Theme-Plot Integration Part 17 - Crafting an Ending

Theme-Plot Integration

Part 17

Crafting an Ending

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of Theme-Plot Integration listed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

We've explored finding the correct "opening" or beginning moment.

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

And we've defined the "ending" as the resolution of the conflict that begins on Page One.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

Middles are tricky, and we have not discussed them much yet, but you can't nail a MIDDLE without knowing (at least subconsciously) where and when the ENDING comes.

The middle is the turning point, where whatever is at stake, what the Main Characters stand to lose if they act boldly and aggressively, becomes more important.  The stakes are raised, everyone ante's up into the pot, and the final stare-down begins.  Is it a bluff?  Or can your main character deliver?

Stakes exist in both plot and story.

I use the word "plot" to mean the sequence of physical events, deeds, and decisions that change the situation.

I use the word "story" to mean how the main character reacts to the events, what is learned, and how the main character changes (arcs) because of the Events of the Plot.

Story is internal to the characters, while Plot is external.

Different writing textbooks use these words differently, and identify the moving components of a work of fiction with different terms.  But every one I've seen so far, and all the working professional writers I've learned from and taught with, all identify the same moving parts -- by whatever vocabulary.

So Theme is what you have to say with this piece of fiction -- it is what you are revealing to your reader about reality, something that you can see but maybe your reader can recognize without actually understanding it.

A good Theme comes clear near or at the very end of the novel, where the reader stares at the page overwhelmed with a new understanding, a vision of reality that has never come into focus for that reader before.

Plot is what the Characters do, Story is why they do it, and both are derived from Theme -- both plot and story say the same thing but in different ways.

The ENDING is where both plot and story finally "speak" or "chime" in harmony, saying the same thing on different octaves.

For a Romance, you have to keep writing until you get to the Happily Ever After springboard into the future you will not delineate.

When the reader and the Characters understand the Conflict (begun on page one) is now resolved, over, gone, never to return, and the goal is achieved and recorded in the Akashic Record forever, you stop writing.

The trick in crafting an ENDING is to get all these elements to converge into one moment in time.

This is usually done with symbolism

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

The final explosion of pure, raw emotion that makes your reader laugh, cry, and shout for joy all at once - then memorize your byline and look for everything else you've written - is achieved through the confluence of symbolism.

It is a silent language that triggers deep, unconscious responses.

But the same object or image does not trigger the same responses in everyong.

Thus your human and your alien characters might react very differently to the same visual symbol.

The meaning of a symbol lies deep in the culture, and each culture on Earth has its own language of symbols.  We all have a lot in common because we're all human -- but don't expect your aliens to have the same common symbols with humans.

A lot of the meaning of symbols is rooted in sexuality, as is most of the human cultural values and ideas of how humans can live together, depend on each other for survival, and still be independent individuals.

The main conflict in being human is just that -- the personal sense of individuality vs. the absolute necessity to blend into the Group.

The trick to getting both plot and story to END in the same visual event or symbol is The Character Arc -- the story ends when the Character learns his lesson, absorbs the core of the Theme and changes his/her behavior.

The challenge that roared into his life on Page One comes around again, and the opportunity to make the same mistake over again appears in a different (but recognizable) guise.  The END is where that Character has changed because of the Events to a point where he/she will pass up that opportunity, and behave in a different way.

The new behavior SHOWS without TELLING that the Character has changed, has arced, and now understands the Theme.

Recently we looked at current trends in fiction in terms of choosing a Character Arc Direction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/trends-and-counter-trends-part-1.html

One way to create an Alien Romance situation is to bring two characters together on Page One -- one arcing in one direction and the other arcing in another direction.  In other words, each of the two characters who will Conflict to generate the plot has a different definition of Good, and a different vision of his own Ideal Self toward which he/she is striving.

The ending then becomes the point where one or both of these Characters changes their mind.

How do you make it plausible to a reader that a character has changed their mind?  Really changed, on some fundamental thematic issue.  For example, how do you convince a skeptical Character that the Happily Ever After can be theirs -- all they have to do is change their mind?

What would you change your mind for?

What would convince you that you are wrong?

That is, of course, always the question you must ask yourself whenever you firmly believe something.  If there is no evidence that could be presented to you that would make you change your opinion on something, then your belief is a non-falsifiable hypothesis.

This mental/emotional dynamic is what the Paranormal Romance depends on -- if you sidestep into a Fantasy universe where Magic is Real but you firmly believe that Magic is Nonsense, what happens when you see Magic used?

The sensation of having to change your mind, to change some fundamental constant of your personal universe (such as God Exists or God Does Not Exist, or Humans Are Basically Good, or Humans Are Basically Evil and must be controlled) is intriguing to the Fantasy fan, and repugnant to the Reality fan.

Some people love roller-coasters, some don't.

In Depiction Part 30,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/06/depiction-part-30-depicting-royalty.html
we noted:

------quote---------
During a lifetime, we change.

We looked at a research article about how people are different as they become older -- fundamental personality and attitudes differ.  Character traits such as reliability can change drastically with age.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/06/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

So as you grow and mature as a writer, so too your audience (and editors) grow and change.  What matters to you changes.

But how do you change?  From what to what?  In what direction?  And why is it that there's always an exception to every rule?

Here's another bit of research that may give you a clue to what makes the difference between "the masses" or "the peasants" and "royalty" or "the rulers."

http://www.corespirit.com/new-discovery-shows-dont-listen-facts/

This article says only a small percentage of people alter their "first impressions" according to new hard-fact data, while most humans form opinions to "blend in" with their friends, associates or Group identity.

-------end quote----------

Unless all your characters die at The End, you leave the reader with the impression or expectation that the Characters will continue to change after absorbing the change necessary to survive this novel's Events.

If you are writing science fiction romance, you might need to craft a Series of novels about the same Characters.

In that case, you'd have to map out (consciously or subconsciously) the sequence of changes your characters will undergo.

If you are writing for TV or Video Production, you must expect many writers to be crafting stories featuring your characters.  To do screenwriting for a series, you have to map out these Character Arc changes consciously so they can be verbalized in creative story conferences and meetings.

But if you are writing a novel of your own, you don't have to know so much consciously -- so you are free to let the Characters run and just watch what they do.


Still, you need a Theme to drive the Plot to an Ending.

Look at the real world around you, study humans around the globe and through hisstory, and you will never lack for a Theme.  Just ask yourself, "What is the truth?  What would change my mind?"

Note the article
http://www.corespirit.com/new-discovery-shows-dont-listen-facts/

makes it clear how small a percentage of humans change their minds to accomodate new facts.

Writers are very likely to be among that small percentage -- especially science fiction writers!  And the truth as I see it is that Romance writers also bring a lot of flexibility to their craft.

Readers can pick up the knack of re-assessing fundamental assumptions from reading widely in these genres  -- and about 10% of the readers will bring that knack to bear on their real lives.

Take, for example, the notion of "What is Government?"  What is government for and why do we even bother?  Do humans need government?  Or does government need humans?

If humans do not need governing, then why do tribes keep re-inventing (around the globe and throughout pre-history to history) Chieftains, Bosses, Leaders?  Chimps and Bonobos exhibit tribal organization and pecking order -- and humans are primates, so we do it too.

Where "government" fails (e.g. the Inner Cities) then "Gangs" rule. Or some other organization structured under a "strong man" or leader or boss.

This social organization is vividly depicted in Marshall Ryan Maresca's world called Maradaine.

https://www.amazon.com/Intrigue-Maradaine-Constabulary-Marshall-Maresca-ebook/dp/B01BK0SQEK/

The sociology behind the worldbuilding Maresca shows without telling is absolutely fabulous -- it is thematic core material used properly.

The overwhelming force of Culture to define the scope of the Character's choices is pure Art at its best.  This is a world where Magic is real, but has a very realistic cost.  Morality is likewise real, and has a vast cost.  No one Character's story begins and ends with him or her.  Everyone has ancestors and is where they are because of what ancestors did (or did not do).

Interesting, these characters don't think a lot about how their Ancestor's deeds defined their reality -- or conversely what they can do to redefine the possibilities for their children's futures.

I love Maresca's work, and highly recommend it.  It will make you think.

Jean Johnson's First Salik War novels give the long-ago, far away, historical underpinnings of what will happen in the novels set later on the timeline.

https://www.amazon.com/Jean-Johnson/e/B001JSEGXY/

The Blockade shows us how the vast Evil got penned up onto their own planets.  Prophecy (yes, a sort of time-travel, astral travel premise makes these novels work well), shows that this Evil will escape and eventually destroy itself.

The plot, conflict, and character arc dynamic behind all these novels pivots on the themes that question what humans need government for, and why we keep re-inventing government in various forms (from Aristocracy to Democracy and everything in between).

