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

On "Maleficent"

I've always been intrigued by stories that take the traditional villain, and re-write the tale from his, or her, point of view. In my twenties, I rewrote the part of Homer's Odyssey dealing with the Cyclops, and wrote from the point of view of Polyphemus the landowner dealing with trespassers, cattle (or sheep) rustlers, and murderous home invaders.

In my forties, I discovered the writings of Vivian Vande Valde, and was especially enchanted by her collection of short stories wherein she told the tale of Rumplestiltskin four or five times, each time from the viewpoint of a different character: the King, Rumplestiltskin, the girl's father, and so forth. The Rumpelstiltskin Problem (apologies for the single link). What a fascinating exercise!

I was hopeful that Maleficent would follow in Vivian Vande Valde's vein. (Irresistible alliteration.) I enjoyed the spectacle, but was disappointed on a couple of technicalities.

Who suffers most?
Maleficent does. If you don't want to read any spoilers, stop here.

Who suffers first?
Maleficent.

Who suffers most often?
Maleficent.

Her first love --perhaps we should call him her first pash-- drugs her on their first date, and uses an iron chain to burn off her eagle-like wings, leaving her in crippling physical and emotional agony.

As is common with persons who wrong someone else, King Steffan subsequently treats his victim badly, not inviting Maleficent to his infant daughter's christening.... although he does invite other magical creatures. She is mocked, insulted, threatened. Later, her realm is attacked, many attempts are made to trap and kill her. It is Maleficent who suffers remorse and sheds tears of penitence and heartbreak

Who suffers most in your story?

That most tortured of your characters ought to be your POV character, at least for the scene in question if you are writing Third Person, Limited, Multiple POV.  I forgave Vivian Vande Valde, because there is no way that the Miller (father) could be any kind of hero. The Rumpelstiltskin Problem was an academic exercise.

Unlike many of the harshest critics of "Maleficent",  I don't mind about the departures from Disney "canon", after all, the preamble and colophon inform the delighted audience that the original account was the distorted view of prejudiced witnesses.

Let us tell an old story anew, and we will see how well you know it. Once upon a time, there were two kingdoms that were the worst of neighbors. So vast was the discord between them that it was said only a great hero or a terrible villain might bring them together. In one kingdom lived folk like you and me, with a vain and greedy king to rule over them. They were forever discontent, and envious of the wealth and beauty of their neighbors, For in the other kingdom, the Moors, lived every manner of strange and wonderful creature. And they needed neither king nor queen, but trusted in one another. In a great tree on a great cliff in the Moors lived one such spirit. You might take her for a girl, but she was not just any girl. She was a fairy. And her name was Maleficent.


I do mind that it was Aurora and not Maleficent telling us this. This intrusive editorialisation was not in character with Aurora who seems to be an intellectual lightweight... as most sheltered sixteen-year-olds are. Moreover, given that Aurora in this tale was brought up by idiot pixies in the woods, one wonders whether she would have used the Royal "We".

One word about casting; for me, it was jarring to see Dolores Umbridge (the child torturer of Hogwarts) entrusted with the infant Princess Aurora. Perhaps "Harry Potter" will be to Imelda Staunton what "The Sound of Music" was to Christopher Plummer.

The shapeshifter, Diavel, was the next most interesting character after that of Maleficent, and his scars were intriguing hints that there might have been some thought about the cost of magic (a convention one should respect: there should always be a serious price to be paid for the unfair advantages of sorcery.)

The movie was weak on logic and the quality of dramatic inevitability that a Cambridge professor used to call "thusness".... and,  at least for me, the ending fizzled.  Aurora and her prince appeared to inherit the flowering moorlands, but there was a hint of something interesting for Maleficent.

All things considered, I would recommend seeing "Maleficent". It was strong on spectacle, and therefore enjoyable. Moreover, for those considering a similar experiment --perhaps with a villain from a public domain work-- it might be instructive to also study the reviews. This movie aroused powerful feelings... and make a lot of money!

Good night,
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8 - Use of Statistics by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8
Use of Statistics
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration, titled Another Use of Media. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

That post has a link to Part 6 which contains links to previous parts.  Here we will build on those posts. 

Part 7 is about a Fortune Magazine article about "The One Percent" of our population (a statistics based argument).  I found that article in a magazine in a doctor's waiting room, which led to a conversation with a young woman who plays videogames. 

Statistically, women videogame players are a minority, but in the 40% range.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/12/women-50-percent-gaming-audience/2411529/

Marketers use statistics like this to shape the creation and packaging of products (like novels, for example) and to "Target an Audience" with advertising.  We've discussed targeting audiences at some length and will no doubt return to that topic:

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

Back in November 2013, a story broke in the Washington Post that caught my eye.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/new-york-post-claims-census-falsifies-unemployment-figures-5436

And here is a set of graphs about employment trends statistically broken down:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/comment/reply/5210

It was a report, which called into question the accuracy of statistics released by a government agency -- a statistic which large numbers of people may have used to decide whether Barak Obama had done a good enough job rescuing the economy to deserve re-election. Later push-back pointed out how these numbers are produced by being passed from hand to hand across agencies, and that the career civil service employees really do take getting accurate figures together seriously.  This would be very hard to disrupt.  So the question becomes why did the Washington Post print that story in the midst of the Obamacare website disaster and not sooner? 

Dancing a political candidate through a "campaign" is all about packaging a product and targeting the market for that product (ignoring the 1% because they don't count, majority rules so the 1% are powerless.)

Marketers call this packaging and targeting "messaging."  You have to use the right keywords to get your message to "resonate" -- e.g. to get retweeted, or repeated as fact, even if what you're saying is not fact. 

For example: "Reverse mortgages are safe and effective" is the message, but the fine print says that you will own your house only until the last owner leaves.  That means if you are 92, get thrown into a nursing home against your will for 6 months, you thereupon have no home to go back to if you should violate statistics and survive incarceration in a nursing home.  ROMANCE NOVEL: Gal's grandmother incarcerated, loses home, gets well, has no place to live unless Gal throws her live-in-Guy out.  Now what?

Political Strategists determine what "messaging" keywords to use via statistics generated from "Focus Groups."  All of this is a use of the power of Science to manipulate people using knowledge of what those people do not know -- ignorance is bliss, and blissful people don't rebel. 

Remember this post is about Theme-Worldbuilding Integration and that idea, that "blissful people don't rebel" is an example of a theme cast as worldbuilding, fully integrated. 

A government statistical release is a "package."  It is "Messaging" packaged to be believed, because who would distrust a "non-political" department of government staffed by Civil Service employees who of course have no political opinions of their own.

