The previous 5 parts of this Series of posts are:
LINKS TO PREVIOUS PARTS:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-5-great.html
Part 7 of this series of posts will appear on March 26, 2013
The essence of story is CONFLICT -- and conflict is the power-plant of the plot.
As I've defined it in previous posts about novel and film structure, story is the sequence of emotional states and lessons learned from those states experienced within the viewpoint character(s), while plot is the 'because line' or sequence of external events each occurring "because" one of the previous events occurred.
Story is about how you feel, and plot is about what you do because you feel that way.
Not every writer, or writing teacher uses those definitions -- but every commercial story writer I know has firm grasp of these two components of story, and how they interact, regardless of what labels they use to designate them.
As I've been pointing out in this series on Theme-Plot integration, commonly held fallacies are a wondrous source of steaming hot romance stories and science fiction, fantasy, and magic based plots.
One such plot generator of a commonly held, or wished for, fallacy is the fallacy that "safety" is real, is achievable, and even desirable. Some would say necessary for life, especially if you're planning to raise children.
Safety is the goal of every Main Character caught in a Horror Novel plot.
In Horror, you stumble upon some monstrous Evil, it hits you, you hit back, struggle free, flee for your life, double-back to rescue someone, perhaps someone who's rescued you, someone you owe a favor, some total stranger you then fall in love with -- a SOMEONE who rouses emotions counter to stark-terror -- then flee with that someone who perhaps then rescues you, and finally reach some kind of weapon to use against the Evil, turn and confront the Evil, and -- because it's Horror genre and this is the rule -- YOU MUST IMPRISON THE EVIL. You can't destroy Evil, but you can be SAFE FOR NOW by putting it behind a barrier, a wall. Think of a 3 year old hiding behind his mother's leg.
The goal of Horror Genre is the payoff of FEELING SAFE (after long, drawn out, stark terror). The more stark the terror, the more potent the feeling of safety -- people indulge in Horror Genre to achieve that RELIEF of SAFETY-AT-LAST.
The iconic film to consider here is Jurassic Park -- a love story, chase scene, horror imagery mixture worth studying. The horror is caused by the usual "power in the hands of Evil" -- or uncontrolled or uncontrollable -- people. And in this case, the classic bugaboo is "science."
To understand the connection between Horror genre, Science Fiction and Fantasy, consider how Science as we know it today is a branch of Natural Philosophy, which was an attempt to make a systematic study of the how's and why's of Magic.
Yes, it all starts with Magic - with Herb Lore, and other attempts by humans to get a handle on the Environment and all the threats to life and limb that abound in our world. Since the first Cave Painting, humans have apparently been using our well developed brains to leverage intelligence into a method of "getting safe."
With agriculture, medicine, well built construction, and the mastery of fire (and all subsequent forms of power sources up to electricity), we have been building a wall between ourselves and the ravages of Nature, extending our life spans and making those lives more gentle.
Horror is an extremely popular genre because life isn't safe. And the same can be said of Romance -- we search for (and most often do find) a Soul Mate, a PERSON who complements our skills and increases our ability to make a safe-spot in the whirling storm of ever present threats.
So while we've been applying every clever trick we can think of to gain safety from our environment (fire, famine, flood, draught, desert heat, arctic cold, disease, and hard work that breaks down the body) we've also been using that same powerful brain to figure out ways to gain safety from EACH OTHER.
Yes, all the monstrous threats Nature throws at us pale in comparison to what we throw at each other. We have warred with stones, clubs, axes and atom bombs, and now we war with chemicals and even diseases. Every bit of Nature we control, we turn into a weapon against other humans who think, believe or feel differently (or who just own better crop lands or electric power sources).
The basic bond of the Soul Mate grows into the extended bonding of family, and multi-generational family structures which become tribes, villages, towns, cities, whole civilizations.
Writing courses teach that there are three basic CONFLICTS: Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, Man vs Himself.
But I've never seen a writing course teach that all humanity, and every story ever told, has only one goal: SAFETY.
Safety is certainly the goal of every Romance. Safety is another way to say "Happily Ever After." It's a point or situation in which there are no further threats that you can not overcome. Everything from there on is easy. You are SAFE.
Why do we seek safety? And what is safety? What ploys, dodges, plots and schemes have we invented along the way to convince ourselves we're safe?
What do we define as "safety?" Where does that definition come from?
These questions are all philosophical in nature -- such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Philosophy, as I've often noted in these posts, is the source-material for Theme.
Pick a philosophical stance, state it clearly in one sentence, find an object that symbolizes it, and you have the essence of what you want to SAY with your story.
Every story, novel, poem, song, film, says something. It is you the writer talking to your audience, and (as in a speech) taking a thesis, explaining it, demonstrating that it's true, then restating the thesis, transmitting an IDEA about life, about the environment, and maybe about the Soul.
You, the writer, as you say what you want to say, must hold the attention of your audience if they're to sit still long enough for you to get to your point. Your point is your theme - an abstract (boring) philosophical notion.
So you dress up that boring thought in concrete clothing - in a costume, period, in a practical object (like a lamp or a soup bowl) and you decorate your object to make it beautiful.
The object you decorate is a segment of a life, of a character's life, a segment that is recognizable to your audience and well defined in their minds already.
Examples: Going Away To College. Getting That First Job. Getting That First Divorce. Finding Mr. Right At Last. The Death of Your Last Remaining Parent. Inheriting The Haunted Mansion. Having Your Child Move Back Home Bringing a Grandchild. Marrying Off Your Grandchild.
These are familiar life milestones even to those who haven't lived them yet. Everyone knows people who have "gone through" a "period" like that.
You, the writer, take a period like that, a recognizable swatch of "life" and decorate it with particulars, a character, situation, setting -- and theme! You make a boring, utilitarian object BEAUTIFUL by making it unique.
Which brings us back to the concept of how Safety is a Fallacy a writer can exploit while at the same time delivering that emotional satisfaction of having achieved safety at the end of the novel.
The aftermath or denouement of a novel (to be classed as a Happy Ending or Upbeat Ending) has to deliver the emotional experience of SAFETY - the threat is over, gone, vanquished. The characters can relax now, and so can the reader.
You and I know it's an illusion, but the reader can experience it as real.
How do you create that illusion and "sell" it as real?
Let's consider where in life we experience safety.
We say, "There's safety in numbers."
Families form groups, and tribes - towns etc. Why? Because we feel SAFER when surrounded by others.
However, the most formidable threat to human life on this planet is other humans.
So we band together to defend ourselves and our possessions from other humans.
Look again at the essence of the Horror film -- usually involving isolating a person (or two people) from "the others." In diving, we always go with a buddy. In spelunking, we always go with at least one -- more usually several -- others. The object of the Horror Plot is a) isolate b) run from then neutralize a threat and c) REJOIN THE GROUP (or civilization, or your Combat Unit - whatever you got separated from you get to rejoin).
Why do humans feel not-safe in isolation?
Well, note that biologically we are born "premature" compared to other animals. Most other animals can stand or walk immediately to nurse, and are more functional in other ways. Humans are premature because of the physiology of the over-sized head and the birth canal, so much fetal development happens in the first 6 months to a year after birth.
So very early, there must be one other to care for us, hands-on. To get good brain development, human babies must be handled a lot. Later of course we rebel and take off on our own -- what mother hasn't chased their 2 year old across a parking lot?
We are taught what to fear -- and other people usually top that list.
Familiar people are safe. Strangers -- not safe, maybe useful, but not safe.
So in your mind, run through the stages of human development and correlate all you know against everything you've learned about how to create, handle, and resolve a PLOT CONFLICT.
So, again, we're looking for wide-accepted fallacies to challenge in order to create a theme, a statement that leads to Happily Ever After, or at least safety.
The fallacy I'd like you to consider here is Safety Is Real.
Does that fallacy come from our infantile experience of safety in the hands of our caregiver (mother, surrogate, father, elder sibling acting as parent - whatever hands got us through infancy)?
Anyone who's raised a child knows that the parent's objective is to get the child to feel safe (to stop screaming and give me a moment's peace), to return to that safe place, ("Come here, Johnny!" Mom yells across the parking lot.) and not talk to strangers (but later to be socialized enough to fall in love and form a new family; what a contradiction.) Anyone who's been a child knows that the child's objective is to take insane risks while utterly oblivious to the magnitude of the risk.
Human Parenting consists of implanting a "false sense of security" in every child.
Since we deal with Alien Romance on this blog, I should point out that I said HUMAN PARENTING -- being very specific there.
So safety is an illusion we learn as infants to regard as real, and we crave it periodically throughout life.
Feelings of safety can be evoked by CONNECTING with another human, especially after a long period of facing dangers, risks, and horrors all alone.
The film series Home Alone comes to mind. That is worth studying for the theme of safety and where it comes in our hierarchy of values.
Of course, we're not writing YA here, however, these are iconic classics about the process of learning what safety is (and is not.)
There are any number of pop psychology books on "leaving your comfort zone." All of those are great resources for Thematic material you can craft around the concept of the Fallacy of Safety.
So, since we're looking to write for adults -- about adult issues -- we should look at the adult version of the experiences of the infant and the pre-adolescent.
I have a theory (thematic material, indeed) that all International Affairs, and all theories of government, all governmental forms and the clashes between them, recapitulate the experiences of infancy and pre-adolescence (sometimes adolescence too). I look at governmental bodies (Congress, Parliament, etc) and their antics as eerily similar to Elementary School play yard activities.
One of the things kids do, especially adolescents, is form cliques. Countries form Alliances.
One thing adolescents do is dress alike. Some generations have prided themselves on each person violating some or all of the conventions of dress imposed by their parents -- in rebellion. The net result is a school full of kids all dressed identically -- ever noticed that? Mismatched colors, floppy baggy shapes or tight-skimpy patches that pass for clothes - it doesn't matter. Teens adopt an identity.
In some neighborhoods, gangs abound - and what do they do? They adopt a UNIFORM -- something everyone wears to mark them apart from others. Often it's a scarf of a particular color or pattern, or a type of shirt. In defense, schools adopt a School Uniform. This just reinforces the underlying PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT: "Safety In Numbers."
