Social Networking Is A Learning Tool

Way below I'm including the image of the back cover of an ARC which tells reviewers how the book will be promoted. If you've never seen one, try to load the full size scan.

Last week I showed you some of the connections I had stumbled into via "social networking" and recommended you read some of my previous posts on the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-networking-is-not-advertising.html
The impact on society of the Internet and social networking -- and whatever comes next -- is far bigger than anyone now realizes.

We have a violent debate going on worldwide between philosophies. 

The level of violence is exemplified by how Bin Laden was taken out, and the dancing on his grave by those he wronged while others plot revenge for his murder.  In Chess or War, the side that takes out the other side's leadership wins, and violence stops, healing begins.  Not happening this time.

Note that at the time of the take-down of Bin Laden, Mars and Jupiter were conjunct in the sky -- see below for more astrological connection.

Also note how twitter broke the news first because someone in the town where Bin Laden was tweeted about US helicopters overhead, then followed developments until a local news service picked it up.  Only then did US media pick it up.  This is a new world, but humans still do violence the same way for the same reasons.

To have "violence" you have to "polarize" -- or state the topic of debate as two polar opposites.  You have to factor the issues down to just 2 things, and only 2 things, or the majority of people won't understand what you're yelling about and won't care enough to "take sides."

I.Q. 100 is the "norm" because it's the "norm" -- but maybe I.Q. is a totally incorrect way to sort human ability????

That's an issue with so many shades of gray you would not believe what it means unless you study it back to the origins, then follow the developments through the decades.

But it's been shown again and again, that the most powerful "messages" -- such as used in commercials -- are "simple" (sound bytes.)

In film entertainment, often the title and starring actor are forgotten as the "one-liner" ("Make My Day") becomes a household cant.

Remember we're talking ART here not POLITICS; the artist's task is to "see" deeper into matters than most people will at a casual glance, and thus "reveal" hidden truth.

So one of the polarizations I see might be stated thusly using Astrology:

See my posts on Astrology Just For Writers
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html

That post has 8 previous posts linked in it.

So using what we learned there, think about the Headlines and think thusly of dichotomies--

We're exploring the anatomy of constructing a Theme in such a way that the plot will sort out into a natural conflict that will come to a natural resolution creating a saleable story you can describe on a social network in such a way that people will know what it is and want to read it.. You can learn best how to do this by examining "reality" and looking to current events to see how people interpret them.

So let's find the natural dichotomies people (even those who don't know Astrology) use to parse the pea-soup of "reality" into a conflict they can understand and take sides about. 

a) 1st House vs. 7th House -- Self vs. Public responsibility

b) 2nd House vs. 8th House -- Personal Values and finances vs. Public, family or collective fiances

c) 4th House vs. 10th House; Safety of "Home and family" stability vs. Vocation, Purpose of Life, Public Reputation

These are dichotomies that are inherent in the structure of human life, whether you "believe in" Astrology or not.  Most other systems of psychology will show you these dichotomies, and those systems work just fine for story-construction.

Remember we're talking ART here not POLITICS; the artist's task is to "see" deeper into matters than most people will at a casual glance, and thus "reveal" hidden truth.

So the futurologist (which the Science Fiction Romance writer needs to be) looks at the impact of social networking, now accused of fomenting riots and government-destruction worldwide, and wonders how to write a story that will still read well 25 years from now.  How do you write a "classic" when the world is spinning like this?

Is it enough to delineate the conflict as this vs. that?  Is this capitalism vs. socialism  -- is the democracy vs. republic?  Is this "the individual can and must govern himself" vs. "the majority has the right and obligation to govern the individual."

What is government for?  Is it for making everyone "safe" especially from themselves? Is it for determining the collective values?  Is it for insuring everyone has enough money for everything? Is it for forcing individuals and especially corporations to live up to their responsibility to the whole society?

Each of those questions can generate a plot-conflict that can tumble to a nice, neat "resolution" -- and in the process reveal many more questions for the reader to think about.

Presenting a reader with a moral dilemma makes the reader memorize your byline (I was asked about that on #bookmarket chat on Twitter and couldn't answer in 140 characters or less.)

That's the trick that both Gene Doucette and Carol Buchanan (both of whom I met on twitter) pulled off with me.

Gene's book, Immortal and Carol's book Gold Under Ice, each left me curious about what more they might say about the moral dilemma their characters were struggling with.  No sooner is one solved, than the solution creates yet another dilemma very relevant to this whole tumbling world we're living in.

I discussed Gene's Immortal here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html

Gene commented on that here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/gene-doucette-discusses-his-novel.html

And I revisited Gene's points in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/gene-doucettes-immortal-revisited.html

And here we are again discussing this novel.  I told you then that you needed to read Immortal because it illustrates a decision every writer must make from the heart and from the gut, maybe more than from the mind.

Go quick and read the commentary on "constructing opening of action romance" post linked above.

That commentary raises a social networking issue, the Web 2.0 issue, the issue of the "Indie Publisher" where you find a property like Immortal being right at home, and of the "self publisher" where you mysteriously find books that should have a wider audience, such as Gold Under Ice.

In my post, I pointed out why Immortal is a perfectly turned out novel, solidly executed, and fine just as is. But I could see why this novel could not be accepted by the large, mass market or hardcover publishers, why it would not get big publicity bucks pushing it into your perception with advertising.

The one thing that I personally disliked about Immortal was the use of Point of View -- it used the present progressive for current action and the usual past-tense voice for flashbacks, alternating.  This is what I consider a fancy literary affectation that has no effect other than pure irritation and distraction from the story.

But Gene executed the trick of it perfectly, flawlessly.  I judged it inappropriate artistically, but he made it work artistically, which earned my undying admiration.

Then I went on to completely turn Immortal inside out, rewriting the very structure by changing the point of view, and ignored the literary device gimmick.

I wasn't "reviewing" Immortal, I was dissecting its mechanism to make that writing technique more accessible to the practicing writers who are aiming for a career writing Science Fiction Romance.

That's why the piece was not titled "A Review of Immortal by Gene Doucette."  It was titled Constructing The Opening of Action Romance.

Immortal is not (and was never intended to be) Romance, but it has a sizzling hot love-story in it.

