Cozy Science Fiction Part 3 - Point of View by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Cozy Science Fiction

Part 3

Point of View

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Part 1, we challenged Brian Aldiss's definition of Cozy Catastrophe Science Fiction
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/cozy-science-fiction-part-1-by.html

In Part 2, we attempted to provide easy, objective ways to identify Style and Voice
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/02/cozy-science-fiction-part-2-style-and.html

Now, in Part 3 we return to Brian Aldiss's definition and agree with it a little bit.

For the most part, Romance Genre tends to avoid catastrophe of the planetary kind.  Of course, today, we have Global Warming to figure into any novel set in the next century or so.  And NASA is using the threat of giant asteroids striking Earth to bring awareness of their space program's importance (which I think is even more important than that).  Meanwhile, we also hear about Earthquakes and Super Volcanoes (California's "Big One" seems more likely every day.)  And all of this ignores the prospects of a global war rooted in religion or political power struggles.

So there are plenty of catastrophe scenarios dangling over our heads -- yet Romance abounds.

Science Fiction often deals with a collapse of civilization due to catastrophe -- in the 1950's, science fiction focused on destruction of Earth by atomic bomb.  That threat is back again.

So how do you write Science Fiction Romance without embedding your characters in so much catastrophe that they appear stupid if they ignore the world because they're suddenly in love?

As I pointed out in the previous two posts in this Cozy Science Fiction series, Gini Koch has answered this question with an ever escalating galactic invasion of Earth and Earth as a political football in some game being played by her version of E. E. Smith's Arisians.  Gini Koch's characters find love, fulfillment, and produce children while defending Earth very effectively.

This is a formula worked out in Hollywood during the popularity of World War II movies, and we've seen it used in Viet Nam War movies -- the TV Series M.A.S.H. had plenty of "cozy" relationships among the medical team where it was not even Romantic Love but sincere friendship.

Brian Aldiss observed of British science fiction - in the recent aftermath of World War II which pounded England to rubble in spots - that the tendency was to write about characters who were more aware of each other than they were of the collapse of civilization around them.

We've seen this in many U.S.A. writer's takes on how things would go here after a total collapse of services.  You either tell a tale of striving to survive or a tale of Love Conquers All - can't do both.

Now, why is that?

Maybe if you add Romance to Science Fiction, telling the tale of catastrophe conquered by Love is just exactly what Cozy Science Fiction is best at?

If you want to tell the tale of the catastrophe, you generally have to use many points of view.  The "hero" or "protagonist" is the catastrophe or the response of civilization to that catastrophe (politics may enter into it, as well as the Media.)

When you divide your 100,000 words of novel space into a plethora of points of view, you lose the space needed to reveal the internal psychology of a Character that makes them prone to derive this (or that) lesson from the Events of the Plot.

In other words, even though each point of view character has a story - the plot becomes so overwhelming that you have no space to tell the story inside the most interesting character.  In fact, you have to space to convince the reader that the character is interesting.

So if the Catastrophe and its consequences to Humanity is your Protagonist or Antagonist, you don't have space to reveal enough story to make the Plot convincing.  In other words, "cozy" requires a lot more wordage than "action."

If the Protagonist is "saving the world" - their attention is wholly on the gigantic, overwhelming threat, not on the inside of their own minds and feelings, which is where Story resides.  In other words, the novel is all plot and the story is left to the reader's imagination.  War stories and Action fiction require that structure.

Today's modern science fiction trends are starting to include Love Stories, and in some cases, Romance.

Here are some examples of Action Science Fiction, written by men for men, which include Love Story -- and a hint of Romance -- and thus show us the direction in which Cozy Science Fiction (with or without catastrophe) might yet take.  These novels are not, in any way, shape or form "Cozy" -- but they illustrate how point of view can be used to create Cozy Science Fiction that can sell to the mass market.

Mike Shepherd's series I've reviewed here is still broadening a story of Galactic War And Politics -- even Invasion By Alien Species included.

Here's #14 in the Kris Longknife series, BOLD:

https://www.amazon.com/Kris-Longknife-Bold-Mike-Shepherd/dp/0425277380/

This series is so popular, it has a spinnoff about one of the minor antagonists of the Kris Longknife series -- Vicky Peterwald (a princess kid just growing up learning to run a galactic empire).

https://www.amazon.com/Vicky-Peterwald-Rebel-Novel/dp/0425266591/

 In both these novel series set in the same galactic-war universe, the protagonist and main point of view character is female, in charge of things, makes decisions that impel other Characters to do things and people to die, lives to regret and learn.  In both cases, this Protagonist Character is focused on the external Catastrophe, but does not ignore or neglect their love life and all the emotionally maturing lessons gained from it.

Note that this plot/story trick is possible only in a long series of long novels -- pay attention to how long the novels in Gini Koch's ALIEN series are, and compare to the more ordinary length of the Kris Longknife and Vicky Peterwald series novels.  The amount of "action" (fighting, space fleets maneuvering, politics) in Kris and Vicky's lives is emphasized more than the battle sequences in Gini Koch's novels.

One way to tie Characters to the Catastrophe (which they cause or avert or just suffer and survive) and still incorporate a cozy romance is to have a vast canvass and a lot of words is to feed the deciding Characters information from various farflung sources such as a spy network, a turncoat, hackers listening in to enemy communications, and the Media.

