Of Letters, Lies, And Legacies

Among the movies showing free this long, holiday weekend is "Can You Forgive Me?" based on the true story of an author who became a forger of dead celebrities' private letters.

Lee Israel is said to have believed that her forgeries were the best work of her life. The greatest mistake of her life (perhaps apart from misspelling "arse"), may have been in not accepting a bribe.

This is a fascinating read:
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/can-you-ever-forgive-me/

On the topic of lies, I was reminded of a song by Greenslade that I have always like very much for a particular line that I probably should not quote, because songs have so few lines that it is easy to infringe the songwriter's copyright by accident.  The line is about untruth in journalism.

I believe this link will take you to "Newsworth" and Greenslade or their estates will be inadequately compensated, but compensated somewhat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuWAk1Soeyw&list=OLAK5uy_mqXdw-xi7F93T-RWu3qyyQ-oLcMZVJ2Kw&index=2

Sequeing to estates and estate planning...legal bloggers Joseph B Doll and Michael J. Kearney, writing for Cole Schotz PC, discuss what happens when a bitcoin investor dies unexpectedly, without making sure his or her or their loved ones have the cyber key and passwords to unlock his/her/their digital property.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1daa55a6-6d41-411f-a82a-4ab75d3e0e46

Or, for the original:
https://www.cstaxtrustestatesblog.com/2018/04/articles/estate-planning/considerations-estate-planning-bitcoin-ethereum-crypto-currencies/#page=1

One can also lose invaluable photographs and other intangible delights if they are locked up in Facebook or Drop Box or a proprietary "cloud".

For Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP,  Joshua Boughton discusses digital assets with a focus on the inheritance dilemmas of British persons.
https://www.bclplaw.com/en-GB/thought-leadership/digital-assets-and-estate-planning.html

Harking back to copyright and private letters, legal blogger Ken Moon, writing for AJ Park examines the case for copyright infringement when a newspaper publishes substantial portions of a living celebrity's private and personal letter.
https://www.ajpark.com/insights/articles/meghan-markle-v-mail-on-sunday/

It's all food for thought concerning the enduring value of letters, especially for authors and creators. One might also give some thought to the preservation (or not) of text messages and emails... and unpublished works.

One might also consider leaving instructions in one's Will concerning social media accounts, ancestry-related social media accounts, health and fitness logging accounts.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3451737/google-fitbit-purchase-data-health-care-fitness.html

At least it wasn't Amazon that acquired the ability to track your heart rate and daily steps and swings of the arms via a device that you paid to purchase, not to mention the details you uploaded to the site to record your water consumption by the glass, your dietary choices, your weight and more!
https://writersweekly.com/in-the-news/11-29-2019?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67


All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

The Metamorphosis of Journalism

Earlier this year, the Toronto STAR ran an article by Catherine Wallace, winner of the 2016-2017 Atkinson Fellowship (a journalism award), about the whirlwind changes currently happening in the field of journalism:

Journalists Are Vanishing

The traditional media outlets, especially newspapers, are no longer the only source of news. For many people, they aren't the primary source, and some don't read old-fashioned newspapers at all (a practice that seems incredible to me—give up my morning papers? never!). The traditional media used to be the "gatekeepers" of information, as Wallace puts it. Now we get news and opinions from many different sources in addition to printed papers, not only broadcast programs (TV and radio) but a variety of Internet formats such as blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and videos filmed by ordinary citizens. In Wallace's words, "My smartphone is a 24-hour news feed — a newspaper, magazine, computer, radio, TV and town square in a single mobile device." The Internet has blurred if not abolished the distinction between content providers and audience. Journalism is "no longer an industry, now an ecosystem." What have we lost or gained with the passing of the former status quo?

The Internet makes it possible for anyone to publish anything. Wallace applauds the "democratization of news and information." We can all express our opinions publicly. The news "ecosystem" has become diverse rather than monolithic. We have "countless witnesses to big events" instead of just the official line.

On the negative side, she mentions the loss of jobs in the field of journalism, a decline that endangers the objectivity we used to expect from the traditional news media. The Internet is swamped by information, but much of it is "raw." Traditionally, reporters and editors made sense of this flood of information (and misinformation). And then there's the "bubble" effect (though Wallace doesn't use that term), in which it has become too easy to surround ourselves with information and opinion sources that reinforce what we already believe. We're in danger of consuming "fake news" and "alternative facts" without checks and balances. Wallace draws particular attention to the role of traditional news sources in reporting on local community events and issues. That's one reason why I'll never drop our subscription to the local paper, even though, since it was bought by the company that owns the Baltimore SUN, the two publications print a lot of the same articles.

Wallace's long essay contains lots of thought-provoking observations and is well worth reading in its entirety.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 22 - Making a Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World

Part 22

Making a Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World

Previous Parts of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World are indexed here:

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

"Profit" is a term considered anathema in some circles - with fairly good reason.  The term "profit" has come to signify getting something you didn't earn, something actually earned by the sweat of others.

Those who oppose Capitalism could not destroy Capitalism because it is so good at racking up Profit.  Everyone wants "profit" when it is defined as "something for nothing."

But "something for nothing" is not the definition of profit nor has it anything to do with Capitalism.  Capitalism is about personal, individual ownership, which makes copyrights a form of capital.

-------------quote from a quick Google search------------

cap·i·tal·ism
ˈkapədlˌizəm/
noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
synonyms: free enterprise, private enterprise, the free market; enterprise culture
"the capitalism of emerging nations"
-----------end quote---------------

Google's definition of Capitalism calls it a "system" -- a political and economic system.

Capitalism is not a system and has nothing to do with politics or society.  Capitalism is "not a bug in the social system; it's a feature of Reality."

I saw this item on Quora back in June 2016 and admired the precision of this definition.

-------------quote-------------
https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-working-class-person-prefer-capitalism-to-communism

First please understand that you can't really compare the two since they are different things. Communism is a socioeconomic concept while capitalism is a solely economic concept. Therefore there are no social policies which can be definitely associated with capitalism, which means the comparison needs to be exclusively economic or based on specific cases (e.g. USA vs. USSR). Also, no country on earth practices or has practiced true communism; by definition communism supersedes the concept of the state with small, self-organized communities, therefore neither the USSR nor China were "true" communist systems.

Now, why would a working class person prefer capitalism? I'd say because they would not enjoy living in a communist society.

-----------end quote---------- 

I could write this entire blog entry about the concept "working class" and how it can not possibly be applied to the USA.  The US Constitution can only function well if the populace understands there is not now nor never has been any such thing as "class" in the human species.  

SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE WRITERS NOTE: all bets are off if you are depicting Aliens. Create a species where "class" is a biological imperative, then launch your Love At First Sight story and see what happens next.

But where only humans are involved, the USA Declaration of Independence and the Constitution nailed it perfectly.  These founding documents are based on "All Men Are Created Equal" and we've fought out the battle over the idea of "all men" (which now includes males of different colors) and the idea that "men" includes women, too.  In other words, our social history has been directed along the lines of enhancing Individualism by turning individuals loose to craft their own destinies in their own pursuit of happiness ever after. 

These ancient words mean that in the USA, there is no such thing as class, working or otherwise.  There is no such thing as "the" 1% -- the ultra rich are "a 1%" not "the 1%."  

Social systems that divide humans into classes are called Aristocracies.  The USA views Aristocracy as resoundingly repudiated by thousands of years of utter failure.

Without a "working class" you can not have an Aristocracy.  

So in the USA, there are people who make a living by working, but they are not a "class" -- at any time, any given individual, can become independently wealthy, self-employed, employ others to work for him/her/whatever, go back to school on a scholarship, or get injured (perhaps in war action) and go on the dole or a well earned pension. Humans do not come in "classes."  Humans are resilient and adaptable - ever changing.  We all work.  There is no such thing as "working class."   

Writers work, but do not form a "class" in any sense.  We have nothing in common with one another, which is the exact trait we have in common -- unique individuality. 

That is the precise condition under which Capitalism thrives, flourishes, and produces far more than is invested.  Capitalism is an "undocumented feature" of the Reality Matrix that writers are uniquely suited to exploit.  

The term Capitalism has been co-opted by politicians and redefined.  Academics subsequently wrote a lot of books for Economics courses (often required for various majors in college) because of their Publish Or Perish business model.