That love story lies there, all potential and very little realization.

The piece I wrote was intended to show you how to create action Romance out of such a story idea simply by changing the point of view to the woman, leaving the man as The Immortal.

I contended that this shift would widen the potential readership into the Mass Market breadth.

People who had read and really loved Immortal just the way it was written (which I never said wasn't great) jumped into the discussion defending book with the feeling that as written it should be a huge best selling success because it's GOOD.

My contention was not that it wasn't good, but that the publishing industry doesn't care that it's good -- only that the main character is incorrectly chosen for a mass market exposure.

To hit mass market, you must have a "sympathetic" and "likeable" (better yet, lovable) main point of view character.

Gene's readers felt that was unfair, wrong, and just plain hostile to his artform, and I was not being reasonable but authoritarian and autocratic.  Nobody used those terms, but I'm bringing them in here because of the "social networking" angle I'm discussing.

I pointed out that I used Immortal for this writing lesson because it is so very, VERY well written that it can be studied, re-engineered, learned from, deconstructed etc -- it's an invaluable resource for the writing student. An example this good is extremely rare.

Now, in July 2011, a book will be published that is almost exactly the novel that I twisted and inverted Immortal into during that writing lesson.

It's super-duper-promoted Mass-Mass marketed by Hyperion.

It's called Original Sin, A Sally Sin Adventure -- Wife, Mother, Spy by Beth McMullen (go pre-order it).

To learn this lesson well, seat it in your subconscious where it can become usable by your artistic processes, do a detailed contrast-compare between Immortal and Original Sin.

The decision you have to make as you write your own novel is what market it is to entertain - and how it is to reach that market.

If you do not have a Best Selling big name byline, you won't get this kind of big promotion from a big publisher for an unsympathetic main character (unless you have some other sort of connection to the decision maker at a publisher. It does pay to go to the right cocktail parties, if that's your objective).

I got Original Sin free from the Amazon Vine program, just because I liked the 1 parag description -- sounded like one of my favorite TV shows, Scarecrow And Mrs. King.  It isn't quite, but it's good.

You should find my review in the stack gathering at Amazon. I gave it 4 stars.

Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure

As you read Original Sin (no it's not about Religion, but that's the association the promoters wanted with that title; maybe it was the author's choice) just think of the guy who kidnaps Sally Sin repeatedly as "The Immortal" and think about my twisted rewrite of Immortal.

Instead of writing from the point of view of the unlikeable, nasty, wasted male, write from the reluctantly enamored, fascinated (no, I AM not fascinated by you) female.

Sally Sin is married (not to the kidnapper) and has a 3 year old she adores, and loves her new retired-from-spying life.  But she knows she has enemies. They lurk.  She's paranoid?

Original Sin is written with the same tricky, literary gimmick as Immortal - different verb tenses for flashback and present tense, and it uses the present-progressive that (for me) ruins the narrative.  But it's done exceptionally well, just as with Immortal, so the story, the book, is excellent and it shows.

Original Sin is almost (except it has no fantasy element) the exact same novel as Immortal, but it sold to a top publisher and is getting top-drawer promotion.

This ARC (Advance Reading Copy) for review, is bound like a regular trade paperback, with the cover that will appear on the book, but with printing along the bottom saying ADVANCE READING EDITION - NOT FOR RESALE -- and that warning is there because the text hasn't been copyedited (there are a few typos) nor has it been edited (for continuity and glitches).  But we're trained to read-over the rough spots and ignore them in judging the book - just assume they'll be fixed.

The BACK of the ARC though is always very different from the published book.  The back of an ARC reveals the publisher's plans for promoting the book, a secret from readers.

The idea is that reviewers at newspapers with the widest circulation choose only widely publicized books to review (by decree of the editor or owner of the newspaper - no "obscure" books are allowed in certain papers, or certain columns.)

So the publisher is pitching this novel at the biggest circulation venues for review.

Here is the back cover of the ARC of Original Sin.

Click the image, then when it loads full size, use the + tool to magnify the Marketing Campaign, and you may be able to read it.

The only conspicuous difference between Original Sin and Immortal is the point of view character's likability - the absence of drunkenness in characters that are supposed to be admired, and the upbeat, determined, goal-directed heroic spirit of the point of view character (the exact opposite of Immortal).

In both books, torture, murder, drug dealing, unarmed and armed combat are frequent elements.  Ugly dark stuff happens and is confronted frankly, no punches pulled.

Sally Sin admits she has killed, and even takes us through her memories of being willing to off the bad guys. The only difference between books is her attitude and opinion, and the language she uses in her head when she thinks about these things, which bespeaks her likable personality.

Every mother can identify with her (and most fathers resonate).  Many others can wish to be her because the threats their children face are as formidable as Sally Sin's own enemies, and we all wish we could do what she does to protect our children.

Not so with Immortal.  There's no point of contact offered in Immortal -- and Doucette explains carefully why he chose to do that, and his readers explain vociferously why they enjoy that book so very much.

Again the only difference between these two books is very simply and very clearly - the likability of the main character via the eyes of publishers wanting to hit with a very wide audience.

Certain fans of Immortal will find Sally Sin revolting.  But that's not the point.

Immortal doesn't have this publicity muscle behind it.  Sally Sin does.

When you frame your own novel, think about how the choice of point of view and characterization determine the amount of publicity money that will be devoted to it.

The change that social networking has made in "The Arts" and will continue to make is all about this "publicity money" issue - the business model of publishing that I've been discussing repeatedly the last few years.

The business model of Hyperion requires sympathetic main POV character in order to be worth big bucks publicity.

The business model of Indie Publishing does NOT require the same "lowest common denominator" structure for a novel to hit big time with the readers that can be accessed via social networking.

The self-published has a bigger dilemma.  You must promote with your own money.  I've seen statistics on self-published authors who are selling 1,000 copies a month with only social networking, blogging, etc -- but that kind of sales statistic comes at the price of writing in a "popular genre."  The only successes like that which I know of are in Romance mixed-genre, such as Paranormal Romance.

So, blogging is social networking, and you're reading this blog.  Are you learning?