The Vast Canvass produces a lot of information during a catastrophe - as well as disinformation and just plain noise.  The writing techniques needed to keep this information stream both realistic and entertaining to the reader are the same techniques used in Mystery Genre -- Detective Fiction, Police Procedural, lucky amateur detective, and any Mystery subgenre.  It is a combination of active searching by the Protagonist and accidental discovery or incoming Media items where significance lies in the other information the Protagonist has.

If some of that incoming information shades, textures, explains or reveals details about the Romantic Interest, (maybe some embarrassing secrets, too), and if the Romantic Interest is involved in generating or averting the Catastrophe, you have a Love Conquers All novel in the making.

SAVE THE CAT! (the screenwriting book I keep referring you for clues about novel structure) warns us, "Keep The Press Out Of It."

But to tell a tale of catastrophe on a galactic size canvass, you need incoming information on developments far-far-away.  The main characters, Protagonist, Antagonist, Romantic Interest, will be choosing actions based on media reports that hear (or somehow do not hear, or get on their phone-alerts).

Writing contemporary or near-future settings today requires at least some of your characters to have the ALERTS enabled so they will be informed of local impending catastrophe (such as tornado, flood from a broken dam, etc.)

But to get those alerts, you need "location services" enabled so the alert knows where you are and gives you specific warnings.  Many techs advise against enabling location services (for good reasons!), so you may have some characters who get alerts and others who do not.

What a Character does (plot) depends a lot on what they know or don't know.  One major suspense technique using the "tight point of view" of just one character and what that character knows or does not know, is to let the reader know things their favorite protagonist does not know.  If you tease the information into the story at the right pace, the reader will be rooting for their Protagonist to find out the bit of information.

If the information is something that affects 'the public' -- such as "The Dam Broke! Run For High Ground!" or "There was a fatal 50 car pileup on I-5 half an hour ago just north of the Grapevine."  And the reader knows that the protagonist does not know that the romantic interest character was in that pileup.  "Location Services."

News media or social media, flash-mob, or opportunity to make $50 by carrying a protest sign in some march before media cameras, is information that a Character would use to determine an action.  All of this information may come to your single-point-of-view Protagonist via professional media sources (the New York Times) or via social media (Breaking News App, Snapchat).

So if the world starts falling apart around your Character's head, what does the Character do?  Check phone, Tweet?  Dash to the rescue of his brand new Romantic Interest?  Or maybe his ex-wife and kid?

Catastrophe and Romance seem utterly immiscible until you add Science Fiction.

Science Fiction is a kind of fiction-surfactant, a foaming, slippery soap that causes oil and water to mix easily.

This is also true of Paranormal, Fantasy, and all the sub-genres of science fiction.  With or without a catastrophe, the science fiction genres are all amenable to the "Cozy" treatment.

Here are two novels by Elise Hyatt
https://www.amazon.com/Elise-Hyatt/e/B003W3W9WO/

https://www.amazon.com/French-Polished-Murder-Elise-Hyatt/dp/0425233464/

in Mass Market paperback from Berkley Prime Crime Mystery

-- which I reviewed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-i.html

Elise Hyatt is a pen name -- when you adopt a distinctive "Styel or Voice" that is appropriate to one genre but not another - you need a pen name specific to that genre.

There are 3 novels in this series so far.  They illustrate how ugly, strange, twisted murder events can fit neatly, smoothly, warmly into a Cozy Mystery.

The style and voice are Cozy -- the world the protagonist is embedded in is challenging.  Other characters are inside the cozy warmth -- the nasty Events are outside.

The entire trick of taking an ugly, violent, sick-minded world and embedding a nice, clean, optimistic and bright Character into that world, producing a Cozy effect lies in how POINT OF VIEW is handled.

Point of View is one of the component elements in "Voice and Style" -- just as the worldbuilding is.

In our everyday reality, we can view our catastrophe-threatened world from one point of view or another.  Each point of view creates a different sort of atmosphere or impact, significance and meaning of the catastrophe.

Consider Star Trek's various Captains, but particularly Captain Kirk -- right in the midst of all plans going awry, of immense stakes in a game of pure chance, Kirk's attitude was bright, optimistic, zestful, even happy.  Jokes flew thicker in midst of disaster than at any other time.  That is not unrealistic.  It is how winners behave under pressure.

Kirk's point of view showed us a world that, though fraught with threats, was actually "Cozy."  Of course, he never really "got the girl" so broadcast Trek didn't qualify as Romance -- but it did spawn vast amounts of genuine Romance genre fanfic where Kirk, Spock and everyone else got a cozy love life.

To achieve the tight point of view that allows for Cozy stories, you set your 'camera' of the mind on the shoulder of a Character who sees opportunity where others see catastrophe.

It is that simple.  The single point of view narrative gives the most possible power to the "Cozy" dimension, sharing with the Reader a warm, smooth, easy, no-need-for-emotional-defenses approach to life, the universe and everything.

Take a huge, ugly threatening tsunami of Events destroying civilization, put a Character into that world who see, understands, comprehends, and fully credit's the destruction with all its due fear and awe, and tell the whole story through that single Character's eyes -- very tight point of view, not one single comment straying from it, -- and tell that story as a Cozy Science Fiction story.

Make the reader scared of the Events -- and assured of the Love Conquers All outcome.

If you can pull that Cozy effect off, you can motivate readers to approach their real life with more optimism, assurance, and even joy.  That kind of attitude toward handling grim realities attracts True Love.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2: Ruining The Romance With Words by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2:

Ruining The Romance With Words 

by 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Today we'll examine a terrific novel in a picture-perfect series from Ace Science Fiction  which I just absolutely love -- but find myself gritting my teeth over certain brief scenes that are actually the core of the matter for me.

