What Does She See In Him?

This is going to be an oddly rambling post, especially juxtaposed to the 2 on Scene structure and the Plot Vs. Story one on walking and chewing gum.

But trust me, all these rambling bits and pieces will eventually come together into something you might use to generate that elusive Mega-Alien Romance Movie-TV Series.

First I have to acknowledge that August 6th was a sad day for us as writers and as movie goers. Several of the Titans of The Biz passed away during that week, including the young and vibrant genius I keep quoting here, Blake Snyder.

Go to his website and drop a note on the blog at http://www.blakesnyder.com

His third book is due out this fall. I'm sure I'll be quoting it.

See a shortened list of those who've passed on at
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/08/rip-notices.html

I hope I don't have to add any more any time soon.

As I've said before, what I'm attempting to convey with these posts on writing craft and the internal dynamics of the PNRomance, is just the essence our common heritage of campfire storytelling art and craft passed down through the generations.

These losses just make our task more formidable but also more urgent. Techniques must be passed on, taken up, carried on, and passed on again. This is our legacy for the far, far future of humankind. Our job here is to infuse that legacy with love.

Don't think that because you haven't heard of or memorized some director's or writer's byline that they haven't been contributing to our success with this task of illuminating a genre.

We are regarding Alien Romance as a genre or a crossed-genre. Some people are using the term "Speculative Romance" but SF never succeeded under the title "Speculative Fiction." It makes dictionary sense, but somehow not commercial sense. But this post isn't about what we call what we do. It's about the components that will eventually generate a label that will carry the genre to prominence. In this case "What Does She See In Him?"

See my comment on Margaret Carter's August 6th entry on this blog about Lovecraft and Romance that somehow lacks a title and thus a specific URL.

So once again let's revisit several of the craft techniques we've been discussing and synthesize them, doing several at once, finding the connecting links among all these apparently different writing processes.

In this effort, we may be able to resolve some of the conflicts we see between ways of teaching and ways of learning the fictioneer's trade.

So, what the heck DOES "she" see in "him?"

The reason that obvious question (that every Romance editor reads MS's looking for the answer to) is so hard to answer (in a writing lesson, in life, and when writing a novel) is that it is incredibly poorly phrased.

A good half, maybe 90%, of the answer to any math problem lies within the statement of the problem.

This key question to the Romance Genre Signature is poorly phrased for the same reason I discussed in Plot Vs. Story

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

Writers who set out to teach writing all seem to use different words to refer to the same moving parts of stories because writers are mostly readers who are self-taught to become writers (since it's unskilled work, a hobby anyone can do, who would deign to teach it?) and have to make up their own vocabulary for what their artist's eye sees.

Yeah, it's not just the Romance or Alien Romance genres that are disregarded. It's WRITING that bears a stigma (not the stories produced but the craft itself). Ask any wife with a contract to deliver a book on deadline. Editors get more respect.

I have yet to cover in this blog the difference between an Editor and a Writer. These two skills require two totally separate brain functions which produce individuals with completely distinctive traits.

Producers and Writers likewise are distinctively different, which you'll see after you know a bunch.

But sometimes you get both in one package. Fred Pohl leaps instantly to mind. It will be a long post when I tackle that personality difference, but for the moment, let's focus on this nagging question that you, as a writer, must answer for the editor to decipher well enough to buy your MS.

What does she see in him?

To answer that question in your fiction convincingly, you must have an answer that makes sense to you, then you need to orchestrate a large number of these individual writing craft skills we've been illuminating, and you must do that orchestrating not with the conscious mind but with the subconscious.

That means "walk and chew gum," Or drive and sing along with your iPod, or cook and watch soap opera. Yeah, now you've got it. You must multi-task when you write.

You learn the procedures individually, then you combine them, doing two at once, then three at once, etc. until you're doing everything at once and don't even know it.

The typical daily 5PM routine of a Mother of small children comes to mind. You can do that; you can write a novel.

So using all these skills you have to convince an editor or producer that "She" does indeed see something in "Him," something that the READER/VIEWER will actually understand without having to think too hard, and that something explains why "She" does wacky things to be with "Him."

And you have to convince an editor your characters' actions make sense when the editor herself (himself sometimes) has no clue that the question is indeed poorly phrased.

What a tall order. (yeah, I love cliches)

So where to start figuring this out?

We discussed the construction of the HEA, the Happily Ever After ending that is so much a signature element of the Romance Genre that it must be the target ending for the Alien Romance, nevermind that not all SF ends happily.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

The HEA ending has to evoke a certain feeling in a reader.

More, it has to ping that bell for a huge readership composed of a lot of different kinds of people who maybe have at most one or two things in common.

An ENDING can be factored into its component parts to create a BEGINNING, which is why some writers start by writing the ending first.

The ENDING (HEA or not) contains all the elements within the story. All. No exceptions unless it's a series, in which case the Story Arc overarching all the volumes is the DRAMATIC UNIT that contains all the smaller ones, and each volume is a dramatic unit holding up that arch.

The structure-within-a-structure motif applies to every genre. Nothing can be in the composition that does not figure into understanding the ending. That's what it means "end." It won't feel like an ending at all if there are pieces in the drama that are left out of the ending (of the novel or the series, whichever, but everything drives toward that ENDING). It has to be an ending to be satisfying to the consumer who paid you to do this. And "ending" by definition contains ALL the elements that went before it.

The HEA is an ending.

But the HEA is not the ending of the Plot. It's not the ending of the Story. It's the ending of a DRAMATIC UNIT.

We discussed The Scene as a DRAMATIC UNIT, but I don't think I pointed out strongly enough that the entire story is a DRAMATIC UNIT, and if the story is in a series, then the whole series is likewise a DRAMATIC UNIT. (I'm putting these moving-parts tech terms in CAPS for a reason. I'm not shouting at you. I want you to be able to find the section of this discussion that answers questions that will arise later.)

Think about what that "entire story is a dramatic unit composed of smaller but identical dramatic units" concept means in terms of this poorly stated question, "What Does She See In Him?"

A Dramatic Unit starts with a feeling -- ANTICIPATION -- and ends with a feeling -- SATISFACTION.

The little dramatic units all string together in a rising arc of tension, driving toward that ultimate satisfaction, but to get there, to "rise" in emotional tension, each small unit must deliver something, a teaser, a hint of how that ending will feel. (sound familiar? It is, pretty much, like sex.)

HEA is a type of satisfaction. It is primarily the reader's satisfaction. Readers pay the bills, and have to get what they thought they paid for or they won't buy again.

So something has to be satisfied.

Before you can deliver an emotion driven by anticipated satisfaction, you (as any salesman knows) must first awaken curiosity, desire, need, an awareness of the lack of something. But more than an awareness of a lack (at a friend's wedding, crying because you don't have anyone to marry), the salesman (i.e. the writer, in this case) must first awaken ANTICIPATION that the lack, whatever it is, will be SATISFIED at the end.

In general, the novel can deliver any sort of satisfaction.

A mystery delivers the solution, satisfying the need to know (and the best is when the reader gets their guess about the solution ratified, but it can't be too easy.) A Western or Action Drama delivers dead bad buys and righteous good guys surviving.

The Romance and all genres crossed into Romance (Vampire, Lovecraft Horror, SF, Paranormal, Action, etc) has to deliver the HEA. The HEA is an extrapolation into a SECURE and PREDICTABLE future.

So if the HEA is the defining element in Romance, why does "she" have to see anything at all in "him?"

Take for example the woman on the hunt for a man, let's title this story STALKING WOMAN.