If you hire a publicist who hates Romance to publicize your book, would you trust their "messaging" about your book to your audience? 

That's not a rhetorical question: it is what publishers do by assigning novels to their publicity department, staffed by people hired by their Human Resources department folks whose degrees are not in Romance Writing.  Such publicists are very likely well schooled in statistics and Public Relations courses abound in their C.V.

If you haven't studied the formulae used to generate statistics such as the Labor Department or Census Department release, studied the vast array of "assumptions" taken as "fact" when generating the numbers, and exactly which direction to reason from the numbers, you may come to incorrect conclusions.

At some point, we must discuss that 1% from Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration again because that 1% statistic is at the heart of this culture's entire sense of "right vs. wrong" and who can and should do what to fix it.  That is a massive theme and a huge conflict we can use to great advantage in galactic Romance, and it is salient to the development of Paranormal Romance novels because the concept of "Right vs. Wrong" bespeaks the mystical view of the universe.

For example, speaking of that 1%, I have just read a wondrous Romance novel, Girl of My Dreams by Morgan Mandel:



Girl of My Dreams is about a TV show where 25 women vie for the favor of a male Billionaire.  It's a contest and the prize is potential marriage to a Billionaire (1%-er)who happens to be quite a hunk, too.  This is a novel worth studying in conjunction with Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration. 

So back to the boring concept of Statistics and what a Romance writer can do with it.

People use statistics as an accurate picture of the entire world around them because statistics produce accurate predictions -- such as the outcome of an election via exit polls --  and if their own experience is at variance with the picture, they assume "It's just me."

For example, if the candidate you voted for doesn't win, you assume "everybody" voted for the other candidate.  Statistics don't lie.  You are the 1% on that issue.  You are the oddball.  You don't count. 

That is a CONFLICT, an Internal Conflict,  -- the exact type of CONFLICT that is at the heart of every story, and especially at the heart of a good Romance because it's all about self-perception vs. your perception of others and what that conflict implies about whether you should change yourself -- or change others. 

That conflict is HUMAN vs. NATURE -- where in this instance what passes for "Nature" isn't grass and trees, storms and earthquakes, but "society."  "NATURE" is the general environment that we never notice - the air we breathe, water we drink, people creating the traffic jam we have to penetrate to get to work on time.

Road engineering is done not just from physics (to calculate degree of embankment on curves) but commuter volume statistics which is as political as employment statistics.

There's a Hollywood adage that explains why low-budget pictures don't get made. 

"You can't steal a million dollars from a million dollar movie budget." 

It's a principle you can use to understand the political component of building commuter roads based on employment statistics and "expectations."  We set, using statistics, a certain percentage of every large-budget project to shrug off as a loss due to "waste, fraud and abuse."  There's a percentage of "we can't account for it" and "miscelaneous" in every budget.  The larger the budget, the larger the absolute value of that number.

That principle is one way writers can implant a statistical theme into their Worldbuilding.

If your Lead Male is an engineer building a road or a website, his job depends on the size of the budget of that project, and his management of that budget to disallow "waste, fraud and abuse" in excess of a certain percentage -- a percentage set by political considerations, but excused by statistics.

If your theme is "Honesty is the Best Policy" then your Lead Female becomes the woman who is, maybe the Auditor for that project or for some agency -- or maybe for a political candidate's campaign looking for dirt on the incumbents who launched your Lead Male's project.

Do you see now why STATISTICS is a matter of Ultimate Concern to Romance Writers?

If your Lead Male accepts that his bosses "know" the correct percentage to allow for "waste, fraud and abuse" (and maybe wants his own cut of that percentage), and your Female Lead is convinced the correct percentage for "waste, fraud and abuse" is zero, you have a Hot Conflict. 

Which one will prove their idea is correct?  What would the other take as proof their own idea is wrong?  Is it Evil to compromise on a Principle?  Is this percentage a Principle -- or a political whitewash?  Ultimately, what do you let the hottest lover you have ever had in your life get away with, just to keep them in your bed?   

Our perception of our environment is shaped by whatever information flows through our conscious and subconscious awareness (today: the internet news stream does a lot of the shaping.)

I've noted in this blog on writing craft that a savvy writer has to monitor headlines for the context in which their readers actually live, and use what the reader already "knows" whether it's true or not, but craft the ART behind the story that's being written in such a way as to reveal something new. 

If the artist thinks the audience believes incorrectly, and writes a story only to correct the audience's misconceptions - the work will fail as a story. 

If the artist understands what the audience believes, and understands many other points of view from the inside, then the artist can depict the contrast between these various beliefs as CONFLICT. 

When each character speaks sincerely and convincingly from a unique point of view, the conflict among the characters leaves the audience with a question.  The audience members are each free to decide what the answer is, or ought to be.

That clear, convincing presentation of opposite sides of an argument (say about the project management's ability to eliminate "waste, fraud and abuse" entirely) will make the novel or story "resonate" -- i.e. get tweeted and retweeted about. 

The audience won't come out of reading the story with the same opinion as the writer, but they will memorize that writer's byline or subscribe to their releases on Amazon.

See last week's post, Reviews Part 4, for more on following a byline:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/reviews-4-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Capturing of a reader's attention to the point where the reader memorizes and follows a byline is what the Artist does art for.

Art is done by rearranging the bits and pieces a reader already takes for granted, or does not realize that they know in order to show the reader a new picture that is interesting.

Here is a post in the series on what makes a story "interesting."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

There is a rampant assumption loose in the world today that can be used to magnificent advantage by a fiction-artist.

That assumption, which is taught by and supported by the National Curriculum called "Common Core" (a product of the Bill Gates Foundation and Microsoft who definitely do know better), is that statistics can and should be applied BACKWARDS.

What does that mean?  Statistics is a mathematical gadget that manipulates numbers derived from observing specific attributes distributed across a "population."

The "population" sliced and diced by statisticians may or may not share other characteristics.

Statistics have proven such accurate predictors of the behavior of large populations of otherwise dissimilar individuals (people, yes, but this would apply to non-humans as well) that people use those numbers to create their opinions.

And a growing number of young adults are using statistics reports "backwards."

Using statistics forwards means collecting data on individuals and predicting how large numbers of individuals will move together in the same direction.

For example: how many iPads will Apple sell in the next six months?  How many people will upgrade from a Samsung to an iPad (and think it's an UPgrade?).

Those are questions statistics can answer accurately.

Will you upgrade from a Samsung or Kindle to an iPad and think it an UPgrade?

Statistics can't answer that.  It would be using statistics "backwards" to predict your behavior based on the behavior of a majority, or even a significant minority of people "just like you."