We yearn to be governed, or do the governing, but keep overthrowing government because (at least for humans) "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

So Jean Johnson is exploring what sort of humans could work in governing without making everyone want to overthrow them.  She introduces telepathy and various ESP functions to Earth's humans -- and even humans elsewhere in the galaxy.  And she peoples her galaxy with a wide variety of non-humans with a loose association.  The non-humans all seem to crave government, too, but so far I'm not clear why that is.

The thematic assumption in both Maresca's Fantasy and Johnson's Science Fiction seems to be that government is necessary.

We all know how Ayn Rand founded a career laying out an epistemology questioning those fundamental assumptions.

To create fiction about something as fundamental, pervasive yet invisible as "government" takes real genius.

One of the Theme-Plot Integration tricks is to take the nebulous, non-verbal concepts we call Theme and state them clearly in a this vs that format.

We love simplification, especially of the diffiult and complex.  The simplification of a complex matter makes us feel as if we understand something way above our intelligence level - it makes us feel powerful when someone smart explains what they understand in a way that gives us the illusion that we understand it just as well as they do.

So finding your Theme is one part of the writing process -- and may in fact be the easiest part.  Simplifying what you know on a non-verbal level so that it can be stated in a very simplified way in words and symbols is a different part of the novel crafting process.

THEME: What is government?

CHARACTER: Government Rules - humans must be ruled or they will misbehave.  Government is the power above.

CHARACTER: Government Serves - civilization requires clean water, sewers, sewage treatment, electric power, garbage removal, recycling, paved streets, street lighting.  Government is the foundation below the feet of free humans.

CONFLICT: I Rule vs. Don't You Dare

PLOT: Revolution

ENDING: A Throne Toppled - exultation and triumph

SEQUEL: so what kind of government will this revolution revolve to the top of the heap?  Who Rules Now?  Somebody's got to rule, right?

In modern Science Fiction Romance, we have only to hark back to Orwell's 1984.

In our prevailing reality, we already have concrete examples of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things - the evaporation of privacy, and a rising necessity to identify each individual human and track their deeds microscopically.

So the vision of Skynet popularized in the Terminator movies is no longer "far future fantasy" but actually a possibility.  We will build it to defend ourselves from ourselves!

We might build it to "serve" -- but will that prevent it from "ruling?"

Would an Artificial Intelligence like Skynet be able to "change its mind?"

Would the people about to throw the switch and light up such a neural network be the sort (the 15% or so) to change their minds when presented with new facts?

And given the state of "fact" acquisition today, will we create a Skynet to determine and decree what the "facts" are?

Where there is government, some humans (probably 5-15%) will be criminals. Depending on the form of the government, it is probably a different 5-15% that will be deemed criminals.

A lot of (great) Romances have been written about falling in love with the bad boy from the other side of the tracks (i.e. the Alien!).  And in many of them, marrying a 'good girl' tames the 'bad boy.'   We saw the science indicating that, with age, with time and experience, human personality does change.

What makes a person change like that?  Does government and law hammer humans into the 'correct' shape?  Or is it Love that conquers All?  Maybe a good theme would be, "Patriotism Conquers All?"

Love of Country could substitute for love of another human?

 If humans must have government, then humans must have criminals.  What does a stable civilization do with criminals?

Obviously, jail does not "work" to change minds.  I would theorize that the few who do get out to become law abiding citizens probably got jailed wrongfully, or maybe just made a very poor decision or a stupid mistake rather than intentionally violating a law because it is a law or because it just does not pertain to them.

So if jail does not change criminals into good citizens - what would?

What system would your Aliens use?

The ancient Biblically prescribed method is to sprinkle the miscreants among a large population of very well behaved people.

As noted in the article
http://www.corespirit.com/new-discovery-shows-dont-listen-facts/

Most people don't make up their own minds -- and thus can't actually change their mind on any topic.  Most people just absorb the prevailing opinion of their Group in order to validate their membership (and thus safety) in the Group.

If that is an innate trait of all humans (except that pesky 15%), then thinly scattering miscreants among a well behaved population will eliminate most criminal behavior.  Miscreants will absorb and practice the prevailing culture.

But there is always the hard-core miscreant, the really annoying ones who think for themselves and have consciously and deliberately chosen to oppose civilization (or at least "that" civilization, if not the "other" one).

So the alternative to jail, to just drown the criminal in polite society, would still leave a percentage of ill-behaved people running loose.

Many great novels have been structured on the Adopted Child -- making the main character someone who grew up on foster homes, or was adopted and didn't know it.  Great themes can be crafted around the idea of the Adopted Criminal -- who changes their own mind with age.

Putting those two scientific experiments together, you can generate a wide variety of themes, characters and plots.

"Going Native" is always a great theme.  Acculturating the non-human into an Earth society, then taking that alien back to his home planet to see how much he's changed, gives you the background against which to tell a very steamy Romance story.

Imagine if non-human criminals were sent to Earth to be rehabilitated by this method of living in a well behaved society.  Or maybe, vice versa, and human criminals were sent to another planet to live in well behaved families.

There is more to be said on this topic.  As you watch the world develop around you, keep in mind one of the oldest sayings: "My mind is made up; don't confuse me with facts."

So always remember most people don't make up their own minds but absorb opinions from the ambient culture -- therefore they can't change their own minds for themselves.  Since they don't know why they think what they think, they can't imagine what fact could come along and falsify their opinion, forcing them to find a new opinion.

Could you write the story of a Character who has no opinion?

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 10 - Is Government Form Irrelevant? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration

 Part 10

Is Government Form Irrelevant?

 by

 Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts of this series are found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

In Part 9 of this series on integrating your stated Theme (what you want to say about Life, The Universe, And Everything) with the World you construct around your Characters,

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-9.html

I wrote:
-----------QUOTE--------------
Worldbuilding is about analyzing our real world into bits and pieces, then synthesizing, putting them back together into a new pattern, building a new world from the same components we already have, and maybe one or two really alien ones.

Theme is about the organizing principle that arranged those bits and pieces to begin with combined or synthesized into the new principle you invent to build your fictional world around.

What makes fiction believable and the source of value to your customers is the internal consistency of the rules for your built world.
------------END QUOTE-----------

One of the most frustrating things I have found about reviewing the newest Science Fiction Romance or Paranormal Fantasy -- most of the new novels with or without an ostensible Romance -- is the absence of new, original thinking.

One of the singular attractions of this field is New Ideas.

That is why science fiction is called The Literature of Ideas.  Not because science fiction with or without a romance or love story is purely intellectual, dry, boring, abstract and/or philosophical, but because a whopping great science fiction novel makes you think of New Ideas wholly different from those presented in the novel.

You get new ideas from reading fiction.

The fiction doesn't "give you" ideas, and doesn't tell  you to believe this or that idea, or ideal, but as Gene Roddenberry taught, it asks questions.

The questions a good piece of fiction in any genre asks are the ones the writer does not know the answer to -- but may in fact know quite a few possible answers that only lead to more questions.

The core of the matter is questions.

Learning to wade into a new field, a matter, a problem, and sort it out so that useful questions can be posited is very hard.

It takes maturity, it takes experience, it takes training in scientific thinking, and it takes training in mystical thinking.

 Plotting a novel, with a romance story, a love story, and a mind-boggling Theme requires setting your Main Character(s) loose into a World you have Built, and blind-siding them with a Problem.

Chapter One does not have to open on the Problem, but does have to set the Characters on the path that leads to the Problem.

The trick to finding the Hero of the Story is knowing all the Characters, and choosing to tell the story from the point of view of the person whose inner decisions and mindset become implemented and cause the Problem to arise.

In other words, you can start with the Character as a kid, sitting on his bed, looking out the windows at the stars and wishing to be kidnapped by a UFO.

Pick out some aspect of that scene that leads to the Problem that kid will have to solve and show don't tell how the mystical forces of Universal Justice respond to that Wish.

Yes, "scary mad wishes do indeed make things come true."  I do understand why "Mr. Rogers" sang that wishes do not make things come true -- but they actually do.  That is why we recognize the odd resonance called, "Poetic Justice."

Poetic Justice is "the end" of your plot that starts with a wish to be kidnapped by a UFO.

It doesn't mean you will be kidnapped by a UFO, nor even that you will be kidnapped at all.  It doesn't mean you will meet up with a UFO.  It means that the reason why you wished to flee the Situation in the Household will be addressed by the overall shape of your life, and the Happily Ever After will not happen until you completely address all that family-induced "baggage."

 The writer has to address those connections in show don't tell, and stay completely "off the nose" as they say in screenwriting.