She cries at a friend's wedding, bereft with loneliness. She spies a guy. She sets her sights. She executes her plan. She hooks him. She preens at her wedding. She has achieved her goal, totally triumphant.

Is that an HEA?

No, it's an Action Adventure ending, goal achieved. War won. Captivity escaped or survived. Or as a romance reader might assess that ending, it's trouble in the making. Therefore, in a Romance, that wedding would be the MIDDLE (down-point) of the novel, where her real troubles begin, with the stakes raised, maybe Mr. Right appears as a waiter at her wedding to Mr. Wrong? Or it might make a decent opening to something like MR. AND MRS. SMITH which I discussed at some length in

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html
and
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

What's the connection (walk and chew gum) between the CAUSE OF THE ATTRACTION and the EXTRAPOLATION INTO THE FUTURE ending? Think again of STALKING WOMAN.

Where is the error in phrasing the question, "What Does She See In Him?" And vice-versa of course.

Your objective is to deliver an HEA to a reader you've never met and probably won't. How do you know what will satisfy that reader, what their idea of HAPPY might be? How do you know that your reader will be enthralled by a woman who sees heroism in a truck driver? They might be repelled by heroism in a truck driver. What kind of HEA can a truck driver's wife expect?

Does it matter "what" causes the attraction in "What Does She See In Him?" Will any human trait work as "attractive" enough for any reader you might reach to anticipate the satisfaction of a permanent relationship?

Next think about "See." What does she SEE in him (& Vice-Versa).

Does the character have to "see" something in another character in order to have their romance genes activated?

That is, "see" in the sense of be consciously aware.

Is it indeed the CHARACTER who has to understand why she is attracted to this guy, in order for the READER to experience anticipation satisfied?

Do people in real life know why they marry a particular person? Are they always right about that?

Does a reader have to know the exact and true REASON that one character is attracted to another? And does the reader have to agree with the character about "what" the attracting trait is? Might not the reader "see" a different attracting attribute than the attracted character THINKS is causing the attraction?

Who among us understands themselves deeply enough to articulate what it is about our spouse that attracted or attracts us?

Do you know why you dislike certain people? Or do you just make up excuses, rationalizations for a feeling you feel, but somehow need to explain because our culture demands that we explain ourselves?

Can a reader attain satisfaction and an HEA sensation if all you offer is a rationalization about why one character is attracted to another, knowing that what one person sees in another may not always actually be there?

Thus the dual-POV Romance lets the reader see what he sees in her, what she sees in him, and maybe that neither one is seeing correctly.

But then does everyone reading this know what is REALLY going on inside their own subconscious mind? As the writer, you need to do most of your writing work subconsciously, outside your own awareness, and you need to trust your subconscious to produce usable material. How much do you really need to understand about your own subconscious in order to achieve that? (Well, as everyone knows, writing is unskilled labor, you see. So easy anyone can do it.)

Remember, we're talking about SF or SF Romance, or Paranormal Romance, where the two characters involved might not be of the same species. There may be no "she" or "him" involved at all.

For me, that's what makes it interesting. (see my Dushau Trilogy - and if you can't find it at a reasonable price, I'm expecting it'll be available again in a new edition. Subscribe to this blog, or see my FriendFeed box for other ways to get announcements.)

So this discussion of such a simple question is getting really confusing. Such a mess.

"What does "She" see in "Him?"

When answering a question that is so apparently simple leads to a mess like this, it's reasonable to suspect the question was not phrased well, and so can't be answered directly.

We're juggling a lot of parameters here, all moving parts in the fiction delivery system.

A) The Editor
B) The Reader
C) The Characters
D) The Reviewer
E) The Writer

All of these have to achieve satisfaction at the end of your dramatic unit. Yes, you get to be satisfied, too.

All these people are all different. Three of them you'll never really know well, or at least don't know now. (even if you write a book on contract for a given editor, that editor may move before your book is turned in)

How do you figure out what all these people are anticipating and what will satisfy their anticipation and give them a sense of a secure future? And what has the answer to that question got to do with the problem of what one character sees in another?

I have an answer to that. It may not be your answer.

Some writers maybe shouldn't even know their own answer to that! Too much conscious input can ruin a story, which is another reason I use editingcircle.blogspot.com for analyzing THROW AWAY exercises at writing craft techniques. If you workshop a story you want to sell, focusing conscious critical attention on every moving part, you end up producing an unsellable mess that looks like an assignment for a writing course, not a story for publication. So you need to make up toss-off stuff to workshop and practice techniques, (doing scales at home) then PERFORM your actual story for sale and send it to an editor (dress rehearsal) THEN finally perform the rewrite to editorial specs for publication.

Now that you've gnawed on this problem set a bit, I'll show you my answer if you show me yours (that's what the comments section here is for).

If you've been reading my posts here for the last two years or so, you probably know my answer.

PHILOSOPHY.

Philosophy is the carrier wave that you impress your information on, and it carries that information to your editor, reader, reviewer (me), and back to yourself, delivering satisfaction.

The carrier wave of the universe.

I hope you all understand radio and broadcast TV well enough to understand how a carrier wave works. It's like the dial tone you hear when you open your telephone and it's ready for a call. (but a dial tone isn't a carrier wave)

A carrier wave is a plain, simple, smooth, regular ripple, a hum underneath the universe. In STAR WARS terms, The Force which can carry A DISTURBANCE to those sensitive to the carrier wave.

In the case of humans and culture (yours, your reader's, your editor's), the carrier wave is our ambient culture's values. Our philosophy.

The USA is an amalgam of dozens of disparate and often conflicting cultural heritages, which is one reason some of our artistic products such as films do well in other countries. Most individuals in the USA partake of several conflicting philosophies. It's a wonder we're even a little bit functional!

The writer is a performing artist who selectively recreates the reader's reality (which is the carrier wave that connects writer and reader).

Your philosophy (you have one even if you don't know it) shapes what you "see" as reality. No two of us see the same reality. We filter whatever objective reality may be out there into a shape and color that fits our philosophy.

Philosophy comes first. Emotions are shaped by philosophy. Actions are powered by emotion. Results proceed to manifest - and this is the spooky part - to express in concrete, everyday reality, the exact philosophy the subconscious holds as that philosophy flows down through the lower 3 levels. The universe is all of one piece.

In previous posts here, I showed you how that works with the level of Actions and Material results, in the 20 posts on the Tarot.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/10/10-swords-your-chickens-come-home-to.html -- has an index of the previous posts

The levels of Philosophy and Emotion, Wands and Cups, are covered in two as yet unpublished volumes, but I'm hoping to have those available soon. Delays keep happening.

The artist selects carefully among all the bits of philosophy that she knows, to highlight and explicate those bits of philosophy that the writer, editor, reviewer and reader have in common. That's why a writer must know more philosophy than almost any other profession, philosophers included.

To create the bonding force between two characters, a romance writer selects bits of reality and leaves out other bits, to bring a picture, an image, a pattern to the foreground, a pattern the reader (and editor) will recognize only subconsciously.

When a reader recognizes some pattern in a story subconsciously, they "buy into" the premise of the fiction (believe six impossible things before breakfast). The World the writer has Built becomes real to the reader even if it mostly doesn't resemble their ambient reality.

The congruence between the reader's perceived ambient reality and the fictional built world becomes the CARRIER WAVE, the philosophical juncture between the subconscious of the writer and the subconscious of the reader.

THUS

The question, "What does she see in him" becomes utterly meaningless.

What she is consciously aware of, uses as an excuse, or rationalizes about him is NOT the source of the attraction, and satisfying that rationalization would produce no more pleasure than satisfying any other neurotic need ever does.