But your friend you go to lunch with at work might use released statistics to make a confident assumption about your future behavior.  That lunch conversation can become the core of a novel's conflict by Integrating that THEME (working statistics backwards) into the WORLDBUILDING (contemporary Romance).

For example, the lunch-friend is a Guy your Gal really wants to go out with on a real Date.  He makes this swaggering, sweeping prediction about her trashing her Kindle for an iPad.  She scoffs.  She wants him.  She buys an iPad and flashes it around the office.  He approves and crows his triumphant I TOLD YOU SO.  She pretends he's right.  He invites her out.  At work the next day, he overhears her scorning her iPad to a girlfriend, but praising him as a fabulous Date.

That's a THEME-Worldbuilding integrated CONFLICT. 

It is also a Story Springboard, not the whole story.  It's up to you to finish the story. 

Here is Part 6 of Story Springboards with links to previous parts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/story-springboards-part-6-earning.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Verisimilitude VS Reality - Part 3 The Game, The Stakes, The Template

Last week we covered 3 "Clues" about how to integrate Multiple Point of View with Story Structure; Master Theme Structure,  The Camera,  Nesting Plots and Stories. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html
This week we have 3 more "Clues" for the advanced writing student, and a homework assignment that should keep you busy a few years.

CLUE 4   The Tennis Match vs The Football Game

Your reader is reading your novel as if watching a tennis match, or a football game (depending on how many Point of View characters you have).

If you write a novel with only one point of view character, that character is the only thing in the novel that the reader is watching.  That character is the only thing that matters to the reader.  So if that character fails to capture affection or identification from the reader, the novel fails.  But it is much, much easier to write from a single point of view with one theme, one conflict, one resolution.  Do that in 1st person, and you may have a small readership, but you will glue those readers to the page.

When you have more than one point of view character, the reader ceases to be totally absorbed in one character. 

At least that's how it should work.  If a reader finds one POV character much more absorbing than the others, the reader is likely to skip the sections from the other POV and then not recommend the novel to friends.

So when you move from single POV to multiple POV, you shift what is important to the readership from the character of the person experiencing a story, to the PLOT rather than the STORY.

Consider the person who goes to a dance recital to see one dancer perform several pieces on stage, to demonstrate what they've learned, or how good a dancer they are.  Or Figure Skating championships where you have the single skater at a time, but several in a row to judge against each other. 

That's a single POV novel, or novel series where each novel has a different protagonist, POV character.

The typical Romance bounces the POV from the woman to the man and back, each of them most concerned about what's going on in the other's head and how to get the attention they want.

The typical Romance novel is more like a Tennis match where the audience watches two people volleying a ball back and forth.  It's pretty simple, the stakes and the feats required to prevail are clear.  But the viewer watches the ball, not the characters. 

Now move up to the football game. 

Yes, we cheer particular players or root for this team or that, but we go to THE GAME not a given player's performance.

The performance (the story) is secondary to the GAME and it's outcome. 

The viewer's attention is on the scoreboard, the referees' calls, the bench, the coach, the cheerleaders, and the concessionaire barker moving through the stands, maybe the TV cameras in the booth above.  And the viewer is having a great time.  People "go to the game" not for the players but to have a great time! 

The Camera mentioned in Clue 2 which was on the POV character's shoulder, and is on the shoulder of each of the POV characters in a more complex work, now is on the viewer's shoulder.

The writer of a 2 or 3 POV novel can inter-cut from all 2 or 3 cameras on character's shoulders, creating verisimilitude by following each POV character's story and plot within that character's "blinders." 

Use more than 3 characters and you don't "intercut" you "pan" the camera from one thread of a story to another.  The reader's attention is under the reader's control, not yours, and your success as a writer depends on anticipating where the reader's eye will light next, not on guiding it where you want it.

The technique of inter-cutting between cameras to get a different perspective on what's going on, becomes the technique of following The Game - following the ball when it's in play, following the bench when a player substitution goes on, following the TV cameras up above when something happens, following the cheerleaders when they take the field at half-time (yes, the 'beat' that belongs at the halfway point changes by how many POV characters there are).

The reader is no longer interested in the emotional reality of an individual character, or two, but is interested in the outcome of The Game.

That makes all the stories of all the characters of lesser import.

But it allows the writer to tackle bigger, more emphatically egregious themes, themes which violate all the reader's ideas of reality.

Such novels place the reader in the position of Observer, outside the action, above "all that."  The reader can feel superior to all the characters because the reader understands what's going on better than any given character on the field.

That makes it harder for the writer to get the reader to care about "the stakes" a given player is playing for.

The trick in Point of View Shifts is to follow The Ball, follow The Game, to follow the journey toward finding out whether the stakes are won or lost. 

So you come to a point where a character throws the ball, and shift point of view in a PAN not a CUT to the player who catches that ball, then follow what the player with the ball does with it until it leaves his/her hands, and you follow that ball not the character's story, across point of view shifts.  How the ball travels, where, to whom, who gets smeared and who carries it to the next touchdown all explicate and illustrate the theme without ever stating that theme. 

So in a multiple point of view novel, you don't shift point of view, you follow the ball that is describing the theme by the way it moves. 

So we're back to THEME. 

CLUE 5 The Stakes

The more points of view the writer presents, the more crucial it is to get the reader involved in The Stakes, and the harder it is for the writer to achieve that involvement.

When you have only one Point of View, "The Stakes" are just what that one person stands to gain, lose, or learn from resolving the conflict.

When you have 2 Points of View (as in a Romance) "The Stakes" are whether that couple will coalesce into a working Relationship that will last.  The rest is decoration.  The real goal is forming a stable Relationship.

When you have multiple Points of View, "The Stakes" is the outcome of "The Game." 

In the first two instances, the writer's job of getting the reader to care is fairly easy.  Show don't tell how the character is likeable and the rest falls into place.  That's the thesis of Blake Snyder's works on screenwriting, SAVE THE CAT.

To create a likeable character, show the character's very first action the reader sees as "saving a cat" -- doing something that displays a good heart, something the reader/viewer approves of that takes an effort or a risk on the part of the character, a risk beyond the ostensible reward.

So even in multiple point of view novels, you must create that likeable character trait.  What's "likeable" varies with target readership.

But one thing is always the same. 

The outcome of The Game is the important thing to the reader.

How The Game comes out will defy or validate the reader's sense of Reality, of Truth, Justice And The American Way, of Good vs. Evil, or whatever The Game is about.

The Game is always The Game Of Life.

And it is the reader's life at stake, not the writer's.

