Monster Markers

A recent post on Quora asked, "What are the traits of ghosts in your culture?" Musing on that topic, I first thought of our familiar depiction of a ghost as a humanoid figure draped in a sheet. Now rather cartoonish, this image has inspired generations of children to wear sheets with cut-out eye holes as Halloween costumes. I assume that idea originated with the white shrouds in which corpses used to be buried. In A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Marley's ghost wears his burial garb, complete with a wrapper around the chin to keep his jaw closed. Otherwise, ghosts in the British and American tradition tend to look the same as they did in life. Hamlet's father appears "in his habit as he lived." We can tell they're ghosts only if they vanish before our eyes, walk through objects, or become transparent. In many legends, they display the wounds of violent death, perhaps carrying their severed heads if they died by beheading.

Other cultures have different concepts of spirit apparitions. Among the many categories of Chinese ghosts, some have "mouths like burning torches," "mouths no bigger than needles," or "hair like iron needles" (from Wikipedia, "Ghosts in Chinese Culture"). The supernatural status of beings like those would be hard to miss! There's a ghost in Bengal that takes the form of an owl and another that appears as a ball of fire like a will-o-the-wisp.

Japanese ghosts—yurei—typically have white clothing and black hair. They may be accompanied by floating flames of blue, green, or purple. Most often, they don't have feet. In anime, we can recognize a ghost by the fact that its bodily form fades to nothingness where the legs and feet should be.

In American popular culture, we have conventional ways of recognizing other kinds of supernatural beings. A character who never seems to eat, seldom or never appears in company during the day, and recoils from religious objects might be a vampire. If several unexplained "wild animal attacks" have occurred locally, the person who has hairs in his palms, eyebrows that meet over the nose, and/or two fingers of the same length (typically the index finger and the one next to it) is the logical suspect to be the werewolf, especially if he or she consistently disappears on nights of full moons. Sometimes a fiction author can use traits such as these as red herrings, to point readers toward a supposed vampire or werewolf while another character is the true villain or something altogether different is going on.

During the witch hunts of the early modern period, if a person suddenly fell ill or suffered the unexplained loss of valuable livestock or other property, accusing someone of malicious magic seemed the logical response. A remembered curse from a neighbor (usually a woman, most often one who was already disliked) shortly before the stroke of misfortune could lead to examining her for evidence of witchcraft, such as a suspicious mark on the body or the keeping of a pet that might be a demonic familiar in disguise. In fiction, these "proofs" might be reliable, some other character might be the real witch, or there might be no actual magic at work after all. When as a child I read Elizabeth George Speare's classic THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, I was quite disappointed to find that there's no genuine witch in the story. The book is a realistic historical novel about accepting differences, and the titular character is a kindly widow ostracized because she's a Quaker.

In my recent story "Spooky Tutti Frutti," I expect readers to figure out the nature of the ghost long before the protagonist makes that discovery. The title includes an obvious hint, for one thing. The mysterious girl tends to disappear abruptly when the protagonist's back is turned, and she acts clueless about common features of contemporary life. I hope the readers will enjoy waiting for their suspicions to be confirmed.

Spooky Tutti Frutti

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 41, Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio - Fan Fiction Styling Has Gone Mainstream

Reviews 41

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio

Fan Fiction Styling Has Gone Mainstream 

Reviews posts have not yet been gathered into an index.  Find them by searching author or title or Reviews or reviews.

Today we'll look at a huge, long, novel launching a new series THE SUN EATER Book One, Empire of Silence.

Here it is on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Silence-Eater-Christopher-Ruocchio-ebook/dp/B07693PKH7/

You'll probably want the Kindle version because the font in the hardcover is rather small and crammed -- for a reason we'll be discussing here.

So as I was reading this book (all of it; it is a page turner!), I was also involved in editing the second book in a Trilogy in my Sime~Gen Universe, and there's a relevant story in that comparison.

This back-stage story I want to tell you is relevant to spotting trends in Publishing and figuring out their origins.

I have been involved in fanfic since I was in 7th Grade, wrote novels when I was in High School and college (thankfully unpublished), and dove right into Star Trek fandom when I first saw it because friends from Science Fiction fandom (Bjo Trimble among them) were pounding the table about this wonderful TV Series (yes, it was and is wonderful!)

So I wrote the non-fiction book, STAR TREK LIVES!

precisely to introduce the general public (non-science fiction readers who loved Star Trek) to fanfic.

I aimed to rip aside the veil of contempt with which the general public shrouded all science fiction -- "kiddie crap" worthy only of comic derision.

I (and a cast of millions) blew the lid on Star Trek fanfic, and the world has changed.

As evidence that Star Trek had done something on TV that no previous Radio or TV drama had ever done, I footnoted my novel HOUSE OF ZEOR.

House of Zeor was at that time the first novel (but not first story) to be published in the Sime~Gen Series ( Sime/Gen was the logo then, but later changed by the fans to avoid the inaccurate "/" designation).

And it turned out I was correct in pinpointing the unique element in Star Trek's appeal.

I had designed HOUSE OF ZEOR to appeal to the Star Trek fans who most loved the Spock Character, and to touch the same creative nerve that the broadcast TV series touched in them.

And as predicted, many Star Trek fans wrote Sime~Gen fanfic -- at one time there were 5 regular Sime~Gen fanzines being published offset and/or mimeo.

We have most of that fanfic posted for free reading on simegen.com.

My ambition was always to bring those fanfic writers -- and their original "take" on Sime~Gen -- to the wider readership who buy professionally published novels.

And we are doing that right now -- as I'm reading the currently published Hardcovers such as EMPIRE OF SILENCE from DAW books (which also first published several Sime~Gen novels in Mass Market Paperback originals.

So as Wildside picked up the Sime~Gen backlist, and also published the several novels that got swallowed in publishing house collapses later retrieved, we went ahead with our fanfic writers to put out the first anthology of original fan written stories (some from the old fanzines rewritten, and some brand new ideas the writers have had after years of writing Star Trek fanfic).

 Now we are bringing up a masterful trilogy by Mary Lou Mendum, completely rewritten to step onto the main historical TIMELINE of the Universe, presenting the detailed narrative of how certain oddball personalities become positioned to move History forward (quite by haphazard accident, you know) while struggling to do Good For Humanity.

FEAR AND COURAGE on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014TDP8JQ/


That is THE CLEAR SPRINGS CHRONICLES - Book One is now available, and we were working on Book Two as I read EMPIRE OF SILENCE.

And the writing lesson is all about STYLE.  The fanfic style, targeting an audience of those already steeped in the mythos of a fictional world (like Star Trek, Star Wars, vs. the professional writing style targeting a broad, or gigantic viewership.

CLEAR SPRINGS CHRONICLES on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N383GS2/

Jean Lorrah, who joined Sime~Gen with her first published novel, FIRST CHANNEL (the third published in the series),

...has since been studying screenwriting craft and marketing screenplays (even won an award for it), and has fully internalized the terse, to-the-point, not-one-second of viewer time wasted or distracted with detail, STYLE required to tell a story visually.  We were taught this style by Traditional Publishing's major editors, but visual story telling requires an even higher precision styling.  Reading the SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting retrains the story crafting to the broadest of all audiences (the 4-bagger).

FIRST CHANNEL on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OYUFN0/

To broaden an appeal to a wider audience, ELIMINATE DETAIL, and "BTW" events, and decorative additions (detailed description etc).  Put all that information in the plot.

The more TERSE the style, and the more clean and definitive the scene structure, the broader the potential audience.

SAVE THE CAT! on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Blake-Snyder-ebook/dp/B00340ESIS/

That is true today -- but may not be true 20 years from now (say 2029).

The force moving to this direction of more lazy plotting, more larded on irrelevant detail, is the force that is making audiences for anything SMALLER (e.g. fragmenting the monolothic TV audience which had only 3 TV stations that broadcast only 4 hours a night).

That is STREAMING.  All the different mega-giants in this industry of episodic story-telling (Netflix, Amazon - retailers of fiction) are trying all sorts of different topics, formats and styles that "narrow-cast" or more directly target a sensitive area of a small audience (creating fans).

In STAR TREK LIVES! I called that "the Tailored Effect" which is what made Spock fans love the show and never notice McCoy and Kirk (and Chekov) were equally mysterious and interesting.

Nobody calls it that now, but everyone is using that basic principle -- that the narrower your audience, the more intense their pleasure and resulting "glued to the page" behavior.

In other words, what is "popular" or "Mass Market" must, necessarily eliminate exactly what you most want in your fiction payload.