To understand Capitalism, think about raw, basic survival, say on Mars or some other harsh planet among the stars. To understand what a Main Character or Hero is and does that is so admired, the writer must understand the reality of Capitalism with all the mis-directions and academics stripped away.

By stripping away that co-opted idea-grab that Capitalism is a system (thus created by humans), a writer creating fictional worlds peopled by Aliens or driven by Romance can use the core concept Capitalism to
a) create alien worlds that are truly alien but comprehensible and
b) to run their own writing business.

The basic idea of Capitalism goes like this:
A) Person One has a resource they can't use
B) Person Two has an ability to use that resource but does not have the resource
C) Person One LOANS that resource to Person Two
D) Person Two uses that resource
E) Person Two gives that resource back to Person One with some extra from what using the resource produced (amount determined by prior contract)
F) Person Two keeps all the rest produced by using that resource as personal property.
G) Person Two now has the resource and the ability to use it to create more resources
H) Person One now has the resource and more but still no ability to use it

That resource is CAPITAL, and the process of loaning it and collecting the return OF Capital and ON Capital is Capitalism.

And the story of where that Capital goes repeats the cycle as Person One finds something else to invest the resource into and Person Two keeps on producing more and more, reinvesting excess resource to grow the business and employ more people.

In the Publishing Business, the writer is Person One who has a Resource (unpublished manuscript) they can't use, and the Publisher is Person Two who has ability to use that resource but does not have the resource.

Writers LICENSE their copyright (not SELL, license, a kind of loan) to the publisher, thus loaning the publisher the resource under terms set by contract.

The Publisher uses the manuscript, turns it into a book and gets people to buy it.

After the set term of the contract, the license the publisher holds expires, and all the licensed rights revert to the author (capital is returned) plus all the royalties paid in between.

Today, in this new world, Person One now puts the book up on Kindle or other e-book format and the reputation for that byline or title created by Person Two (the publisher) continues to sell the book, fewer copies but at a greater profit to the writer per copy. Thus the writer "capitalizes" on the Publisher's hard and expert work creating reputation.

Publishing is a perfect example of Capitalism in action and has nothing at all to do with governmental forms or academic economic theories of "society."

Capitalism has to do with combining talents of individual people whose individual talents would not earn them a living -- but when "packaged" by an organizer (like a publisher or producer) those individuals' resources can be transformed into potatoes and oranges bought at the supermarket.

The problem for working writers is that what they get paid, net-net after decades in the business, about averages out to potatoes and oranges.  A good, widely published, widely reviewed writer can cover a modest lifestyle of room, board, clothing, transportation, -- today, maybe not medical care.

SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) carries a healthcare policy for members that is very expensive but better than nothing.  Few can afford it, yet all need it.  Writing is way too sedentary a profession to maintain health well. The future of Obamacare is not certain, and switching policies can elevate the cost.

Nobody I know works harder, longer hours for less profit than fiction writers.

When all the time is accounted for, time mastering craft skills, time learning, time researching, time dreaming, time writing, time re-writing, time in copy-editing, time formatting, time repairing computers used to write, time marketing, time interacting with readers, time studying markets, -- already the writer of fiction makes less than minimum wage (even if they don't raise that dollar amount of minimum wage soon!)

In my experience, the most creative, sharpest minds contributing to gross domestic product get paid the least per hour worked (over say, 25 years average annual income) if they are working writers. There will be years topping $100,000 income, but then the IRS takes a chunk of that calculated on the idea that this income level will be sustained year after year.

Long ago, the tax code allowed writers to "income average" over 5 years, smoothing out the spikes and valleys of tax owed, taking into account the irregularity and unpredictability of writing income.

So to the TIME spent creating and writing and marketing (even with an Agent, it's a lot of time spent marketing), add the time spent on bookkeeping and accounting and tax preparation -- or the expense of out-sourcing that work.

You aren't "making a profit" at writing until you have paid all those bills, plus your own salary, rent for your home-office and business machines and their supplies (yes, ink for your printer is a business expense paid before declaring a profit).

And that does not even begin to account for capital invested before a career can take off, money for classes, lessons, travel to and from such schooling, computers, phones, tablets of various types constantly upgraded and the professional-level software necessary to produce copy that can be submitted in the proper formats.

See?  There's that word, capital.

Running a business is all about capital investment vs. return on investment (called ROI).

The point of Capitalism is to invest a resource, then turn the crank of the business model, and return that invested Capital, keeping what's left over (after all expenses) as Profit which is then REINVESTED into that business or another business.  Capital is recycled Profit.  They are the same thing. Capital is not MONEY -- Capital is a resource, like a copyright or a house you buy with a mortgage and then rent at more than it costs you.

Money is to be spent on expenses.  Capital is to be invested and recovered plus a profit.

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle-ebook/dp/B0175P82RA/

If your house's roof starts to spring leaks, it can cost less to patch it if you only consider the money you will spend this month. But then another leak will happen, and another patch.  You also have to consider your time as money -- to go get the materials and climb up there and patch the roof yourself is time spent not-writing, and money just spent.

Your time and your money regarded as capital would lead you to a different approach to solving the problem of a leaky roof.  Call the best roofer in town, replace the entire roof this month with a top professional job and materials (not Home Depot).  You do it that way, you have made a "Capital Investment."  Your capital (time and money) will now "work for you" and pay back in "royalties" (a little each year the roof does not cost you anything).

If you plan to charge the cost on a credit card, and pay it back slowly, the interest the card charges you is NOT a capital investment by you.  It is money spent. Calculated carefully, it can turn out that getting a whole new roof will not "pay for itself" (return your Capital) because "revolving credit" is way too expensive.

A roof can cost the entirety of a book advance plus a royalty payment or two.

Your copyright is your capital.

You invest it into a Publisher, trusting them to use it to make a profit.

You can invest the "interest" you get from loaning your capital (advance+royalties) in a roof. Your house is capital.  You've taken your "profit" (advance+royalties) and reinvested that capital in a capital investment which itself pays dividends. And you still own your copyright.

Your copyright is your capital.

Capitalism, the definition specifies, is a system that assumes you own your copyrights and can rent them out, or sub-license them how you choose.

Is Capitalism a "system" -- or is it a simple fact of surviving in the real world where no individual has all the skills and resources necessary to survive?

Capitalism is the system of contract law that allows a person with a resource to loan that resource to someone who has the ability to use that resource.

The ability to write songs is a resource, the songs written are capital -- but it takes an orchestra and maybe several singers to make a profitable YouTube Video of that song and get millions of hits and launch careers.  The song writer still owns the copyright on the song.

His or her heirs can inherit that copyright.

Copyright law specifies a number of years before it goes into public domain -- i.e. is taken from the rightful owners, the heirs -- but there is no statute of limitation on owning a house or a farm property. There is no difference between a copyright and a farm.

Art, paintings or photographs, fabric patterns, animations, all kinds of art we create become our capital which we license but still own.

Whether creating such works of art is profitable depends on the size of the market that will pay for it - i.e. depends on popularity.

Commercial Art is a different field from Fine Art.  Both create capital. Usually Commercial Art is the only kind that turn that capital into capital+profit.

In the sharing economy, the open source economy, you are free to give away your copyright, and get paid in enhanced reputation - name recognition, publicity, or just spiritual gratitude.

To some extent, people using your open-source resource will toss some money into your PayPal account from time to time, but the "open source' movement is thriving without money.  It runs on pure capital alone, or maybe some bitcoin here and there.

Fan Fiction is that kind of sharing-economy, open source resource, where the writer gets paid in name-recognition, reputation, and writes things for other people to pick up and write about.

So there is a profit to be made off the capital investment of time/skill etc., but that profit is not convertible to money.

Capital and profit are not money.

In Capitalism, capital and profit can be converted to money, and money can be converted to capital and profit.  If your unusable resource is money, you can loan that money at bank-interest+risk, and if the gamble does not fail, you get your money back, plus inflation, plus a profit.

One thing writers must understand about making a profit is that bank interest is not profit.  The tax law treats it as profit and taxes interest, but banks deliberately calculate and set the rate of interest on CD's and savings accounts to cover all their expenses (accountants, tellers, Cloud Megs, hacker intrusions, etc) and give you just exactly enough more dollars to keep your purchasing power going down.  Yes, you lose purchasing power by putting money in a CD and reinvesting the interest.  The interest rate is calculated to be less than inflation, but in such a way that you don't see it.  You look at your numbers and think you have more, but you actually have less.  That is what retail banks do for a living, and they are good at it.