Hence the writer must learn to walk a mile in the reader's moccasins, must learn to espouse with vigor and sincere enthusiasm whatever philosophy the reader holds most dear but has no clue is inside them.

When the writer brings a subconscious value held dear by the reader to the surface, or just barely under the surface, at the end of the novel, the reader CRIES or LAUGHS or responds in a part of their being they didn't know was there.  In a way, the reader loses virginity in this process.  And the reader will always remember that book. 

That is the payload the writer lives to deliver.  It is the essence of the artform.  Punch.  Impact. Revelation.

So in the outcome of The Game the reader has been viewing from the 50-yard line, the reader will come to understand the theme of your novel.

But the reader's understanding of your theme will not be your understanding of it.

If you have "the good guys" win, the reader could conclude not, "justice prevails" but "might makes right."  Or possibly the reader won't "buy" the ending, and will feel it's "contrived" because they were rooting for the bad guys.

You can't make a reader understand life the way you do because their reality isn't yours.

But using verisimilitude, you can allow the reader to experience a reality that is not their own, even if it isn't yours either.

The more point of view characters you use, the more likely it is the reader will not even be aware of your theme.

But if you, as writer, are not very clear on why each element is emphasized in the novel just this amount, not more or less, then the reader won't feel verisimilitude or reality -- they will feel confused.

CLUE 6   Steal From The Best

One mistake many new writers make is to attempt to create or innovate a brand new, never before used, plot structure in order to be seen by publishers a "original" and thus get promoted big time.

But if you study some first-published works of very famous writers, you will find (and this is not an easy study) that their first novels, or breakout novels, all shared one characteristic.

They used an old, tried and true, done to death, plot structure.

They say there aren't any new plots.  Maybe not, but there are new plot structures popping up all the time -- just not as first sales by unknown writers.

Occasionally you'll see one that seems to be a first sale, but digging a little you'll find that writer has a professional track record under a different name. 

You might want to read my post on pen-names:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-ii.html
It has a link to part one.

If you have Microsoft Office, you may have found on the Microsoft website where they sell or give away "templates" for their more complicated programs.

You need such a template to attempt the leap from single POV to multiple POV novel structure.  It's what I used to structure MOLT BROTHER.

But they don't give away templates for novels.  The closest thing I've found is Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet, referenced so many times in the posts listed in Part 2 of this series.

Using a familiar Template for your multiple point of view novel gives you a leg up with inducing suspension of disbelief in your readers.

Snyder uses the 3-act screenplay template.

There is a 4-act screenplay structure favored by many.

The classic 100,000 word novel structure is 4-act.

But you can't really do more than 2 or possibly 3 points of view in 100,000 words of novel.

For real multiple point of view, a whole football game, you need 150,000 to 175,000 words, and few publishers would take a chance on a new writer at that expensive length, at least not if they hadn't won some prestigious awards in the same category with short stories.

So pick a word length you think you can sell, and figure how many points of view you'll need to cover your theme.  If there are too many points of view for the length you can sell, divide the work into a series of novels.

Today you can sell novel series provided the first novel stands alone well enough that it works if the second novel is not published because sales on the first didn't justify it.

I would suggest finishing, completely polishing, 3 novels in a series before presenting them to a publisher if you have no previous sales.

Now, find four or five novels in the general genre or subject area of your material, aimed at your market, that are all of the same length as what you think you can sell.  Choose novels which really twang your heartstrings just the way you want to reach your readers.  Be sure you choose novels that you find unutterably fascinating, re-readable, and moving.  Choose the best of the best of what you have read that represent the reason you want to write this story.  Eventually, your marketing materials will be based on these choices.  Editors will pitch your novel to their sales staff as "just like" or "appealing to lovers of" those 5 novel choices. 

By the time you get done with the following exercise, you may be bored to tears with those novels.

Study those novels for structure. 

Count how many pages between internal-climaxes (I don't mean sex scenes).

Count the length of the scenes (750 words is a great meter per narrative scene).

Count the points of view.  You want to choose novels that have the same number of points of view that you will be using.

Find the story and the plot-thread for each point of view.

Find the Beginning, Middle, End, and quarter-points for each story.

Find which story starts first and ends last.

Find which starts second and find where it ends.  And so on, until you've charted the emotional ups and downs, climaxes and suspense-lines of each of the points of view in all your samples.

Find the "ball" -- and name the Game -- in each novel.  What is the objective of the game?  Who's playing?  What are the stakes?  What is the meaning of it all? 

Read reviews, especially by other readers such as you find on amazon.com, to find what other readers found interesting or boring in these novels.

If I've guessed right, you will find the novel structure behind each of your choices is the same.

Yes, very likely, if you loved each of these chosen novels all that much, you will very likely find that all (or at least most) conform to the same structure.

Why is that?  Because what makes us love novels is not the characters but the structure.

Every single reader believes to the tips of their toenails that what they love is the character in this or that TV show or novel.

It isn't.  What evokes that fascination is the structure that displays the character.

It's like putting a classy, sparkling diamond on a glittery white background under flourescent lights, or putting that same diamond on clean, rich black velvet with one single, tiny spotlight of sunlight spectrum.  Do you love the sight of the diamond or the setting?  Unless you're a gem-buff, it's the setting that sparks the emotion.  That setting in the gem world is the same as the structure in the novel world.  The structure is the part the consumer, the buyer, never notices.  But the professional will fuss over it endlessly. 

Or as caterers will tell you, how delicious food is said to taste depends entirely on presentation not ingredients.  Ingredients count, of course, but presentation can ruin marvelous ingredients. 

Why is this presentation, or novel structure, really the heart-grabber?

Because that structure (like the football game and its rules) provides the element of verisimilitude.

The novel's structure reflects or echos our perception of reality.

In order to deal with reality, we cut it down to size by wearing philosophical "blinders" - like a racehorse wears so the horse won't spook at movement to the side or get flying mud in their eyes.

We try to understand reality.

We impose our own philosophical structure on our personal reality, just so we can deal.

Likewise, in entertainment or art, in the perception of beauty or deliciousness, or sexiness, we respond most strongly to that which fits into the structure we use to understand our reality.

Fiction seems realistic, and thus more satisfying, when its structure mimics our own perception of reality.

That structure of novel and our reality contains within its bones our most cherished, subconscious assumptions about reality, our values, our notion of what is right and what is wrong, of good and evil and whether such a thing actually exists.  The most fundamental axioms and postulates of our personal philosophy (you can't trust men/women; Big Business is the Enemy of the People), are encoded into that structure.

In my series on Astrology Just For Writers on this blog, I think I've explained how Saturn is structure -- it is referred to by some of the most prominent Astrologers as the Illusion that Reality is Real.