Immortal might be seen as an example of the conflict dichotomy a) above -- Original Sin might be seen as an example of c).  What do you think? 

Writing exercise: Parse the Bin Laden events into dichotomy b) above. 


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (for current novel availability)

Gene Doucette's IMMORTAL revisited

In January 2011, I posted an analysis of Gene Doucette's novel IMMORTAL.  At that time, it had gathered a nice sized readership and was still growing in popularity and even controversy. 


At the time I wrote the analysis, some months prior to posting, I asked his permission to dissect his work in public and use it for a writing lesson.  Being a professional, he consented, and I sent him my analysis.  He sent me a response which I then set up to post right after my post on his novel. 

He noted these posts on his own blog and website -- and several of his fans leaped in to add commentary, all of which is absolutely fascinating and worth reading.

Note that I did not, in the body of my post, "review" IMMORTAL.  This is not a review but a nuts-n-bolts analysis that should be taken in the context of my previous writing-lesson posts.  My post was not a criticism of the novel (that would have different content).  My post was an analysis aimed at Romance writing students. 

I could not capture or articulate all the important points about IMMORTAL in this one post, and so recommend all writing students (regardless of genre specialty) read this novel, make marginal notes and come back years later to study it.

Here are the direct URLs.

My analysis of IMMORTAL. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html


Gene Doucette's response:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/gene-doucette-discusses-his-novel.html

Each of these links will take you to a page with the comment-discussion at the bottom.

Note, if the colors make it hard to read, you can highlight everything with your cursor and get black text on white background.  The blog-owner may still have issues with the color scheme.

So, on Gene's post, one of the comments is from Angela who was curious about what I meant by "couldn't put it down."  Another was from Mike, who observed how easy (and interesting) it is to get caught up in a secondary character's story and make it your own. 

I set out to answer as a blog-comment, and well, you all know I don't write short.

So my answer has become this blog post, scheduled for March, and there are several reasons for that.

First, while these 2 posts were being discussed, Gene Doucette mentioned to me that he was still in the process of determining how commercially "successful" IMMORTAL would be.  I think that was after I had noted that I felt it would do wonderfully well as a feature film script, and he answered that he had that in mind. So I wanted to wait a few more weeks to see what might develop.

Second, I did recommend students read the novel, and didn't want to continue the discussion until they'd had a chance to do that.

Third, meanwhile the subject came up on a #scifichat that a "Star Trek-The Love Boat" mashup would be something to avoid at all costs -- which spawned the sequence of 7 posts from Feb 15th to March 29th, 2011.  Oddly, that dovetails with the discussion of IMMORTAL but most specifically with the aspect of commerciality. 

Fourth, on a #scriptchat I think it was, there was a discussion of the 4-quad script and the virtues of the 4-act structure as opposed to the 3-act structure Blake Snyder favors. Taking "4-quad" to refer to the 4 demographics a film must capture to be an "opens everywhere" film, (by age and gender), which speaks directly to this issue of how intensely Gene Doucette's fans respond to the novel IMMORTAL as opposed to how wide the potential market for IMMORTAL might be.  (size of market vs. cost of production). 

Fifth, I do have an example of a self-published book as strongly crafted as IMMORTAL but in a totally different genre.  It is not, however, readily apparent to me how to make a writing lesson out of it -- all I can do is point and say "write like that" Carol Buchanan's GOLD UNDER ICE is on Amazon (read it; we'll talk about it's Tarot underpinnings)

http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Under-Ice-Carol-Buchanan/dp/0982782217/rereadablebooksr/

So I still have a lot more to learn from Immortal.  I want to see the screenplay!

So go read or re-read the posts and comments on IMMORTAL linked above, and here's my answer to Angela and Mike who commented on Gene Doucette's guest post.

---------
 Angela:

As a writer, I enjoy things in a story that are not the same as what a reader enjoys. 

I read and analyze at the same time.  It's a rare book that forces me to suspend analyzing for structure, beats, character motivation, theme, etc etc, the moving parts of storytelling.

IMMORTAL was not of that kind for me.  But it is, precisely, that kind of book FOR OTHER KINDS OF READERS. 

And that's what kept me reading.  I saw this book through the emotions of others, not myself.  That is what it means to be a writer reading to learn the craft.

Reading stories becomes very non-personal, and the reward, the payoff, the zing at the end comes from the craftsmanship used to entertain that readership to which you do not belong. 

It is such a "high" to get outside your own head, to go where you yourself could and would not go, that seeking that high becomes the point of reading stories.

All addicted readers do that.  It's part of what it means to be a reader.  Readers seek to be "transported" into imagination, to places where things are "different."

IMMORTAL has proven, through its loyal readers, to have the level of craftsmanship behind it that I did see upon reading it.  The spirited response to these two posts shows clearly that I was right about this book.  It's special. 

But what kept me turning the pages was the promise that I had in my hands the exact book I'd been seeking for years while writing this blog about Hybrid Romance Writing Craft.

This is the book that illustrates these points - and I read a lot, believe me.  I also get a lot of beginning writer's manuscripts where I have to explain to them why it won't sell (explanations that have been drilled into me over years in the publishing industry).

I know this stuff so well, so subconsciously, that I'm inarticulate on the subject and can't get my point across to students without an example.

IMMORTAL is the perfect example, and I seriously believe that all those aspiring to sell Romance novels of any type, especially ALIEN ROMANCE, need to read and reverse-engineer this book for themselves.

I do not ever mean to imply there is "one and only one" way to write, to do the Art of writing, and by no means am I defending "the publishing industry" and the standards by which working editors at the mass market imprints choose books to publish.

If you have read most of my entries on this blog and the more technical teaching-blog editingcircle.blogspot.com you have to know how I am following and interpreting the changes in publishing due to POD and e-books.

You must have noted how I keep returning to doing futurology on publishing using the tools I'm illustrating in the writing craft posts.

If you've followed these blogs, surely you've browsed through my professional review column and noted that my personal take on the world is that, contrary to the Great Wisdom of true sages, I see the world as complicated, not simple.

As I see it, there are no "simple" answers.  But what I do in these writing craft posts is focus up close on a single strand, or a tiny pixel-sized light, in the overall pattern I'm seeing, and try to give you the "hex-number" for the color of that pixel.