Writers and other artists, being in one of the lowest paid professions, must understand this quirk of tax law - retail bank interest is return of capital, not a payment of a profit, so when you pay taxes on interest, you are actually giving the government some of your capital, reducing your ability to earn in your old age.  The only way out is to get out of the retail level of finance.  Deal wholesale.

To deal wholesale in capital and money you need a lot of capital -- a lot -- so your capital can be invested and earn money you can spend without reducing your capital.  In fact, well invested (Mutual Funds are a good start, but their fees reduce earnings potential), your capital can grow at or above the rate of inflation while yielding a good living.

The trick of it all is to get your mind around the truth about Capitalism.  It is not a social "system" -- it is a fact of reality: humans are interdependent; no man is an island.

Money can be used as capital, but it is not capital.  When used as capital, money becomes a commodity.  It can be traded as a commodity on the international currency exchanges. Money can be a thing in itself, unrelated to potatoes and oranges. In math, this is called Units Conversion.

So the operational, everyday-useful definition of Capitalism is the contract-structure that allows using other people's resources in a way that benefits them most, and yourself second.

As a writer, who owns copyrights, that means you are the one who is benefited most.

You start out with nothing, create something, loan it out, get it back plus a profit, and can loan it again and get paid again, and you still own it.

The cost of creating that something, the overhead expenses you invest in your business, have to be less than what your copyrights bring in for you to declare a profit -- and that means your business has to pay you a living wage before you can declare a profit.

It is very rare for a writer or any creative artist to make an actual profit from their work.  Only during the (usually few) years when the work is reaching its broadest audience is the income more than the cost of doing business as a creative artist or a performing artist.

A reason for that hides within the structure of the big businesses that own publishing or production.

Yes, movie and TV studios and the independent producers who sell them shows are also owned by other types of businesses.  In the case of films or stage productions, the real owners are often "Investors" (individuals with extra millions to invest on the chance they will get their money back and much more).  Many times "Investors" put up the money for a stage play or other production more for the prestige than profit, and are happy to break even.

In this "Changing World" impacted by electronic distribution, Kindle to Netflix to promoting books on blogs, the vast and significant change in the Fiction Writer's business model is also now impacting non-fiction.

The biggest casualty in 2016 is the NEWS BUSINESS.

Here is an article from FORBES about Snapchat and its impact on the News business

http://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2016/06/19/what-snapchat-tells-us-about-the-future-of-news-and-information-gathering/#440c2d41480d

 -- by appealing to the youngest people, Snapchat is setting the stage for adult behavior 20 years hence.  And in this infrastructure shift to electronic media and personal connectivity, which is so deep and so basic (more so than maybe the Printing Press), 20 years is the blink of an eye.  Do you remember cell phones from 20 years ago?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones

That Wikipedia article shows the evolution of from 1947.  Scan down the article and look at what changes in 20 years. Realize a writing career can be 40 or 50 years because writers don't usually "retire" with a pension.

Facebook is buying these communications start-ups that appeal to specific demographics (target audiences) for a reason, but I doubt that Facebook's execs think of themselves as running a News Service (like AP or Reuters) designed to gather facts and sift out rumors and opinion.

Here is a quote from the Forbes article on Snapchat, tailor made for writers looking to make a Profit off their writing skills in a Capitalist World.

---------quote----------

Most adults, if they have even heard of Snapchat, know it as the place where messages disappear after a few seconds. But the company is adding more and more options, and it is now the network on which young people not only use different kinds of messages, and no, not all messages self-destruct in three seconds, some stay in the in-tray for up to 24 hours, and others can be kept for as long as the sender likes. What’s more, young people even read the company’s online magazine, as well as using other channels it has set up, including one to send money.

So while most of us grownups don’t even know what Snapchat is, Evan Spiegel, now elevated to the status of visionary, and his team have created a company valued already at some $20 billion—so far he’s turned down a $3 billion offer, and then reportedly another for $4 billion—and that is now the new television for young people unable to disconnect from their smartphones, and that 23 media partners are now using to reach a younger generation of readers, attaining millions of hits each month, and that other brands are using to advertise their wares during the Super Bowl. This is highly profitable advertising, as well as non-intrusive, unlike the trash that we have to put up with on other networks and publications unless we install an ad-blocker.

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

This business model based on advertising is one that novelists have never needed to tackle, but TV Series writers must internalize to get the climaxes (cliff hangers) just before the formulaic commercial breaks.  News (televised or internet) packages are structured the exact same way for the same reason.  A Package is that little bit of actual news sandwiched between commercial breaks.

We'll explore more of that Forbes article in Part 23 of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World, looking at the future of our business model.

Fiction publishing and news publishing (such as newspapers on paper and magazines printed on paper, even Radio and TV News or the old fashioned News Reel at the movies) were never "profitable."

Historically, book and Magazine Publishers were owned by other bigger businesses or investors specifically for the "tax write-off" and the Prestige, entree to "the right" cocktail parties and social networks.

In non-fiction, the News business also grew up as a hybrid "public service" or charitable way of paying society back for profits made on other products.  From the 1700's and "movable type" the local town newspaper was a low-margin business at the very best.

News (whether you view it as fiction or non-fiction!) is a capital intensive business.

To gather the product (information), individual people have to go out where the events are occurring, observe, gather and check facts, then cast all that data into the format of "information" by writing the article.  The article has to be transported back to the editing office,  edited, shaped to fit the newspaper's available space, laid out, compiled into print, printed on paper (which has to be trucked in from a manufacturer -- likewise ink -- never cheap), then the paper has to be hauled off to be offered to reluctant buyers.

All those people have to be paid, and all that stuff has to be bought, and all that transportation costs.  This is also true of online newspaper distribution operations such as Huffington Post.

Print papers combined the advertising model with the pay or subscribe model and survived right up until now.  They are still trying to find a way to make money online.

So historically, print and broadcast news operations are labor intensive, capital intensive operations that were owned by larger businesses, mostly for tax write-off, a public service, and prestige (in the case of "news" of course, power over political processes is another form of profit).  Even with advertising and subscriptions, even at their most profitable, news operations have never been stand-alone operations that made a profit.

Publishing and News are two kinds of business that have traditionally been designed specifically to lose money.  So they paid writers and journalists as little as possible to keep them providing material.  These businesses weren't cheating.  They simply could not afford to pay wriers and journalists more and still break even.

Today, in this changing world, Publishing has been moved from being a prestige-crown-jewel to a profit making operation.  That is one reason the price of paper books and e-books are so high, relative to what those prices were in terms of a loaf of bread a hundred years ago.

With razor thin margins, publishers had to 'consolidate' (buy each other until there are only a handful of publishers left who cover the whole world).  So they don't publish books that "ought to be published" or "deserve to be published" any more. They publish books the computer algorythms predict will sell very broadly and very quickly.  Likewise "News" publishes what will captivate the most eyes.

Even though writers are paid a percentage of the cover price for a book, and thus have a built-in wage hike for inflation, that percentage has not gone up, but agent's fees have gone from 10% to 15%, taxes (state, federal and local) have gone up.  Writers' margins have narrowed while publishers are just barely making it unless they have a few blockbusters in a year.

News, likewise, is now making a transition to a stand-alone for-profit business, and therefore needs a much wider audience for commercials and subscriptions.  The only strategy available to get that broad an audience is to make the News more Entertaining (fictionalize it, jazz it up, create a "narrative" that will keep people glued to their screens).

This shift in the non-fiction writer's business model has caused less capital (time, effort, energy) to be expended on fact-checking, thoroughness, meticulousness.  Non-fiction (News) that is fact-rich is a very expensive to create, and the truth is the market is too small.

Very few people will pay (by watching commercials or subscribing) to get a listing of un-exciting, dry, boring fact after fact.  A few will tune in for a "story."

The cure is, of course, to make fact-gathering much cheaper (Go-Pro cameras in drones?), so that news can be published in fact-rich but boring summaries to that tiny audience that prefers it.

Sometime soon, a Science Fiction Romance writer will write a book set in a world built around a new business model for publishing -- both fact and fiction publishing.

