Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 4

Part 1 of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html

Part 2 of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_17.html


Part 3 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_24.html

This series is ostensibly about Maggie Anton's trilogy, Rashi's Daughters.  Actually, it's about how you can write a better historical novel than that trilogy (as good as any novel is, you can always do better). 

This blog series is most especially about how to craft Paranormal Romance.

My Jan 2012 release, The Farris Channel is extremely Paranormal, not so extremely Romance, and very "Future Historical" since it answers the fans' questions about the historical background, the worldbuilding behind novels set later in the Chronology.  So my thinking has been focused on Paranormal Historical Romance, hence this relentless pursuit of the inner mechanisms of the Rashi's Daughters trilogy. 

The question is how to lure hostile readers into a suspension of disbelief that will let you ask them a question they'll never forget.  If you can achieve that, readers will force their friends to read your novel because they can't talk to anyone who doesn't have that background reference, and they want to talk about finding the answer to that nagging question.  Posing questions is what "science" is all about, which is the core essence of what "science fiction" is about.  Posing those nagging questions about the Paranormal as it relates to Romance is much harder than posing questions about simple physics and he-man Action Adventure.   

So here we go with the 4th part of this series, exploring what a writer does with their mind to integrate Research into Plot using Theme as the integration tool, to break up the lumps of exposition to create a smooth, unified product, "shaken not stirred." 

Last week we ended off with this idea from a musical analogy:

A theme is composed of ideas (beats) but defined by the "silence" between them -- by what is not mentioned, by what is ignored, deemed unimportant or non-existent, by how the idea is spread across time.

Consider the pixels on a TV screen.  The clarity of the screen is created by the deepness of the black surrounding each lit pixel, not by the brightness of the pixel itself.  You can research that on amazon or just remember what the Sony Trinitron screen had that nothing else on the market had -- and that was true-black surrounding each pixel.  Today, it's the Panasonic plasma screen (tightly held patents) that lead in BLACKNESS. 

It's the lack of signal, the lack of picture that makes the picture comprehensible.

And so it is with philosophy, the mother of theme.  What does not exist lets what does exist come together in meaning.

This sorting skill is usually learned in the earliest experience in school of "writing a term paper."  You have to learn what to exclude as well as what to include. 

The fiction writer, though, is an artist whose medium is emotion. 

The fictioneer can't transfer their own emotion to the reader.  The writer must activate emotions the reader already has.

That's why children's lit is so different from adult fare -- as we age, we acquire more emotions, more mixtures of emotion, and more emotional triggers. 

A baby's eyes at first only distinguish the primary colors -- and the brain can only experience the primary emotions (mostly in isolation from each other - hence the ability of a baby to be distracted).  A baby really only does one emotion at a time.  Adults can experience all the primary emotions at once, and many mixed emotions each with an identify of its own.   

Here is some recently reported research you've all heard by now on the development of the teenage brain, which gives a clue why YA novels have to be different from those aimed at older people.

-------------
http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm
QUOTE:
It now appears the brain continues to change into the early 20's with the frontal lobes, responsible for reasoning and problem solving, developing last.
The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood as grey matter wanes in a back-to-front wave as the brain matures and neural connections are pruned...


AND QUOTE:

In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on a desire for thrills and taking risk -- a building block of adolescence; but, they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully.

 ---------end quote------------

Indications in this research are that the brain continues to change with age, and especially with usage.  Thus a teen who reads ends up with a different brain than one who does not.  A teen who reads THIS as opposed to THAT may actually end up with a different wiring.  Given that books (cold text) delivers different emotional experiences, it could be that subject matter actually does make a difference.  Sexual excitement induced by reading cold text may differ from that associated with images, and from that coming via reality.

It has already been shown that adult and elder brains can repair or relearn function after motor injuries.  So targeting your reader by age, and by experience is important in delivering the emotional roller-coaster ride a novel is expected to carry. 


The adult's emotional triggers are the hooks or handles by which the writer can take hold of the reader. 

Back to art, music and now dance.  The writer is dancing with the reader, rhythmically moving with the reader's emotions, leading them into other emotions, and onwards perhaps into unexplored territory and new emotions.

As with music, it is the pauses in the dance that give it meaning, just as the silence gives the musical beat it's rhythm.

