Theme-Plot Integration Part 3: Fallacy Analysis

This is Part 3 of Theme-Plot Integration, and here we'll look at some glaring fallacies in our world.

Previous Parts are here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html


I'm collecting stuff here for future reference on the aftermath of Election 2012 - and what all that has to do with THEME-PLOT Integration.  In this part of the series on Theme-Plot Integration we're using the classic "fallacy" as the focus of the exercise. 

Here are websites that may still be available with statistics on the Election.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-election-results/#

http://nation.foxnews.com/2012-presidential-election/2012/11/07/fox-exit-poll-summary-2012-presidential-election

I just happened to click on a fox link and found these by accident -- nice technology, but CNN is probably better. 

Here's a DICK MORRIS newsletter:

http://www.dickmorris.com/why-i-was-wrong/

Read what he thinks led him astray in predicting the outcome of Election 2012 which differs so markedly from what he predicted. 

Morris highlights is important stuff about how fallacies work in drama illustrated in a real-world context.  Here he's digested a lot of information into a "briefing" that is perfectly constructed for busy writers to study.  And it tells you something very important about your target audience, the people you have to entertain to get them to buy your next book. 

The gist of it is the same comment I saw on CNN from their somewhat new commentator Van Jones.  Here's a clip with Van Jones reacting to CNN's re-election call.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/07/gergen-election-outcome-shows-desire-for-moderation/

Here's an article about who Van Jones is and how he got to be a CNN commentator.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/06/van_jones_resigns.html

The United Stages Demographics Have Changed.  

I'll bet you already knew that.  Thing is, do you know from what the demographics changed and into what they changed -- but maybe most importantly, why? 

"Why?" is important because in the worlds you build around this theme of "fallacies" need that aura of verisimilitude to draw your readers into your reality.  Your world must be in flux, and that flux must be driven by a reason.  Why does your built world have to be in flux?  Because your audience's world is in flux, and any world not in flux will not seem "real" to that audience.

This theme-plot integration series of blog posts is pointing out how to use popular fallacies in weaving Theme-Plot Integration -- this is subtle philosophical stuff.  But it's not difficult to master. 
See how I have plucked out just one tiny bit from all this election data and found an element to include in your worldbuilding that will improve your sales?  In this case, demographics in flux changes the politics.

Now, "world in demographic flux" also has to be woven into theme, and then plot. 

Consider that one demographic segment that might flow like a tidal wave over an established, static world upsetting the whole balance of power in your fictional world could be -- oh, say Religion, as a wave of conversions sweeps through.  Or a plague might upset the male/female balance.  Or an invasion of aliens (think of the TV show ALIEN NATION -- but increase the number of refugees to say 3/4 of the indigenous population.)  Each cause for a change in the demographics of your built world points to a different set of themes.  Within each theme, you can find a pivotal fallacy to generate your plot. 

Remember fallacies are fallacies because they reside deep in the subconscious, behind the assumptions that make life livable.  And that is where your Hero's main Adversary comes from, that's the origin from which the Villain is projected.  Psychology has uncovered how this works.  Each of us is a Captain Ahab bound to our Whale.  The whale isn't Ahab's problem.  The binding is the problem.  Those bindings are made up out of the fallacies we harbor. 

Identify and articulate the fallacy in your Main Character's subconscious, and you have determined not only who/what the Adversary is, but also what the Conflict Resolution is.  That Resolution defines what the Conflict is.  Follow the conflict back to its origin, and you'll discover where exactly your story begins -- and be able to craft a narrative hook that will grab a very large audience.

Again and again, I need to emphasize that I'm not telling you what to think about which fallacy, but showing you HOW TO THINK LIKE A WRITER (which is very, very different from how a reader thinks).  This is about how to look at current events, find the widely-held fallacy, identify it inside yourself (if it's not inside you, it won't produce a great novel), and create the "argument" that dispels the fallacy.  That "argument" is your plot. 