The technology is being implemented rapidly.  Something obvious is staring us all in the face that we are just missing.  The writer who sees it will write the classic everyone refers to for the next hundred years (like 1984, or The Cold Equations).

It may be as simple as what some indie bloggers, and web-radio and YouTube personalities are already doing, gathering and presenting the facts that contradict the "narrative" adopted by the bigger news operations, broadcast network or cable news.

News and Book Publishing may become, once again, not-for-profit operations that just break even in a good year and are tax write-offs in other years.

Where would your career fit into that future?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Targeting a Readership Part 8: Anne Pinzow Guest Post Machiavelli and the Internet by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Targeting a Readership Part 8: Anne Pinzow Guest Post Machiavelli and the Internet by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here are previous posts in this series:

Targeting Readership Part 1 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Part 2 is inside this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Part 3 is inside and woven into the following post in my Astrology Just For Writers series which by mistake has the same number as the previous part but is really Part 7:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 4 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/targeting-readership-part-4.html

Targeting a Readership Part 5 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html

Targeting a Readership Part 6 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 7 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-7-guest-post.html  A guest post by Valerie Valdes on use of setting


Over the last few weeks, I've been kicking around some topics with Anne Pinzow, a Journalist by profession who likes the same kinds of fiction I do. 

Many of those topics center around trying to define the core essence of the shift in content, Theme (as I've discussed extensively on this blog), and focus of current TV  fiction, movies, and even fanfic. 

Another set of topics center around analyzing the financial markets, international affairs, local politics, and other elements of the reality our target readers are embedded within.

Anne thinks pretty much the same way I do, but most often comes to different conclusions using the same input and the same thinking methods.  This makes her a fabulous sounding board for ideas, and a never-ending source of enlightenment.

It's not surprising.  We were trained by the same book editor and agent.  We think of fiction in very similar commercial terms.

So recently I was explaining my take on the effect of the U.S. Fed's printing way too much money being ratcheting up of inflation.  Additionally we were also kicking around the behavior of politicians which we agreed hasn't changed much in our lifetimes: they use many methods to avoid conveying the truth to their constituents.

Both of these ongoing conversations with Anne were in progress during the days that I was reading the latest novel of Darkover -- now that Deborah J. Ross has taken over continuing the series. 

That is The Children of Kings. 

Side note, Marion really hated having the word "The" at the beginning of a book title, but her submission titles were often changed and a The inserted. 

Ross has captured a lot of the "feel" of Marion's vision of Darkover in this volume, so I think it's worth reading if you've read the other novels.



The Children of Kings is about two heirs to different titled positions on Darkover and a woman who is forging a new path, plus another woman from the Drytowns who wears the chains of a Drytown woman but doesn't link them to her wrists.  It could qualify as a Romance but no sex scenes -- it ends with a marriage proposal, too.

In all cases, the characters make their decisions and take their actions based on their own ideas of what constitutes the honorable path.  No effort or risk is avoided to act in the most honorable way possible.  That kind of behavior distinguishes Darkover culture from the goings-on in the surrounding galactic civilization which is in the midst of a civil war, and possibly an irretrievable breakup.

In other words, the galaxy that Darkover is living in pretty much resembles our world today -- eerie coincidence.

The novel gives the reader a great deal of food for thought on the matter of what Honor has to do with Adulthood.

So with that as a backdrop, I was talking to Anne via chat, and kicking around both current events and the TV shows we had in common.

And recently, Anne sent me the following contrast/compare commentary that I want to share with you as another example of how a professional writer thinks, how a professional writer observes the world around them, and how a professional writer with honor can acknowledge when someone else has nailed a point worth considering. 


------------Quote From Anne Pinzow---------------
So, last week my Cablevision bill jumped $6 and that pissed me off so I called and at first they were telling me that I was paying for the least expensive package that carried the channels I watch. So I said I'd get rid of the "optimum online" aspect of the whole thing because I'd still get the channels and I could still catch up on missed shows online.

All of a sudden I got switched to another customer assistant and they told me that if I switched to the Silver service (which is $20 less than what I was paying) I'd not only get to keep the optima online but I'd get most of the movie premium channels, HB0, Showtime, STARZ, etc. It's all included now, they said.

That's how I ended up watching a Showtime series that started about two years ago called The Borgia about the reign, so to speak, of Pope Alexander the VI, the father of Lucretia Borgia. If you remember, that period has always been of interest to me.

So, there's a scene, actually several of them, where Machiavelli, known for the philosophy of the end justifying the means is advising one of the characters about how to treat a particular situation. The instance that really struck me for the purpose of this email is one character was being tortured in order to force him to confess to heresy. They tried everything and the guy wouldn't do it. He was very near death and still would not sign. So the boss of the torturer signed the confession with the man's name and killed the witnesses. Now he's got the signed confession that everyone wants and the prisoner gets burned at the stake, a nice entertainment for the kiddies.

Keep the above in mind.

So today I'm doing interviewing this man for a story and he tells me that his great uncle was Marty Maher. Well I don't know if you know who this guy was but he was very well known in this area as being a very colorful character and having had worked at West Point for 55 years. There was a book written about him called "Bringing up the Brass" and a movie staring Tyrone Power, called "The Long Gray Line."

I loved that movie, made in the 1955 and so I got it and was watching it. There's the scene where a cadet had gone slightly off limits because of worry about his girlfriend. No one knew about it except Maher who was not "an informer". So then Maher sees that the cadet is walking punishment tours and later is astonished to learn that even though the cadet only broke a rule walking by about 20 feet away from the main gate and "got away with it," that he turned himself in. "Well that's the honor system."

Fifty's movie glorifies honor.
2013 TV series glorifies, well, Machiavelli and the uselessness of honor.

You're point, right there.

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

So there you have it, a perfect description of the audience you must Target if you want to sell to these premium Cable networks, and the financial pressures that targeted readership labors under.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Plot Integration Part 8 - Use of Co-incidence in Plotting

The posts with "Integration" of two skills in the title are "advanced" discussions.

Here's the index to the previous 7 parts in this series. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

Now we'll tackle the entire STEN SERIES by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole.  It is not Romance, so we can be more objective about the story and how it's constructed. 

To do the kind of study I intend to show you how to do with a Romance genre novel would be impossible.  You'd get too caught up in the particular dimensions that we resonate to and not be able to discern the structural bones behind those dimensions. 

For a while now, I've been searching for an example I could use to illustrate the techniques that create widely selling, big hits, that are not shallow.  You see the kind of book I'm talking about in Regency Romance where an entire world of technology and psychology cradles a story which is deceptively simple on the surface, unutterably profound within. 

But readers who dislike Romance don't see the profound depths.

There's something of the same effect in action-based Science Fiction.  Readers who dislike "science" often don't see the profound depths in an action galactic-war novel. 

But sometimes it is those invisible depths that produce the gigantic, explosive, (bewildering to the publisher) sales track record of a series. 

And oddly enough there are some techniques that power action/military Science Fiction sales that can easily be applied to Romance, but seldom have been, or where you have found it, it isn't done Blockbuster Style.

I love action/romance genre novels - particularly space-military-romance -- double-particularly with a human/alien romance.  When the theme and plot are integrated using the techniques that drive the Sten Series, those mixed-genre Romances sizzle! 

When you add sizzle to profound, you will get that explosive sales pattern that you see at the top of the Romance Genre lists. 

Sten, of the Sten Series, is a sizzling hot hero who can't settle into a Relationship -- well, read all 8 novels for how that ends up. 

I think you'll find the ending of the series a springboard into a human/alien romance of your own -- completely different but the same.  (Isn't that what Hollywood is famous for demanding "the same but different?"  Well we're going to study how to do that by examining what a writing team that DID THAT consistently to make a living in Hollywood, wrote in their novels.)

I've talked about Allan Cole in previous posts as someone with a career worth studying if you plan to be a successful writer in today's swiftly changing world.

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

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

We're going to examine how he and Chris Bunch achieved what they did with the STEN SERIES. 

The point here is that the The Sten Seriesis a genuine "series" (with a masterplan behind it like Babylon 5) -- a single story in 8 volumes.  Click the title to see my reviews on Amazon, on Kindle versions. 

It is not romance genre.  It's action, military SF.  We're going to reverse engineer it and apply what we learn to ROMANCE GENRE.

