How to Dissolve Your Expository Lump by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

How to Dissolve Your Expository Lump
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here are links to previous scattered discussions of Expository Lumps.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

Expository Lumps are the product of a writer's imagination building the story-world for them prior to informing the writer about it all (i.e. the "I have an Idea!" moment.)

In one fell swoop, you know everything about these characters, this world, and its arcane, mundane, and esoteric Relationships.  You know the karmic forces, the rebirths, the life-history -- you know everything all at once and don't know where to start. 

So you sit down to write the story.

You want to take your reader on a wild rafting ride down a swift mountain stream, the plot carrying them along with whoops and screams.  Instead, your reader gets smashed dizzy hitting the rocks in your plot-stream:


The rocks are expository lumps. 

You create those rocks because you want the reader to understand your new world so you say, "But wait! Before you can understand what's going on, you must know this -- oh, and that -- oh! I left out...!!!)

There is all this connected foundation material the reader MUST KNOW FIRST.

Informing the reader so enjoyment and understanding will happen later (but not now) is called an expository lump.  It's a rock that splits the stream of the plot and story apart. 

A lump is more than 1 sentence, more than a pebble. 

Very often, the lumps come in the first or second chapter (or possibly a forward or preface), and the longer you wait to inform your reader, the more paragraphs (even pages) of history, considerations relevant to the characters but not (yet) to the reader, life-story of other characters we haven't met yet, and so on and on get lumped together in a block of text.

Here is how to spot a lump you have created:

Finish the manuscript's first draft. 

Scan the pages and find long, unbroken paragraphs -- they look like lumps, visually, but can be description, dialogue, or even narration. 

These are blocks of paragraphs that do not advance the plot&story in lockstep, do not change the Situation in the direction of the Ending and usually are not about what is going on at that point in the text.  They can be about the past, or about the possibly future (disasters or triumphs, anything that is not-happening-now.)

Expository Lumps are usually not actual scenes -- but a misplaced scene can act like a Lump and kill reader interest.  The cure is to study scene structure:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

Any such not-now material should be half-a-sentence, maybe one or two short sentences -- not full page paragraphs unbroken by things happening, things being done, things being discovered, lessons learned.  Yes, you can do long flash-forwards and flashbacks, but those require the same non-lump techniques and a different set of skills.

Take those lumpy paragraphs apart point by point -- bulleted lists work, but use whatever format you like. Detail what information the reader gains. 

The sign you've got a Lump may be that you can extract more than one bullet point per sentence. 

Another sign you've got a lump is the use of complex-compound sentence structure, or the run-on paragraph -- a paragraph that wanders all around a point (more than 8 lines without dialogue). 
Here's a blog titled The Almighty Paragraph in the acquiring new techniques series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/acquiring-new-techniques-part-2.html

Another way to spot a hidden lump is to scrutinize your dialogue. 

If a character speaks more than two sentences at once while the other character just stands there, you've likely got an expository lump disguised as a lecture.  The best way to fix those is to delete the middle sentence of the dialogue paragraph and re-evaluate whether any of what is left is needed.

Ask yourself, how does this utterance advance the plot, change the situation, and change the way the listening character is thinking?  Good dialogue advances the conflict toward the resolution which is the Ending.  If the dialogue is static, doesn't advance the conflict, then it is likely to be a Lump.

Dialogue where one character tells another something the other character knows is expository lump.  Dialogue where one character tells another what the reader already knows is expository lump best cured by deletion.  In those spots where you have deleted dialogue that was repetition for the reader, you can insert bits of expository lumps that you've broken up using the method below. 

Once you've spotted your expository lumps, dissolve them and anoint the moving parts of your story with the resulting solution. 

Here's how:

1) Ask yourself if the reader absolutely must understand this point in order to comprehend the Ending.

A) if so, clip that sentence or paragraph and save it in a txt file or notation, but get it out of the narrative.

B) if not, delete that material.  Don't worry, if you need it later, you will recreate it at a more appropriate point, or perhaps change it markedly to lead to the ending. Endings morph as you write and rewrite, so likewise info in lumps must morph.

2) Ask yourself if this point made in the expository lump must be understood by the reader at this exact point in the story.

A) if so, ask yourself if there is another way to SHOW DON'T TELL this point. Maybe there's a scene missing, maybe a character, or an offhand line of dialogue. Sometimes a bit of worldbuilding can be restated as a piece of artwork, a vase, a brightly dyed carpet - a bit of visual stimulation that implies underlying technology or trade without explicitly detailing it all.  A Persian Carpet in Fiji implies trade without exposition.

B) if not, put this detail into a file of "Move it to Later" -- sometimes you can copy the bit and paste it at the top of the chapter where it absolutely MUST be known.  When you go through on rewrite, you'll think of a way to show-don't-tell without slowing the pace of the plot.

3) Ask yourself why this point is interesting to yourself.  Maybe this Expository Lump is the real story you are trying to write, and all the rest is just noise?  Yes, every character has a life-story and a history that you, the writer, must know -- but that does not imply that the reader must know it, or must know it now.  Leave some bits over for future novels in the series if it is intrinsically interesting but irrelevant to the Ending of this novel.

A) if this point is more interesting than the story you've written, write the story that goes with that point separately.  It may be a prequel, and you started in the middle of a series (like Star Wars).

B) if this point is inherently boring to you, it will bore the reader, so cut it.  On rewrite, you will fabricate some other back-story point from the theme and plot:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

The solution that dissolves all expository lumps is "Show Don't Tell" -- which means to illustrate, dramatize, symbolize,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html
or embody the material in a character who speaks for that philosophy or point of view and throws monkey wrenches into the lives of your main character (i.e. to integrate the lumped material into the plot.)

Every writing course will tell you to show-don't-tell, but I've never found one that shows you how to show rather than tell. 

This Tuesday blog series on writing craft is designed to impart the necessary clues for developing the ability to illustrate, dramatize, symbolize, and transform your creativity into Art that conveys a fresh point of view to your readers. 

The most common reasons for coding material into expository lumps are:

a) it's boring to you, so you just want to get on to your exciting story -- so you TELL instead of SHOWING.

b) it's more interesting to you than the story you think you can sell.

c) you do not have mastery of character-creation via theme which is what makes stories interesting.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

4) Ask yourself which makes you more excited -- the story you condensed into a Lump, or the story you are writing? 

A) if the lump is exciting, cut it, paste it into a new file, and write an outline of that story with a beginning, middle, end just as if you were going to write that instead.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html

B) if the lump is not exciting, copy/paste it into another file, separate it into bulleted list of points it makes, and copy/paste that bulleted list into the "Move it to Later" file.

Once you have your second draft, with all the bits of broken up Lumps sprinkled where they best lubricate the moving parts of your story, go over the "Move it to Later" file and check to see if you left out anything important.  (the editor and copyeditor will still find stuff you have to fix).  Leaving items out is much better than putting in too much.  Make your editor and readers ask questions.

5) Don't despair!!  Once you have done this Lump-Dissolution process a few times, your subconscious will begin to feed you the information the reader needs in the order which the reader will most appreciate it.  And you will be writing the most exciting story of the bunch that come wrapped in boring expository lumps.

In other words, professional writers who can make a living at it do not spend months rewriting.  They write, clean up the second draft, and send it in -- getting on to the next contract they've already signed.

But most people don't begin their careers able to do that.  First comes that proverbial million words for the garbage can.  This Expository Lump method allows you to retrieve those early works from the garbage can, and produce the story you most want to write.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Astrology Just For Writers Part 11-The Fishtank Model of Romance

Most writers and readers don't want to know anything about Astrology, and that's fine.  There are plenty of other systems for parsing the patterns of human life.

A writer only needs one such system, but having several can give a writer the flexibility to work with vastly different audiences.  Adding Astrology to your toolbox can position you to take advantage of unexpected opportunities with unruffled aplomb.

But you don't need to become an astrologer, or even to "learn" astrology or do it.  You only need to learn to think like an astrologer, and to understand what lives look like from the point of view of someone well versed in this craft.

Here are the previous posts in this Astrology Just For Writers series that help you get the perspective we'll discuss next.

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

And here are additional ones:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html

Part 10 was on August 30, 2010.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/astrology-just-for-writers-part-10.html 

And this is Part Eleven.  The intention is to collect this series into an e-book and make it available for download on simegen.com.

The 20 posts on the Tarot Swords and Pentacles that I've done here will likewise be published along with the discussions in volumes on Wands and Cups, plus a volume on how and why to study Tarot, and when and how to shun it.

Here are two posts indexing the 20 Tarot posts available.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

When using Tarot to structure a novel, never mention cards, suits, mysticism, foretelling the future, etc.  Keep your use of these tools "off the nose" and be able to say, "It just came to me."