Science Fiction fans are always "unusual" people -- on the tail of some bell distribution curve.  They may be at the norm in many attributes, but always have some specific attribute that is way off the charts.  Most fans have more imagination than the norm of the bell curve -- are willing to suspend disbelief to read a Romance of a human and an Alien.

To appeal to the FEW, fiction has to be "cheap to make" because it must be made at a profit.  E-publishing, and now Streaming media using digital cameras are RELATIVELY cheap to make. There are still the fixed costs of writing, editing, copyediting, and setting up the manuscript or recording the actors doing the play.

But those costs are coming down, and the means to create such salable items as e-books or YouTube video casts, are within the technological know-how and financial means of huge numbers of people.

Fanzines first arose using spirit duplicators and rapidly converted to mimeo (fans had Gestetner mimeograph machines and stencil cutting type writers in their LIVING ROOMS!!! -- equipment usually then found only in schools or corporate offices were obtained second hand by ordinary people for the hobby of publishing).

So, now, the means to professional produce and distribute (even publicize) fanfic are available to most people -- all you need to add is talent, skill, and will power.

Professional business structures (Traditional Publishers of books, Hollywood Studios), for-profit purveyors of expensively produced stories, are learning that there is profit to be made serving tiny markets but serving them well.

That lesson was the major point in STAR TREK LIVES!  People with unusual taste in fiction are profitable.

One of Gene Roddenberry's major contributions to TV Science Fiction was the art of containing costs.  He did a lot with very little money (yeah, and today that really shows, but on B&W small screen TV's it didn't show so much.)

Now the genie is out of the bottle.  Tiny markets are being well served with stories in styles that please the taste of those tiny markets immensely (but might jar the nerves of many other markets).

To learn STYLE, a writer must read lots and lots of books they really dislike.  It's the job.  The more you dislike a book, the more you can learn to make your writing into something you will like - even love - 40 years later.

What Jean Lorrah did to Mary Lou Mendum's second draft of Mary Lou's Fanfic series which we published in an offset press run of a fanzine (about 1,000 copies) has not been done to EMPIRE OF SILENCE, Christopher Ruocchio's THE SUN EATER Book One.

Jean is broadening the potential audience by sharpening the craftsmanship (cut-cut-cut -- add back show don't tell in different places -- rearrange information -- rephrase more tersely).  In the process, material cut from the fanzine version will be spun off into more stories.

That's what fanfic does best -- compress whole novel series into a few paragraphs and call it a scene in a larger story.  That is, fanfic gives readers who know the Universe thoroughly a whole new perspective on what they think they know.

Star Trek fanfic gave readers a reason to view the shows again (and again) and go to the movies several times.  Read a fanfic, go watch again and it's a totally different story you are seeing.

But to achieve this effect, fanfic lards in vast amounts of irrelevant detail, dwelling and dwelling on ideas, decoration, "depth" of characterization at the expense of plot movement.

Frankly, I like fanfic better than I like most professional fiction.

However, we now have a new audience, with new writers speaking to them about the problems of this new (tech based) world we now live in.

Christopher Ruocchio is one such writer who has plunged into creating a Science Fiction series, The Sun Eater, around a "colorful" Character (who might star in most Historical Romances!).

And to reach and grab this younger audience into his created world, he has not relied on the structures common in Gaming (which tends to emphasize plot, and opposing forces, at expense of Character Motivation).  He has instead painted his world with excessive detail.

This novel, EMPIRE OF SILENCE,

is written as if it were fanfic in a Universe you should know.

Ruocchio uses the Historical Fiction technique of a Main Character, who was the key player in changing the course of galactic history, reminiscing about his early life and how he came to be that key player.

It is the presentation mode made famous in some Arthurian legend novels, and many very early novels in that legend.  It goes back deep into the roots of human storytelling.

This is the kickoff novel creating a "world" -- as House of Zeor introduced Sime~Gen to the readers who had missed the short story in WORLDS OF IF Magazine.

But where House of Zeor is about 75,000 words, Empire of Silence is about 269,360 words and that doesn't include the appended glossary.

House of Zeor presents a whole new "language" based on perceptions that the reader does not have -- yet does not append a glossary.

In my estimation, about 25,000 words could have been cut from Empire of Silence without in any way impairing the visualization of this new galactic empire or the presentation of its historic movement.

Those 25,000 extra words are the reason the font in the hardcover is so small.  Books can be produced only in certain page-counts.  It is the job of the "book designer" to cram all the extra words into a page layout that comes out to be the exact number of pages in an integral number of "folios."  A folio is the folded over unit you can see by looking down onto the top of a book. Printing machines can make only certain sizes of these folded over units - all the books from a particular imprint run through that same machine. So the book has to be expanded or contracted to fit the machines that print it. This is the reason some books have blank pages at the back.  Think about that as you polish your final draft. The age of your target readership determines the optimum size print.

In doing such a line-edit cut, the Characterizations (and a nice Romance that is just skipped over in narrative), and the motivations as well as political concepts could have been brought to the surface in clean, unequivocal terms so that fanfic writers might pick it up and embroider on it.

Cutting, when done with deliberate craft to a specific point, can improve the art as well as broaden the potential audience which would revel in the romp of imagination.

"Deliberate craft" is what Jean Lorrah has mastered in screenwriting exercises.  You will be able to see the results when the entire CLEAR SPRINGS TRILOGY is published.  We are keeping the 3 Den & Rital stories online for comparison.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/CHANGE.html

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/mlm/shiftc01.html

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/LEGACY.html

Mary Lou added the science for improving selyn battery technology to enable heavier than air flight to her previous fanfic plot-line of "launch a Sime Center out-Territory."

At some point, we might post the intermediate draft so you can see how Jean and I cut, polished, refocused, and cut-cut-cut, to make these novels both enjoyable (as the original fanfic) and conforming to professionally published Mass Market standards.

So, by reading this novel, EMPIRE OF SILENCE (which you will enjoy and will probably want the sequels), and by comparing it to Mary Lou Mendum's fanfic on simegen.com, and to the professionally published Clear Spring's Trilogy, you can (painlessly) gain a grasp of how fanfic STYLING has become DAW Hardcover Mainstream traditional publishing acceptable.

Once you can draw the line connecting all 3 "dots" (1970's Science Fiction Hardcover, 1990's fanfic, 2020's Hardcover/Streaming) , you can make a prediction of your own about how 2040's Science Fiction STYLING will blend Mass Market with Fanfic Styles.

Write the next STAR TREK LIVES!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tarot Just For (Romance) Writers Now On Kindle by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Tarot Just For (Romance) Writers Now On Kindle
 by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg

This month is seeing the Kindle-only release of a compilation and substantial revision of the 20 blog posts so popular on this blog about how to use Tarot in writing Romance genre, and all its spinoffs.

Below you will find links to the Amazon pages where these 5 volumes and the compilation of all 5 in one volume are available.

Here is some of the story behind these new releases of non-fiction books started in 1996, volumes that contain thinking dating to back 1972.

While we're waiting on release of the Sime~Gen Anthology, FEAR AND COURAGE, with stories by 14 new Sime~Gen contributors (beyond Jean Lorrah and me) and while we're waiting on completion of the Sime~Gen Concordance, I've crammed another project into this time-slot.

That project is the series of volumes on the Tarot that was originally contracted to Belfry Books in 1997.  The first volume was published as The Biblical Tarot: Never Cross A Palm With Silver.

My original series title, now in use on Kindle exclusive editions is The Not So Minor Arcana.

Look at the end of this post for links to pre-order of the volumes on Kindle, or if you're reading this after September 2015, you can download them immediately.

Right after publication of NEVER CROSS A PALM WITH SILVER, Belfry Books went out of business due to the collapse of the Book Distribution business before the next 2 volumes, Wands and Cups, could be published.

I had written the volumes on Wands and Cups, working against the established deadline in the contract, and was ready to deliver them when Belfry Books announced they were out of business.

I retrieved my rights and set the project aside until, in 2006,  Rowena Cherry​ asked me to join this Alien Romance co-blog she had just started.

I'd never blogged, was just barely thinking about doing that, and so of course I said yes!  I love to do new things!

So when I hit on the idea of finishing the set of Tarot Books with a blog post per chapter, I didn't expect anyone to read it.  It's dense, abstract, off-topic, meta-thinking of little interest to anyone.

