Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Advice on "Breaking In" to Publishing

Cory Doctorow's newest LOCUS column discusses the beginning writer's obsessive quest for tips from pros on how to get started in publishing. In particular, we love to read about how successful authors landed their first sales:

Breaking In

The major premise of this article: The publishing field changes so fast that a veteran author's story of how he or she first got accepted for professional publication isn't likely to be of any practical help today. As Doctorow puts it with reference to his own early experiences, "While I still have an encylopedic knowledge of the editorial peccadilloes of dozens of publications, most of them no longer exist, and the ones that do have been radically transformed in the intervening decades." What Doctorow supplies instead is "meta-advice," advice on where to find the best advice. According to him, novice writers can get optimal assistance by pooling their knowledge of current publishing practices and trends with other novice writers, sharing what they've discovered through researching markets and submitting to editors. "Just as a writers’ critiquing circle should consist of writers of similar ability, so too should a writers’ professional support circle consist of writers at similar places in their careers."

He does offer some general guidelines applicable to everyone, a more specific, pragmatic version of Heinlein's well-known "rules." Doctorow also narrates his own "breaking in" story with mention of several publishing veterans who assisted him, including Judith Merril. He declares that an established author's most "powerful tool for helping out new writers" is encouragement.

My first adventure in professional publication (my only previous published work being limited to short pieces in our high-school newspaper), in the late 1960s when I was just over twenty years old, certainly has little if any practical application for writers today. I didn't have the benefit of mentors or networking of any kind. I knew nothing about submitting manuscripts except that they had to be double-spaced on only one side of the paper and had to include a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope, for those who've never submitted a paper manuscript). My sole source of information about the industry came from the annual WRITERS' MARKET reference volume in the public library. Today's novice writers are so fortunate to have the resources of the internet. I assembled a collection of stories for a vampire anthology, wrote an introduction, and sent the package to Fawcett in New York. After a year of silence, I mailed them a humorous "haven't heard from you" greeting card. Now that I know better, I'd never think of doing such a thing. Yet they responded promptly, apologized for the long wait, and offered me a contract. In view of my total ignorance, the editor had to explain to me how anthology payments worked and how to arrange for reprint permissions. That proposal became my first book, CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, a mass market paperback.

My first professional fiction sale came about in a more conventional manner that still applies to today's markets, other than the shift from snail mail to e-mail submissions and communications. I received a call for submissions to Marion Zimmer Bradley's second Darkover anthology, FREE AMAZONS OF DARKOVER, probably because the rudimentary fan activities I'd started doing had somehow gotten me on Bradley's mailing list. The zip code on the envelope, however, was wrong, and the letter had reached me barely in time to meet the deadline, if I worked very quickly (for me—I wasn't quite as slow then as now, but I haven't been a truly fast writer since my teens). So this sale had an element of luck, too; the submission invitation could have been lost completely. Without much hope of success, I wrote a story and mailed it just in time. To my surprise, it was accepted. After that, I had stories included in numerous later Darkover anthologies. They stayed in print for many years and, for a long time, supplied my most reliable (although modest in amount) source of royalty income.

Doctorow's "advice" for beginners may be broadly summarized in the eloquent statement, "Writers blaze their own trails, finding mentors or not, getting lucky or not, agonizing and working and reworking, finding peers and lifting each other up."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Sunday, May 24, 2020

In Dispraise of Haste

Which "haste-related" cautionary proverb comes first to your mind?  I thought of "Marry in haste, repent at leisure," which was a socially relevant warning in Britain and Europe for several generations thrust together and torn apart by World War I and World War II.

In recent eras of living together, and relatively easy divorce, there probably less need for "repenting at leisure," so that proverb has lost its power.... which may be why it is ranked #30/35.

Source: Inspirational Stories.com proverbs on haste.
https://www.inspirationalstories.com/proverbs/t/on-haste/

Are proverbs still taught in schools? For that matter, are the different names for the males and females of animal species still taught? "Tiger / Tigress", maybe but it seems doubtful that "Cob / Pen / Cygnet" for swans, or "Hart / Hind" (of red deer) and "Buck / Doe" (of roe deer) are taught.

Animal names
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/doe

"Click-through in haste..." might be a modern day proverb.

The ever-interesting Mark Sableman, blogging for the law firm Thompson Coburn LLP, discusses online contracts (with a topical pun about contracting disease), and explains the different degrees of how inextricably to bind a visitor, or to be bound as a visitor, to a contract that --in their haste-- they have not read.

Original Link:
https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/blogs/internet-law-twists-turns/post/2020-05-14/you-may-avoid-coronavirus-contacts-but-you-can-t-avoid-online-contracts#page=1

Lexology Link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6f1da6a7-56a4-4c18-8f3d-2c744f7b9a11

It reminds me a bit of a marital pre-nuptial contract!

Seriously, if you surf the internet a lot, or if you have your own website, or blog, you ought to read Mark Sableman's explanations of browse-wrap, click-wrap (or click-through), and sign-in wrap.

European readers of this blog should understand that the authors of this group blog do remind readers periodically that Blogspot will drop cookies on you, (it's browse-wrappy), and Google does post generic notices about the terms of use that you are inferred to agree with and to by sticking around.

Online contracts can be very secure, and safer than you would think, and they hold up well in court.  Thus, one should read an E-sign contract very carefully indeed, and not merely click merrily away to provide 7 (or however many) initials and 2 signatures in your choice out of 5 available fonts.

Legal blogger Tyler G, Newby, writing for Fenwick & West LLP, gives a fascinating historical overview of contracts, going back to the signet ring and hot sealing wax to the present day Docu-Sign (or its rivals such as Authentisign), and explains that such convenient services provide a time-and-date stamped audit trail  that may include the signer's IP address.

Of course, too, there is the clickwrap or click through and sign in protection for the professional who sends a link in an email to the expected signer.

For readers interested in how much copyright infringement has increased during the Covid-19 shut down, MUSO has a free, downloadable "white paper". It comes with click wrap, you have to give them your name and email address... but it might be interesting enough to be worth giving them the data, and possibly receiving follow up emails from MUSO.

https://www.muso.com/white-paper-demand-discovery?utm_campaign=COVID-19%20Protect%20&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=88156774&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-92B76dMP1rBc2xvht7vDqlzhChwXeYH-GGsTVaL3B6_aOiXEnexlgriwMhuv35_T2oUwbU8dyrNfvG9G1H767syhNUjQ&_hsmi=88156774

Talking of privacy, and marketing (which I do, often), Zarish S. Baig, blogging for Squire Patton Boggs, discusses the suspicions of some that third party marketers may listen in on private smart phone conversations.

https://tcpaworld.com/2020/05/13/googles-privacy-policy-cant-save-it-from-smartphone-spying-claim-california-privacy-laws-tested-in-suit-alleging-big-tech-is-letting-subcontractors-listen-in-on-your-conversations/#page=1

It would appear, the above average internet user is also expected to read any ISP's Privacy Policy, especially if they purchase and use a device capable of recording anything.