That's what I'm talking about here.  The structure of our fiction contains the skeleton that supports our cherished (and necessary for sanity, just as a racehorse's blinders are necessary for the horse's sanity) illusion that our reality is real.

Some people go to fiction for a challenge to that illusion, for a glimpse outside their daily blinders.

Others go to fiction for a validation of that illusion they need so much.


The same reader might have either or both purposes in mind when choosing a given novel to read.  Whatever your reader's purpose, thwart it at your own peril. 

Romance actually caters well to both purposes.

A writer's journey to craft mastery requires the cautious, gentle, shedding of those blinders, at least the cultural ones.

The first step on that journey is choosing the 5 novels that have impacted you the hardest and analyzing them for all these traits I've listed, and more that I've touched on in other posts.

But most especially analyze for the structure that validates your personal reality via theme.

The only place for theme in fiction (except for maybe one line of dialogue at the end, or possibly one line at the beginning, and rarely should that line be "on the nose.") - the only place for theme is inside the bone marrow of that skeleton of structure.

So find 5 novels, analyze them for their structure, and then extract that structure to be your TEMPLATE for this type of novel (chosen by number of POV characters).

If you work at it, you'll end up with several such templates, each for a different type of novel aimed at a different readership, different kinds of publishers, different number of points of view.

This same trick works for non-fiction too.  Structure is everything in fiction and non-fiction. 

Extract successful templates, shake off the clinging details, delete anything specific to other writer's styles, and use that template for your own fiction or non-fiction.

For MOLT BROTHER I used a template of converging plot-lines.






I took two main characters connected by a single huge Project (in this case an interstellar archeological pursuit of evidence of a forerunner civilization in the galaxy).  The two characters' lives were connected by secondary characters who were running the dig.

The weak spot in this novel is that the reader can't see clearly enough, right off the bat, what the connection between the two groups of characters will be.  You don't see the convergence of the plot lines until too deep into the novel. 

But the novel developes velocity as the two main POV characters are on a collision course, and finally meet.

Then both main characters and their secondary characters are furiously involved in the same big stakes game.

MOLT BROTHER and CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS
are about individual characters and their present lives, but what they are doing, why they do it, and what happens because they do it are all the result of karmic forces they let loose thousands of years ago, converging forces.  One of those forces is the invisible, unknown to exist, arch-enemy orchestrating dire events off stage - the evil puppet master. 

It's an enormously complex piece of worldbuilding with a deceptively simple reader-interface. 

The Converging Plot Lines structure is classic, but it's difficult to do. 

MOLT BROTHER has enough technical flaws in the facade to allow writers to deconstruct it and learn the template for their own use.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Verisimilitude VS Reality-Part 2: Master Theme Structure, The Camera, Nesting Plots and Stories

Part 1 of this series can be found here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html


And now we're going to tackle an advanced topic, integrating two whole sets of writing techniques into a more complex composition.  I'll highlight 3 major clues this week, and three more next week, a lot to digest.

But first, review these previous posts that we'll build on here.  They contain the components of integrating multiple point of view with story structure. 

Related posts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/six-kinds-of-power-in-relationship.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html
(that you can't do in a Movie)

Oddly enough that last one has the structural trick of multiple Points Of View explained in the best way I've managed, but I've been asked to revisit the topic of integrating multiple-point-of-view stories with Plot Structure.

Last week I told you about my first attempt at the 2-POV plot structure.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/audiblecom-audiobook-adventure.html
So this week's focus on multiple point of view and plot structure will make a good lead-in to a much deeper exploration of THEME and how to work with it, because that's the core of the integration technique.  Theme  holds a story and plot together.  Theme is what makes it possible to switch points of view without losing the reader's interest.

Integrating Point of View with Plot is a juggling act, for sure, and an advanced craft technique newly published writers may need to master swiftly after their first sale, both because long series require it, and because editors are seeing sales statistics that make them lean hard on writers to do it, even though the editor doesn't know how to teach it.

I can't honestly say I've mastered it myself.

My first attempt was my novel Molt Brother, newly available in a very wide variety of e-book formats. 




Now here's the thing.  The readership at the time Molt Brother was first published in Mass Market (I'm assuming you've read it because I've discussed it here before) was not conditioned to reading SF novels with a plot structured for two different points of view.  Worse than that, actually using both a male and female point of view, or a human and non-human point of view, was just not done in the action genres.  Yet I did both male/female and human/non-human in the same novel. 

So Molt  Brother was both an experimental piece and my first attempt at this structure.

Molt Brother has recently been picked up for audiobook, and you will find it on audible.com, iTunes, and Amazon in audiobook.  I'm hoping the direct sequel, City of a Million Legends will be out in audiobook soon. 

I tried Molt Brother out on a Historical writer I admire, Carol Buchanan, and she has praised it several times on twitter.  I told you a little about that last week.  See the link above. 

From the readers at the time of first publication, I got a lot of blowback about how readers really couldn't tolerate one of the point of view characters, an alien female named Arshel.  More recent readers don't seem to be having the same problem (others maybe, but not the same ones). 

Arshel was a character pretty much invented by my editor and the dual point of view was required, not something I had originally intended for telling this interstellar archeology story.

So I can sympathize with the new writer, recently breaking into publishing, who is now wrestling with this problem.

The lesson is basically, don't try to do too many new techniques in one novel.  Master them one at a time, but keep adding techniques.

You don't "master" a "technique" by paying close attention and concentrating, rewriting until you get the manuscript "right." 

The object of these doing writing lessons is not to  produce one perfect novel.  The object is to master the process of producing novels so you don't have to think about craft and can fully concentrate on your art. 

You master a technique by doing 5 or 10 manuscripts with it, until you can do it without knowing you've done it.  When you can write it while minding the kids and talking on the phone, timing dinner in the oven, and jotting down notes for your next novel, then you've "mastered" the technique. 

But first you do have to do it on purpose, one tiny step, one line and one paragraph, one bit of dialogue at a time, rewriting and rewriting one manuscript until it's the best you can do.  Then do another story, then another, work against distractions and against the clock. 

The hallmark of professional mastery in any field, particularly a performing art like writing, is that you meet your deadlines.  "The Show Must Go On" is the main adage of the writer.  Get the manuscript out of your hands, go on to the next.  

So let's break this down into components that can be added one at a time to the writer's toolbox.

CLUE 1   Master Theme Structure

From my post: http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html


-------QUOTE---------
I was delighted when a student writer asked me (and then reminded me) to explain the structure of very long novels, with emphasis on how to structure a novel for 3 viewpoint characters, even if they're all protagonists.