Neurotic need: take for example someone whose neurotic need is to be rich. Goes to school, gets degrees, works hard, workaholic trait busts up the family, gets HUGE fortune amassed, commits suicide leaving a note about misery. (notice that I told a story here in PLOT OUTLINE form)

A neurotic need is one that can't be satisfied by the apparent target of that need.

"What she sees in him" is that kind of illusion or twist. No amount of "him" will satisfy her need for him.

That's how it is in the real world. Our subconscious, true needs, bind us to each other, not our conscious rationalized needs (which often drive us apart - hey, guys, CONFLICT IS THE ESSENCE OF STORY).

Depict that subconscious binding force via your selective recreation of reality, i.e. worldbuilding, in your fiction, and your characters walk off the page into your readers' dreams.

Trying to answer the question "What does she see in him" creates what Hollywood calls "on the nose" dialogue and plotting. It just fails to communicate, or amuse, or to mean anything because it says what it means rather than placing the real meaning in subtext.

"On the nose" dialogue gets instant rejection in Hollywood. "On the nose" plotting gets instant rejection in Manhattan.

So "What does she see in him" becomes a totally new question. You should restate it for yourself, because your restatement may not be mine, and the stating is an artform in itself.

But mine is, "What subconscious element binds writer, reader, editor, reviewer, and CHARACTER together? What is the carrier wave?"

The carrier wave will be found in the philosophy.

Once you've sorted the carrier wave out of the background noise of our ambient culture, you can use it to carry your information (emotion is information). Then you will have the tone or wavelength that becomes your THEME.

How do you find themes? How do you figure out what themes will work for this or that story, plot or drama?

This subject is a big, amorphous mass of sticky stuff. How can you train your subconscious to sort through it all and find ART you can use to convey your ideas?

Remember, readers live in a big amorphous mass of sticky stuff that doesn't make any sense to them. They read novels to be shown patterns which they can later see hidden in the stuff of life. That's what artists do, find and display patterns that art consumers won't discover on their own.

So how do you train yourself to look at your world, the same world your readers live in, and re-sort the amorphous mass of reality into a pattern your readers will enjoy because you can make life make sense to them? (i.e. deliver to them an HEA that is plausible enough to feel in their bones)

Back again to PHILOSOPHY (my answer to most questions).

That big amorphous mass we call reality sorts itself very neatly into patterns of 10 compartments, and once sorted neatly enough, every living person on this earth will find something in it to recognize, and something to respond to emotionally because it communicates directly to the subconscious.

That pattern of 10 is most commonly and easily available as the Tarot.

One of the first things you learn when you start to study Tarot is that it pretty much pre-dates most religions and contains the recognizable basics of all religions. The understructure is the structure of the universe, and all religions are derived from ways that Avatars have used to explain what they saw when then ascended on High and viewed All Reality from the perspective of the Throne.

Thus, internalizing the structure of The Tarot, and using that structure as your carrier wave, can let you communicate with readers of vastly disparate religions, and even atheists and agnostics.

The Tarot is particularly well suited to communicating Love.

That's why, when this blog posed the question of why it is that Alien Romance is not a highly respected genre, and the question of what we can do to change that arose, I decided to finish my series of volumes on The Tarot and make them available.

The way of looking at the world through the structure of Tarot shows reality as iterations of a unified pattern of 10. It is just one of the many (MANY) philosophies extant in the USA nevermind the rest of the world. It's not a question of "right" or "wrong." It's a question of what we have in common, and of all those elements in common, what can be used in Worldbuilding.

This pattern of 10 method, and subsets of it, subsume religious and philosophical barriers, and can be accessed by any artist (you don't need a mathematical mind).

From explaining Tarot for writers, I went to giving a primer on Astrology in a series of posts starting 7/15/2008
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers.html

There are 5 posts so far directly on astrology and a few other posts mentioning it in passing.

Astrology is also mentioned in the posts on Tarot because they are really the same subject, and if you know one, it's easy to explain the other in terms of the one. It doesn't matter which you start with.

These two esoteric disciplines, Tarot and Astrology, address the SYMBOLISM we all share as human beings. I've barely touched on how the writer can use symbolism in fiction. Academics write papers on it. I'm sure you've all studied it in college.

Tarot and Astrology are not separate and apart from Psychology, Sociology, Archeology, Anthropology, Linguistics, or even bio-physics.

If you know any of those academic disciplines, you will immediately pick up on the repetitive echoes of them in Tarot and Astrology. You may discover there's nothing left for you to learn from Tarot and Astrology. Most of your readers won't know these disciplines either, and you should never let your knowledge show through "on the nose" in your fiction.

As with the terminology of the difference between plot and story and drama, it doesn't matter what you call this carrier wave element of humanity that binds us all, and binds us into pairs, and then families. I call it philosophy. Invent your own term.

You don't have to be gnostic or agnostic or atheist or a follower of any religion to "get it" on the level an artist needs to have it in order to create with philosophy.

It doesn't matter what you CALL the human soul, or the way our souls connect.

It does matter that you have a clean, clear, operational, precise and accurate personal internal grasp of the moving parts and working components of the amorphous sticky-ball we are embedded in.

The ARTIST's job is to peel away the layers of sticky and amorphous slop in our universe and reveal the pattern underneath it.

That is what those who formulated the question "What Does She See In Him?" were groping toward without knowing it.

The question that the artist must answer for the reader in metaphorical visual terms, though the characters are ignorant and should remain ignorant, is "Which universal elements do "She" and "Him" share?"

Do they live in the same universe or different universes?

What two lovers believe doesn't matter. Look how many mixed marriages work just fine!

The binding force of the universe that rivets us into pairs is not affected by belief or rationalizations. It is a product of the carrier wave subsuming our reality.

The easiest and quickest way I have found for understanding the relationship between Philosophy, Emotion, Thought, and Deed is this Tarot Structure study that I walked you through on this blog.

But I only explored a single pathway connecting the 10 different states of mind. There are ever so many other ways to connect Her this to His that.

The interconnecting pathways between the 10 different states of consciousness sort the impossibly complex mess of reality into something even the human mind can handle and the human heart can respond to. All readers subconsciously know this pattern, and exult to see it depicted in art.

Tarot is the artist's filing system. It clarifies the subconscious and makes it accessible to your art.

It's not what one person "sees" in another. It's what one person responds to in another (CUPS - Romance is all about CUPS, EMOTION), and why that response happens.

Once you can parse the universe of your everyday reality into this ten-fold filing system, the binding forces among souls becomes clear. If you can show that clarity to your readers, they will respond with joy and relief and satisfaction of understanding that love is not mysterious nor bewildering nor crippling.

This 10-unit model of the universe explicated by Tarot corresponds to what the old time mystics called The Music Of The Spheres, and yes there is a relationship to the planets of our solar system. And you can learn it well enough to play that Music - writing is a performing art. Love, Romance and even Sex all have an analogue in Music.

So you take my 25 blog posts and amalgamate them, infuse the result with your OWN philosophy (not mine, for crying out loud!), select from that amalgam, and extract a theme you can build a world to showcase.

Then answer the question in your fiction: What note is "She" tuned to? What scale is "She" singing on?

She will bond with a lover who can play her as if she were the Stradivarius among women. He will bond with a lover who can play him as if he were a Steinway among men.

See? It's not "what" or conscious awareness of a trait. It's recognition of that 10-fold pattern underlying the Tarot, and the 10-fold variable model of human personality inherent in Astrology (9 planets, Sun and Moon make 11 just like Tarot's shadowy 11th Sepherah). Isn't it odd that Pluto was demoted from planet status, a shadowy 11th element in our Astrology?