To achieve that unruffled aplomb, that level of "Cool,"  in the face of the opportunity of a lifetime, the one thing a writer needs to learn about using Astrology in their writing is, just as with Tarot, never mention the name "Astrology" or "Natal Chart" -- or any of the planets or stars that Astrology tracks.  Never mention "influenced by" or "under a transit."  Not even "Horoscope!"

Mentioning the source is what Hollywood screenwriters call being "on the nose" -- or in the parlance of the narrative text writer, "telling" rather than "showing."

I've seen this "on the nose" error in text a lot lately, even from seasoned professional best sellers.  That happens because the editors don't catch it and send it back for rewrite.  Editors need to know this stuff just as writers do.

Lazy writers, or any writer just in a hurry or being lazy, tend to try to disguise expository lumps as dialogue or description.  When that is done, the dialogue or description comes out "on the nose."

Here are some of my entries about Expository Lumps:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-much-is-too-much-world-buliding.html

And there's another on August 23rd, 2011

Also see my series on Editing.  Here's the final installment, and it has a list of the previous parts at the top.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

A master craftsman writer portrays the life (and arc) of a character in a way that is familiar to the readers -- they know real people who've lived through that pattern (or died in it).  But you must not tell the reader how you found out about that pattern.  It just came to you.

There is a popular commercial running in 2011 for Progressive Insurance in which the iconic saleswoman shows a prospective buyer the "Bundling" machine.  You put your information in once, and get out two products in a box.

The buyer turns to her marveling and asks, "How did you think of that?"

She answers, "Oh, it just came to us."  Then looks over at a centaur shopping the shelves of bundles.

That line, "Oh, it just came to us."  is supposed to be a tickler, funny, amusing, memorable to the viewers.

What most viewers don't know is that it is the stock answer to that question in Hollywood.

It's so routine, and so stock, and so necessary when a producer or director asks a writer "How did you think of that?" that the "never let them see you sweat" rule kicks in automatically, and the only answer is a nonchalant shrug with, "Oh, it just came to me."  Saying essentially you have a genius that the nuts-n-bolts people who make your story real for viewers just don't have.  You are indispensable to the process, but not overly impressed with yourself.  It was an accident you thought of this ingenious solution.

This is so absolutely ingrained in the Hollywood culture that Blake Snyder ( http://blakesnyder.com ) of the Save The Cat! books insists this is the only way a writer can respond to that question.  He teaches writing, and goes out of his way to make this point.  There's skill, craft, and lots of sweat behind these ingenious solutions to production problems, but you as a seller of your skills must never let them see you sweat.

And that's true of the relationship between you and your reader as well.

You must never let the reader know how you know -- know what process you used to create the magic they adore.

It won't be magic if you do.

Think of a painter facing a well prepared blank canvass.  Most often, after settling on the subject, the painter reaches for charcoal not pigment, and maybe a ruler, and draws in a whole lot of very faint lines later to be erased.  Those lines set up the composition, the perspective, the point of view from which the subject's inner nature will be revealed.  The painter deliberately plans how the viewer's eye will sweep across the images, and what they will notice first, what next, and what will be in focus and remembered.

Yes, it's all very deliberate skill in painting.  It's learned early and practiced like a musician practices scales until the painter can have an image "just come to him" and boom, it's on the canvass and you never know what happened even if you were watching.  The Master Craftsman usually isn't conscious of "what happened" either -- he really lives the "it just came to me" moment without asking himself how that happened.

Teachers on the other hand have to unravel that "just came to me" moment and convey the individual skills to the craftsman one at a time, in boring repetitive drills.

That's what we're doing here in this blog for writers who want to figure out how better writers achieve those marvelous effects.

Today's craft point is a look at Astrology from the writer's point of view.

So let's look at the two lead characters in a Romance.  Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series of books on screenwriting, says all Romances belong to his "genre" called Buddy Love.  I recommend you read those books.

Blake Snyder On Amazon

Also, because of the encroachment of graphic novels, film, webisodes, games, and other visual media on storytelling,  today's text-narrative writers must incorporate the pacing and visual emphasis that fiction consumers have become accustomed to.

So I recommend getting Snyder's screenwriting SOFTWARE that goes with the books, and using that to lay out the structure of your novel.  I am particularly involved with that software right now because I'm a beta tester on version 3.0 and I really love the improvements.

You can find it at blakesnyder.com or Amazon.  The software is also called SAVE THE CAT!  You can also find it on professional screenwriting software sites like Final Draft.  It's integrated with Final Draft 8

So now you're looking at a blank canvass to create your characters, their arcs, and the story they must live through.

You've nailed the transit influences affecting them.  Since this is a Romance, of course Neptune is hard at their respective sensitive spots.  But other influences can fly through that long-arc Neptune transit as well.

So you need a mental model too understand what these two people are and why they act and react as they do.

And that model has to be comprehensible to your readers especially because you're not going to explain it "on the nose." 

Without learning astrology, what can you visualize that will tell you what is happening to this couple, this pair of Soul Mates, falling in love?

Visualize it like this, and see if this works for you.

A Soul incarnates at a particular moment.  Astrology captures the moment of birth in a flash-photo still shot called the Natal Chart.

That chart delineates the positions of the planets of the solar system, and the Sun and Moon, at the time of birth.  It further captures the two lines delineating the path to the horizon east and west, plus the point directly overhead at Noon - the highest point the Sun reaches on that day at that longitude and latitude.  The opposite point is directly under foot, opposite the Sun's peak of arc, midnight.  That line is called the MC, and defines the 10th House and the 4th House, the mystical purpose for taking this life vs. the foundation of the Home under the person's metaphorical feet.

The Ascendant defines the view of "reality" the person has from inside his life, and what others see when they look at him.  Opposite the Ascendant is the 7th House cusp, which delineates partnerships, significant others, spouses, and the public (when you figure what all those things have to do with each other, how they're all absolutely identical, you'll have an understanding you can use to write fiction.)

Different astrological systems of mathematics assign different ways to calculate the positions of the other 8 "House cusps" -- I favor Placidus, Tropical, and it works well enough for my purposes (creating characters).

This up/down, horizon to horizon framework delineates the support structure of this character's life.  When you put the planets, Moon and Sun, into the framework positioned relative to the  birthplace on Earth at that moment the baby draws first breath, you then have a giant clock with at least 10 "hands" moving at different paces.  You can get fancy, and delineate 20 hands to the clock.  But a writer doesn't need that.

You don't need to understand how those clock hands move as much as you need to understand that they're there, they're set with precision, there's no escaping, and everyone alive is utterly familiar with their permutations and combinations in dynamic effects.

That "setup" of life at birth is the part of astrology that lets you make your characters "the same" as Hollywood always wants, and as Manhattan publishers need and will buy.

When something has become popular (like Harry Potter) the purveyors of fiction strive to duplicate exactly what it was that sold so well..  And that's why they always want "the same but different."

Writers, however, have read a lot of books, and usually want to put their work forward as "different" and not at all the same.  "Different" feels like the essence of art, the essence of your soul. (because it is)

You can do "different" and get small readerships.  Or you can add in "the same" dimension and strike for larger readerships.  It's a choice.  Create a pen name for each career path.

But first see my entries on PEN NAMES.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-ii.html

The Blake Snyder Save the Cat! books and software show you how to do "the same" without infringing on your personal "different" and thus unleash your full potential as a commercial writer.

Now visualize this giant clock everyone is born inside.  Each of us live inside a clock set to a different time zone, a unique (or nearly unique -- even twins are born at different times) time zone.

This clock forms the framework of your life, the outside of your life, not the inside.

Think of this framework as the walls of a fishtank.

Fishtanks come in a lot of shapes and sizes, but they have transparency in common.  At least one wall is transparent (think of the giant aquarium at a zoo).  Most fishtanks are transparent on at least 3 sides.

The tank you live in, your natal chart, defines the size and shape of your life just like the walls of a fish tank.

You can think of it as walling you away from what's out there.  Or you can think of it as containing a benign environment uniquely suited just to you, thus protecting others from your environment.  This should be familiar to SF readers of space adventures with intelligent aquatic creatures.  Metaphor?  Maybe. 

Unlike most fish, you can see OUT, hazily.  With distortion.  You can see the reflective walls of other people's tanks, and sometimes glimpse through those walls into the life of another.

In this (admittedly limited and distorted) analogy, your Soul is the fish.

Unlike fish, you can create, shape, decorate, personalize and customize your tank.  You create your inner environment.

What your Soul is capable of creating, how nicely you can arrange things, what you can "do with the place" is limited by your talent, determination, and other resources your soul brings into this life.

You live your life within your natal chart, within your clock, by the choices your Soul makes, and the resources and wisdom it has brought with it, and what it learns from this life.

The "clock" does not say "You will meet a tall, dark, non-human, stranger and fall in unrequited love."