It's really very simple to do, but infernally difficult to explain.

In order to understand how to craft such a long novel that doesn't sag in the middle or peter out at the end, you have to have a firm grasp of the basics of structure that I've discussed previously.

Protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end, and THEME.

And the most important structural component in a long piece is THEME.

A short story (under 7,500 words) can have one theme, and only ONE. It must be something very clear, starkly simple, mostly concrete -- something you can say in 3 to 10 words. "Life is Just A Bowl Of Cherries" -- "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" -- a bumper sticker.

A novelette (to 17,500 words) can have a DOMINANT THEME and 1 SUB-THEME (and only one).

A novella (17,500 to 40,000) can have a DOMINANT THEME and 2 SUB-THEMES (only 2).

A NOVEL (40,000 words and up) (up to any length) can (but doesn't have to have) a DOMINANT THEME and UP TO 3 SUB-THEMES and no more than 3.

I did not make this up. I learned it in the Famous Writer's Course (a correspondence course on how to write fiction which I completed in the 1970's).

I've been a professional reviewer since the 1980's and a paid reviewer for The Monthly Aspectarian since 1993. I've read a lot of books in addition to the books I read just because I want to. I have NEVER seen this above paradigm of thematic relationships successfully violated.

If you want to see how it works in practice, read the early draft of my Sime~Gen Novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER which is titled SIME SURGEON and posted for free reading at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html Then read UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER (which had a HC edition and a paperback edition so you might find a copy somewhere).

The difference is the thematic structure paradigm strictly enforced, rigidly applied -- because my editor at Doubleday insisted or no publication. Her favorite mantra "It isn't clear" -- comes from how she searches for that thematic structure and the inner relationships between the sub-themes. But she, like most writers, does that subconsciously.
----------END QUOTE------------

You can find all the Sime~Gen novels here:
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20  (that's an Amazon "store" with links to paper and ebook editions)

Look on the right, find Jacqueline Lichtenberg, click, and find Molt Brother, City of a Million Legends, the Dushau Trilogy, and other books including 2 short story collections by me.  Many of Jean Lorrah's novels are there too.

So, the first CLUE is to master THEME STRUCTURE.   And to understand the use of the Master Theme, or the main theme.  We'll have to discuss that in later posts, slicing and dicing philosophy, psychology, religion and other really discomforting topics.  To be able to extract the most Romance Writing Craft clues out of those future posts, you will need to foster a clinical distance from your own personal belief system and subconscious assumptions about reality. 

Most writers have probably been fostering that clinical distance from about age 5 already, simply because writers, like actors, just adore studying people --- other people with different points of view.

So now --

CLUE 2   The Camera

I don't think I've used this Camera analogy before, but again, as with the thematic structure clue, I didn't make it up.  I learned it.

And it isn't something that the e-book revolution will change, destroy, wipe-out or even modify.

That's because this is how the basic human brain is hard-wired.

In "Reality" from the title of this piece, humans (the majority of your readership will be human, probably) view their lives, and the world through one, single, narrow point of view with "blinders" (like race horses) on the sides of their philophical vision to narrow and concentrate their vision of reality.

It's disturbing to glimpse what's outside those blinders.

Your personal philosophy is probably outside the blinders of the majority of your intended readership.

People used to publish books because they were "important" -- because they would "disturb" readers -- because they said something most readers hadn't thought of.  That was before publishing was thrust onto a "profit or die" platform, when readers were only the highly educated, vastly intelligent 5% of humanity looking for new ideas.

Today, that 5% is gravitating toward the ebook and indie-publishing market, and everyone else is buying from Barnes&Noble, often on Nook but really just looking for "the same but different" as Hollywood puts it.  You can be successful with strange, different things in the indie market that won't fly in Mass Market.

That shift is maybe half done, and there could be a sea change before you finish your latest novel, so stay in touch with what's succeeding and what is not.

So if you're aiming at Mass Market (or an "opens everywhere" screenplay, not an indie screenplay) you must create verisimilitude -- the illusion of reality.

To do that, you have to have a good grasp of what your readership sees as reality, then you must frame your information feed (oh, do read those posts listed above) to cast the illusion of reality around your characters and their world.

Lately, many Action-Fantasy and Fantasy-Romance novels are being publishing using First Person narrative because it is easy for a writer who can't handle point of view to cast that illusion of reality if the narrative is all about "I did this, I thought this, I wanted that, I changed my mind" -- it's a cheap trick, and not literarily valid all the time, but it works and it's very easy to do.

The success of the First Person narrative in today's market may reflect our modern young culture's obsession with Self.  It often seems as if in our reality, we are very concerned about "I think about others all the time," or "I can't let the helpless starve," or whatever idealistic value is in focus.  It's about how I practice this value in my life. 

So First Person narratives have verisimilitude for those who, in reality, think inside their own minds "I - I - I"

So if you choose a Third Person narrative, or Omniscient Narrator, you have to work harder at verisimilitude.

What exactly do you do in your mind to create verisimilitude in a Third Person narrative?

Here's how I learned it.

You set a video camera on the shoulder of your character and show the reader what it records.

The camera is not inside the character's head.  You can discuss his "I" narrative only by inference. 

The camera analogy automatically sets those "blinders" around the edges of the character's peripheral vision -- this works wonders for writing Mystery or Mystery-Romance. 

The writer will be tempted to talk about (in those dreaded expository lumps) all the things going on that the writer knows about (must know about) but that the character doesn't know about, doesn't see, isn't aware of.  The CAMERA POINT OF VIEW will prevent the writer from spilling the beans to the reader, or make it easy for the editor to slash out the expository paragraphs and send the manuscript back for rewrite.

What the character does not (yet) know is the single, easiest, way to create a "suspense line" right alongside the "because line" that I've discussed in those posts listed above.

When the character finds out what was happening outside their camera angle, outside their blinders, the reader will experience the emotional shock right along with the character -- so you have created empathy and character identification in your reader, all by leaving out the exposition.

Now, using the Camera On the Shoulder, you can insert a character's thoughts on ocasion when the "beats" (oh, do read the posts listed above) require the information be fed to the reader.  You do that by setting the character's thoughts in a different "grammatical voice" and using a different verb tense than in the narrative.  And you set those "worded thoughts" in italics, not for emphasis but because they are not spoken.  So you don't use quotes on worded thoughts. 

