Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes Part 4 How To Make Ghosts Vampires and Demons Real

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes

Part 4

How To Make Ghosts, Vampires, and Demons Real 

Previous parts in this series are:

Part 1 - Star Trek Fan Fiction

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

Part 2  - Find Some Crazy Ideas

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate_19.html

Part 3 - What Makes and Idea Too Crazy

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/02/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

Here is an article from 2020, targeting the Halloween readership -- about ghosts, and the scientific explanations for what people are "really" seeing or feeling but interpreting as "supernatural."  You've read a lot of these, I'm sure.

https://www.grunge.com/162385/why-people-see-ghosts-according-to-science/

The multiple universe worldbuilding for very long series of very long novels is usually done "on the fly" by authors who accidentally write the first book in a series thinking it is a stand-alone -- only to have it sell so well that the editor asks for another book.

This has happened to me. It's REAL.  

It happened to me also on submission.  Here's one story:

My Agent told me I needed to establish another byline, so I thought about it, and found I could write one of the action-action-action novels such as we discussed in Part 3 of Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/02/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

So I submitted a very short novel to my Agent which he said was too short for the market he had in mind, and I should make it longer.  So I added more action scenes - combat, unarmed combat, space-battle, but that didn't satisfy my standards for story.  So I added more story, more Relationship and Character to bring it up to the length he wanted.  He liked it, and submitted it. 

My Agent called me back shortly thereafter with good news and bad news.  He had an offer from a Mass Market paperback original editor, but they wanted a sequel.

There was a chance for even more books in the series, so I needed to add more worldbuilding - creating a sprawling galactic war backdrop that could support many sequels if needed.  

As it turned out, the publisher and editors all shifted jobs (as happens constantly in Manhattan Publishing) and the third book was never sold, but the two hit the stands and sold very well.  I retrieved the rights, and posted Hero and Border Dispute,  on Amazon Kindle as a single volume because they are very short novels by today's standards.  You can read free on Kindle Unlimited.

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

By expanding the world building behind the story of HERO I  learned a lot about how the Setting and the Story interact with the Plot of a novel, or a Series.

Hero and Border Dispute both occur in a single level of reality, no alternate universes, no "supernatural."  But those elements are in there, behind everything, hidden, and easily to be revealed if necessary.

The structural integrity of the world building behind the Setting bespeaks the author's intentions, values, understanding of Real Reality, and scope of Imagination.  

The world you build reveals more about you than what you wear, how you speak, what makes you smile, or whether you believe in God.

And most of the time, as you write, as you cast the outline of a story into a sketch, you have no idea just how much you reveal.

Are you precise, organized and goal directed?  Are you helter-skelter, mess churning, haphazard, and amateurish?  Are you an artist or an artisan?

Are you able to see the paranormal dimension in your own everyday reality?  And if you can see it, can you explain it? Do you understand it? Have you studied it? Are you master of the state-of-the-art material all humanity has generated over centuries of study of the Paranormal?

The answers to those questions are the bare bones of any fictional world you build to tell a story against.

Who are you? 

That is the essence of Worldbuilding -- building a world broad enough, strong enough, coherent enough, deep enough, and variegated enough to support a long series of long novels -- or a series of long stories broken into shorter novels, shorter books, books designed to fit into any publishing environment.

I like to depict "Aliens" -- people who maybe aren't very human, but have enough in common with Earth's humans to be recognizably people.

The question that generated the premise behind the novel HERO -- was simply, "What if an Alien species, allied to humanity to fight a vicious war, regarded heroism as a horrendous crime against their species?"  

What if heroism was a stigma?  

What if well meaning, big hearted, humans awarded such an Alien some supreme accolade for heroism? And what if he/she/it then went home?  

That's the story.

What's the plot?  Well, there has to be a common enemy and it has to be righteous and proper to slaughter them, maybe even to the point of genocide.  And there has to be a reason it's not easy.

What traits in an alien species could qualify them to be exterminated?  (Yeah, I know, so I'm a Star Trek Fan with a lot of Doctor Who included.)

So in this case, the book idea started with a Character feeling horribly embarrassed about something the reader would regard as an Honor.

And the plot, and the world (and other Characters) unfolded from that overwhelming embarrassment.

But if you look closer, you'll see that the World (the galactic war situation) these characters live in make a thematic statement you find you most of my other work -- what if what you think you see isn't actually there?  

What if you think you see ghosts -- but actually they're just real people living in another dimension?

What if Vampires (complete with blood lust and apparently magical powers) are just Aliens from another Planet stranded on Earth and struggling to get home?  