The clock does not say a tall dark stranger will come into your life.

The clock says it's time to meet strangers, go find one.

Whether there's a stranger there or not, and how you respond to that particular individual stranger, is a matter of the Soul, not the clock.

It's not that there's no such thing as "destiny" -- it's that "destiny" is far more complex than the Ancient Greeks ever knew.

"Destiny" is crafted from the material at hand (via the clock, the shape of the fishtank, the limits of imagination in fixing up the place inside the tank), by freewill choices, but not just your own.  Everyone has free will and makes choices which you respond to.  And others respond to your choices.  You interact (i.e. fall in Love) with others who likewise live in fishtanks of their own, tanks you can sometimes almost see into, but never enter.

In my universe paradigm, there's a third force acting to shape and reshape "destiny" for each of us and all of us collectively - God.  But the fishtank analogy holds whether there's a third outside force or not.

So here your character is inside her fishtank, and is moving stuff around trying to make the place (her life) comfortable.  (i.e. has landed a plum of a job promotion, and really sees the big bucks coming soon)

And she decides out of pride of place to clean her tank walls nice and clear and transparent so she can see and understand the world (i.e. takes a course and learns something, or proves something).

She wants love, so she makes herself more visible, her real self, or what she wants to believe is her real self.

And what happens when she cleans her tank wall is that she SEES another tank out there because it's time to meet strangers, and she can now see through her own reflection to something that is not herself.

She sees another tank wall, and reflective though it is, it seems to curve around the edges of her tank very neatly, and with the angle just so, she can SEE the Soul swimming around inside his life.  Or she thinks she does.  Part of the image is a reflection of herself, but having cleaned her tank walls, she is seeing something that is not herself.  Thrill of a lifetime. 

Wow. He's gorgeous.  Just look at those sweeping, draping fins!

The two souls can get close, nudge their tanks right up to touching, so it seems the walls have merged into one wall, and they can create new life together.  But neither can leap over into the other's tank and swim there.

The analogy kind of breaks down because Soul Mates who marry do actually merge into one.  Those two tanks bond and stick together.

But the insides are always separate, even when most of the reflection effect at the tank surfaces is eliminated by bonding the two tank walls together.

Lives are SEPARATE -- Souls merge.

We each live in our fishtanks, isolated and alone.  But we can share a Soul, mate with a Soul.

Think of this analogy.  The two tanks come together, the walls fuse so they can almost just about see into each others' tanks (there's always reflection -- what we see when we look at others is a reflection of our inner Self).  So they move into such harmony that they each redecorate their tanks to match, so you can't tell it's two rooms.

Maybe she quits her job, and he quits his (ok, today it's more likely they'll get laid off), and they start a business together -- a shop, a newspaper, a blog-for-money operation, e-Bay sales, whatever.  They change their lives to harmonize.

That's what "Happily Ever After" -- the HEA ending -- actually looks like.

We talked about the Happily Ever After concept in a 4 part series the Tuesdays in October 2011 titled Believing In Happily Ever After.

Using the fishtank analogy of lives that are set up at Birth, and Souls trapped inside those lives at least for this incarnation, you can see immediately why people today just don't credit the Happily Ever After goal as realistic.

You can never really get inside another person's life.  You can't let them inside yours.

You can't even see inside other people clearly, which leads to misunderstandings.

Consider a good marriage where, after some time, one partner wanders off to live mostly in the far end of his tank, becoming mostly invisible from the mated tank.  Left alone, she ends up living at the far end of her tank, where there's a view into someone else's tank.

No matter how close some part of your life is to another's, or how visible, there's a part of your life they can't see or share.

That's what it means to be an individual, a unique person, a sovereign person.

Since everyone has that experience, it's easy to see why most people don't believe another person would deliberately live their life only in the corner of their tank that touches the other tank.

Until you mix in the Soul Mate dimension, that delineates the unique pleasure of being near another, willingly sharing a life (redecorating) for the sheer pleasure of the meaningfulness you find in the other's company, there's no way to explain Happily Ever After to those who have no experiential model for it.

That is, there is no way to explain unless you're a writer who has mastered show don't tell, the off-the-nose techniques Blake Snyder teaches so ably.  The genre that specializes in making the unbelievable real to the reader is Science Fiction and its more recent offshoot adult Fantasy.  When you mix SF/F with Romance or just plain Love, you get PNR and SFR.

PNR writers need a firm grasp of the esoteric or occult disciplines such as Tarot and Astrology to make the rules of magic of a constructed fictional world real to their readers.

Here is where you can find my novels, and my co-author Jean Lorrah's, to see how we apply these principles.

http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Source of the Expository Lump Part 2

 Last week we discussed two urban fantasy PNR writers, Amber Benson and Kathryn Leigh Scott, both from the acting profession, and both possessing a writing "voice" that is enchanting at least to me.

We'll have to discuss "voice" in detail at some point, but it is a quality composed of the mastery-levels of a plethora of skills we are exploring in these Tuesday posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com.  Learning them one at a time, then practicing them by orchestrating all the skills, adding one at a time with each practice piece, will develop your unique "Voice."

Here's a post from Blake Snyder's blog from a screenwriter, Anne Lower, who is "making it" using the Beat Sheet Snyder outlined, but who has found her "voice" over and above those craft skills.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/2011/07/01/voice-%E2%80%93-a-writer%E2%80%99s-journey/ 

the % symbols in that link arise because of the dashes used in the title.  Don't use dashes in URLs or blog titles!

The link is http://www.blakesnyder.com/2011/07/01/voice---a-writer's-journey/ 

You will note that this writer mentions both a long journey of skills acquisition, and a period of working hard without her "voice."  Part of the process of finding your Voice is working without your own voice, imitating others' voices. 

But you can't stop there.  You must then re-engage your own personal voice.

Those who've read my posts on Tarot for writers may remember the 5 of Pentacles, the Dark Night Of The Soul concept. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/11/5-of-pentacles.html

That's the process Anne Lower describes in her post on Voice. 

"Voice" is a great analog for this combination skills-set because a singer must "train" the "voice" to be strong.  Voice is made up of muscles, vocal cords, that must be exercised to become strong enough to produce the exacting tones with enough volume to fill an opera hall.

Likewise a writer must practice exercises that aren't actually stories in order to strengthen that part of the mind that synthesizes "Voice."  It has to do with combining all the components of a story just like a musical chord, each note in the right volume relative to the other notes in the chord, the chord then juxtaposed to other chords in the right duration and relative loudness to create a composition that is pleasing. 

Eliminating the expository lump is one of those practice exercises like a pianist's scales that is no fun to do and not any fun at all to watch someone else do -- the result is not immediately entertaining either.

So why is it that beginning writers, and even those currently being published in Mass Market produce a "novel" that is laced with expository lumps?  What happens inside that writer's mind as they are worldbuilding and story-plotting?

An Expository Lump is a series of facts about the world in which the story occurs or about the characters.  It is what the writer knows that seems interesting and exciting to the writer, and the writer desperately wants the reader to understand it all BEFORE reading the story.  The writer feels "you need to know this in order to understand what happens next and get a kick out of the event."

Very often with beginning writers, those facts in the Lump are the real reason the writer wants to write the story, or wants you to read and understand it emotionally. 

Now let's switch to a Culinary Analogy -- salad.

What's a Chef's Salad?  It's a special concoction of ingredients which blend nicely as a meal in itself or prelude to a meal.

Think of a reader who wants desperately to write her own story for all to enjoy.  Now she's going to make a story of her very own.  Making a novel is just like making a salad for a dinner party. 

She has been to the store (i.e. read a lot of books, done some hard living) and now she arrives home with a couple of grocery bags filled to the brim with lovely ingredients for her salad. 

She has a head of lettuce (a world she's built), gorgeous colored green, yellow, orange, red bell peppers (characters with seeds inside), a fabulous ripe Tomato (villain?) and a great Cucumber (hero?),  lovely red onions, green onions, and carefully chosen virgin olive oil, apple cider vinegar, fresh basil and other fresh herbs etc with which to make the dressing (theme) that will bring the whole composition together. 

She's planning a dinner party (i.e. writing a book, maybe a series, for others to enjoy).  Oh, it's going to be wonderful and garner her great praise and admiration because she's chosen her ingredients with such knowledge and careful research.

With great pride and a broad smile, she plonks the two grocery bags on the linen draped table among the sparkling wine glasses, cloth napkins, polished sterling silver flatware, exquisite china (the publisher is the table setting, the presentation of the work of art, and those who come to dine are the readers.)

And there the two brown grocery bags sit in the middle of this exquisite setting (the publisher provides top drawer artwork for the cover, perfect printing, vast publicity budget), and the dinner guests arrive.