Apropos hastiness and insecurity, if Zooming, or Facetiming, or otherwise broadcasting a live video of yourself, bear in mind that more of your background than you might expect might be exposed.  We've all seen the accidentally-on-purpose naked roomies caught over the shoulders of vloggers; the over casual anchor without his trousers who spread his legs a little wide under his desk, and his bare thigh crept into view; and then there is the prince who did not realize that he had official secrets on an open file in his background.

Derek M. Stikeleather, for Goddell DeVries Leech and Dann LLP shares Kim Kardashian's tips for looking fabulous while teleconferencing, and much more.

https://www.gdldlaw.com/blog/what-kim-kardashian-and-prince-william-can-teach-us-about-remote-oral-arguments

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

Sunday, March 01, 2020

Just Because It Looks Like A Smutty Joke....


Just because you might dress up dissing your competition as a mildly dirty joke --even a fart joke-- does not necessarily mean that you can expect to come away from Court smelling like a proverbial rose.

That could be said to be the bottom (groan) line of an entertaining law blog article about false disparagement and the failure of a "puffery" defense.

Penned by legal bloggers Amy Ralph Mudge and Randall M. Shaheen, representing Baker & Hostetler LLP,
they really cut loose with the puns and wit, while making serious and useful points about dirty competitive strategies.
Lexology version:

Original:
https://www.adttorneyslawblog.com/advertising/butt-isnt-it-just-puffery-if-it-is-funny/#page=1

In case you wish to know, "Puffery" is the legal argument that the offensive suggestion is too ridiculous --or hilarious-- to be taken seriously by a reasonable person.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/puffery/

There are object lessons for writers who do their own marketing. Not every author compares his/her/their work to a rival's works in ways that compliment the rival.

Does anyone still read Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies? This writer has never forgotten the lessons of Mrs. Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By  and Mrs. Be-Done-By-As-You-Did. 

Another recent legal blog deals with truthful advertisements, from which one can extrapolate advice about comparing your products and services to those of others... or not.  Christian P. Foote, writing for Carr McClellan

Original:
http://www.carr-mcclellan.com/insights/truthful-ad-claims-product-not-implied-false-comparisons-competing-comparable-products/

Lexology:

One would have to have a major inferiority complex to sue a rival for claiming that their (the rival's) own sweet product has "no added (ingredient)" which must mean the same thing as the rival disparaging the offended party's product by suggesting it is unnatural.

Alas, some will see offensive "micro-aggression" where none was intended. The internet is full of potential for such misunderstandings.

On a positive note, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is open to public comments on its Endorsement Guides. The guides mostly affect Influencers, but commenting is an opportunity for writers to comment publicly with wit and charm.  Your name and comment will be published.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/02/ftc-seeks-public-comment-its-endorsement-guides?utm_source=govdelivery

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

Thursday, May 03, 2018

Surviving the Gold Rush as a Writer

The latest issue of RWR (the members' magazine of Romance Writers of America) includes an article titled "The Key to a Lifelong Career" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, whose online articles on the business of writing can be found here:

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Her essay in the May RWR focuses on how to avoid burnout but ranges over a number of related topics—handling success (some writers try to replicate the process that led to their success without really understanding it and end up "working harder" without working "smarter"), reasons for burnout (e.g., pushing oneself to churn out too many books in a year), diminishing returns in income, what it means to find oneself in a mature market instead of a new one that's expanding at an exponential rate, overextending oneself in terms of expenses and how to reduce them, and switching one's writing business from a "manufacturing model" to an "artisanal model."

One section of this article is headed "Surviving the Gold Rush." The "gold rush" designates the exponentially expanding phase of a new market when it seems easy to get into the field and make bushels of money. Rusch writes in insightful detail about the rise of e-books and the early boom in independent publishing, followed by the leveling-off phase. She discusses the three stages in the typical way "markets develop over time": (1) The gold rush, when growth doubles, quadruples, or more each year. (2) The plateau, with large but not exponential growth. (3) The mature market, when growth still occurs, but it's slow and steady.

Personally, I never experienced the gold rush, at least nowhere near the extent Rusch describes. The closest I came to it happened in the early years with Ellora's Cave (now closed), when e-books were still an exciting novelty and EC was, although not the only game in town for that subgenre, the highest-profile and biggest-selling publisher of erotic romance for women. I was lucky enough to get in at a stage when, by publishing with EC regularly, I could count on a nice check each month. But the levels of success Rusch writes about—authors who earned royalties in the tens of thousands of dollars per month at the height of the "gold rush"—boggle my mind. Likewise, the allusions to authors becoming discouraged because their incomes dropped to half of that—still more per month than I made annually in my best years. In that respect, the indie superstars inhabit a different world from mine!

The priorities she recommends for hard-working writers concerned about potential burnout, however, apply to everyone. In order of descending importance, they are: self-care; spending time with loved ones; writing new words; publishing new words; whatever keeps you healthy and happy. While I can't point you to this particular article because it's in a members-only publication, you can find lots of related useful information and counsel in Rusch's posts at the link cited above. She provides plenty of specific details and hard facts, with numbers.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Sunday, April 01, 2018

Leaking Clouds, Dark Days, Do Not Track... My Underwear

When marketing a novel, the received wisdom is -or used to be- that a reader must see the cover/title/author name at least seven times (presumably in a positive context) before that reader is inclined to purchase the book. Does it still work that way? Maybe. The ad-funded internet giants would like authors and publishers to believe that paid advertising works.

When marketing a song, the vinyl model was that it was worth giving radio stations one's blessing to play the song, because the more a song was heard, the more likely it was that a listener would like it, and the more a listener liked it, the more likely they were to buy the vinyl.

The internet is funded by advertising. Perhaps the biggest question is, who pays? (Quis solvit.)

For Crowell & Moring LLP,  legal blogger  Christopher A. Cole asks "Is the Cambridge Analytic Scandal a Watershed moment for the Ad-Funded Internet?

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f81ed65e-14d4-4c3b-8a8e-509726507d88&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2018-03-30&utm_term=

The legal blog article mentions the use of blackmail and dirty tricks to influence elections, and also the use of information scraped from Facebook "friends" for the purpose of psychological manipulation.

There's a lot of passive blackmail and extortion on the internet, anyway, and deleting social media accounts is not a viable solution. Public figures and would-be public figures are obliged to join social media sites to protect their own names and identities. We writers probably all know of someone who had to become "thereal...." because his or her real name or pen name had already been taken by someone else.

That does not mean that one has to give these sites one's true birthdate (as long as one can remember the lie), or be bullied into giving answers to their questions. Remember, the more you reveal online about cousins' names and memorable streets where you have lived, and school names, and youthful crushes, the less choice you have when filling out those banking secret questions/answers that have to be changed every few years.