Remember, the point behind all these posts dating back to 2007 is to figure out why Romance genre is not held in the high esteem we think it should be, and how to change that.  Sheer sales volume won't get us that kind of respect.  But sales volume is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for garnering that respect. 

Sales volume achieved in spite of, rather than because of, professional promotional support does gain the kind of attention that can lead to the respect we're talking about. 

THE STEN SERIES is a major clue.  Read this from Allan Cole, co-author of STEN.  Follow the link in this email letter, and read about how the series was originated and sold.

-------quote from email from Allan Cole -----------
...
The tale of how Sten came into being has to be one of the weirdest stories in writerly history. I told the story in one of the early Hollywood MisAdventures: "Sten - The Fast Turnaround Caper." And it goes into some detail. Here's the link:

http://www.allan-cole.com/2011/07/sten-fast-turnaround-caper.html My guess is that it'll have you on the floor. >g<

As for the publisher's sales efforts - they were sorely lacking. The books basically sold themselves. And sold so well in fact that our agent (Russ Galen) got well over six figures for each of the last two books. I don't think Del Rey ever realized what they had until the series was complete. This worked to our advantage. We had no NY literary rep at the start. After Wolf Worlds came out, Russ Galen - a young agent at Scott Meredith, then - called us and asked if he could represent us. Then he made Del Rey contract for the books one by one, upping the ante each time.

Around about Fleet Of The Damned, he sweetened our kitty by forcing them to give back the foreign rights, which they never really attempted to sell. Then the foreign sales took off like crazy. We kept telling the editors (Owen Locke and Shelly Shapiro) about how well the books were doing overseas - and all the mail we were getting from readers. (snail mail at first, then Compuserve), but they didn't pay much attention. In the Nineties, Del Rey let the books go out of print one by one. Meanwhile, foreign sales were soaring. We were making way more money abroad than at home - and also getting more respect. (In the late Nineties, my foreign editors flew Kathryn and I to Europe for a six-week Continental book tour... London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Geneva and Moscow... The crowds at the Moscow book-signing alone went around the block.)

Finally, a year or so after Chris died I talked to his widow, Karen, who agreed to let me see if I could get the U.S. rights back. Thanks to Shelly Shapiro, who had by then become a good friend, the deed was done with little effort. Wildside did the U.S. paperback and e-books. Books In Motion bought the audio rights. Immediately, the British sat up and took notice. Called my foreign agent (Danny Baror) and grabbed the UK rights. The other foreign publishers became newly enthused and there has been a flurry of new contracts, new editions and new readers.

I'm hoping that there is going to be a major Sten revival.

One of these days I'll finally get Sten on film. It's not a matter of "if," but "when."

So, as Laurel might tell Hardy, That's my story - and Sten's - and I'm stuck in it.

allan

Allan Cole
Homepage: www.acole.com
Allan's Bookstore: http://tinyurl.com/l9mpr5
Allan's E-Books: http://tinyurl.com/684uos8
Allan's Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/allansten
My Hollywood MisAdventures: http://allan-cole.blogspot.com/
Tales Of The Blue Meanie: http://alcole.blogspot.com/
------------End Quote---------

We'll pick this topic up again very soon, so go look over the Sten Series, especially my reviews on Amazon Kindle.

Read the books with particular attention to the PLOT aspects, and the use of co-incidence in shaping Sten's military career all the way up to admiral.  Then read VORTEX (Sten #7) with particular attention to the science of tornadoes. 

In fact, from Book 1, read with attention to the behavior of tornadoes.  You'll find by Book 7 that the THEME aspect lies within the concept of tornado. 

Ask yourself what is the Romance genre equivalent of a Tornado?  When you find the TORNADO within the structure of the whole STEN SERIES, you'll have the answer to that question, and you'll know what you can do to elevate the reputation of Romance. 

Also as I read the STEN novels on Kindle (all but one, which I got in audiobook) I used the SHARE feature to share significant quotes.  If you "follow" me on Kindle, you can see the excerpts I selected to "share" as I was thinking of doing this series of posts. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Information Feed Tricks And Tips for Writers Part III - Publishing Business Model

Part I of this series was posted on November 16, 2010
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html  and Part II on November 23, 2010,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for_23.html     

Just reading this item which Jean Lorrah found:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/cnn-drops-ap-old-business-models-and-the-new-journalism/19528986/

and some of the links provided in that article, I realized this is hugely significant.

This article is from way back in June 2010 but it's still important. In the article is a link to a Pew Research annual study on Journalism that I have only barely begun to absorb.

http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/

I also found out via Wikipedia and other sources that Amazon.com and Craigslist were both founded in 1995, and according to this article on dailyfinance.com, the steep decline in newspaper capacity to gather and report news is 30% from 2000 to 2010.

Craigslist incorporated in 1999 (so did simegen.com). Classified ads and well heeled buyers from classified ads deserted newspapers for Craigslist. Then boom - the bottom fell out of the business model of print news  papers.

Lately, I've heard that staff reductions at TV News operations, even cable's CNN, are cutting into delivery.  I've  noticed they basically turn off coverage on weekends now, and run tape over and over.  That may not seem strange to younger people. 

Lots of other stuff happened through the years mentioned above, driving and luring folks online and on-cell, and now to e-books and e-book readers that download magazines and news feeds like Kindle and Nook.  All that is drawing readers away from print books, news, and magazines. 

Yes, I know, we love the feel of holding and smelling a book. Where did that come from? Early reading pleasure associated with it. So there will be a generation that has that same pleasure-response from holding a nice warm e-reader. They'll hate it when e-readers go cold from energy efficiency or project the screen into the air in 3-D.

When you are living in interesting times, apparently you don't really notice so much as you will later.

Hello! It's now later!

Here's where I discussed Emigrating To The Future

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/emigrating-to-future.html

And there I noted 5 observations in my researches around the internet that taken together sets off a Red-Alert before my eyes.

We are crossing (or perhaps have crossed) into a totally new world, and quickly we have forgotten both what we really don't need to remember, and many things well worth remembering.

I listed off some of my previous posts outlining these developments dating back to 2008 and my infatuation with Web 2.0 (the first interactive basis for online social networking). I think we're probably into Web 4.0 by now.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/blogging-and-reading-and-blogging-oh-my.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/fix-for-publishing-business-model.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/thorium-real-hope-for-e-books.html
Here's a very informative map (such as you might see in the front of a Fantasy novel) of the "world" of social networking. I found this link on twitter.

http://mashable.com/2010/08/11/2010-social-networking-map/

The basis for twitter and facebook -- and all the rest -- is the advertising business model. Some, like google and huffingtonpost.com, are succeeding where print-paper newspapers have failed.

Some online news sites like politico.com actually pay reporters to write stories and blogs (it's not as good a living as print journalists used to make, but it's better than novelists are doing today) -- they pay from advertising revenue, just like newspapers used to. Print papers made money from sales on the street, and for subscriptions, but their real money was from classified ads and grocery store ads.

When I told my Dad (who worked for Associated Press) that I wanted to become a writer, he was all excited. He was ready to pay my way through a Journalism degree even though very few women worked in Journalism. It was an absolutely guaranteed income for life -- a Journalism Degree! 

He knew more women would flock to Journalism soon. He was shocked but cooperative when I chose Chemistry even though he couldn't see a living in fiction writing, especially not science fiction, but Chemists made good money. He figured I'd eventually revert to Journalism. I guess he was right, because here I am blogging online and reviewing for a paper newspaper. Only the world has changed in ways he couldn't have imagined.

The article from dailyfinance.com says:

-----Quote-------

"With traditional media companies facing an advertising slump and rising competition on the Web, the AP has come under pressure from its members to cut rates," the Associated Press recently reported about itself. "It lowered its fees for U.S. newspapers by $30 million in 2009 and plans a $45 million cut for newspapers and broadcasters this year."

Meanwhile, CNN is experiencing troubles of its own. Ratings for its U.S. television programming are down, and the Project for Excellence in Journalism State of the Media report says advertising revenue for CNN and its sister network, HLN, were projected to drop 8% to $513 million in 2009, down from $556 million the previous year. A CNN spokesman said the terms of AP's licensing agreement "did not fit our business model."

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/9sIy4F
-------END QUOTE------

Yet CNN.COM is one of the biggest, most visited cites on the internet.