The argument goes like this:
a) Hero believes Fallacy because (X)
b) Villain or Adversary believes differently and attacks X
c) Hero defends X (Ahab scrambling to stock his ship and get that damn fish -- or Columbus begging money from royalty to outfit ships to sail off the edge of the world)
d) Villain wins - disproving X (that's the middle, the low-point for Hero)
e) Hero realizes he's believed a fallacy - what he knows to be true is in fact not true (grand angst moment)
f) Villain takes advantage of angst-moment to attack
g) Hero gathers himself and creates a NEW BELIEF (which might be partially fallacious if you need a sequel) and attacks Villain
h) Villain gets away
i) Hero pursues and triumphs having freed himself of the bond to the villain by eliminating the cherished fallacy

If it's a Romance, Hero and Villain might be the couple -- or the Villain might be vanquished by the Hero and Heroine getting together ( as in the Prince who elopes with the milkmaid redefining the King's view of reality.)

Whatever the genre, the argument over the validity of the fallacy is in the plot, and never (ever) articulated in actual words, not exposition or dialogue.  The argument is articulated only in action, in change of situation.  Plot is not about "what happens" -- but about what the characters do.  What happens is the result of what the characters do.  The plot is what the characters do, and the story is all about how the results of those actions change the fallacy they hold most dear.

All my traditionally published novels are formulated on such "fallacies" that become entrenched in popular thinking, different fallacies for different times, and the shifting demographic served by the particular publishing company I was working for. 

Oddly, the Sime~Gen Series is based on a fallacy that hasn't yet gone out of fashion.  For the Sime~Gen videogame, though, we are adding another fallacy and setting it in the space age. 

Fallacies you find in general media always work very well for generating popular fiction.

I saw a factoid flick by me (while watching data feeds on my cell and flipping channels on the TV, so I don't know where this came from) -- that last minute deciders cast ballots on the basis of the TV commercials they had seen, believing those political ads, just the way Bernays predicted people would behave (way before such tech as TV ads existed).

Here's a quote from Part 1 of this series leading you to study this fellow:

--------QUOTE FROM PART 1----------
Here's a link to Wikipedia (incomplete article in need of fact-checking)

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

-------------QUOTE--------------------------------
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[2] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[3
---------------END QUOTE------------

Thus "Public Relations" is a field that grows out of one genius's deep rooted fear of the behavior of his fellow humans, and a terrible need to "control" that powerful and evil force called "humanity."

---------END QUOTE FROM PART 1 ----------

PUBLIC RELATIONS wielded by the invisible hand of power behind the throne could make a NIFTY reason for the CHANGE IN DEMOGRAPHICS in your built world.  It could also work as the source of the fallacy that binds the Hero to the Villain just as Bernays' purported belief that society was irrational and dangerous because of the "herd instinct" and therefore more evolved people must command the direction of the herd -- members of which can't be allowed to make individual decisions about the course of their own lives. 

One good fallacy to base fiction on might be a belief that Bernays was mentally ill, that society isn't irrational and dangerous and there is no herd instinct among humans.  But Bernays created the herds of humans and drove them insane.  That situation would make a nifty alien planet for your invading refugees to come from - landing on Earth to find the same nightmare situation in play, and changing the demographic by simply being here.

Finding, articulating, and challenging such fallacies is the main source of ALL science fiction. 

Here's a post from Facebook by David Gerrold, a master of this plotting technique.  Read what he wrote about our current shifting demographic and how that affects fiction audiences and see why you must explore the worlds he's created.  Remember, he broke into screenwriting at an early age with his first sale TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, an iconic Star Trek Episode, but went on to write some of the best, and most widely read novels in Science Fiction. 

----------POST ON FACEBOOK BY DAVID GERROLD ---

http://www.amazon.com/David-Gerrold/e/B000AQ1PQM/ is his author page on Amazon.  READ ALL HIS BOOKS!

-----------QUOTE FROM DAVID GERROLD----------
I haven't been reading a lot of science fiction lately, and I've skipped a lot of movies too. And it finally hit me after seeing Cloud Atlas what was bothering me.

I grew up in an age when science fiction movies were about vision and courage. Things To Come was about humanity triumphing over ignorance and leaping into space. Destination Moon and Conquest of Space were vivid predictions of what was possible. Forbidden Planet took us to far stars and 2001 was one of the great inspirational landmarks of the twentieth century. Star Trek, the original series, was about a future of exploration and partnership. All of these taken together said that human beings would survive our darker impulses, would learn how to live together in harmony, would assume the responsibilities of true sentience. And it's no coincidence that those stories helped motivate one of our grandest adventures -- the Apollo program that took us to the moon.