So we grow up, get a job as a Congressman and join a caucus -- or a coalition -- a GROUP OF GROUPS who all think or act in the same way.
In a previous post in this series, PART 4, Fallacies and Endorphins, I mentioned Edward Bernays. Refresh your memory on the idea that the father of Public Relations (i.e. publicity, advertising, spin doctoring) viewed humanity as having a natural herd instinct.
Themes derived from that idea can range from No Man Is An Island to Each Man Is An Island -- from we're all the same, to we're each unique.
All advertising is based on this assumption: humans can be herded. You just have to hammer the individuals into uniform units (i.e. dress them all alike in school uniforms), and they'll stick together. You know the Chinese adage that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. That's how a governmental system based on herding humans for SAFETY has to treat individuals --- they must be made into uniform copies of each other and taught to stick together.
We all learn in school to be inconspicuous in class when we don't know the answer.
We all learn the value of "fitting in" and we do feel safer in groups.
We don't walk the dark streets at night alone, and it isn't just for safety from muggers. We go in groups because each human is UNIQUE.
We each have a set of talents, abilities, and acquired skills that are distinctive from those of everyone else -- and no one person, alone, has ALL the skills and talents needed for a high probability of survival -- not safety or certainty, just a good chance.
So we are attracted to our opposites (Soul Mates are rarely identical, and "interests in common" don't usually insure a life-long marriage). We look for those who don't have our skills -- but have other skills, so that among our friends and relatives (our Church Group or whatever group) we have access to all the necessary skills, talents and abilities.
That diversity of skills arises from a diversity of philosophical positions on any issue, and yet we get along best with people who agree with us about a few basic ideas. As we change our ideas about things, we change the groups we associate with.
Political coalitions are often formed from groups that are mortal enemies -- who don't argue their differences until a resolution is reached and someone (or everyone) changes their mind.
We discussed arguing fallacies to a plot-resolution in Part 3 of this series of posts.
Why do we form coalitions? One good set of answers (good being those that generate plots you can write) arises from the human search for power over other humans, as discussed in Part 4, Fallacies and Endorphins. Again I refer you to the book, You Can't Lie To Me by Janine Driver and the theory that politicians who exercise power over others (particularly with a lie) feel an addictive rush of endorphins from exercising power over other humans.
Why do humans experience pleasure in exercising power over other humans?
Would that be the case if humans really had a herd instinct as Bernays says?
As I described here above, note that the history and pre-history of all humanity has been the fight against the ravages of Nature -- but that battle pales against the backdrop of the fight of humanity against humanity (war.)
Exercising power over other humans makes humans feel SAFE -- that's what that endorphin rush does! And it's a fallacy. A drug induced delusion.
We wouldn't need that delusion to feel safe if we had a natural herd instinct. Just being with, beside, or among other humans would make us feel safe. It doesn't.
It takes particular, specific, unique humans around us to produce that feeling of "family." That is because each of us is a puzzle piece, maybe with a fairly standard shape but a unique color or pattern -- or perhaps with a standard color and a unique jigsaw shape -- we only fit HERE, not THERE.
Each of us has an exact place in the world, and when in that place we feel safe. Outside that place, not so much.
We feel powerful when we are in our place -- threatened when not.
Coalitions (political within a government, or among nations) don't bestow that "in your place" safety - not a safety in numbers, but a safety that comes from being among those whose skills and talents complement your own. Coalitions are based on the fallacy that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and so always fall apart as soon as the external threat has been handled or neutralized (or just abated a little.)
The members of a coalition are themselves natural enemies that can't co-exist -- that's usually the nature of a coalition.
A family isn't a coalition so much as it is a "small business" (an economic engine). The power of that engine is Love -- not the hate that powers Coalitions.
Each of these statements I've strewn throughout this series is itself the source of hundreds of possible themes strong enough to support a novel. And each suggests a plot.
The plots based on the nature of a "coalition" (the "agree to disagree" formula) is obvious. The cooperating entities dispense with the external threat, then (to the surprise, shock or horror of the others) turn on each other in a war of dominance that can turn to a war of extinction.
The plots based on "each human is unique and fits into one exact place in the world" are not quite so obvious because you don't see that many of them, especially not outside the Romance novel field. These plots are the "find your Soul Mate" plots, "Love At First Sight" plots, and "The Stranger Who Goes Home Makes Home Strange" plots -- all the "Home For The Holidays" plots fit in that category.
We live in an era when internecine warfare is considered the natural state of the family -- almost all the TV series currently running assume some sort of embarrassment, strife, or even hatred of Parents -- going "home" is indigestion-incarnate. Estrangement is almost synonymous with Family.
So the philosophical statement, "Humans can not be herded because each human is unique and has an exact place in the world," seems to the audience like a fallacy. That makes it a very powerful source of Theme for a Science Fiction Romance. The cognitive dissonance inherent in the theme is maximized by the "real" life of the reader.
A plot that addresses that theme might be formed from a Main Character buying an expensive item (a TV set, iPad, Green Energy House) that was ADVERTISED (Bernays; herding humans) enticingly, being disappointed with the performance of the product, fighting the company for a refund or redress of injuries, maybe taking it to Legal Aid services, (meeting a Soul Mate of a Lawyer - imagine that!) and powering it through all the way to the Supreme Court -- years and years and many children later, ending up as the Spouse of a Supreme Court Justice (you never hear about them in the news, do you?) Becoming a Supreme Court Justice means you're "safe" -- because nobody can fire you and you make enough to support your family well.
Of course, then there's always the sequel where the Supreme Court Justice resigns and runs for President.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
The Education of an Action Romance Hero
Officially, the 2005 film titled SAHARA is described thusly:
---
Master explorer Dirk Pitt goes on the adventure of a lifetime of seeking out a lost Civil War battleship known as the "Ship of Death" in the deserts of West Africa while helping a UN doctor being hounded by a ruthless dictator. (124 mins.)
Director: Breck Eisner
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Penélope Cruz, Steve Zahn, William H. Macy
---
There are a lot of DVD's on Amazon titled SAHARA - this is the 2005 movie about treasure hunters looking for a battleship in the desert -- As I was watching ( logging the SAVE THE CAT! "beats" with part of my mind), I was imagining the story I would have written: LIKE THIS: “ Indiana Jones on Tatooine with McGiver for a sidekick and Captain Kirk in orbit ”
The film SAHARA also reminds me of the Action-Romance film ROMANCING THE STONE -- the two-guys-and-a-tough-gal in a chase/battle for life and limb (with larger stakes beyond themselves) format is now an entrenched classic, though there was a time when the gal was only there to be rescued and do stupid things to get caught again.
Looking at the dates - early 1980's to just before 2008, I think these films hit big because they were hammering away at a stereotype the people of theater-going-age desperately wanted to break (all females are helpless, or if not, are "Evil.") Power in the hands of a woman turns Dark, or destroys the woman.
Today, (2012) we have NEW STEREOTYPES that the teens of this time will hammer away at. These are recently born stereotypes, almost too new to be called cliche. Yet the rate of change in our society has exploded to the point where the brand new stereotype is an old cliche before the movies to challenge it have been shown in theaters.
We're seeing those challenges I think in the "Indie" market - the films made on low budget by the brilliant producers honing their craft on YouTube and Vimeo.
The question the beginning writer must answer is, "What are today's stereotypes?"
I suspect you'll find a lot of answers by examining the condition of "the family" in today's world.
Statistics recently posted indicate that a man and a woman who marry and raise their kids in a structured, family environment, have a much MUCH lower chance of unemployment, poverty, -- and I haven't yet seen the statistic but I suspect someone is crunching numbers on the juvenile delinquency rate. We do have a "bullying" problem erupting in the early grades of schools, a precursor to real trouble in life (both for the bully and the victim).
One development we have seen between 1980 and 2010 is the advent in the Romance Genre of the novel centering on the divorced or single-parent woman finding true romance the second (or third) time around, despite having attained a sense of total independence -- or perhaps because of it.
The broken family mends, might be the theme of that sub-genre.
The stereotype that may be forming (to be broken soon) would be that seen by the children of these "broken" marriages -- the next generation looking back and seeing "family" and the distaste, strife, and even real hatred between their parents and their grandparents.
"The Family" broke during those decades along two axes -- horizontally via divorce rate, and vertically as children found the "generation gap" (that has always existed) widening beyond comprehension.
It's probably not irrelevant to include the advent of the internet as a household utility between 1980 and 2010. The cell phone revolution of the 1990's just added fuel to the fire. Social networking, Web 2.0 and up, ebooks, and a whole new curriculum in the schools widen that vertical gap.
I do hope by now you've all read Alvin Toffler's non-fiction book, FUTURE SHOCK -- he predicted all this and more. If you are looking for the next stereotype to break and sell a blockbuster movie, read that book.
Toffler notes that the public school system in the U.S.A. (an innovation that changed the world, PUBLIC schooling) has always been the tool of industry, politically dominated in such a way as to turn out workers suitable for the jobs that industry needs to fill.
The nature of the jobs needing filling has shifted markedly in this 30 year period -- to the point where those educated in the 1980's public schools don't qualify for modern jobs unless they've acquired more certificates or skills, degrees, and resume items in between.
The "covert curriculum" that Toffler points out prevailed in the 1970's actually cripples folks for the workforce today -- it shifted and then shifted again. But then in the 1990's or so, the covert curriculum in the schools was turned much more "overt" -- saying "on the nose" that the purpose of schooling is to prepare you to work a job rather than to educate you to think for yourself.
Some of this peaked as the Unions became powerful enough to challenge industry's control of the job market, setting the idea that the monetary compensation for a "job" should be determined by what the worker thinks it should be - not what the employer thinks the job actually produces.
And another notion ebbed and flowed all the way into the university level -- that the purpose of education was to learn certain things are true, and others are not true. That the world "should" be this way, but never "that" way.
I've had some long, deep conversations with teachers retiring from the workforce who have taught at the High School and college levels (and I know some Middle School teachers too) who have felt this shifting wind of philosophy altering the textbooks.
Two rules I've seen imposed that exemplify this shift creating a new stereotype that new films will attack:
A) If one student in a class misbehaves, punish the entire class. There are no individuals, just the group, and the whole group is responsible for the behavior of individuals.