Western music uses an 8 tone based musical scale. But that's not an intrinsic property of sound. It's a convention. Ever listened to Japanese music?

Analogy, archetype, meta-cognition, fuzzy math. Meat and potatoes for the writer.

Go listen to the Music of the Spheres and determine what scale you will perform your masterpiece in. Listen to some Opera duets between male and female singers. There's no "what" and no "see" involved. It's soul level attunement.

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

6 Tricks of Scene Structure - Part 2

My original post on Scene Structure drew a very interesting question from Kathleen McIver paraphrased:

Ah, pardon me ... what is a scene?

My instant reaction: "Um. Ooops."

So I dashed off a quick answer to the question in the comments section of 6 Tricks of Scene Structure

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

You'll want to read the comments, too because I had to fill in other gaps in what I'd covered.

But of course, my quick comments are not sufficient to really answer the question, "What actually is a scene and how do you identify a scene in finished works?" And perhaps more importantly, Kathleen asked:

"And does this mean that we, as the author, should be able to break down our entire novel into 3-page sections, each of which has these elements?"

Even more wisely, Kathleen noted how she didn't know enough to phrase a question the answer to which would provide the information she's missing. I truly respect that mental capacity! Wow, this is one sharp lady.

So I've been thinking about this for a couple of days.

It's funny what you forget you know, and how you can assume that others know it as well as you do.

But some people just grow up into the skill without noticing they learned anything. Others have to learn one painful lesson (scathing review) at a time. The ones who have to learn it make the best teachers of it.

Linnea Sinclair touched on this once again in her post on Worldbuilding techniques that are necessary even in contemporary Earth settings.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/world-building-for-writers-politics.html

Contemporary authors do worldbuilding, too, and the better they do it the broader audience they reach. Really, audience is proportionate to this craft skill because, when added to a High Concept the worldbuilding is the tool that delivers the punch the High Concept hints may be there.

Also, the better the worldbuilding, the more concise and sharp the dialogue because the characters have something to talk to each other about besides the worldbuilding that each of them take for granted.

Careful worldbuilding helps avoid the expository lump. But it's a tricky tool.

The trick to using the worldbuilding tool is THE SCENE.

And the scene structure discipline also helps eliminate the lumpish aspect of exposition.

This was articulated by Blake Snyder in SAVE THE CAT! where he labels it the POPE IN THE POOL technique and describes it as an expository lump disguised as dialogue between two people sitting across an office desk. The window behind the desk is over an indoor pool in the Vatican. The Vistor Chair can see the Pope disrobing and diving into the pool. The Official behind the desk can't see that. (Blake's field is comedy, and mine isn't)

I haven't seen the movie that scene is from. But if it were my scene, I would start it when the Visitor enters the office, shakes hands, sits down and the Official opens with the subject of (the expository lump). Just where the lump gets boring, the Pope enters the swimming pool, and behaves as if not observed, taking his swim. Meanwhile, the conversation hits a snag.

Remember the key to great dialogue is that every spoken encounter (very often a scene is simply two or more characters exchanging words) is MORTAL COMBAT of some sort (even in Romance; sexy foreplay is mortal combat of a sort -- "I want you now." "Wait a while -- then again, maybe not tonight."

Every dialogue exchange (even in novels) has to advance the plot AND the characterization AND relationship, as well as the story.

Some dialogue exchanges lap over from one scene to another, and leave over punctuation comments for later. The dialogue in the film, Mr. And Mrs. Smith illustrates this technique.

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

A "scene" is not a discrete entity, isolated from the rest of the story.

Like atoms reach out and bond with other atoms (sometimes of different elements) to form molecules, so scenes reach out and bond with other scenes sometimes of different types, to become a story (novel or film; same rule)

Dialogue can be the binding factor.

One dialogue technique I particularly like is Pillow Talk.

If a couple has an issue arise over breakfast, separates to race through the day overcoming harrowing obstacles toward minimally rewarding goals, arrive home pulverized and exhausted, blow off excess energy in sex, then exchange comments about the morning's issue in brief, maybe one-word, comments, you get that binding force making a scene come full circle.

The morning breakfast scene raised an issue, the issue was discussed in the underlying theme of what each individual faced alone during the day, that harrowing experience changed their attitude or take on the issue, and after sex, with barriers down the couple is able to resolve the original conflict.

The couple re-binds during pillow talk, and the marriage becomes more sound because each took a beating during the day.

In Mr. And Mrs. Smith, we see a couple who keeps secrets from each other. The secret each keeps is that their day-job is to kill people, and each is really REALLY good at it.

They have marriage issues because of the reticence. They resolve those issues with dialogue snippets of an ongoing conversation that continues as they team up to fight against an overwhelming force trying to kill each or both of them.

So the conversation continues in bits of dialogue strewn through almost all of the scenes, and reinforced by the visuals chosen as background for those scenes (as Pope In The Pool).

So a "Scene" is NOT simply a conversation unit.

What exactly is the property that defines a "Scene"?

Is it an artform to identify scenes? Or just another of the cut and dried techniques anyone can learn?

Well, maybe a little of both, but Hollywood has hammered out this definition to a science. Some books on screenwriting go into it in detail.

Mostly, though, you learn it by reading and watching a lot of stories looking to see if each story follows "the rules" you've just learned about scenes.

Originally, the stage play worked out that a "scene" goes from when a character enters the stage, to when that or some other character leaves.

"Scene" is defined by who's on stage (or camera).

That's because in real life, a group dynamic is defined by who's there and what they know about whom, and what the other guy does not know about whichever issue is going on. What some character wants another to know, and what must be withheld (Conversation in the murder mansion does not flow freely when they know Columbo is in the room.)

Real life has scenes, too.

"Don't make a scene in the restaurant this time."

What does that mean?

It means "Don't wax dramatic and attract attention with hystrionics."

If you must fight, whisper?

And there you have the "Scene" defined as a unit of story.

It's a DRAMATIC UNIT.

It starts when a trigger for drama appears. The meat of the scene, the MIDDLE, delivers (as the middle of a story) a CHANGE that advances the PLOT and preferably the story too. The dramatic unit ends when explosion that's been triggered dissipates leaving "damage" or change behind. That changed Situation is the hook for the next scene in the chain.

As I've detailed any number of times in these writing technique essays, the backbone of the story is CONFLICT and the two (or more) units that conflict RESPOND TO EACH OTHER - so that the plot is the sequence of events along a BECAUSE CHAIN.

Because Mom grounded Michael, he climbed out his bedroom window, the trelis broke, he fell, broke his ankel, spent Christmas in the hospital, met the girl he would eventually marry and hated her on sight.

The trellis would not have broken had his mother not grounded him, etc, BECAUSE -- the plot is the chain of because events.

The story is the reason (character motivation) that the characters respond this way not that way to whatever event confronts them.

Michael, living a different story, would not have climbed out the window. He might have stolen Mom's car keys (before he got his license even) and stormed out the front door, driving off despite her effort to stop him. Maybe he then runs over her as he guns the motor out of the driveway?

THAT is the story - what grounding means to Michael, what his options are, which option he chooses and why, and what he learns from that choice so that when confronted with the same kind of choice toward the END, he chooses differently.

OK, given that plot and story, and the irresistible urge to write Michael's story -- do you have to "chop it up" into 3 page scenes?

NO! But also YES! At the same time, yes and no.

You don't CHOP it. You do like Michaelangelo, and you FREE the story from the shapeless block of marble in your head.