I wrote that as THOSE OF MY BLOOD and the

parallel novel DREAMSPY, and was pleased with the hardcover editions, except for the covers. The subsequent publishers took a little of my advice, and I ended up with these covers, that at least show it's a Relationship Story.   

https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamspy-Tales-Luren-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00BFGG1RO/

What if Demons are REAL???  What if a Vampire's human friend was haunted (and viciously targeted) by a demon?  I have a series of Vampire short stories about a human/Vampire pair who have demon problems -- reprinted here:

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Vampirism-Jacqueline-Lichtenberg-Collected-ebook/dp/B004MPRUZM/

I've rarely used the "demon" character in my own work even though I have followed with rapt attention the way other writers, especially Romance genre writers, have developed the common, ordinary, symbol of pure Evil, the threat to the humanity of a human, into a varied and unpredictably almost-good-sometimes Plot Moving Character (i.e. a point of view Character).

And in the series we looked at in Part 3, the Cassie Palmer series about a time traveling guardian of the timeline titled a Pythia, we have a fully rounded depiction of demons, gods, half-breed god/demon and human/demon and god/human mixes as people trying to just live "normal" lives, and having to morph into Heroes.

The Demon, Ghost or Vampire -- the Evil One -- as the best of the Good in humanity, is actually what Science Fiction and Romance are really about.

You will find that in all my novels -- the world building is predicated on the assumption that the universe is rooted in the Fountain of Love in such a way that LOVE DOES CONQUER ALL.  

The essence of solving any problem humanity might encounter will always be the emotional bond between one human and another -- no matter the details of the species each human belongs to.

In other words, the essence of my worldbuilding is a philosophical idea about the nature of reality -- that all the universe we call "real" is fabricated from the musical note of Love.  

But to solve problems, we have to figure out what is really happening, and ride the wave of reality by understanding what is "right" and what is "wrong" in the situation we are in -- do righteously, and Love will bring an optimum solution to the problem.

So that science article about Ghosts cited above is in hot pursuit of the solution to some problems.  It poses the question gnawing at most of us -- if Science can't analyze it, then is it actually Real?  Or put another way, "What exactly is Reality?"

When you build a world to house multiple alternate Universes where the same Characters live through different plots - becoming different people because of their choices and the results of their actions - you, the writer, must know what is "right" and what is "wrong" in each of the universes and why that is so.

What property of each of your alternate universes (pocket realities, or whatever) determines the laws and rules of righteousness?

The answer to that will depend on your take on what property of our everyday reality determines what the laws of morality and ethics are.

For example: if God is real, and has revealed his Rules of Order in the Bible, then the rules of this Earth's reality are known to most of your readers (or they can Google it).

If your world uses different Rules - how does God manifest in that Reality? 

Whether the Characters know it or not, there has to be a "scientific" explanation that you know for the existence of these various orders of beings in your various alternate universes - Magic Users, gods, demons, vampires, ghosts, hostile and friendly -- for reasons.  Everything that shows on the surface of your narrative has to be consistent with those premises.  Just as in Mystery Genre, you must play fair with the reader and be sure there is a way for them to figure out what the "reality" is even if the Characters don't know it (well, especially if the Characters are clueless.)  

If God is not Real, and was just made up by bossy humans who wanted control over others, then who made up the Rules of your well built world?  What would the Rules of morality be in a world created by "Demons?" 

What do the peoples of your built world think sets the Rules, and what Rules do they argue over? (very hot wars can ensue from such a premise).

As a writer, you don't need to know the answers to these questions consciously. Most of the synthesis of all these variables will be done by your subconscious - but the resulting novels will be incoherent and incomprehensible to readers if you don't train your subconscious and fill it with the Collective Wisdom of Humanity.

You can find a whole lot of different Collective Wisdoms recorded throughout History (and pre-History) and around the Globe.  Set them against one another and you have Conflicts vast enough to support a long series of long novels.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Settings Part 3 - Dreamspy in E-book

Last week we discussed a bit more about Settings, and I mentioned how closely connected Setting and Genre are, as topics. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/guest-post-by-j-h-bogran-settings-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/settings-part-2.html

If you're writing for a Western market, your Setting has to have horses, wagons, Sheriffs, rattlesnakes, guns, desperadoes, muddy streets, maybe a herd of cattle.  The Western Romance was a growing sub-genre at the time Those of My Blood and Dreamspy were first published. 

About three years before Those of My Blood came out, the first novel in my Dushau Trilogy won the Romantic Times Award for Best Science Fiction.  That was so long ago that the credit for it is not on their website!  I still have the trophy, though.