The dinner guests are all dressed up formally, hungry in anticipation of a great meal.  They swirl into the dining room and stop dead in their tracks staring at the brown grocery bags amidst the sparkling table setting.

Where did those grocery bags come from?

They came from the same place that many Great Writers have found their material -- Life.

But they aren't a meal.  They aren't a salad.  They aren't what the hungry people came for.

The new writer looks at her bags of magnificent ingredients and at the dinner guests and has no clue WHY they are dismayed and gathering their coats to leave.

Her writing is as good as anybody else's!  She has done all her research and globe-trotting for experience.  She's garnered the wisdom of the ages and the very best -- in fact better than most writers' -- ingredients.

Why don't they want to read her story, to eat her meal? 

This is the plight of many self-publishing writers.  They have truly great stuff, in fact better than most of what the big publishers spew out, fare not unlike what you might find at a typical McDonald's. 

But new writers have no clue why they can't gather an audience, why their dinner guests leave talking about McDonald's and settle on Chinese.

What is it they teach in Culinary school that makes the difference between a chef, a cook, or a great shopper?

They teach sharpening knives, good chopping blocks, fine-chopping -- these onions very fine, those in rings.  They teach the use of blenders to make dressing out of ingredients, how much of this, how little of that.  They teach the patience to put in the hard work in the hot kitchen.  They make you apprentice and clean up other people's messes, scrub vegetables for others to chop with finesse.  They make your hands strong, your ability to stand long hours and  heave heavy things reliable, and gradually you absorb the art of combining ingredients. 

Fresh ground pepper lightly sprinkled on top makes the dinner guests cling to the table.  A box of peppercorns does not, no matter if the peppercorns are of higher quality than the ground pepper.

So, to stretch my analogy out to a thin crust, the salad ingredients are expository lumps.  Because they are ingredients, in wrappers in a brown shopping bag, they aren't dinner yet.

The reader/ dinner guest expects the writer/chef to chop fine, mix thoroughly, dress perfectly, and create something unique from the same-old-same-old ingredients. 

It's the writer's job to stand at the sink and wash, core, chop, proportion, food-processor the carrots, just so but not too much.  The dinner guests don't come to work, they come to dine elegantly.  You sweat; they laugh. 

If you present your story to your reader still in the shopping bag, they won't appreciate it no matter how good the story is.  They're hungry, not ambitious. 

This is what is meant when Hollywood says they want "the same, but different" -- "the same" part is the ingredients, the same old bell peppers and lettuce, and the "but different" part is the chopping, proportioning, creating a chef's salad. 

And it is in the creative proportioning and combining spices into dressing that is the work of the writer. 

A writer isn't the farmer that grows the stuff, or the retailer who brings it to town from across the world, or the maker of the crystal and china on the table.  The writer is the chef in the kitchen making up new recipes to present the same old ingredients in new and unique ways, or at request in the same-old-same-old ways (Waldorf Salad is Waldorf Salad and when you want that, you don't want chopped egg and dill pickles).

The reason many readers have been disappointed in "self-published" books is not because they're "self-published" but because someone planning to self-publish may chintz on the chopping.  Someone who has chintzed on the chopping will not be hired (sell their novel) to work at McDonald's (big publishing.) 

But people buy self-published books because they want something different -- it's just it's got to be 'the same' too. 

The writer's job is to chop ideas up into bite-size pieces and toss the salad good to mix up all the chopped ingredients in appetizing proportions.  New writers, like kids learning their way around a kitchen, just don't have the knack of chopping fine enough, tossing two more minutes, or adding that last dash of oregano to the dressing.

"Is this small enough, Mommy?"  Ask your readers if your Big Ideas are Small Enough Now.

And remember, if you're fighting expository lumps, you're only learning to make the salad.  Entree and Dessert are even more work, and you don't have a meal until you've got all the parts chosen to go with the correct Wine Of Life.  Your "Voice as a Writer" is that whole, balanced, meal.  All the parts and components from nutrition to flavor and texture, combined in artistic proportions unique to you, create your Voice. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Crumbling Business Model of Writers

This is a lesson on the business of writing in our everyday world (very much the topic , but contributes much to Colby Hodge's discourse on When A Story Doesn't Work, and how the craft of writing blends into the Business of Writing
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/when-story-doesnt-work-part-two.html
as well as the issue of "worldbuilding" of a fictional world, and also references the Expository Lump problem writers face. Oh, this is a long post covering a lot of territory.

And the point of all this rambling and muttering over many, many posts here focusing on the real world (on a blog about Alien Romance) is to gather the necessary data to figure out why Romance in general and Alien Romance in particular is not regarded with the respect we feel it should garner and what we can do about that.

We all love our fiction, but few readers, game players, movie goers, video-watchers -- i.e. fiction consumers -- still think in terms of how the creators of their entertainment can make a living good enough to keep on producing top notch entertainment.

As I discussed last week
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

(where I beg you to go read the comments that correct a mis-statement on my part!)

the business model of most industrial revolution businesses is busted, and some new thing is coalescing out of the shards of our civilization's economy.

Those who properly divine what that new thing is, how it works, why it works, will be making the new founding fortunes of this century and probably the next. Very few have yet figured out just how profound the shattering of the foundations of our economy is at this moment.

But one SF writer may have a grip on explaining it. C. J. Cherryh.

C. J. Cherryh's marvelous SF novels (with a good dash of alien romance) showcase her talents at their best in her FOREIGNER series. The latest is CONSPIRATOR, and it's book #10 which will likely be the first of another trilogy in the series. Series composed of trilogies seem to be all the rage again.

Read those 10 novels (preferably in order) just for the sheer pleasure of a good story -- a refreshing joy to read such a well written, good story about what I like to read about (smart people caught in impossible predicaments, plights, and stymied by cognitive dissonance).

Put in perspective, those 10 novels give you a vision of our own society from the point of view of the anthropologist. It works better than studying anthroplogy in college courses though - because it is the application of the basic principles of the interface between science, technology, and culture to a Situation (Cherryh is the best in the biz at Situation).

The world C. J. Cherryh is working with is a human colony isolated on the world of the Atevi. Atevi are so similar to us, sex is possible, but "love" is a word that applies to a salad not a person. Atevi are driven by emotions about 45 degrees off the direction of human emotions. Not opposite, not at right angles, but skewed in a dizzying way.

Atevi are more herd creatures than humans are. But not really. They're just Alien.



It takes many novels to let Cherryh draw us into the mindset of these alien creatures. Cherryh is an expert at avoiding the expository lump, yet the narrative goes on and on about the multi-axis Atevi political situation. There's a little repetition, but it provides emphasis, points you might miss if you were skimming. While you're reading about what seems to be completely comprehensible politics, in fact boring politics, you're actually learning to look at reality from an alien point of view.

These long political analyses seem to be expository lumps, but they aren't. They move the story along quite briskly, setting up the action even in future novels. If you are following the anthropology and commentary on humanity, you see things beyond the politics.

Yes, it's an intellectual exercise, but that's what SF delivers as part of the pleasure.

In the FOREIGNER series, Cherryh has also recently introduced other aliens "out there" among the stars, and they're very likely to make their first visit to the Atevi homeworld too soon, so all the Atevi politics has to do with preparing for that eventuality. Meanwhile, the main character is a human whose job is to see to it that human technology does not destroy Atevi culture with potential world war as a result (the Atevi don't do "war" -- but they fight and assassinate a lot).

And here I go inserting exposition into this discourse on the Business Model of Writing.

See my blog post on expository lumps at:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

Reading this 10th Foreigner novel right after writing last week's post about the massive shift in the "business model" that isn't confined to publishing, gave me a different take on just how dire this culture-quake we're in may become.

This week's news is once again about North Korea rattling atomic bombs at us, and all about the cooperation between North Korea and Iran and the arms race that's being unleashed into a ferment of cultural-warfare (which is what this whole Terrorist thing is about; the culture generated by certain religious outlooks). Meanwhile, the USA is facing the legalization of gay marriage which seems a dire and horrifyingly revolting change to some and pure justice to others. It's cultural change.

Cherryh starts CONSPIRATOR with the basic problem being a speech that Bren Cameron, our human POV character who is translator between human and atevi, has to write trying to stop the atevi from adopting cell phones.

The rest of the novel illustrates why the Atevi must adopt cell phones, and why they must not! It ends with the speech unwritten and undelivered. I expect that speech to be a roaring occasion for violence in the halls of the Atevi legislature.

Today's multi-function cell phones are web-access instruments, wireless windows on everywhere. The newest features give you direct access to facebook, twitter, and other social networking tools.

So when you talk cell phone, you talk Web 2.0 -- which means you're talking about the force that is pulverizing the industrial revolution business model, bureaucracy and even democracy itself -- certainly pulverizing capitalism! Perhaps destroying our cultures even more traumatically than the human technology leaks are destroying Atevi culture.