You, as an artist, are charged with the responsibility to show the reader or viewer the artistic beauty of the universe hidden within the amorphous mass of everyday life. They can't see it (because Hollywood and Manhattan have trained them from childhood to the 3-page scene) unless you show it to them in Scenes.

They'll never see it if they can't sit still through it, and by our frenetic culture and our relentless training, we can't focus and concentrate for longer than a 3 page scene. Deplorable but true, and the commercial artist doesn't rail against the deplorable, but rather just uses it as part of the artist's toolbox.

So you don't perform on your material an operation that is alien to that material.

You don't chop it. You don't cut it.

You know that because of a lifetime of watching movies and reading books and yearning to "be a writer" by actually writing something, you know that your subconscious has already arranged this story into "scenes" and then, because it's an eager puppy jumping all over to get your attention, subconscious has made a mess of all the supportive material.

Subconscious wrapped your story up in batting and gift paper and made it glitter, then gave it to you. But before you could open it in an orderly fashion, subconscious gnawed it open and flung wrapping and batting all over the place.

Inside that mess is your glowing, polished, beautiful, well structured story.

It's your job to find that story, and sweep away the mess to reveal those marvelously chained together SCENES.

As you do this over and over, subconscious will learn like a puppy dog, and bring you the story clean and shining so there's not much mess to clean up.

So how do you do that?

Start with the knowledge of the structure of a Scene as outlined in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure.html

As you write, watch your page count and word count. Really, make a habit to check it constantly.

If you reach 750 words or 3 script pages WITHOUT advancing the plot by delivering an explosive resolution to the scene's narrative hook, STOP WRITING.

Sit back, and start measuring, and rearranging the exposition (usually it's exposition that's the culprit -- stuff you oh so want the reader to know before something else happens so they'll understand the emotions is exposition. CUT IT. Save it in a note file. Dissect it and sprinkle it throughout the rest of the story. Never let exposition expand a scene beyond 750 words.)

You know what this Scene must do -- somebody has to learn something, get injured, have an idea. You know what CHANGE this scene must deliver.

Ask yourself why it's taking so long?

Usually, you can first draft a scene at say 1500 words, then just cut the middle out and make it the plot-mover of the next scene.

After you've done this process a few (or more) times, you will find that your subconscious will quit trying to write longer scenes that nobody will read. Subconscious wants its scenes read, trust me. It can be trained to do this for you, and increase your productivity to professional levels.

But you have to train your subconscious, and this process works.

Write it out, cut the middle, glue the ends together, use the left over material to construct (mind you CONSTRUCT via the 6 elements) another scene.

A "Scene" is a dramatic unit, but it can look like a plot unit in an action flick, or like a story unit in a slow sex scene.

Have you ever wondered why some readers claim a really hot-hot-HOT sex scene is BORING?

It's the 3-page effect.

Now a really great sex encounter can go on for 12 pages or so in a novel, even a whole chapter covering a weekend of hot stuff.

But if it's a 12 page encounter -- it will have to be 4 SCENES strung together.

And those 4 scenes have to have an over-all shape.

"Scene" is a dramatic unit, not a plot unit or a story unit. DRAMATIC.

What does that mean?

Emotion.

Specifically EMOTIONAL PITCH.

A scene has to start on a low emotional pitch (because the previous scene blew the energy of the previous scene's narrative hook to provide an ending, a resolution of a conflict).

A scene has to END on a higher emotional pitch than it started on.

BAM - that's the end of the scene. Huge blow-off of emotional energy.

That leaves the characters (you should excuse the expression) deflated, and thus ready to start another scene on a low emotional pitch.

Now if you string 4 sex scenes together non-stop, you start the first one on a LOWER emotional pitch than the last one ends on.

Draw a graph.

Think of a sine wave. Tilt it so the right side is higher than the left.

Each down point is higher than the last downpoint, so there is a RISING PITCH running through all 4 sex scenes yet each scene starts down and ends high, the emotional pitch changing during the scene. If the emotional pitch doesn't change, it's not a "Scene" yet. That's what scenes do; they change the EMOTIONAL PITCH, the dramatic tension. And the change, through a whole story must be up, up, up, DOWN, up up up, to the ending BAM. A "climax" (ahem, dramatic sort as well as the usual) is a UP TO DOWN in a BAM!

The final of the 4 sex scenes then BLOWS OFF HUGE -- and really flattens the characters.

That's the payoff, the resolution of the simmering emotional tension at the beginning of the 4 scenes, and it has to be huge after 4 scenes of it.

Now you can't let your BECAUSE LINE of the plot languish, stop dead, slack off even a bit, during these 4 sex scenes.

The plot must advance, right along with the story.

So BECAUSE they succumb to sex, something HAPPENS in scene one, that CAUSES something else in scene two, that CAUSES something new in scene three, that finally materializes big time in scene four, and hurles them back (willy nilly, ready or not) into the "real world" where they must fight for their couple-hood.

That's how you keep the reader not-bored during a long, complex, intimate interaction where there are only 2 characters in conflict for 12 whole pages.

So first draft the 12 page sex scene, then (like a knitter who's dropped a stitch) go back down and pick up the plot, and PULL that through the sex scene (an item caught on the TV news and ignored, not understood, or actually missed as they disrobe up the stairs leaving breakfast to burn to a cinder) and add a plot-CHANGE into each of the 4 scenes.

Now go back and find the STORY thread that you dropped, and PULL that through the sex scene. Perhaps a jealous lover knocks on the door? The owner of the mountain cabin drives up to evict them -- changes his mind. Drug runners they owe money to almost find them hiding in the basement (guess what they're doing down there!).

Now you've got the relationship, the plot and the story all beating like the heart-beat of a novel.

All of it simultaneously.

Now measure again, by page count, and cut, trim, condense, eliminate, or add or move to EVEN OUT THE PACING.

Remember the SCENE is your main pacing tool. Something has to CHANGE in the plot, the story, and the character arcs EACH THREE PAGES.

PACING = RATE OF CHANGE OF SITUATION

I've said that before, again and again.

This week, I finished my edit run-through of the 5 books on Tarot which will be availble (I hope soon) in PDF and other e-book formats, and eventually as POD. The volumes on Swords and Pentacles appeared in this blog and will be here for free reading. The volumes on Wands and Cups have never before been published (this was a project bought by a publisher which went bankrupt and I hate unfinished projects litering my desk).

Those volumes on Tarot are the precursor to the volumes on writing craft tentatively titled INSIDE THE WRITER'S MIND.

That's a whole lot of tedious editing yet to do, and it will take time.

You can subscribe to this blog, or see my FRIENDFEED box for the various social networks where I'll put the announcement when the volumes are ready.

Meanwhile, you can find the Tarot posts by searching TUESDAY (my posting day) here, or start here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html
and follow the directions to work backwards to the Ace of Swords (they are written to be read in sequence Ace to Ten.)

I'm very late getting this post written so it's not getting proofed very well. It should have gone up an hour ago! If anything here is unclear or not sufficient, please drop a comment and ask, or just say you don't get it.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg
http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Choosing The Age of Your Protagonist To Win An Oscar

Last week, the Oscar rules were changed by the Academy that awards them. Now 10 nominees for BEST PICTURE compete for the Oscar, the most since 1943. Maybe this is not a good thing?

Here's the link.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090625/media_nm/us_oscars_reaction_2

Quoting from that article:

---------------
In fact, one studio executive compared the Academy bombshell to getting doused with a bucket of cold water. He confided that he has enough trouble every awards season figuring out whom they have to satisfy with an Oscar campaign and which talent they can safely neglect or do less for.
--------------

Read that article for the attitude and values of the decision-makers who decide what will (and will not) be allowed to attract your attention. People who go to few movies, generally favor the award-winners because they've heard of them and know people who've seen them.

