive. For a serious tutorial on the hows and whys of that time-requirement, read

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner Series

Yeah, read SF about a non-human society to understand what humans create and use for "society."

Vertical integration of the generations is why the resistance to change built into the human brain during aging is GOOD. The job of youth is to innovate. The job of age is to discard innovations that are destructive to the stability of society -- because without society we're back to every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost.

So it isn't improvement or progress toward a better world that elders resist. But they do resist.

They resist INSTABILITY caused by running experiments in change in society at large when such changes really need to start on the lab bench, and proceed to the pilot plant and field testing before being released. But youth is "impatient" with methodical testing. It's the nature of youth, and that's not bad unless it is not restrained by age. Not STOPPED, mind you, but RESTRAINED (slowed).

What the elders understand that youth does not is just what is at stake in their madcap pursuit of "progress" in all directions except stability.

If society disintegrates to hand-to-mouth again, and if two generations don't get book-learning educations, continuity is lost and society disintegrates even further. With climate change threatening famine, sword-rattling threatening mass destruction, and free-travel mixing up the genes of viruses and bacteria, bedbugs making a come-back because of hotels not changing sheets every night, and bedbugs being a prime vector for bubonic plague which is mutating and making a comeback, -- those who have lived long enough to learn to see "4 moves ahead" in the chess game of life want to avoid any innocent looking first move that could lead to destabilization in a 4th move.

Elders can see that we can't afford to be off-balance taking a step forward just when we must face one of those major threats (threats that youth discounts as something that will never happen because youth is immortal).

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

What we have today is the result of vertical integration of the generations - the elders teaching the youth, and restraining youth until they get some sense.

OK, this resistance to change analysis is very simplistic, and you can easily argue against my thesis here, but just wait a few minutes and think about these points as a skeletal outline in the subject of serialization as the future of the fiction delivery system.

So "the media" started around campfires in caves, then minstrels roving the countryside singing for their supper (advertising business model), and continues unbroken to Radio, TV, CNN, satellite feeds, and RSS feeds. (do subscribe to this blog; you won't regret it, and if you don't know how to subscribe to a blog, click one of the SUBSCRIBE icons to the right. Try GOOGLE and it'll lead you to the Google Reader setup.)

Ponder Margaret Carter's post on the business model of the e-book again.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/business-model-of-e-publishing.html

And consider this treasure of a post titled Traditional v self-publishing: a false comparison by Alasdair White (who isn't the famous musician Alasdair White, but rather the famous business management consultant Alasdair White). I met him on LinkedIn where he answered a question on publishing with the following totally brilliant analysis:

http://pm-solutions.com/infosys/blog/?p=32

Note that "e-publishing" is synonymous in some people's minds with "self-publishing" which couldn't be farther from the truth. But the e-publishing industry has grown up from scratch in about 10 years or so. Nobody knows what e-publishing IS, least of all the e-publishers, except that it's a big change. Just as TV started by copying the business model of Radio, e-publishing started copying publishing, and has now diverged markedly.

After reading Alasdair's analysis, I pointed him to Margaret Carter's post on the business model discussion among Romance Writers of America members and he wrote me back with the following illuminating insight which I'm quoting with permission:

----------------FROM ALASDAIR WHITE------------------
LinkedIn
Alasdair White has sent you a message.

Date: 8/31/2009

I read through the post you link below and it seems to me that there are still some fundamental misconceptions as to the relationship between author and publisher (no matter what form the publisher takes). The author, publisher, bookseller and reader form a value chain (in business terms). The author invests their time in the creation of a manuscript. The publisher invests their skills (and adds value) to the manuscript and turns it into a saleable product. The bookseller invests in facilities and stock and takes the product and sells it, The reader invests in buying the product and 'consumes' it.