The writer has to dissect the reader's real world into bits and pieces, then reassemble it around the Main Character into a world where that childhood "scary mad wish" comes true, is faced, is vanquished, and Happily Ever After sets in.

The World the writer builds around the Character has to "reflect" the Character and his/her Problem, just as our own subjective realities are shaped by the problems we harbor within our subconscious minds.

"Scary Mad Wishes" erupt from the subconscious, and sometimes go back into hiding.  From that hidden place within, they orchestrate our personal downfall -- and perhaps our next rise.

Revealing to the reader just how the Character's Scary Mad Wish is manifesting in their life, without them knowing it at all, can show the reader just how their own repressed Scary Mad Wishes or Bright Longing Wishes are manifesting in the reader's own life.

It's a principle.  You can see other people doing this, but it's very hard to see yourself being your own worst enemy, getting yourself fired from job after job, being the victim of unexpected disasters.  The key to making it stop happening is to see it happening.

Only by resolving that Scary Mad Wish that the kid crammed down into the subconscious and made into a repression and/or neurosis can the succession of bewildering, adverse Events be redirected into fortunate Events.

These childhood repressions (OK, oversimplifying here) govern our close personal Relationships -- romance, love, marriage.

Marriages break up in two main ways:
A) the refusal to confront and resolve repressions which leads to insane fights or
B) the resolving of a repression changes the Character to where the pairing no longer works and the Bond is shattered.

In other words, married couples grow away from each other for two huge categories of reasons:
A) fed up with your repressions or
B) not co-dependent on you anymore.

So the Writer's Problem becomes illustration of the reasons why some married couples grow toward each other, not away.

The "hotter" the Romance that sucks them into Bonding, especially before the age of 21 (3rd quartering of Saturn) the more likely the attraction is rooted in something that will cause an explosive breakup.

The Astrology Just For Writers posts are listed here:

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

The ideal pairing in a Romance is between Soul Mates.

As I've discussed at length, positing a Soul Mate situation requires positing a Soul -- and the "reality" of the Soul is a Theme-Worldbuilding element.

If you posit Soul Mate level Love for your Couple, you are building a world in which the Soul is "real."  That may be a fantasy premise, and the rejection of that premise may be why so many readers disbelieve the HEA.

As I said in a previous post here:

----------QUOTE--------------
To understand the infinitely large, one must have a solid understanding of the infinitely "small."

"Large" and "Small" are concepts that can not be defined without using "space" (the 3 physical dimensions, Height, Width, Depth).

If a thing doesn't have "size" how can it "be?"

Well, how big is your Soul?  How much does it weigh?

We can measure the "brain" but have not yet "located" (in space) the Soul.  Therefore, people who study this kind of thing have a hard time including "Soul" in their model of Reality.

Thus reading Romance Novels is "escape" for them because the best romance novels are about Soul Mates.  Free Romance Novels are flying off Amazon's virtual shelves very likely because  spending time in a universe where Souls are real is just the escape that is sought by Romance Reader.

The most profound thing I've ever learned about Souls came via a course on Kabbalah, where I learned the soul enters the material world through the dimension of Time.  Not SPACE -- but TIME.  The Soul exists through TIME -- but not SPACE.  The brain exists through SPACE and TIME.

Another thing I learned from Kabbalah while writing the 5 books on Tarot...

http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20?node=4&page=1

...is that the Soul descends into the body in stages, starting at conception and proceeding (I think by quantum leaps) to the threshold of sexual maturity at about 13.  This theory produces a unique paradigm for child-rearing, setting expectations expanding as the Soul gains a better grip on the animal body.  Given knowledge of what will be expected of him/her at given birthdays, and training to rise to that new level, maturity unfolds in a more steady way.
-----------END QUOTE--------

So Soul has no "dimension" -- nothing to measure and certainly has no "location" not even as indeterminate as the location of a "particle" (which is probably a wave).

Soul is not like a "particle" -- nothing material can find or measure it.  But its presence resonates in our awareness.

That's just one Theory of Soul.  You can create your Theory of Soul freehand with many other postulates.

If you posit Soul Mates, then you must posit Soul, and if you posit Soul you must include in your Worldbuilding the distinctive properties that define Soul in your fictional World.

To create verisimilitude, you must build your fictional World's Soul hypothesis around some feature of everyday reality that your readers are accustomed to.  Religion does the trick for a lot of readers, but today many have been raised without official religious instruction.

So the Romance Writer is left to recreate the anthropological dimension of Religion for the Cultures of their fictional Worlds.

If Religion and/or Soul is the Main Theme of your novel, then elaborate detail about the nature of Soul in your fictional World can be brought front and center, becoming the plot-driving-force.

Most Romance novels don't require long, elaborate thesis statements about the nature of Soul.  The point, after all, is the Romance not the Theology.

Theme is the point of your story.  Love Conquers All is the big, envelope theme for all Romance stories.

The big conflict in Romance is "Love vs. All."  Most readers have a set idea about what Love really is, so the writer's main job is to create an All for Love to conflict with, and All that prevents the Love from reaching the HEA.

The Love is an emanation of the Soul.

The All is the outside environment.

Remember in Romeo and Juliet it was social standing in an Aristocracy that was the All.  Aristocratic based government is the standard default worldbuilding element Fantasy wriiters use without thinking.

Much of the Paranormal and/or Fantasy Romance genre comes out of Victorian Romance because the appeal of the Victorian era is the purely Alien Ambiance.

Note that Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain series started with  The Palace, a novel set in an Aristocracy -- and the Vampire St. Germain bills himself as a Count.

Historically, in our real world, totalitarianism has always been the default governmental form.  Thousands of years B.C.E., Egypt, Persia, Assyrian, Babylonian, -- all totalitarian ruled by Aristocracy.  That's why the Ancient Greek contribution of the bizarre and strange (truly alien to human nature?) concept of Democracy, and the related compromise of Republic, were science fiction concepts of their time.

Look at the Middle East Mess Of Today -- where governments melt down, "strong men" take over ruling their "tribes" with an iron fist.  So the advent of a Sharia Law driven Rule By Divine Right is immensely attractive.

So we come to the crux of the matter -- Rule By Divine Right, totalitarianism by Divine Decree.

If your theme is Love Conquers All, and you are telling the story of Soul Mates bonding despite The All that opposes them, that "All" that opposes True Love is almost always a product of Governmental form.

In an Aristocracy, you have the arranged marriage for political purposes, welding Kingdoms together into alliances that can last generations.

In other words, for the sake of peace, the strong government thwarts the Soul Mates joining in True Love.

In a Rule By Divine Right government, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one (as Spock said and I noted last week.)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/reviews-20-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html
So despite the need of the individual to marry her Soul Mate, she is married off to the foreign King so there won't be war.

The form of the governmental structure dictates the Plot of the story told in the World you have built.

If this type of atrocity is not happening to your Main Character, it is happening to someone in your world.  The form of the government is never irrelevant to your Main Character, no matter the form or the social status of the Character.

Why is that necessary?

Think about your reader's life.  Think about your own life.  Think about the lives of people in the news.

We have a worldwide refugee problem because of collapsing governments and people fleeing the "Strong Man" out to destroy them.

We have a worldwide drug-cartel economy -- the most arable land in Afghanistan is forced because of the form of the government, to grow drug poppies rather than the food that would grow there in abundance.

In the U.S.A. we have millions of "illegal immigrants" -- here mostly because of the governments they are fleeing.  The form of government has a lot to do with the form of the economy, and people migrate if they don't have enough to eat or are hunted by thugs for being good people.

Amidst all that churning and ever migrating population are all the Love Stories, Romances, and thwarted Soul Mates who will have to wait for another incarnation to Bond with each other.

Click around in this history timeline map for a bit and muse over how urbanization spread across continents.  A Strong Man (tribal Chief, hereditary or on merit) government is all you need if the only people within 5 day's travel are members of maybe 5 or 10 families nomadic families.  Settle in by a nice tame creek with lush fields all around, a neat little forrest for hunting, and suddenly you need "government" because you have to defend your territory from those who envy it.

Look again at the Bible.  It traces the archetype of history so neatly.  From Abraham to the final entry into the Promised Land, the people had no government as such.  They had respected elders who decided disputes, and people lived whole lives around people they knew all their lives.

Once they moved into the Promised Land, the Law changed.  They had a nice river and lush farmland, and other resources and had to defend it.  Things got chaotic, and they had to deal with other people around them, so they asked for a King like everyone else had.

Tribal Elders everyone knows and trusts is a non-scalable form of government.  It doesn't work when you have to organize a defense of a larger group, and some people don't want to give their fair share of what that defense costs.

When the group grows, gradually the needs of the many begin to outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

So we appoint or elevate Kings who develop an aristocracy of would-be Kings to manage local problems.