B) Never allow students to read ahead in the textbook, or ask questions from the "next chapter." The full weight of Teacher Authority must squash any notion that a student should teach themselves without supervision.
The covert curriculum thus becomes control of the group by authority.
Now this is not yet entirely visible across the nation, not at all. It turns up here and there, gets dismissed, turns up again, and is tossed out. Parents get outside tutoring for their children, take them to dance and music classes and all those things that break the grip of the public school authority.
But just anecdotal evidence from teachers I've spoken to indicates it's a rising tide not a receding one. The children who grew up trained by authority not to teach themselves are almost at the level of being in charge of things. The main result of having gone through school being punished for the misbehavior of others (over whom we have no control) is to hammer at government to CONTROL the misbehavior of others lest it hurt us.
Safety from the misbehavior of others and a deep seated conviction (irrational as it may be) that we can't solve problems that haven't been solved before, may be creating an even wider generation gap, or a very wide gap between spouses.
In the 1970's, the biggest business and the biggest category of self-help books was the DO-IT-YOURSELF industry (father of Home Depot). Today, you don't do-it-yourself, you go to Home Depot and ask a clerk how to do it and what to buy.
The oldest joke since the popularization of the automobile is the difference between the husband and wife as they try to find an unfamiliar location. Ask or read the map? That's gone now by the GPS!
So, the writer should be asking, "Will the imposition of Authority over Thinking For Yourself bring us together and heal the Family?"
At one time, "Father Knows Best" -- a man was King of his Castle and the wife had to shut up and take orders. That let at least half the people in the world vent their frustrations at being bossed around at work on their stay-at-home-do-nothing-but-rest-all-day spouse.
Did we have healthy family dynamics then? Do we need to go "back" to that? Or forward into something new that's never been tried before in human history?
In the film SAHARA the characters are on a treasure hunt -- and they find more than they were looking for, but only after harrowing, near-death experiences that only miracles could rescue them from (yes like INDIANA JONES).
Take the beat structure from SAHARA, strip out the subject matter, and replace it with THE FAMILY. That's the treasure the treasure hunter searches for - the HEA.
Remember in the HEA ending, the Happily Ever After of the Romance story, the result of happiness is children (one way or another). That means HEA is the equivalent of FOUNDING A FAMILY though "Romance Genre" doesn't usually deal with after the wedding.
Ancestry.com is a very big and growing web-based enterprise now. People are curious about their distant heritage (even if they hate their parents).
Yes, I know, you don't hate your parents -- nor do I. But if you watch a few TV series, you'll see the modern "cliche" stereotype when the parents come to visit. There's always anticipation of strife, and then really serious strife -- sometimes it's resolved in the show, or at least partially, but the RIFT between generations is routinely portrayed as so common it doesn't need explaining to the audience.
The other thing you see mentioned offhandedly with the implication that the audience understands the nature of the strife implied -- that's the phrase "my Ex" -- everyone has an Ex and knows what meetings with him/her mean. Strife. Galore.
The reason Romance Genre doesn't deal with "after the wedding" is that we, as a culture, now expect Family Life to be fraught with strife. There's me vs. my parents. There's spouse vs. spouse's parents. There's me vs. my spouse's parents. There's my spouse vs. my parents. Children only make it worse. Then there's his children from a prior marriage vs. my children from a prior marriage.
Remember THE BRADY BUNCH? Could you put that on TV today and make it a hit? Why was it a hit then? (1969 and a film in 1995)
It was a hit because divorce had become common, but "The Family" was still strong. An amalgamated family was plausible because despite the inherent strife between generations, Family was plausible in a way it is not today.
Remember The Waltons TV Series?
The Waltons On Amazon
Remember Little House on the Prairie?
If you don't remember them, you can probably get them streaming on Netflix etc.
As a writer, you have to learn to discern the intended audience's characteristics and interests by looking at the piece of fiction with a writer's eye. But just because you're studying one thing, don't think you are allowed to forget everything else you've studied.
One of the things with WRITING as a craft, discipline, business, and artform is that you must teach yourself in defiance of most every teacher you've ever had in a formal school setting.
In truth, nobody can teach you. Honestly. There are a lot of expensive courses in writing all over the web now, but the truth is none of them will do you any good at all unless you are completely free of the ideas in A) and B) above -- that you get punished if someone else misbehaves and that you must not look ahead in the textbook.
In fact, that trick of looking ahead in the textbook is the one thing that got me through college. The very first day when I got the syllabus that said what the textbook would be, I'd run to the bookstore and get the books, then while in waiting rooms, around anywhere I was, I'd be reading the textbooks from back to front -- that's right, BACKWARDS, starting with the index and ending with the table of contents, until I understood what the course was about, what the underlying covert-curriculum thrust underneath the material actually was (whether the professor knew it or not, and it was usually NOT).
When I went to college, professors and TA's didn't take role call, didn't know or care whether you were in class (unless there was a pop quiz you needed to score on). If you knew your stuff, you got the grade commensurate with what you knew. They did not grade "on the curve" -- everyone in the class could get an A or an F and the administration wouldn't blink. Everyone had an equal shot at an A because no rule forced the teacher to sort the class by statistics.
All you had to do was take the mid-terms and final. Sometimes you didn't need to bother with the mid-terms if you aced the Final. Some courses you could get credit for by just taking the Final before the course was given (History was one of those). It was called "placing out" of the course to satisfy a pre-requisite for some other course. Some courses didn't have mid-terms or quizzes. A term paper and a final was your only chance. Nobody cared whether you lived or died, and the other students didn't even know your name. In that environment, you grow up fast or you flunk out.
There was no hand-holding or encouragement. All that baby-ing of students stopped for me in 12th grade. And I thought that was fine. I had known it was coming and was looking forward to it with relish. As soon as the hand-holding stopped, my grade-point-average shot up.
The maturity gained from being treated like that is what I see lacking in today's college age people. It takes them years after college to attain that level of maturity. I strongly suspect that the cohesiveness of FAMILY illustrated in those TV Series comes from having been educated in elementary school the way I was educated in college.
I suspect that because I know that is how my parents were educated in grammar school and that's where they learned how to teach me to go to college and succeed.
That lesson is one of the reasons I love my parents. They turned me loose in the world with a fully mature sense of self at about age 15 when I got my driver's license. At that time license-age was 15 1/2, and kids that age had never smoked a cigarette or taken a drink of hard liquor, not because it was forbidden but because it was uninteresting and irrelevant. I'm not kidding, this culture has changed that much that fast.
That environment where you must achieve certain goals without anyone supervising you to force you to do the work creates a sense of individuality -- a sense of Identity. You don't have to do the 1960's thing of "finding yourself" because your Self emerges strong, very early in life, and can never be threatened by anyone else's behavior or misbehavior.
The key, I think, is that covert curriculum item of "nobody cares whether you live or die" -- what you do doesn't affect whether they succeed so they have no stake in you failing (thus no bullying). No grading on a curve means how well you do doesn't depend on how poorly someone else does. Thus there's no reason to hate, resent, or undermine other students.
It is that strong sense of individual self that is the absolute bedrock requirement for the ability to Pair-Bond, i.e. to experience ROMANCE that leads to the HEA not to just another fling ir at best the HFN (Happily For Now).
Now, go back to the film SAHARA. Like ROMANCING THE STONE this film has a back-and-forth, rescuing and rescued, between a guy and gal who eventually do get to have their dream-date-on-a-beach.
These films depict the forging of a Pair-Bonded Relationship based on two people having that strong sense of Self. That kind of educational experience I outlined that produces Heroes (no wonder women were excluded from college, from becoming doctors and Lawyers -- they might then become Heroes.)
Remember the film LEGALLY BLONDE?
Remember we're talking about hammering at stereotypes? The "dumb blonde" is a big one, and the dumb blonde beauty who's a lawyer? Think about that in terms of the "nobody cares if you live or die" educational method producing Heroes instead of herds of cattle or nice tractable, obedient soldiers or employees all in a row.
That "nobody cares if you live or die" is the feeling that the street urchin gets, the tough street kid who grows up to be a boss (Mob or otherwise).
Now there's a difference in the effect of receiving that attitude at the age of say, 8, and at the age of 18.
FIRST must come the warmth, coddling, and protection of a strong family environment. THEN comes being thrown out into the cold, cruel world to fend for yourself. If you're never thrown out, or are thrown out too late in life, you never develop the ability to fend for yourself. You remain dependent and in need of protection (read some Regency Romances written prior to say 1980, then some from today which overlay today's woman on the Regency heroine.)
So, given cell phones and social networking peer support groups that parents know nothing about, what kind of pair-bonding potential will this new generation have built into them? (We're looking for the stereotype that will be popular to attack, don't forget that.)
If family bonds that are both vertical and horizontal are now shattered beyond repair, what next set of bonds are under attack? And by what tools?
We've seen the advent of the "flash mob." We've seen it used to attack social order by robbing stores for fun and profit; or even by robbing stories in the name of demanding justice for a kid shot by a Neighborhood Watch fellow.
We've seen flashmobs used to build a strong community (actually coming together to clean garbage off a street or spend time gardening or building houses for the poor.)
The flash-mob by itself is a neutral development, but the purpose a group chooses will be the result of the values of the individuals in the group.
Is the flash-mob itself our next stereotype or cliche to be hammered by a great film?
Remember the film, You've Got Mail?
Is school bullying the stereotype to attack?
Look carefully at this selection of films and TV series and ponder what the current set of 10 year olds (born in 2002) will be 10 years from now. If you start on a film script today, that's about when it will hit the theaters. Most original novels take about 5 years from "Idea!" to published book. 10 years for a First Novel isn't out of the ballpark.
Don't dismiss any of this famous-film-based perspective on our fiction market from your mind when you watch the political gyrations and contortions flow out of your TV News or Videos online. If you can think both these kinds of thoughts at the same time, you'll have the belly-laugh of a lifetime! "LEGALLY BLONDE indeed!" Politics is, first and foremost, entertainment. To understand politics (especially the ads on TV) you must understand the fiction market.