Moreover, ages are not private. In "A Dark Day For Hollywood..." legal blogger Tony Oncidi for the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP reveals the gob-smacking truth that a Californian law prohibiting online commercial sites' publishing of Hollywood actors' ages is unconstitutional.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7aad561a-cbc6-4723-825b-4fddc6cef270

Apparently, it's a free speech issue. If a commercial site wants to sell true information about how old you are, even if you object, they may do so.

For the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, legal bloggers John F. Delaney and Aaron P. Rubin reveal that over the first half of 2017, Facebook received almost 33,000 requests from law enforcement for user "data" and 57% of those "requests" forbade Facebook to notify the users that their information had been requested by the authorities.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=03dbdcc2-2c7b-4616-ba91-49e6482462a6

Coming back to Christopher A. Cole, he suggests that advertisers who buy into "data analytics" to target their pitches will need to pay attention to the sources of the "data".

"Data", by the way, comes from the Latin "dare" (to give), and its singular "datum" used to mean "that which is given".  How ironic! (I shall now go back and edit to add a plethora of "give" words.)

I cannot help wondering if everyone is missing the woods for the trees. By what metric do the purchasers of advertising know if their advertising budget is well spent? Clicks, perhaps?

If advertising is the problem, it is helpful to know how pay per click (PPC) works.
https://farotech.com/blog/how-does-ppc-work-a-beginners-guide-to-pay-per-click/

Christopher Carr of Farotech tells us that 64.6% of people click on Google ads when they are looking to buy an item online.

Why buy online? Oh, yes, it is convenient. Instead of a check out clerk knowing that you buy (insert most embarrassing product) ... you'd rather risk all the internet and the Dark Web too knowing your buying habits, and embarrassing afflictions, and monetizing the knowledge.

But, if you want to buy online, why not do the research, clear your cookies and cache, and go directly to the website without clicking a Google ad link?

Perhaps the problem is not the ability to buy online, or the convenience of clicking through. It's the aggregators' interest in TARGETING the advertisements. Even that probably does not serve the purchaser of the advertising or the recipient of the advertising. If I bought a houseful of perfectly fragrant and safe, 30-year guaranteed hardwood flooring three weeks ago, how likely is it that I want to replace my new flooring with more of the same this week?

As a Romance writer, what am I supposed to think about the advertising executives at a brassiere-selling business if they seem to expect me to rip my bodices and need replacement underwear every single day?

Which brings me to Under Armour. They've been hacked. According to Lifelock, (2 days after Wired,  Fox and NBC broke the story) approximately 150 million social exercisers using the MyFitness Pal app need to change their passwords immediately.

Another tip:
Don't let your computer or your ISP or the "cloud" store your passwords for you.
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252437297/Firefox-bug-exposes-passwords-to-brute-force-for-nine-years
By Peter Loshin

IMHO, permissionless "targeting" is akin to stalking. The most elegant legislative solution would be to give legal standing and force to a Do Not Track request. Right now, too many sites ignore a "Do Not Track" setting and install tracking cookies regardless.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 23 - Mastering The Narrative Line

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 23
Mastering The Narrative Line

Previous posts in this series on Marketing are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

In writing classes, emphasis in the explanation of how to sell your fiction is always focused on the Narrative Hook.

The Narrative Hook is one of those dense mysteries for new writers, especially Romance genre writers because most of a Romance is not NARRATIVE at all, never mind "hook" worthy.

The whole point of a Romance is the emotional Velcro that binds two into one -- yes, Velcro has "male" and "female" hooks that make it stick together, so it is a good analogy.  That's not "narrative" but worldbuilding and Theme-Character-Worldbuilding Integration.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

We have discussed construction of Narrative Hooks, and will no doubt revisit that pure craft skill.  But it occurs to me to wonder if the real reason new writers have such an amazingly difficult time crafting a Narrative Hook lies within a lack of conceptualization of what a Narrative Line is, where it comes from, and why readers expect it.  What the Narrative Line has to do with Art and the reader's determination to memorize your byline and find all your books.

The Narrative Line begins with a Hook (on Page 1) and ends usually just before the Plot Climax and Story Conflict Resolution.  The Narrative Line ends with the bald articulation of the THEME,  which is most effective when phrased as a "one-liner."  Those single lines of dialogue that audiences take from movies and quote out of context to reference the underlying theme of the movie -- which has suddenly appeared in their real life.

People communicate in references, in one-liners, and so must your characters.

The Narrative Line is the "Show-Don't-Tell" explication of the Theme.

The Narrative is not the Event Sequence (or Plot, Because Line), and it is not the Character's Life Lesson (or Story).  Both of those are derived from the Theme (or generate the theme, depending on where you start creating the novel). The Narrative Line is usually less tangible, less memorable, and much harder to articulate.

The Narrative Line is what makes sense of the World you have Built.  If the Plot is the backbone of the novel, the Narrative Line is the Spinal Nerve running down the hollow bone, causing the moving parts to move both consciously and subconsciously.

If you can grasp the concept of Narrative Line, find it operating in your own Reality, and then in the (very different) Realities your readership inhabits, then you will very likely have little trouble crafting a Narrative Hook to alert that specific readership to HERE IS THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE.

Real life work situations are usually very boring, repetitive, dull.  Most jobs are tiny parts of a big whole operation that produces something the worker never sees or has any use for.

If you make steel bolts for a living, you aren't involved in enjoying the backyard swing set they hold together -- you never meet those children, have no idea they even exist.  You sweat away your days in a noisy factory floor running giant machines that hammer out identical bolts, and get punished if too many aren't identical enough.

You are on the Narrative Line those parents and children are on, but you don't know it, and you're likely too tired to care.

"Art" -- storytelling -- replicates reality by dramatizing (making larger) certain parts, and minimizing others.  In the case of making bolts for a living, the noise/sweat/exhaustion part gets minimized and the pride/precision/workmanship and economic elegance of the production line is dramatized.

How would you dramatize making bolts?

Well, what if a swing-set manufacturer had a massive recall because of faulty bolts, and the floor manager and maybe his gang of workers got called to testify in court about the process of creating that particular bolt that broke at the top of a child's swing-arc and sent her over a neighbor's fence into the empty cement pool?  The bolt making floor boss has to meet the widowed mother and crippled kid, learn the husband who bought the swing-set committed suicide while the kid was in Shriner's Hospital For Children with bleak prognosis.

See? An isolated, boring, lonely, miserable job can be dramatized by revealing the Narrative Line the boring situation lies on.

This kind of material is sometimes identified as "back story" - and it can be that.  But the parts of the back story that belong in this current novel have to be selected, teased out of the whole life stories of all the Characters, and presented in a discernible "line" -- a curve, or arc, or hurtling straight line into a Fate, ass-backwards into a bear trap, or upwards toward a worthwhile goal.  Selecting what to include in the Narrative Line is Art.  Art is selectivity -- omitting in order to sift a pattern, a statement, a "truth" out of the mixed background noise of "life."

In 2016, we are in the middle of a huge transition in the Narrative Line of the Human Species.