TV advertising budgets go to award contenders and winners, not to the others.

If you don't follow an industry (any industry) you may only choose from what "they" decide you may.

With the proliferation of E-books and small publishers to the point where Publisher's Weekly routinely covers the field, the roll of "gatekeeper" has disintegrated. But it is quickly being re-invented.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6666456.html?q=e%2Dbook

The Academy is expanding its finalists list from 5 to 10, and that may be because of the disintegration of the "gatekeeper" role.

The Academy has been, with the Oscars, a major gatekeeper. Now there are many other gatekeepers in the film industry with Festivals awarding winners and other Awards like the BET awards. There are many more films you've heard of so you get to choose whether to see them or not. So the Academy has responded to changes in the world by trying to compete for its top gatekeeper spot.

I did not find anything in this article on the Oscar rules the least bit surprising and I doubt most of you will either. The book business now works exactly the same way (though it didn't in the early 20th Century or before.)

In this new media-dominated world, we need to understand how (and why) our choices are deliberately limited by people who don't know us and couldn't care less about us.

This gatekeeper thinking is the thinking that rejects Romance, especially SF Romance, while at the same time panders to teens. That's a relatively new development.

Don't ever forget the 1951 film DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Talk about hot Alien Romance!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/

Quoting on increasing the number of nominees to 10 from that article on the Oscar rules:
----------------
The only problem with widening the net is that this is no longer the 1930s or '40s, when the Academy last fielded 10 or so best picture noms each year. Back then, it had an overabundance of what were grown-up yet popular titles -- ranging from "It Happened One Night" and "Mutiny on the Bounty" early on to "You Can't Take It with You" and "Casablanca," the last movie, in 1943, to wrest the Oscar from nine other contenders. Nowadays, most Hollywood movies aren't really made for grown-ups.
-----------------

My boldface on that very telling comment, tossed in off-handedly. "Nowadays, most Hollywood movies aren't really made for grown-ups."

On 6/16/09 I posted here a commentary on the award winning film Mr. And Mrs. Smith
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

Would you say that film was for grownups? No children characters and it's ostensibly about marriage counseling and professional assassination.

On 6/23/09 I posted here a commentary on the Disney film Snow Dogs:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

Children were not the featured characters in Snow Dogs, but the adults were working through issues having to do with their parents just as if they were still children, and the comedy venue made it accessible to children, so it's billed as a "family movie" -- which basically means it's not really for grownups but grownups wouldn't mind watching it. (I enjoyed it!)

Both Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Snow Dogs are stories focused on Relationships, with the Romance part in the B-story, hidden but thematic.

With the loss of so many middle-aged celebrities these last couple of weeks, ( David Caradine, Ed McMahon (who was 70's but too young to die), Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Gale Storm ( http://www.popeater.com/television/article/gale-storm-dies/547078?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main%7Cdl2%7Clink4%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.popeater.com%2Ftelevision%2Farticle%2Fgale-storm-dies%2F547078 ) and Billy Mays.

Here's a website that tries to keep an up to date listing of deceased celebrities:
http://www.hollywoodmemoir.com/forum/8?sort=desc&order=Created

We are clearly in a turning-of-the-generations cycle.

McMahon had risen to the level of decision maker, as has Leonard Nimoy (who's still with us, and did a splendid job in the new Star Trek movie). David Caradine did much more than acting, as did Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson was mostly known for being wild and irresponsible (ending up in half a billion in debt), but likewise he was an influence whose success made others want to copy or pick up one or another of his attributes.

Our deceased icons of American culture knew very well how the movers and shakers behind the Academy and the Oscars think. That's how they got to be icons.

Do we have to go back to the 1940's to find a ROMANCE ICON? If so, do you think maybe it's been long enough and it's time for a new Romance Icon to arise?

If so, who? And with what sort of public image profile? How are they going to impress the gatekeepers? The decision makers?

What sells? And why?

Demographics.

Hollywood studios (and even book publishers) have spent big bucks commissioning statistical studies and analyses of the demographics of movie ticket buyers. They know that what held true in novels holds true in the movies -- the age-group that will want to read or see a story will be close or related to the age of the protagonist.

The film Cocoon was a hit with older people, not so much with the youngest demographic.



If you're writing a children's book for 7 year olds, the protagonist has to be 7 or maybe 9 years old, not 15 or 25.

For pre-teens, your protagonist has to be a teen (because that's what pre-teens identify with and aspire to).

Middle Aged people don't really yearn to become OLD, so stories about older people who "can still shoot straight" abound.

But film producers discovered that today's audiences are composed mostly of teens and college age people, often dating. And on a date like that, even TODAY, the male's taste in entertainment prevails.

The 16 and 17 year old crowd wants stories about early 20's. The 20 somethings will go for stories about 30-somethings who "have it made" but still get into the same pickles 20 somethings get into. Only they handle it better.

We want to identify with a Hero we can feel proud to become.

So when choosing the age of the protagonist of your story, consider how big an audience you want it to attract. Look at the demographics, note which age group has the most disposable income.

The Golden Rule of protagonist age choice is simply, the protagonist has to be the age of your typical reader/viewer.

If the golden rule holds, the key to creating a blockbuster Alien Romance will be primarily the age of the protagonists.

In all genre fiction, it is the audience's identification with the main characters that determines the sales volume, thus the prominence, and whether they are chosen as contenders for major awards. Or as the article I was quoting above pointed out, which actors the production company can safely ignore.

As the article points out, it doesn't matter how good a film is. When it comes to the Oscars, it only matters "who" the stars are and what it will take to mollify them.

Go back to my analysis of why and how a writer can use Astrology to plot a story (5 post series in 2008)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html
and see that "life" has a particular shape, an ebb and flow, a sequence in which we learn lessons.

Writers often learn or are born knowing that at certain ages, we reach certain plights, challenges, consequences, and choices all of which shape the plot of our real life, and our taste in fictional life.

Many of these most prominent and widely understood (without the aid of knowing astrology) life lessons are connected to Saturn's 29 year period.

Relationships are ruled by Venus which has a period of about a year, and "Romance" is induced by Neptune which has a period of about 164 years; more than a lifetime. Neptune is also famous for creating "strange" (i.e. alien) environments, coincidences, and miracles. Neptune is all about the exceptional moments in time when the rules blur.

You really do, literally, get a once-in-a-lifetime shot at real Romance.

But it comes at different ages in different lives. Sometimes it's in the teens, sometimes the 40's or even the 70's. So you can write a really hot Romance with some deeply significant lessons about the relationship between self-esteem and unconditional love, and use characters of almost any age.

Yes, sometimes the Romance transit of a lifetime comes before you're 10, but when that happens, you usually experience it through your parents (or parental figures), so it shapes your attitude toward life. And perhaps, those are the "marry the boy next door" stories.

So as far as creating that blockbuster Alien Romance that will change the way the entire field is regarded, as Star Trek changed the way Science Fiction was regarded, you can focus on any age demographic and still craft a plausible Alien Romance.

But certain ages will be preferred by certain producers or publishers.

A Silver Rule perhaps would be that the more expensive the fiction is to deliver to the consumer, the broader the target demographic must be.

A book costs less to produce than a movie, (though a book has a smaller potential profit margin) and so a book can appeal to a narrower audience and still make a profit. Authors know their book made a profit when the publisher sends them royalties beyond the advance.