The character's inner-story is revealed, only one sparse hint at a time, in those worded thoughts.   Be very VERY careful to get the verb tense right because that's what carries the emotional impact, the shift from third to first person brings a loud shout of immediacy and personal contact.  A lot of Mass Market novels today are too loosely edited and very often the italics are omitted or the verb tense and person of the pronouns aren't changed properly in the worded thought.  For good examples, see Marion Zimmer Bradley's novels.  Studying her work for the source of the effects she creates is where I learned the worded-thought technique.

CLUE 3   Nesting Plots and Stories

In a very long novel with multiple points of view, you need to have a complete story for each character, but only one plot for all the characters.

No two writers do this breakdown in the same sequence, and any given writer will do this exact breakdown in different ways for different projects.  How it's accomplished is never the same twice.  But every really great novel or film with wide readerships/ viewerships displays the exact same results as I'm about to describe.

As you outline before writing, during writing, and after finishing the first draft, look for and impose this structure on the work, ruthlessly.  After the structure is in place, go back and polish up the "art" that was your original intent.

1) MAIN THEME - nail a single main philosophical theme that dominates the work

2) MAIN CHARACTER - the main theme is the lesson the main character learns.  Don't let the supporting players overshadow or upstage the main character.  Count the main character's pages of "face-time" and dialogue lines just like an actor's agent would.  The FIRST CHARACTER intro'd on page 1 is the MAIN CHARACTER, and his/her conflict resolves on the LAST PAGE.  This is the envelope surrounding all the internal commentary.

3) 1st SUPPORTING PLAYER  -- that character's complete story explicates the 1st sub-dominant theme, and the lesson of that sub-dominant (fraction of the main theme) theme is the lesson driven home to the supporting player at the single climax of the novel.  The 1st supporting player is intro'd second, and his/her sub-plot conflict resolves just before the Main Character's story resolves.  The 1st supporting character's plot-conflict resolution CAUSES the Main Character's conflict to resolve.

4) 2nd SUPPORTING PLAYER - exactly the same as 1st Supporting Player except this one is intro'd third, has a plot conflict that resolves before the 1st Supporting Player's conflict resolves, and CAUSES the 1st Supporting Player's conflict to resolve. 

See the pattern?  NESTED STORIES, one inside the other like Russian dolls.

That's enough to chew on for a while, especially if you re-read the posts linked at the top of this entry.

I'll give you 3 more CLUES next week.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Shifting P.O.V.

Shifting Point Of View
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is a succinct, graphic, iconic way to depict what Lovers fight about, sometimes break up over, and occasionally become enemies about.  It depicts the reason that "The Far Left" reviles "The Far Right."  It's all in the Point of View, and that different vantage point is what creates the best dramatic Conflict, the Essence of Story.  Think hard about this graphic.

On a Yahoo Group zinelist where fanfic writers who are as good as professionals discuss fanfic, the topic of fanfic preference for single POV (Point of View) came up.

I learned to spot POV in narrative when I was in High School and read in a Writer's Digest that the POV in a story is what you would see through a camera set on the shoulder of the POV character. The POV character might not be the main character, the hero, or the character whose story is being told. The POV character can be a "Watson" -- a chronicle writer, a journalist traveling with, a Bard dogging the footsteps of King-to-be Arthur.

But knowing the definition of P.O.V., seeing it done by others in narrative, is not the same thing as writing it yourself.

I struggled with POV as a beginning writer and still focus on it as a professional SF/F reviewer for an on-paper magazine.

Choosing the wrong POV for a story, or shifting POV during a story can kill reader (and reviewer) interest.

I've been teaching writing craft since I was writing my Kraith Series of Star Trek fanfic, a series which had 50 creators working their own notions in my sub-universe under my editing.

Kraith is now available online FREE
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
with other classic trek zines. (and we're open to posting more classics). Kraith won the Memory Alpha Award.

I went on to launch my professional SF novels, the Sime~Gen novels, then several other SF universes (one of which, DUSHAU, won the first Romantic Times Award for SF (so long ago the award isn't posted on their website!)) and now may be revived as webisodes in full color images.

Some writers who have studied the POV issue closely may have missed one key (very invisible) element in a good POV shift that I had to discover for myself.

The issue is not whether you shift POV or not.

The issue is when and why and how you shift POV.

Shifting POV is an art, but also a craft. And it is very difficult to pull it off correctly, or even to define what "correctly" is.

As you read this, please remember Art always trumps Craft in POV shifting. But without Craft there can be no artistic statement. Art requires discipline, and it is the discipline that makes the Art shine forth.

So there are a few craft rules, which if violated ruin both the fine-art aspect of the narrative and the commercial art aspect.

So when you violate a craft rule, (note, I said when not if -- as with all writing, POV rules are there to be violated) as an artist, you must telegraph that you know the rule, that you know why it became a rule, what your readership gets out of your obeying that rule, and that this violation intensifies or delineates an artistic point, and that it will be worth it to the reader by the final line of the story. (i.e. suspense).

For the most part, it is best to use such rule-violation technique with an audience you have established and wooed into trusting you. Your violation of the rule should come as a shock and a frisson of alertness to your reader. "She never writes like THIS! What's going on here?"

And it should come across as your promise to your jaded readers that you know what they generally get out of your stories, and that you will deliver that charge despite the rule violation -- or because of it.

Now, how in the world can a writer accomplish all that with a rule violation? And how can a writer know they have accomplished it, not just lost their base readership?

The answer lies in craftsmanship. Seasoned craftsmanship.

The reason single POV is absolutely, beyond question, the best choice for a beginning writer is that it takes years and millions of words to learn to manage a single POV.

You can't (really can't) manage the discipline for two POVs simultaneously if you can't manage just one by itself. It's a strength, like the strength of a muscle.

You can't lift 100 pounds if you've never lifted 50, or if you managed it only once then dropped the weight.

The reason many novels get published professionally where the POV shifts are not done correctly (blending Art and Craft smoothly = correctly) is that many editors don't have the education to know what they're buying -- and today, a lot of novels are bought by committee, not individual editors. The editor you submit to may be the only one who reads the whole book, then describes it to the committee -- who wouldn't know a POV shift if you put it before them.

Readers, however, still respond subconsciously to the Art and the Craft of the POV shift the same way they always have -- with some added sophistication because of the influence of TV shows.

A badly crafted POV shift will flip a reader right out of the story. They'll put it aside and not come back. Ask them why, and they say "Well, it got boring." or "I lost interest." or "I forgot what the story was about."

Readers don't know where their emotional responses to the character and story are coming from. And it's better for the writer if they don't. Better yet if the editor doesn't know where his/her emotional responses are coming from.

Writers must know -- at least subconsciously -- where their emotional power comes from in the story. It's structure. It's all structure.