Armed with that information, the writing student can use that color code to enhance the richness of color in his/her own compositions.

Get enough of these color-codes into your toolbox, and you can create images in your reader's mind in three dimensions.

There are thousands.  It's very complicated.  There are more "right answers" than "wrong answers."  In fact, there are only a few "wrong" ways to write a story.  That's why it seems there is no rule that can't be broken.  But there really are some. 

When you can bend and twist the "right ways" to look like something new (a craftsmanship level beyond most working professional writers) you can create something like IMMORTAL.

My students may never be able to duplicate the feat that Gene Doucette pulled off here, but I do want them to understand how he did what he did, and how they can do it too.

Mike: Does what I've said here show you why I didn't "lose myself" in a supporting character, and that's why I found this book fascinating and worth discussing?

By looking at a piece of writing in multi-dimensions, you discover the adage of all stagecraft, "there are no small parts."  There's no such thing as a "supporting player."

Marion Zimmer Bradley also taught me something she'd learned from her teachers: "The Villain Is The Hero Of His Own Story."

When a story is well written, all the characters are Heroes with Stories.

On Star Trek, they introduced "The Holodeck" as an entertainment center, the next step in fiction reading is to step right into the 3-D story and participate, make decisions that direct the plot, act and react.

Why is that such a natural thing to understand?

Because all readers already do that, using cold text! 

The writer's challenge as an artist is to get readers to step into the story and walk a mile in the moccasins of one of the characters (any one of the characters the reader chooses).

Gene has achieved that with IMMORTAL -- for his targeted audience, very specifically, very exactly, very precisely. 

Therefore, this work is worth studying.

We'll talk about Carol Buchanan's novel GOLD UNDER ICE next week.  And I think there will be much more to say about all this. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Gene Doucette Discusses his novel IMMORTAL

This below is a guest post by the author of the novel IMMORTAL that I discussed in my previous post here on January 18, 2011. 

Of course I know he didn't intend to write an Action Romance or any kind of romance.  I understood what he was doing, and I intended to make it clear that he did achieve that objective.  My discussion and dissection of his novel is a writing lesson for those attempting to do something entirely foreign to Doucette's genre.  I believe readers of this blog who love Romance and perhaps are writing Romance will find reading IMMORTAL to be a worthwhile experience simply because it is so far away from the Romance genre.

My personal reading tastes are broader than my readership's, or the intended readership for my professional review column.  In fact, you might say I'm a professional reader.  Nothing that is well written will fail to rivet my attention.  I am a lifelong devotee of fanfiction.  I even love badly written or "Mary Sue" fanfic! 

At the end of his guest post, Doucette asks me a question.  I shall answer.  I highly recommend that you read what he says here carefully. 

--------------GENE DOUCETTE---------------


I’m not certain how to begin a response to a critique that simultaneously describes Immortal as a chore to read and as something that could not be put down.

But I will try.

I’m going to start with the bottommost point, which is that this story should not belong to Adam the immortal narrator, but to Clara, a character that appears in roughly 1/4 of the book.

There are many things I could say about this suggestion, but to begin with the most obvious: it’s not her story, and I’m not interested enough in telling her story to build the novel around her.  What I was interested in—what I am still interested in—is what it might really be like to live through the breadth of human history.  If I wanted to tell that story through the eyes of a twenty-something year old college student, I would have written a different book.

(Read about what kind of book Immortal IS at http://genedoucette.me/immortal )

The description for that hypothetical book would have been “pretty young college student discovers an immortal man, and is pulled into a secret world of intrigue and danger.  And she may be falling in love…” I expect the most common response to the description would be either, A: “oh; another one of those” or B: “is that the new Twilight book??”

This holds no interest for me.

Lichtenberg seemed to want me to write a different kind of book entirely, but this is not a romance, or even a love story.  It’s also not about the moment in the life of a very old man in which he found his One True Love.  It isn’t that the love story was given short shrift, it’s that there is no love story, triangle or otherwise.  There is sex, and there is sexuality, but in this part of the life of my jaded protagonist, he is not coming across a One True anything.  Or, to be more precise, he has come across several One True Loves in his lifetime, but this is not one of those times.

Adam is of course capable of love, and of caring about the people around him.  Despite his age, he is very much human and very much a part of the human race.  That means, like anyone, he has defense mechanisms to protect himself that leave him emotionally closed off much of the time.  He is also not particularly good at talking about his feelings—unreliable narrator—so his actions are sometimes more telling than his words.

(Some words from Adam:
http://genedoucette.me/2010/07/20/immortal-excerpt-adam-explain-himself/
http://genedoucette.me/2010/07/13/immortal-quotes/)


So knowing what this book is not—a romance about a girl helping a sexy but mysterious immortal man—let’s talk about what it is.

As much as is possible I tried to put myself in the position of someone who had actually lived through history.  I used “magical” characters because they made his history more interesting, and because the idea of playing with fantasy tropes and then stripping away all of the magic to see what was left appealed to me.  But at the very core of it is Adam’s voice and his experiences.  I had to make a number of discrete decisions and forced definitive limitations on myself—for instance, writing an action novel in first person is a real pain in the ass—in order to tell the story.  I also had to decide what KIND of person, and personality, would be capable of living that long without dying accidentally or on purpose.

(One of my biggest beefs with the modern “romantic vampire” character is that they all act like twenty year olds.  I think it’s perfectly possible for a person whose personality is stuck somewhere between Act III and Act V of Romeo and Juliet to become a vampire, but I find it incredibly unlikely for them to have survived beyond a couple of decades.  It is not a survivor ethos.)

And so Adam’s personality—which Lichtenberg has lauded—is the result.  A sarcastic, sometimes unpleasant, very clever man who tells the story of his life with a Raymond Chandler-esque bitterness.

(What others have said about Adam: http://genedoucette.me/media/ )

More generally, I find the points about convention and structure to be a bit strange.  Why would I take my unconventionally structured, unconventional story and turn the whole thing around so that it’s about a different character, has none of what makes it compelling—the narrator’s voice—and jam it into a structure that so very many other novels already adhere to?  At some point it stops being THIS novel and becomes someone else’s novel, and we’re about three steps past that.