Also scrutinize the political map of the USA vs population density. Notice how the fiction markets of New York and California differ from those of Kansas and Nebraska, then compare with Florida and Ohio. A novel has to sell in all those markets, and a film must be a hit in New York and California to survive the first day in the theaters.
For reviews of 5 novels in terms of Tarot cards that represent their plot/theme structure, with a further discussion of the concept of what is (or is not) "Fair" in our current culture, see my April review column, now archived here: http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2012/
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
---
Master explorer Dirk Pitt goes on the adventure of a lifetime of seeking out a lost Civil War battleship known as the "Ship of Death" in the deserts of West Africa while helping a UN doctor being hounded by a ruthless dictator. (124 mins.)
Director: Breck Eisner
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Penélope Cruz, Steve Zahn, William H. Macy
---
There are a lot of DVD's on Amazon titled SAHARA - this is the 2005 movie about treasure hunters looking for a battleship in the desert -- As I was watching ( logging the SAVE THE CAT! "beats" with part of my mind), I was imagining the story I would have written: LIKE THIS: “ Indiana Jones on Tatooine with McGiver for a sidekick and Captain Kirk in orbit ”
The film SAHARA also reminds me of the Action-Romance film ROMANCING THE STONE -- the two-guys-and-a-tough-gal in a chase/battle for life and limb (with larger stakes beyond themselves) format is now an entrenched classic, though there was a time when the gal was only there to be rescued and do stupid things to get caught again.
Looking at the dates - early 1980's to just before 2008, I think these films hit big because they were hammering away at a stereotype the people of theater-going-age desperately wanted to break (all females are helpless, or if not, are "Evil.") Power in the hands of a woman turns Dark, or destroys the woman.
Today, (2012) we have NEW STEREOTYPES that the teens of this time will hammer away at. These are recently born stereotypes, almost too new to be called cliche. Yet the rate of change in our society has exploded to the point where the brand new stereotype is an old cliche before the movies to challenge it have been shown in theaters.
We're seeing those challenges I think in the "Indie" market - the films made on low budget by the brilliant producers honing their craft on YouTube and Vimeo.
The question the beginning writer must answer is, "What are today's stereotypes?"
I suspect you'll find a lot of answers by examining the condition of "the family" in today's world.
Statistics recently posted indicate that a man and a woman who marry and raise their kids in a structured, family environment, have a much MUCH lower chance of unemployment, poverty, -- and I haven't yet seen the statistic but I suspect someone is crunching numbers on the juvenile delinquency rate. We do have a "bullying" problem erupting in the early grades of schools, a precursor to real trouble in life (both for the bully and the victim).
One development we have seen between 1980 and 2010 is the advent in the Romance Genre of the novel centering on the divorced or single-parent woman finding true romance the second (or third) time around, despite having attained a sense of total independence -- or perhaps because of it.
The broken family mends, might be the theme of that sub-genre.
The stereotype that may be forming (to be broken soon) would be that seen by the children of these "broken" marriages -- the next generation looking back and seeing "family" and the distaste, strife, and even real hatred between their parents and their grandparents.
"The Family" broke during those decades along two axes -- horizontally via divorce rate, and vertically as children found the "generation gap" (that has always existed) widening beyond comprehension.
It's probably not irrelevant to include the advent of the internet as a household utility between 1980 and 2010. The cell phone revolution of the 1990's just added fuel to the fire. Social networking, Web 2.0 and up, ebooks, and a whole new curriculum in the schools widen that vertical gap.
I do hope by now you've all read Alvin Toffler's non-fiction book, FUTURE SHOCK -- he predicted all this and more. If you are looking for the next stereotype to break and sell a blockbuster movie, read that book.
Toffler notes that the public school system in the U.S.A. (an innovation that changed the world, PUBLIC schooling) has always been the tool of industry, politically dominated in such a way as to turn out workers suitable for the jobs that industry needs to fill.
The nature of the jobs needing filling has shifted markedly in this 30 year period -- to the point where those educated in the 1980's public schools don't qualify for modern jobs unless they've acquired more certificates or skills, degrees, and resume items in between.
The "covert curriculum" that Toffler points out prevailed in the 1970's actually cripples folks for the workforce today -- it shifted and then shifted again. But then in the 1990's or so, the covert curriculum in the schools was turned much more "overt" -- saying "on the nose" that the purpose of schooling is to prepare you to work a job rather than to educate you to think for yourself.
Some of this peaked as the Unions became powerful enough to challenge industry's control of the job market, setting the idea that the monetary compensation for a "job" should be determined by what the worker thinks it should be - not what the employer thinks the job actually produces.
And another notion ebbed and flowed all the way into the university level -- that the purpose of education was to learn certain things are true, and others are not true. That the world "should" be this way, but never "that" way.
I've had some long, deep conversations with teachers retiring from the workforce who have taught at the High School and college levels (and I know some Middle School teachers too) who have felt this shifting wind of philosophy altering the textbooks.
Two rules I've seen imposed that exemplify this shift creating a new stereotype that new films will attack:
A) If one student in a class misbehaves, punish the entire class. There are no individuals, just the group, and the whole group is responsible for the behavior of individuals.
B) Never allow students to read ahead in the textbook, or ask questions from the "next chapter." The full weight of Teacher Authority must squash any notion that a student should teach themselves without supervision.
The covert curriculum thus becomes control of the group by authority.
Now this is not yet entirely visible across the nation, not at all. It turns up here and there, gets dismissed, turns up again, and is tossed out. Parents get outside tutoring for their children, take them to dance and music classes and all those things that break the grip of the public school authority.
But just anecdotal evidence from teachers I've spoken to indicates it's a rising tide not a receding one. The children who grew up trained by authority not to teach themselves are almost at the level of being in charge of things. The main result of having gone through school being punished for the misbehavior of others (over whom we have no control) is to hammer at government to CONTROL the misbehavior of others lest it hurt us.
Safety from the misbehavior of others and a deep seated conviction (irrational as it may be) that we can't solve problems that haven't been solved before, may be creating an even wider generation gap, or a very wide gap between spouses.
In the 1970's, the biggest business and the biggest category of self-help books was the DO-IT-YOURSELF industry (father of Home Depot). Today, you don't do-it-yourself, you go to Home Depot and ask a clerk how to do it and what to buy.
The oldest joke since the popularization of the automobile is the difference between the husband and wife as they try to find an unfamiliar location. Ask or read the map? That's gone now by the GPS!
So, the writer should be asking, "Will the imposition of Authority over Thinking For Yourself bring us together and heal the Family?"
At one time, "Father Knows Best" -- a man was King of his Castle and the wife had to shut up and take orders. That let at least half the people in the world vent their frustrations at being bossed around at work on their stay-at-home-do-nothing-but-rest-all-day spouse.
Did we have healthy family dynamics then? Do we need to go "back" to that? Or forward into something new that's never been tried before in human history?
In the film SAHARA the characters are on a treasure hunt -- and they find more than they were looking for, but only after harrowing, near-death experiences that only miracles could rescue them from (yes like INDIANA JONES).
Take the beat structure from SAHARA, strip out the subject matter, and replace it with THE FAMILY. That's the treasure the treasure hunter searches for - the HEA.
Remember in the HEA ending, the Happily Ever After of the Romance story, the result of happiness is children (one way or another). That means HEA is the equivalent of FOUNDING A FAMILY though "Romance Genre" doesn't usually deal with after the wedding.
Ancestry.com is a very big and growing web-based enterprise now. People are curious about their distant heritage (even if they hate their parents).
Yes, I know, you don't hate your parents -- nor do I. But if you watch a few TV series, you'll see the modern "cliche" stereotype when the parents come to visit. There's always anticipation of strife, and then really serious strife -- sometimes it's resolved in the show, or at least partially, but the RIFT between generations is routinely portrayed as so common it doesn't need explaining to the audience.
The other thing you see mentioned offhandedly with the implication that the audience understands the nature of the strife implied -- that's the phrase "my Ex" -- everyone has an Ex and knows what meetings with him/her mean. Strife. Galore.
The reason Romance Genre doesn't deal with "after the wedding" is that we, as a culture, now expect Family Life to be fraught with strife. There's me vs. my parents. There's spouse vs. spouse's parents. There's me vs. my spouse's parents. There's my spouse vs. my parents. Children only make it worse. Then there's his children from a prior marriage vs. my children from a prior marriage.
Remember THE BRADY BUNCH? Could you put that on TV today and make it a hit? Why was it a hit then? (1969 and a film in 1995)
It was a hit because divorce had become common, but "The Family" was still strong. An amalgamated family was plausible because despite the inherent strife between generations, Family was plausible in a way it is not today.
Remember The Waltons TV Series?
The Waltons On Amazon
Remember Little House on the Prairie?
If you don't remember them, you can probably get them streaming on Netflix etc.
As a writer, you have to learn to discern the intended audience's characteristics and interests by looking at the piece of fiction with a writer's eye. But just because you're studying one thing, don't think you are allowed to forget everything else you've studied.
One of the things with WRITING as a craft, discipline, business, and artform is that you must teach yourself in defiance of most every teacher you've ever had in a formal school setting.
In truth, nobody can teach you. Honestly. There are a lot of expensive courses in writing all over the web now, but the truth is none of them will do you any good at all unless you are completely free of the ideas in A) and B) above -- that you get punished if someone else misbehaves and that you must not look ahead in the textbook.
In fact, that trick of looking ahead in the textbook is the one thing that got me through college. The very first day when I got the syllabus that said what the textbook would be, I'd run to the bookstore and get the books, then while in waiting rooms, around anywhere I was, I'd be reading the textbooks from back to front -- that's right, BACKWARDS, starting with the index and ending with the table of contents, until I understood what the course was about, what the underlying covert-curriculum thrust underneath the material actually was (whether the professor knew it or not, and it was usually NOT).
When I went to college, professors and TA's didn't take role call, didn't know or care whether you were in class (unless there was a pop quiz you needed to score on). If you knew your stuff, you got the grade commensurate with what you knew. They did not grade "on the curve" -- everyone in the class could get an A or an F and the administration wouldn't blink. Everyone had an equal shot at an A because no rule forced the teacher to sort the class by statistics.