Yes, not "race" because humanity is not a "race" but a species.

And yes, our Narrative Line is about to swoop into a new direction. We have the ability to edit genes (even before figuring out what that gene does), and transform humans. We are using that ability to craft mosquitoes to fight that disease vector.  We've found traces of very ancient DNA from viruses inside our genes.  We're beginning to see how all living things on Earth are "made out of" each other -- we all contain parts of each other.

Tracing the development of genetic knowledge from the mid-1950's onward, you can create a "Narrative Line" and project it into the future.

Then look at research into Personality and Behavior (even Mental Illness).  Brain, nerve, and chemistry studies are probing for the origin of Love inside our physical bodies.

There is even a "line" of studies trying to show how brain configuration determines your politics (Republican or Democrat).  This opens the possibility of "editing" genes so we're all Democrats and don't argue so much.

A person with a job in a vast gene-editing operation might do one task repetitively all day long without ever knowing the "back story" of the Narrative Line or the ultimate result of the end of that Line being reached.

Of course, we also have the Automation Narrative Line that started maybe even before Henry Ford implemented the first Assembly Line.  Today boring, repetitive jobs are being filled by robots.  Today's cars have more parts, and fewer assembly line jobs, even though most families have at least one car (unless they live in the city with bus service).  Of course, the self-driving car will put taxi and truck drivers out of work.

Automation is a Narrative Line you can use to dramatize a Character's life.

Take a hot topic, ripped from the Headlines -- Gun Control as the solution to Alien Invasion.  You can't have an armed (and ignorant) public confronting the Flying Saucer People -- humans tend to shoot things they don't understand, right?  That could start a war we can't win.

Another hot topic, ripped from the Headlines, sexual misconduct by famous people, stars, celebrities, politicians, even Heads of State of other countries.  Or the same misconduct by a total nobody, an unknown, whose trial is dramatized by Network News until everyone knows the guy's mother's maiden name.

Yet another hot topic, ripped from the Headlines, Police Misconduct -- over-reaction against suspects who are actually innocent.

Which leads to another topic, the legal principle of Innocent Until Proven Guilty which is the Narrative Line Media News has set aside in favor of Allegations Must Be True Or They Would Not Have Been Alleged.  Suspicion = Guilt.  For example, merely being on the Terrorist Watch List is cause for suspicion.  Or the bureaucratic mishandling of some email documents puts you under suspicion of treason, and we all know suspicion means guilt.

So Narrative Lines have TOPICS.  Mass Communications, such as TV News or making Speeches to stadiums full of people, or guesting on a call-in radio show, requires sticking to a TOPIC.

You have probably noticed that these blogs don't stick to a topic.  There is an esoteric reason for that.  I, personally, do not see the world, reality, or life as divided into separate things of any sort - topics, ideas, points.  With one mental eye, I see Reality as one, single, interconnected, single-origin whole -- completely undifferentiated.  With another mental eye, I see individual particles and people connected directly to a single origin much more strongly than to each other.

This binocular vision gives me a notion of another "dimension" to Reality.

My Topic in these posts is that other "dimension" -- how it is related to what we see with our everyday physical eyes.

As a result, I bring in what appears to be unrelated material and drop it in the midst of what might be making some sense to you.  If you can discern a relationship instead of an intrusion or an "off-topic" remark, you might glimpse a bit of that "dimension" in a way you can use.

Today's topic is The Narrative Line (or arc, circle, spiral).  The Narrative Line of a novel has a TOPIC, but is not a topic in itself.  The Theme is a slice or cross-section of a Topic, and both contains a topic and is derived from a topic.  Theme is what you have to say ABOUT a Topic, not the topic itself.

Once completely drawn, the Narrative Line will illustrate your Theme, and may not appear to most readers to stick to a Topic.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

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

The core skill of Illustration is Depiction.  Here's the index on Depiction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Once you have constructed a Narrative Line, fabricated to illustrate (using depiction and symbolism) your theme, you will have no trouble finding the right Narrative Hook for your own Targeted Readership.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

And here is Part 4 of Symbolism series with links to the previous parts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

Here is the key post on Symbolism:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Those posts on Symbolism explain to the fiction writer working in text medium what the visual media (TV News for example, or online video news or advertisement) call "Optics."

Optics is about what the target audience will infer or deduce from the visual image, not about the image itself or the reality behind it. That concept embraces the paradigm "Suspicion=Guilt" that is so pervasive today.  An image or angle on an image taken out of context or perspective is as misleading as a quote taken out of context.

This is why politicians learn to speak to Mass Media in sound bytes or Talking Points, pre-scripted, memorized monologues.  Professional writers create those Talking Points to be quoted out of context harmlessly.  Today's politics is a battle of writers putting words in the mouths of Characters (the candidates) to thwart other writers excerpting those Talking Points to quote out of context and reverse the meaning.

The trick for constructing the Narrative Hook that drags your Target Reader into your Narrative Line and holds them on that line is to select a Topic the reader is interested in, but does not know they are interested in.

When we post a news article on Facebook, we often say "This is interesting."  But the truth is the opposite.  The quality "interesting" does not reside in the thing itself -- but rather in the observer.  What we really mean is, "I am interested in this" -- not that "this is interesting."  English has many such grammatical twists which can be used in writing dialogue (but not narrative).

Here's the index to posts on dialogue - there are actually more than 4.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

Readers often don't know what is interesting about what they are reading (fiction or non-fiction, the source of fascination is hard to spot and articulate.)

You are familiar with the Acting lessons that emphasize "people watching" -- closely observing people, their mannerisms, accents, dress, and especially "walk" (how they move -- a dancer vs a martial arts master vs a runner vs a soldier etc).  Character is intrinsic in one's "walk" or "stride."

Honing the ability to observe random strangers is the key to good acting.  Honing the ability to observe one's own reaction to words is the key to good writing.

In other words, good reading is necessary to good writing.

What is the difference between reading and good reading?

Analysis.  Just as an actor analyzes the people walking through the mall, the writer analyzes the words of the story being read.

One thing you analyze for is "interest" -- why is this interesting to me?  What is it about ME that makes me respond to this?  A story, Character or Topic is not inherently "interesting."

Grasp that fact and you'll have an inexhaustible source of Narrative Hooks.  Find the right hook for your Line and you will catch a lot of readers.

What it is about you that makes you interested in This Topic is the exact reason why your Target Reader will find This Topic interesting.  If you understand the Topic well enough to grasp the import (even on a non-verbal level), you will be able to explain the Topic to your reader in a way that will interest them -- perhaps subconsciously.

How do you teach yourself to straighten your stories out into a Narrative Line and craft a strong Narrative Hook?

Study Network News -- Video News online -- text-news stories and articles such as the one I pointed you to in Part 22 of this Marketing Fiction In A Changing World series.