(My discussion of genres: http://genedoucette.me/2010/10/07/on-genres/ )

“You have a lovely cat,” Lichtenberg seem to be saying, “and he would be even more perfect if he was a horse.”

Some other points:

--Adam’s unlikability.  Lichtenberg comments that I have given myself an uphill battle in attempting to tell a story from the perspective of an unlikable character.  My problem with this is I don’t think Adam’s unlikable.  I never have.  He is complicated, bitter, and drunk through much of the first part of the book, but I don’t believe him to be unlikable.  Yet this is not the only place I have seen this comment, so I don’t know what more to say about it than “all right, but you still liked him enough to keep reading.”

(I discuss his apparent unlikability more in: http://genedoucette.me/2010/10/22/mary-sues-and-assholes/)

--Drinking.  I thought the comment that Adam was unlikable specifically for enabling two college students by buying them alcohol was very telling.  The implication being he’s buying for minors and that they would not have otherwise had access to alcohol.  We are talking about COLLEGE here; this is a preposterous suggestion.  There is also nothing in the text whereby Adam “keeps them drunk”, nor does he ply them with alcohol.  He is not recklessly manipulating mortals into drinking with him; he’s drinking with mortals who are inclined to drink as well.  As he says on multiple occasions, his preference is to hang out with bar drunks and college students.  It’s a social thing.

A larger point would be that, again, this is a man who has lived an incredibly long time.  It is only in the last hundred years or so that alcohol has developed a (deserved, I admit) stigma, and he was drunk for most of them and probably didn’t notice.  In earlier times—one need not go back far at all, actually—drinking regularly and in large quantities was very common.  His interest in drinking is perfectly in keeping with his character.

--Murder.  It was hard to tell whether the “gritty realism” point was a critique or merely a comment, but I thought it worth pointing out that if one establishes a character that began life as an African tribesman sixty thousand years ago, one has to reconcile oneself with the fact that the character is a murderer.  And again, look at the historical record of the human species: the remarkable thing is not that Adam has, can, and will commit murder to protect himself, but that he hold the lives of anyone other than himself to any degree of esteem.  The idea that all life is sacred is a very new concept.

--The third act.  I disagree with the suggestion that the switch from past tense to present tense is jarring and unnecessary.  I think it’s fundamentally necessary if only for the obvious fact that the italicized sections at the beginning of each of the chapters in the rest of the book are all in present tense.  More centrally, I find that the present tense makes the action in the final act much more palpable and direct.  You already know, in every other part of the book, that Adam survives, because he’s telling the story from a safe distance.  In present tense, while Adam is still narrating, some of that safety net is removed.  It was something that began as a logical decision—because of the chapter pieces—that became what I consider a happy secondary result: a more gripping ending.

--Saving the cat.  It should have been obvious to anyone reading the prologue—in which Adam recounts a time, eons ago, when he hunted and killed a large cat—that I’m thumbing my nose at this convention as well.

--Convoluted, expository lumps.  I’m not really sure what to say about these comments.  It’s a story about an immortal man told by an immortal man, with small historical tales nested inside of a larger present-day story arc.  It’s not convoluted; Adam just has a lot to say.

Lichtenberg pointed out that there were things Adam talked about that she didn’t need to know, using the Egypt flashback as an example.  The point of the novel was NOT to solve the overarching mystery of who is after Adam—which is revealed roughly the halfway point anyway—or necessarily even how he escapes.  It is ONE point, but it is not THE point.  THE point is, he’s an immortal man, he has some stories, and he’s sharing those stories.  The Egypt passage was pertinent because it was on the subject of why he has trouble trusting women, and he’d just been put into a situation where he didn’t know if he could trust the woman he was sleeping with.  It was a pertinent story, because it was a developing characteristic of Adam, and Adam IS the story.  (And as a spoiler aside, the discussion of cultures revering men as gods is pertinent to Hellenic Immortal, the second book.)


In conclusion, I’d like to steal one of your points: look at the title.  This book is called Immortal because it is about the immortal man telling the story.  He may be complicated and some readers may not like him, but this is first and foremost a character study of someone who is, in my mind, an anthropomorphic representation of mankind.  (And I mean man- not humankind.)  The book has its digressions and its discursions, it may be messy at times, but it’s a compelling, interesting story that is difficult to put down.

So let me throw this back to Jacqueline Lichtenberg: in our past discussions you have lauded the idea of innovation and finding new ways to tell stories in fiction.  You have been handed a book that ignores very nearly every convention yet manages to be addictively readable, and your response to this is to suggest what I think is a tired, conventional story I couldn’t even imagine WANTING to write.  You clearly enjoyed the read.  Why are you back-tracking?
----------END GENE DOUCETTE'S GUEST POST------------


Why am I "back-tracking?"

Of course, it doesn't seem that way to me. I would never do such a thing.  I am all about the future, not the past.

You executed the "form" you chose for this novel perfectly (the pre-chapter inserts from captivity; the joining of the two plot threads.)

You applied that form expertly to the story you wanted to tell.

My judgment is (and there's a lot of taste involved in this) that the story you wanted to tell doesn't fit the form you chose.  I see an artistic mis-match. The virtuoso performance of the writing art does not hide the major problem - passive hero, hung hero, lack of plot-movement. 

I found the "couldn't put it down" appeal because I'm me, but I'm a very rare type of reader.

I judge that because of the artistic mismatch between form and story, the readership will be more limited than the story deserves.

I feel more people would be drawn to (reread and search for sequels) this character if the form matched the story artistically.

So to solve that problem which many beginning writers have and can't cover up the way you did, (and to demonstrate to writing students some points I've made previously) the writer either changes the form or the story -- or possibly both.

Switching the POV is one way to do that with dispatch and economy, to do it in a way that a commercial writer who is writing for profit (i.e. more than minimum wage) would prefer.  But you can only do that way before you start to write, preferably before you "have the idea for the story."

Yes, of course shifting makes it a different story and changes the genre.  In fact, that's a standard exercise in writing class - change genre by changing pov.

However, the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote.