Each part of the value chain is investing time, skill, and/or money in their part of the activities of the value chain. Each is taking a 'risk' with their investment. Each receives a reward for risk taken once the value chain is completed. Except when the author is commissioned by a publisher (who then effective buys the time and skills of the author who then has no investment in the product) there is no valid reason for an author to assume that they have any relationship with a publisher other than that of supplier.

Normally, if a product is supplied to another part of a value chain, then the supplier is recompensed at a fixed value - but very few authors simply want to be paid a fixed price for their manuscript - they want to garner the rewards of the sales (hence the royalty system). Thus, in exchange for a greater potential reward, they risk their short-term recompense.

BUT, and this really irritates me, authors then want an advance against the royalties - so they are now expecting the publisher to become a bank and to lend them money- which is possibly OK (although poor business management) because the publisher could set up the contract in a way that the author has to repay the advance proportionately if the sales fail to reach a certain break-even level. But can anyone name an author who would accept that?

No, the author wants an advance (fixed amount payment) AND a royalty and consider those publishers that don't pay advances as exploiting the authors and trying to avoid the risk. Now that is pure unadulterated greed speaking - but I bet the same complainers are criticizing those bankers who were paid bonuses in the good times but don't have to repay them in the bad - but it is the same argument.

If authors are paid an advance, then they should receive no royalty whatsoever until the sales reach a break even point which is determined by advance+in-house investment in bringing the manuscript to print+production costs (designers, printers etc)+marketing spend+lost opportunity cost (return that could have been generated had the money not been used as it was). This would, on an average novel push the break even sales to around 3000-5000 copies - which, for most novels is fantasy.

The fact that e-publishing does not have the printing costs (usually less than 30% of the final production cost) means only that producing an e-publication is marginally less costly than doing it as a hard-copy. And authors who feel hard done by need to take a crash course in the economics of publishing.

Even with our parsed down operating model it still costs a lot to link the first part of the value chain with the last part and authors need to consider whether they wish to take a risk of greater rewards (royalties only) or to be paid for their work at a fixed price. Personally (as both an author and a publisher), I feel that the combined advance+royalties model is unworkable and essentially unfair as it penalizes the publisher. If authors want the greatest return then they simply have to be willing to share in the risk.

Alasdair
http://pm-solutions.com/infosys/blog/?p=32

----------------------END QUOTE FROM ALASDAIR WHITE--------------

What has this to do with "Can Serials Work Via e-publishing?"

Well, that question is actually a complex question. First you must understand what publishing is/was. Then get a good grasp of the Web 2.0 model of cyberspace -- and anticipate where Web 4.0 will take us.

Alasdair is teaching us some things about "Media" as an industry that writers don't generally internalize. He's showing us "what" we as writers are actually doing. And his posts reveal a world totally different from what any creative artist would envision as the delivery mechanism for their art to their end-consumer.

Understanding the infrastructure of the fiction delivery system, and the meaning to "society" of the madcap pace of CHANGE in that delivery system over the last few decades, we can turn our attention to the really difficult part of this Question: What exactly is serialization?

In the history of the MEDIA, when did the SERIAL arise?

I honestly don't know.

But I think the origin of the Serial relates to my post on the Medium Is The Message:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

Fiction has always been a for-profit endeavor by the fiction creator. The shaman was supported by the tribe in exchange for Wisdom conveyed in a form they could understand and use. The Minstrel brought news and got fed for it. In the Middle Ages, Church copyists copied older documents and were supported by charity gifts to the church, and by their scribe function. Think about it in terms of a business model - the fiction-delivery-system and the news-delivery-system.

The printing press, of course, is the evolutionary step in "The Media" which is comparable to the leap into electronic distribution.

But this one, Web 2.0, social networking, and gaming (interactivity between the consumer and the story), is much bigger even than the printing press or even "motion pictures."

If words are to be distributed FOR PROFIT, they have to go down a delivery system that has a pre-determined size, shape, delivery point and most especially that "value chain" that Alasdair White tutored us in.

The delivery system is the "business" and the words are just the commodity being purveyed by the business.