Today, too many books and movies and TV shows are about the failures of humanity. We see big impersonal cities or dystopic soul-crushing cities. We see failure and futility and hopelessness. We do not see people laughing, building, exploring, seeking, discovering, or rising to new heights -- no, we see them struggling for survival, squabbling with each other-- not uniting in common cause, not surviving as communities, but devolving into deranged and panic-stricken animals.

I know from personal experience that view of human nature is wrong. I've been at the center of a disaster and I watched as strangers came together to help each other, as neighbors gathered to make sure that everyone was safe and cared for.

I think that since the sixties, science fiction authors have become more and more overwhelmed by the future -- there's too much knowledge, too much research, too much technology for any one single human being to keep up. The "singularity" is crushing down on us even before it arrives. So it's easier to write about the collapse of civilization than to imagine a future where civilization has leapt to a new level.

But the history of our species is an astonishing chronicle of invention, innovation, and stubborn mean cussedness over the obstinacy of the physical universe. There is still so much we can be looking at, imagining, predicting, postulating, extrapolating, and describing so vividly that the reader will be certain we're time-travelers from the future. We have a whole solar system to explore. Getting into orbit, getting to the moon and Mars and the asteroids and the moons of the gas giants, all of those locales are opportunities for amazing tales of unknown possibilities.

This is my point. Everything in the world starts as a conversation. Everything. The conversation can be "I hate it when..." or "why can't we..." or "I wish it were possible to..." or "what if..." or even "that's odd..." -- but those conversations are the beginning of possibilities. Science fiction is about possibilities. It's the consideration of those possibilities that creates probability. And after probability, the next step is inevitability.

Science fiction is about the choices ahead of us. Every moment of every day, life is about choices -- not just the choice of the moment, but the results of that choice. Science fiction is about the results and the opportunity to make choices that will take us there. Science fiction is the conversation that illuminates the unknown landscapes of tomorrow.

That's the science fiction I want to read, that's the science fiction I want to see in the movies. Because science fiction is an opportunity to rekindle the enthusiasm for science as a world-changing adventure.
---------------END QUOTE---------

David -- being the genius I've always known he is -- nailed the core of the fallacy producing this crazy quilt of "results" -- elections with margins too narrow to reflect an actual, considered consensus.

The reason for this -- well, it's for fiction writers to speculate and write about, to turn the problem every which way and imagine different courses out of it, to find academic theories that account for it, to put American's peculiar constitution (peculiar in the sense of not being duplicated anywhere else in the world) into world-context, and human history.

Go out into the galaxy, find some aliens you invent, and explore what traits of human aggregate behavior are the source of this situation. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How To Change Perception Of Romance

OK, the November election is long over and everyone has simmered down.

But nobody, even the winners, are really satisfied, and the people who voted for the winners aren't even satisfied.  Those who voted for the losers are gearing up to "fight again."

Most of us look at "politics" as a toxic swamp that functions more like a field of World War I muddy foxholes than like a managerial team.

But just as I pointed you toward studying the phenomenon of Glenn Beck -- NOT Beck himself, mind you, but the generating mechanism that caused the phenomenon which impacts so many in such a strange way -- I now have to point you to the study of politics.

This is an exercise in what screenwriters call SUBTEXT.

Philosophers, linguists and semanticists have other names for it.  But we're fiction writers here, and we're trying to solve the problem of how and why the HEA, Romance and particularly Paranormal and Science Fiction Romance got such a horrid reputation among those who never (ever) even read it.

I mean, if you don't read Romance, how can you have an opinion about it?

See where I'm going with this?

People don't know politicians, but have opinions about them.

People don't understand economics, but have opinions about it.

Even professors don't understand economics -- they're making it up as they go along and winning Nobel Prizes for it, but they're all clueless about how economies actually work.  If that were not the case, we wouldn't have a problem with the economy would we?

Does that sound like the field of professional fiction writing?  Everyone has an opinion, but nobody understands it. 

Yes, "economics" and "politics" and "government" and getting elected are an "artform" and actually close to writing because working as a politician is being a performing artist.

As I've told you, Alma Hill clued me in to the actual category of the writing craft -- writing is a performing art.

Well, so is politics.

And "selling" a politician or even just a political idea or stance (not even the whole philosophical package behind those ideas -- the whole "theme" of the created piece the politician is performing) works just exactly like selling books.