A film on the other hand must appeal to a very diverse and broad and deep audience. The higher the budget for the film, the broader the apparent appeal must be. It's all about the numbers, and the Academy knows that -- and perhaps the Academy does not know much else!

This article on changes in the Academy of Motion Picture rules of the Oscars clearly informs us that the blockbuster film that becomes a TV show, with endless spinoffs, books, action figures etc, has to be "NOT FOR GROWNUPS."

The article also makes the point clearly that SEQUELS don't win awards because they are "warmed over popcorn." But it also indicates literary pedigree is acceptable. So we can pry open this field via novels.

The general rule though, in what producers are looking for is something "the same" but "different."

It occurs to me to wonder if the "different" part could be not the involvement of a human with an alien on a deep, intimate level (romance, but do we really need to tell them that up front?) but rather the revival of the 1940's "romance."

Just think, Casablanca - set on Epsilon Eridani in the midst of an interstellar war with invaders from another galaxy.

Or think The Boy Next Door and transform it to The Alien Next Door (it's been done, but not really well as a Romance.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg
http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg

Writer's Eye Finds Symmetry

We had an interesting discussion on Spoilers recently in which I held that any story worth reading or viewing couldn't be "spoiled" by knowing the ending, or any particular scene, plot development or bit of dialogue.

In other words, I held that there is no such thing as a "spoiler."
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html

If knowing what happens "spoils" it for you, then it wasn't well written enough to be worth your time and money anyway.

But in fact, there is such a thing as a spoiler!!!

What "spoils" fiction for readers and viewers is not knowing what happens, but knowing the trick behind the fictional facade.

The trick that's jerking your emotions around, that takes an event or line of dialogue and carries it straight through your conscious defenses into your subconscious and hits your deepest, most buried buttons, works just as well whether you've heard the plot in advance or not.

But once you know the trick being used against you, you don't react to it any more.

As stage magicians loathe letting anyone know their "secrets" (even other magicians), so also writers (who are prestidigitators of the emotions) should guard their proprietary secrets. Some writers go so far as to not-teach new writers because newbies are 'the competition.'

There is a process which trainee writers undergo as they pass from audience to stage-magician that is extremely wrenching. As you learn the secrets that writers have been using to jerk your emotions around, to make you laugh or cry over a scene, to deliver a GASP!, or a whoop of triumph, you find that your favorite fiction is "spoiled" -- you just don't enjoy it anymore, the way you used to as a mere reader.

You've found the keywords that trigger your emotional responses, even when used 200 pages before the impact hits you. You've found how you fall for the hero's kryptonite weakness, or root for heroes who have no such weakness. You've read a lot of these articles on how to write, and you've attended panels at conventions where writers reveal their secrets. Perhaps you've even done some writing yourself, and realize that these stories that always seemed so real, so important, so filled with higher truth, spiritual insights, or personal affirmation of your view of the world -- all this stuff you always adored suddenly seems as flimsy and false as the Western town main street consisting of plywood fronts for stores with catwalks on the back for cameras.

And it's all bland and pointless, except there's money to be made writing! So you set out to write, and that just makes the apathy for reading or viewing any fiction worse.

This state of apathy for fiction can persist for years once fiction has been "spoiled" for you by glimpsing behind the scenes. Or it might persist only for a few months, depending on how fast the stage of mastering the craft lasts. And the length of that interval depends on how hard you work at mastering the tricks yourself, and how much of yourself you put into it, and on how good you are at learning abstract things then applying them in the practical world.

Some people actually reach a version of this stage of apathy just while watching television, never thinking to become writers. They grasp the underlying formula for a TV series, find it predictable, and then find it boring because it's predictable.

Some will then segue into an "I can write better than that!" attitude and proceed to do so (with varied results), but still not find their enjoyment of commercial fiction returning.

So let's talk a little about how writing students bootstrap themselves up to the level of professional writers, and begin enjoying fiction for totally different reasons than they had ever been able to imagine before. This sheds light on why the same novel rarely wins both the Hugo (voted by fans) and the Nebula (voted only by professional writers.)

What does the writer's eye see that the reader's eye misses?

What do writers see in each others' work to send them into paroxysms of joy, of admiration, or even (*gasp*) into becoming a FAN of another writer's work?

It's all in the writer's TRAINED EYE. The writer's inner eye "sees" patterns that escape the casual reader. Having attempted to capture such a pattern and display it in a fictional universe, a world they have built themselves, the writer is aware of how difficult it is to put such an abstract vision into a piece of fiction and have the fiction still work as a story comprehensible to other people.

Only the writer who has studied the craft, then attempted (and perhaps even sold) stories has full appreciation of what an achievement capturing a real-world pattern in a bit of fiction can be.

If the pattern is put into the foreground of the fiction, the fiction fails to reach the reader/viewer's subconscious. If it's in the background or too buried in symbology or assumptions, the fiction doesn't communicate the pattern to a commercial size audience. If it's too hidden in the THEME, the fiction fails. Too blatant or too hidden -- either one is easy to write. But getting the pattern to be visible, clear and well stated, but still open to personal interpretation, and thus able to engage the audience's subconscious, now that's hard.

A writer can have a blazing epiphany, become filled to the brim with the urgency of showing the world an important bit of wisdom, and write their heart into a story -- only to have it sneered at or rejected.

After such a failure, a writer is set up to break through the apathy barrier, to become a FAN of other writers, to appreciate writing as craft and art welded into a thing of beauty.

What does a writer learn in that moment of breaking through the apathy barrier? What breaks that barrier and restores enjoyment to fiction? Finding a pattern you recognize properly used in a bit of fiction, understanding the craft elements that construct and convey the pattern, and knowing "This is what I was trying to do!" Recognizing another writer's success at something difficult restores a writer's zest for reading/viewing other writer's fiction.

All that is very abstract. Here's a concrete example.

Let's take the film MR. AND MRS. SMITH, the 2005 movie version where a husband and wife are in marriage counselling, and discover that each one has been keeping a secret from the other.

They are both assassins working for secret agencies. And they've been assigned to kill each other, and in fact the situation which pits them against each other was rigged by their superiors simply because they were living together. (um, yeah, it's a romance, and has all the elements of an alien romance, since each is "the unknown" to the other)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356910/



I've seen this film several times, and once again just recently.

But this last time was the ONLY time I saw what it was that speaks to me in this film.

Previously, it had been years since I'd written a screenplay. Recently I've done three (none yet to my own satisfaction!). Now I'm seeing movies differently, and really enjoying things I did not enjoy before. Apparently I stopped writing screenplays before I broke this barrier.

So in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I found the PATTERN that (when I couldn't see it) was jerking me around. Now it is very likely you saw this pattern the first time you saw the movie, and you won't understand why I didn't see it.

And I like this movie even better now that I've seen clearly what was only hazy before.

I hope you've re-read my post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html
because in that post I did mention that if you have a prologue, you also need an epilogue. That's a technique of structure often called "bookends." Mr. & Mrs. Smith has "bookends" in the structure, and I never missed that point.

The film starts with the husband and wife sitting in office visitor chairs before a desk you don't see. It's a marriage counselling session. They haven't had sex in a while (with each other, that is) and can't agree on how long that's been, nor on how long it's been since they met. We see how they met, pretending to be a couple even though they didn't know each other, evading a police search for an assassin who was an American traveling alone. Total strangers, they provided cover for each other.

We see each of them in their ordinary workday persona, in wild "James Bond" action, battling, killing, almost being killed, arriving home in very "James Bond" unruffled fashion, being the perfect suburban couple. They argue or go stone-silent over trivial household matters. Clearly something abnormal there.