The blog was about Alien Romance Novels, Science Fiction Romance sub-genre, Paranormal and Futuristic Romance readers, but I wrote specifically for the writers, not the readers, of Romance.
The first two volumes, Wands and Cups, are very abstract, theoretical, written for the Intermediate Tarot student.

The second two, written for this blog on Romance is aimed at the advanced student of Romance Writing looking to add Fantasy and/or Science Fiction elements.  Tarot provides a worldbuilding template that all readers understand without having it explained to them, thus cutting out the deadly Expository Lump.

Here are links to the 10 posts on Swords and the 10 posts on Pentacles.

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_23.html

The Kindle versions on Amazon are re-edited and expanded, substantially revised.

This is difficult material to place with a publisher because my take on Tarot is the opposite of what the market for such books wants.  My thesis is that Tarot is of no use whatsoever for "foretelling" the future.  It won't give you magical power, or any other competitive edge of any kind.

The Volumes are very short, about 30,000 words, too short to publish as a stand alone paper book, and they contradict common beliefs on every page.

In other words, these 5 volumes are of use to science fiction romance writers, fantasy writers, creators and purveyors of imaginary fun.  It's a how-to manual on fiction writing, and a non-fiction presentation of how I created and wrote Sime~Gen and most all my other novels.

These volumes contain the world-building I did as I created Sime~Gen, and some of the other universes, like Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends as well as the Dushau Trilogy (remember Dushau won the first Romantic Times Award for Science Fiction - so long ago, the award is not listed in the online compilation though I still have the little statue), Dushau, Farfetch, Outreach.

Oh, yes, and my Vampire novels Those of My Blood and Dreamspy.  Especially, Dreamspy.  Are based in the paradigm I extracted from Tarot.

These non-fiction books contain what is behind that which is behind the underpinnings behind my worldbuilding.  This behind-behind structure, 4-layers deep at least, is why you can't read the novels and spot the mechanism that generated them.

Because these volumes on Tarot are so short, they could not be released economically through a publisher such as Wildside, which does not have any New Age imprint.

The complete, compiled 5 books together are too big to be released as one, certainly not in a print version.

Compile the 5 volumes into 1, then cut that 1 in half, and any abstract meaning someone might glean would be lost.  The 5 volumes are in fact a single structure, built to a point.

Kindle comes to the rescue with their somewhat new arrangement allowing authors to release titles for 99 cents.  And that's about what these little volumes are worth to readers.  Released through a publisher, they would be $4.50 or so apiece, minimum, which is way too much for what you get.

As we have been working on the Sime~Gen titles and then the video game for several years, I have had no time to take Karen L. MacLeod​ 's edited version of the Tarot books and reformat it for Kindle posting (no small feat; a bizarre process indeed!)

After we sent in to Wildside Press Sime~Gen Vol. 13 (Fear And Courage), and while Zoe Farris​ was polishing up the Concordance Manuscript for me to prepare to send to Wildside, I put the Tarot books together in Kindle format.

Now 6 volumes in The Not So Minor Arcana Series are coming available throughout September 2015.  You can order or pre-order.  If you pre-order, Amazon will deliver the books to your Kindle or whatever device you have chosen for your Kindle books.

There are 5 small, separate volumes, plus one huge all-5-volumes together (which is over a meg of download).  If download size is an issue for you, choose the individual books.

I'd like to know if these books turn up being pitched to you by Amazon.

I hope to make these available free for a time toward the end of the year but I don't know when or if I'll have time to do that.

You can pre-order or order at these web-pages now.

The combined volume is cheaper for you than buying each separately.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

These books can all be "borrowed" on the Amazon Unlimited program for free, as can Dushau, Farfetch and Outreach.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Information Feed Tricks And Tips For Writers Part 4 - Keep The Press Out Of It by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Information Feed Tricks And Tips For Writers
Part 4
 Keep The Press Out Of It
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series on Information Feed:

Part 1 was on the Definition of News:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

-----------QUOTE FROM PART 1 of Information Feed--------
When is it fun to acquire information?

When you have been harboring a burning question you need the answer to, AND when you have found that answer for yourself, by your own efforts, without anyone TELLING YOU.

Information someone tells you is boring.

Secrets you unravel for yourself are interesting.

That's what editors mean when they say they want to read a well written manuscript that "holds my interest."  That's code for "make me figure it out." 

Information that is kept from you is irresistibly interesting.

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

That quote relates to Story Springboards, Part 7, where we discuss in detail what it means to write an "interesting" story -- what constitutes INTERESTING and how do you identify it? 

Here is Story Springboards Part 7
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/story-springboards-part-7-knack-of.html
----------
Part 2 of Information Feed Tricks and Tips is also on Definition of News:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for_23.html

Part 3 is about the publishing business model
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

Prior to the series on Information Feed we discussed some of the ingredients here:

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

So now we're going to look at the role of the media in fiction, and how to use the element of media intrusion life in a novel. 

As noted these last few months, to construct an "interesting" piece of fiction, one must consider the world in which the intended reader is living.  You must know more about that world than the reader of your novel would ever want to know. 

Information is boring.  What you are TOLD is boring.  What you figure out for yourself (as discussed in Story Springboards Part 7) is inherently interesting and memorable.  Even if it's the same thing!

So look at how today's public is tuning out the information in "Current Events."

That was the course where 6th grade children learned how to read a newspaper and understand what "The Press" does as the watchdog set to hound our elected officials and expose everything they do (or don't do). 

In the 1940's, people who voted got their news from Newspapers, while Radio News was a bit dubious and superficial.  Though TV had been officially invented, and even deployed commercially, the general public didn't have it, and there was no TV News. 

Visuals of what was going on in the world were distributed via theaters where a short (10 minute) "Newsreel" was shown between the films of the "Double Feature."

A "Double Feature" was two films, one with big name stars called the Feature or A-Picture, and a second with lesser known actors and usually a not-so-good script, cheesy effects, a cheaply made movie called the B-Picture.  You can now get most of them streaming on Amazon.

Between them came cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck,) and sometimes a weekly Serial (Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon), and the Newsreel (when most went out to buy popcorn.)  This would be 3-5 hours of entertainment for 25 or 50 cents depending on your age (about the price of a 1lb loaf of bread or a gallon of gas.) Oh, and no commercials before, during or after these segments.  Theaters made all their money from concession stands and box-office.  And they did WELL indeed.

So a tidbit of NEWS was delivered amidst fictional entertainment, fantasy, and humor aimed at kids (but laced with racial and sexual innuendo only adults would notice.)

People didn't go to theaters in order to see the Newsreel about World War II or the Korean War or whatever.  They went to see FICTION, and that was because there was no TV in most homes.  Where there was TV, there was only one to three channels that broadcast maybe 3-4 hours per evening. 

Why the summary of ancient history?  Those people are not part of the modern Romance writer's audience.  Who cares?   

This blog entry is about the role of the MEDIA in Romance Genre and sub-genre, mixed genre. 

Why is this of interest to fiction writers?  Especially to Romance Writers?

Well, concurrently with this "tune-out" of the general public, we've also seen a complete revolution of the Romance field in general, and the gradual addition of MIXED GENRE sub-categories to Romance genre.

We saw the rise of the Victorian, the Historical, the Regency Romance, the Gothic Romance, the Western Romance, each taking a turn in the spotlight.

But it was still just a Romance story transplanted to another venue. 

Now we've seen a full pivot to the Kickass Romance Heroine, a completely different story and plot.  The shrinking violet and wall-flower are still around, and you can catch up on those via Kindle re-issues.  But today's Romance characters are heroic characters whose decisions are implemented. 

Reprints in general were essentially forbidden in Romance publishing for decades.  The stories were too much alike, and one writer (sometimes under several pen names) would write the same story over and over in different settings, with details and characters that differed slightly, and all of them would sell big time.

That era is almost gone.  Almost.  Now there's Paranormal Romance, Vampire Romance, Werewolf Romance, Interstellar Romance, Alien Romance, Military Romance (where the Heroine is a high ranking military fighter, pilot, strategist, troubleshooter, etc.), and women who are CEO's, COO's, etc -- some who are villains, thieves, blackmailers, spies, etc etc. Even hard-boiled Detective Romance has a place.

In other words, the feminist revolution opened up the roles women live in real life, and now that there's a new generation of teens entering the Romance readership which has internalized the idea that just because you're female doesn't mean you can't do THIS (whatever this is.)

It's not happening worldwide, (yet), but it is seeping into every country, even those under theocratic dictatorship.

In fact, the entire story-line (or Romance sub-genre) of a woman coming into her sense of person-hood under the thumb of an autocratic male regime is still hot-stuff.