I will include "spoilers" -- we're talking here about the 11th novel in a series, and no way can you discuss that without revealing where those previous 10 have been leading. 

These scenes score an "epic fail" for me because of the sour note in the Romance thread of the plot. 

Why? 

What could a writer do about it? 

A lot, and it would be easy and not make the book longer. 

Previously in this blog series on writing craft, we've discussed Dialogue with special focus on invective.

Here is a post from 2009 which opens the issue of dialogue with a broad overview.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/expletive-deleted-tender-romance.html

It refers to a previous series of posts on Verisimilitude vs. Reality where we examined how "dialogue" differs from the way people just talk in real life.  Dialogue is not "real speech." Writers watch a lot of television and/or movies to develop an "ear" for the difference.

We have also discussed dialogue from other angles. It is part of characterization, pacing, plotting, foreshadowing, choosing a title, description, narrative, and of course conflict.  In fact, dialogue integrates all the techniques we've discussed here separately.

Here are some previous posts about dialogue:

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

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

The magnificent writer whose work I'm going to criticize here is Mike Shepherd, a military Science Fiction writer I admire.  He has replicated, in modern writing, the style and rhythm of the 1940's science fiction writers.  This is a tremendous feat!

I read a lot of these very old novels as I grew up, and saw nothing wrong. 

As a teen, I hated "Romance" genre novels because they were about stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.  Romance has GROWN UP since then, and now we have the kick-ass heroine who won't take "no" for an answer, and we also have women who are hackers, gamers, research scientists, and even military commanders.

Mike Shepherd has created a character for an interstellar war era who comes from a line of military leaders who have risen to be crowned "King" of multiple star systems.

This family line is surnamed Longknife. 

Shepherd has created a galaxy-spanning human civilization which, as humans will do, has split into human vs. human to hold a war or three. 

In the meantime, this civilization has encountered aliens, conducted long and complex war against them, and settled the conflict (maybe not permanently, but things are looking good at the moment.)

Shepherd has extended the human life-span and created artificial intelligence computers and a material for warcraft hulls he has TRADEMARKED the name of "Smart Metal" (so other writers can't use this term.)  This is magnificent work. 

Shepherd has several series set in this vast universe, and today we are focusing on the 11th in the series, the 2013 release, Kris Longknife: DEFENDER by Mike Shepherd from Ace Science Fiction.

The previous titles in the Kris Longknife Series are, in order:
Mutineer
Deserter
Defiant
Resolute
Audacious
Intrepid
Undaunted
Redoubtable
Daring
Furious
and in 2013, Defender

Slated for October 2014 is Kris Longknife: Tenacious, followed by another novel that takes up the doings of one of Kris's main foes who became an ally, then a filling in of the backstory of the war fought by Kris's father and grandfather. 

These other three people are tremendous, colorful characters -- but they don't grab my interest as Kris Longknife does.  I'll give them a try, though, because Shepherd is a great writer.

Kris Longknife starts out in Mutineer as a slip of a girl, just out of school and taking the stage in her life.

Her ancestors are Kings, her whole family has a reputation for making trouble, for getting people killed, for doings that have the massive signature of Pluto Transit Events.

Natal Pluto position in a birth chart is one of several signatures necessary to produce Fame, Infamy, A Place In The History Books (not a footnote size one either).  Pluto magnifies whatever it forms an aspect with -- hard aspects produce vast results that get noticed.

If you've followed my discussions on how a writer can use Astrology to structure a character or plot that readers can grasp at a glance, you know that these natal chart formations actually form family-signatures -- yes, astrological charts show family tendencies.

I used that well known (but unnoticed by most people) fact to create the Farris Family Reputation ("Every Farris Makes Headlines At Least Once In Life") for the Sime~Gen Series. 

Said another way, "The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree." 

This inheritable factor is the subject of all kinds of folk-sayings, and is just common knowledge.  So writers can use this to plot multi-generation tales.

I doubt Mike Shepherd has studied Astrology, but he has portrayed that Pluto driven natal chart feature of The Warrior-King perfectly. 

Kris Longknife starts out at the beginning of this series with people trying to kill her -- assassinate might be a more accurate term, considering she's scion of this Royal family.

Along the way, she develops a sizzling-hot relationship with her bodyguard who routinely saves her life -- she does her share of saving, too.  In fact, she saves planets, civilization, humanity, even aliens -- big things. 

The point of view stays nicely inside Kris's head, and we see all these problems through her eyes -- we see how she muddles through, assesses and takes risks, congratulates herself when she makes a good call, and aches all over when she gets people killed.

But that's the "Longknife" pattern -- people standing anywhere near her get killed, but she survives (without doing anything to make that happen.)

The few people who do stand near her and survive with her become our friends and win our affections, too.  They are well drawn characters with depth, focus, and values we can admire.

So though this series is mostly about battle strategy and tactics, about politics, revolution, (or revolution thwarted), assassinations, face-saving, and engineering miracles on the fly, all these larger-than-life things are happening TO very real, very deep and sensitive Characters. 

And all of this magnificence is accomplished despite really bad dialogue writing.

What's bad about it?

It is what Blake Snyder labels (in his SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting) "on the nose" dialogue. 

"On the nose" is the opposite of "sub-text."