A fictional theme is composed of abstract ideas, each one lit up like the pixel on a TV screen or computer monitor -- the clarity of the piece of fiction, it's penetrating ability, it's gosh-wow-gasp effect depends not on what is said but on what is not said -- on the stark, absolute darkness and silence surrounding each idea.  But the theme is not "art" unless all the ideas composing it add up to a picture of "Life, The Universe, And Everything" - on matters of ultimate concern. 

This can be done in many ways.  The bestselling way is to use the writer's craft to depict the universe in the exact way that the majority of readers either see it or wish it were.  The "genre way" -- the smaller, more defined audience way (i.e. Romance fans, History buffs, Geeks, Murder Mystery fans, Western Action fans) is to depict the universe in a way that the target reader has never seen or thought of before - to say something that has never been said in fiction, to astonish, mesmerize, and impress. 

If you have something new to say, genre rules and strict structure can give you the  backbone of a story which can be the vehicle for that theme.  By using an established structure the reader knows (like picking a "theme" for your email), you can showcase your idea in the forefront.  The security of already understanding the structure lets the reader focus on what you have to say.

If you're saying the same old thing everyone already knows, you invent a new way to say it, a new genre structure or variation, or you find a new setting against which to fling your old-hat idea as Maggie Anton has done. 

If you put a new idea into a new structure, the reader gets the impression of a "busy" field of view, a 'cluttered' page, something they can't sort any sense out of and so don't pay money for. 

To get rid of the "cluttered" or "busy" impression, the writer integrates the story-structure elements into a unified whole.  You smooth and blend, to get that effect, you shake not stir. 

So how do you "shake not stir" Research into Plot? 

What's the exact mechanism a writer's mind uses to achieve that smooth blend of hard facts the reader already knows and the Events in the story that happen to the character? 

What is it Maggie Anton didn't do with her novels?

She did take the old, worn, done to death, feminist vs. the establishment conflict and fling it into a new setting -- 1040 C.E. in Rashi's family. 

She astonished us by showing Rashi's family just barely resisting the feminist daughters who won all their freedoms with barely a struggle (while in the rest of their world, women were killed for less but Anton doesn't discuss that except via one character, the daughter of a parchment maker -- from whom we learn a lot about how parchment is made).  And Anton got the Rashi's Daughters trilogy published without a genre label. 

That's a fairly solid publishing success, but what do you do if you want to go Anton one better?

You ask yourself questions - certain HARD questions about the reality in which the characters are embedded and how the character would see the world differently than the writer would in the same circumstance.

Instead of projecting yourself onto your characters (Mary Sue) - you project your characters onto yourself and look for the life lesson to be extracted from the events, a lesson you wouldn't be aware of if you were living through the events because it would affect you subconsciously, not consciously.

The life-lesson is the origin of the theme; the events become the plot.

Here are some previous posts I've done on theme and how to apply it to plot and story generation:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html 
which has links to the previous parts in that sequence.

The post topics are:

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 1, Stephen King on Potter VS Twilight
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 2, The Power of Theme-Plot Integration.
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 3, Standardization vs Customization
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 4, Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other

So I'm going to proceed on the assumption you've read those posts and the posts referred to inside them. 

Of course we're talking about HISTORICAL (actual, factual) fiction here, Rashi's Daughters.

We all know how unhappily ever after the European Jewish population lived.  We know that the era in which Rashi's family lived had been preceded by a number of really horrendous slaughters, and that more slaughters were to come.  That was Maggie Anton's problem - to depict convincingly the flourishing years of that historic community through the eyes of one generation of that historic family who knew the past and weren't oblivious to where it all was headed. 

Anton had the historic fact and the ambition to show us how strong, heroic women might have survived in and contributed to that  flourishing intellectual culture.  She had a feminist mindset to project onto historic figures, proposing the notion that our current feminist breakout may have had its roots in the spiritual heritage all Jewish women share. 

Anton hit on a hellishly commercial fictional CONCEPT -- like in "Hollywood High Concept" that I've written about at such length.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/converting-novel-to-screenplay.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/religion-in-science-fiction-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

I wouldn't be surprised if these novels are made into films or a TV miniseries -- this stuff is high concept to the max.

Assuming you've got the principles discussed in those posts fully internalized, let's move on. 

Anton just didn't use the writing techniques to blend her HIGH CONCEPT into the historic facts without distorting them.  She didn't generate her fictional facts from the historic facts to create characters with enough depth to make readers such as I quoted in Part 2 of this sequence of posts suspend disbelief long enough to entertain the notion that Rashi's daughters might have been feminists in an anti-feminist society. 