In the 1960's writers played with the idea of women in the role of the oppressor (the role-reversal ploy). Even Gene Roddenberry tried that in a couple of failed Pilots.

The Millennials are beginning to drag the culture back to a "norm" of some sort.  If you study TV News, (just turn the sound off and watch), you will notice how men still wear shirts, ties, and jackets while women guests and anchors wear shrink-wrapped sheaths cut down to HERE, over spandex. 

Women TV News anchors wear 3 or 4 inch spike, platform shoes. 

And the hair style has reverted to the 1940's "look" of long, dangling hair with shreds tickling faces.

My mother noted, when she hit 50, that all the styles she had been forced to wear 30 years prior had suddenly come back.  She advised, "Never throw anything out.  It'll come back into style again." 

It's taken about 40 or 50 years, but here comes the 1950/60's sheath dress with spiked heels and lanky, artfully un-done hair.

Gene Roddenberry made a RULE for his TV shows (in the 1960's).  Women had to wear their hair UP or cut short.  If they didn't, it was a "signal" that they were sexually available.

To whom, and under what circumstances (home, work, playground with the kids, night out on the town, on school campus?) are we now sexually UNavailable?

The big difference between the 1950's and now is birth control.  These days a woman is expected to be sexually available with no fertility -- or carrying a morning after pill.  Sex is for fun only unless both parties deliberately choose to make it about procreation. 

That is a huge change in self-perception for women that isn't going away any time soon.

But that perception has not cut into the market for Romance novels.  It has, however spawned a multitude of new kinds of stories told in the search for Love, for a Soul Mate, and the thesis that a sensible woman test-drives the guy before getting deeply "involved." 

Now look at the rest of the picture, searching for where this alteration in female style came from and is going (OK, the answer is "around again" as my Mom noted.)

Where we are in this cycle of Sexual Politics -- reflected in dress, speech, work roles, ball-busting, kickass heroines to shrinking violets -- seems to be in a reversion to some kind of "norm."  

In Biblical Times, daughters who had no father were apportioned Land in his stead, by decree of God. 
In Roman times, a widow had property rights and other powers.  By the Middle Ages, all those rights were gone.  By Victorian times, the pendulum on women's rights was starting to move again, widows first. 

As writers, we search for a principle that works in any kind of fiction designed for marketing via any medium from paper print to webisodes. 

Why do we need that principle?

The Romance Genre professional of the 1950's didn't need any such principle.  In that era, a Romance novel was trash, fit for a single reading and tossing into the fire, or the trash (there was no recycle and no e-book.)

Publishers, as noted above, would never reprint a Romance Novel.

If you worked in Romance, you were a second class citizen (maybe third class) among writers.  The scorn was beyond the belief of today's Millennials.

And we still feel the sting of that scorn.  But it's a lot less now than then.  It just hurts more.

Why has the scorn abated at all? 

Romance novels are now considered re-printable -- if only as re-issues in e-book by their own authors. 

Today, there exists such a thing as the Romance Series.  That, too, is new (in both Science Fiction and Romance, as well as in the SFR or PNR mixed genre).

The existence of the mixed genres may be attributable to female contraception, which unleashed women to take over the world.

Or, as some say, Fanfiction (which is written mostly but not exclusively by women) to take over the world.

Here is an academic study to which I contributed an essay titled FIC, or why fan fiction is taking over the world.



What has fanfic to do with media intruding into a fictional world you have built?

Oh, just about everything. 

Birth control unleashed women to finish college, found careers, and relate to men in general as well as to a Soul Mate in particular, in a fashion that fulfilled the human potential inside that female.  This realization of potential found very early expression in fan fiction, where women raised in the 1940's and 1950's sought to create a model of a male/female Relationship between equals.

In the 1940's 1950's and well into the '60's, science fiction invented the fanzine and practiced (and perfected) individual, personalized magazine publishing. But at first fanzines carried nothing but non-fiction written by fans about writers or their professionally published science fiction novels, about the lives and ambitions of people who read those books and magazines, and about why they read them.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/101100368553209934322/albums/5971007155107206257/5971007161129801506

The professional magazine was a main communication channel in addition to Newspapers and Newsreels.  There were a lot, and there were a few "everyone" read (LIFE being one of those, TIME another.) 

Spirit duplication (that purple ink stuff) was used in business and in schools.  Fans used it to copy and distribute (by snailmail) "fanzines" (fan magazines written by and for fans) to fandom.

Fandom was a word that applied not to what you think of today, but to a well organized group of people all over the USA (mostly who hadn't met in person) who paid dues to one or another fan organization.  It had its own language and etiquette that differed markedly from that of the general public.  It spawned the World Science Fiction Convention in the early 1930's, suspended it during WWII, and resumed in the late 1940's.

As science fiction fandom grew, the number of copies of a fanzine grew -- and the larger circulation ones went to mimeograph (Gestetner is the name to research.)

If you look at the pictures of the World Science Fiction Conventions in those decades, you'll note it's mostly men (the writers were men), and you will see a number of women at formal dinner events (where the Hugo was awarded).  They were the SO's and wives,  often who worked hard and made the Event possible, but were not those listed for achievement.  There were exceptions, women who wrote under male bylines.

If you trace this kind of Event through the decades, you'll see that change in fandom in parallel to how it changed in the general population -- Science Fiction people didn't lead this "revolution."  Today science fiction fandom is about 50/50 male/female, as is Gaming, but the purveyors of these story-forms have not yet admitted that.

Science Fiction provided the first outlet for the children of those women you see in those early pictures, the decorative add-ons to what men did.

You may look down on those add-on women, but you might change your attitude if you just sit and imagine what it felt like to be them. 

Very possibly, you are in your thirties, maybe you have one or two children or plan to have them in your thirties.  That's a very different life, and different self-image than those add-on women had.

My grandparent's generation looked at life from that older perspective, and I know a few women who, today, are living that life.  If you know what it feels like to be pregnant, to have a baby that just doesn't sleep for months then barely naps, to get pregnant again before that kid is toilet trained, and so on for 9 to 12 pregnancies starting at age maybe 16-20 years, and turning 40 with two toddlers in tow -- just think about that weary drag on strength, spirit, and self-image.

Think about burying two of those hard-birthed children.

Think about having your body's strength drained away like that while having to do all their laundry by hand (and iron it all) and shop on a shoestring budget and scratch-cook almost everything they ate. 

It isn't a Regency Romance lifestyle.  There are no servants.  And you have to keep all that off your husband's shoulders because he has an even more draining challenge to keep a job and bring home a paycheck. 

Those women didn't monitor the News of the Day via some internet feed.  They knew almost nothing about what the men were up to in Washington D.C. and frankly, couldn't care less. 

Those women were (and still are all around the world) kickass heroines of the first class.

That lifestyle defines what it means to be a woman -- it means indomitable will, keen judgement, crafty budgeting, fiscal responsibility, and an iron fisted control of the husband and his paycheck. 

Remember, too, in those days women died in childbirth -- mostly, that was what any girl had to look forward to as her fate.

Don't feel sorry for them.  Respect your ancestors.

But now consider the women TV News anchors wearing shrink-wrap dresses cut down to HERE and spike heels that serve no purpose but to make it hard to walk around the set as a man does.

ASIDE: If you note the apparel in most videogames, it's shrink-wrap because animating flowing robes, skirts, even loose fitting pants, is one huge (expensive) technical challenge (even though Disney's been doing it for generations.)  So today's Millennials are used to the image of heroic people in shrink-wrap clothing.  Perhaps they are mimicking game-clothing in real life?  Or it just "looks right" to them?

I called that News Anchor apparel change from women in pants suits or at least long sleeved jackets, or dresses with long sleeves and high necks, a "reversion to the norm." 

But what is the "norm?" 

Is it the early 1900's -- the Old West? -- or Regency ballroom low-cut open bosom -- or the cult-modern version of the shirt-dress look?  What's "norm?" 

A writer doesn't need to know the correct answer to that -- but a writer must have an answer.  The answer the writer has (at the moment the Idea For A Story occurs) contains the Theme of this story.

You can make an answer up, especially when worldbuilding an alien culture that will spawn your Leading Man.  A differing "norm" can create conflict.

Take, for example, the "Lost Colony" scenario where you are writing the Old West set on another planet where explorers from Earth have crashed and are trying to eek out a living. 

You have to get inside the head of a young woman raised on that planet to see no escape from a life of rapid-succession child bearing as she meets an Orbital Lander from Earth and sees her Soul Mate step out proclaiming the Colony Found.