Pulverizing our culture just as a sound wave pulverizes kidney stones.

Most Americans don't even know what culture is. Can you point to your culture? Which pocket do you carry it in? What ringtones have you downloaded into your culture?

We have the TV Show REAPER where parents sold their son's soul to the Devil -- and this season ends with the boy's girlfriend selling her soul to the Devil on the chance of getting her boyfriend's soul free.

A whole, very successful TV show about the SOUL - but can you point to your soul?

It's like "air" was say, a thousand years ago. You don't know it's there because you live in it. It took science a long time (and a lot of computers and satelites) to get a model of weather that's almost working! It's hard to study something you're inside of.

The book I best like for conveying a concept of "what" your culture is, so you can look inside yourself and find it (trust me; it's there somewhere) is



But like souls and air, you miss your culture only when it's GONE.

So we all know the term culture-shock but most Americans who have never lived isolated abroad (with no American community and no one who even speaks British English around) simply don't know what "a" culture is, nevermind their own.

And that's why alarm has not been more pervasive in the USA as our culture crumbles. We don't know it's there, can find no use for it or value to it, and we just don't care.

But we should. Global Warming is nothing compared to this.

You can barely see the cracks in the foundations of our culture yet, but one of those cracks is the downfall of our huge 19th and 20th century corporations. General Motors going bankrupt practically on the 100th anniversary is just one example of failed business model, a surface crack caused by a movement in the foundation underneath our CULTURE.

And C. J. Cherryh has explained what's happening today in an SF novel ostensibly about alien politics, the 10th in a series. Yes, you can read it as the first novel you read in the Foreigner universe, but I've been reading them in order as published, and I see bits and pieces of information I'm using that I picked up in each of the previous novels.

The whole set of 10 Foreigner novels makes this image of our culture under attack by our technology so clear.

Start with the first in the series here:


Now let's skip all the way back into "reality" -- and refer to the series of posts I've done here on Web 2.0 (read them in the following order if you haven't already)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/blogging-and-reading-and-blogging-oh-my.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/urban-fantasy-job-hunting.html

You see? All this is adding up to something, and giving you a view of the gears-and-chips inside the writer's mind.

This is how a writer thinks, and what a writer has to think with, the reasoning laid out like a beginning Algebra student has to write out each step of the solution to a problem with liberal application of imagination.

So far as I know, only a few SF writers have twigged to what is going on beneath our feet, in the vast unconscious of the human species, because of technology.

In past posts and in my review column
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/
I've surveyed the trend toward depicing "reality" as a thin film over a seething cauldron of EVIL. That portrayal of the world is so popular now, you can barely sell anything that doesn't express that philosophy.

Here, in an article in Wired magazine, you may find the reason WHY you can't sell any other kind of fiction lately -- or when you do, it plays to a very narrow audience that leaps for joy over it because it's such a wonderful breath of fresh air.

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism

My previous post on Wired can be found here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/04/wired-magazine-for-romance.html

The social networking and Web 2.0 developments I have been talking about in the above linked posts are barely the tip of the iceburg.

The banner headline for this article in Wired says:
----------------
THE NEW SOCIALISM: Wikipedia, Flickr, and Twitter aren't just revolutions in online social media. They're the vanguard of a cultural movement. Forget about state ownership and five-year-plans. A global collectivist society is coming -- and this time you're going to like it.
----------------

Frankly, I'm not so sure about the "like it" part which may just be the "slant" of this particular magazine. But this article fingers something very important about what's happening, and C. J. Cherryh's latest novel, CONSPIRATOR, describes that very thing from an alien perspective which makes it more comprehensible (as Spock added the alien POV to Star Trek and let us see ourselves from the outside).

But if the panicing Chinese (and other country's) attempts to "block the internet" -- to dictate what Google links will or will not work if you're inside their blackout curtain -- definitely bespeaks a deeply spooked humanity.

This Web 2.0 development may be even worse for humanity than Cherryh depicts it is likely to be for the Atevi. (oh, I do wish everyone had read the whole Foreigner series to date! This is all part of the STAR TREK discussion I haven't gotten to yet.)

The A-bomb proliferation race breaking out may just be part of this sense of panic set off by the forces described in this article in Wired (you can read it free online).

The totalitarian governments have the knee-jerk response of trying to "control" these new technologies, keeping them away from the poor peasants who would use them to overthrow centralized government control. Control is of course absolutely necessary. Humans can't exist without our betters controlling us. We all know that.

Why just look at the mess in society because we gave up the arranged marriage. Control is necessary, you see, and everything is getting out of control!

I don't know where to start telling you about this article "The New Socialism" in Wired Magazine. Every three or four paragraphs I put a post-it note onto the text to remind me to quote it at you, but this little essay is already too long.

The article quotes a book, HERE COMES EVERYBODY by Clay Shirky, from which the article takes a 4-part division to help sort through the effects of social media.

It targets work, how you get paid for what you contribute, and how people get access to what you've created with your work.

It doesn't harp nearly enough on the cultural aspects of the changes in these economic foundations of society. (A culture and a Society are not the same thing. Different societies can share a culture and do just fine relating to each other. What's happening because of Web 2.0 is that the cultures themselves are being pulverized.)

The culture generates the economy (think about Moslem law being the foundation of their banking system -- it seems to be working for them). The economy generates a zillion societies. Take a "society" to be just a group of people who agree on a certain set of laws -- like driving on the right, not having a King but a President, protecting property rights of the individual from the government, rule of the majority strictly limited to protect the individual)

We're currently trying to extend our "social contract" to include healthcare for everyone. Corporations discovered it's economically advantageous to provide healthcare for workers -- they work more consistently and productively. So now "society" wants to model itself on corporations and declare a social profit to having everyone healthy. Do you see any holes in that, other than trying to pay for it?

Our culture says "be kind to the less fortunate" -- our society says, "health is a right not a privelege," and our economy says, "I'm dying!"

Where do writers fit in all this?

COPYRIGHT!!!!

That's right, copyright is dead. Really. It's been uninvented, and the law hasn't caught up with the CULTURAL VALUE CHANGE that has left the old industrial revolution values pulverized.

Quick, GOOGLE creative commons, and see what turns up. The Wired article sites Creative Commons and GNU licenses as the newly invented concept, (ethical platform) replacing copyright.

http://creativecommons.org/ is only the beginning of what you'll find. Check the Wiki entry, since this Wired article sites WIKI as an example of the new economy.

A whole new set of ethics underlies this new culture. I mean really pulverizing all the unconscious assumptions implanted in our cultures since the 1600's and the invention of the printing press and the business model of publishing (which didn't start as a for-profit business, you know. You have read Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain series, particularly Borne in Blood - where St. Germain owns a printing business in Amsterdam, I think it is.)

In fact, the internet and the web are forces unleashed into our world that are as huge or maybe more huge than the printing press was in its time.

I've been on a number of panels at conventions about how evil the copyright laws are.

This article in Wired takes that to a whole new level.

The writer's business model is based on COPYRIGHT. Or it has been.

That business model is still functioning, but about as well as General Motors was functioning in say, 1990. Lehman Brothers did pretty well in the 1990's. They seized what appeared to be the new business model (securitizing home mortgages). It killed them.

These behemouths are corporations. Each individual writer is a corporation -- whether you incorporate or not (writers are legally allowed to incorporate and make their corporation the owner of their books. Several revisions of the law ago, this was the best deal you could get on your income taxes as a writer. That's why you see some books copyrighted by some corporation that almost sounds like the author's name.)

Alongside the writer's business model of the 1600's, we now see the business model described in this article in Wired as an application of a principle in the book "Here Comes Everybody" -- 1. Sharing, 2. Cooperation, 3. Collaboration, 4. Collectivism -- and this blog post is an example of the new business model. I'm writing. You're not paying me unless you link to this blog entry in a post of your own, mention it on some popular blog comment space, twitter it, digg it, I don't know what all.

Think about what I said about Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock in this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

The human brain can make only so much change in a lifetime, make only so many decisions in a day, -- we have a hard-wired physical limit.

Think about historically what happened to the American Slaves abducted from their slow-changing culture in Africa and then systematically stripped of their culture here, to break their Will so they'd make good workers. They borrowed, desperately preserved, and just plain invented a new culture. A few decades ago, the novel and TV miniseries ROOTS explained to a vast majority just what they'd lost and where to go to find it again. The result has been a black President of the United States (who couldn't be proud of that accomplishment!)

That black President though had a father whose parents and grandparents had not had their culture stripped from them.

Humans need that multi-generational cultural grounding. It is our strength.

The internet and the Web have riven our generations apart, like a hot knife through butter.

The young people today are starting to live in exactly the world "The New Socialism" by Christoph Neimann describes.