It's all about popularity.

And as any screenwriter will tell you up front, to get a film over the hump and into "popularity" one must be a virtuoso at subtext.

If your dialog is "on the nose" (putting the subconscious assumptions into delineated, direct, conscious expression) it won't work.

Men (or the masculine tendencies in everyone) are especially put off by this.  Emotions must not be articulated.  Emotional content has to be sub-subtext or they will run away before you can make your point.

Subtext carries the message, the theme, the point of the whole thing.

And that can be just tone of voice, or choice of vocabulary.

Actors master this early.  You can say one thing, but convey another, and the audience will pick up on and believe the other.

Now if you've been studying commercials as I suggested long ago in these writing craft pieces, you already see this point.

The key to selling product in a commercial is tone of voice, music, -- the images and articulated message are there just to distract the audience so that the real message can be rammed into the subconscious where it will control behavior against the audience's will.

That's how it works, and it is now a practice reduced to a mathematical formula.

The Overton Window that I talked about is derived from that mathematical study of the behavior of large groups of people.

Individuals can't be controlled.  But large groups can.  The more uniform the individuals in the group, the more easily the larger group can be controlled -- like cowboys herding cattle.  That's why they're called "cowpokes."  They poke here and there, and five of them can control a thousand head of cattle.

Now what's happened on the political scene in 2010 was the result of a court decision regarding how money spent supporting candidates can be collected, spent and accounted for.  In effect, the laws instituted to try to "clean up" elections turned out to be unconstitutional.  So that opened the spigot for all kinds of funding to flow in all kinds of ways that the general public is not to be allowed to know about.

It's raining on the field of World War I muddy foxholes and the battlefield just got a whole lot more toxic.

As any writer knows, to generate a really great mystery plot, just re-analyze the events in terms of "follow the money" -- that's where murder motivations seethe.

Publishing likewise is all about making money.

Winning high political office sets people up to become wealthy themselves -- and I'm sure most of the deals they swing are perfectly legal which is what lures them into swinging shadier deals and eventually getting caught.

Lots of plot ideas in that, but let's stand way back and watch the publishing field as the color Nook and Barnes & Noble rule the roost for a while before they get shot down (maybe by Amazon?)  It's warfare, trench warfare in publishing now.

And it's all about advertising.

Advertising is the war against readers.

The point of advertising is to get a reader to buy a book they don't want, just as advertising lures people into buying all sorts of other things they don't want or need.  We are now an admittedly consumer driven economy (which I don't think is the best thing to be, but that's another discussion.)

Remember we're writers, and we write stories.  The essence of story is conflict -- conflict generates both plot and story, and how that conflict plays out to a resolution states the theme.  In other words, conflict is theme-driven.

Think back over this election and all the particolored junk that came in your snailmail and the flashing advertisements on TV, the posters and bill boards, handbills given out at grocery stores, and so forth.

Advertising is the war against voters.

Advertising is done by someone who wants to change someone else's behavior to be in accord with the benefit of the advertiser -- REGARDLESS of whether that benefits the recipient of the advertising or not.

And sometimes it does benefit the recipient.  Here's a better cold remedy.  Here's a way to get spots out of your carpet.  Here's a more delicious coffee.  Here's a really cheap shampoo that works better.

Sometimes ads tell the truth.

Sometimes they don't.

Regardless of the truth contained, advertising is more efficient at herding humans than cowpokes are at herding cows.

Cowpokes use bovine instinct to get results.  Advertisers use subtext.

To become a popular writer, you must master the use of subtext.

To "sell" (by advertising) the theme "Love Conquers All" to those who disbelieve it, you must bury it deep in subtext and use it in your advertising (i.e. what screenwriters call a pitch).

That means you must study successful use of subtext in advertising.

The most efficient way to learn something is to watch someone else use it.

They still teach the Medical Arts by the "See One, Do One, Teach One" method, and there's a reason for that buried in the human brain's learning process.

But in writing, the best way to learn a technique is to see it, do it, and teach it in an artistic context different from the one where you intend to apply it.

That's why I did the long series of 20 posts on the Tarot which I hope you've finished reading and absorbing by now.  Instead of focusing directly on writing techniques, you learn by focusing attention elsewhere and absorbing the essential lesson on writing from the subtext.