He's from Earth at a time when women don't "bear children" -- but have them incubated in a mechanical womb.  Or maybe there is such a thing as a womb "3-D printed" from the mother's DNA that incubates the fetus without strain on the mother's metabolism? 

What would that do to the psyche of all Earth's cultures?  What of the studies that show fetus responses to music and other environmental effects around the pregnant woman?  Would heartbeat and music be provided?  Everyone the same? Or unique for each fetus?

Maybe women have household robots, (Artificial Intelligence as good as what we now see depicted on the TV Show ALMOST HUMAN?) 



I can hardly wait until they do an episode of Almost Human where the AI has to babysit a family of kids while the mother is in the hospital.  I doubt it would be a challenge for him to deliver a baby -- medical procedures are probably in memory -- but you can't program child-care (yet.)  Kids are known for original thinking. 

Would being raised by an AI au paire change humans?  The answer to that could be a THEME. 

Look, here we have a website agenting in-home child-care.
http://www.aupaircare.com/

So you can see SFR writers have to be able to don the mindset of the woman from a world where there is no such thing as female contraception -- and if there were, it would be anathema because the very survival of the colony depends on a growing population. 

And you should have no trouble adopting the mindset of a young woman with a Talent (for art, music, acting, business management, sharp-shooting) being crushed into a life of continual pregnancy until she's too old and worn out to do anything she dreamed of as a child.

But having adopted your character's mindset, you now have the Information Feed problem mentioned in the title of this series. 

Somehow, you have to bring your reader into that always-pregnant mindset.

That process of bringing a reader into a new mindset is what I term "Information Feed."  You must feed your reader information in small bits deliciously wrapped in emotional significance. 

To provide your reader entre into the mindset of a woman who does, heroically, seek a life of child bearing and child rearing, you must appreciate the current culture's attitudes, and grasp this process of "reversion to the mean" that I've referenced above.

Such a "Lost Colony" novel really is a contrast/compare essay of two extreme positions highlighted against "the mean" -- the central, no strain, position human cultures tend to oscillate around.

Oscillate is the keyword. 

Currently, Millennial women demand contraception as part of their healthcare insurance policy.  I'm not coming down on one side or the other of the Obamacare argument over contraception.  I'm focused here on how the media figures into storytelling, Romance Novel writing and marketing. 

I'm showing you how to observe your world and think about it like a science fiction writer, not a denizen of that world. 

Stand outside of human history and look at the ideas, opinions, and standards of right and wrong as they oscillate around a mean over thousands of years.

To write a novel that will stay in print for 20 years (as my first novel, House of Zeor, did) then get reprinted and reprinted by different publishers for the next few decades (as my first novel, House of Zeor, did), and leap the gap into whatever new media delivery system becomes popular through those decades (House of Zeor went to e-book, and is now in audiobook, and its series is in development at a videogame company), nail that mean and know where your audience is now in that oscillation.

Just as in sharpshooting, you have to "lead your target."  You have to shoot at where your target audience will be, not where it is.

I don't see that changing any time soon.  Even with Indie production (or Amazon subsidized production) of web-distributed feature films, there is usually at least a 5 year lead time between "I've got an Idea" and "There It Is On My Screen!"  Very often, unless you're handed a work-for-hire contract and have 6 weeks to write the script, the lead time can be 10 years.

So assessing that oscillation around the mean can be a critical skill for any writer. 

Upon your assessment of the world you live in will depend your reprintability, your ability to craft a Series, and your ability to leap across tech-upgrades. 

In other words, your retirement fund depends on your ability to assess the harmonic motion underlying our ambient culture(s). 

Once you've arrived at an assessment and tested it out by watching TV News, Magazine and Web and Blog News, and comments on news stories on blogs, and listened to conversations at parties (that's an important element -- eavesdropping and keeping your mouth shut at parties to scarf up the ambient opinion), then you park your assessment in the back of your mind where your subconscious can find it.  Your subconscious will eventually craft an IDEA out of it.

Don't try to do this consciously.  A story deliberately crafted to showcase your own opinion about current culture will come off as "preachy" or as thin, awkward, with cardboard characters riddled with cliche.

Also, remember all the discussions on this blog about how necessary it is for a writer, particularly of Romance, to be able to argue all sides of any issue, including hot-button issues like contraception or abortion.  Remember, if there is nothing you could accept as evidence that you're wrong, you hold a non-falsifyable opinion.  That's not an opinion at all but rather it is a religious belief (even if God doesn't figure in it!).  You always have to image the counter-argument that would convince you to change your mind.

Romance writers of the 1940's were talking to a fairly homogenous readership, pregnant women raising kids and wondering if they had the right husband because their guys only wanted sex and more sex while women in that position need emotional support and admiration from their men, especially admiration for their heroism.

Also remember, in those days, divorce was a horrid stigma that followed the children and stunted their careers -- especially if the woman remarried.  Whisper campaigns killed. 

Put yourself in the position of such a wife/mother who really (truly, deep inside) wanted to be such a wife and mother, a stay-at-home Mom with no other way to make a living.

In the 1940's, Unions and all men solemnly believed that working men had to make more money than women who worked because a man worked to support a family, and women who were stay-at-home-moms actually EARNED half his paycheck by feeding, clothing, and tumbling him to keep him in top shape to do his job.

For a man to have children at all meant that a woman had to be pregnant most of her career-founding years (read sick as a dog, weak, coddled because of her "delicate condition" and rendered stupid and useless to the outside world by "mood swings.")

To have children meant someone had to stay home and take care of them (no such thing as day-care) -- no way could a Mom be employed without doing irreparable harm to the children.  A working Mom was abusing her children.  Think about that.  Get inside that mindscape. 

Remember the 1950's and 1960's post-WWII era saw the advent not just of the Living Room TV Set, but also the electric washing machine (and dryer), permanent press clothing, and a plethora of "labor saving devices" for the kitchen -- including refrigerators with freezers on top.  Less time scratch cooking (more packaged meals; the TV Dinner), and less time shopping and hauling food home every day by hand (women didn't have CARS -- families with two cars didn't become common until the 1960's and 70's).  Women cooked, cleaned and shopped by hand -- but they didn't have to drive carpool because schools were in walking distance of every home.

Any one item taken by itself wouldn't mean anything to the ambient mindset of the era.

Taken all together, they form a pattern of a huge weight taken off female shoulders allowing women to stand up straight, take a deep breath and re-assess their own self-image, independence, and power.  The 1970's whirlwind of change didn't happen because of ONE BOOK -- it happened because men commercialized convenience food and labor saving devices because they loved their wives.

That's a Point Of View -- it's a thematic element that has to be represented by a Character whose dialogue reflects that attitude in subtle ways.

Why would you need to learn that point of view if you're writing a Contemporary Romance aimed at the Millennials market?

The answer is simple.  To depict a character that is not "cardboard" and to reveal motivations without writing long, internal monologues, (motivations such as What Does She See In Him) you need another character, and that other character has to be someone OLDER. 

Parents and Grandparents are good prospects to flesh out your main character, uncles and old mentors, elderly neighbors, a dependable servant, a clever shop owner, the cop on the beat. 

Fictional characters also work to voice the dialogue that argues the other side of a matter -- characters in old novels or old movies that your Main Characters quote or reference.  "Those aren't the bots you're looking for." 

Oh, and speaking of The Force, don't forget the role that organized Religion has played, and still does in other parts of this world.  Religion is generally considered an oppressive force today, but one of your characters has to present the case for Religion as the actual Liberator of women.  This doesn't have to come from Clergy, but likely prospects for minor characters could be a female Rabbi, and other religions are giving women major roles, too.  Remember that this trend is also an oscillator. 

So we have these social and technological trends that oscillate while governing (independently) sexual behavior, reproductive behavior, marriage laws, gender-based self-esteem, career choices, wealth potential, power potential, gender based property ownership laws, sumptuary laws, and many other departments of life that anthropologists study.

Under "self-esteem" place all the categories of a person's access to communication with others, and sources of in-coming information (such as News, Weather, Sports, Gossip).

Would the good wife/mother hang out at the tavern to hear the latest Bard who wandered through?  Not likely.  They'd pump their men for the story.  The story would be edited by drunken inattention, illiteracy, bad memory, disinterest in the topic, and consideration of a woman's irrational emotional responses to men's business.

Such women didn't have blogs and online support Groups, or any of the worldwide associations we have today.  They weren't less intelligent than we are.  They just lived in an information-vacuum.