The hard-fact research truth is that Rashi's daughters did not live in an anti-feminist society because that's not the kind of atmosphere Rashi's community generated -- as the commentator I quoted in Part 2 mentioned, that's the truth.  The surrounding Christian community, though, is a totally different kettle of themes. 

If Anton's research is as well done as indicated, Anton knows that truth.  In a number of places, she indicated that the customs lived in Rashi's times were different from the customs later introduced by an even more beleaguered Jewish community after even more slaughters, so I can only assume that she also knew that Rashi's community was not anti-feminist.  Even today, in a certain corner of the community that lives the world-view that Rashi chronicled in his commentaries, feminism is a non-issue because there's no oppression to spark it.  Therefore, to those in that community, Anton's novels seem to lack verisimilitude. 

But the novels didn't have to fail to engage that corner of the community if suspension of disbelief had succeeded. 

Remember the connection between plot and story is the character whose decisions and actions cause events which splash-back to affect the character.  Those decisions and actions are the only real clue the reader has about the theme. 

The story is the sequence of emotional states and reactions the character experiences when impacted by events that leads the character to CHANGE -- to "arc" -- to learn a life lesson in the school of hard knocks. 

The plot is the sequence of events that ensue BECAUSE the character acts prompted by emotion.

The story is the sequence of inner emotions the character experiences that CAUSE the character to act in specific ways, that cause the plot to happen.

The character's actions cause reactions which deflect the character from his/her intended course of action -- the plot is the sequence of events that take the character either back to their original target (achieving an objective) which is the "Likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal" plot, or to a new destination that is either a) better than the original target or b) worse (in which case there's a sequel coming) -- which is the "Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out" plot.

So where does theme come in?  How can theme integrate Researched facts with Imaginary facts (worldbuilding) and with plot?

The theme embodies what the character learns about life, a transcendent truth that becomes customized specifically for that character.

A life-lesson has a practical, concrete component, but it also has an emotional component.  After one of those hard-knocks that only "life" can delivery, our emotional triggers are changed, and we react differently to situations, colors, tastes, the sound of a voice, the flash of a camera in the face. 

For example, consider a rape victim learning to love and have sex freely again.  Consider a soldier who dives under the bed every time it thunders learning to walk in the rain and laugh. 

Those kinds of turn-arounds happen because of a deep and meaningful Relationship moving through various stages, impacting the person on many levels.  Those turn-arounds are the story, and what changes inside the character is emotional. 

What brings a reader into a story, making the reader want to suspend disbelief, and willing to work to shut off the mental jangle of "that's ridiculous" is the way the character's emotional responses connect to the reader's emotional responses. 

Where do emotions come from?

The various answers to that question that you as the writer have, and that your target readership has or wants to have, will determine how you work with theme. 

With my novel that I discussed last week, Unto Zeor, Forever, I used the theory that emotions come from your philosophy -- and vice-verso, your philosophy comes from your emotions.  Yeah, chicken and the egg -- they interact with and cause each other.

Think of that TV screen analogy again.  When the screen is turned off, the pixels are still there but they are as black as the surrounding background.  The screen still has a pixel array structure, but you can't see it without special instruments. 

The structure is a certain number of pixels in rows across and columns down - an array.  The pixels are all the same size, the rim around them, separating them is also uniform. 

That all-black pattern, or array of pixels is your philosophy.  It's a structure that is fixed and unwavering, a screen UPON WHICH you project your reality. 

The specific choices you make about story, plot, setting, characters, will light up the pixels, and each succeeding choice will reveal more of the whole picture.  But whether that picture is intelligible to your reader will depend on the blacks around each pixel.  In other words, your reader's suspension of disbelief depends on what you leave out.

You will "see" your mental reality only as clearly as the blacks around your pixels.  The smaller the pixels, the more numerous the pixels (or axioms and postulates of your philosophy) the finer your picture of reality will be. 

Some people work on their philosophy and achieve a picture quality like High Definition.  Some have LED quality screens, some have Plasma quality colors.  Some are still living with analog screens, large fuzzy pixels, a blurry picture of reality.

The artist's job is to show the consumer of the art how the world would look with deeper blacks around the pixels, with LED back-lighting, with clearer vision. 

The artist draws a picture of reality the consumer would never sort out by themselves by sorting the signal from the noise, and suppressing the noise until the signal reveals a coherent picture of life, the universe, and everything.  The artist distinguishes signal from noise by filtering the signal through a philosophy -- not necessarily the artist's own philosophy, though most beginners start there. 