The older folk, and even not-so-older folk, RESIST. E-book readers, high-tech phones, twitter, (follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg ) myspace, flickr.

The Google email spam sorting mechanism is a perfect example of the exact kind of "socialism" the article talks about. We, the people, decide what is and is not spam by our votes.

Now, why is it that I am so at home in this new world, while others my age don't even have a computer, nevermind social network memberships, RSS feed reader (I use Feed Demon), friendfeed and other aggregators. I'm using 2 different aggregators for Twitter and haven't found the one I really want, yet. I don't text much, but I would gladly if I were dragged away from my desk more. I text people's phones from my desktop instead.

Why? How is it that I DO ALL THIS? And blog too. There are so many people so much younger than I am who just don't.

Why am I undaunted by Web 2.0? Why do I feel that the advent of all this culture pulverizing tech is not at all disturbing? Why don't I resist it? What's different about me?

Three guesses, and the first two don't count!

I grew up in FANDOM!!!! I was in 7th grade when I wrote my first letter to the editor of an SF magazine, and they published it (with my snailmail address -- something that could never happen today; it was a much safer world back then).

My parents' mailbox became stuffed with dozens, then hundreds of letters from fans all over the USA. I had just learned to type, and I learned that in "fandom" typing was more intimate than handwriting, and if you didn't type a letter you had to explain for at least 3 paragraphs why your typer was broken.

That's a CULTURE. Fandom had it's own language (fanspeak) just as texting today has developed a condensed spelling shorthand.

In fandom, it was rude to address anyone, but especially someone older than you, by their last name. In fandom, culture demanded not only first names but NICKNAMES - fan names.

"fandom" is a kingdom, (fan = fanatic dom = domain as in Kingdom) floating amongst the real world, above it, interspersed with it, but having no fixed geographic location. The fannish calendar is divided into before and after Worldcon (which used to be Labor Day weekend, but now it too floats dates). Worldcon = World Science Fiction Convention. Most conventions (not CONFERENCES!!) have the infix "con" in them somewhere, if only by allusion.

I'm on a mailing List (an email List; an entire concept made obsolete by Web 2.0 but still existing and growing) for the Las Vegas SF fandom organizations. Recently a new member joined and a veteran Fan, Arnie Katz, sent the new member the following welcome message which may give you some idea of "what" fandom is (other than what you think it is if you joined after fandom moved online).

-----------FROM ARNIE KATZ on VegasSFAssociation@yahoogroups.com ----------------

I saw your premiere post on the VSFA listserv and thought I would drop you a note of welcome and introduction.

I'm not big on writing autobiographies, but let me attempt one so you at least know who is talking to you. I'm a 62-year-old professional writer and editor, married to Joyce Worley, also a professional writer and editor. I'm from New York, she comes from Missouri and we moved here in 1989. I've worked in a number of fields, including science fiction/fantasy, popular culture, collecting and collectibles, video and computer gaming, sports, adult and professional wrestling.

Joyce and I met in Fandom in the mid 1960's. She was a leading fan in St. Louis (she chaired a worldcon and got a Hugo nomination for her fanzine) and I was similarly well-known in New York. Hyndreds of pages of correspondence led to Joyce moving to New York and we got together pretty much upon her arrival.

Fandom is kind of a busman's holiday for us, as it is for many creative people. We're known for our writing and publishing for Fandom. I was chosen as the number one fan in the world in 2009 as well as the hobby's best writer.

Enough about me... Let me tell you a little about the entity that you have just encountered, Fandom.

Fandom arose in the late 1920's, born in the letter columns of the professional science fiction magazines. The people who filled those letter columns began writing to each other directly, easily done in an era in which such letters carried full addresses.

The first fanzines appeared around 1930 and the field quickly grew and evolved. The earliest fanzines were little more than blurbs for upcoming prozines. The hobby slowly progressed from a fixation on the stories and authors to an interest in discussing the idea contained in the stories. During the 1940's, that stretched to include ideas not derived from specific stories, but which seemed "scientifictional." By the early 1950's, though, Fandom embraced talking about anything under the sun, including personal experiences and Fandom itself. That's pretty much where the hobby is today.

The current incarnation of Las Vegas Fandom dates from 1989 and the formation of SNAFFU (Southern Nevada Area Fantasy Fiction Union), the city's formal, open SF club. SNAFFU (and Las Vegas Fandom) broke out of its isolation when they met Joyce and I. We introduced them to the like-minded folks around the world and Vegas Fandom has prospers ever since.

There are two other clubs in town, VSFA is by far the smallest, little more than a video-watching group. They're nice enough, but very mundane and pretty much uninterested in the creative side of Fandom. VSFA, through a cooperative arrangement among the three clubs, puts on the annual Halloween Party.

Las Vegrants is the largest fan group in town with two to three times as many members as the other two groups combined. It's an informal, invitation group that includes the city's top fans, many of whom are professional writers and editors.

I'm pretty much the answer man around here, so please feel free to ask any, and as many, questions as you may have about all this strangeness. To get you rolling, I'm including a copy of the second edition of THE TRUFAN'S ADVISOR, a little guide that I turned out a year or so ago. It should be fairly helpful.

Don't hesitate to contact me if there is anything I can do.

Faanishly,

Arnie Katz
----------------------------------

Over the years, I've welcomed many mundanes into fandom and I've had to teach them the inherent values of fandom which I learned in 7th grade and have lived ever since. If you read a fanzine, even if you paid for a hardcopy, you only paid for ink, printing and postage, and you owe a LoC (Letter of Comment). That's true of blog posts too -- you PAY for any post you find valuable by dropping a comment.

Barter is coin of the realm in fandom. You get something good - you give something. Your words, your coolie labor collating a fanzine (minding a website), your thoughts, your arguments, your publicizing a convention by mentioning it on big blogs, or as Arnie here above has offered, his ANSWERS for a neofan. Perhaps the best thing you can do for a blog you love is to "follow" it by RSS or subscribe because there are aggregators out there that position a blog in their search results according to how many subscribers it has.

So the coin of the realm has a new design, but the principle hasn't changed. As ever, coin of the realm today is your words, and your LoCs are more valued than you know until you've gotten one on something you wrote.

The LoC comment can be critical, lambasting the author for any number of errors or omissions, even typos -- but the praise garnered in LoCs is important too. Fanspeak has a name for that praise; egoboo -- a boost to the ego. It's food for the ego, and for the culture of fandom as a whole. Praise for one person's accomplishments feeds the ambition of others to contribute accomplishments. It's not boot-licking or toadying to praise a blog post or web page. It's contributing to the new Culture 2.0.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about fandom is that it has no government, needs no government, but is not "ungoverned" -- it isn't an anarchy, but it can't tolerate "organization" as a top-down-management style except in small endeavors like, perhaps an ad hoc committee putting on a convention.

Now that Arnie has introduced you to fandom, go read that article in WIRED.
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism

If you understand fandom, and read this article -- you will see that this "new socialism" is actually not so new. It's not an 'ism. It's a 'dom. Webdom maybe.

If you understand C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER universe, the Atevi culture, and why human technology is such a threat, you will understand that the magnitude of the threat to our current world from this growing "The New Socialism" collectivist society is so pulverizing, and especially pulverizing to the business model writers have used since the 1600's.

NOW TO STAR TREK.

And no, I'm still not going to talk about the new movie or the script or acting or directing etc.

It's the IMPACT of Trek on our CULTURE.

Remember THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- and then think about the Atevi.

Now look back on history and see how fandom, and our world has changed under the impact of Trek.

OK, Trek hit in the late 1960's, and the 1970's are famous for Women's Lib and of course the rise of Black Culture after Roots in 1977. In 1975 my non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES! was published and blew the lid on Star Trek Fandom -- and fandom in general.

The Star Trek conventions were about getting together to meet the people you'd only snailmailed before -- to brainstorm ST fanzine stories, to tell stories, to buy and sell and exchange paper fanzines, and little by little, a track of programming was added (well attended but not the heart of the matter) where the stars of the TV show stood on stage and later signed autographs.

The ST cons were modeled after (and run by BNF's Big Name Fans) SF cons, but that proved to be non-scalable, so the structure gradually evolved to be big enough for the crowds.

So LITTLE ST Cons popped up, just for 'zines, costumes, how-to-run-a-con practice and so on.

Star Trek took the CULTURE of SF fandom and scaled it up, filling fanzines with more than just articles and as Arnie says "life and life in fandom." SF fandom used 'zines the way most people today use blogs, for the meta-conversation. But Star Trek fandom injected FICTION into the fanzines, and sold those zines for paper and postage only, no labor charge.

That's the model Christoph Neimann is describing in his article, calling it a "new socialism" -- but it's neither new nor socialism. It's FANDOM!!! Star Trek style.

Now back to the envelope subject of this whole series of blog posts that's probably bored away the entire readership of this co-blog.