The very best way to learn "pacing" in fiction writing is to understand what constitutes NEWS.  "News" is a Plot Development.  Every scene on a Plot-Line starts with a Narrative Hook and ends with NEWS.  That is basic scene structure, and it works on stage, screen and text page.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-2-avatar-and.html

To teach yourself to identify a Narrative Line that large numbers of people (even beyond your targeted audience) are interested in analyze Network News.

To teach yourself to understand why those people are interested in these Narrative Lines, study the Network News.

Don't ask people what they find interesting. They don't know (some do, most don't) why a Narrative captivates them.  The most captivating and compelling stories are the ones that communicate with the subconscious, illustrate or symbolize subconscious issues.

Find a Narrative Line that interests you and probe your own subconscious until you see why it does.  Chances are good that once you consciously know why that Narrative holds your attention, it no longer will hold your attention.

To get good at Narrative Lines study the ones that you already have no interest in.  Some of those will be Narrative Lines you have an aversion to.  Those are extremely valuable as they are the raw material of Conflict that can drive a novel.

In our world today, the biggest Narrative Line is the Rate of Change in our world far outstripping our ability to adjust.  The human genome (as currently constituted by Nature anyway) has built-in limits on what can be changed at certain ages, and how fast change can happen, as well as how severe and urgent the need for change must be.  The older you get, the more severe the need must be and the harder you have to work at it.  EXAMPLE: stroke victim learning to talk or walk again.  The older you are, the harder it is to create new neural connections.

Which brings us to Snapchat and the article we touched on in Part 22 of this series:

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

As you see in this quote ...
---------quote---------
There are other differences that set Snapchat apart from Facebook, for example the complex algorithms and procedures that have led to accusations that Zuckerberg’s company is editorializing; Snapchat Discover is essentially a feed reader or news aggregator, the magic tool that many of us consider to be the beating heart of our information systems, but that few adults who haven’t grown up with the internet still don’t really understand and thus fail to use. If you don’t use a feed reader you aren’t informing yourself, you’re being informed. Think about it.

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

... if you don't use a feed reader you aren't informing yourself, you're being informed.  I've been using feed readers since they first came available, and many have come and gone since then.  Yahoo is being sold, so I expect my all time favorite feed reader page on Yahoo will be gone.  Therefore I've been watching Snapchat develop, and meanwhile using Flipboard more and more.

The Snapchat Discover feature has serious promise.  The Narrative Line of the world's problems as seen by the young people this Forbes article refers to is very different from the Narrative Line presented by Cable News or Broadcast Network News.  They will lose audience share as the older folks die off and the young become Middle Aged, thinking about "the narrative" in a different way.

Meanwhile you can find me:

https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg

On Snapchat search for thelichtenberg or click here (on your phone)
 https://www.snapchat.com/add/thelichtenberg

As also noted in that Forbes article on Snapchat,

---------quote--------
So while most adults either continue to inform themselves via the same media they have always read or simply accept what is put in front of them by whichever social media, young people are learning to choose, to subscribe to publications that mean something to them, rather than accepting segmentation, which they see as creepy, as though they were being spied on, and just about accepting geographic segmentation. Meanwhile, Snapchat Discover is an exclusive club, a place newspaper editors are dying to be admitted to, and that feels free to kick out Yahoo! News after six months because Spiegel thought they didn’t get millennials.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, but Snapchat is much more than it seems, and it is doing what it does spectacularly well. If you’re aged 25 or over you might find it challenging, but make the effort: it’s well worth it.

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

Look for and identify Narrative Lines embedded in Mass Market News.  You can rip TOPICS from the Headlines, but to get the Narrative Lines about those topics that captivate the aggregate subconscious of a country or the world, you need to study more deeply than just headlines.

Mining of Big Data is one Narrative Line to follow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/06/19/television-as-data-mapping-6-years-of-american-television-news/#5430ebdf628c

And the counter move to Privacy embodied in Snapchat -- and also Whatsapp's encryption protocols -- is another Narrative Line.

Gun Control, Privacy, Personal Sovereignty, Income Redistribution, Religious Freedom -- these are TOPICS.  Each one has a different Narrative Line on different News packagers (NBC, CBS, ABC, Reuters, AP, Fox, etc.).

These News organizations create the Narrative Line then cherry-pick Events, developments that further that narrative.

Once you get hold of how this is done by comparing them on a New Aggregator like Snapchat or Flipboard, you will begin to understand Scene Structure and The Narrative Hook in a new way.

If you are under 25, you may need to make a conscious effort to acquire the Narrative Line of the world as seen by today's teens -- your market in 5 years or so.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-teens?utm_term=.lcGJJdaZx#.wunppoeAN

------quote----------from buzzfeed.com
my 13-year-old sister, and she’s the most prolific Snapchat user I’ve ever seen.
We live in different states, so I rarely get a chance to hang out with her. That’s what made Thanksgiving so eye-opening. I would watch in awe as she flipped through her snaps, opening and responding to each one in less than a second with a quick selfie face. She answered all 40 of her friends’ snaps in under a minute.
How was this even possible? Is she a freak of nature, or is this just how things are done when you’re young? I had to find out what I was missing. What do these “teens” know that I don’t?
I decided to investigate further…

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

That single description of a 13 year old's worldview should indicate what different Narrative Lines will look like in 10 years.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 4 - Creating A Story Canvas by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Worldbuilding From Reality
Part 4
Creating A Story Canvas
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts on Worldbuilding From Reality:


Here are some previous posts related to Worldbuilding

In addition, there are long series of posts about integrating Worldbulding with each of the other skill sets we've discussed.  

Working with the developers of the Sime~Gen Videogame, who are worldbuilding in a Universe I created, I've been following developments in mapping our Galaxy and the stars beyond.

The Game developers want to take the narrow window on Future History I used to showcase the Characters I used and open that window wide -- taking humanity of the far future into the Galaxy on adventures flung far and wide. 

So I have been collecting posts on the advancing edge of astronomy and astrophysics and putting them on my Pinterest Board


I also park some on Flipboard and some on Facebook. 

In particular, the videogame company that has licensed one of my series, Sime~Gen, is planning to create an Interstellar setting for the character-driven story.  It will start with exploring this solar system, then expand to discovering Aliens "out-there."

But WHAT is "out there?"  

You all know that the fashion in science has been, for decades, to assume that there are no intelligent Aliens "out-there."  That idea went out of fashion with old-style Science Fiction.

Guess what. It's back!  Speculation began sizzling and then exploding in mid-2015.


And now comes the NEW orbital telescope called the James Webb Space Telescope, expanding on what Hubble has found, it is just inevitable we'll find whatever there is to be found out there.


That new orbital instrument will let us expand the map of all galaxies, solve mysteries of things like "dark matter," gravity, Black Holes, and maybe find some "Intelligent Life Out There" -- of course, what we see will be millions or billions of years old, but still useful information.

Here is a video of a map of galaxies, showing where in this mess Earth is located: 





The Video says Earth is not the "center" of the universe -- but know what?  Maybe we'll discover otherwise.