Which brings us back to what I sketched out at the top of this blog entry.

Today, the Millennials and their parents have "tuned out" -- they don't listen to "The News" the way people did during World War II.  They don't devote an hour a day to absorbing the import of doings and Events around the world, intent on their responsibility as voters to make the right assessment of the behavior of those they have elected.

Yes, that attitude is also oscillating. 

In the 1950's Radio, Newspaper, fledgling TV, Magazines, and Newsreels were commercial endeavors that served an audience keenly focused on understanding what was going on, and why. 

Here's the thing though.  When it came to voting, if a husband and wife disagreed on an issue on the ballot, they would both not-vote in that election because their votes would cancel each other out, so why bother.

But for the most part, because women were so focused inside the home, and so bedraggled/exhausted/spent, women believed what men told them and tended to vote the way their husbands said they should.  Nevermind secret ballot, the women voluntarily conformed to their husband's political opinions.  (fat chance of that today!)

The 1970's changed that, and women became News Consumers -- a bonanza for advertisers!  Women control spending in the USA -- pretty much always have. 

So women were "tuned out" in the early 1900's, "tuned in" by the 1970's, and now we're approaching the 2020's (just six years hence). 

Where have News Audiences been this last 20 years?  Tuned-in or Tuned-out?  And where will they go next?  (oscillation, remember - is the mean around which we oscillate creeping because of technology?)

Check the new Core Curriculum that has roiled up so much controversy as the Federal Government tries to control childhood education and make it uniform across the country.  See what your kids are being taught now.

Check particularly for Current Events -- what sources are children told to bring in to class to give speeches on?  The Web?  The New York Times or LA Times?  Local papers?  Video clips?  Huffington Post?  What are the authoritative sources most admired by school children today?

Most likely, all you know about the Core Curriculum standards has been learned from TV News or talk-show coverage.  (pundits and talk-shows are a relatively new phenomenon, too).

Unless you're an activist, you probably have not read the original source material that puts a gag order on local school personnel when talking to parents.  And there's very little coverage in mainstream news - TV Network News, Cable News, just don't focus on the revamping of the education system.

Several forces are at work there.  Fewer people are having children, and fewer of those who are growing a family have time to pay attention to News. 

Since our news sources are commercially driven (except NPR which gets public money and thus is politically grant-driven), they edit the news to be of interest (i.e. deliver eyeballs to commercials) to the life-situations of the viewers. Since fewer viewers have children in school, the news programs don't cover what's going on inside education -- must not bore viewers with information they don't want.

The rest of the country, retiring baby-boomers, 40-somethings who may have kids in school but both mother and father work full time, unemployed Millennials, and laid-off middle-aged people who are in the depressed/hopeless stage, may watch TV but even when watching News expect to be entertained not informed.  As a result, most of what's broadcast as news is really gossip and local news like accidents put up to fill National News time.  They show you video clips because it's more entertaining.

SHOW DON'T TELL is the watchword for good fiction because information is boring. 

That's why mystery and suspense has to be structured by the Socratic Method.

In January, 2014, we discussed how to use the Socratic Method to find and construct your story opening:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/story-springboards-part-7-knack-of.html

The Socratic Method gets the reader to ask questions, wonder, formulate answers, then test those answers.

That mental process is inherently entertaining, and the key skill in "writing an interesting story."  People are inherently interested in their own ideas, not yours.  After all, whose ideas are you most interested in?  What gets you racing to your tablet or computer to write something down or look something up?  The Ideas that energize you are your own, and it is your possession of them that makes them interesting -- not the content of the IDEA.

The questions to ask yourself as you craft your second draft is, "Why does this matter?"  "Why does 'the truth' matter to this character?" "Why does that character care?" Or the Romance version, "What does she see in him?"

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-2-whats.html

It's the same with Science Fiction -- it's all about showing the reader into a puzzling situation that the reader gets to solve.

As in the Socratic Method, though, the way to hold your audience's attention is to withhold information.  There's an art to that, as well as a craft.

That's why I call this technique "information feed" not "information withholding." 

The core of the technique is to get your reader asking questions, postulating their own answers, and changing their minds about their assessment of the situation and the characters involved.  You can't tell the reader what you already know -- that's boring.  You have to get the reader to figure out for themselves what you already know. 

You do this by feeding information one kernel at a time.  The easiest way to structure that feed into a story is to have your main Point of View Character ignorant of everything you, the writer, knows at the beginning of the story. 

Then "feed" that information to your Character, causing the character to a)doubt what they know, b) seek more information, c) find partial or wrong data, d) reassess what they think, e) act on insufficient data, f) get into a huge mess because of acting on insufficient data, g) find out more, h) act again and succeed.

Now, look again at the title of this entry -- Keep The Press Out Of It.

That is advice from the screenwriting series, SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES! by Blake Snyder (of the 3 book series that I recommend.)



How do you apply it to novel writing?

In Romance, usually, you work with a tight focus on the lives of two people who are working out a Relationship.  So usually the media would not be in the story.

When you create a character or situation which would inevitably (in our real world) attract media attention into what is a private transaction, you destroy the bubble in which your story occurs.  The characters begin to respond to the external force of media attention more strongly than to each other, and the entire plot explodes and dissipates.  Various successive scenes refocus on the external scrutiny, and you lose your way through the story.

Look again at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/story-springboards-part-7-knack-of.html

That's the Knack of Hooking Readers.  The abstract mental process of a writer creating a "hook" is explained via the analogy of a screwtop bottle.  When you let the media into your story, you strip the threads of that screwtop. 

When Blake Snyder was in the midst of writing that series, and propounded the maxim, "Keep The Press Out Of It" - he had a weekly blog.  I went on the blog and explained to him where I had used media reports to move a plot, and he agreed that technique was usable.

What was the example I gave him?

It was in my Vampire Romance THOSE OF MY BLOOD -



- which is set on the Earth's Moon.  The main character sees a news report showing his house, back on Earth, blowing up, and follows the story of who did that and why.  Knowing that information, learning it via the media, he acted in ways he would not have acted otherwise.  The fact that the team on the Moon was in the media spotlight was inescapable via the story's logic.  At the end, the media arrive in force, and that drives the characters to act yet again.

That novel was difficult to write, but the publisher who bought it for hardcover publicized it as my breakout novel.

Keeping that TIGHT FOCUS on the characters' developing and changing relationship, and using media for information feed for items the characters would not ordinarily learn about, not letting media become a major plot-driver, is difficult. 

There is one way to let the media be a character, and still not include reporters as characters.

Consider the high-profile character -- a corporate executive, multi-billionaires, Presidential Candidates, Oscar Winning celebrities, people who have the media lurking in bushes and chasing after them all the time.

Such people treasure PRIVACY -- and much of their energy is spent getting away from media, locking them out, walling them away. 

That's a CONFLICT.  Conflict resolution is what every story is about.

When you introduce media into your story, you introduce a major conflict inside and outside your characters, a conflict so major that it overshadows and pre-empts whatever conflict you introduced on page 1.

The theme shifts from what you wanted it to be to whatever the media represents to your readers.

The story then becomes all about the effect that your characters' actions have on the general public, how the public reacts, and what that reaction does to your characters.

That's HUGE.  Beginning writers generally can't handle that big a mess of themes, sub-themes, conflicts nested within conflicts. 

One example of how to do that well is


In Gini Koch's ALIEN series, one of the minor characters who provides many plot-moving elements as well as thematic statements is a reporter for a scandal rag.  He used to do UFO stories that were real, but present them as the usual crack-pot-nonsense.  Now, though, everyone knows there really are Aliens - some living on Earth defending Earth from others that are powerful and hostile. (If that sounds like THOSE OF MY BLOOD, it is like it.  THOSE OF MY BLOOD is about Earth's native vampires defending Earth from vampires from outer space.  ALIEN series is about Earth's native space aliens defending Earth from other space aliens.)

Yes, I love Earth.  Yes, I would defend it from all comers.  But yes, I do think it very likely most Aliens are good friend material if we handle First Contact well.

The first part of the ALIEN series is about a woman who thinks of herself as an ordinary human who gets caught up in the secret (out of the view of the media) war the resident aliens are waging against invading aliens. 

Little by little, information is fed to the reader as the Earth woman learns "what is going on." 

Gini Koch has gotten both the information feed and the use of the media just right in this series.

But take a good look at these books.  They are HUGE -- very long, very expensive to publish and very expensive to buy because of the size of each volume.  That's what happens when you include the media, or a media-attention worthy Event or plot-line or character.