The successful print papers are now online, breaking stories the hour they happen, not the next day or the day after as necessary with print. In our new world, speed, "real time" interactivity is essential. Note how most news sites are "blog" (Web 2.0) enabled with long, often heated and nutty, comments posted by readers -- who often post without actually reading the article.

I saw a rumor (unsubstantiated) that some of those who drop comments on news items on this popular news sites are paid to espouse specific political views and hammer sites with comments.  That's an interesting business model for a non-fiction writer but what about the advertising revenues for the hammered websites?  They pay the website by hit, but the hits stats are distorted if hitters are just passing through doing a paid job.

 Another fiction writer acquaintance who just found me on facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg said he's been making a living now doing short researched articles for the government.  He loves it because he's doing what he loves - research!  And another friend is trying the syndicated online articles market for her non-fiction.  

Here's an article you might have missed from Publisher's Weekly where the new publisher for Simon&Schuster (publishing companies have been collapsing and being bought up just like newspapers) outlined his new VISION for how to organize a book publishing operation in this new world.

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=1495

Does that seem like a totally new business model designed for the internet age?

That S&S model is what writers of novels have to work with today.

But the book-buyers live in this blog-style interactive news (even from professional news services), with "facts" gathered not by people with Journalism degrees necessarily but by folks with a cell-camera and a lot of initiative and local contacts.

Have you ever found yourself yelling at the TV screen during a news commentary broadcast?

People want to interact. I think even in fiction.

My insurance company, Geico, offers an interactive online Defensive Driving course that  costs $20 to take (4 hours of interacting) instead of the I think it was $80 3 years ago to take the course in person at the library or in a hotel function room. 

People live online these days, and do most of their reading online.  When reading books, they want, just like the online experience, to marginal notes on their e-reader that the writer will actually see -- as if they were comments dropped on facebook. Readers want to make comments other readers will see (as on Amazon). And hear/see what others respond.  That's not just "what others say" but what others "respond."  That is to have a conversation, such as the twitter chats I've been quoting from.  People talk to each other, and eventually those raised on conversing with strangers will want to converse with their fiction writers as they read. 

Already, writers have been posting as-I-write-it segments of stories. That's been going on since Listserv was first invented (have to look up when that was - hasn't it been there all my life?).

I was a member of the Forever Knight Lists, one of which carried comments on fanfic posted on the other List. Stories were posted in chapters or installments, and writers got feedback as or before writing the next chapter.  Some great writers came out of that training. 

That now goes on with blogs and among a writer's beta-readers on fanfiction.net and other fan fiction posting websites. I'm on a mailing discussion List for a Star Trek fanfiction posting site:
http://www.trektales.com/

Compare the way fiction for such sites is created -- the way a writer thinks about "information feed" as described in the previous posts in this series -- with the way Simon & Schuster is reorganizing to publish novels.

Now think about the 7 part series I did here on Editing starting with these 2:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-i.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-ii.html

Does the new S&S concept change the "editor's job" in any way?

Does the shift in news-gathering business model really mean anything to fiction writers?

Think about the convenience of CNN.COM, Foxnews.com, CNBC.COM etc. (don't forget snopes.com and wikipedia's not so reliable "facts") And then I'm always quoting Wired Magazine's website - and Time and Newsweek.  If it's not online, it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.  How can I point you to it if there's no URL?  Why would I frustrate you talking about something you can't find at a click? 

Fiction writers have to consider "information feed" techniques of fiction in terms of what NEWS is (and is not) for the modern reader. At what point will that shifting perception of reality among readers and viewers of "news" change how fiction writers do their job?

Oh, are we living in interesting times or what?

I still love Web 2.0 even if it is obsolete already.

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

Information Feed Tricks And Tips For Writers Part II - Definition of News

BUT FIRST (yes, this is news) -- I have to announce that the Sime~Gen Novels (by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Jean Lorrah, and various combinations of us) along with new ones, are now coming out in Kindle, Nook, Apple, and almost all other e-book formats, plus new paper availability.  HOUSE OF ZEOR is available now in paper, in December 2011 on Kindle, Nook, other formats, so you can give it as a holiday gift.

You'll find news, updates, on this (huge) project on http://whatsnew.simegen.com/ 

Here is the link to my Kindle page which now has MOLT BROTHER and CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS with the Dushau Trilogy and the omnibus Hero/Border Dispute in Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26x%3D12%26ref_%3Dnb_sb_noss%26y%3D16%26field-keywords%3DJacqueline%2520Lichtenberg%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Ddigital-text&tag=rereadablebooksr&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

And here's the link to Jean's page on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26x%3D17%26ref_%3Dnb_sb_noss%26y%3D11%26field-keywords%3DJean%2520Lorrah%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Ddigital-text&tag=rereadablebooksr&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957
---------------------
Now to work:


In Part I, posted Nov. 16, 2010 on
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html 
we discussed the 5 questions to answer in order to tease the tangled lump of a "story idea" out into a straight line and grind it into "bread-crumbs" that can be laid down to lead a reader into a huge universe.

We noted how the story and plot "dance" together, and how genre is a bit like different dances because of the pacing of that dance, waltz, fox trot, macarena, square dance, grand march, quadrille.

Notice how each dance name evokes era, pacing, dress, level of social intimacy, -- a whole story-universe in a word.

Your plot and your story "dance" together just like that, and readers choosing which book to buy recognize those dances and choose by their mood or taste. Your novel opening has to identify which "dance" your story and plot will be doing in order to engage the reader.

Readers will engage (or not) when they see that "first step" into the dance on the "downbeat" (on page 1) of your novel. From that first step, they know the name of the dance and the steps. They want to watch your characters do this dance because they've enjoyed watching others doing it - maybe they've done it themselves. They like this dance. The moves feel good.

The 5 questions we discussed last time lead you to name the dance (genre) for your novel, and to submerge out of sight all the pairs of characters doing a different dance, to put the spotlight on the couple (protagonist; antagonist -- or lovers-to-be) who will entertain us.

And now we'll add a 6th question, after we look more closely at the structure of a breadcrumb.

In this case, a "breadcrumb" is a tidbit of information about your universe, your characters, your story, that answers a question and contains the next question.

This is part of what we discussed in how to structure a scene, and string scenes together. As a professional reviewer, I've seen (and discarded) a number of mass market novels lately that fail at scene structure. To rise out of the pack after publication, structure your scenes thusly:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

Here is the key concept you need to be able to apply this writing technique of breadcrumbs and structured scenes to the tangled story-idea seething in your head so the plot and story "dance" with each other.  

NEWS

That's it. That's the whole secret to generating suspense, creating a page-turner novel, writing non-fiction about boring topics and getting people to read it and talk about it.

News.

It's so simple a caveman can do it.

Do you have a "nose for news" as a journalist must?

Do you know the difference between news and gossip?

Why is it that seasoned journalists write novels that attract big publishers who lavish vast sums on publicity campaigns for them? (and they do marvelous scene structure, and sell film rights!)

Because working in journalism hones the "nose for news."

And "news" is what fiction-plotting is all about. No story is widely interesting unless it has a plot.

Here's where I showed you the difference between story and plot and how they're glued together into a novel.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

In brief, I use the word "plot" to represent the chain of events initiated by the protagonist which culminates in the final climax, or resolution of the conflict.

I use the word "story" to represent the meaning of the events to the characters involved, and how the plot-events prompt or cause the characters to learn life-lessons, articulate theme, and change their actions. "Story" is the sequence of changes characters undergo as they "arc."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html
It doesn't matter what words you use to designate story-components.

Every professional writer understands fiction to be composed of components each of which does something important to communicate to the reader. It doesn't matter what you call the component, just so it does what it is there to do.

Editors, too, recognize those components (and call them by different names). And they recognize the dances between plot and story, and call them by different names. It just doesn't matter what you call it as long as you do it.

See the 7 part series on Editing starting here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-i.html

So using my definitions, (which I didn't make up, but learned from professionals) fiction-plotting is the process of taking that amorphous lump of material in your mind that you "just know" and are tangled up in because it's so interesting to you, and spreading that lump out into a straight line

You take the ball of string in your mind and unwind it, laying it down across your living room as many loops as necessary to get it all laid out.

Now you look at how long that string is. It may be several novels long. Don't try to stuff it all into one volume if it's too big.