You may have seen that video around.  It contains this blond-hair like image in the middle of the video and takes some patience to get there.

The red dot you see in this still from the video is us -- our GALAXY, not the Sun.  That's the structure of the Universe -- at least of a tiny slice near us that we've mapped parts of.

Then there are all the 2015 articles about Dark Matter with more papers due all the time now.

Definition from Astronomy:

(in some cosmological theories) nonluminous material that is postulated to exist in space and that could take any of several forms including weakly interacting particles ( cold dark matter ) or high-energy randomly moving particles created soon after the Big Bang ( hot dark matter ).
For example:

So our notion of the cosmos is expanding, and mysteries are appearing out of the nooks and crannies of Math and Astrophysics.  The gravity generated by Dark Matter is theoretically responsible for giving the Universe (that branching yellow hair type image in the video) its shape.  

The Hadron Collider will be making a lot more news in 2016.

So what is a science fiction writer to do?

Well, story telling is about focus, about a selective recreation of reality, not about reality itself.
By factoring out all the other variables, the writer focuses the reader's attention on the singular point of this particular story.

Stories are about people who are symbolically represented by Characters.

Characters are not "real" people -- but they trigger a recognition response in readers who then fill in all the gaps to create in their own imagination a Person derived from the writer's depiction of a Character.

That's how a reader puts him/herself into a story -- by filling in what the writer left blank.
So, to create your story canvas out of this vast-vast Universe we are now able to glimpse, you first need a story.

To find the story, you need a Character who will live that story.

Find the Character in your imagination, figure out what bit of that Character's life is that Character's story, then SELECT a bit of the vast-cosmos of reality to wrap around that Character.
Set the Character free to roam your slice of real-space.

For a long series of long books, you can use a bigger canvas -- a larger slice of what the James Webb telescope will be discovering.

You can move your Characters between Galaxies if you can intuit a space-drive that might be able to traverse such distances.

In the 1930's and 1940's Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., posited that the factor limiting our space-drive possibilities to sub-light "speeds" was INERTIA.

So he just posited that humans invented a device small enough to put on a space ship that eliminated inertia.  He called it an Inertialess Drive. I don't recall its fuel or energy source.

Gene Roddenberry came along in the 1960's and posited a Wormhole Based space drive powered by antimatter, focused by dilithium crystals.  Look up the history of science as understood in the 1950's and you'll understand what Roddenberry did there.  

So now it's 40 years later, and science is puzzling over Dark Matter and Dark Energy and Black Holes that swallow stars and burp.


What are you going to base your star drive on?

And how far do your Characters have to travel?  How big a government do they need - how many people, how many different kinds of people?

C. J. Cherryh has done a wonderful job of depicting interstellar civilization in her FOREIGNER SERIES which I keep rave-reviewing here and everywhere. It is up to volume 17, now. Here's Amazon's page listing the books as a series.


But now we have all this new information about the map of the Universe -- how many galaxies there are, where they are in relation to each other, and what is between them (e.g. Dark Matter and Dark Energy).

So naturally, writers will be exploring what they can do with a star drive based on Dark Matter.  

Say, a ram-scoop technology based on scooping up Dark Matter and converting it to Light Energy?  

Or perhaps "sails" designed to capture Dark Energy?

There is more "Dark" than "Light" out there -- and nobody knows what can be converted to what or used for which.

That does not mean you, the writer, can just randomly postulate any old thing.

Whatever you postulate for the solution to the mysteries faced by particle physics and astrophysics today, it must symbolize, explicate, illustrate, or explain your theme.

In other words, the Characters you create have to "belong to" the World you build around them -- in a manner similar to (but different from) the way human beings belong to our world.

You create imaginary physics, as Gene Roddenberry did, to tell a story of a Character.

Read this short comic, and see how  Captain Kirk was a part of Gene Roddenberry's real life character.


Now look at the Universe Roddenberry created to wrap around James T. Kirk -- to set Kirk loose into that wild west setting.  

Even now, there's new Star Trek.

Note how Roddenberry set the TV small-screen Series mostly on the Bridge set, and occasional quarters or sick-bay, and the transporter room -- all interiors. And a lot of the planet exteriors were inside sets on a sound stage (and looked like it).

Making what the reader "sees" very small in comparison to the total environment the Characters "know" is "out there" is a dramatic device to engage the reader's imagination, get the reader to invent all the details and thus invest themselves in the dream.

Doctor Who did this for decades -- there was a Gallifrey out there, we knew it, but the story never went there, so we had to invent it.

Use that technique. Start your vast-enormous-intergalactic canvas in a small, tiny, slice of the Reality your Characters live in.

Book by book, expand the stage, explore hidden parts, romp among galaxies like grains of sand.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 10: What Besides Sex&Violence Sells by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 10
What Besides Sex&Violence Sells
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
 
The previous parts of this series about Marketing Fiction In A Changing World can be found at:

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

We've discussed the definition of "strong characters" previously, establishing that the technical publisher's term "strong characters" does not mean muscles bulging or "kick ass heroine." 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/strong-character-defined-part-2.html

In the Depiction series we started in Part 1 with Depicting Power In Relationships.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

We tend to see our real-world surroundings in terms of "Power" -- such as "Does The Government Have The Power to XYZ?"  or "Does a President have the Power to ZYX?"  "Power To The People!" 

What do we really mean by the term "Power?"

The bald truth is most people, including voracious readers of Romance or Science Fiction Romance (or even Paranormal Romance) have no clue what the term "Power" means to them, except that they want it.

The writer's job as an artist is to DEPICT their reader's ordinary reality in such a way that it makes the Fantasy aspects of the story seem "realistic."  Not real, mind you, but realistic enough to believe for a little while. 

Then, as you've seen in the recent political campaigning, "connecting with" the audience is the big, fundamental, and essential avenue of communicating.

"Connecting" means letting the ideas being discussed come from a person the audience members can "identify with" -- or in some way see themselves in.

In a job interview scene, you want to write the dialogue (very off-the-nose style) in such a way that the interviewee presents him/herself as having something in common with the interviewer, so they communicate smoothly. 

Or if the applicant is to be rejected, you want to make it clear that the interviewee just can't connect with the interviewer/decision-maker.

This is important when talking to Human Resources interviewer, but it is crucial when talking to the person who will be the immediate superior depending on this new-hire to complete tasks expeditiously.

Note: this is VERY important in the case of a hit-man applying for a contract from a Mob Boss.

So there are ways to study political posturing to discover techniques to employ in creating all kinds of fictional scenes.

One of the most critical techniques to learn about dialogue is that all dialogue is mortal-combat -- a jousting match between two (or more) people looking for an advantage, doing one-upmanship, positioning themselves in the power-dynamic of a Relationship -- or establishing a Relationship where they can define their own position as "powerful."

In real life, that's not always true.  There are all kinds of speech used for all sorts of purposes, and some of them actually do lend themselves to becoming a Scene's core dialogue.  There is Intimacy that does not have a power-agenda.  And there is Intimacy that does have a power agenda. 