All you had to do was take the mid-terms and final. Sometimes you didn't need to bother with the mid-terms if you aced the Final. Some courses you could get credit for by just taking the Final before the course was given (History was one of those). It was called "placing out" of the course to satisfy a pre-requisite for some other course. Some courses didn't have mid-terms or quizzes. A term paper and a final was your only chance. Nobody cared whether you lived or died, and the other students didn't even know your name. In that environment, you grow up fast or you flunk out.
There was no hand-holding or encouragement. All that baby-ing of students stopped for me in 12th grade. And I thought that was fine. I had known it was coming and was looking forward to it with relish. As soon as the hand-holding stopped, my grade-point-average shot up.
The maturity gained from being treated like that is what I see lacking in today's college age people. It takes them years after college to attain that level of maturity. I strongly suspect that the cohesiveness of FAMILY illustrated in those TV Series comes from having been educated in elementary school the way I was educated in college.
I suspect that because I know that is how my parents were educated in grammar school and that's where they learned how to teach me to go to college and succeed.
That lesson is one of the reasons I love my parents. They turned me loose in the world with a fully mature sense of self at about age 15 when I got my driver's license. At that time license-age was 15 1/2, and kids that age had never smoked a cigarette or taken a drink of hard liquor, not because it was forbidden but because it was uninteresting and irrelevant. I'm not kidding, this culture has changed that much that fast.
That environment where you must achieve certain goals without anyone supervising you to force you to do the work creates a sense of individuality -- a sense of Identity. You don't have to do the 1960's thing of "finding yourself" because your Self emerges strong, very early in life, and can never be threatened by anyone else's behavior or misbehavior.
The key, I think, is that covert curriculum item of "nobody cares whether you live or die" -- what you do doesn't affect whether they succeed so they have no stake in you failing (thus no bullying). No grading on a curve means how well you do doesn't depend on how poorly someone else does. Thus there's no reason to hate, resent, or undermine other students.
It is that strong sense of individual self that is the absolute bedrock requirement for the ability to Pair-Bond, i.e. to experience ROMANCE that leads to the HEA not to just another fling ir at best the HFN (Happily For Now).
Now, go back to the film SAHARA. Like ROMANCING THE STONE this film has a back-and-forth, rescuing and rescued, between a guy and gal who eventually do get to have their dream-date-on-a-beach.
These films depict the forging of a Pair-Bonded Relationship based on two people having that strong sense of Self. That kind of educational experience I outlined that produces Heroes (no wonder women were excluded from college, from becoming doctors and Lawyers -- they might then become Heroes.)
Remember the film LEGALLY BLONDE?
Remember we're talking about hammering at stereotypes? The "dumb blonde" is a big one, and the dumb blonde beauty who's a lawyer? Think about that in terms of the "nobody cares if you live or die" educational method producing Heroes instead of herds of cattle or nice tractable, obedient soldiers or employees all in a row.
That "nobody cares if you live or die" is the feeling that the street urchin gets, the tough street kid who grows up to be a boss (Mob or otherwise).
Now there's a difference in the effect of receiving that attitude at the age of say, 8, and at the age of 18.
FIRST must come the warmth, coddling, and protection of a strong family environment. THEN comes being thrown out into the cold, cruel world to fend for yourself. If you're never thrown out, or are thrown out too late in life, you never develop the ability to fend for yourself. You remain dependent and in need of protection (read some Regency Romances written prior to say 1980, then some from today which overlay today's woman on the Regency heroine.)
So, given cell phones and social networking peer support groups that parents know nothing about, what kind of pair-bonding potential will this new generation have built into them? (We're looking for the stereotype that will be popular to attack, don't forget that.)
If family bonds that are both vertical and horizontal are now shattered beyond repair, what next set of bonds are under attack? And by what tools?
We've seen the advent of the "flash mob." We've seen it used to attack social order by robbing stores for fun and profit; or even by robbing stories in the name of demanding justice for a kid shot by a Neighborhood Watch fellow.
We've seen flashmobs used to build a strong community (actually coming together to clean garbage off a street or spend time gardening or building houses for the poor.)
The flash-mob by itself is a neutral development, but the purpose a group chooses will be the result of the values of the individuals in the group.
Is the flash-mob itself our next stereotype or cliche to be hammered by a great film?
Remember the film, You've Got Mail?
Is school bullying the stereotype to attack?
Look carefully at this selection of films and TV series and ponder what the current set of 10 year olds (born in 2002) will be 10 years from now. If you start on a film script today, that's about when it will hit the theaters. Most original novels take about 5 years from "Idea!" to published book. 10 years for a First Novel isn't out of the ballpark.
Don't dismiss any of this famous-film-based perspective on our fiction market from your mind when you watch the political gyrations and contortions flow out of your TV News or Videos online. If you can think both these kinds of thoughts at the same time, you'll have the belly-laugh of a lifetime! "LEGALLY BLONDE indeed!" Politics is, first and foremost, entertainment. To understand politics (especially the ads on TV) you must understand the fiction market.
Also scrutinize the political map of the USA vs population density. Notice how the fiction markets of New York and California differ from those of Kansas and Nebraska, then compare with Florida and Ohio. A novel has to sell in all those markets, and a film must be a hit in New York and California to survive the first day in the theaters.
For reviews of 5 novels in terms of Tarot cards that represent their plot/theme structure, with a further discussion of the concept of what is (or is not) "Fair" in our current culture, see my April review column, now archived here: http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2012/
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Amber Benson: Tara on Buffy The Vampire Slayer
And my point here is that Amber Benson is also a screenwriter, director, producer, webisode involved, AND an on-paper novelist too. This is a woman to study (Google her up). She has a lot to teach. So let's see if we can learn.
The last few entries I've done here have been long and full of abstract advice and arcane demands on writers to do the impossible (sometime before breakfast at least if not before coffee).
Now once again, lets get back to the practical by looking at a writer, her novel and the background she brings to the craft.
How does a writer actually WRITE? Where does the flowing poetry of images and words come from? What level of an Urban Fantasy needs poetry, or poetic justice, and where do you put the dense philosophy of the theme? Do you dare touch Religion?
Where do ideas come from and how do you organize them into fictional formats that can be understood by readers?
As I keep telling you, it's the writer's subconscious that does most of the work. And as I learned from Red Skelton and Jack Benny, the best material is stolen. The trick is to steal only from the best.
But after you've stolen your ideas from say, The Bible, or Isaac Asimov, what do you do with them?
You put them into your subconscious. You've watched me say that a lot.
Amber Benson's novel Death's Daughter is a flawless amalgam of her background, her life, and her career coming to high focus in a blazing burst of artistic freedom. It's just not so easy to see that art that comes from a well stocked and disciplined subconscious. But if you can see it, how do you do it?
I have no clue how she did it other than her public biography, but I do know how others have done it. Each person has to store stuff in their subconscious via a different mechanism. Writing (un-storing the stuff in your subconscious) is the opposite of the storing procedure, but they are related.
So HOW do you store stuff in your subconscious? How do you train your subconscious to regurgitate these marvelous classic ideas all wrapped up and organized to be just like something famous, but different.
What is the mechanism within the human mind that can achieve this feat?
If you can explain how you do it, please drop a comment on this post.
Meanwhile, I want to talk a little bit about the various ways I've seen accomplished writers do it, how I was taught, and how I find it works best for me.
This process of programming the subconscious to produce Art you can sell is a "feat" -- like an athletic feat, or like an adagio dance exhibition, a Chopin concert at Carnegie Hall, or recording a perfect operatic aria. It is a feat you must train for. And even so you might not equal or break a world record ever in your lifetime.
First you must establish a regimen in communicating with your subconscious.
The relationship between conscious and subconscious is, as I see it, best described by THE STRENGTH CARD, of the Tarot. It's usually a picture of some kind of beast (a lion or mythic creature known for ferocity) being petted and gentled (and dominated quietly) by a "defenseless" Maiden figure.
The beast represents the subconscious. The Maiden represents some part of the conscious mind -- perhaps the level of CUPS or perhaps WANDS. (or both)
There was an article recently on research into dog intelligence.
http://news.aol.com/article/dogs-as-smart-as-2-year-old-kids/609181
A dog may be as smart as a 2.5 year old, but the dog will be socially mature and still be only that smart.
Studies have shown that if a dog's owner is aggressive, the dog will become aggressive.
Dogs are copy-cats. (oy)
My dog learned the household routine. Even though I was never aware of how very routinely identical my daily procedures had become (I've since changed to inject variety) until my dog showed me by EXPECTING what would ordinarily come next.
Dogs recognize patterns and get disturbed if the pattern is broken.
Art is all about patterns. Poetry is about patterns. Poetic justice is all about patterns. If there isn't poetry inside your novel, the novel is missing an important ingredient because our real, normal world runs on poetry.
Dogs maybe can't "learn" in the way humans do but they can be trained, just like your toddler can be trained but not really "taught" (yet).
A toddler is not going to respond to all these magnificent abstractions I love to indulge in. The reasons for holding your hand crossing a parking lot don't mean a thing to a toddler. The statistics about toddlers killed in parking lots, the statistics about toddlers kidnapped, the stats on those maimed for life, zilch, nada, nothing.
But insist the first time, and never miss insisting on that little hand in yours, and next thing you know the 3 year old will force his hand into yours. The 5 year old - not so much - but dogs don't get to the 5 year old level (though some primates do!).
And your subconscious is about 2-3 years old, give or take. Forever.
Your subconscious doesn't CARE about all my beloved abstractions and meta-cognition and subtle value system comparisons. Subconscious is totally primal (which is why Blake Snyder kept saying make it PRIMAL).
The subconscious is where the "helpless" nightmare comes from, and why horror novels are so popular! We all have a scared little 2 year old inside somewhere who doesn't understand the world and still nurses lingering echoes of infancy's true helplessness. Adults still have some of that, which is why dark- mysterious- incomprehensible- insurmountable makes such a great movie!
So subconscious can be trained but not taught.
How do you train subconscious to produce poetry, art, music and stories complete with theme and structure?
It's that pattern recognition function built in as a survival mechanism!
Dogs have pattern recognition, even through time. (this comes after that) And people do too, on just that same very primal level where "reason" is not a factor.