How do you know how big it is?

A really big idea will have a lot of characters doing things that change everything, very likely dancing different dances between the character's story and the overall plot of the universe.

A really big idea will have characters who are massively changed by events.

That is there are lots of events, and characters learn huge lessons that turn their lives totally around.

The older the characters are, the more "backstory" they have accumulated through their lives, the wider the turning-radius for the ship of their life. Big characters make big changes one tiny event at a time.

Young characters can turn on a dime. One event, and BOOM, the teenager sees the light and starts behaving differently.

A fifty-year-old CEO of a corporation has a habit of life-coping-strategies ingrained into the subconscious. One event, they start fending off the temptation to wonder about their habits. Two, three, four, maybe they'll wonder. And so on -- takes a lot to change an older person, usually ending in a huge calamity and the necessity to risk all to save others.

So the age of the main characters, the number of main point of view characters, and the size of the character-arc is what determines how many novels it'll take, and how big those novels have to be.

Here's where to learn how to estimate the size of your project and how to construct theme-structures robust enough to support larger stories.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

If you make your characters "see the light" after one tiny event, you end up with something called "thin plotting" -- with a kind of comic-book or juvenile feel to it. Just not plausible because the character changed too much from too little impetus.

OK, so now you know how to unravel your universe from a ball of twine, separate out the odd little threads tangled through it, and straighten it out into a linear sequence of EVENTS (i.e. plot).

You have charted how the events affect the characters, so you have a story-line, all neatly linear.

Your interesting universe has become long and tedious -- even boring.

Now what do you do?

Like I said, the key is news.

To make it interesting, you FEED the INFORMATION you have organized into a linear sequence to the reader/viewer as one event after another. Breadcrumbs. Tiny ones, so the reader is kept hungry and looking for the next crumb in the trail.

Each event will be CAUSED by the previous event, and the first event is caused by the PROTAGONIST.

In Chess the first move is made by the white player - it's a protocol.  In novels the protagonist is defined as the one who moves first. Usually, "pro" tagonist is defined as the one the reader is rooting for to win, and antagonist is the one the reader wants to lose.

A reader chooses a book off a bookstore shelf, or an editor chooses a manuscript out of a slush pile, or a reviewer (like me) chooses a book to read through with an eye to reviewing it, by reading the first paragraph.

If the "white" - protagonist - character to root for to win, isn't doing something in that first paragraph or first page to make the reader want that character to succeed in solving the problem presented in paragraph 1, the book will be tossed aside (unless of course you have a known byline, guaranteed to deliver the goods in the end).  

If the story-plot dance doesn't have an interesting rhythm, the book will be tossed aside. There are a lot of other books that have the sought-for attribute. No need to read this one.

Now, it may be that the antagonist's action is EVENT 1 of your novel.

Your protagonist is sitting in his living room with his feet by the fire enjoying a pipe, and the antagonist breaks the door down and yanks him out of his comfortable home.

You, as the writer, must know why the antagonist attacked the protagonist.

But you don't tell the reader -- that would be boring exposition. The protagonist doesn't know, so why should the reader?

Instead, you keep it secret, but let the reader know you have a secret and that you will try to keep the reader from finding out what it is. That's the game you play with the reader - a game of wits. You lay down the breadcrumb trail and lead the reader on a merry chase, with just enough challenge to be fun.

Controlling that information feed, the space between breadcrumbs and the size of the crumbs, is your job as a writer. It's the skill and artform that makes you a story-teller.

So you go back to question 1 and question 2 in Part I of this post. Find out why you want to tell this story (it'll be the reason why the reader wants to read it).

Take your semantically loaded vocabulary list, and then describe the protagonist's comfy living room, the fire, the kind of socks he's wearing, anything he's doing or thinking, SYMBOLIZE his spiritual situation and his starting point -- SHOW DON'T TELL WHY THIS PROTAGONIST DESERVES TO BE ATTACKED - maybe not by this antagonist, but inherently needs to be attacked, and is just begging for it.

The first bit of news, the first breadcrumb, the reader should see has to symbolize and contain the answer to this new question:

6) What did this protagonist do to deserve this?

That is the content, the subtext, of the calm, quiet opening scene before the antagonist does something.  It is the pose of the tango dancers on stage in Dirty Dancing, that indrawn breath before the downbeat AND!.

And this first breadcrumb then makes it clear to the reader that the protagonist has made the first move that has set this chain of EVENTS into motion. The protagonist's story is now dancing with the antagonist's plot.

It takes more skill to do that than to have both story and plot be driven by protagonist. Don't let the editors see you practicing.

You must pose this question of what the protagonist did to deserve this to the reader in such a way that there are many answers, and a lot of them are correct. Different readers will choose different answers, different ways of understanding this protagonist. Don't limit the reader here. Eventually, you want to have the audience dancing in the aisles.

Now back to NEWS.  News is information that's added to what the hearer already knows that changes the significance of what they already know. 

This concept NEWS is so important, and so much harder than it seems.

The exact same information presented one way is boring, another way is news.  

What makes your boring universe interesting to your reader is that the reader encounters a bit of news that raises a question that changes a significance of what happened before.

The reader then strives to find the answer to that question.

In striving, the reader becomes invested in your universe, just as you are, and your universe becomes interesting to your reader, because they have a stake in "what happens next?" They've guessed what will happen, and now need to find out what will happen -- and if they find they're wrong, they have to see that what does happen is better than what they expected.

Oh, do watch Dirty Dancing again for that stage scene where they do the tango for the audience. Will she do the lift? Now compare the stage dance to the finale where she runs down the aisle at him. Study that film for the way the story and the plot "dance the tango" together. It's a very old film, and it still "works" because of how the story and the plot tango, while the surface of the thing is a girl learning to tango professionally.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092890/

But just because you can see some Hollywood writers did it, that doesn't mean you can just do it with your own material.

How did they do it?

Let's look at how to apply the idea of breadcrumbs as news items, or beats in the dance rhythm.

When you set out to write a novel, what you are actually doing is writing a NEWS ITEM FOR A NEWSPAPER OR TV SHOW.

The mental process you use is identical to that a journalist uses.

The journalist is using that process on "reality" -- the tangled mess of say a traffic accident caused by a bank robber fleeting the scene of a messed up getaway attempt facilitated by a bank employee who let the robber in, but the robber shot the employee on the way out, but the employee survived to testify, but the robber was paid to rob the bank by someone who wanted the employee dead because the employee was helping them launder money for a charity that was accused of (but innocent of) funneling money to Al Queda.

See?

Just as a news story unfolds from a twinkle of light ricocheting off a bit of metal hidden in deep shadow -- so too your novel must UNFOLD one tiny bit at a time in linear form.

Breadcrumb 1 is a traffic accident, Breadcrumb 2, protagonist is bank robber, and each crumb follows the last forming a trail into a huge news story (probably complete with a Trial scene - maybe jail visits, an appeal, being exonerated, getting out of jail free at last).

So just as a journalist needs a "nose for news"....

"Traffic accident? That was no ordinary traffic accident. Who was driving? Bank? What bank? ..."

-- so too does a fiction writer telling a wholly fabricated story.

Yet I've never seen anyone try to teach a beginning fiction writer how to find the news story inside the complex universe that comes with having "an idea."

Where do you get a "nose for news" -- how do you tell what's news and what isn't?

One reason so many of the new fiction writers trying for their first publications as self-published e-books are failing is that the TV news does not "model" (or demonstrate) the difference between what is news and what is not news.

The "news show" comes on, flicks through a few items that might be news worthy, then settles into long pieces on items that are absolutely not news but are labeled news. And so the definition of what is news is no longer ingrained in young minds from their earliest years. But it's still what novel readers want.

-----------

Definition of News

Information that changes your understanding of what has happened before.


Information that changes your understanding of what will happen next. 

Information that changes what the READER/VIEWER will anticipate.

-----------

The essence of "news" -- change. 

Most of what you see on "news" shows on TV these days isn't news.

Even "the top five stories" on the AP wire online are rarely all "news."

These news sources are advertising driven. Therefore they must attract not just large audiences, but audiences larger than the other news shows.

Advertisers pay per eyeball, not per news story. So instead of giving you the information you really need to know about (which would bore you away from the text), the "news" organizations are now giving you what you want to know about.