The non-Aristocrats consider the Aristocrats to be "priveleged" but the Aristocrats see Noblesse Oblige -- that their needs are sacrificed by an accident of birth to the needs of the many.

Back to Astrology for a minute.  The needs of the many is represented by 7th House, the Public, and the marriage partner, and the family, tribe etc.  The needs of the few or the one are represented by 1st House, the Self, and the position of Self relative to Other.

The Natal Chart diagram is a circle divided into 12 sections, 6 pairs of opposites.  The oppositions represent that kind of tension between government (the many) and self (the one).

Another pair writers need to study is 4th House vs 10th House -- which is the Workaholic Spouse Story, the tension between Home and Career.  When that tension breaks, you get the cheating spouse and divorce story.

All the House pairs of oppositions define plot types.

The 4th House is your household, your home.  The 10th is Government.  4th House is symbolized by The Moon, and 12th by Saturn -- emotion vs. logic, Soul vs. Science.

The form of government (Saturn and Capricorn represent governance, regulation, management) dictates the form of the home, (The Moon repesents the reigning Need).  The resolution of this conflict is for the power of Saturn to be enlisted in the accomplishment of the Reigning Need.

That is the astrological description of the Happily Ever After result.

Note that the 1st House vs 7th House opposition is at 90 degrees (square or athwart) the 4th House vs 10th House.

The "square" symbolizes interference or the kind of challenge that builds strength as it is conquered.

That 4-way tension describes your reader's world in terms you, as a writer, can emulate in your fictional world to give the absurd things your Characters do verisimilitude.

You build the form of government which may be functioning outsiide your Character's purvue into the foundation of your fictional world where your reader may never see it.  The fact that it is there governing the Characters world gives the reader a feeling that this fictional world is real.

In a Romance story, you focus the plot on the 1st House and the 4th House -- Self athwart Home -- but to make Self and Home seem realistic, they must be under tension of opposition from The Public (7th) and Government (10th).

You choose the form of government to be an expression of your Theme, just as you choose the form of the Home to express Theme.

The Main Character, the Hero, is the one facing the Problem.

Back to the kid wishing to be kidnapped by a UFO.

Consider the popularity of the TV Series The X-Files.

 
http://amazon.com/Pilot/dp/B001BWQ0XM/

Eventually, it is revealed that Mulder's sister was kidnapped by a UFO, which memory sank into his subconscious and set him on a furious and perhaps unreasoning (anti-Saturn, ungoverned) quest to prove UFO's are real, so he's not crazy.

The woman he's partnered with is a pure-science person who has an open mind but sees nothing that can prove UFO's kidnap people.  Little by little, she has to change her mind.

That's a typical Soul Mate Bonding process.

That's why the show was so popular.

They worked for the FBI (government - Saturn) and had their careers (10th House) ruined (thwarted) by their personal (1st House) needs.  So they got relegated to the X-Files -- made a laughing stock.

To write a Romance between an Alien and a Human, you have to create an Alien -- which means creating an Alien (non-human) culture.  To have a culture, you must have some "form of government" -- and for it to seem realistic, your alien government has to be something that would not work to govern humans.

If you can come up with something new -- some form of government and an alien species that would naturally develop that form -- you will have a science fiction best seller.

So consider the evolution of forms of government for humans and why they work -- from tribal elders to tyrants and totalitarian Kings in every form -- consider Democracy, Republics, elected Emperors like Rome, and all the way to religious refugees creating the absurd compromise of a Democratic Republic for the United States of America.

Then trace the erosion of the Republic of the USA back into a strange, hybrid totalitarianism where we elect people to make all our personal decisions for us.  Juxtapose the rise and fall of the Democratic Republic hybrid against the population statistics.

Ancient Greece had a microscopic population density compared to even the most rural parts of America today.

Most galactic science fiction postulates either Empires (STAR WARS) or autonomous world-kingdoms.  Some postulate more complicated representational governments.

What these novels ignore in creating galaxy-sized governments is the way our forms crumble when scaled up by orders of magnitude.

The USA Constitution worked wondrously for a couple million people all the way up to 60 million or so.  Between then and today's 320 million, decision after decision has led to more centralization of decision-making, more of the individual's decision-making being out-sourced to government.

Why?

Because the human brain just can't absorb enough information to make sensible decisions for such huge and diverse groups.

So we are trending toward imposing uniformity in order to "manage" (Saturn; Govern) the country.

Why?

Because if we can impose enough uniformity on ourselves, we have fewer independent variables to consider when making decisions -- with uniformity, we could keep on using the same old the human government forms we've already invented.

There are cultures that have a continuous history of thousands of years that exalt uniformity and elevate the needs of the many over the needs of the few or the one.  For them, totalitarianism in all its plethora of forms works just fine.

For humans totalitarianism and the kind of uniformity that it requires is the only thing we have proven to work in high-density populations for thousands of years.

Generally speaking, over human history, government by totalitarianism or dictatorships or centralized management (the Ancient Chinese are famous for their bureaucracy) usually means government by revolution.  The only way to replace decision makers with new ones is by long and bloody wars.

The French Revolution -- off with their heads -- is a grand example, as is the Russian revolution.  They had to kill all the aristocrats, but having done that -- the new leaders became aristocrats by a different name.

The Poul Anderson rule of science fiction is that you start inventing your aliens with their evolution and sexuality or reproductive biology.  The idea is that human government is a consequence of human reproduction methods.

One new theme might be that the nature of the Soul generates the form of the government.

So create the biology of your aliens, generate their cultures from that biology and/or souls, then from their cultures generate their forms of government.

As long as you keep the paradigm of opposites that your reader lives within, (1st House vs 7th House; 4th House vs 10th House), you will be able to convince your readers that your aliens are Alien, but comprehensible enough to be worth reading about.

The Problem your Characters must solve will then be obvious to you from the pairs of opposites.

For example, if you stand within the Individual, within Yourself, then your Problem is Others.  Others can be the public, the spouse, the family including in-laws, the ex-spouse, and anyone you are obliged to.

If you stand within the Home, your Problem is Career.  If you stand within Career, your Problem is Home.

4th House is what you need, but its opposite 10th House is what you must do, -- discipline is Saturn, and discipline binds Government (10th House) to Family (4th House).

That astrological paradigm is based on the configuration of our solar system.  Aliens might evolve a different paradigm if they originate in a different kind of solar system.

If your Alien system is based on this "tension between opposites -- thwarted by squares" layout of social forces, it will be plausible to your reader when your Earth Human falls in love with an Alien.

Looked at another way, family is the foundation of government (Cancer vs Capricorn -- Moon vs Saturn).  They are inimical to each other, but at the same time each contains within itself the seeds of the opposite.

Nurture (Moon) requires Discipline (Saturn).  That which you need (Moon) must be limited (Saturn).

Put another way, "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" -- Nurturing triggers a Saturn backlash.

You can't have everything you want (Moon) just because you want it.  Thousands of Romance stories revolve around the ne'er-do-well and attempts to reform him with nurture.  Nurture won't reform him -- what will reform him is discipline, Saturn, limitations.  You send him to the army and make him a private.

If the problem is Needs/Wants/Desire run wild, you have to create a hierarchy of values, and decide what to give up for what.  You can have anything, provided you are willing to give up everything for it.  That's Saturn in action.

Does your Alien Solar System have a Saturn?

We call the absence of government "anarchy."  But is it if you don't need government?

Many animals on Earth are 'territorial' -- living one per so many square miles of territory and chasing off rivals.  Are your aliens territorial?  If they live one per solar system, do they actually require 'government' at all?

Note what I pointed out above -- our governmental forms morph in lockstep with our population density.  People who live in cities, densely crowded tend to vote for policies that use governmental power to force the more capable to support the less capable.  People who live in rural districts tend to vote for policies that prevent government from using force upon them.

How much Territory does a human being need?  How many humans must a human have around them?  How large does a colony on another planet have to be to survive -- and at that minimal size what kind of government would they choose?

What about humans living among aliens -- how would the humans govern themselves?

I tackled that one in two novels, Molt Brother
http://amazon.com/Molt-Brother-Lifewave-Book-1-ebook/dp/B004AYCTBA/
and its direct sequel, City of a Million Legends.
http://amazon.com/City-Million-Legends-First-Lifewave-ebook/dp/B007KPLRUU/

Would humans raised among Aliens adopt the alien's government form?  Or impose human forms on the Aliens?  Or hybridize the two so the Aliens become Alien to their compatriots?