That's another reason Blake Snyder was always saying get down to the PRIMAL level even a caveman could understand, before technology, before international trade, before Wall Street cartels.
Inside our sophisticated world wise behaviors, we are driven by the most primal issues of love, loyalty, reproduction, life, death, protection, possessing, command of power.
The story comes from the subconscious of the writer, and must be presented in such a way that the subconscious of the reader can recognize the pattern, the primal pattern.
Not SIMPLE pattern. PRIMAL pattern.
Life and Death are very primal, and not at all simple, but still very much what our subconscious is designed to handle magnificently.
That's why life and death are the subject of so many novels, and the stakes in so many plots. You don't have to explain what's so important about it. Using something that primal is almost a cop-out because it's so easy to grab for Life, Death, and Devil archetypes to drape your story on.
But Amber Benson has gotten away with it gracefully in HER NEW NOVEL "Death's Daughter" -
and thereby hangs the tale of a lesson in writing.
And the lesson in writing is READ.
As you train your toddler to hold your hand in a parking lot (pattern recognition triggers habitual action), so you can train your subconscious to steal IDEAS when reading a good PRIMAL novel (pattern recognition triggers habitual action).
The first step in training your subconscious is to sort your to-be-read stack into Good, Better, Best. (some of these will be re-reading projects)
You should pick writers and books that you want to emulate, or that have sales statistics you want to achieve. Most likely, the ones with the sales statistics you want to achieve will contain elements you seriously dislike or balk at. Those elements are very possibly the source of the sales statistics, so study them and reinvent them in new guises that you do like.
There are two kinds of fiction you should read to train your subconscious.
One is the really slick, highly professional, so well synthesized you can't reverse-engineer it to see how it was done.
Another is the awkward, not-quite-right, fumbling, jerky neo-pro product you most often see these days in the e-book form because Manhattan isn't publishing midlist and beginner writers as much as they used to.
That's not casting aspersions on e-books! I've reviewed a number of e-books that are better constructed than you generally find from Manhattan! The e-book has stolen from Manhattan the right to be the home of the mid-list as well as the beginner, launching what will soon be stellar careers.
Manhattan will soon be in financial trouble because they are not fostering the new beginners and will not have their loyalty (loyalty is primal, remember?)
Reading to train your subconscious to write is very different from reading to enjoy a good read.
As you start doing this exercise, your ability to enjoy any novel will falter and may disappear. If you persist, a new and very intense pleasure will emerge as you read interesting novels that also tickle your pattern-recognition nerve.
You start by reverse engineering a number of your most favorite novels until you can see their moving parts as detailed here in previous posts.
One tried and true technique is to take colored highlighters or pens and highlight or underline words, phrases and sentences. Don't do it just mentally. The physical act of marking is what communicates to the subconscious. Just thinking about it won't achieve the same communication level.
Mark DESCRIPTION, DIALOGUE, EXPOSITION, NARRATIVE in separate colors. A really top flight writer like Andre Norton will use all 4 in almost every sentence. Some words will carry both exposition and narrative in one word.
Mark the PROTAGONIST ANTAGONIST and/or NARRATOR.
Later flipping through those pages, you'll see the proportions of words allotted to each character. It's important to get that proportion right.
Mark the BEGINNING, MIDDLE and END of each scene, and note in the margin the SITUATION CHANGE for PLOT and for STORY.
See my two entries on SCENE STRUCTURE at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html
And note that my "definition" of scene is echoed in this web page on stage vocabulary.
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/Vocabulary.html
Note particularly where it says BLOCK A SCENE because we haven't discussed that yet, here, but we have covered the components of blocking. Blocking a scene is very VERY important in action narrative, and when you read DEATH'S DAUGHTER, you should watch for the techniques so smoothly and subtly applied.
Color code 2 or 3 of your favorite novels in each of the categories
1)very advanced that you want to emulate, and
2)beginner's work that you COULD emulate.
DO THE SAME THING watching television. Take a notepad, note down the scenes and how each changes the situation. Capture the plot outline as you watch. (this is where you wish you knew shorthand).
If you need to know what a "plot outline" is, I gave you a couple of examples in WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html
Now, after this intense exercise, never let yourself read anything without mentally coloring in the components as DESCRIPTION, DIALOGUE, EXPOSITION, NARRATIVE, scene blocks etc. After you've done the actual coloring, subconscious will begin to spot them for you, and train your conscious not to miss them! (like the 3 year old who will insert a hand into yours crossing a parking lot)
Once subconscious has started to do that, and you can't read anything without being aware of the components, go to sleep assigning your subconscious the task of having AN IDEA when you wake up.
The first few IDEAS it produces will be like a puppy piddling in the corner. Think of the STRENGTH CARD, and remember how you tame the fractious, spoiled, savage beast of the subconscious with kindness, repetition, firmness, consistency, just as you train a toddler. Reward good behavior. Ignore the bad. Make friends.
When an idea comes pre-formulated to the pattern you are training into your subconscious, write it down (that's the reward for subconscious, getting written down). Do the plot outline for the novel, just as we've covered in these posts such as WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM. With practice it shouldn't take more than half an hour, maybe 20 minutes, to jot down the outline (my examples came out as fast as I could type; it just takes practice) and they don't have to be consecutive minutes.
Let subconscious do the part that's "the same" and you do the part that's "different."
Now, where to start training?
AMBER BENSON!!! I just wrote my January 2010 column (that's another lesson in publishing - it's August and I'm late turning in the January column.) And except for a quick Noel Tyl astrology mention, the January column is all about DEATH'S DAUGHTER and why it's an "important" novel in the guise of just another Urban Fantasy.
But one little 1500 word column couldn't begin to scratch the surface of "all about" Death's Daughter. There's so much more to say. We shouldn't get to that until after you've read it and reverse engineered it.
Amber Benson's novel DEATH'S DAUGHTER is a perfectly structured, breezy-easy read targeting the most primal archetypes, Death, Devil, God, normal human woman who just wants a normal life.
The world Benson has built for this novel is soooo Buffy and sooooo Different from Buffy. The world's mechanisms, the tone, the brightness, the attitudes, the philosophy behind everything is all different from that famous TV show, but awakens soothing echoes of the Buffyverse pattern. And yes, there's the constant thrum of a Romance in there too! "What does she see in him" is handled gorgeously.
If you're familiar with the Buffyverse, you will pick this up right away. And you'll see how Benson's universe is unique. You'll also find a purely cinematic structure articulating the skeleton of this novel. And you'll find the poetry, the art, a musical rhythm to the pacing, and so many tightly and smoothly integrated patterns even I couldn't count them all.
DEATH'S DAUGHTER is a leap-for-joy FIND for the writer looking for a really tough nut to crack on reverse-engineering.
But it didn't just spring full grown out of nowhere. Here's Benson's bio from the back of the novel.
“Amber Benson cocreated, cowrote and directed the animated supernatural Web series Ghosts of Albion with Christopher Golden, which they followed with a series of novels, including Witchery and Accursed, and the novella Astray. Benson and Golden also coauthored the novella The Seven Whistlers. As an actress, she has appeared in dozens of roles in feature films, TV movies, and television series, including the fan-favorite role of Tara Maclay on three seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Benson wrote, produced, and directed the feature films Chance and Lovers, Liars and Lunatics.”
TV, Web production, feature film, print media. And all that experience is neatly, tightly integrated into DEATH'S DAUGHTER.
Christopher Golden once taught me a lot about this structure stuff, and how the subconscious needs to be disciplined to separate material into distinct stories. I don't know that's where Benson learned it, or if she came to Golden already knowing it. Or maybe she was born knowing it (some people are just talented that way).
I highly recommend making DEATH'S DAUGHTER one of your novels to reverse engineer to see what it's made of and how its moving parts are joined by the theme. Yes, it'll be as hard as if it were written by Andre Norton or A. E. Van Vogt because it's so well integrated. But your subconscious may pick up the patterning for the multi-media creation, which could make your fortune.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
The last few entries I've done here have been long and full of abstract advice and arcane demands on writers to do the impossible (sometime before breakfast at least if not before coffee).
Now once again, lets get back to the practical by looking at a writer, her novel and the background she brings to the craft.
How does a writer actually WRITE? Where does the flowing poetry of images and words come from? What level of an Urban Fantasy needs poetry, or poetic justice, and where do you put the dense philosophy of the theme? Do you dare touch Religion?
Where do ideas come from and how do you organize them into fictional formats that can be understood by readers?
As I keep telling you, it's the writer's subconscious that does most of the work. And as I learned from Red Skelton and Jack Benny, the best material is stolen. The trick is to steal only from the best.
But after you've stolen your ideas from say, The Bible, or Isaac Asimov, what do you do with them?
You put them into your subconscious. You've watched me say that a lot.
Amber Benson's novel Death's Daughter is a flawless amalgam of her background, her life, and her career coming to high focus in a blazing burst of artistic freedom. It's just not so easy to see that art that comes from a well stocked and disciplined subconscious. But if you can see it, how do you do it?
I have no clue how she did it other than her public biography, but I do know how others have done it. Each person has to store stuff in their subconscious via a different mechanism. Writing (un-storing the stuff in your subconscious) is the opposite of the storing procedure, but they are related.
So HOW do you store stuff in your subconscious? How do you train your subconscious to regurgitate these marvelous classic ideas all wrapped up and organized to be just like something famous, but different.
What is the mechanism within the human mind that can achieve this feat?
If you can explain how you do it, please drop a comment on this post.
Meanwhile, I want to talk a little bit about the various ways I've seen accomplished writers do it, how I was taught, and how I find it works best for me.
This process of programming the subconscious to produce Art you can sell is a "feat" -- like an athletic feat, or like an adagio dance exhibition, a Chopin concert at Carnegie Hall, or recording a perfect operatic aria. It is a feat you must train for. And even so you might not equal or break a world record ever in your lifetime.
First you must establish a regimen in communicating with your subconscious.
The relationship between conscious and subconscious is, as I see it, best described by THE STRENGTH CARD, of the Tarot. It's usually a picture of some kind of beast (a lion or mythic creature known for ferocity) being petted and gentled (and dominated quietly) by a "defenseless" Maiden figure.