That would be fine, and really useful to fiction writers, provided we mostly wanted to know what we need to know.

If a novel gives you what you want to know, pretty soon you lose interest because "nothing's happening."  What you want hasn't CHANGED.  So you get bored.  

It's the strangest thing. Satisfying a desire causes the desire to go away. You don't want your readers to go away too. Every once in a while, something has to happen to cause a new desire to know, a new curiosity. Something that makes the plot progress, something that CHANGES understanding of what is happening, has to emerge along the breadcrumb trail.

The schools in the USA have somehow fallen off the curve in terms of educating our children. Today they "get an education" instead of "become educated."

That huge difference has gone unnoticed, and as a result we have about two generations of people who are easily bored.

You can use that to make a living if you pay close attention to it.

Reading good novels can teach how to follow a breadcrumb trail, and how much fun it can be to out-figure the writer (i.e. dance with the writer).

People who "get an education" are taught what to think. They are forbidden or discouraged from reading the entire textbook for a course before Lesson Two or Class Two. They are discouraged from reading textbooks or sources other than the one chosen for the class, and if any test questions are answered with information from other sources, the answer is marked "wrong" even if it's right and the class text was wrong.

This starts in the earliest grades. It teaches that Authority is always right.  Get to be an Authority and your opinion becomes fact for others whether they want that or not. 

The implication is by extension that once you "finish" school, you stop learning. You've learned what to think. So you've no idea what to do with information that contradicts what you were taught. You've never seen a Teacher have to yield to a fact which contradicts the textbook.  You don't know how to think. 

Also the teaching techniques make learning boring, not fun, so nobody in their right mind would ever try to do any learning on their own.

Can you see what a huge readership awaits the clever author who studies TV News?

We had an incident in our neighborhood recently where some cars were broken into. The police responded in force and with a rolling crime lab (quite a sight!) but shrugged it off. They get a rash of car-break-ins every time school lets out.

The minute there are no classes they're forced to sit in, students stop learning.

That's failure to produce educated people, not failure to educate -- which is why we can't solve the problem of what's wrong with the schools. The politicians are trying to solve the wrong problem, so they make no progress on the real problem. (oh, what an opportunity for fiction writers!)

So when confronted with an authority like a TV screen that demonstrates "this is a news show" -- today's young students take the contents as the definition of what news is.

Later, having become well educated, perhaps in college or life, trying to write a novel, such a student will not know how to reduce the "idea" to a sequence of News Events - because they don't know what News is.

If you've been caught in this trap, and you've read this far, it's no problem anymore. Here's what you do.

1) Learn the definition of news above
2) Observe the world
3) Find the News out in the world
4) Compare with what the media label as news

Now, understand that your target readership for your novel is more confused than you ever were.


But it doesn't matter. Hit them with News along your plot-line and story-line, and they'll not only recognize it, but clamp their mental jaws on it and worry it like a dog with a bone until they crack it open and understand it to the marrow. And they'll learn how to think, not what to think. 

That's what people do, whether they're smart or not, whether they're educated or not. It's a survival behavior, very cave-man, very primal.

Any information that CHANGES EVERYTHING is inherently fascinating, especially if it's a tip-of-the-iceburg, a hint of something hidden, better yet something SECRET, something the writer knows but isn't telling.

Practice identifying news in your everyday reality, and noticing how much of what is on the TV News is not news at all because knowing it changes nothing in your life.


Now, do the same thing with the characters in your novel.

Things they do and the things that happen that CHANGE NOTHING are not news, and therefore not interesting, not plot events, not story events. Skip them. They may happen, but they're not part of the scene structure. 

Frame your scenes from the consequence of previous NEWS to the arrival of NEW NEWS.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html
As the news arrives in your character's life, your character will change behavior, change opinions, ask new questions, seek new answers, understand how he/she was wrong to begin with and go through all the stages of adjusting to that shock. Hit the character with NEWS again before the shock wears off, and you've got a plot going that'll dance with your story.

NEWS moves the plot. NEWS moves the story.

That's the very definition of NEWS, you see. News changes things.

Now,Gossip.

Most of what comes off the TV News shows today is not news, but it is gossip. Usually, it's really good gossip, too.

What's the difference between news and gossip?

News changes things. News moves the plot. News moves the story. Gossip does NOT.

Gossip is stationary. Gossip goes around and around and AROUND the same material, perhaps revealing deeper rounds of more of the same juice, but changing nothing.

For example:

NEWS: A drunk driver drove a tractor-trailer rig off an overpass, and it fell onto a school bus in a freak accident on the first day of school. VIDEO: tractor-trailer spinning through air in improbable ballet.

NEWS: Driver of a car who was drunk when he hit a tractor-trailor rig that fell on a school bus killing twelve has been convicted and given a 20 year sentence.

Between those two news stories, our TV delivers gossip.

What the drunk driver's mother had for breakfast (beer?). Who sold the drunk driver other drugs. Funerals for the 12 kids killed. Interviews with doctors who prescribed impairing drugs for the drunk driver. Psychiatrist interviews. Drunk driver's brother's testimonials. A 1 hour feature on rehabilitation for the quadrapelegic tractor-trailer driver. Interviews with 3 people running for office who pledge to get the railing fixed on that overpass so nothing else falls off. Marches of anti-drunk-driver organizations.

All of that is gossip, not news. It's all interesting if you have a focus on drunk-driving, but it doesn't change anything for you (unless you drive drunk, that is).

That gossip would be news if that was the only freak traffic accident caused by drunk driving this year, or in 10 years, or ever.

In fact, what makes the steady stream of accident reports, fires in apartment buildings, bank or 7-11 robberies, kidnappings, missing children, gossip rather than news is that the events focused on are not unique.

NEWS: Traffic fatalities are down 20% year over year as a result of enforcement of the new cell phone laws. (uh-oh I better get a hands-free cell rig for my car)

GOSSIP: a tractor-trailer fell on a schoolbus killing 12. It was awful for everyone involved.  It was really awful.  It was even more awful than that.  (oh, that's terrible; maybe I'll donate some money)


If a story on the tractor-trailer accident were about the first and only time any such event had been handled by "the system" then how it was handled would be news you could use in voting on how the system should be changed to avoid this in the future.

Another example: the coverage of the BP Gulf Oil disaster.

A good 10% of that coverage was actually NEWS. We needed to know what had happened, how it happened, why it happened, what was being done to fix it, and the results of the efforts, and eventually (not during) who was responsible and what penalty was leveled at them (so we can vote for Congressmen who advocate new laws).

But go over the coverage and you'll see that information is buried amidst huge heaps of gossip.

Note the questions: WHO, WHEN, WHAT, HOW, WHY. News answers those questions, and that's it. The rest is "color" and "filler" -- details that you don't really need to read or remember.

Detail can, however, be important.  It speaks volumes beyond the hidden opinion that twists the essential facts. From the details in a news story you can reverse engineer the news into what really did happen, the actual facts, if you understand the difference between news and gossip. 

But, as with fiction, too much detail obscures the useful information feed, and ultimately bores.

So TV News laden with gossip function to direct attention away from the actual facts, to dwell on the unimportant, the data that isn't information until viewers get bored and go away. (that systematic process is now called a news-cycle and lasts about a day for most events).  When Neilsen's ratings drop, they move on to another story. 

Given that this kind of gossip-laden TV News is how audiences have been trained to view news, the clever fiction writer can imitate the rhythm that glues that huge audience to their screens, and sell a lot of books.

Finding that balance between News and Gossip, the rhythm, the spacing between bread-crumbs, the style of the dance between story and plot, the fiction writer can plant breadcrumbs of news for the characters to discover along the way and keep readers glued to the page.

We may be back to this subject to study the composition of crumbs, so in the meantime, study the structure of your favorite TV News, and then study the News shows you really hate (those are the most revealing).

Channel surf from one news show to another, watch the placement and duration of commercials, chart that throughout the day (prime time news has more commercials and shorter intervals).  Think about "who" those commercials are aimed at - that gives you the demographics of the audience, and you can therefore see how the content of the show is crafted to grab that specific audience.

Selling fiction to an Agent who sells to an Editor who has to enthuse to the Marketing Department, etc. is the same process in reverse.  Reversing your mind is hard, but it's the difference between a reader and a writer, a viewer and a TV News Editor. 

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