The "can't put it down" story for me was the story of the young girl utterly caught up in the "affairs of wizards" and falling in love with this Immortal guy.  (title would still apply perfectly from her POV -- that's ALL she can see; that's become her whole life.)

That "become her whole life" effect is the core effect of Romance Genre.

From her point of view it's a Romance.  If you're not a Romance fan, reader or writer, small wonder you don't think that would be interesting, or that the novel would be utterly unique in the anals of commercial fiction.

If I wrote this story about this Immortal guy from that young girl's point of view (and from her POV the other woman is an arch rival and a threat) there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, about the resulting novel that could be described as "tired" or "conventional."  Ask my fans if they'd expect that it would be tired or conventional coming from my hand.

But of course if I wrote the novel, the Immortal guy would have a totally different character. So the novel I want to read is the one you would write from her point of view.

When one writer reads work by another writer, they rewrite it in their heads to be their own.

And the brutal fact is that all readers do that too, sometimes without knowing it.

The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote.  I learned that from Marion Zimmer Bradley who always quoted it from one of her mentors, and I don't recall who (which irks me).

It's no doubt something her mentor learned from someone else.  It's forever true.

Writers don't do the innovating in the storytelling field.  Readers do.

So thank you for giving your readers a glimpse of the inner workings of your mind as you crafted the first book in this budding series, IMMORTAL.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Constructing The Opening Of Action Romance

Story openings are difficult to construct and even harder to troubleshoot once constructed.

Information must be coded, compact, subtle, "off the nose" and at the same time explain to a totally disinterested reader why they should read (or viewer why they should view) this story.

I've discussed openings and how to construct them in the context of many other posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com -- posts on theme, character, plot, and the other working parts of story.

Here's some posts on structure which reference the skills of constructing an opening.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

And here's one on first chapters by Linnea Sinclair

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/first-chapter-foibles.html

And my usage of the words "story" and "plot" just to be clear about that.  Theme is what glues them together.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html


If you've been trying to apply these techniques, I now have a really great example to illustrate them. 

Here is the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette - a writer I met via twitter and #scifichat #scriptchat and others.

Immortal

The structural issues make this a very borderline book, and it may not make it into my professional review column for that reason alone.  However, there is a compelling resonance here that makes this a "can't put it down" read.

The structural issues that are a put-off for me might well be the real source of interest to others.  Structure is not absolute.  There are elements of taste involved.

So I have to say that the structure chosen to tell this story seems unnecessarily involuted to me.  It's too complex for the material.

What is this structure?

The first-person narrative does hold to the POV of first person (an Immortal born so long ago language was only grunts).  So I have no complaints there.

The structure is clever. 

Each chapter is introduced by a few paragraphs set in italics that are happening while the main character is a prisoner (hung hero) in a laboratory setting where they are obviously investigating his immortality and immune system.

If the novel were told starting with his capture and going through his escape attempts until he succeeded, it would be a drag, long, boring hung-hero dealing with distractions rather than advancing the plot.

The plot is not about him escaping prison. 

The actual narrative tells the story of this Immortal discovering that someone is after him.

This "someone" is rich and powerful and hires "demons" as hit men tasked with taking him alive.

Other people, though, die all around him. 

So the straight-through plot is this Immortal being chased by humans, hit-men, demons, (actually some online gamers being used as dupes) and there are vampires, and a female who may be as old as he is (or older) he isn't sure.  There's another woman involved, too, so you have a sort of "triangle" situation which isn't made clear even at the end of this volume.  But the ending leaves us eager to read the next installment in this guy's Relationship problem. 

He's been playing tag with this Immortal woman for millennia.  (I told you this is good stuff.) And in the end of this novel, he learns some things about her, and his Relationship to the woman he meets in this novel changes substantially -- so the plot is advanced and there is a solid "ending" leading to a sequel. 

At JUST THE RIGHT POINT (I told you the structure is well done for what it is) we get to the event where he gets captured at just the point where he hatches a successful escape attempt.

All the elements (characters and tools) to create this escape have been properly introduced in prior scenes.  The possibility that he can die permanently has been made real. 

So what's "wrong" here?  This plot rumbles along like a well oiled machine.  Why is it a chore to read? This is a good writer with a solid track record.  What happened here?

There are 2 very abstract technical problems with this absolutely fascinating novel (don't worry, there's a sequel in the works that'll be better).

#1) The point in time chosen for Chapter One is wrong.

#2) The innate "character" of this character may be either badly presented or actually formulated wrong. 

OK, let's start with #1 because that's easy to fix once you understand why it doesn't work.

------SPOILER ALERT -----

As often stated in this blog, I don't believe a good story can be "spoiled" by knowing what's going to happen in it.  If it can, it's not a good book.  If you understand that, read on fearlessly.  You'll still love reading this book.  In fact you may love it more after reading this discussion.  

The first characters introduced after the main character wakes up out of a drunken stupor end up dead right away. 

It is established that this dissipated and dis-likeable main character telling the story actually holds this pair of unlikeable college men in some affection -- mostly because they enjoy getting drunk and watching ballgames on TV with him.

This is a portrayal of college students that does not "work" for me.

What rule is violated by this portrayal? 

Many 1940's SF novels elevate and laud drunkenness as a means to accessing higher consciousness or even one's innate intellectual skills.  I used to like those novels.  I know too much now to find such an attitude laudable. 

Opening a story with a guy (apparently homeless bum) crashing in a college student's apartment and supplying beer and liquor to keep them drunk just doesn't work for me.  I feel no sense of identification with this main character and couldn't care less what happens to him.

The information fed into the story-line by this opening situation is that this guy is not homeless, not poor, is capable of affection for these young men, and is -- ta-da! Immortal. 

He ended up in the apartment having been brought there to a party by a friend (not-human not-magical iifrit) who also plays dissipated drunk convincingly. That friend later returns to move the plot forward, solidly and convincingly.

So I don't like this immortal character because he gets humans (who can be harmed by drunkeness) drunk while he drinks to a stupor but can't be harmed by it.  He stays drunk for centuries just for the fun of it. 

We see a portrait of an individual blessed with long life, not invulnerable but Immortal (so far). 

I dealt with this problem of being immortal among mortals in my Dushau Trilogy, but my immortals there were aliens (I do vampires in other universes such as Those Of My Blood.)