The writer has a philosophy, her characters each have a philosophy, and the reader has a philosophy.  Very likely, all are different.

The writer's job is to know their own philosophy in order to know how it differs from the character's philosophy.  That's how you avoid writing a Lt. Mary Sue, who is just yourself idealized. 

Most ordinary people don't know their own philosophy -- don't know they have one, and barely have a notion of what the word means.  Normal people don't enjoy discussing philosophy.  Writers thrive on it.  Artists thrive on it.

The other thing writers thrive on is "research" -- most of us grow up reading the dictionary and encyclopedia for FUN not profit!  We love words, their meanings, their implications, their emotional nuances and semantic loading.  We collect facts like a dragon collects gems and brood on our hoard of trivia for years before hatching an idea for a novel using those facts.

Maggie Anton, in a comment on one of the reader comments on Amazon, says she studied Talmud for 10 years in order to make the story of Rashi's daughters authentic -- she believes she did it.  She also amassed a lot of information about the technologies and practices of the time period and location. 

So this week we'll leave off there and give you time to finish reading Anton's trilogy and/or the comments on Amazon or any other online source you can find.

Next week we'll finish up this study with a brief description of what Anton might have done instead, and how it could be done - what tools she might have used that you've seen discussed on this blog.

Remember, this blog series is about Research-Plot Integration, not a critique of a trilogy about a Medieval Jewish community.

Wherever the Jewish elements are mentioned, substitute the worldbuilding elements you might make up from the historic facts you might have amassed.

Soon, we'll talk a little about the Television Series, Once Upon A Time which has an odd thematic relationship to this Rashi's Daughters trilogy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 2

Last week:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html
we looked at a trilogy of historical romance stories about Rashi's Daughters.

I'm discussing how Maggie Anton's trilogy of historical romance novels with paranormal, supernatural, and spiritual elements blended in, fails because of a failure of orchestration of advanced writing techniques, namely the technique of integrating techniques.

Anton's trilogy does not fail because of a failure of either research technique or plotting technique by itself, though her plotting technique is not one that I respond to or use.  But the two techniques applied separately produce an "oil and water" layered effect rather than an emulsion or a new chemical compound with unique properties (i.e. a Romance Novel).

I hope you have had time to consider these novels.  Here's a link to them on amazon:

Maggie Anton

I don't know Maggie Anton personally, and have no idea what went on with the writing of these novels other than what it says in the books.

Here is a reader response on Anton's first novel from Amazon to consider indicating that the author's imaginary Jewish Culture of the Middle Ages stood out from, made an oil slick on top of, and obliterated all the rest of the romance novel stories in the books:

---------QUOTE-----------
3.0 out of 5 stars Good in general but Jewish life lacks authenticity, May 10, 2009
By
D. L. Lederman "leahiniowa" (Iowa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME) 
This review is from: Rashi's Daughters, Book 1: Joheved (Paperback)
I am an Orthodox Jew who happens to deeply enjoy history and well-written historic fiction. I have strongly mixed feelings about this book. I am deeply impressed with the research that went into this book as well as Anton's ability to compile an enjoyable story from her research.

Unfortunately, it is clear that Anton does not know enough about living the type of authentically observant life that Rashi and his family enjoyed to write about these people without over-laying them with a 21st century mentality.

Those of us who follow the traditions given down from parent to child over the generations know that Rashi's daughters did not wear tefillin and learn Talmud because they were rebels. On the contrary, they were very holy women who followed the law to the letter. Judaism is, at its authentic pure level, NOT a sexist religion.

Further, those of us who live the observant lifestyle are aware at a bone-deep level the benefits of abstaining from prohibited activities. E.g., the prohibition against mature, unmarried men and women touching at all (not to mention "making out" or "snogging" or what have you), along with the observance of the laws of married life, create an intense, passionate bond between husband and wife. No intelligent woman (or man) who has lived this lifestyle and learned significant amounts of Torah (the term Torah is often used to include the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrashim, etc. - basically all of the accumulated studies) would be foolish enough to put themselves in a position such as the female characters in this book found themselves with their "beaux."

To clarify what one of the other reviewers stated, yes, Jewish women at that time were mostly illiterate - especially as regards to Judaic studies. But so were most of the Jewish men. Only the special few - those with outstanding mental abilities or those with the finances to pay for an education - were able to learn enough to read and/or write Hebrew. And learning more than that was even harder to accomplish.