"On the nose" means when you "hit the nail on the head" or say something explicitly, in spades, flat out factual recitation.  "On the nose" means no allusions, allegories, symbolism, misdirection, sarcasm, white lies, but just meaning exactly what you say.

"Subtext" on the other hand means that the utterance contains vocabulary, subject matter, and perhaps plot references (i.e. references to actions under consideration) that have absolutely nothing to do with what the Characters are actually discussing and they both know it.

Good romance is rife with "subtext" and resorts to only one on-the-nose utterance -- which is that final, angst-ridden admission of a by-then-obvious truth, "I love you."

The writing craft term "subtext" means that the "text" (what is actually being said) is "sub" or under that which seems to be the subject under discussion.

Here's a snatch of subtext dialogue from the screenplay BASIC INSTINCT:

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

INT. THE HOUSE

It is beautifully done in a Santa Fe motif.  She goes to a
bedroom of the living room.

                         18.


Nick sits down on a couch facing the bedroom she's walked
into.  Gus sits across from him, his back to the bedroom.
There is a coffee table between them.  She leaves the
bedroom door halfway open.

An old newspaper is on the coffee table them.  Nick reaches
for it.  The headline says:  VICE COP CLEARED IN TOURIST
SHOOTINGS.  A headline underneath says:  GRAND JURY SAYS
SHOOTINGS ACCIDENTAL.  There is a photograph of Nick.

He stares at the paper.

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    How long will this take?

Nick puts the paper down on the coffee table.  He is lost
in his thoughts.  Gus picks the paper up.

        NICK
        (looks up)
    I don't know.

Nick, facing the half open bedroom door, sees a mirror near
the wall of the bedroom.  The mirror reflects her in the
other corner of the bedroom.  She is taking her clothes
off.  He stares.  She strips down.  He sees her back. She
has a beautiful body.  Naked, she puts a dress on.  She
doesn't put any underwear on.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    Do you always keep old newspapers
    around?

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    Only when they make interesting
    reading.

And she is suddenly out of the bedroom.  She stands there,
smiles.  They look at each other a long beat.

        CATHERINE
        (finally)
    I'm ready.

They get up, head out.

        GUS
    You have the right to an attorney.

        CATHERINE
    Why would I need an attorney?

INT. THE CAR - DAY

They sit in the front; she is in the back.  The car goes
over the winding, two-lane Mt. Tamalpais road.
                         19.


The fog is heavy.  It's starting to rain.  We see the beach
far below.

        CATHERINE
    Do you have a cigarette?

        NICK
    I don't smoke.

        CATHERINE
    Yes you do.

        NICK
    I quit.

She smiles, looks at him.  A beat, and he turns away.
Another beat, and she lights a cigarette up.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    I thought you were out of
    cigarettes.

        CATHERINE
    I found some in my purse; would you
    like one?

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    I told you -- I quit.

        CATHERINE
    It won't last.

A beat, as she looks at him, and then he turns away.

        GUS
    You workin' on another book?

        CATHERINE
    Yes I am.

        GUS
    It must really be somehtin' --
    makin' stuff up all the time.

He watches her in the rearview mirror.

        CATHERINE
    It teaches you to lie.

        GUS
    How's that?
                         20.


        CATHERINE
    You make it up, but it has to be
    believable.  They call it
    suspension of disbelief.

        GUS
    I like that.  "Suspension of
    Disbelief."

He smiles at her in the mirror.

        NICK
    What's your new book about?

        CATHERINE
    A detective.  He falls for the
    wrong woman.

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    What happens to him?

She looks right into his eye.

        CATHERINE
    She kills him.

A beat, as they look at each other, and then he turns away
from her.  Gus watcher her in the rearview mirror.

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

You can get the whole screenplay (which showcases this technique throughout, as do almost every movie or TV Series episode today) at
http://sfy.ru/?script=basic_instinct

Notice how they're talking about smoking, and a book she's writing -- but that's not what they're talking ABOUT.  The subtext is all about Relationship -- about flirting -- about what they might be or become to each other. 

The REAL conversion is off-the-nose.

Now, back to the military Science Fiction novel with a bit of a love-story squeezed in between battle scenes, or frantic preparation for battle.

In this 11th book in the series about Kris Longknife, the issue that has kept Kris and her bodyguard apart during 10 novels is solved by a woman thought to be dead a long time ago, Kris's grandmother, also a ship's captain, thought lost in action.

Turns out, she led her battle squadron off in a chase across a galaxy, managed to escape her pursuers, just barely, and couldn't get home.  So she set up a colony on a world already occupied by some bird-like aliens with whom she hacked out a treaty of sorts. 

The issue Kris and her bodyguard have been dealing with is Navy Regulations against "fraternization" -- that is an anti-bullying regulation that is there to try to prevent a "superior" officer from trading good will and privileges for sexual favors from someone of lesser rank.

So those in the same chain of command who are (whatever) number of ranks apart aren't allowed to have a Relationship.

Kris's grandmother points out that because of shifts in titles and appointments, there were a few hours when Kris and her bodyguard were not in the same chain of command, and that the grandmother is empowered to conduct weddings.

They throw together a wedding ceremony using borrowed clothing, and well rehearsed wedding participants, and take off for a honeymoon at a coastal resort on the planet.

The romantic interlude is (appropriately) mostly nudity and sex, in very high contrast to the usual scenes in these 11 novels -- all very well written sex fantasy that keeps the characters in character.  But the dialogue lacks that "subtext" technique illustrated above.