There is a lot of room for original thinking on Government Forms in the newly hybridized field of Alien Romance.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Reviews 20 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg -- Jean Johnson's The First Salik War Book 1 The Terrans

Reviews 20 

by

 Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The First Salik War
Book 1
 The Terrans 

by

Jean Johnson

Previously, I reviewed Jean Johnson's ...
http://www.jeanjohnson.net
...mostly Military Science Fiction series, 5 books collectively called Theirs Not To Reason Why about a precognitive, half-human time-traveling woman.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/reviews-18-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

I told you to read those books, even though they are not specifically or ostensibly "Romance Genre" -- there is a love story in there, and it does affect the story but not the plot.

Now I'm going to tell you to read her new, prequel-series, THE FIRST SALIK WAR, (1st book THE TERRANS), set centuries prior to the events of THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY, and I'm going to tell you why you should read The First Salik War saga (which is hot-Trekfic-Style-Romance).  When you get done, you'll see the ROMANCE inherent in Theirs Not To Reason Why.

 
She is working on a huge, gigantic, multiplex canvas to display an artform to the mass market that hasn't actually been created yet.  She's at a forefront of things to come.  

Last week,...

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

...we discussed the impact of online fanzine distribution, particularly Star Trek, via a Guest Post by Kirok of L'Stok, and as an introduction to what he had to say, I pointed to The Terrans and how Jean Johnson had blended the writing craft styles of Romance into Science Fiction, bringing one to the fore and then the other.

To see where this is coming from and how it is not only changing the online fanfic market, but also the mass market paperback market, we have to look deeply at The Terrans.

Jean Johnson has made a good reputation as a Romance writer.  I met her on Facebook, and did a #scifichat with her on Twitter.  She's a good conversationalist, as well as a good writer.

She says she was writing Harry Potter fanfic and got a request from an editor at a mass market publisher for a Romance.  She had a book already written (see? that's the key -- write and keep writing, develop a file of stuff you have written), and "dusted it off" and sent it in.

That's another key.  You have to have a file full of material you've written a while ago, and when requested for something designed to mass market to a specific market, you have to be able to "dust it off" -- to update the writing techniques, rephrase things, scrub typos, and generally conform the raw artistic sketch to a specific market as requested.

And you have to be able to do that lickity-split -- it has to be just a few days between request and produced manuscript. Markets flow fast, reshape, open and close.

Publishers work a conveyor belt operation with specific dates set years in advance, a wide variety of different departments all producing pieces of the work (cover art, cover copy, copy-editing, publicity reserving ad space, all sorts of things you've never heard of if you don't work in publishing).

And budget - budget is the biggest item.  The longer a thing takes to do, the more it costs.  Readers will buy at a certain price, and balk at a price just 25 cents higher, and publishers know where the break-point is.  And they know their warehousing costs, trucking costs, etc.

As a writer, you have to produce an item that fits their conveyor belt within the time-slot of when their empty slot moves by the editor's desk.

Timing is everything.

In fact, that is exactly how we sold the non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES! that blew the lid on Star Trek fanfic.

Prior to publication of the Bantam mass market paperback, STAR TREK LIVES!, reviewers for the large magazines and reporters for newspapers had never, ever, heard of fan fiction and had no idea what it was!  Now there are lots of books, academic and mass market about fanfic, and it is casually referred to in news stories and by Characters on TV Shows.

We are Marketing Fiction in a totally Changed World, that is still changing fast.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

We sold STAR TREK LIVES! to Bantam (Fred Pohl being the editor at the time, and he knew me because he'd bought my first story, set in the Sime~Gen Universe but he didn't know the connection between Sime~Gen and Star Trek).  At Bantam, they had a conveyor belt filled with pre-contracted books, contracts with reliable professional writers with selling track records.

As happens, but rarely, one of the writers failed to deliver on time, but as with professional writers, enough warning was given so the panic in the offices was muted to, "We can handle this."

In midst of "handling this," Fred Pohl met one of my co-authors, Joan Winston, at a Meet The Authors event at a Star Trek Con in Canada, mentioned his problem with a vacant conveyor belt slot, and asked if the book he had turned down previously was still available.  It was, and had been rewritten a couple times since -- and it didn't have a title.  Fred chose the title STAR TREK LIVES!

And the reviews fastened on the FANFIC element we presented.

Sondra Marshak went on to compile the VOYAGES series of fanfic professionally published.  That went best-seller, and little by little, changed science fiction as a field and the thinking behind publishing.  Of course, all during that time, online publishing was rising, and computer-data-feedback from stories grew, and Amazon launched obliterating brick-and-mortar Indie Stories, and the world changed.

Into the aftermath of this melee in the business side of things, around 2007, Jean Johnson started publishing in the Romance arena, capitalizing on all the change rooted in Star Trek, carried forward by B-7 (which also had telepaths), and then transmitted to a whole new generation via Harry Potter.

And of course, the Fantasy arena likewise morphed, and some serious contributions have been made there.

The confluence of all these influences is launching us into a new epoch in publishing, in science fiction, in romance, and in science fiction romance.

Jean Johnson may be one of the leaders in this new Epoch.

It may not be on purpose, but I can easily see that she is writing to change the world.  Or at the very least, my world.

With Theirs Not To Reason Why, she presented a blend of the Fantasy ESP premise of the precognitive ability originating in an energy-based (shades of ST:ToS) beings mating with humans (shades of Greek Mythology), all seamlessly integrated into an interstellar war.

She billed that war as The Second Salik War, with only hints of what dire events had transpired in The First Salik War.

In 5 large volumes, she painted a mural of future-history.

Now in The First Salik War, she is taking us through the details of how Earth made First Contact with that galactic civilization filled with a panoply of species, fought in the war, and survived.

The writing style of The Terrans is mostly all tell, very little show.  It is, as I said last week, one huge expository lump after another, painting an enormous picture of Earth's history, and "current" mode of governing.

That violation of all science fiction structural "rules" has a certain validity, and it has a target audience.

The payload for wading through all that exposition is enormous.

Just barely arriving at the story/plot beginning at the 3/4 point of the novel, the book turns into the quintessential reason why Star Trek fanfic exploded out of an audience that would never touch a "science fiction novel."

It's the Romance.  That's it, pure and simple.  Adding Romance, in all its facets, to a life-or-death war situation complicated by clashing governmental forms, by laws, rules, unconscious assumptions, and RELIGION.

The Science Fiction Romace field has two requirements that few writers can meet at the same time in the same work:

1) the Aliens have to BE ALIEN
2) the Human/Alien Romance requires the ALIEN to be HUMAN (but still alien).

In both Theirs Not To Reason Why and The First Salik War, Jean Johnson has managed to fit both criteria without straining the underlying worldbuilding.

I've just barely met her, so I don't know how deeply and consciously she has thought through her worldbuilding.  She did tell me that she had been mulling and imagining this universe for many years, and that shows in the overwhelming plethora of detail she presents about it.

So I want to look more closely at the Content of The Terrans, as separate from the structure and writing craft choices, or even the artistic choices leading into using enormous expository lumps disguised as conversation, and telepathic conversation.

There are so many other ways to style the crafting of such a tapestry against which to fling an interstellar war Romance, a Helen of Troy With A Twist Romance, that you can read these novels, mull over what Jean Johnson has extracted from the Potterverse fanfic, combined with her audience's everyday experience of the world, and morphed into an interstellar war, and then use that same technique to create something vastly different.

If you can pick up what Jean Johnson has done, why she's chosen the tools she has chosen, what she injected into the blended field of science fiction romance with fantasy elements, and re-cast it into your very own, original concept, I think you can carry this New Epoch of the world of publishing forward yet another step.

So don't miss any of these books.

Meanwhile, think about this quote from STAR TREK:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/quotes
STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
----------QUOTE-----------
McCoy: [Kirk runs in to the engine room and sees Spock inside the reactor compartment. He rushes over but McCoy and Scotty hold him back] No! You'll flood the whole compartment!
Kirk: He'll die!
Scotty: Sir! He's dead already.
McCoy: It's too late.
[They let go and Kirk walks to the glass and pushes the intercom button]
Kirk: Spock!
[Spock slowly walks over to the glass and pushes the intercom]
Spock: The ship... out of danger?
Kirk: Yes.
Spock: Do not grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many, outweigh...
Kirk: The needs of the few.
Spock: Or the one. I never took the Kobayashi Maru test until now. What do you think of my solution?
Kirk: Spock.
[Spock sits down]
Spock: I have been, and always shall be, your friend.
[he places a Vulcan salute on the glass]
Spock: Live long and prosper.
[Spock dies]
Kirk: No.
-----------END QUOTE-------------

Science Fiction and Fantasy-Action Romance stories require Heroism in the main character.