That kind of material is hard to control, hard to discipline, and it takes strength built through practice to achieve this. 

Note that in the early ALIEN novels, Koch has "kept the media out of it" -- and only gradually introduced this reporter character.  Study how that is done.  It is done exceptionally well. 

All rules are red flags in front of the bulls who are writers -- all rules will be attacked, and sometimes broken.  Most of the time, breaking a rule of this kind will result in unusable material.  But when you do it successfully, you hit best seller ranks. 

The secret is to practice in secret.  Remember, publishing is itself "media" and doesn't always mix well with real life.  Some of what you do does not go into books or onto the web. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Acquiring New Techniques Part 2 - The Almighty Paragraph by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Acquiring New Techniques
Part 2
The Almighty Paragraph
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

To find examples of current news Headlines you can rip for your next novel, you may want to follow my magazines on Flipboard:
https://flipboard.com/profile/jacquelinelhmqg

Part 1 of this series on acquiring new techniques is about how I dared to attempt the writing of a joke using a pun. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/acquiring-new-techniques-part-1-pun.html

Nobody can "teach" you to write.  It's a craft.  You don't learn it, you train in it.  It's an apprenticeship process.  The part of your mind that masters all this is the subconscious.

So any methodology that you've developed over your lifetime that works to train yourself in a new process will work just fine for most writing craft skills.

And this one - the structure of the paragraph - is no exception. 

Teaching yourself to write and self-edit, to rewrite and improve each draft is not a random undertaking.

There is a system to teaching yourself, and to training yourself.  Your system may differ, but the essential elements will be the same. 

Once you've figured out exactly what market you want to sell into, here's a system for studying that market and getting the hang of producing your own, personalized and quirky, stories to be gobbled up by that market.

I wrote the following in response to a question that someone asked on Google+ --

---quote-------
Are there any good tools that could help me edit? My paragraphs feel choppy...
---end quote-------

And here's what I answered.

For the rule of thumb you need, find some books from the publishing company you are aiming at, in the genre you are writing in, and preferably edited by the editor you want to sell to (sometimes an author includes a thank you to their editor or agent which gives you this clue).  FIND TWO OF THOSE BOOKS.  Read them BACKWARDS (so you aren't influenced by story or content).  LOG (on a piece of paper or some people love spreadsheets) the length of paragraphs in lines, in words, and in sentences.

Analyze those paragraphs for structure.  Look at subordinate clauses, at dialogue included, at the shift within a sentence from description, narrative, dialogue, exposition (in Kindle you can highlight with different colors each of these 4 essential components).

Now that you have the PATTERN you need to master in your head, sit down with a book you REALLY LOVE and can't stop re-reading (hopefully from the genre and editor you want to sell to) and COPY-TYPE THE ENTIRE NOVEL.  (It's not stealing.  You just discard the copy you make.)

This will train your mind on a level no amount of mere thinking can ever reach.  It is training, not learning.  Turn your mind off and just let your fingers TYPE.  Don't worry about this ruining your 'style' or 'voice' -- it actually sharpens and focuses your personal art.

Now go back to your manuscript and RETYPE IT FROM SCRATCH -- copy type it making a new copy, but letting your new rhythm make changes in the words, parts of speech, dialogue, and especially transitions from exposition to narrative to dialogue to description.  Be sure to include all 4 components in each sentence, mostly by deleting words that don't say anything and finding words that convey exactly what you mean.

---

Given that "the paragraph" is a quirky thing in itself, that differs from genre to genre, there's almost no way to teach it.

If you took Literature in college, you read a lot of books with paragraphs as long as a page.

If you paid attention in High School, you learned that a paragraph is a complete thought, but of course nobody ever defined what that is. 

The world of commercial fiction writing is totally different from Academe.

In publishing, a paragraph and a page is a visual, artistic LAYOUT problem, not a grammatical one.

So your aim is to keep your reader glued to the page using every bit of artistic LAYOUT talent, skill, ability, and Rules that you can grab.

The best way to internalize such rules is just what I said above, learn by analyzing with the mind, then DOING by copying.

Since we focus on this blog on Science Fiction Romance and Fantasy Romance, Paranormal Romance, and Action Romance, the rules for ROMANCE (longer paragraphs, wandering internal ruminations, speculation about what the other characters think or feel, self-criticism about emotional responses) have to blend into and modify the rules for Science Fiction or Action-Adventure.

And then that resulting blend has to be reconfigured for today's impatient readership that skims or page-flips.  This is the era of lack of concentration, so page layout tricks have to carry the impatient reader through the necessary story development.

Here's a place to start as you rewrite your manuscript.  Remember, you can change what you drafted into this pattern, then go over it again and change it to something else.  It is a multi-step process, not something you just do -- at least until you've practiced this a lot.

Set your page layout for a 60-character line, 25 lines per page.

Break up every paragraph that runs more than 7 lines (even if there's a one-word fragment on line 8, put a paragraph break in the middle.)

Read it over and see what you need to change to make it a literary paragraph (complete thought) rather than a graphic paragraph (something a reader might actually finish before answering the phone.)

Check the page for paragraphs that are more than 3 sentences long.

Any important (critical to understanding the plot) information must go in LINE 1 of a paragraph, or in the last line.

Skim readers are taught to SKIP THE MIDDLE SENTENCE OF A PARAGRAPH.

So if you're working up a sneaky mystery plot, a suspense line, or foreshadowing a twist due later, bury that in the middle-sentence of a 3 sentence paragraph.

You want to use graphic layout to control the eye-movements of the reader, just as an artist drawing a picture does.

Now look over the page you've rewritten to break up paragraphs.  No three paragraphs in a row can be three sentences long.

In between the long, 3 sentence, 7-line paragraphs, you intersperse with 1 line dialogue.  (not 7 line dialogue speeches).

Last week in Dialogue Part 7 we did a bit of dialogue rewriting on some excellent published dialogue.  Re-read that and do some of that kind of rewriting.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/dialogue-part-7-gigolo-and-lounge.html

Now you've got your page looking "right" -- you have to make one last pass through.

Because you broke paragraphs and rearranged, no doubt changing some words, and weren't reading the page as a whole, errors have crept in that you would never have made on first draft.

So re-impose the rule that no two paragraphs in a row can start with the same word, preferably not with the same LETTER.

Delete any "And" or "But" at the beginning of a sentence, especially at the beginning of a paragraph. 

Delete all the adjectives and adverbs.  ALL of them. (don't fret; you get to restore some)

Re-read the page -- this is the polish re-read, so check for spelling, homonyms confused, malapropisms not intended, etc.  Check for rhythm, for clarity of thought, for organization, for pacing. 

On this last re-read, find the VERBS and NOUNS that had modifiers and check to see if they convey what you intended without the modifier.  If not, spend some time looking for the exact VERB or NOUN that should be there.  If such a word does not exist (actually it does, but you haven't found it), then insert the modifier. 

Only use adverbs and adjectives where the word they modify requires it because the word does not mean what you want to say.

That's your PAGE SETUP draft.  Do that process with all your pages.  Don't worry if it takes a long time to do this editing pass -- on your next first-draft you will have acquired most of these habits on an unconscious level.

NEXT - as you are editing, check the LENGTH OF YOUR SCENES.

No scene should be more than 700 words without a character entering or exiting (the "scene" definition is enter, exit, change location).  A scene with entrances and exits within it should run no more than 7 pages (25 line pages as above).

If your scenes are too long, go back to structure and check each scene's structure for how it advances the plot, advances the story, and changes the Situation.

If that gives you a problem, read these two blog entries:

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

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

One of the biggest problems I'm seeing in self-published Romance novels these days is SCENE STRUCTURE.

I can't emphasize enough how vital scene structure is in novels. 

Here's the scene structure trick that will affect your paragraph structure.

Long, wandering paragraphs seem to pour out of a writer when nothing is happening in the story or plot.

When you see you have produced long paragraphs, consider deleting that entire section.

The error beginning writers fall into is knowing what the characters do, and just following the characters through everything they do.  That's not a story, and it is not a plot.

The technique you can look up in writing books is not called Scene Structure.  It's called Transitions. 

Smooth transitions are a result of tight scene structure -- they happen because the story springboard is properly wound up.

The index to the series on Story Springboards is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/index-to-story-springboards-series-by.html

In brief, cut all the paragraphs that chronicle the movement of characters between scenes, all the journeying, the traveling.

Cut the part where the character wakes up, brushes teeth, gets dressed, gropes for coffee -- and then the phone rings with a shocker.