Dushau (Dushau Trilogy)

My Dushau Immortals studiously avoid close personal relationships with mortals because they have perfect memories and too many bereavements can lead to insanity.

Doucette saw this problem as well, but handles it differently and with some intriguing twists.

In the course of the opening set-up chapters of this novel, we see this Immortal experience affection and friendship for a number of humans.  His heart opens and he bonds easily with all and sundry (even vampires). 

This makes him, to me, an irresistible character.  Could not put this book down.

But at the same time, there's the "gritty realism" that this character has murdered -- over thousands of years, for many reasons, causing death has become no great big deal.  And we see him murder mercilessly.  Maybe with some justice, but with a callous attitude. 

Now here we come to the Information Feed issue.

Go back to SAVE THE CAT! (the 3 books by Blake Snyder on screenwriting).

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

What does the title say?

To engage your viewer INTO bonding with the main character whose story you are about to tell, you MUST first reveal something about him that will arouse viewer sympathy, empathy, identification or a yearning to become "like that."

The first thing we learn about the dingiest, dirty-harry character you want to present has to be LAUDABLE, universally laudable.

So Blake Snyder says -- show your hero SAVING THE CAT.  Taking a risk for the helpless, or otherwise revealing an admirable character trait BEFORE you reveal the gritty traits that make the 6 problems the character has to solve.

Nothing in the introduction to Doucette's Immortal is in any way "saving the cat" -- drunkenness itself which is not a real PROBLEM for the Immortal but which harms those humans he associates with is not laudable.  Bumming around among college parties with an Iffrit with dissipated habits is not laudable.  That this is done by choice because he has nothing else to do is cause for reader disinterest.

So, while there are many traits about this Immortal character that are absolute grabbers, what we learn first are put-offs.

The put-offs will eventually become the problems that establishing Relationships will solve.

But as depicted in the opening, this Immortal has no conflict (internal or external) in forming friendships. 

The first real plot event is the news that the college students who hosted him have been murdered by a demon -- and the assumption that the demon had been aiming at the Immortal while the college students just got in the way.

The structural problem with this plot event is simply that the Immortal was not in the apartment when the demon killed the students.  The event happened off stage.

The Immortal actually feels a little sad and maybe miffed that the humans he felt affection for (briefly, in passing, without depth) had been murdered because of his presence in the apartment.

If not for that feeling, he'd have just blown town.  But the murder of the humans made it more personal. He wants to fight back. 

So from there on, the story gets interesting.  The plot advances, and you begin to see where things are going with the bits at the beginning of chapters showing he's going to be captured.

The next structural innovation that is unnecessarily complicated is a shift in the narrative voice at the point where the two narratives (the chapter headings during captivity and the chapters leading up to being captured) come together.  The standard first-person past narrative suddenly becomes first person present.

This is unnecessarily jarring, a real put-off.

In a different sort of story, it wouldn't be a put-off.

In fact, the entire structure could be the best artistic choice for some stories.  Stories that involve say, time-travel, could work this way.  Or stories about known historical events -- a King Arthur legend, The French Revolution, etc. 

But in this particular narrative, the device seems like an erroneous choice because the material itself is strong enough to carry the reader straight through the plot.

So what we seem to have is a story-concept, a very intriguing character, that needed introducing to a readership.

There is a huge over-burden of background to work in.  This character is 10's of thousands of years old and his development as a human being has direct relevance to how he relates to the modern century.  He admits that at first his people were barely self-aware.  He still has long-distance running skills from running down game for days at a time.  He has trouble relating what happened to him in his life to the various calendars that have come and gone. 

There's a lot of background to work in.  A lot of information to feed.

The Immortal's story is being picked up when two women come into his life and that changes things significantly.  But that means the story has to portray how things were for him "before" so that how things become "now" and will be "after" these relationships start to affect him. 

How can you plot that when it's all information feed.

How can you avoid expository lumps? 

The story and the plot are totally stationary in this Immortal's life all through this novel. 

He's a "hung hero" on two levels -- being captured and imprisoned to be studied, and being chased down to be captured but he doesn't know by whom or why until the last third of the novel.

So the author cleverly structured the two stories against each other to give the illusion of movement.

Without the headings at the beginnings of chapters, we wouldn't anticipate him being imprisoned or why or how hard it would be to escape.  It's foreshadowing by expository lump, cleverly translated into show-don't-tell (yes the chapter headings read very well, no mistakes there).

Without the story of his being chased down and captured, the story of escaping from prison wouldn't carry the novel.

So given that you have this terrific character with a huge exposition needed to introduce him, and NOTHING HAPPENING in his life to make a story, what do you do?

The solution to clever-up the structure is actually a work of genius. 

But for me it just doesn't "work" because the story there is to tell about this Immortal does not require artsy-craftsy tricks of structure.

This Immortal's story actually begins when he meets the woman who will change his life, his self-concept, cause him to become involved in the modern world, in humanity and humanity's future by using all his past experience in the service of a greater good.

For any man, that change is always caused by a MATE - a SOUL-MATE (for most it's female, but not always). 

The element is LOVE.  The journey is from today's misery to "happily ever after." 

When that story starts to move, the novel begins.  All the rest is throat-clearing. 

The story starts where the two elements that will conflict first come together. 

So for this Immortal, that point is where he meets this human woman who will become significant forevermore.

But the story of his being captured and escaping is an incident, an excuse for action scenes, not the story, not the path to resolving the conflict.

Taking Blake Snyder's advice, the story starts where SHE sees HIM "save the cat" -- i.e. do something that endears him to her, that makes her willing to RISK something to save him.

Do you see where this is headed? 

We have a classic PASSIVE HERO - he fights, he takes action, but his decisions do not actually make a real difference.  This very clever, very skilled author has hidden this salient fact under some virtuoso writing, but the fact itself spoils everything in this novel.

What do you do to solve a PASSIVE HERO problem?  What do you do to avoid expository lumps?  What do you do to find a new opening for the novel that does not focus on a hung-hero who can't do anything about his problems and about whom the only important facts are odious to the very readers who would most enjoy the novel? 