In general, only a few pages of a 400 page book can be devoted to non-power-agenda dialogue.  Dialogue (as opposed to real speech) has an underlying power agenda.

The reason for the exclusion of non-power agenda Dialogue is that (in general) it doesn't advance the Plot.  All the words, every one, on the page must advance the plot, advance the story, AND enhance the context the characters are living in (description, narrative, exposition are the tools for context enhancement).

Non-power-agenda Dialogue can advance the Story when it does not seem to advance the Plot. 

As we've discussed before, I am using the following definitions for story parts -- different writers use different terminology, but every professional fiction writer knows and manipulates these components.

Story is defined as the sequence of changes in the Character due to the impact of external Events (actions by an opponent).  Plot is defined as the sequence of Events. 

In other words, regardless of the ostensible subject matter, the conversation between characters that survives the final-cut is about Power. 

Two kinds of Power that the writer does not have to explain to a reader are Sex and Violence. 

They sell big, are considered the essential ingredients in a work intended for large and diverse audiences, because they need to explanation, and they need no translation for foreign audiences (Filmmakers aim at World Distribution, and sub-titles just don't cut it if they must contain polysyllabic words.)

So "action" sells because it is violence, and usually needs no translation.  You can depict action easily in Show Don't Tell. 

Think of the 1980's  film THE TERMINATOR.


The Terminator had plenty of Romance, as did the Indiana Jones films.  So did The African Queen which was much more Relationship driven than violence driven -- so they added leeches, mechanical breakdowns, and threats.

If you haven't seen those films, dig them up and watch them.  Streaming has become the most invaluable asset for a writer.  You can pick up long-standing trends, and analyze what does not change decade to decade.

So Romance was top of the heap in World War II movies made in the 1950's, but it was more expensive to depict airplanes in dog fights and big explosions.  Good closeups were cheaper.  The sex scenes were "go to black" -- they happened off-screen.

As technology advanced, audiences came to adore the explosions, destruction of cities, massive crashes, and other violence they had only been able to imagine.  More minutes of a film were devoted to destruction and violence than to the slow-sweet development of a Relationship before sex.

As social values shifted, sex (nude scenes) replaced "go to black."  Step by step, Romance took a back seat to Sex. 

Whatever wasn't a nude scene had to be a violence scene, and those films and novels that spent more time on sex and violence and less on "What she sees in him" made bigger profits -- because "What She Sees In Him" is very hard to translate across languages and cultures.

All the way to 2014, marketing machinery has caused writers and film makers to trim back the time spent on Relationship and include only nudity or violence (or sometimes both at once). 

Some very broad trends in the reader/viewer's community can be traced parallel to this trend in entertainment.

These are decade-long waves of change.  The point in discussing them here is to  pick up a trend and extrapolate it to The Next Big Thing.

So here's a list to consider and research on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

1) The disintegration of The Family (trace Leave It To Beaver and The Brady Bunch all the way to Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Lost)

2) The displacement of Loyalty, Patriotism and Honor with Betrayal, Draft-dodging, and Hatred of Parents.

3) The replacement of Character Arc expressed in Poetic Justice with Characters who just win and indulge their emotions (with sex or violence), mostly to just escape their fate.

These are 3 trends that depict the changes in the consumer's real world and are reflected in what those consumers (your market) enjoy in entertainment.

There are reasons for taste preferences in statistically large markets that can be most easily understood by writers via Astrology.  Here is the index post to all the Astrology Just For Writers series -

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

Astrology gives a handy way to capture the timing of generational shifts.  Marketers target people between certain ages because at those ages they tend to be more vulnerable to peer-pressure, sales pitches, and tricks of the Public Relations craft. 

That "certain age" lies between the advent of sexual awareness and mastery of the overwhelming emotions and physical demands of the body.  The demographic centers around about age 18, but spreads from 13 to 35, with decreasing gullibility after age 30 (after the first Saturn Return when Saturn (discipline) has been full experienced and internalized. 

As they say: Never trust anyone over 30 -- they might actually be able to think for themselves.  Wisdom sets in at 30.

In other words, at certain ages, humans tend to be better "Marks" for the grifter's tricks.  Public Relations is the grifter's art enhanced with mathematical precision. 

As entertainment producers discovered sales increased when sex&violence were ingredients, and followed the trend to making sex&violence the only ingredients, so too will they follow the trend to something that comes along and sells better.  Could easily be Romance again, with a new twist.

Keep in mind that it is to the advantage of Sellers to keep the Buyers immature and unable to discipline (Saturn) their own emotions (Moon, Venus) so that they will identify with characters who have no self-discipline who "model" impulse-buying and use the excuse "I couldn't help it" when failing to resist an emotion.

It is the hallmark of the teen years when sexuality kicks emotions into high gear that the teen's personal philosophy is founded on the conviction that the only right or wrong in the world is rooted in how you feel.  And we see that reflected in popular fiction -- especially Romance --- that there exists such a thing as an "irresistible" arousal.  And that is true for the immature.

Thus marketers have a vested interest in fostering the assumption of helplessness in the face of your emotions.  If they can induce in you a desire for something, you won't even try to resist because resistance is futile.

The writer's concept "strong character" means a Character whose character is "strong enough" to impose discipline on emotions, even raging arousal, and not succumb -- not even consider succumbing -- to an inappropriate impulse.

In fact, a fully mature human never even has an inappropriate impulse.  That is the Strongest of Strong Characters.  Such people do exist in real life, and every culture has a term for achieving that level of maturity and a theory about how to achieve it.  The achievement was once assumed to be a universal goal of all humanity and was lauded, applauded and rewarded with Rank and Power. 

In fact, the only humans trusted with Power over other humans were of fully mature, strong character.  Others who achieved Power without that Strength of Character we distrusted and rebelled against.

Thus Hollywood depicted Role Model characters, such as The Lone Ranger,

http://www.classicmedia.tv/pr/loneranger/art/LR_creed.jpg

who had achieved that ultimate strong-character position dealing kindly with people who did not have strong character and thus inspired a generation to emulate strength of character (even if they didn't have it).  It was an admired and achievable trait to be beyond temptation via the emotions.

See The Untouchables - Elliot Ness's take-down of the Chicago Mob by being incorruptable - beyond the temptation of money, and beyond the fear of being targeted by a hit man.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052522/combined

Or P.N. Elrod's brilliant The Vampire Files series.

The Vampire Files  Now is in audiobook, too.

Character Arc means the experiences that develop that kind of incorruptible strength of character -- all the way to the point where the enticing vision does not in any way arouse or entice.

We call that an old fashioned value.  So writing it into a Romance can be a radical departure.

Maybe we won't go all the way back to "go to black" for sex scenes - but maybe onward to less air-time (or page-words) spent on nude athletics and more spent on the complex and abstract reasons for accepting this person and rejecting that one according to the self-discipline exhibited by that person. 