Many novels today, especially Fantasy, portray the main Character as a victim, not a Hero.  That's fine if the writer does it on purpose, having chosen deliberately for artistic reasons and telegraphed the reason for that choice to the reader.  But that fine-point is often overlooked.  It is a sophisticated technique many new writers haven't mastered when they first break into print.

I discussed "The Hero" a little in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/reviews-9-sex-politics-and-heroism.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/strong-characters-defined-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

Creating a "strong" character and casting that character into a Situation that is "beyond him/her" -- so that the Character is tested to destruction and rebuilt anew by the end -- requires a great deal of study of Human Nature -- psychology and all of its manifestations.

Jean Johnson says, on her Facebook bio, that she studied Religion in college.

In Theirs Not To Reason Why and now The First Salik War, Jean Johnson portrays some characters with a sense of the spiritual, but who eschew Religion, and some who are deeply steeped in their own (non-Terran) religious texts.

She deals with Prophecy -- one of the elements that make the Bible such essential reading for writers looking for hot-plots.

I discussed Prophecy and its plot-potential in the context of reviewing Jennifer Roberson's novels -- which I recommend across the board. Read anything by Jennifer Roberson you can lay hands on.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/doranna-durgin-on-changes-in-publishing.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/original-thinking-in-romance-part-1.html

Strong Characters meeting Prophecy often brings some element of Self Sacrifice into the plot.

Heroism is often defined in the popular culture as self-sacrifice.

Some people regard self-sacrifice as noble.  Others think it's a stupid way to behave.

Both kinds of people, religious and anti-religious, shed a tear or two or three at Spock's (first) death scene.

We didn't know he'd be resurrected, and neither did those in charge of making contracts to get Leonard Nimoy to portray Spock again-still-once-more-forever.

In few other genres can writers resurrect characters and make such a wide audience believe and accept.  The Genesis Planet used science.  Alternate Universe travel, time travel, all sorts of nonsense Fantasy premises are turning into science now.

While the audience was held in the limbo of having lost Spock to a graphic death, we were all left to ponder this philosophy.

As usual Roddenberry put his finger on the central theme of the philosophy -- graphically depicted in prevailing religions -- of Self-Sacrifice.

More than 30 years ago, Roddenberry stated the conundrum of the confluence point of Government and Religion without apology.

Self-sacrifice is taken as a sign of heroism.

It is the eternal tension between the individual and the group, or in astrological terms, 1st House vs. 7th House which is discussed in these posts on Astrology Just For Writers where Character Development is also addressed.

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

The struggle between the rights of the individual and the rights of the groups supporting that individual's right to individuality continues today.

It is being worked out on the world stage via ISIS or ISIL or whatever they're calling themselves these days, the attempt to reinstate the Caliphate -- a theocracy.

Their particular theocracy is based on the idea that the highest spiritual reward, the most exalted heroism, is achieved by dying to kill those who refuse to adopt their religion.  Dying while killing earns a higher reward than saving a life.

In that theocracy, the force of government is brought to bear on those who disagree with government, and the religion is the government you must agree with or die.

The U.S.A. was founded on the Legal Philosophy rooted in the idea that a Monarchy (England) could not use Government to enforce conforming to a Religion (the Church of England).

American Government is a limited government designed to protect the rights of the few or the one from the power of the many or the majority.  In this philosophy of law, government does not impose the will of the majority on the individual but protects the individual from being bullied by a majority.

In other words, Spock cited a principle in diametric opposition to everything America holds sacred.

The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.  That's the political philosophy behind the modern concept of Human Rights, and most of the Legal Philosophy behind our concept of Justice.

Spock's voluntary sacrifice re-defined and/or confirmed the Spock Character as a Strong Character, a Heroic Character.  His reason for it posed the kind of salient question Roddenberry was always famous for.

In America, the rights of the individual outweigh the rights of the many -- UNLESS that individual voluntarily and without coercion (sword at the neck, ISIL style), and with informed consent, offers to wave a right for a specified time (such as in joining the Armed Services or taking an Oath for an elected Office.)

Jean Johnson showed us an individual in Theirs Not To Reason Why who made the sort of voluntary contribution that Spock made by giving his life.  (really, I'm telling you, you must read those books even if they aren't Romance -- really!)

The Hero of those novels had to fight her government to achieve a position where she was able to make that self-sacrifice.

In The First Salik War, The Terrans, Jean Johnson shows us another kind of sacrifice - a circumstantial and inevitable one, very much like the dilemma that Spock faced in entering the radiation-hot chamber to twiggle a device to avoid the ship blowing up.

In The Terrans, we meet this Character who has been embedded in the Political scene, working as a representative in Earth's world government.

Go read that novel, and we'll discuss more about the content in another post on this blog.

It raises questions.  Gene Roddenberry taught that good fiction doesn't answer questions, but rather asks them.

Posing a question in a form that depicts a problem that can be worked is an artform.

The art of posing questions is not taught in the early schooling in America today.  Schooling has also become political, a matter for a central government not parents.

There are good arguments on both sides of that dilemma, rich fields for Romance novels to find conflict.  How easy is it for parents to agree about how their children should be educated?  How much discussion of the High School education of children goes on during a hot Romance?

Yet, how many good marriages founder on a point of this sort -- how to educate children, how to pay for it, how many children to have and whether to choose the number of children or let God decide?

Yes, Religion invades education as well as Romance.

Religion is a bedrock component of Romance.  As I've pointed out,  you aren't likely to bond with a Soul Mate if you don't have a Soul.

The are of question formulation leads one to the obvious problem: if you have a Soul, must you also adopt a Religion?

And what has having a Soul, and a Soul Mate, got to do with good governance?  With choosing a form of government that is "scalable" -- that is can be scaled up to govern a humanity flung to the stars and beyond?

How do you govern Earth in such a way that we can become part of an Interstellar ciivilization that's already "out there."  What if our political philosophy clashes with that which we find out there?

What if their idea of where religion and prophecy belongs in the scheme of the Philosophy of Law differs from ours?  What if the ideas are incompatible?

What if the two people who make First Contact will die (or worse) if they obey the law?

Is there any such thing as a sacrifice that is not a self-sacrifice?

What is a sacrifice?  What is it if I sacrifice your life to my benefit, turn around and walk away happy that I have gained so much for so little?  Is it possible to "sacrifice" someone else?  If it is, what is the person who sacrifices another for the greater good?  Is that a Hero?  Can a villain be a Strong Character?

Where do ethics and morals intersect the Philosophy of Law, and what has Law to do with good governance, with global governance, with interstellar government forms?

If you've read Jean Johnson's novels so far, you can ponder those questions and see why a degree in Religion equips you well for a career in fiction writing.

For contrast check out the book I reviewed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding-part.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_26.html

When I find one of these writers, I just go on and on about them!

This is important work.  This is writing to change the world.  This is the kind of writing that can change the world.

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword.

War is nothing in the face of fiction.  Fiction reveals the "truth" of politics, law, philosophy, religion and opinion by examining the various shadow governments we can imagine espousing various religions, with and without the bullying of the minority by the majority, with or without the informed consent of the bullied.

Study this image again.  Think hard about it.

 

How do you pose such ineffable questions to build a world around the story that you want to tell?

These are the sorts of questions Jean Johnson has chosen answers to in her First Salik War saga.

Read the books, consider other ways to answer those questions and write your own novels rooted in such profound questions which your Characters answer in their own Characteristic ways.

This is content, not structure. Structure aims a novel at a given audience.  Content can be carried to any audience if you choose the correct structure, the structure that audience prefers. The structure is your vehicle.  The content, or payload, you put into your vehicle is your theme, what you have to say.

First, question everything you think you know.  The more positive you are that what you think is true is actually The Truth, the more likely you are missing something important.

Aliens may have that something important, and be missing something we think is obvious.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Governing Humanity Part 1 - Democracy - by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Governing Humanity Part 1
Democracy

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In connection with this topic, you may want to look at Jack Campbell's THE LOST STARS series entry titled IMPERFECT SWORD, which is in the same universe as his THE LOST FLEET series (both highly recommended). 

The worldbuilding behind these two series has to do with scaling up historical governing structures to manage interstellar civilizations.  The discussion is entirely "off the nose" and constitutes excellent writing craft (and there's a love story!)

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Campbell/e/B001H6W4PU/

In October 2014, Allan Cole posted this on Facebook and comment to a news item which started an interesting discussion.