HOW DO WE DO IT FOR SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE????

We must study how culture evolved, (or as C. J. Cherryh said in CONSPIRATOR -- adjusted) to accomodate the new forms of communication.

Fandom evolved from the SF magazine readerships, readers meeting in micro-cons in New York. Star Trek fandom likewise started in and around New York.

What is going on now that has allowed SFR and PNRomance to get a toe-hold is e-books and e-media and Web 2.0 devices like http://www.goodreads.com .

What is happening in the world today, this whole pulverizing impact of social media on our culture could (it's not that big a stretch) be attributed to the success of STAR TREK, or perhaps more importantly of STAR TREK LIVES! a little Bantam paperback that went 8 printings in the 1970's.

The conventions and fanac (fan activity) surrounding Star Trek became public knowledge as the New York Times and other big papers picked up the hints in STAR TREK LIVES! about K/S and other exotic fiction experiments.

Star Trek itself went only 3 seasons then grew in syndication. The media execs wanted to repeat this "fandom" phenomenon, and thought they had it with SPACE 1999, which Trek fans sneered at and stayed away from though it was advertised as Star Trek fans will love it.

Likewise the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA -- (not the remake which is Intimate Adventure
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html and Ronald D. Moore has even said so
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventurecomments.html )

They tried and tried, and they just could not duplicate the appeal of Star Trek. But Trek fans took the K/S premise and "slashed" combos of characters in other shows and made fascinating reading in fanzines for shows that have absolutely no SF appeal.

We eventually got Star Trek films, new series, a few new series, and a hiatus, now a new Star Trek movie, with the one thing no fan would have gone for in 1990 - NEW SPOCK AND KIRK ACTORS.

That's the test of a classic role - when a succession of generations of actors play the role successfully, the role becomes bigger than any actor.

That's important to understand. It's vital. It means Hollywood has stopped excluding SF from the concept "classic." And that's happened gradually as SF and Fantasy movies have won Oscars (which was unthinkable before Trek).

Star Trek and Trek fandom broke down a wall in our world, and now Trek has spread to all levels of the ambient society and culture.

Don't forget, it was Trek fans in a university environment that basically invented the internet to play a video game from campus to campus. A Trek type video game.

Christoph Niemann goes on and on about the social networking and the internet changing our very economy, our entire concept of personal property is being changed.

Gene Roddenberry's concept of the Trek universe was that it had no MONEY - money wasn't used anymore, nor were pockets needed to carry money. People weren't hired to crew the Enterprise; they were volunteers. Honest, that was his concept and few have ever understood that.

So Star Trek spawned the Internet, and the older SF fandom which spawned ST fandom has now spawned what Niemann dubs "the new socialism" in Web 2.0 and social networking.

Any number of us on this blog have mentioned how disregarded readers of SF were in the 1950's and 1960's. Disparaged. Held in open contempt wouldn't be too strong a wording for the attitude we endured for liking science fiction. Fantasy was even worse.

Then came Star Trek. It got cancelled because it was science fiction. (really, the network execs who made the decision didn't care about the tons of fan mail -- they just didn't like the show. That's it.)

So "we" fans organized in just the way Niemann describes what he thinks is a new cultural form, and we beat Hollywood to its knees and produced this new Star Trek film which has been given rave reviews and a HUGE amount of space in Variety, the NYTimes, Wired Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Business Week -- you name it. Talk about prestige.

WE WON! We fought for decades. We used the oldest tool in the fannish arsenal, FANDOM ITSELF, its strange organization, its unique way of using words, its intrinsic value system and economy of sharing -- most especially fueled by the LoC.

And we won.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are now mainstream.

How did that happen?

Star Trek -- Wagon Train To The Stars. (based on the incredibly long running TV show that everyone watched Wagon Train).

Star Trek, OK nobody else will ever notice this is true, because it took 40 years and everyone's forgotten everything about that long-ago time -- none of the salient facts of how this happened have ever been recorded for posterity because Star Trek and SF in general was not important.

Star Trek provided the pivot point in history, the inflection point, the "place to stand" and eventually with the films, books, and fanzines, provided the "lever long enough" and we changed the world into the vision Niemann is talking about in Wired.

These people who are inventing Web 2.0 devices, un-inventing copyright and all the industrial complex business models, in fact uninventing currency itself, these people are the descendents barely 2 generations removed from those who envisioned the future world of Star Trek.

The impact of Star Trek is just beginning to be felt (will never be identified officially, I'm sure) in the pulverization of our culture and our society and our business models. But we can take a lesson from all this.

The world was inimical to the SF fan. SF fans flocked to the first real SF on TV. We changed the world to be friendly to SF and SF fans.

The world is inimical to Romance. Romance fans need a vehicle to flock to. Then we will change the world.

The vehicle SF fans flocked to was a TV show, because at that time about a third of all the adults in the USA watched TV. There were 3 networks. What else was there to do in the evening but listen to the radio which didn't have any good shows anymore.

The vehicle Romance fans need has got to be Web 2.0 based.

Look at the numbers and websites with numbers that I talked about last week

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Nobody watched TV anymore. And the TV watching public is graying fast. Any TV watching younger people do is on the web.

The web as a fiction delivery system is burgeoning, and copyright and other business model elements from the 1600's to the 1900's only strangle that burgeoning growth.

We're having our economy shattered by the new business models, uninventing money and labor for a wage, etc.

Do we, as Romance readers, writers and fans, do we seriously want to add a shattering effect from Romance, which is our fundamental life's relationship to this deadly mixture?

Or do we, as Romance readers, writers and fans, bear an obligation to produce that Romance vehicle that will draw us together to become a Web 2.0 force, (and Web 3.0 is already in launch mode!) to provide the SOLUTION to the pulverizing, culture shattering, social fabric ripping effects of the loss of copyright?

Which is it? Tell me by commenting on this post that's longer than a chapter in a long book!

If you got all the way to the end of this post and have any idea what I'm talking about, you owe me a LoC according to Christoph Niemann.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

How Much is Too Much (World Buliding & Balance)?

Since I'm essentially brain dead after completing a twenty-five+ page "author questionnaire" for Random House (and it could have gone more than twenty-five pages...I just gave up out of exhaustion)... I'm going to piggyback a post that's going on today at The Galaxy Express about world building, or as Heather delightfully puts it: The 7 Unnecessary Science Fiction Worldbuilding Details.

Jacqueline's done some great posts on info dumping before:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

But Heather neatly broke down those things that irk her and to a great extent, rightly so. There are certain 'givens' in genre fiction. The trouble to me come when you're dealing with cross-genre fiction. How much does an author do to bring a new reader "up to speed?" What kind of assumptions can we make about our readers coming from two different camps?

Just to torture myself, I have a Google-search on my name that brings to my inbox daily a list of blogs that mention me. I've found some pretty neat reviews that way and met lots of new fans. But I've also read a number of "back fence" conversations by both SF and Romance readers who find huge fault with SFR--and usually for the opposite reason (or the other side of the same coin...bear with me, I'm really tired.)

The SF readers for the most part don't get the 'required HEA' in SFR and express distaste to displeasure on the amount of time spent on the romantic relationship. To them, going into the hero's or heroine's thoughts about the other is rather like noting that chairs are decklocked. That's something they simply don't want to know. Yet if it's left out, the romance readers riot.

The SF readers don't particularly care that much about things romance readers look for: descriptions of anything from clothing to the hero's apartment/cabin/house. Where to romance readers, setting can "set the mood" to SF readers, setting is...setting.

On the other hand (are four fingers and a thumb...oh, wait, I'm blogging) I recently read an interesting post on Goodreads where a romance reader decried SFR for it's use of "futuristic names" (what's wrong with Jack, she asked?). I knew what she was getting at but I wondered if it wasn't more a stereotype than actual occurrence. My characters aren't named Jack but they are named Philip, Mack, Branden, Sully and Theo. For starters. I think the day of the main characters in SFR or futuristics being T'Kwee'gre'sha and Perr'k'ray-roo are long gone, if they ever were. But because "alien sounding names" are often used for worlds or items, I think there's a general belief that SFR is chock full of T'Kwee'gre'shas. (And by the way, as a Yank originally from New Jersey, names like Padraig, Siohban, Ceallach and Sinéad confuse the heck out of me and they're all names from right here on this planet.)

So the question becomes, how much is too much--to which part of your readership? What assumptions can you make about SFR readers? How do you keep one half entertained without insulting the other? Can we assume everyone knows what an airlock looks like and does? That's like assuming I know how to pronounce reticule, a word often found in historical romances. It's part of my history, I should know that, eh?