On the other hand, Anton's portrayal of Rashi's mother as an active, educated intelligent woman who ran her own business is strikingly accurate. Plus, I enjoyed learning about the lifestyle and history of Jews living during the time of Rashi.

I really would have preferred to give the book 3 1/2 stars or even 3.75 stars, because I do think it is very well-written and interesting. Unfortunately, books which do not portray Torah true Judaism accurately tend to do more harm than good. From the other reviews I have read, this already seems to be the case.

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

And here is a reader response posted on Amazon on one of my novels, House of Zeor, which indicates that applying the integration technique I'm discussing causes readers to be able to absorb the imaginary culture of imaginary characters even when it differs starkly from anything familiar:

------QUOTE------------
5.0 out of 5 stars Only the beginning . . . of a great series, November 4, 2011
By J. A. Davis "firedrake54" (Ontario, CA)
This review is from: House of Zeor (Sime~Gen, Book 1) (Kindle Edition)
I can't tell you when I first read "House of Zeor", but it was back when I was thin and my hair wasn't. I found it amazing, when, last month, after not reading it for perhaps 20 years, I picked it up and was immediately transported back into a fondly (and well) remembered world. This book is one of the most complex, painfully realistic and memorable psycho-sociological thrillers I've ever read, and the foundation for an entire universe of stories, the complexity and beauty of which would definitely win awards at Arentsi (and you'll have to read it to find out what that means).

Ms. Lichtenberg, her eventual co-author for later books, Jean Lorrah, and the entire community of Sime-Gen worldbuilders have imagined characters, societies and situations that embed themselves on your brain and don't let go. I suppose it's indicative of something that I remembered many of the terms used in House of Zeor for decades -- mostly Sime-specific curse words, I confess, but they're used in context so clearly you have no problem knowing exactly what they mean.

I've been reading science fiction for nearly 50 years (yes, really). I can count the number of authors and series that have stuck with me this well easily on two hands, and I've read a LOT of SF in those years. The Sime-Gen books make you want to KNOW these people, and make you CARE about what happens to them . . . and their society, which comes painfully to the brink of collapse and ultimate calamity.

I've heard them called "vampire-analog" stories, "chick books" and more, but at base, what they are is good stories, well told, about characters you can get into.

READ THEM!
-----------END QUOTE-------------



House of Zeor illustrates how readers respond to a "new chemical compound" and how that response differs from the response to "oil and water."

There are also comments on Anton's novels from non-Jews and from Jews who know less about Judaism than most readers of this blog know about Simes.

In the comments on Anton's novels, notice how the Medieval Jewish culture - the truly "alien" culture - of a small town in France leaps out and dominates the reader commentary.

Most of the reader comments on Sime~Gen focus on trying to explain the background to prospective readers because that background is the compelling force that shapes the characters.  Readers feel you won't understand why the characters do what they do without that background, but it's the characters and their effect on their civilization that the reader wants to tell you about.

That's what I feel the effect the Rashi's Daughters trilogy ought to have because all the characters were shaped by Torah and Talmud study an even smaller minority interest in those days than now, and much less accessible then than now.

But the comments on amazon are not explaining points of Talmud that you need to understand the character motivation, or what the reader learned from the novel that they applied to life with some success.

On the SimeGen Group on facebook, fans are always talking about whether they "identify" with Sime or Gen.  Non-Jewish readers of this trilogy are not saying that for the time it took to read Anton's books they knew what it felt like to be a Jew in Medieval France.  They got a glimpse of life in Medieval France, they didn't live there for a time.

Fans of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels often relate how they "grew up on Darkover."

Note how Robert A. Heinlein's fans talk about how his novels inspired them to learn math and science.  Or Isaac Asimov's fans.  Fans of Star Trek talk about how Roddenberry's creation led them into career tracks.

The comments on Rashi's Daughters are not relating how  people are dashing off to learn the real Torah and Talmud after becoming enchanted with her fantasy version of Torah and Talmud.  How many are reporting they enrolled their kids in Yeshiva?  But science fiction fans who grew up on Heinlein have kids on track to become famous astronomers, N.A.S.A. engineers, etc.

Keep in mind, it's my opinion that Anton wrote these novels as a polemic in modern feminism touting feminism to young Jewish women, hoping they would become feminists not Torah scholars.  Oil and water.  Some readers react to the oil and some to the water.

There are technical, writer-craft, reasons for that contrast in response between Heinlein/Roddenberry and Anton.