Then the novel continues into another mission, more space-battle-tactics, arriving home to more frantic battle-preparations as great-big-bad-alien-killers approach, and a final battle where Kris dredges up some old Earth sea/air battle tactics.

Between long narrations of how they can stretch their resources to defend this solar system from the approaching aliens, Kris and her new husband have several scenes alone.

The issue of "fraternization regs" is raised, and Kris calls a conference of her staff leaders.  They rewrite the regs for the sake of morale, so there are a couple more sex interludes and a few times on the space station they build in orbit, they go out to a cafe for dinner. 

On page 316, near the end of the book, before the aliens arrive to try to take the planet, they go out to a restaurant on the space station (which now serves food that's mostly native to the planet).

Jack is the bodyguard/husband, Kris has 3 titles, one of which is Admiral.  Sal is Jack's A.I. computer and Nellie is Kris's A.I. computer.

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

I'm having dinner with my husband. Right!

"Do you know what's special about today?" Jack said, reaching across the table for her hands.

"Besides the cavalry arriving to either rescue us or go down in our defeat?"

"Forget the job," Jack growled.  "Today is our second anniversary.  It's been two months since we let Granny Rita talk us into taking the plunge.  Do you regret it?"

"Never," Kris said, squeezing Jack's hand.  "Two months.  I totally forgot about it.  I can hardly keep track of the time.  How'd you do it?"

"I had Sal do it for me."

"Nelly, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know it mattered to you.  I know it's a very romantic thing for you humans.  I just didn't know if it would include you, Kris."

"Yes, I'm human, and yes, I'm romantic, at least for Jack, and Jack, why are you doing all the girl things and me doing all the stupid boy stuff?" 

"You're the admiral," he said with a shrug.

Kris let out a sigh.  "I don't like that, Jack."

"But you have to.  That's what Longknives do.  They do what they have to dol."

"Well, I want to do more.  Stuff I want to do as well as what I have to do." 

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

Dinner arrives, and they talk about the food and then ...

------quote---------
"You amaze me, Jack.  You remember our anniversary and do it enough ahead of time to talk my granny ut of the fruits of her garden."

"Oh, I didn't talk her out of anything, it was pure horse-trading.  My Marines will deliver a truckload of fish offal to her and all her neighbors' gardens.  Nobody gets anything free from your granny."

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

Note how dialogue is substituted for narrative, and information is conveyed in TELL rather than SHOW.

Yes, it's fun banter, and yes I do love the styling -- and yes, after all these years of reading these novels, it's fabulous to "hear" them speak to each other so frankly -- but the dialogue is stilted, stiff, servicable, filling an interlude between lovingly detailed, subtly crafted battle scenes with some "words" that indicate they're still in love after all they've been through. 

Off-the-nose dialogue is show-not-tell -- it illustrates rather than states, allowing the reader to deduce what it means, and therefore the reader comes to participate in the story.

OK, so what CAN a writer do to finesse around these awkward moments, creating engrossing dialogue, quotable quotes, and

Why is there no way I can just rewrite that dialogue sequence, changing some words, restyling it, and bring it up to snuff for a modern Romance reader?

Here's why: the problem does not lie within this dialogue itself.  The writer is in a corner, there's a word-length limit, there has to be room for that final battle scene preceded by Kris sweating out what kind of battle plan might give her out-numbered force a chance.

The problem with this dialogue scene lies way back on page 66 to 86.

The problem here lies in the honeymoon scenes.

For this scene to be "off the nose" that honeymoon scene had to have additional "plants" inserted, images, symbols, and other devices that this scene could be fabricated from.

That inserted material had to be alluded to in other snatched moments -- perhaps gifting Kris with a certain flower on her access screen when she gets up in the morning, playing games with the calendar, etc. 

Since this is military science fiction, and this volume consists of more "logistics" problems than it does battle-tactics problems, the sexual innuendo and metaphore material has to be fabricated from shared combat experience (scenes missing here -- they don't work-out together, they don't fight each other, (they do shower together), they don't have a hand-to-hand-combat scene where the two of them are fighting an enemy.

There was opportunity for such together-scenes as their survey of the planet found other races of the natives who were not-so-friendly.  They could have found themselves in hand-to-hand-combat against unfriendly natives that they contrive to befriend.

This volume does have the more combative natives accepting positions in the space Navy to defend their planet, and Kris does consider promoting one of them to her personal staff.  So that story is there, in the background -- and was just passed over as a tell not show. 

The honeymoon scene could have been sliced in half to make room for a side-by-side or back-to-back combat scene which would provide the text to cover the sub-text in this 2-months-anniversary scene. 

There is the sub-genre of Action Romance, and this series of novels fits the description perfectly. 

The Longknife series is about combat, and Kris achieves results in combat that are ostensibly pure luck. 

There is a reason we have the term Sexual Politics and Battle of the Sexes.

This volume of the Kris Longknife series is about sexual politics.

But that issue is told not shown.

Kris's battle-commander results are LUCK.  Some characters resent her for that, others admire her, and the sensible ones stay as far away from her physical person as they can -- but they know which is the winning side in any conflict before it happens.

Watch this video of a veteran attributing combat results to luck:

VIDEO - IT'S ALL LUCK
http://youtu.be/iJsB2Xifq8c


Read Kris Longknife: DEFENDER, and watch for ways to restructure the early parts of the novel so that this crucial Romance Dinner Scene comes out with all the most powerful part of the content in subtext. 