A good novel, or movie, can be graphed for emotional pitch and volume. The name of the composition (novel, short story, movie, TV episode) tells you exactly where the peaks and valleys of emotional pitch and volume must fall throughout the work -- by percentage of the way through, by page number. Exactly.

Any writer can produce a work which has originally placed peaks and valleys of emotional pitch dictated by their personal sense of art -- but that work won't be a "novel" or a "feature film" or a "short story." Thus, it won't be "marketable" by the current marketing mechanism.

The name of the kind of work it is dictates the placement of peaks and valleys of emotional pitch -- and thus by derivation, of where the POV shifts may be, and how they can be structured.

Violate any of those unwritten (and un-taught in classes) rules, and your work will not become a marketing success even if you can get it mass market published.

Robert A. Heinlein, quoting an old adage of stagecraft wrote the motto of our WorldCrafters online school of professional writing (at http://www.simegen.com ) -- "Sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation." And from Alma Hill, "Writing is a Performing Art."

And that's the secret behind POV shifting and not losing your readers attention. CAREFUL PREPARATION. It's all stagecraft, a performing art.

The seeds of the shift are planted 10's of pages before the event -- the upcoming shift is telegraphed clearly, but not blatantly.

ARTISTIC RULES:

1) Use single POV unless forced out of it by the THEME, the underlying art.

2) When you introduce a second POV, (or go to Omniscient Narrator) you blow your suspense line to smithereens, and totally change the reader's mood and engagement with the material. If that's the artistic effect you need -- to break the reader's concentration and building emotional involvement -- then you must shift POV because nothing is as effective at loosening a reader's hold on the material than a POV shift. But you must be "strong" enough, disciplined enough, in enough control of the material to redirect the reader's attention smoothly right at a peak of emotional tension where you have precisely foreshadowed what will happen next.

3) In preparation for a POV shift, plant the questions answered from the other POV, and make the reader pant to learn this information. Take two or three chapters if necessary to foreshadow the new POV. Plant the thematic and most especially the visual clues, the symbolism that works on the unconscious, way before the new POV.

CRAFT POV RULES:

1) Never shift POV because you don't know any other way to show the reader some information. Instead, learn the information feed techniques.

2) Never shift POV by accident.

3) Always know exactly what the entire story looks like from ALL the characters' POV's and what they're thinking, feeling, planning, hoping, dreaming.

4) Never shift POV to let the reader know what another character is thinking.

5) Craft the POV transition with the same care you use crafting a time-shift ("Let's go get pizza!" *** The pizzeria was hot and steamy.) or a flashback shift back and forward (another really complex set of operations).

6) At the outlining stage of your story, when you cast your vision of the beginning, middle and end plus the theme and conflict of the story, DIVIDE (or as they say in Mathematics, "factor") those monolithic elements into philosophical fragments that ADD UP TO the story you're telling, and assign each factor to a POV. (that's how Gene Roddenberry created the original Star Trek ensemble cast, factoring the underlying theme. Or so he told us.)

7) Never shift POV in a story under 30,000 words or so, preferably only in a story that's at least 50,000 words. It's too jarring to the reader and there isn't enough space to smooth the transitions. That's why romance novels tend to be longer than action novels.

That all sounds very cold, calculating and distant, maybe more work than fun, and fanfic writers write for FUN above all.

So not all writers do all these operations at the same stage of production.

Craft Step 6 above may be done on the 4th or 5th rewrite. For an example of me doing that, see my first Award Winner, Unto Zeor, Forever. It is in Hardcover & paperback. An early draft of it called SIME SURGEON is posted online for free reading, so students can see how that sort of rewriting process works, step by step.
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html Compare with the published, award winning novel, and see how the POV is tightened and the theme sharpened.

So, the trick to POV shifts that don't leave the reader bored is the same as the trick that lets a writer include information in a flashback. As you move over the transition point between time or character, you must KEEP THE PLOT MOVING FORWARD.

That forward motion is accomplished by the foreshadowing and planting of thematic questions and symbolism long, LONG before the first POV shift -- by ensuring that the reader is anticipating what will happen to the character you're leaving as soon as you return to that character's POV -- and by ensuring that the reader is ready to leap into the new POV and the whole new STORY that comes with it, trusting you to take care of the character they already learned to love.

The more information you allow your reader to have, the harder you have to work planting the questions that produce suspense that will ultimate break explosively at the climactic moment where the conflict is resolved.

When you have two POV's, you have to craft the story's ultimate climax so that both POV-stories resolve in the same incident.

Marion Zimmer Bradley worked for over 20 years struggling to craft that moment for CATCHTRAP. One of the peak highs of my life was when I provided the comment that gave her the key to creating that moment. Publication of Catchtrap opened the door to publication of Mists of Avalon which became a TV Miniseries and a long series of long best selling novels. Crafting that final moment where two stories climax in one event is the secret of that kind of success. It's worth 20 years of hard work.

In a Romance it is customary to use 2 points of view, the two people who are falling for each other.

The first chapter opens in the POV of the person whose story the envelope plot is telling.

The second chapter opens in the POV of the secondary character who is the complication to the main plot. Or who might be a main plot of his/her own.

The questions that generate suspense in a Romance arise from the very POV shift itself, each understanding the other's behavior to be generated by different motives than the reader sees.

By introducing POV's in that order in that way, you telegraph to the reader that these two people are in conflict over a Romantic spark or involvement or misunderstanding. You also telegraph that you know what you're doing, that you understand the form of the Romance novel, that you will deliver what the reader wants.

Another way to work POV is to use Arthur Conan Doyle's motif of the objective narrator who watches events unfold, and is usually only peripherally involved.

I loved it on Sanctuary (the Sci-Fi Channel TV show) where they had Watson and Jack The Ripper faced off against each other in modern times. And Watson was the one who had actually been The Detective, not Holmes.

Writing a multi-POV story requires writing several single POV stories simultaneously, thus the rule 7 above, that it takes more space to construct a story with POV shifts. The single story has to be factored into 2 stories, each with plot, theme, and conflict, all derived from a single unifying theme .

For all those stories to be in the same volume, with events interwoven, the single stories must share a single thematic set. (Otherwise the reader gets confused, disinterested, or remains unsatisfied by the ending.)

I've discussed thematic structure in:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

That post has a discussion of the lengths of novels by theme structure and how to achieve that.

A discussion of the Art of theme construction is at:

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

Our current plan at WorldCrafters Guild is to post PDF files edited from these long blog posts to put related subjects together for easier study. You will be able to download those volumes in PDF, and maybe HTML and .lit formats.

You can follow me on twitter as JLichtenberg -- or on LinkedIn or Facebook -- to get notice of when those books get posted.

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