Then they're pitted against each other (we don't know why at first) and each wrestles with whether to kill the other (almost does it), and finally they begin actually TALKING about the issues between them ("What did you think the first time you saw me?" asking frank and embarrassing questions and answering honestly.) As they clear the air, they decide they won't kill each other, and they team up as allies against the conspiracy of their superiors to make them kill each other because they're living together (and therefore the "other" is a spy.)

The battle scenes get wilder and wilder until they shoot up a store, blow things up, (even their own house gets turned into a pile of kindling) then there's a stunt-doubled car chase to make Indiana Jones pale.

And after one wild-WILD action fight sequence, they blow off the rest of their aggressions in sex, wild passionate sex like they haven't had in years.

They settle the problem with their superiors, and they're back at the marriage counsellor. Mr. Smith prompts the marriage counsellor to ask the sex question again. They admit they redecorated the house (one of the issues they were spatting over was the color of the curtains).

Of course, the way I've outlined the story here, the pattern is obvious because I see it now.

The VIOLENT ACTS we see as they do their day-job, the violence in joining in combat at a job (that was a setup) where one tries to steal the "package" from the other, all the way through forming an alliance and shooting up and destroying a SUBURBAN HOUSEWARES STORE (with all kinds of nasty hunting weapons) (and they turn out to be wearing kevlar vests! I tell you the SYMBOLISM is perfect for penetrating subconsciouses), even the explosion that destroys their house -- all that violence and destruction is the SHOW DON'T TELL illustration, an exact replica or reflection, of the usual ho-hum marital-spat screaming fights most couples have. When a marriage is in real trouble, those spats become symbolic of the real problems in exactly the way the violence and truth-in-marriage issues do in this film.

The violence in this film acts as a SYMBOL for the marital issues that are screamed over and around but never actually stated in ordinary marriages (such as viewers of the movie might be living through). As the violence escalates, their COMMUNICATION over the real issues escalates (as rarely happens in real life -- I said this is a romance.)

The marriage counsel session dialogue is easily recognizable as marital issues. Just read some self-help books and you can't miss it. Textbook stuff. The marriage counsellor doesn't know they're both assassins by trade. Would that trade make a difference?

The VIOLENCE appears to be just rollicking good fun needed to sell a movie. Neither is rattled by explosions, wounds, etc. The violence isn't about the violence. It's about conversation, about communicating.

This is a film in which VIOLENCE is CONVERSATION. DESTRUCTION is SEXUALITY.

The film doesn't go into great detail about the sex scenes, but the violence is detailed move for move and prolonged for fun, right down to gradually stripping off clothing as it gets ruined by the violence.

We've all discussed the psychological equivalence of sex and violence.

From the writer's point of view, the trick is to define a HIGH CONCEPT, and write that story, delivering on the fun in the concept.

The CONCEPT that husband and wife are (secretly from each other) professional assassins casts the marital "battle of the sexes" into HIGH CONCEPT, and provides the "violence" that producers require to pull in audiences.

But the violence in Mr. And Mrs. Smith (2005 version) is not gratuitous. It's not there to draw audiences. It's not there to display the grandiose physiques of the stars or the director's genius. It's there to FULFILL A PATTERN, to reticulate a pattern, and to discuss the nature of marriage.

Whee! This writer SQUEALS FOR JOY at seeing every bit of this script so clearly etched that every line traces right back to where the concept came from.

Now seeing into the wheels-and-gears behind the illusion does not spoil it for me. It is in fact the reason I imbibe fiction in all media. I take vast joy in well oiled wheels-and-gears.

Seeing into the mechanism is one part of the exercise of creating such a mechanism of your own. Seeing this particular mechanism fitting a typical alien-romance plot into commercial box office parameters makes me ever more hopeful that we can indeed create that blockbuster, runs-for-twenty-years PNR TV series.

Does anybody reading this remember TOPPER? It's not even currently available on DVD, and what's available used is only "highlights" -- it's time to rethink all this PNR stuff.



AMAZON SAYS: "A madcap comedy escapade, The Adventures of Topper is a collection of the funniest episodes from the ""Topper"" television series. The show, based on a novel by Thorne Smith and the book's subsequent spin-off motion pictures, features genteel banker Cosmo Topper who moves into a new house that comes complete with ghosts and all!"

Remember "The Ghost And Mrs. Muir" ???



Each of those two "Concepts" spoke to a particular generation in terms of what was bugging that generation most. Mr. & Mrs. Smith speaks to the issue of truth in marriage. Note how on SMALLVILLE, and even in BUFFY, the truth issue is make-or-break in the Relationships. (Clue: truth in marriage wasn't always iconic in USA society, [rememer I LOVE LUCY?] nor in Victorian or Renaissance English Romances. It's really a very new yardstick for measuring relationships.)

Book, film, TV Show -- there's a link, a trail to follow that connects these forms of entertainment with each other and with the social matrix they address. And today we have to add web-originals, and other graphic novel, TV, and other new distribution channels.

Now think CONCEPT and think SYMMETRY as only the writer's eye can see it.

Think about Mr. And Mrs. Smith and how the violence level of the script mirrored the exact textbook progress of a marriage encounter-group session. See the pattern whole and completely reticulated, in the subconscious and in the conscious. The pattern is not in the foreground, not in the background and not even in the THEME. It's in the ties between the violence and the psychology that exist ONLY IN THE VIEWER'S MIND, and never on screen.

Don't just admire the modern Mr. And Mrs. Smith -- follow the pattern lines back to the originating concept, reverse engineer the script, deconstruct that concept into its components, and delve into how that concept was created.

It's not just a flash of inspiration that creates concepts. It's long, hard days of perspiration -- sometimes watching or reading things you wouldn't ordinarily want to. When that flash of inspiration occurs, it's your subconscious reporting on its month's work.

Writers do most all their work while sleeping, but the IRS doesn't let you deduct the bedroom of your house. Talk about unfair tax practices.

So replicate what they did to create and recognize the High Concept, "A married couple where each is secretly an assassin."

You can't use their concept, but you can use their method of finding that concept.

What other conflicts besides the "battle of the sexes in marriage" do you know of that go on in millions of people's lives every day? That's the question to answer in order to get the effect Hollywood wants: THE SAME.

What kind of well known, familiar conflict is so pervasive people don't even notice it's there, nor consider it worth commenting on? And what are the best self-help books that address subsets of that vast conflict area?

Nail that SAME part, then search for the BUT DIFFERENT part of the formula.

With Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the "different" part is that they're BOTH professional assassins.

Then the grind-the-crank part of the plot leads directly to "assigned to kill each other" - you just have to figure out a reason. The elegant solution is "because they're living together which means each is a spy assigned to waggle our secrets out of our hired assassin."
The twist with Mr. and Mrs. Smith is that the box-office requirement of VIOLENCE is supplied by their day jobs, not by the domestic dispute over keeping secrets.

I'd bet all of you already know all this.

So what are you thinking. Two alien from outer space spies meet on Earth and marry to maintain their cover? But they've each been sent here to search for the other and a) kill him, or b) protect Earth from his faction Out There?

Here are some widespread "conflicts" to explore other than Battle of the Sexes:

1) People Vs. Medical System
2) People Vs. Insidious Advertising Practices (think 0% nothing down mortgages)
3) People Vs. The Boss From Hell
4) People Vs. College grading system
5) People Vs. Traffic congestion
6) People Vs. Post Office Screw Ups
7) Tech Support Slave Vs. Enraged Customers
8) Mom Vs. School System over allowing Bullying

What other pervasive, everybody knows what it is about, conflicts can you think of?

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