-----Allan Cole Quote---------
That's because there is no chance for democracy under the Chinese system, where there really is no "rule of law," because the Party makes - and breaks - the rules as they please.
 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/1016/Hong-Kong-leader-confesses-that-real-democracy-is-impossible-video

-------END QUOTE--------

To which I commented:

----quote-------
Democracy can be seen as just "mob rule" -- High School Clique dynamics writ large (gangs, tribes, petty-Kings). The fudge factor thrown into USA constitution adds in elements of a Republic (then modifies the Republic model with a bit more mob rule). My contention is that the advent of "crowd-sourcing" via internet, blog, social media, etc. can now be creatively applied to the problem of governing humans, but I think we just won't figure out how to govern humans until we meet up with some non-humans and study them. There are unthinkable thoughts that need thinking on the issue of governance.

--------end quote ---------

Allan answered with links to two books I suspect could be vital resources for Romance writers doing Paranormal Romance -- time travel or fantasy or SF.

http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Political-Order-Prehuman-Revolution-ebook/dp/B00457X7VI/

http://www.amazon.com/Political-Order-Decay-Industrial-Globalization-ebook/dp/B00IQOFS7M/

If you read the biographies of Allan Cole which I've pointed you to in previous posts here, you will discover where he gets his political savvy.  His recommendations for these two sources should be taken seriously.

Here are some of my posts mentioning or focusing on Allan Cole.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/career-management-for-writers-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

All of the theme and worldbuilding posts depend entirely on your understanding of the use of Conflict as a story component.

We will no doubt revisit the entire concept of CONFLICT as a component of Romance in future posts, so you have some time to catch up on this worldbuilding topic of governance theory.

Politics is always part of Romance -- and breaks up more couples than it welds into one.




Next week we'll look again at Depiction of  Money and Wealth in Depiction Part 6.

Depiction Part 5 is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Dialogue Integration - Part 2 - What's Eating Her by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Dialogue Integration
Part 2 
What's Eating Her
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is Part 1 of this Theme-Dialogue series, What's Eating Him?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

Last week, Loreful, the videogame company developing a Sime~Gen RPG style videogame taking Sime~Gen into the space age, pitting humanity against aliens in a galaxy spanning war, launched a Kickstarter to fund the first of the Sime~Gen episodes.

The fate of that project is now in the hands of "crowd-sourcing" -- a concept that just tickles my heart no end!  I have always been an advocate of associated groups of individuals banding together to do original work, to change the world.

I'm still, after all these years, totally dedicated to CHANGE -- we have just soooo mucked up!  We have to FIX THIS, I keep ranting.  And that means we have to change our entire idea of what the problem is, so we can solve it.

When I was about 5 years old, no actually more like 3, -- which I remember because we moved coast to coast when I was about 4 1/2, and this particular memory is from before that move -- I parsed the problems in my little world (this was during WW II when they kept preempting or interrupting THE LONE RANGER on the radio to insert war news), and I decided that all the problems in the world were caused by adults having missed one, tiny but salient point about the structure of reality.

Yes, such was my thinking before the age of 5.  Consider at that age I thought the reason the wind blew was that the trees waved their leaves.  I hadn't yet figured out the world, even when my Dad explained wind blew because of pressure differences.  I KNEW it was tree leave that did it. 

My ideas about how weather happens have changed -- markedly! 

My ideas about THE LONE RANGER have not changed, -- much.

Here's the thought that has persisted, and which is behind all my novels.

Fiction consumption is a life-function of the same level and magnitude of the 5 life signs, organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, and reproduction.  Respiration, mobility, etc. are often cited as well.   I've seen definitions that include adaptation, but I could dispute that as if it were TRUE, we would never have species die-outs. 

So as a 3 or 4 year old, I added FICTION to that list, which I hadn't yet learned.  It never occurred to me that animals and trees didn't imagine.  Boy do humans learn a lot in the first 10 years of life!

But my main fiction sources, The Lone Ranger, Superman, persisted into the TV era, and onwards, and my ideas about the vital necessity of imagination developed through my exploration of science fiction - then adult Fantasy, and I launched a career into the teeth of the prevailing winds, adding Romance to Science Fiction but hiding that so deep inside the fictional worlds I built that editors couldn't see it.  My first sale was the Sime~Gen story Operation High Time to Fred Pohl -- read some of his novels and see how anti-Fred Pohl SFR really is, and I sold him a Sime~Gen story!  It is so deeply disguised, he didn't notice.

Today, I still firmly believe fiction -- specifically The Lone Ranger, Superman, -- and yes, Sime~Gen -- is more important than war, more vital to staying alive than winning a war, because fiction of this type reaches and nourishes the parts of your spirit that make you want to live and enjoy life.

Remember the gusto and zest with which Captain Kirk on Star Trek tackled impossible odds? 

Given an incompatible First Officer who refused to acknowledge the importance of emotions, particularly hunches and "gut feelings" -- Kirk enjoyed associating with Spock so much that Spock changed his mind.

Spock watched Kirk surmount impossible odds --

The formula for a novel of any genre has 2 main plots -- which bespeak the very essence of STORY.

a) A likeable hero overcomes apparently insurmountable odds toward a worthwhile goal.

b) Johnny gets his fanny caught in a beartrap and has his adventures getting it out.

Memorize those two, (they are true for ROMANCE too!) and evaluate every story you see or read to see which one it is.  Some really great literature has both.  Look at your life, and you'll see yourself doing both, often simultaneously.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, ...



...which I've reviewed on this blog many times, is mostly a beartrap plotted series -- but the wider envelope which keeps these novels a strong series and got it onto TV as a short-run SciFi channel (before the channel name change to SyFy), is crafted from A) the Likeable Hero with a Worthwhile Goal. 

You will find that same combination in C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels that I rave and rave about here ...



Study this structure, it's the key to why FICTION is a life-necessity like air, water, food, shelter. 

Heroic fiction -- Westerns, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy -- fiction with a real HERO whose mind and heart are revealed to you in a way that you can become that character -- is a necessity of LIFE, because it gives your spirit the strength to overcome obstacles, just as food gives your body the strength to overcome disease and heal and reproduce. 

In Occult practices, this principle is applied by "donning magical robes" or a "ring" or other symbolic garb, and becoming your best self, even if you are only pretending for the moment.  Do this pretense assiduously enough, persistently and repeatedly, and you do become what you pretend to be. 

That is part of the nature of humans: you become what you emulate.

There is another principle promulgated at the heart of Kaballah, that the entirety of existence is made from pure energy.  That's a principle of the occult studies, too, and was derided and scoffed almost to death by the early Scientists.  Now we have split the atom, and are examining quarks, bosons, and other phenomena that compose space and the stars.

We are made of pure energy, and that energy (says Kaballah) is God's Love breathed into the world and shaped by Words.  God recreates the entirety of creation millisecond by millisecond.

That's a principle -- our very existence depends on being recreated by Words in increments too small to perceive.

Science now scoffs at that -- and is desperately trying to explain all of human experience in terms of biochemistry and the electrochemistry of the brain. 

That is the science that science fiction is based on.

The recent dust-up over the SFWA Bulletin Cover and a blog by another person that erupted into a discussion of how the SF community is viciously rejecting women and SFR might be parsed into an example of how society is trying to reject the existence of the HAPPILY EVER AFTER "ending" - or "worthwhile goal" that we strive toward.

The Occult Studies -- particularly Tarot -- see the feminine principle as the masculine principle's aperture to "heaven."  See THE LOVERS card -- the male looks at the female on the material plane, and the female standing on the material plane looks upward at an angel.  The female connects the male "real world" to the ineffable.

Without that connection, goes the theory (which I didn't know at age 4), men behave in very brutal ways.

I suppose by now you've all forgotten the video images (that surfaced in June 2013) of a Syrian "opposition" fighter killing an Assad regime soldier and cutting out the man's heart and liver and eating them on camera.  That pretty much sums up in symbolism the "brutality" referred to in the theory.  The philosophy advocated by most of the factions trying to re-create the Middle East as a Caliphate are intransigently anti-woman. 

You might look at the way that society insists women be wholly covered in public and NOT LOOKED AT.  Thus, in public, no man sees a woman, and therefore is free of all contact with God (even though they publicly bow down to God repeatedly during the day, they do it without contact with the feminine principle.)  Sans femininity there is no way a male can connect with God.

That's what SOUL MATE is all about -- connecting our men to God on a soul level.

In Occult Studies, sex magic involves the public displays of feminine nudity, and even public sexual acts.  This practices releases a certain type of (very dangerous) power into the world, and especially  into the hands of the men involved in this practice.

Masculinity seeks power within the material world.  That is the nature of male-ness. 

Femininity seeks power within the spiritual world.  That is the nature of female-ness.

But "within every man is a woman; within every woman is a man" -- we are all composed of both.

The balance though is not (usually) equal within a human.

Occult studies maintain that Souls reincarnate sometimes as male sometimes as female.

Kaballah maintains that Souls reincarnate (if they do at all) always as the same gender because gender is a property of the Soul, not the body alone.