That's the drill that's most effective in absorbing any writing technique I've discussed "on the nose" in previous posts here.

So now look closely at the field of political advertising and the effectiveness of it, and think in terms of the "message" we are trying to get across about the HEA.

Here below is a brief excerpt from an email begging for contribution money for a "cause" rather than a "candidate" - just substitute HEA for the cause.

Note I chose this one, but the exact same language and subtext are in every one of these fund-raising emails -- I subscribe to one or two from every flavor of the political spectrum and study them for techniques.  (one day you might need to write one as part of a plot, so study carefully.)

--------FROM DICK MORRIS--------

From the desk of Dick Morris

Dear Reader:

Let me tell you about the devastating ad we’re running right now to defeat THREE Pelosi Democrats from Arizona. It’s called “Stop the Arizona Three!”

You can be proud of this ad because donations from friends like you made this ad possible.

The ad is simple. It exposes the three Democratic politicians for voters to see. It says that Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell, and Gabrielle Giffords:

Voted for Obama’s massive healthcare takeover
Voted for a $500 billion Medicare cut
Voted for $1 trillion in wasted stimulus funds
Supported Nancy Pelosi
The ad ends with an appeal to “stop Obama’s tax hikes, his amnesty for illegals, and his job-killing policies.” And it closes with these words: “Vote for the candidates who share your values.”

The beauty of this ad is that we hit three birds with just one stone! For the cost of one ad, we can defeat three Pelosi Democrats!

And, thanks to your donations, we’re also running similar ads against Pelosi Democrats in Florida, West Virginia, Minnesota, Tennessee, Wisconsin and elsewhere. The ads all follow the same successful formula.

 --------END QUOTE---------

Did you detect the subtext?

It's the same subtext you see in every single political fundraiser.

"I can get people to do what you want, not what they want, and all you have to do is give me money."

Now if you're any kind of writer, you've also studied carefully all the techniques used by grifters, confidence artists, to finesse you out of your money.

This is the same subtext used to victimize the retired folks who don't have enough money.  "give me your money and I'll double it."

This is the same subtext used to hoodwink anyone into doing anything that is against that person's best interests.

MONEY CAN BUY ANYTHING.

And it's a subtext that's believed by a lot of people, but it's especially believed by the pragmatic people who pay attention to politics.  The winner is always the one who has raised the most money.  That's how we got George Bush as President. That's how we got Barak Obama as President.

And all the lesser offices work the same way.

It is so rare that the under-funded politician wins that when it does happen it's a national news story even if the office is local.  It's the "man bites dog" story -- when "dog bites man" is not a news story.

I can make things the way you want them to be if you pay me money.  Well, that wasn't enough money, give me more.  Confidence men (women) can get people to give them entire fortunes a little at a time -- it wasn't enough, give me more.  It's working, see?  Every ponzi scheme works that way.

The pragmatic truth is that as politics is run today, political offices are for sale to the highest bidder. (this isn't new)

That happens not because of campaign funding laws, but because of the mathematicians behind The Overton Window.

Here's where I wrote about that:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-i.html

These people are changing the behavior (NOT THE MINDS) of vast herds of people by snapping a whip over their heads.  (whip-snapping can be described mathematically).

Parents know the subtext technique because it's taught by all the parenting books and coaches and advisers about how to defuse the fights with teenagers.

This behavior control via subtext is built into human beings.  (what if an alien species comes along that doesn't respond?)

So one of the elements we must master in order to change the perception of the romance genre in the eyes of the larger, general public (especially men) is subtext.

Dick Morris's (and the other fund-raisers) message is "give me money and I'll make the world the way you want it to be."

As I read it, that is the exact opposite of the message the Romance Genre carries.  I've rarely encountered an HEA ending that carries the theme "money can buy happiness."

Nevertheless, the vast majority in America does behave as if money can buy happiness.  Look at all the hundreds of millions of dollars given to political campaigns.  Lots of it is given by businesses, and they know they will make a profit on that investment as will the politicians.  (Look at those who give money to their own campaign chests!)

Look at the very rich who give away all their wealth to a "Foundation" -- well, even though other names may appear on the letterhead the person who gives the funds to the foundation controls the way that wealth is used.  Giving it away doesn't lessen their "power" -- it increases it.  And the maneuver keeps the control of that wealth from the government.