Now find where you can use that same technique to restructure your work so that the dialogue stays "off-the-nose." 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Denvention 3 = Walk-a-con

I had a wonderful time, overall, and made several new acquaintances, learned a great deal and brainstormed some new screenwriting ideas. The overall theme of most conversations I was in was MARKETING -- promotion, advertising, blurb writing, pitching, salesmanship.

I arrived Tuesday Aug 5th. Jean was late in due to thunderstorms. We crashed that night and picked up our badges and program participant materials on Wednesday. That took an hour and a half. Some program participants stuck in the pre-registration "get your badge here" line, which you had to go through before getting your final panel schedule, were late to their panels because of this.

We were told there were hotspots for Internet access in the area, but until Thursday, I had no Internet access. We finally decided (Jean Lorrah and Torun Almer and I) to split the cost of a T-Mobile temporary account to get Torun's notebook online.

T-Mobile has a grand reputation. We thought the monetary expense would be the only expense. Instead, in order to complete and maintain the T-Mobile connection, Torun spent several hours over 4 or 5 days on her cell phone on tech support with T-Mobile, and it was a struggle. But we were able to file brief con reports and get a number of business emails attended to. Frankly, I don't recommend T-Mobile from hotels. The hotel access that was offered, though, was slower than T-Mobile. T-Mobile wasn't fast enough or enabled enough to allow sending a short video from Jean's camera or you might have had a video report. It was just a hassle all around.

Wednesday I attended a panel where Kristin Nelson was giving a slide presentation on how to write a cover blurb. Kristin is Linnea Sinclair's agent and it was marvelous to discover that Kristin is the bright, splendid, energetic and erudite person I'd expect for Linnea to choose as an agent. She really REALLY knows her business. Kristin used Linnea's covers as examples in her presentation.

Jean Lorrah took these notes (it was that kind of lecture you needed notes):

-----------------------------
The cover blurb (and the query letter, which ideally becomes the cover blurb) should be no more than nine sentences, but may be more than one paragraph. It should include these four elements and nothing more:

Catalyst

Backstory

Character

Inter-related Plot Elements

Any sentence that does not address one of those four elements should be removed.
------------------------

http://www.nelsonagency.com/ -- somewhere on there or a related URL there should be a FAQ page by Kristin with more details, but we can't seem to find it. Someone who knows the FAQ URL Kristin referred to, please drop a note on this blog.

At the end when Kristin Nelson opened the discussion to the audience, I interjected several comments to the audience full of writers about how reviewers use cover blurbs to extract a book from the avalanche of books publishers send us. And from the writer's point of view, in order to penetrate the reviewer's mind and be reviewed, it's best to write the cover blurb FIRST, then write the novel to fit it (which I've done on books of mine that got New York Times, Library Journal etc etc reviews). When I got home, I discovered Kristin had mentioned my comment in her blog.

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/

And that was mentioned in other blogs:

http://jennakrumlauf.blogspot.com/
http://www.lisashearin.com/blog.cfm

Thursday morning, Jean Lorrah and I opened the SFWA Suite -- made coffee and put out breakfast foods. A few dozen SFWA members (Science Fiction Writers of America -- see sfwa.org ) dropped by to tank up on coffee before their early panels. We met some people we hadn't known before and had catch-up conversations with old friends. The hours melted away!

Thursday afternoon I was on two panels that will remain memorable.

The first had an odd topic title about how large a galactic empire could be.

As I arrived for the panel, three fans with armloads of my books ambushed me for autographs. The program had me listed as doing autographs on Saturday, but the fans knew that wasn't going to happen because I don't do autographings on Saturday. I had put in a program change to a Sunday slot with Jean, but the daily newsletter hadn't published it yet. And they'd lugged all these books here. It had to be a mile or more from their hotel room.

There were 7 hotels scattered around the side of the convention center that was opposite where our convention space was. Even by Thursday it was clear we would spend more time walking than talking at this convention, and so it was. But my heart went out to those who carried so much extra weight so far in such thin air just to get my autograph.

So, sort of against the rules, I sat down at the panel table to sign autographs real-quick-like because the panel was starting. (usually you autograph after a panel)

In fact, the moderator came over and wanted me to leave because the next panel was about to start -- then I said but I'm on the next panel, not the previous one, and she laughed as everyone else took their places and found their name cards.

As panelists were being seated, a woman came up to me from the audience -- and I didn't get her name, but I remember her face. She said I'd analyzed one of her short stories at a previous convention and she'd done what I said had to be done to the story -- and had just a few days ago SOLD the story, her first sale. I told her to tell the audience what she'd told me, and she did. BIG CHEER!!!! I'm so bummed that I didn't write her name and the story title and publisher down so I could be sure everyone reads her story! (I do remember I liked it!) This may be Linnea-Sinclair-the-next-generation!

Most of the people in the audience were writers, so I ended up sketching a formula for how to use this question about the size of a galactic empire in WorldBuilding.

First we talked about TIME -- how long does it take to get information and/or goods from one end of the Empire to another? Any political structure is limited in size not by geography but transit time. I cited Ursula LeGuin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and the ansible technology.