Sime~Gen uses the Occult theory - and in Sime~Gen Souls sometimes incarnate as male, sometimes as female, and sometimes as Sime and sometimes as Gen -- and even more confusing, Souls reincarnate as aliens.  That is humans can reincarnate as aliens of another species, and Souls that are now human may have been non-human prior to that.

This concept is reflected in Kaballah theory as the idea that some Souls occasionally incarnate as inanimate objects or insects or other animals, for the sake of completing some task.

The Kaballah based Chassidic school of thought maintains that Joy Breaks All Boundaries.

In other words, the "apparently insurmountable obstacles" between the Hero and the Worthwhile Goal are surmounted by tackling the problem with JOY.

Zest, verve, happiness, bright-eyed optimism, -- i.e. Captain Kirk asking Spock the odds -- is the spiritual fuel that causes success.

It works on beartraps too -- the beartrap is a "boundary."  The beartrap is the consequence of not having assessed the consequences of other people's actions (the trapper sets the trap and you step in it before the bear does).  Once it's snapped shut on you, you have been placed inside BOUNDARIES.

It is zest, joy, verve, happiness, that breaks out of the beartrap.  You must pry the jaws apart, taking whatever physical damage that costs you, but you will fail without HAPPINESS (or so the Kaballah based thought goes.)

We, as SFR writers, are looking to convince a gloomy public (that sees War as a solution rather than the problem) that there exists a HAPPILY EVER AFTER, an HEA.  It's real, and it's within your reach, except for the problem of the beartrap or the "apparently" insurmountable odds.

Where does a man get that zest, verve, joy, happiness that fuels a Captain Kirk approach to problems?

Note Captain Kirk is a "womanizer" -- i.e. is driven by sexual appetite.  And woman accept his advances readily.  That acceptance is one of his character traits, too.

There is a higher truth behind that formula.  Contact with the FEMALE PRINCIPLE fuels that sense of impervious JOY that romps happily over every obstacle.

In other words, that JOY that the Kaballah theory talks about comes from God via the female principle. 

The female principle is the nurturer, the astrological sign of Cancer, the 4th House of the Zodiac, and the other water signs, Scorpio, Pisces. 

So what do women get out of men? 

What is eating her?

Could it be war? 

Last week in:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

We touched on the idea that Mars represents a fistfight, maybe road rage or a bar fight, but Pluto represents a War - probably a World War.

Right now, Pluto is transiting opposite the USA natal chart's Sun (energy source, sense of individuality).

The Sun rules the natural 5th House (Hollywood, and children, siblings).  Pluto stirs the unresolved conflicts of childhood (the much used defense of "I was an abused child, so I commit crimes now.").

The Nation's childhood was in the birth of the Constitution -- and I maintain that the USA has two valid natal charts because we are two countries interwoven -- based on two distinct philosophies which have traditionally been represented by the Democrat and Republican parties (what we now call "Left" and "Right" which I see as misnomers.)

The Sun rules Leo, the sign of Sovereignty. 

Note how Astrology indicates that Entertainment (fiction), children (sex for reproduction, a life function), and siblings (bonding) are the selfsame identical energy.  Opposite the 5th house is FAME, the 11th House, Aquarius ruled by Uranus, freedom.  Think about the implications of the binding and intermingling of these concepts usually treated as separate and incompatible things.

You have the same kind of situation between the 1st House (Aries, ruled by Mars) and the 7th House (Libra, ruled by Venus).  (these are the "Natural" Houses; the personal Natal chart indicate the same forces, but place them in different signs depending on the time and place of birth)

1st House is your personal, individual Identity (your sense of self that develops at puberty with a sudden, inexplicable, need for privacy, especially privacy from parents, and today privacy from the Nanny State.)

7th House is the OTHER, family, spouse, foreigners, strangers, groups, and allies, partners, even enemies!  When there is a 7th House malfunction, you get xenophobia. 

With Pluto transiting the National natal 7th, we have publicly espoused inclusive group principles, the public refusal to "discriminate" and reject people from our groups on various grounds.  We rejected the principle that we should deny people loans on the basis of their financial condition.  When Pluto finished the 7th House transit and hit the 8th House cusp of the USA Natal chart (exactly to the day) we had the financial meltdown known as the Housing Crisis, where the mortgage and thus banking industry collapsed.

Now Pluto is transiting the National 8th Capricorn, (natural 8th is Scorpio ruled by Pluto; USA natal 8th is Capricorn ruled by Saturn).  The Nation has a stellium (complicated conjunction) in the Natal Second House which is ruled by Cancer. 

Which brings us back to the feminine principle (nurturing, home building, Cancer ruled by the Moon) vs. the masculine principle, imposing human will on material reality, (career building, success, Capricorn, ruled by Saturn.)

Whatever it is that is "eating her" nationally, is very likely to erupt full blown into national consciousness over the next couple years as Pluto transits opposite the national Sun.

The National Sun is in Cancer (in both national natal charts), Mother, Home and Apple Pie. 

This eruption of complaints about how women are treated in Science Fiction communities is all connected to the national conversation about "the place of women" in the world, and in life.

There are those arguing that women should be kept inside the home and never seen in public. 

There are those arguing that women are absolutely no different from men.

What's eating her is that society is using force and coercion to KEEP HER WITHIN BOUNDARIES.

What's eating him is that society is "including" her in public life, eroding the boundaries men have created.

The solution - magically and kaballistically speaking - is JOY. 

The Kaballah maintains that there is an intrinsic difference between masculine and feminine functions in the matrix of reality.  A very deep, abstract study of this philosophy reveals that the difference that Kaballah fingers as the distinction between men and women is very,  VERY different from the difference that society (historical and modern) has tried to impose.

In other words, we have parsed the problem incorrectly, which is why we can't solve it.

It's very possible we don't understand Kaballah at all, really -- as it has traditionally been interpreted by men only.  Today many female scholars are tackling the climb up the Tree of Life into the rarified reaches of Kaballah.  So things might change drastically in the very near future.

What seems clear to me, and has always seemed clear since I can remember even thinking a thought, is that FICTION is the tool for solving this problem.

Fiction does two things:

a) it BREAKS BOUNDARIES constraining the imagination, allowing you to concieve and try out various descriptions of the problem and of the solution.

b) it INJECTS JOY into your life as you experience triumph together with your avatar in the story, and that lets you break the very real boundaries that constrain you in your everyday life

Which brings us back to Sime~Gen, and the space war that Loreful wants to present to the world.

Sime~Gen solves the problem of the way humanity has artificially imposed "boundaries" on each gender and thus created The War Between The Sexes -- which I maintained is a scam here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

Sime~Gen postulates that humanity mutates into Sime and Gen.  There are male Simes and female Simes and male Gens and female Gens.  Simes Kill Gens to live, to survive. 

Thus the difference between Sime and Gen preempts, overshadows and wipes out the significance of the differences between male and female.  But it replaces it with an even bigger difference, a lethal difference.  Men and Women still find their Soul Mates, reproduce, and live Happily Ever After, and in fact it's those men and women who eventually solve the problem of half of humanity needing to Kill the other half.

Then with that problem solved, they dissolve the Territory Boundaries they created between Sime and Gen so each could survive, and they create an interstellar space drive that requires cooperation between Sime and Gen to work.

They venture into the galaxy, and run smack into an existing interstellar civilization. 

The result is War.  (that was planned into the Sime~Gen series premise, and the stories I want to write lie on the other side of that war, so I was happy to license Loreful to create me a space war, and so was Jean Lorrah, my co-author on Sime~Gen.)

Even at the age of 4, I knew that war was WRONG because it interfered with fiction imbibing.  And I still stand by that assessment.

Fiction imbibing is a necessity of life -- war is all about death. 

Remember Conflict is the Essence of Story.

Life vs. Death makes a good conflict to generate a fabulous plot. 

I actually adore World War II movies -- the Hollywood version of war, not the real thing.  Real thing is to be avoided - which is the message of all good fiction.  NO WAR!!! 

War is the result of the failure of diplomacy, which is a form of warfare. 

War conflicts with the necessities of Life, and Sime~Gen is all about LIFE - about living, not dying, about the glories and joys of life (but, yes, there are some barriers to overcome to get there).

So the Simes and Gens who have hammered their way to Unity will now hit another barrier, one that will try very hard (Pluto hard) to shatter that Unity. 

This game is going to be FUN - and it will spread much JOY into this world that is so sorely in need of JOY. 

What's eating both him and her is BARRIERS -- walls around us that keep us from communicating.

Play this game, take home some joy, target your communications with others, see if that breaks or surmounts any of the barriers in your life -- especially the barrier to getting your own fiction published!

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com