It is not a difference in the basic material or the story.  No place or time could be more alien to the modern reader than a Jewish Quarter in a small French town during the Crusades and the fall of Rome -- Darkover was easier to relate to.

Anton's historical Jews are alien to the modern Jew, and the dangers of Medieval France are just the same as in any Historical Romance with knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, and arranged marriages.

It is a difference in the application of writing craft techniques.  It's not that Science is more interesting than Torah.  It's simply a difference in how the "researched" (or factual) material is used to generate the fictional structure.

Being a professional writer means being able to get the reader-response you aim to get by using the tool that triggers that response.

Maggie Anton has probably gotten the reader response she was aiming for -- but not the response I would have aimed for had I decided to write about Rashi's Daughters.

And I'm only guessing, but I think she may not have known that the material about the Medieval Talmud Academies she had become enchanted with could be incorporated into a historical romance novel using the exact techniques perfected by science fiction writers decades ago.

The "technique" I'm referring to here is the "integration" of two (and sometimes more) of the basic techniques I've discussed on this blog in previous posts.  The integration tool that's most useful is "theme"  which we've discussed at length.

Anton has a theme.  I suspect it might best be stated as "Feminism is not new."

To illustrate that theme, she's created an alternate universe fantasy history.  Since she failed to use the Science Fiction techniques I'm discussing (she may know them and just didn't use them) her readers are calling her down for inaccurate or bad history -- possibly because her readers haven't read a lot of alternate-history fantasy such as Katherine Kurtz pioneered.

Her readers are miffed at the historical errors because Anton didn't lull them into a "suspension of disbelief" by telegraphing that she knows the "real" history that the reader already knows, but will now play a fun game re-arranging that history to tell a story that will pose interesting questions.

She could have created Rashi as a cross between Spock and Sherlock Holmes that would have rocked this nation.  She didn't.  Rashi himself hardly gets a word in edgewise, and when he does, it isn't the word "Logical" which would have been the author's wink at the reader soliciting the suspension of disbelief.  

The readers who don't know enough to spot her historical errors believe her version of history and like it, maybe prefer it.  Other readers are distressed by ignorant readers being taught inaccuracies, with never a clue that this is actually fantasy.

And then there are the real nuggets of historical fact Anton has uncovered which contradict what people in the modern world think they know about Rashi's time and lifestyle!

The knowledgeable reader rejects those nuggets along with the warped facts, not being able to distinguish one from the other -- all for the lack of writing techniques, most especially Research-Plot integration.

All that could have been avoided by treating the hard facts, the warped-facts, and the imaginary facts with a science fiction writer's techniques.  Poul Anderson comes to mind.  Vernor Vinge.

The readers who are calling her down for her historical inaccuracies have completely missed enjoying the Romance stories in this trilogy because their attention was distracted from the foreground story to the background setting.

Please note that the number of reviews Amazon has posted on Anton's novels far exceeds those on my novels.  There are a lot of technical (internet world related) reasons for that (Amazon has erased lots of reviews posted on my titles as they upgraded their computers).

But there is also the fact that Anton's work hits a far more popular topic than I have ever tackled, and was very well published to its exact audience at precisely the time Amazon was growing fastest.

One would conclude I have no business dissecting her product, but should rather be emulating it.

But I have read Marion Zimmer Bradley's SF/Fantasy novels, especially the hottest Alien Romance novel I've ever read, her Planet Wreckers.  I have read the Lensman Series (oh, did I have a crush on Kimball Kinnison and a case of envy for his red headed Soul Mate).  I have read C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner and Chanur series.  I have read  Ursula LeGuinn's Left Hand of Darkness.  I have read all of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels, and a lot of her historical horror novels.  I've read a lot of historical novels (a certain Scotland based historical time travel series pops to mind.)  I used to be a Western Romance fan!  I have read dozens of Vampire Romance novels with varying "rules" for the Vampire species.  And I've read all of Robert A. Heinlein, and dozens of others who blend real science, imaginary science, and a special "take" on human personality seamlessly into their plots.

I somehow don't "hear" an echo of that kind of reading exposure behind the reviews of Maggie Anton's novels by those who liked them.

If you don't know what can be done with the Research-Plot integration technique, you won't miss it at all, and you'll think Anton's novels are really fine novels.

If you read the novels that are there, it's true that they are good.  But I'm a writer.  I read the novel that could have been there and compare it to the novel that is there -- if they're not the same, I try to figure out what to change to make them the same.