Control of money, "power" can buy happiness, satisfaction, or an HEA.  But "Love" can't.

That's the behavior.

That behavior is at odds with the professed, "on the nose" statements articulated by these same people.

Everyone says they accept the scientific studies that show health, long life, satisfaction and a sense of being "successful" come from binding family relationships. But faced with an email like Dick Morris's - they readily give money.  (by the millions of dollars, too)

Is the problem with the Romance HEA that it's "on the nose?"

How do we get HEA and Love Conquers All into subtext, then bullet point it into an advertisement modeled on Dick Morris's successful fundraising campaign?  Controlling all those millions of dollars gave Morris's organization (a non-profit) the kind of "power" that comes from controlling money.

Why does controlling money bestow power?

That question brings us to the philosophical core of the essence of all fiction, but it's especially relevant to Romance because the flip-side of "Romance" is sex, and sex is power personified (for humans; maybe aliens function differently?)

When a person harbors a belief that is at odds with their behavior, you have the main ingredient for a main point of view character for a novel.

When you can define the exact conflict between the belief and the behavior in such a way that it mirrors a conflict resident and active in a large demographic, you have a best seller that can be made into a blockbuster, opens-everywhere film such as Blake Snyder analyzes in his Save The Cat! series.

Ultimately, the resolution of that conflict between belief and behavior bestows upon an individual power over their lives.

That is the essence of the HEA -- power over your own life.

People may be futilely pouring money into poltical campaigns responding to the subtext promise that this act will gain them power over their own life.

Since it never happens, how can those same people buy a Romance novel and expect to read how to resolve their conflict in such a way that they will gain power over their own life and thus achieve the HEA depicted in the novel?

We need to move the Overton Window (I do hope you've read my post on that and the links in it or you won't understand what I'm talking about here) -- we need to alter the perception of what is possible and how to achieve it.

Look closely at the Soul Mate concept and you will see that the philosophy behind it, (the Soul exists), implies individuality and a unique individuality at that.

Each of us is half of some whole.  The other half is our Soul Mate.

Read the Tarot posts, or remember them. Here are 2 posts listing the 20 Tarot posts.

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

The writer learns to parse people into characters to write about by distinguishing between what we all share in common and that carefully defined uniqueness of individuality.  Lots of philosophies do this, but I've round Tarot the fastest way to learn to use it in writing.  (not fortune telling or telling the future -- understanding the present nature of human experience)

That Soul Mate concept makes no sense to people whose individuality has been worn away.  It makes no sense to the nail that stuck up and got hammered down - to those taught "conform or die" and "different is dead."

If you believe that individuality is wrong, and that the individuality of others is a danger to you and must be controlled by "the government" or whatever instrumentality you fund, the whole HEA concept will just not seem plausible, realistic or desireable.  It certainly won't be entertaining.

Love is a phenomenon of the uniqueness of an individual.  Love happens when you percieve that uniqueness in another.

See my post "What Does She See In Him" for more on that.

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

The terrible urgency of Romance derives from the uniqueness of the experience of this ONE INDIVIDUAL PERSON in your life.  There will never be another.

That's the love that generates Romance leading to an HEA where the couple mutually and individually exercise power over their own life.

The ambience of "Romance" blurs the very existence of "the real world" around one so the individuality of That One Unique Other is the total focus.  You don't see how we are all the same when you are focused on that uniqueness. 

That "blurring" is the result of a Neptune Transit which represents a very spiritual state that not everyone can handle well.  Either you see reality with utter clarity for a time, or you become completely befuddled and confused.

Here is a list of some of my posts on Astrology Just For Writers that discuss how a writer can use Astrology as a plotting tool by understanding how it describes the elements in us all that bind us, that make our life experiences identical.

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

We are a herd of identical people.  Exploiting that attribute of humanity makes these political fundraiser efforts successful.

We are unique individuals.

Exploiting that attribute of humanity makes the Romance Genre, the HEA and the Love Conquers All theme profitable for publishers.

Study the political fundraising techniques and the results.  Study the popularity of Glenn Beck and whatever new phenomenon personality appears on the scene. Don't study the text Beck presents, study the subtext and more important than the content of his subtext study how his promoters use that subtext.

Apply your discoveries to your writing.

The younger your target readership, the bigger the effect you will have on the future of humanity, so be very careful what you encode into subtext.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com