The solution is excrutiatingly simple. Think hard. It is a tried and true classic any seasoned editor would toss at a writer who sent in a chapter and outline like this.  Why is this writer fumbling to tell this story when he obviously knows how to write novels?

See my 7 part series here on editing -- here's the 7th which has a list of links to the previous parts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Now, think-think-think. 

If you've read the novel now, you may see the obvious solution. 

This whole thing is not the Immortal's story.

The expository lumps cleverly avoided by having the first person narrative allude to events in past millennia (a literary device that works) are filled with information we don't need to be TOLD -- on the nose. 

And though these allusions are cleverly phrased to appear incidental, they are "on the nose" data-dumps.  The data is mostly irrelevant to the Immortal's story.

How do you avoid that?  What do you change? 

I loved reading this Immortal's "voice" -- but that didn't change the fact that the expository lumps disguised as clever narrative that carried characterization just don't "work."

Why don't they "work?"  Because the information in each memory is not something I wanted to know before I read it.  No suspense.  No revelation.  I didn't have to work for it.  I wasn't asking the question "what happened to this guy in Egypt?"  I didn't NEED TO KNOW in order to solve the mystery of who's after him. 

Because of that I didn't care who was after him or why.  He felt it was ho-hum, being chased another time -- yawn.  So it bored me.

At the opening, in the college student's apartment, this Immortal wakes up from a drunken stupor. 

If ever you are tempted to start a story (and yes, I've done it!) with the main character "waking up" in some improbable circumstance or confused -- STOP WRITING and go back to the drawing board.  Something is wrong conceptually with the structure or the character. 

The story opens where the two elements that will conflict to generate the conflict which will be resolved in the last chapter first come together.

What happens in the last chapter of this novel?

The woman the Immortal meets pretty well into this novel finally gets what she wants, positions herself where she wants to be. 

The Immortal succeeds in achieving NOT ONE THING that he SET OUT TO ACHIEVE in the opening.  He wasn't either setting out or achieving.  He was stationary in his life when SOMETHING HAPPENS TO HIM. 

The two types of plot that go with this kind of material are:

1) Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out

2) A likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal.

In the opening to this novel, the Immortal does not DO ANYTHING, decide anything, take any action, learn anything, or even pray for anything that CAUSES anything else to happen.

Thus the Immortal (Johnny) does not GET his own fanny caught.  That is he does not take an action that initiates a because-line. 
In this novel the Immortal is not introduced by any trait that is even remotely likeable by any substantial audience-demographic.  He is by any measure no hero and most importantly, he has no goal. 

All of these fatal flaws are totally hidden by the superb writing craftsmanship. 

And hereby hangs a cautionary tale.

When you are writing a story that has hold of you by the guts, a story you just have to get others to read, a compelling story -- and you find that you have to HIDE THE FLAWS, then STOP RIGHT THERE and go back to the drawing board.

Readers may not know how to tell you what's wrong, but they will sense something wrong and many of the very readers who should read the book just won't finish it.

Don't use your skills to hide flaws.  Use them to eliminate the flaws.

The flaw in the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette is the very most common flaw I see in manuscripts (and even published novels in Mass Market), and I see the very readers who would enjoy the novel most putting it aside.

It's a simple flaw and it's easy to fix.  You know it's there when you face pages of utterly essential expository lumps. 

YOU ARE TELLING THE STORY FROM THE WRONG POINT OF VIEW.

Now re-imagine this novel, IMMORTAL, from the woman's point of view.

She is the online gamer.  She has an eclectic education, a vast imagination, an embracing nature.  Her story starts when she gets the first inkling that such a thing as "an Immortal male" exists.

Her goal, which she pursues as relentlessly as the Immortal once ran down game animals, is to meet a living Immortal man. 

When she meets him, her GOAL shifts to getting him into bed. 

Her goal shifts when her heart opens to embrace this Immortal as a person, not just an icon. 

Her goal shifts again when she realizes she wants this guy, she wants to be with him. 

And that final goal, at the end of this novel, seems to have been achieved.

She is the one whose life changes, by her own actions, by her own determination, by her own will, by her own heroism.  And that change is a WORTHWHILE GOAL that can be achieved only over SEEMINGLY OVERWHELMING ODDS. 

She is the likeable hero who struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal - one she only sees dimly when she takes that first, fateful, step. 

This novel is her story.

Here is a marvelous post by Linnea Sinclair on Point of View.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/heading-into-danger-choosing-point-of.html
Now from within her point of view, FINDING OUT, or discovering, or unfolding, or digging up the information about how The Immortal interacted with the ancient past, what his opinion of it is, and any relevant detail of his past experiences, becomes the main story-imperative.

As we sink into her point of view, we adopt her urgent need to know, and feel sparks of triumph every time we worm some new tidbit out of the Immortal.

All the expository lumps disappear and we learn his story through her eyes.  What we don't know becomes spice, incense, and erotic triggers. 

Saving him from the laboratory (which she does very cleverly) becomes the plot which culminates in conflict resolved and if not an HEA at least an "off into the sunset" ending leading to a sequel where we chase the HEA which is now suddenly possible - but maybe not going to happen.

So this opening novel, the introduction to the Immortal as a character, is not his story because his life is static at that point. 

Yet through her eyes, we can enter into his life, understand what makes him tick better than he does himself, and see what he needs to do to learn what he must learn in order to change and grow, i.e. to be alive in a real sense, not just immortal.

Sometimes a character's story can be more compelling, more dramatic, easier to write and easier to read when that character's story is seen from outside.  Remember Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. 

Always turn your material around and around, looking at it through the eyes of various characters before writing. 

Notice here the power of THE OUTLINE.  Given an outline of the plot, it would be immediately clear that the ending does not match the beginning and the middle doesn't hit the right "mid-point" tension note.

Once you see that the ending happens where one character achieves a goal, and the other character acquires a goal, you will know where the story starts.

Maybe you'll read this book and totally disagree because the character revealed in the smart-ass inner dialogue is just too interesting to lose by switching points of view.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com  

ps: in a few weeks we'll walk through the step-by-step process of stitching all these disparate techniques together and invent a world bursting with story-potential. That'll be at least a 7-part series of posts.