I don't. Even when I'm not totally tired. ~Linnea

HOPE’S FOLLY, Book 3 in the Gabriel’s Ghost universe, Feb. 2009 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

But, yeah, get shot by a Surger, and it still hurt like a bitch and could put you flat out dead if someone’s aim was good. Not center mass, as they were taught. That only worked on the good guys, but it wasn’t the good guys who needed shooting. It was the bad guys, and they were smart enough to wear body armor. Good luck getting a standard Surger to penetrate that.

Okay, maybe at point-blank.

But at point blank, the bad guys had already shot you dead with their nice powerful Carver-12s.

Dissing the Formula Novel

Last night I reached the halfway mark in Linnea Sinclair's current novel, Hope's Folly.

On this blog, I have said several times that there exists an exacting structural architecture behind novels that is as precise as that revealed in SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT! GOES TO THE MOVIES is for films.

I've said the same thing at many writing workshops, and always there's an aspiring writer, and sometimes even a publishing writer, who says "NO! A Thousand Times NO!!!"

That storytelling is an art and there must be no fetters or artificial restrictions on artists.

Well, storytelling is an art.

And as Marion Zimmer Bradley taught us in CATCHTRAP -- Discipline is the mark of the artiste.

But let's turn it around a bit and look at all this from the story-consumer's point of view.

If storytelling is an art -- perhaps so is story reading?

If you pay a small fortune for Superbowl tickets, would you be happy to plop down in your hard seat, hotdog in hand, only to discover the gridiron full of basketball players?

Linnea has brought up a subject related to this on Goodreads.com -- a network site for people who read. Should SFR be categorized under PNR. Is SF-Romance a type of Paranormal Romance -- or is it something else?

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/104604?utm_medium=email&utm_source=comment_instant

Narrative stories in print or e-text -- stories told in words -- are a game the reader plays with the writer.

Reading a writer's stories is like playing chess or cards or any other eye-to-eye sport -- you get to know the writer.

Thus clever readers follow a byline. Some will look up the writer's pen names and follow all their work -- but usually have a favorite byline.

That's because we use pen-names to play different games.

Likewise, genre labels actually label the GAME the writer is offering to play with the reader.

Linnea is a great Dungeon Master! She'll lead you a merry chase. She follows two formulae at once and sticks to both -- a neat trick.

HOPE'S FOLLY is a case in point (by the halfway mark; I don't know about the ending yet so this isn't a review but a "heads-up").




Linnea nailed the halfway mark with the "beat" of the Romance that has to go at that exact point.

And simultaneously, as a complication to the Romance but also the instigator of the Romance, the SF half of the plot hits the exact point that an SF novel has to hit at the halfway mark.

Because this is a "happy ending" genre (or at worst, bitter-sweet or cliff-hanger ending genre) -- the half-way mark has to be DARKEST HOUR when you can taste success, see it, smell it, know it - and somehow BAM success becomes impossible.

In film, they call the halfway point "raising the stakes" -- what can be lost by failing to succeed suddenly burgeons into something far more important than it was at the beginning.

Perhaps because of the mass market industries driving these "games readers play" with writers -- readers have internalized this structure and come to expect it -- and enjoy that expectation being fulfilled.

Maybe there is an artistic artificiality behind that, but it is inherent in the nature of entertainment that the most enjoyment a reader/viewer has from the underlying structural solidity of a story comes from the strength of that structural integrity, yes, but MOSTLY FROM THE STRUCTURE BEING INVISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE.

Readers aren't supposed to be able to see the structure consciously. Writers must not only see that structure, but know lots of structures and be able to pour their story ideas into the structure most appropriate to the artistic material of the story.

Writers are there to be Dungeon Masters engineering a great, good, chase that allows readers a vast amount of freedom to create for themselves, but at the same time provides the latticework of structure.

Thus folks who are making the transition from Reader to Writer have to pass through a phase of "denial" (much like that phase which is part of grieving because they are grieving their personal innocence lost) in which they insist there are no structural rules they can not and should not break.

True art is formless.

The reader believes that because they have not been discerning the structure of the novels they like the most, and thus believe what they adore is structurelessness.

To gain the ability to write what they truly like to read, they must first admit that what they adore most is the structure -- and any solid flesh on that structure will satisfy.

Because readers don't perceive the underlying structure that thrills their subconscious minds, they participate in the game publishers play inventing genre labels.

Publishers try out a genre label and see if it "sells" -- if it shows promise, they put the label on more things. When they see which things sell better with that label, they begin to buy from writers only things which share that structure to publish under that label. Readers get to trust the genre label, and buy more.

With whetted appetite for a given structure, readers will scarf up more and more of anything called by that genre label.

Eventually, the market gets saturated, sales plummet, and something else skyrockets in sales. Publishers seek a label that says "just like what skyrocketed" and start trying to buy novels written with that exact same structure.

It's a cycle. I've known editors who survived the rise and fall of the bodice ripper, and other sub-genres. I know how they think. It's all about profit.

That won't change - it being all about profit.

So people who share a taste for a particular structure with lots of other people will have lots of novels to choose from. People who are looking for structures that are not popular will have to search in the byways of publishing, not the highways.

However, all that is now changing and changing very fast.

It's the recession-depression whatever we're facing. Intel has just announced they're building a new plant to make chips smaller and faster than EVER that use much less electricity (thus produce less heat).

E-books may be riding on the coat-tails of tech applications, but the coat-tails just got broader and longer with Intel's announcement. The e-book reader has always been the stumbling block in the logical extension of the data revolution to novels.

Readers have always been less than 5% of the population and currently that might be more like 3% (of people who read for fun, not instruction or work). Distribution has always been the commercial barrier.

Paper publishing is still melting down. We're losing newspapers (paperback books are printed on newsprint usually; no papers, no huge market for newsprint, and paper prices soar too high to make books affordable). Gas prices will soar again in a few months (April 2010 crude is over $50/barrel; today it's $39/barrel). Distribution of tons of printed books only to have them discarded is just not economical with a shrinking reading population.

Amazon CEO was interviewed on TV last night bragging they want to have all the books in the world ever printed available on Kindle. Google has similar ambitions.

The origin of "genre" lies in the secret publishers keep from readers -- that what readers get addicted to is STRUCTURE. Each genre has a set structure. It's not content or background, as seems intuitively obvious, it's structure.

"Space Opera" is the Western set in space. The "Western" is no longer saleable as book or TV show. But it lives on in Star Trek, Stargate, and there will be new icons of adventure into The Unknown.

The electronic tech revolution is eliminating the mechanism that makes keeping that secret profitable.

The structure of the fiction delivery system is in total disarray at the moment and will continue to foment. In fact, this next 18 months or so may be crucial to the novel as we know it.

Note this article -- it's not very new and doesn't say much new stuff, but it compiles a lot of facts into a picture that may show you what I'm talking about.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Mobile+and+Wireless&articleId=9127538&taxonomyId=15&pageNumber=1

It's in a tech 'zine online, true, so there's bias.

I have to point out that I think "structure" will prevail. That there are reasons why the most people prefer this or that structure at any given time. That getting the most readers or viewers for your story will always be a writer's goal.

Also there are sound spiritual and esoteric reasons why this or that structure appeals to this or that audience.

Although we may see the e-market swamped with stories that have that so-yearned-for undisciplined formlessness that new writers and even some readers yearn for, I think the structural formula will prevail.

These formulae are not something writers made up, and not something publishers just invented and forced on us. They are formulae developed over millennia of storytelling from cave camp fire to e-book. They are formulae developed because storytellers wanted to hold their audience's attention.

They are formulae rooted deep in human psychology and spirituality. That's why readers become addicted to them. These formulae speak to the essence of what makes us human.

That's why I admire Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series so much. He, personally, as an individual knows how primal this formula is. STC! GOES TO THE MOVIES delineates the exact rules for each of 10 genres Blake has identified empirically. He didn't invent them. Hollywood didn't invent them. MOVIE-GOERS INVENTED THEM by spending money to see movies with those formulae and shunning movies that didn't have those structures.

The formula is the genre.

Which brings us back to Linnea Sinclair.

I'm sure some readers will fault her execution of whichever Romance formula she is using for any given book. And I know I find missing elements in her SF formula. But she's put the two together into a very satisfying mix.

I, for one, am impressed with how she nailed that halfway-point in both formulae at once.

Those who were reading and studying what she and I have written on this blog about the Expository Lump, notably this post on verisimilitude vs reality and the blog posts linked within it -

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

should read and study the first 2 chapters of HOPE'S FOLLY, and the effect they have on you as a reader -- then the way the pacing changes in Chapter 3 and onwards.

Linnea explained the technique she used in the first 2 chapters, and I think there's a link to her explanation in this post.

Creating these effects on readers is an artform. When you want to create the effect Linnea created for you, use the technique she adopted here.

Just note that without those first 2 chapters, the mid-point of both the SF plot and the Romance plot of the story would not fall at the mid-point of the page count.

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