Then we talked about MOTIVE. Why would anyone want a political organization that big? Why would any species (humans included) want or need to organize on such a scale. In all fiction, the key to plausibility is MOTIVE. In this case it has to be the motives of the non-humans (based in their biology) and the motives of humans based on the usual plus unusual circumstances.
The list of motives I have scribbled down here are:

a) PROFIT $$$ and otherwise, sometimes emotional

b) KNOWLEDGE and/or DATA (I was thinking of but did not mention Robert J. Sawyer's novel ROLLBACK which postulates aliens trying to get into touch with Earth by sending their own genetic code to Earth so we can create a breeding circle of members of their species. I later sat beside Sawyer at the con's autographing session but forgot to mention that!)

c) CURIOSITY -- just because you want to know what's on the other side

d) RELIGION -- maybe to convert everyone, or maybe because your religion says you must go see what's out there.

e) Uniting against an external threat -- maybe you need to organize the neighborhood against an extra-galactic threat. Maybe it's not a threat but you think it is.

f) ART -- often the first trade a newly discovered people engage in is "native art".

g) EXCESS POPULATION -- maybe finding colonizable planets and offloading criminals or just plain huge numbers of people is the motivation. Some mathematicians have shown you can't export excess population.

h) everything we haven't thought of -- those ideas make the BEST galactic novels

And then we discussed how such a galactic sprawl of a political unit might be governed, and why writers default to the "Empire" or central-control model. I mentioned the place of background in an artistic composition such as a novel, and we talked about sociological SF a bit.

It's amazing how fast an hour goes!

The second intensely memorable panel was on whether Star Trek has made a difference in our modern world. Well, I doubt anyone here has an answer to that other than "yes" which ends the panel in one word. However the four or five panelists raced on and on talking and talking about all the various contributions that one bit of fiction has made to our modern way of life.

Rick Sternbach (Star Trek art director) was on the panel, as was Roberta Rogow (Star Trek fan writer turned pro). And I was seated next to Marc Zicree whose Star Trek: New Voyages episode WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME was up for a Hugo. I have known Marc for at least twenty years, since he started in the TV business. He really deserved that Hugo but didn't win. (this time)

Marc kept saying things that were on the tip of my tongue and it was delightful to feel how someone currently working (hard and fast) in the thick of things in Hollywood sees and understands the forces shaping what I call the "Fiction Delivery System" in very much the same way that I do. That lends me a feeling of confidence in the future.

Marc Zicree is one of the leaders -- will be one of the most powerful leaders in Hollywood. It's not just that he can do so much. It's that he understands what he's doing and can teach it, as can (and does) Blake Snyder with his SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting.

Jean Lorrah said that she and her collaborator, Lois Wickstrom had taken Marc's telephone seminar on how to pitch a screenplay and it had made a big difference in how their ideas were treated by various studios.

Friday we toured the Dealer's Room. Well, no, we entered the Dealer's Room to shop.

But we got caught in conversations here and there -- one Dealer had none of our books shelved with "Authors at this Convention" -- but a few of them over in "Autographed Copies". Then we ran into a new publisher from Canada who had some classic volumes displayed, new editions of oh, I can't remember, I think Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. Our kind of stuff.

I don't have his card or his name written down, but I remember a long conversation in which we explained some of our more harrowing experiences with publishers and the kinds of writing we do. Rarely do writers have the chance to discuss publishing in depth with someone who is "a publisher" -- rather than an editor who works for a publisher. The running of a publishing business lends an entirely different perspective. This particular conversation gave me more material for my concept of "the fiction delivery system" as it is functioning today. Things are still in flux, and our times are "interesting" so I will remember this rambling conversation for a while.

Friday night, one of the most skillful organizers of fans of Sime~Gen, Kaires, put together the Sime~Gen Party, which we combined with the Broaduniverse party and the EPIC party. The room was ultra tiny and taken up mostly by the huge king size bed (maybe it was a California King). I kept telling people who came in that this was a 3-fer party, and we got it all in because the room was a Tardis. Everyone knew exactly what I meant! I love fandom!

People flowed through the room constantly from 8PM to Midnight and Jean Lorrah and I kept explaining what Sime~Gen is or what it has to do with Broaduniverse and EPIC.

Short form:
"Broad Universe is an organization of professional women writers; EPIC is the organization of e-Book professionals; Sime~Gen is a series of novels by two women who also have e-books."

Our party got a nice mention in the evening edition of the daily newsletter of the Con. There were dozens and dozens of parties, most of them lavishly decorated and serving liquor (two attributes we did not have). But WE got mentioned along with our raffle of Sime~Gen novels.

Jean and I set ourselves the objective on Saturday of seeing the Art Show. We didn't make it.

I have no idea why. We were late getting up because we were out after mid-night at the Sime~Gen Party. We talked and talked that morning -- mostly plot, writing theory, and screenwriting ideas and techniques of MARKETING. Jean and her screenwriting collaborator Lois Wickstrom (who wasn't at Worldcon) have read SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES! by Blake Snyder, which gave us a paradigm in common to talk about. Market-market-market. It's a topic we really haven't spent much time on during our careers! We need to learn more about marketing.

Somehow it was 2PM or so before we got to the Colorado Convention Center top floor where the Art Show and Dealer's Room were located. And the Art Show closed on us so they could tear down for the Art Auction.

Jean was bound and determined to shop the Dealer's Room and said that she just had to do it without me because between her own getting caught in conversations and my getting caught in conversations there was no way we were going to do it together! She was right. We separated and both of us managed to see most of the Dealer's Room.

This re-confirmed my old saying that the mean-free-path of a pro at a con is about 15 feet.