CUT from the end of the previous scene (before the falling into bed exhausted) directly to the PHONE RINGING -- or even into the middle of that shocker-phone-call. 

CUT the stuff BETWEEN SCENES.  Every beginner writes thousands of words of what happens or is done between scenes and fails to cut that material before submission, then wonders why they are rejected without even a rejection notice.

LONG PARAGRAPHS of characters moving between scenes are the hallmark of the unprofessional writer who can not take editorial direction.

If your character is TRAVELING (driving, riding the subway, walking through the woods -- when nothing is changing the SITUATION, when the CONFLICT is not advancing toward RESOLUTION --) then CUT ALL THAT.

I can hear you screaming right now, "BUT BUT BUT that's when he thinks of this brilliant idea, or when I tell the reader all about what the character knows."

Aha, that's why I said learn to do this by deleting all your precious adverbs and adjectives.  That deleting and restoring of adjectives and adverbs trains your subconscious to trust your judgement so when you do this harder exercise, your subconscious won't balk.

When you delete the material (usually identifiable as it comes in long, chunky paragraphs) between scenes, there will be some vitally important items that get deleted.

Those items have to be moved INTO SCENES.

In fact, you may have to insert a scene to convey that material properly, but the inserted scene has to be well structured.

Scene structure and placement is like the percussion-section of a symphony orchestra, it sets the BEAT, the pacing.  A scene is like a 'measure' in music, it has an internal structure set by the "Key" or genre.

So delete all the material between scenes throughout the manuscript, collect the items that must be conveyed to the reader, ponder where in the structure those REVEALS have to be placed, and insert a well-crafted scene to convey just the barest hint of the information as SHOW DON'T TELL.

That's what scenes are for - to SHOW rather than TELL that information that you told the reader in the between-scene segments where the characters are traveling from scene to scene but nothing is happening. 

In a scene, SOMETHING has to happen that changes the SITUATION of the main character.  The plot must advance -- i.e. someone has to do something.  The story has to advance - i.e. someone has to learn something, feel an emotion that causes them to do something. 

To figure out what to keep and what to toss, keep going back to your one-line explanation of what this story is.  "This is the story of Ralph's downfall." 

On your final draft, you'll throw out anything that's left that does not explicate the theme.  "Great Fame can crack any character's integrity." 

All of these techniques are based on the redefining of "The Paragraph" from a literary thought-block to a graphic attention-grabber.

Master the Paragraph, and you'll master The Scene, as well as pacing and style.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How To Learn To Write

I've been mentoring an advanced student into the giant leap from novel-length story writing to novella.

Yes, it's a giant chasm, a leap upward in skills as monumental as the leap from novel to screenplay. 

Just like so very many of my prior students, this one keeps reverting to PASSIVE VOICE when summarizing the story in order to pitch it to an editor for a specific anthology aimed at a specific market.

Hitherto, the one student has been writing stories in personally created worlds.  Now the pressure is on to meet a particular external set of requirements -- a specific "trope" if you will, the action/adventure trope for the 10,000 word max story form.

There's a terrific story, great material, fantastically valuable wide-audience characters and plights, and a rip-roaring adventure during which much of the worldbuilding can be shown without being tediously told. 

But though the writer has an intellectual understanding, and is absolutely personally convinced, that the point of view character must drive the plot, the description (the pitch) keeps turning passive voice.

Obviously, it's a major, huge, giant, incredible STRUGGLE to get the writer's hand inside the main POV character and dive into action.  We are on, I think maybe, the fifth iteration of my saying NO MAKE HIM ACT and the outline coming back to me saying "THIS IS DONE TO HIM." 

The first iteration of the outline was a couple pages of long, dense paragraphs with multi-syllable words, a complete brick wall between the editor and the pitch.

See my series on What Is an Editor.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html   has links to the previous 6 parts.

Don't make your editor struggle, and don't make your editor suspicious that you don't know what you're doing. 

The pitch outline must contain the information "I know how to write in this trope."  Whatever the editor needs, you can supply it, no sweat.  Really, the Hollywood truism holds in publishing, "Don't answer on the first ring, and never let them see you sweat.'

This raises 2 questions:
a) How do you create a pitch that shows-without-telling that you can write this particular trope
b) How do you write such an outline and such a story? 

WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART

That's the answer in a nutshell. 

This new writer is experiencing the learning curve for PERFORMING AN OUTLINE.

That's what a pitch is - a PERFORMANCE of an OUTLINE.

It's just what a pianist does when practicing scales.

All piano pieces contain some of the notes of one scale, but a pianIST can play all the scales.

Proficiency at scales goes hand in hand with proficiency at playing whole pieces.

An editor looks at a a pitch letter and assesses the skill of the writer from the form and mostly from the SEAMLESS EASE with which the pitch letter reads.

If you sit and sweat and strain, pondering each word you type, re-reading and re-editing and polishing and polishing your pitch, it will be summarily rejected across the board.

If you are asked for a "story" with certain parameters, and blink and write a 1 page pitch without thinking about it, without strategizing about whether it will be bought, without anxiety or effort, it will be bought instantly. 

Think about that.  Do you want to sit in a piano teacher's living room and listen to a 9 year old laboriously work their way through chopsticks?  (if it's not your 9 year old, that is)  Would you pay $100 to sit there for an hour?  But $100 to listen to a true master render a Chopin etude and some other pieces would be a bargain! 

In fact, one lifetime highpoint I remember was watching Victor Borge (a so-so piano player with pizzaz http://www.victorborge.com/ ) render Chopsticks in a concert hall.

Writing stories is just like that.  The story you are writing, however original, is not original.  It is a RENDITION of something everyone loves, and whether they want to read it again or not depends on how well you render it, how you perform THEIR STORY. 

If it's all about the ease with which you perform, how do you acquire that ease?  How do you get to where you aren't giving editors a hard time and making them teach you writing while they desperately try t save their job?

Just like piano playing, practice-practice-practice.

How do you live long enough to practice that much novel or story writing?

You practice by creating OUTLINES.

Yes, the power is in the outline.  That outline is not a "rendition" of the story, but a rendition of the trope, the scale behind the piece.

If you see a passive construction slip into your outline, you know your subconscious is fighting your purpose, that you are not well tuned inside yourself.

The objective of practice with writing is the same as the objective with the practice of music, or the martial arts! 

The part of you that does the actual work is not your hands, your eyes, or your conscious mind.

The part of you that does the actual work in music, driving a car, martial arts or writing is your subconscious mind.

The objective of practice is to train the subconscious, because it can not learn.  It's not conscious, it doesn't KNOW, it only FEELS.  But random, rambunctious, flashes of feeling can't perform a structured piece.

The subconscious mind does not "mature" at the same rate as the conscious mind.  Think of a teenager, 14 years old going on 5.  Blows hot and cold, bursts of insane jubilation followed by blasts of depression, absolute confidence and ten seconds later total terror.  Now think of a 35 year old who has actually matured.  The same sensitivity is there, the capacity for jubilation, depression, confidence and terror in response to changing situations, but the magnitude of the emotional blasts is tamed down, and the power behind those blasts is used not for sound-and-fury but actual, visible accomplishments.

The subconscious is like a rebellious little puppy, eager to please but easily confused.  The trained subconscious is like a mature professionally trained guard dog, sounding off only when there really is an intruder (e.g. a passive verb in your pitch).  The trained guard dog's tail wags with delight, but he sits decorously until released.  The emotions are there, but they don't take over and dominate the direction of events.

But how does a puppy get turned into a guard dog?

It's that consistent, kind, generous trainer who rewards good behavior and steadfastly ignores bad behavior. 

The trainer shows the puppy the task, over and over leads the puppy through it, then gives a treat for success.  As the puppy matures, the tasks get more demanding but anticipation of a treat keeps the puppy trying to perform.

The new writer's subconscious is a PUPPY ever so eager to please, dashing this way and that, pulling on the leash, jumping on the trainer with muddy paws, chewing on everything in sight. 

The writer's imagination incites that puppy to yap incessantly.

The one command the writer must first teach that puppy is NO.  Then "here, like this" -- that's reading other  published works, dissecting them, copying them.  Get a good copy, give the puppy a treat.  Eventually, with REPETITION (e.g. writing many story outlines though not the stories), with practice the puppy starts to perform well enough to go out in public on a leash (make a story submission to a paying market.)

So I have this writing student I'm taking out in public on a leash, and a pocket full of treats waiting for performance.

Know what?  Life is FUN! 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com