This is something new writers trying to "sell" their work have a very hard time grasping. They think of editors as "gatekeepers" who favor one person over another rather than African hunters spearing fast-moving antelope in a jungle to supply meat to a Packer shipping to South America.

I wrote a lengthy reply to a Question on a LinkedIn Group I'm on (LinkEds & Writers). I'm going to insert that Answer here because most of you won't be able to access it inside the Social Network and INSIDE a "Group" within that Social Network. Most readers can skip this insert. I'm mostly just sending the new writers to absorb Alasdair White's post on publishing as a business.

-----------FROM Q&A on LINKEDIN.COM LINKEDS&WRITERS----------

Q: I just distilled and posted an email I got from a very disgruntled young writer. It's a rant about the industry - what would you advise this writer?

Here's the transcribed email
http://ontext.com/2009/08/beginning-writer-bitches-publishing-industry/

A: (by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - there are well over 30 Answers so far -- I'm editing mine down)

I have encountered this "beginning writer's rant" that has echoed down the ages.

Beginner Commercial Artists are both right and wrong because they don't understand what they are doing or what the "industry" does or should do, but they do understand that what the industry is doing is wrong somehow, inadequate or philosophically askew.

I'm in a discussion with another LinkedIn member who answered a question on self-publishing with a marvelous analysis of the business models of publishing of all sorts.

His name is Alasdair White (but he isn't the famous Scottish musician).

I saw his answer to a question on LinkedIn and urged him to post it on a blog where anyone could get at it so I could point people at it. I mentioned it on twitter and made White a new fan out of a publisher.

The blog entry is here:
http://pm-solutions.com/infosys/blog/?p=32

Then I linked to White's post in a blog I will post on Tuesday Sept. 1, 2009. I'm a writer and co-blog with other writers on the craft and the industry, with a lot of beginning writers among our readers. My day to post is Tuesday.

I told Alasdair White that I would post a link to his blog, and pointed him to a post on the co-blog about an argument among Romance Writers of America members regarding the status of e-publishing.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/business-model-of-e-publishing.html

Alasdair kindly read that entry by my co-blogger Margaret Carter, and emailed me a lengthy and brilliant answer which I am going to ask if I can insert into my blog with a link to his. But I found this question first.

I think this discussion and analysis of publishing as a business from the management point of view that Alasdair brings to it (and his exemplary articulateness) is just the vision that new authors in the "rant" stage need the most.

Armed with this view of art as commodity, and understanding publishing (or video or TV or other media) as a business that must be managed, a new writer in the throes of The Rant may be able to found his own publishing business and serve his own target audience, or perhaps become the dominant player in the entire Entertainment Delivery System.

I am convinced our Fiction Delivery System is massively out of kilter and about to break. I think it should break. We are entering a new era and need an entirely new Fiction Delivery System.

However, the principles Alasdair so succinctly gives us in plain layman's language, will prevail. Nobody who attempts to create the new Fiction Delivery System can succeed without a full grasp of this picture.

Alasdair gives us the view from outside that artists need to make the leap from Art to Commercial Art.
-----------------END QUOTE FROM Q&A-------------

So again, what has this to do with where Serialization came from and where it's going?

We have serialization because the STORY we want to send down that value-chain delivery system channel is larger than the channel, so we have to break it into pieces (just as an email or web-page is broken to be sent across the internet then reassembled).

A cave dweller's campfire only lasts so long, and dawn's chores come too soon. Stories had to be SHORT -- or serialized.

Dickens serialized his novels in newspapers, same reason. Reach more people, don't try their patience with long involved exposition, leave them wanting MORE, serialize the story.

Magazines, especially genre ones like Action, Mystery and Science Fiction, relied on the Serialized Novel to bait readers into subscribing (back when a magazine cost 25 cents and that was a lot of money).