The beast represents the subconscious. The Maiden represents some part of the conscious mind -- perhaps the level of CUPS or perhaps WANDS. (or both)
There was an article recently on research into dog intelligence.
http://news.aol.com/article/dogs-as-smart-as-2-year-old-kids/609181
A dog may be as smart as a 2.5 year old, but the dog will be socially mature and still be only that smart.
Studies have shown that if a dog's owner is aggressive, the dog will become aggressive.
Dogs are copy-cats. (oy)
My dog learned the household routine. Even though I was never aware of how very routinely identical my daily procedures had become (I've since changed to inject variety) until my dog showed me by EXPECTING what would ordinarily come next.
Dogs recognize patterns and get disturbed if the pattern is broken.
Art is all about patterns. Poetry is about patterns. Poetic justice is all about patterns. If there isn't poetry inside your novel, the novel is missing an important ingredient because our real, normal world runs on poetry.
Dogs maybe can't "learn" in the way humans do but they can be trained, just like your toddler can be trained but not really "taught" (yet).
A toddler is not going to respond to all these magnificent abstractions I love to indulge in. The reasons for holding your hand crossing a parking lot don't mean a thing to a toddler. The statistics about toddlers killed in parking lots, the statistics about toddlers kidnapped, the stats on those maimed for life, zilch, nada, nothing.
But insist the first time, and never miss insisting on that little hand in yours, and next thing you know the 3 year old will force his hand into yours. The 5 year old - not so much - but dogs don't get to the 5 year old level (though some primates do!).
And your subconscious is about 2-3 years old, give or take. Forever.
Your subconscious doesn't CARE about all my beloved abstractions and meta-cognition and subtle value system comparisons. Subconscious is totally primal (which is why Blake Snyder kept saying make it PRIMAL).
The subconscious is where the "helpless" nightmare comes from, and why horror novels are so popular! We all have a scared little 2 year old inside somewhere who doesn't understand the world and still nurses lingering echoes of infancy's true helplessness. Adults still have some of that, which is why dark- mysterious- incomprehensible- insurmountable makes such a great movie!
So subconscious can be trained but not taught.
How do you train subconscious to produce poetry, art, music and stories complete with theme and structure?
It's that pattern recognition function built in as a survival mechanism!
Dogs have pattern recognition, even through time. (this comes after that) And people do too, on just that same very primal level where "reason" is not a factor.
That's another reason Blake Snyder was always saying get down to the PRIMAL level even a caveman could understand, before technology, before international trade, before Wall Street cartels.
Inside our sophisticated world wise behaviors, we are driven by the most primal issues of love, loyalty, reproduction, life, death, protection, possessing, command of power.
The story comes from the subconscious of the writer, and must be presented in such a way that the subconscious of the reader can recognize the pattern, the primal pattern.
Not SIMPLE pattern. PRIMAL pattern.
Life and Death are very primal, and not at all simple, but still very much what our subconscious is designed to handle magnificently.
That's why life and death are the subject of so many novels, and the stakes in so many plots. You don't have to explain what's so important about it. Using something that primal is almost a cop-out because it's so easy to grab for Life, Death, and Devil archetypes to drape your story on.
But Amber Benson has gotten away with it gracefully in HER NEW NOVEL "Death's Daughter" -
and thereby hangs the tale of a lesson in writing.
And the lesson in writing is READ.
As you train your toddler to hold your hand in a parking lot (pattern recognition triggers habitual action), so you can train your subconscious to steal IDEAS when reading a good PRIMAL novel (pattern recognition triggers habitual action).
The first step in training your subconscious is to sort your to-be-read stack into Good, Better, Best. (some of these will be re-reading projects)
You should pick writers and books that you want to emulate, or that have sales statistics you want to achieve. Most likely, the ones with the sales statistics you want to achieve will contain elements you seriously dislike or balk at. Those elements are very possibly the source of the sales statistics, so study them and reinvent them in new guises that you do like.
There are two kinds of fiction you should read to train your subconscious.
One is the really slick, highly professional, so well synthesized you can't reverse-engineer it to see how it was done.
Another is the awkward, not-quite-right, fumbling, jerky neo-pro product you most often see these days in the e-book form because Manhattan isn't publishing midlist and beginner writers as much as they used to.
That's not casting aspersions on e-books! I've reviewed a number of e-books that are better constructed than you generally find from Manhattan! The e-book has stolen from Manhattan the right to be the home of the mid-list as well as the beginner, launching what will soon be stellar careers.
Manhattan will soon be in financial trouble because they are not fostering the new beginners and will not have their loyalty (loyalty is primal, remember?)
Reading to train your subconscious to write is very different from reading to enjoy a good read.
As you start doing this exercise, your ability to enjoy any novel will falter and may disappear. If you persist, a new and very intense pleasure will emerge as you read interesting novels that also tickle your pattern-recognition nerve.
You start by reverse engineering a number of your most favorite novels until you can see their moving parts as detailed here in previous posts.
One tried and true technique is to take colored highlighters or pens and highlight or underline words, phrases and sentences. Don't do it just mentally. The physical act of marking is what communicates to the subconscious. Just thinking about it won't achieve the same communication level.
Mark DESCRIPTION, DIALOGUE, EXPOSITION, NARRATIVE in separate colors. A really top flight writer like Andre Norton will use all 4 in almost every sentence. Some words will carry both exposition and narrative in one word.
Mark the PROTAGONIST ANTAGONIST and/or NARRATOR.
Later flipping through those pages, you'll see the proportions of words allotted to each character. It's important to get that proportion right.
Mark the BEGINNING, MIDDLE and END of each scene, and note in the margin the SITUATION CHANGE for PLOT and for STORY.
See my two entries on SCENE STRUCTURE at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html
And note that my "definition" of scene is echoed in this web page on stage vocabulary.
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/Vocabulary.html
Note particularly where it says BLOCK A SCENE because we haven't discussed that yet, here, but we have covered the components of blocking. Blocking a scene is very VERY important in action narrative, and when you read DEATH'S DAUGHTER, you should watch for the techniques so smoothly and subtly applied.
Color code 2 or 3 of your favorite novels in each of the categories
1)very advanced that you want to emulate, and
2)beginner's work that you COULD emulate.
DO THE SAME THING watching television. Take a notepad, note down the scenes and how each changes the situation. Capture the plot outline as you watch. (this is where you wish you knew shorthand).
If you need to know what a "plot outline" is, I gave you a couple of examples in WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html
Now, after this intense exercise, never let yourself read anything without mentally coloring in the components as DESCRIPTION, DIALOGUE, EXPOSITION, NARRATIVE, scene blocks etc. After you've done the actual coloring, subconscious will begin to spot them for you, and train your conscious not to miss them! (like the 3 year old who will insert a hand into yours crossing a parking lot)
Once subconscious has started to do that, and you can't read anything without being aware of the components, go to sleep assigning your subconscious the task of having AN IDEA when you wake up.
The first few IDEAS it produces will be like a puppy piddling in the corner. Think of the STRENGTH CARD, and remember how you tame the fractious, spoiled, savage beast of the subconscious with kindness, repetition, firmness, consistency, just as you train a toddler. Reward good behavior. Ignore the bad. Make friends.
When an idea comes pre-formulated to the pattern you are training into your subconscious, write it down (that's the reward for subconscious, getting written down). Do the plot outline for the novel, just as we've covered in these posts such as WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM. With practice it shouldn't take more than half an hour, maybe 20 minutes, to jot down the outline (my examples came out as fast as I could type; it just takes practice) and they don't have to be consecutive minutes.
Let subconscious do the part that's "the same" and you do the part that's "different."
Now, where to start training?
AMBER BENSON!!! I just wrote my January 2010 column (that's another lesson in publishing - it's August and I'm late turning in the January column.) And except for a quick Noel Tyl astrology mention, the January column is all about DEATH'S DAUGHTER and why it's an "important" novel in the guise of just another Urban Fantasy.
But one little 1500 word column couldn't begin to scratch the surface of "all about" Death's Daughter. There's so much more to say. We shouldn't get to that until after you've read it and reverse engineered it.
Amber Benson's novel DEATH'S DAUGHTER is a perfectly structured, breezy-easy read targeting the most primal archetypes, Death, Devil, God, normal human woman who just wants a normal life.
The world Benson has built for this novel is soooo Buffy and sooooo Different from Buffy. The world's mechanisms, the tone, the brightness, the attitudes, the philosophy behind everything is all different from that famous TV show, but awakens soothing echoes of the Buffyverse pattern. And yes, there's the constant thrum of a Romance in there too! "What does she see in him" is handled gorgeously.
If you're familiar with the Buffyverse, you will pick this up right away. And you'll see how Benson's universe is unique. You'll also find a purely cinematic structure articulating the skeleton of this novel. And you'll find the poetry, the art, a musical rhythm to the pacing, and so many tightly and smoothly integrated patterns even I couldn't count them all.
DEATH'S DAUGHTER is a leap-for-joy FIND for the writer looking for a really tough nut to crack on reverse-engineering.
But it didn't just spring full grown out of nowhere. Here's Benson's bio from the back of the novel.
“Amber Benson cocreated, cowrote and directed the animated supernatural Web series Ghosts of Albion with Christopher Golden, which they followed with a series of novels, including Witchery and Accursed, and the novella Astray. Benson and Golden also coauthored the novella The Seven Whistlers. As an actress, she has appeared in dozens of roles in feature films, TV movies, and television series, including the fan-favorite role of Tara Maclay on three seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Benson wrote, produced, and directed the feature films Chance and Lovers, Liars and Lunatics.”
TV, Web production, feature film, print media. And all that experience is neatly, tightly integrated into DEATH'S DAUGHTER.
Christopher Golden once taught me a lot about this structure stuff, and how the subconscious needs to be disciplined to separate material into distinct stories. I don't know that's where Benson learned it, or if she came to Golden already knowing it. Or maybe she was born knowing it (some people are just talented that way).
I highly recommend making DEATH'S DAUGHTER one of your novels to reverse engineer to see what it's made of and how its moving parts are joined by the theme. Yes, it'll be as hard as if it were written by Andre Norton or A. E. Van Vogt because it's so well integrated. But your subconscious may pick up the patterning for the multi-media creation, which could make your fortune.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Granddaughters And World Building
Folks:
I agree with Linnea about Magic Lost, Trouble Found -- it's a page-turner with everything and the kitchen sink tossed into the worldbuilding mix.