Sunday, Jean and I did the convention autographing session. About 7 or 10 people sitting at a long table, each doing a 45 minute stint, but not all arriving or departing at the same time. Complicated.

People with books formed long lines, and sometimes a second segment of a line would hold back until the next writer swapped seats with the previous writer then flood forward. People who had more than 3 books to get signed had to go through the waiting line twice or more.

I was amazed that after the folks that ambushed me, and the other things I'd signed on the fly, there were still quite a few people who had read the program changes and arrived on time for my autograph slot. I signed only ONE copy of the Denvention III program book, so that will be a collector's item.

I keep thinking I've signed every copy of FACES OF SCIENCE FICTION ever printed -- and someone brings yet another copy! And I signed a pristine copy of STAR TREK LIVES! plus a first edition HOUSE OF ZEOR. The others are a blur because, as I noted above, somewhere in the middle of my signing stint, Robert J. Sawyer sat down next to me. I do love his books! That grabbed most of my attention.

After the autographing, there was a group of soft tissue massage professionals offering writers who autographed a free massage. I raced right over there and I got a massage from Patricia "Pat" J. Peterson, NCMT, who does Swedish, Polarity, Sports Massage as well as Cranialsacral Therapy -- boy, is she GOOD.

She apparently doesn't have a website and has all the clients she can handle. She's local to the Denver area. Email me if you need her phone number.

After that, I did another tour of the Dealer's Room. I stopped to look at some jewelry and the table next to that was from INTERZONE (the British magazine which carries science fiction and fantasy). I got to talking (well, I wasn't WALKING for a change) and gave them a copy of my newsletter. They insisted on giving me a copy of the magazine and I selected at random a 2006 edition. Then I went to meet Jean in the Green Room and set the magazine before her with the full back cover advertisement for a novel showing. "What do you think of this advertisement?"

As I said, the theme of all the convention for us, every conversation somehow, was marketing, promotion, advertising. Even a couple of email notes from Lois Wickstrom were about marketing, and believe me that's not the only topic Lois knows about! So it was fitting that the magazine I was given had this giant ad on the back with a single sentence in huge red letters on black, a bit of artwork at the top, the book cover at the bottom.

It was so "professional" on the surface, and so out of step with all the marketing stuff we'd been hearing and talking about that I wanted to see if Jean saw what I saw. (Keep in mind it's British.)

Jean basically did agree, which is unusual, so you can pretty much depend on it being true. The ad was totally generic but so generic it seemed more confusing than projecting the message "You want to read this book!"

So as people came in for one last cup of coffee (there actually was some food left; the Greenroom staff did a splendid job!!!) and sat down at our table (which was next to the coffee) I kept showing them (all men, writers and editors) this advertisement and asking what they make of it.

Some thought it was horror genre, some thought it was vampire, some thought it was poorly done -- nobody said the ad made them want the book.

So some people left, new people came, and I kept showing this ad for evaluation. I think we sat there for over an hour discussing that advertisement and MARKETING -- wrapping up the convention on the same theme it had started with at Kristin Nelson's panel on Linnea Sinclair's cover copy.

None of those who passed through our discussion sited Kristin Nelson's rules for cover copy writing though the ad violated them all. No matter how long you've been in this business, there is always more and MORE to learn.

Some of my memories of this convention are encapsulated in bright light and detached from Time.

At one point, in the Green Room, we met a new writer, Fancis Hamit, who is self-publishing and promoting a historical novel titled The Shenandoah Spy about a woman (who really existed) who became an Army Captain at age 18 in 1862. We talked marketing.

At another point in the Green Room, we ran into Beverly A. Hale who recalled when Jean and I had helped her teach a course in composition by providing some marked-up manuscript pages proving that professional writers REWRITE. We have a testimonial from her to post on our writing school. ( http://www.simegen.com/school/ ) That of course, has everything to do with Marketing because to sell and get published you must rewrite to specifications and today those specifications are dictated more and more by the Marketing Department.

In the airport van on the way home, I found myself sitting behind Mike Shepherd who writes the KRIS LONGKNIFE series for Ace Books. I love those books and give them my top recommendation every time I review one. He told me his motive for writing about this very strong but very feminine character, Kris Longknife is so that his granddaughter will have a hero to relate to as she grows up.

I can't think of a more worthy motive for writing -- but I tell you, those books are SPLENDID. If you like Linnea Sinclair's stuff, read Mike Shepherd.

My husband and I got to the airport to discover that United Airlines had cancelled our flight and wanted to put us on a flight the NEXT DAY. But one of the United Employees who worked the alternate arrangements desk, a Mr. Doherty who said he had a relative at the WorldCon, went out of his way to find us two seats together on US Air that would get us home approximately at the same time that the United flight would -- but we had to change planes in Colorado Springs. He walked us to the front of the Security Line or we'd never have made that flight (which was loading as he was typing into his computer!).

So the next time you see someone with an employee badge walking someone through the line reserved for flight crews, don't be too upset by it, please. If we'd missed that hop to Colorado Springs, I wouldn't be home yet (THANK YOU MR. DOHERTY). And we had to do all the security things, including take our shoes off!

When we got to the US Air desk in Colorado Springs, we were told they had never heard of us, but apparently we got there before their computers could update the database because we were put on the flight, there were two seats together numbered as our boarding passes said, and we weren't boarded last on standby! THANK YOU MR. DOHERTY!!!

All in all, it was a wonderful 6 days, but now work is so badly backed up I don't know what to do first. Everything on my desk is top priority and there's only one me!

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