Radio brought the radio serial, and soap opera serialization which became the story-arc I've discussed here at length along with story structure and how to create and place climaxes, though I didn't address the issue of how to structure climaxes to allow a novel to be serializable. (yes, there is a craft technique for that, too.)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/amber-benson-tara-on-buffy-vampire.html

Radio serials like The Lone Ranger and Superman translated directly to early TV. Yes, though made in anthology format, The Lone Ranger (also running as a comic strip in newspapers), actually had a story arc, the story of the man who was the lone survivor of a Ranger compliment ambushed by the Cavendish band. The Lone Ranger had a story-arc mission -- nail Cavendish. He wore the mask so Cavendish would not know he was a survivor of that battle, and would drop the mask only after Cavendish was dead.

And of course, don't forget Dr. Who just because it was only in England all those years before we imported the TV show.

And early film resorted to the Serial installments (Buck Rogers etc) to get people into the theater to see the A and B pictures even if they really weren't that interested -- and that loyal audience then made superstars out of actors like Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Bing Crosby. The weekly serial installment was the value-added along with a few cartoons.

So serials exist because the delivery mechanism is too narrow for the entire story as one piece, and as bait to get an audience for some other product.

The "delivery mechanism size" issue includes the problem of the audience's attention span.

Cave men couldn't sit by the fire for 6 hours every night. Today's audience won't sit in a theater for 4 or 5 hours to watch 2 movies, 2 serial installments, and 4 cartoons (an afternoon like that used to cost $0.50 -- $0.25 if you were under 12).

So today's theaters offer 2 hours and COMMERCIALS. But films are more and more often becoming series if not actual serials!

Meanwhile, we have a trend I've been documenting in my review columns for the beginning of 2010, reviewing many many books which are parts of long series or beginnings of new series.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/

Series and serials have one thing in common -- cliffhanger climaxes. It's only the placement of the climaxes and story-arc shape that differs. But they both accomplish one thing. They break a story into short chunks that can fit into the commercially driven business of delivery and parse into that "value chain" that White is tutoring us in.

Although the e-book and blog-posting format doesn't limit the size of posts (except for the technical issue of how long it takes to download which is largely solved), the person who reads the e-media limits the practical length by simply not having the attention span, or the actual time to read, or possibly the interest. (Yes, I know, this post is way too long and very boring, but it's a complicated question!)

The generation raised on Sesame Street has been conditioned to the commercial-break sound-byte length installments.

So though the actual e-medium can carry 6 or even 10 hours of reading in one download, the longer the piece the smaller the audience.

One thing all writers agree on. The objective is to reach a larger audience, the bigger the better. That's why microblogging like Twitter is burgeoning and the quality of a tweeter is measured by the number of followers, and their followers rather than the information density of the tweets put out.

The children of the Sesame Street generation and their children now, are jittery nervous wrecks compared to readers of the Elizabethan era.

The expository lump was regarded as richness in the Elizabethan era, and practiced as an artform (really! I studied it as an artform in High School where it was revered!) Today the expository lump is anathema.

So serialization leaves you with the problem of "What Has Gone Before." The e-serial can solve this with a hyperlink! But most readers won't follow the link.

Which leaves writers with this problem I indicated in my first point.

1) My answer is related to the difference between Knowledge and Wisdom

Can you tell me what that difference is and why it's related to the issue of whether serials can work via E-publishing?

Let's try this easy thumbnail, micro-blog size definition.

Knowledge is facts; Wisdom connects facts into a pattern.

That's wholly inadequate, but let's run with it.

I've talked a lot about pattern recognition on this blog, because it's a basic component of art. Here's one of my posts which is about the key question any Romance has to answer, "What Does She See In Him?"

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

Notice how I keep tossing in links here to other blog posts? To answer the question Can Serials Work Via E-Publishing?, I have to arrange those little but convoluted points I've made in previous blogs into a pattern you can recognize.

What have I been talking about here since I launched into my 20 posts on The Tarot?

See: http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html
and follow the links back to Ace of Swords.

The overall objective of my many posts here is to figure out why the Romance genre in general, and maybe the SFR and PNR sub-genres too, are so scorned.