This change will come from a book and/or film that just includes that ingredient among the sex&violence. 

So where do we look for this new ingredient that will out-sell sex&violence?

First we have to examine where sex and violence come from in our society, and what those two things represent artistically, then find what other elements exist in human experience that harmonize with them.

In the Astrology Just For Writers series, I pointed out how Astrology describes the relationship between sex, violence, and love.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The sign Scorpio is Ruled By (or associated with) the planet (or whatever they are calling it now) Pluto.  Scorpio is the Natural 8th House which represents sexuality and death, as well as taxes and other-people's-money.  In other words, via the association of Scorpio with the 8th House, we learn the relationship between money and sex, and thus the reason why our Elected Politicians keep getting caught secretly (Scorpio and Pluto represent deep secrets which when revealed become scandals) having sexual affairs and questionable financial dealings. 

Our culture sees sex, violence, finance, Power Over Others, and secrecy as  separate things, as if you can have one without all the others. 

Scorpio Sun Sign is known for such intense privacy preferences that they are considered secretive.

Artists (such as writers) depicting this culture or marketing to this culture, can "see" (with the mind's eye and artist's understanding of poetic justice) that all these separate matters are the same thing.

Scorpio is raw, physical, animal sexuality, and also represents the deeper and more potent manifestations of Violence.  8th House is other people's Values or the Values of The Public.  And Values includes money, which means taxes if the topic is government or power-over-others. 

The current USA government policy is to use Taxes to shape the behavior of citizens.  We tax cigarettes to reduce smoking.  We tax gasoline to prevent driving so much.  This practice puts "Power" into the hands of the few -- the elected officials and bureaucrats who have climbed up the Civil Service ladder to gain decision making power in Agencies such as the IRS, NSA, EPA.

Those who make decisions governing your behavior, incentivizing healthy eating , or dis-incentivizing asocial behavior such as tax-dodging, have positions of Power.

If those individuals are individuals of Strong Character, they can't be bribed, just as Eliot Ness couldn't be bribed in The Untouchables.

And if they have Strong Character, they won't use their Power just to assuage their own emotions.  Say for example the emotion of Fear.  Tax Policy and EPA Regulations are Powers that can be used by those who fear global warming to assuage their fears by forcing people to stop doing what the Powerful believe causes global warming.

People driven by Fear can't be stopped by Facts. 

People driven by Greed (for money) can't be stopped by Facts.

So if one side of the global warming argument is driven by fear of global warming, and the other side is driven by greed for money (based on Fear of poverty?), it doesn't matter what the Facts actually are.  No fact will alter the behavior of either side because the behavior wasn't fact-based to begin with.

We all do this kind of disconnected thinking.  We all have an inner, emotional life that is fraught with Internal Conflict which drives our Story Arc.  That's why novels depicting an Internal Conflict are so vivid.

It doesn't matter nearly so much what the Internal Conflict of a novel-character is, the mere fact that it is an Internal Conflict establishes rapport with the reader.  A character who has an internal conflict that they "project" psychologically on their external world is a Real Person to a reader.

Thus if you are bringing a couple together where one is frantically working to stop global warming and the other is trying to stop the interference with his business by global warming fanatics, you capture the readers from both sides of the argument.

Most people don't know why they believe what they believe.  If your characters likewise don't know or care why they believe what they believe, and so are intransigent in their beliefs, you have a conflict that you must resolve in the end.

"To Agree to Disagree" is not a resolution of a conflict that can lead to a plausible HEA.

If this story is driven by sex and violence -- you will end up with one of this Couple murdering the other.

But if you make the story of the collision of a Believer with a Believer into a genuine Romance (Science Fictional or Paranormal) you another thematic dimension to the innate Sex&Violence collision of say Greenpeace with Whalers.

That thematic dimension is the core theme of all Romance in all sub-genres: Love Conquers All.

People driven by Fear (of Global Warming or Personal Poverty) who have the Power to make themselves feel safer can't be deterred by any arguments. 

Fear is overwhelming, primal, and even more irresistible than sexual enticement.  If these people (government officials or businessmen) have grown up convinced that emotions can not be resisted and had that proven by reading  stories about overwhelming sexuality, then they won't even try to master Fear.

But we have the theme of Love Conquers All.

Love Conquers Fear. 

Love Conquers Sex&Violence.

What's the difference between Sex and Love? 

Raw Sex which is the flipside of Violence is represented in Astrology by Scorpio and Pluto.

Love which is the flipside of Beauty is represented in Astrology by Libra and Taurus.  Venus rules both Libra and Taurus, and has many associations, all of them compatible with Romance which is best symbolized by Pisces ruled by Neptune.

Love is not Romance.  They are two different things, which is why we have so many "Honeymoon Is Over" stories of shattering divorces within the first 5 years of a marriage.  5 years about covers a Neptune or Pluto transit which define the epochs of our lives.

Likewise Love is not Sex.

Love is all about what you see (Libra, Natural Seventh House, Partners, the Public, open enemies) in (internal conflict) another person.  What you value (external conflict) (Taurus, Natural Second House, Money, Beauty, Moral Values) in another person grows out of that Love.

Love is all about what you are capable of perceiving -- not necessarily what is really there.

Love is Blind, as they say.  The symbol for Libra is Blind Justice holding her scales.  Being "blind" in the external eye allows "the sight" with the inner eye, allows seeing into other people.

So your job as a writer is to convince the reader that the reader is smarter than you are, and that the reader is able to see the true inside of at least one of the characters -- to see deeply and accurately enough into a Character to Love that character.

The easy way to do that is to create a Character who is ostensibly an adult but is emotionally immature enough to have no strength to overcome emotion such as Fear or Greed.  His own emotions have Power over him, and therefore anyone with Power over his emotions (of fear, greed, jealousy, etc) can force him to do their bidding even against his own will.

Remember, with Hypnosis, you can not get someone to jump off a roof and commit suicide -- but with control over his emotions, you can -- provided he has no control of his emotions.

The difficult part of telling such a Weak Character's story is to convince the reader that the experiences you put the Character through will cause the Character to strive for strength and thus to become a Strong Character.

Right now, Love doesn't "sell" very well without Sex&Violence added.  So many novels substitute sex and/or violence for studied exploration of the character's inner life.  This substitution makes it impossible to depict Poetic Justice.

Poetic Justice is the Plot Event that brings the reader's sense of right and wrong into alignment with the Character's resolution of the Character's internal conflict.

Poetic Justice is Poetic (a harmony) and Just (making things come out right). 

Poetic Justice is about the Beauty (Venus) of Justice (Jupiter).  The harmonizing element is Mercy.  Justice without Mercy is neither just nor poetic.  But Mercy without Justice creates co-dependence which is not Love and thus conquers nothing.

If you can depict Love conquering All, especially today's most potent Fears, without flinching from depicting those Fears, you may turn the tables on the Marketing decree that only Sex&Violence sells.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com