Dushau is science fiction romance without Vampires. 
http://www.amazon.com/Dushau-The-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B002OSXNM8/

If you can sell Western Romance, why not Science Fiction Romance?  They just couldn't encompass the concept.  Editors were convinced "mixed genre" just could not be sold -- and the evidence before their eyes confirmed that resoundingly.  They had just begun computerizing sales data, and they believed the computer printouts. 

A writer may know, absolutely, that there are readers who want the kind of story they have to tell, and they may be correct, but if marketers don't know "where" to reach those readers, they won't try to reach them.  And the marketers are right about that.

I've seen, lately, several self-publishing writers wailing on Google+ and Twitter about how they can't sell copies of their books - even giving them away, or charging only 99cents, they can not sell books that the few who've read those books rave about.

Writing books and pleasing readers is one thing --- selling books is something else.

Here's a tweet from twitter:
--quote------
twliterary 10:42am via Web (Literary Agent who has nearly 5k followers)
http://www.twliterary.com
Author whose submission was rejected just EM that book pubbed to nice review. Truly happy for you, even w/ gratuitous "nyah nyah" note.
-----endquote------

LESSON: don't crow when you score against the establishment, just bank the check.

So how does a market change?  First comes the publication of a daring new genre, or mix of genres, or an exploration of a Setting (Ancient Egypt?  Victorian England?  The Moon?).  The mix-mixing of a new setting with a type of characer who doesn't belong there (as far as marketers know) has to start with a few books that are marketing failures.  Those novels have to get good reviews, even though they don't sell. 

Then comes an imitation or two, and there's a pre-built tiny market.  Then "word" goes viral, and the new genre gets a name and an identifyable market to publicize to.  Then big bucks get spent on "marketing" another new item designed to appeal to that market, and that's when you hear about this new item. 

This creation of a genre is a slow, tedious process, but the e-book is speeding things up. 

To find out how to achieve this result, study how it happened in the past, change the parameters that technology and social networking has changed, and launch a project into that new non-market.  Become a market maker.

Those of My Blood and Dreamspy are good examples.  Original first printing Those of My Blood has sold for $400-$500 in collector-quality condition (that means unread).  Now you can get Those of My Blood for $3.19 and Dreamspy for $3.99 (I don't control the price, the publisher does.)






So how do you think of what to mix up with what to create something "new?"  Or something you haven't ever encountered before? 

Think about popular SETTING, and inject a character that doesn't belong there, living through a story that's familiar from a different setting. 

The same old worn-out Western story can be told in Science Fiction if the Setting has Stars, Space, Spaceships, spacedrives, and space-type hazards to take the place of rattlesnakes, guns and desperadoes.  To be good science fiction, the story needs hazards that aren't now possible.  The characters have to solve problems that can't possibly exist by getting over their notion that the problem does not exist. 

A Vampire on the Moon, in Those of My Blood -- that is just such an "impossible" problem.  The  Vampire is Fantasy element injected into a Science Fiction Setting, then twisted from the Horror Genre into Romance -- another genre where Vampires don't belong  (according to marketers in the 1980's). 

So when venturing to innovate where marketers fear to go, mix-and-match Settings and Characters. 

So suppose instead of a Western, you had a Romance with International Intrigue and Vampires.  But you set the story in the midst of a Galactic War.  The Setting becomes Space, but the Romance drives the plot.

There was a time the marketers didn't know what to do with such a novel. 

I wrote two such orphan-genre novels (Science Fiction Romance) for the St. Martin's Press hardcover SF line in the 1980's.

Both got marvelous reviews, but St. Martins withdrew all advertising efforts from their Science Fiction line for strategic reasons.  The strategy was to publish the hardcover just to distribute to newspapers and magazines for review (because at that time, certain widely read venues would not review a paperback original). 

So they printed only a couple thousand hardcover copies (hence the collector price) and never distributed to bookstores.  You could buy (the month Those of My Blood was published) several hardcover and new paperback Vampire novels by very big name writers who got award attention for their novels. 

But Those of My Blood, a brand new hardcover hailed as my breakout novel, was not on any store bookshelves (except the Independents) the month it was published.  Where Independents special ordered it for those who knew it was forthcoming, they ordered only for the customer who wanted it and didn't put any on the shelves. 

And then neither Those of My Blood or Dreamspy ever made it into Mass Market. 

Eventually, another publisher picked them up, and they did pretty well, getting reprinted several times but only in trade paperback, and finally going out of print.

Then Wildside Press picked them up and now both novels are available in trade paperback and e-book editions. 

There are no sex scenes the way you'd expect now, but at that time sex scenes were not allowed in Science Fiction.  Marion Zimmer Bradley and Ursula LeGuinn changed that, but notice how their sex scenes differ from today's.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com