In this case it's the Integration techniques that are missing.

As I said above, the plotting technique choice didn't work as well as other choices might have.

Anton's books aren't actually "novels" in the structural and technical sense.  They are strings of anecdotes lightly glued together.  That's what produces many reader comments about "couldn't put it down."  The reader will race through the anecdotes with the feeling that the beginning of the story is imminent, and then find themselves at the last page of the volume thinking they've read a novel.   They didn't.  They read a book, yes, but not a novel. 

Perhaps I just have higher standards in Romance Novels than the readers who loved this trilogy because I found the structural and technique omissions glaring and jarring.

None of the writers I admire who have written novels  blending facts you can get out of an encyclopedia with imaginary characters, real historical characters, and a specific idea of how the world's affairs have been managed, are being managed, and might become managed, would ever have failed to make this integration of plot and research smooth and in-detectible.

As far as I can tell just from reading, Anton made no attempt to blend research and plot, nevermind  create a smooth emulsion.

I learned how to do that integration by hatching an ambition to write like those writers I listed above.  I dissected their work to find out how they did it, then applied that technique to what I had to say, and according to the responses I've been getting on the SIMEGEN Group on Facebook, I succeeded.

Most of you who have read this far must be very frustrated because I'm not laying out exactly how to do this Integration yet.  I'm going to try to explain it, but I am pretty sure many busy readers of this column need time to read at least one of the Anton novels and possibly to explore Sime~Gen.

Meanwhile here is an example from Rashi's Daughters Book III, Rachel -- of a bit of Anton's research which sits like "oil" on top of the emotional waters of her story.  And don't yell.  Last week I did promise you a spoiler and a connection to House of Zeor, and here it is.
---------QUOTE FROM BOOK III RACHEL p353 of the Trade paperback --The main character is talking to a trading partner who deals in dye and wool.-------------

..."But why are some black?"

"The abbess at Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains was inquiring after fabric so I asked Simon to prepare some for her," Rachel explained.  Nuns took a vow of poverty, but the local abbess came from a noble family and refused to wear anything but the highest quality fabrics.

Simon turned to Pesach.  "True black is one of the most difficult shades to obtain.  Each dyer has his secret formula; mine involves lamp soot."  He motioned the pair back indoors, where he slowly unrolled a small bolt of brilliant purple.

Rachel gasped.  "This is exquisite."  She couldn't resist stroking the material.  "I thought Eliezer couldn't find any Tyrian purple, or did you mix scarlet and indigo?" 

Simon allowed Pesach to answer.  "I found some, although Eliezer judged it too expensive.  But the other dye merchants in Toledo said Tyrian purple was particularly scarce this year, so I gambled and bought some on credit."

-----------END QUOTE-------
 
Now there are some obscure facts about the beginnings of the dye industry that few people know, and it's inherently interesting.  It is related to the world of this novel because Rachel is in business with another of her sisters who raises sheep for wool and had to import rams from England to get the kind of wool that can take the expensive dyes of the time.  I know this stuff is true from other sources.

This snatch of dialogue advances the plot element of the side-business of cloth merchanting the lead character is in.  It's not wholly extraneous, and it reveals a lot about the trade-world around this little village.  Worse, all the characters in the scene already know all this and have no business talking as if they don't.  Maybe the scarcity and trade details might be discussed in dialogue - but there's really no dramatic reason for this dialogue. 

If you examine the scene this dialogue is in, and compare it to the discussions we've had here about scene structure and dialogue, you'll see that the scene isn't actually a "scene" -- there's no conflict driving the scene, no rising action, no emotional change, and no climax to the scene, leading to a hook onto the next scene.  The author may believe that all these elements are in the scene, because she tags the end of the scene with a worded thought about her husband who is neglecting the cloth business for his studies in astronomy.

See my blog post of DECEMBER 27, 2011 - Dialogue Part 2 - On And Off The Nose

Anton's Rachel character's husband (the son-in-law of Rashi) is, in this fantasy, involved in the studies in Spain where astronomers may have figured out that the Earth revolves around the Sun centuries before Galileo -- and very possibly those Moorish inspired Spanish Jews may be the source of Galileo's inspiration, or he might have originated the idea on his own.  You can see why I love this trilogy!