This question, Can Serials Work via E-publishing holds a clue to the answer if you can see the pattern behind these 4 points I'm highlighting.

The solution to a problem lies in the formulation of the problem. How you ask the question determines the answer. You can't solve an algebra problem unless you can state it properly.

KFZuzulo has given us an opening statement that could lead to the solution.

20 years ago, Romance genre publishing shunned the sequel, the series, and the story arc. Each novel had to be self-contained, (have very little if any sex), and end with an HEA.

Each story would have to start with the couple meeting, and end with them deciding to settle down together.

That's a tiny slice out of a story-arc of life, and it's the slice where more than likely Neptune is messing both of the characters up with some transit or another.

Usually, the Romance Novel would cover a time-span of weeks, months at most -- some maybe a year so you could do two Thanksgiving Dinner scenes.

The couple would meet, forget the rest of the world exists, and settle down to live HEA. The background, setting, world news situation, career goals, supporting cast, and everything else was incidental and often not well done. The Historicals, Regencies, etc broke through that mold and gave us richly researched detail from the real world history, showing that the typical Romance reader was educated and curious, and could enjoy learning useless trivia just for fun.

But the main story was still largely without conflict, without combat to the death, without a town or corporation or enterprise that was more important to the couple than their relationship. And most especially without challenging the premise: Love Conquers All.

The general reader would see the Romance as too easy, too comic-book, too facile. Too obvious.

In the old fashioned comic book (not the graphic novel mind you!) the characters would CHANGE the instant they hit epiphany, saw the light, understood who the villain really was, and would act without hesitation or introspection -- and all this would happen within a ridiculously short time frame.

For a real person to undergo serious spiritual enlightenment, character change at a basic level, major maturation, takes TIME. Years, not months. Decades not years. The bigger the lesson, the longer it takes to go from the mental insight to actual behavior.

The Romance often turns on an issue of the commitment-shy, on previously burned lover who just can't be sure this isn't a rerun of that failure.

Other plots use various reasons why one lover can't give her/ himself completely to another person, and use that instead of real conflict. (that's an internal conflict, not enough to turn a plot)

Romance has always explored the deepest psychological urges, wishes, aspirations, and vast issues of self-image, self-esteem -- massive psychological issues.

But 20 years ago, the genre required an author to invent new characters for each book, and resolve that character's deepest (hardest) psychological issues in 400 pages (or less).

These novels would span a few days, weeks, months, and chronicle personality changes that in reality take years, decades, or several lifetimes of karmic progress.

And the characters would walk away from these life-long problems scott free into HEA, as if they would never have that problem again.

This compressed time-frame and abbreviated page-count created a story that most people just couldn't decode. It would seem that the characters were cardboard puppets manipulated by the authors through unrealistic gyrations.

Today that's all changed. (well, not in all branches of the field).

Today though, the Fantasy field has produced the super-sized long novel sometimes spanning decades and generations. Some characters are hundreds of years old already (I do love Vampire novels).

The SFR can span decades of a character's life.

Women in Romances are expected to have a career, hobbies, interests, and an eclectic education. Some women are corporate bosses, and still have Romance in their souls.

Both women and men can be deeply involved in the issues of their world. That means that the internal conflicts that take a lifetime to work through can be REFLECTED in the external world the writer builds, and those conflicts can be tackled and partially resolved externally, or even symbolically, and thus the resolution and character-arc can seem far more realistic to readers (because that's how life actually works as explained in my Tarot posts).

Which means there can be, and usually has to be, a sequel or three.

With more room, the writer can tell you a much more realistic story about the stages of maturation and soul growth any human must go through in order to cement a love relationship that has a chance to last HEA.

Which brings us to the ultimate point.

KNOWLEDGE of what happened to a couple can be conveyed in one of these old fashioned Romance novels. The reader can add the details and stages of development by imagining it all on a more realistic time-frame. The novel only has to convey the KNOWLEDGE of what happened and who it happened to.