I got my computer fan replaced and I'm back in the saddle again! (remember Roy Rogers?)
I've been talking about worldbuilding -- the writer's tool for creating an alternate reality background for the story to unfold in front of, for some time now.
Many writers just hurry through that part of preparing to write, because it's tedious, often irrelevant, and will never collect them any money or glory.
But the truth is -- world building is the writer's tool for drawing a reader into a story, especially a romance, and doubly-especially a romance that involves star-crossed lovers or the divinely inspired love that can reach across a cultural gulf, or in our case a species gulf.
The Alien Romance genre actually goes farther to define LOVE in an operational way that readers can use in their mundane lives than any other genre I know of. Love isn't "human" -- love transcends humanity.
That lays a big responsiblity on the romance writer who's just trying to make a living.
Think! As you craft this story, think about the young women and men who will read this story, who will feel these emotions with the characters, who will remember those characters' names their whole lives long as "symbols" of the philosophies they stand for.
Think about the lessons they will derive from walking a mile in this character's moccasins.
Yes, the background world building carries the thematic message of the story more strongly than the characters themselves. It's not BECOMING the character that impresses a story on the readers' dreams -- it's that mile they have to walk in the character's moccasins, feeling every stone through the thin soles.
What draws a reader deep, DEEP, into a story is the philosophical match between the character, his/her internal conflict, clearly reflected in his/her external conflict, crystal and pristinely reflected in the world surrounding the character.
The way all these levels of the artistic creation match, go-together to bespeak a certain view of Life The Universe And Everything -- matters of ultimate concern -- (astrologically 12 House matters) -- that makes that world real to the reader.
For an artist to pull that trick off, the artist must be aiming his/her creation at a very specifically defined audience, readership, market. Just as in conversation, you must take into account what the other person is thinking, feeling (mood), wanting, needing, believing, before you phrase your utterance.
Ask the boss for a raise when you've just spilled hot coffee in her lap and see what happens next! Take her clothes to the cleaners and have them back spotless in an hour and you won't have to ask.
Do the same when you create a story -- take into account who you're talking to and what else they have distracting them and craft your story accordingly.
Most romance readers are either young and dreaming of creating their own family -- or currently raising kids and dreaming of ways to make it easier.
When you craft a story and build the world to house that story, you are talking to that audience, just as you talk to your boss (and make no mistake, the reader is your boss, the reader signs your paycheck.)
So you want to start with a statement or image that makes sense to the reader before you dive off the deep end into aliens and falling in love across vast gulfs.
That one thing that almost all Alien Romance readers have in common -- almost all readers, actually, -- is FAMILY.
Now, here's an aspect of worldbuilding we haven't discussed at much length. FAMILY.
Note that Star Wars is a multi-generation family drama not unlike Dallas, the TV show was.
A popular Romance sub-genre was the Gothic -- where some young woman down on her luck inherits a haunted house with a tall dark stranger next door.
INHERITS being the operative word -- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Where there's a past, there's a future. Romance is really all about potential family.
So I have a real-life story to tell you to make my point here about how to make any alien environment you build accessible (understandable on an emotional level) to your readers.
Read this story with an awareness of WHAT you already know that you use to interpret and visualize what this story means. And simultaneously consider WHAT to invent for your alien world to fill the niches of these things you already know about our reality.
What you choose to put in those niches will delineate the philosophical statement which is the theme of your work.
Remember, your readers will use what THEY already know to interpret what you write, to interpolate facts between your words as you do when reading this story. Leave the gaps they need, but also fill ones that tickle the mind with a new way of looking at the world.
This morning, my daughter called while driving her daughter (4 3/4 yrs old) to an appointment.
My daughter said right off that she had just heard The William Tell Overture on her car radio and she instantly thought of me and how it was past time she should call me.
Why did she think of me? Because I'm a Lone Ranger Fan of the first water, and she grew up well aware of that (as well as Star Trek -- her first word after Orange Juice was Captain Kirk).
So we talked, and she told me several too-too precious stories about my granddaughter who had been nagging her to talk to grandma and grandpa. I won't lay them on you.
Then she told me that at a garage sale a couple weeks ago she picked up for $5 a video camera you can hook to the TV set and see yourself. Immediately, MY GRANDDAUGHTER (here is absolute proof of the relationship!) seized on the camera, set up a vanity table chair as a stage and pretty backdrop, put her Barbie Dolls on it and proceeded to move them around watching on the TV and telling Princess stories.
At her age, I wrote words on paper (even if nobody but me could read the squiggles I thought were writing), my granddaughter tells stories in video! But stories are stories -- I've spawned a PRODUCER!!! Maybe she'll produce one of my unsold scripts she finds when cleaning out my house after my funeral. (Now there's a Gothic tale untold!)
Then we discussed what to get this kid for her birthday. One of my presents to her is this blog which occurred to me when I spoke to her on the phone. Maybe she'll stumble over it when she's a teen surfing the web for romance novels.
Jacqueline Lichtenberghttp://www.simegen.com/jl/
I agree with Linnea about Magic Lost, Trouble Found -- it's a page-turner with everything and the kitchen sink tossed into the worldbuilding mix.
I got my computer fan replaced and I'm back in the saddle again! (remember Roy Rogers?)
I've been talking about worldbuilding -- the writer's tool for creating an alternate reality background for the story to unfold in front of, for some time now.
Many writers just hurry through that part of preparing to write, because it's tedious, often irrelevant, and will never collect them any money or glory.
But the truth is -- world building is the writer's tool for drawing a reader into a story, especially a romance, and doubly-especially a romance that involves star-crossed lovers or the divinely inspired love that can reach across a cultural gulf, or in our case a species gulf.
The Alien Romance genre actually goes farther to define LOVE in an operational way that readers can use in their mundane lives than any other genre I know of. Love isn't "human" -- love transcends humanity.
That lays a big responsiblity on the romance writer who's just trying to make a living.
Think! As you craft this story, think about the young women and men who will read this story, who will feel these emotions with the characters, who will remember those characters' names their whole lives long as "symbols" of the philosophies they stand for.
Think about the lessons they will derive from walking a mile in this character's moccasins.
Yes, the background world building carries the thematic message of the story more strongly than the characters themselves. It's not BECOMING the character that impresses a story on the readers' dreams -- it's that mile they have to walk in the character's moccasins, feeling every stone through the thin soles.
What draws a reader deep, DEEP, into a story is the philosophical match between the character, his/her internal conflict, clearly reflected in his/her external conflict, crystal and pristinely reflected in the world surrounding the character.
The way all these levels of the artistic creation match, go-together to bespeak a certain view of Life The Universe And Everything -- matters of ultimate concern -- (astrologically 12 House matters) -- that makes that world real to the reader.
For an artist to pull that trick off, the artist must be aiming his/her creation at a very specifically defined audience, readership, market. Just as in conversation, you must take into account what the other person is thinking, feeling (mood), wanting, needing, believing, before you phrase your utterance.
Ask the boss for a raise when you've just spilled hot coffee in her lap and see what happens next! Take her clothes to the cleaners and have them back spotless in an hour and you won't have to ask.
Do the same when you create a story -- take into account who you're talking to and what else they have distracting them and craft your story accordingly.
Most romance readers are either young and dreaming of creating their own family -- or currently raising kids and dreaming of ways to make it easier.
When you craft a story and build the world to house that story, you are talking to that audience, just as you talk to your boss (and make no mistake, the reader is your boss, the reader signs your paycheck.)
So you want to start with a statement or image that makes sense to the reader before you dive off the deep end into aliens and falling in love across vast gulfs.
That one thing that almost all Alien Romance readers have in common -- almost all readers, actually, -- is FAMILY.
Now, here's an aspect of worldbuilding we haven't discussed at much length. FAMILY.
Note that Star Wars is a multi-generation family drama not unlike Dallas, the TV show was.
A popular Romance sub-genre was the Gothic -- where some young woman down on her luck inherits a haunted house with a tall dark stranger next door.
INHERITS being the operative word -- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Where there's a past, there's a future. Romance is really all about potential family.
So I have a real-life story to tell you to make my point here about how to make any alien environment you build accessible (understandable on an emotional level) to your readers.
Read this story with an awareness of WHAT you already know that you use to interpret and visualize what this story means. And simultaneously consider WHAT to invent for your alien world to fill the niches of these things you already know about our reality.
What you choose to put in those niches will delineate the philosophical statement which is the theme of your work.
Remember, your readers will use what THEY already know to interpret what you write, to interpolate facts between your words as you do when reading this story. Leave the gaps they need, but also fill ones that tickle the mind with a new way of looking at the world.
This morning, my daughter called while driving her daughter (4 3/4 yrs old) to an appointment.
My daughter said right off that she had just heard The William Tell Overture on her car radio and she instantly thought of me and how it was past time she should call me.
Why did she think of me? Because I'm a Lone Ranger Fan of the first water, and she grew up well aware of that (as well as Star Trek -- her first word after Orange Juice was Captain Kirk).
So we talked, and she told me several too-too precious stories about my granddaughter who had been nagging her to talk to grandma and grandpa. I won't lay them on you.
Then she told me that at a garage sale a couple weeks ago she picked up for $5 a video camera you can hook to the TV set and see yourself. Immediately, MY GRANDDAUGHTER (here is absolute proof of the relationship!) seized on the camera, set up a vanity table chair as a stage and pretty backdrop, put her Barbie Dolls on it and proceeded to move them around watching on the TV and telling Princess stories.
At her age, I wrote words on paper (even if nobody but me could read the squiggles I thought were writing), my granddaughter tells stories in video! But stories are stories -- I've spawned a PRODUCER!!! Maybe she'll produce one of my unsold scripts she finds when cleaning out my house after my funeral. (Now there's a Gothic tale untold!)
Then we discussed what to get this kid for her birthday. One of my presents to her is this blog which occurred to me when I spoke to her on the phone. Maybe she'll stumble over it when she's a teen surfing the web for romance novels.
Jacqueline Lichtenberghttp://www.simegen.com/jl/
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