There's no reason for this scene, though, except to showcase some of the research the writer did.  You could cut this exchange about dyes and you wouldn't lose anything except that "window" into the "world" of Medieval France.  It's decoration.  It's nice.  But it's not essential.  It says to me that the writer just couldn't bear to leave out all that hard work she did, so she couched it in dialogue and used Rachel's business venture as an excuse to include it.  If I were the editor, I'd have cut it with a big red X through it.  (my editors did that to me a lot; I learned)

To me, personally, though, this  bit of dialogue is the best thing in the whole trilogy! 

This obscure bit about black dye being difficult, proprietary secret, and very easy to spot against the kinds of colors cloth had been able to hold in those days was, I thought, common knowledge for at least 10 years before I wrote House of Zeor and invented "Farris Black" as a special color.  I learned it so long before writing House of Zeor that I have no memory of learning it, I just know it. 

Jean Lorrah, who joined me writing Sime~Gen after Unto Zeor, Forever was written, did not know this historical fact about black cloth dye and I had forgotten how I knew it and couldn't prove it when she challenged me.

My fictional House of Zeor is famous in the textile business, in the crude bathtub chemistry of dye manufacture and wool dying.  They do all kinds of small-batch chemistry that's related to textiles, agrochemistry, and medicinals.  Nowhere in any of the 12 volumes in this Universe is there any dialogue even vaguely resembling this snatch I've quoted for you. 

When the Zeor Householding members are faced with the problem of identifying a particular genetic line of people who are medically vulnerable, Zeor does that by clothing them in this very special black -- it's used on edging, fringes, belts, emblems, medical case file flags and chevron stripes, and on entire clothing ensembles at different points in the several thousand years of Zeor's history. 

It's always referred to as Farris Black -- not just any black.  This is a special color, a shade that leaps right out at you.  You can't miss it.  Over the centuries of the Sime~Gen saga, it becomes the custom and eventually a rule with the force of law that ONLY those of the Farris genetic strain may wear this color.  Nobody else would want to -- it could be a life or death issue if you were treated medically as if you were Farris.  Later, when it's not so special, special shapes and items become the label. 

Nowhere in the Sime~Gen novels do two characters who already know all about the dye business discuss the sources or applications of dyes. 

So there's the Sime~Gen/Rashi connection I promised you last week.  Farris Black. 

Eventually here, we'll probably talk about the second published Sime~Gen Novel (a novel I modeled on the typical "Doctor Novel") Unto Zeor, Forever, (my first award winner) and the medical profession research I did for that one -- and what Robert A. Heinlein said about it after he read it.  Of all the novels I've written, that was the only one I deliberately did research for with the specific intent of crafting that particular novel from the research. 

All other research I've used in my novels has been like that Farris Black example, something I've known so long I don't know where I learned it.  Many times, though, I have had to go look up details that I wanted to include to fact-check before including.  In some instances, I've used astronomical calculators and programs that help predict the orbit of a world around another sun.  But Unto Zeor, Forever is a specifically researched-to-write novel.  I hope you won't find any evidence of research in that novel, though. 

So you might want to read Unto Zeor, Forever first and compare it to Rashi's Daughters. 

Rashi's Daughters also has a whole lot of medical research into medieval and Jewish Medieval medicine and especially midwifery larded into the text.  Some of that medical research is well integrated, and some is not.  Many times whole birthing incidents are incorporated simply to illustrate the midwifery techniques.  The birth of a child who will become a significant influence on the course of history makes it seem that the birthing scene advances the plot -- but often that Integration technique just isn't there. 

Perhaps you want to find pair of Historical Romance novels to compare.  You want to find a novel that has obviously been researched for decades, that the writer is so very proud of their research and the publisher is selling it on the authenticity of the research.  And then find one which has even more information in it but you can't tell it's been researched at all -- you can only see that some of the things in it are real facts, and some things obviously made up just for fun.

Your personal library may already have two really good examples to work on.

Once you've tried to figure out what one writer did that the other writer did not do (and which you'd rather emulate) -- then move on to the next Part in this blog series "Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance."

By the way, I learned this method of deconstruction, dissection, and distillation of techniques to discover and apply writing techniques to my own work from a correspondence course on writing from The Famous Writer School (which I do not recommend at all!).

I've seen how Blake Snyder applied this dissection method to create his SAVE THE CAT! film genres -- and I don't think he got it from the Famous Writer's School.

You don't need a teacher to learn this.  But you do need a pair of books you didn't write, one of which represents the kind of book you want to write.  Find and study two such novels, and come back next week for more thoughts on how to learn and apply Research-Plot Integration to your own work.

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