But if a reader is not already in the context of the Romance field, ready to imagine the years and years of character arc that are not detailed in the story, and picks up one of these old-style abbreviated novels, and absorbs the KNOWLEDGE of what happened the story makes no sense. And they discard the whole genre because of the "shallowness" of the characters.

The Romance author has given KNOWLEDGE (facts, actions, feelings as facts) but no WISDOM.

The reader outside the context of Romance can't see the PATTERN. They can't see there is a Wisdom to be acquired.

The main theme of the Romance Genre is LOVE CONQUERS ALL.

"Love Conquers All" is WISDOM, not knowledge.

I can tell someone that love conquers all with a straight face and they'll just laugh and shrug it off as inappropriate hyperbole.

They get the FACT that I said it. They have the KNOWLEDGE of what it means. But the WISDOM escapes them totally because they can't see the pattern made by scattered bits of knowledge that I have but they don't.

You can't convey the meaning of Love Conquers All, or the realistic-ness of it, in 400 pages. That's too small a chunk to contain wisdom, though it can contain knowledge.

Artists (and as Alma Hill taught me; Writing Is A Performing Art) reveal those patterns that people with scattered bits of knowledge can't see.

What art is for is to convey WISDOM, not facts.

To convey Wisdom vertically down the generations, binding society together and stabilizing it so the children can grow up secure in self-knowledge is the mission of the Artist.

The old Romance Genre was constrained to eschew Art and thus could only suggest a sketch of the Wisdom that Love Conquers All. To enjoy reading that old genre, you pretty much had to engulf the Wisdom that love conquers all before you started reading.

The new Romance Genre has had the shackles taken off by competition from e-publishing, just as women threw off the shackles of second-class citizenship in the 1970's. That was nearly 40 years ago. 2 X 20 years ago. We're HALFWAY through the 4 generations needed to make this change.

The new Romance Genre may lead us through the second half of this transition because of the advent of (#4 of my points) TECHNOLOGY.

Web 2.0, interactivity, RSS feeds, blogs, all these tools of distribution and publicity, are a new delivery system constrained by the audience to the short-take and the sound-byte. The YouTube video says it all in 90 seconds or less. Usually much less.

Structure the story into SCENES as I described in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

The Love Conquers All romance novel SERIES or SERIALIZATION is uniquely suited to convey this intangible, unbelievable but vital bit of wisdom to younger generations because now you can tell your whole story, raise understanding of the rich complexity of identity and relationship, and then connect your data points into a pattern your artist's eye sees.

That pattern seen by the artist, encoded into fiction, and conveyed to the non-artist is Wisdom. And that Wisdom is the "Value" you contribute to Alasdair White's "Value Chain."

So with online technology you can tell a story that spans a long enough time-frame that the psychological changes your characters undergo seem realistic, convincing, maybe inevitable. You can do that by serializing Flash Gordon style -- or maybe invent an entirely new style.

With the 6 tricks of scene structure, you can block your scenes and connect them into neat chapters that will each start with a powerful narrative hook and end with a cliff hanger fraught with questions about what will happen next. Somebody please remind me to do a Part 3 to the scene structure series covering serialization.

With serialization giving you enough space to develop the details of step-wise psychological change, you can tell a Romance to anti-Romance readers and make them believe every word.

It's all about enough space to tell the story, and as our ancestor storytellers have taught us, the way to get more space is to serialize and serialization turns knowledge of isolated facts into the rich tapestry of wisdom.

Love Conquers All as knowledge is worthless. As wisdom, it is priceless.

You can deliver that payload of wisdom, even or maybe especially, in the e-published serialization, whether it's self-published, or in a newsletter or e-zine, or by a volume e-publisher or a big trade publisher.  But whatever method you adopt, Aladair White's wisdom about the "Value-Chain" has to be applied. 

That Value Chain concept is an Ancient Wisdom we all need to grasp. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg