The Power Of Thoughtful Questions

 "I ask questions for a living..." Larry King responded to an interviewer of perhaps the most famous interviewer of our generation.  

Larry King also shared some of his guiding principles, such as that an interview is about the interviewee, not about the interviewer, therefore he "left ego at the door". He "never brought [his own] opinion to [his] interviews." He believed in asking concise questions, and giving his guests an uninterrupted opportunity to answer.

Writers can learn a lot, craftwise, from public figures who ask questions for a living. 

While Larry King asked questions to edify and entertain and broaden the horizons of his viewers and listeners, asking questions of a different sort is the basis of an attorney's craft. Asking questions is also a critical part of a teacher's Socratic method to stimulate critical thinking and draw out ideas. The right questions, at the right time, and in the right order can often achieve what no amount of argument will do.

There is an anecdote in "Doesn't Hurt To Ask" by Trey Gowdy in which Gowdy gently roasts Senator Tim Scott for having a vanity license plate US SENATOR 2. Senator Tim Scott responds with a question: "How many times were you stopped last year by the police...?"

Off topic, but maybe vanity license plates that convey a helpfully reassuring message to law enforcement ought to cost no more than regular plates. Maybe somewhere on the back of a vehicle, it should be possible to have the photos of the licensed driver and co-driver of that vehicle.  If the need to ask to see License, Registration, and Proof of Insurance are the most dangerous part of a traffic stop, shouldn't those documents have an RFID chip that the police could read before approaching the driver's window?

One of Gowdy's chapter titles, likely to appeal to writers, is "A word is worth a thousand words".  That might be an oxymoron for the ages. Deep!  Another great insight from Gowdy's years as a prosecutor is that there may only be two witnesses to a murder. One is dead. The other is the defendant.

Another truth is that almost every human likes to talk a lot more than they like to listen. That gives huge life advantages to anyone who likes to listen, or likes to ask incremental questions and is willing to actively listen to the answers.

For authors perhaps wanting a refresher in character development, or the use of dialogue while in the POV of the questioner, Trey Gowdy's "It Doesn't Hurt To Ask" might be a goldmine. As Gowdy says, "Asking the right question is a devilish way to turn the tables."

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Mysteries of Pacing Part 7 - Art of Persuasion

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 7

Art of Persuasion

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in the Mysteries of Pacing series:

Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

Part 4 Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

Part 5 How Fast Can A Character Arc?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html

Part 6 - How to Change a Character's Mind
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

As previously noted in this series, each genre has its own preferred pacing. When an editor calls for "fast pacing" it is relative to the genre in question, not an absolute measure.

We have previously defined "action" as "rate of change of situation."

Pacing is more than action.  Pacing is more than "what happens next," or how few words come between what is happening now and what happens next.  What "happens" is plot.  Pacing includes the plot's links to the story.

We use the term "story" for the Character's internal conflict progressing to a resolution, and the word "plot" for the Events the Character's actions and decisions cause to hurtle toward a resolution of the external conflict.

Terminology varies across texts on writing craft, but all writers and editors (even marketers) search for and identify these two elements, plot and story, in any piece of fiction.

Pacing Mysteries lie in the interlinkages between plot and story, in what the Character wants but doesn't have, what the Character does to topple the dominoes of his life and start the plot rolling, and what the Character learns from the events caused by that toppling.

This interlinkage effect is why there is so much confusion about Plot and Story, and why they are used interchangeably as if they refer to the same thing.  The truth is, they are the same thing -- a LIFE in FLUX.

Both plot and story are integral parts of your THEME, and the world you build to showcase your story is constructed on your THEME.  Theme is what you want to say about the form, shape, and dynamic change, of the relationship between Plot and Story.

How a Soul interacts with Reality, and what to do to cause which result, and why even bother trying, are the warp and woof, the very substance of the relationship between Plot and Story.

The Plot is "the story of this life."  The meaning of this Character's life is the story, and that story fuels the plot (because people do things to make their life go as they prefer).

Take for example, finding your Soul Mate.  How do you do that?  How do you choose what to do to make that discovery happen?

What actions lead to finding your Soul Mate reveals something so fundamental about the structure of the universe that science hasn't dug down to it yet.

A Soul is a spiritual concept, and so far science can't even determine if such a thing exists, never mind what it is and how it interacts with reality.

From time immemorial humans have KNOWN all about Soul and the Meaning of Life.

Science investigates these questions, refutes Ancient Wisdom for decades, and eventually comes around to confirming at least the general idea if not the details.

Right now, science is in hot pursuit of how the brain works.  We looked at a scientific study of the brain which reveals little or no difference in the areas of the brain activated during sexual arousal in men and women.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/11/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-10-does.html

But people, being people (your main audience) already know, without doubt, that men and women respond differently to different cues in flirting, foreplay, and hot flying.

There are many other things people know, without doubt, that science disagrees with.  Yet at the same time, Ancient Wisdom and some classic writings, agree with your audience's position on the matter.

One stable opinion that lasts generation after generation, derived from personal observation, is how very stubborn people are about their opinions and ideas.

People do change their minds -- people can be persuaded.  A whole math based science has arisen around methods of changing the behavior of large groups of people.  It's called Public Relations (PR) and we've discussed it under many topics here.  It is how we change minds about who to vote for, or what breakfast is most healthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations

Everyone knows it's expensive to launch a product (or book) because of how long it takes and how many times a person has to see a message from apparently different sources before it will be accepted as true.

Novel readers work the same way. They will accept that a Character has plausible reason to change behavior or opinion (the great pivot to "I love you!") if there are enough iterations of the message that finally "gets through" during the novel.

There is an ancient science called Rhetoric that was developed to persuade people on a logical level.  But you can't reach the "Happily Ever After" ending and make readers believe it is possible if a Character is convinced they have found their Soul Mate only on a logical level.

On the other hand, without a logical level, there is no conviction either.

You need both the emotional and logical levels in the Main Character to finally come match each other, to say the same thing to the Soul.  That moment, when mind and emotion come to the same conclusion for the first time, is the resolution of the Internal Conflict, and thus the end of the Story.  The Plot should end on the same page.

Here is an article indicating how observation of human behavior has fairly well penetrated the fog and revealed exactly how life works.

https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-art-of-persuasion-hasnt-changed-in-2000-years

Your readers know all this, whether they've read this article or not, so use that knowledge to convince them your Characters are real people -- because your Characters succumb to persuasion just like real people do.

Reviews of a novel will complain of cardboard characters or thin plotting - but the actual problem from the writer's point of view is that the story is not related to the plot in a form, method, or manner that the reader can recognize as real.  Pacing is all about revealing, explaining and arguing for your worldbuilding element that delineates the relationship between people and their lives.  "What does she see in him?"  "What does he see in her?"  "What did she do to deserve this?"  "What did he do to deserve meeting her?"

The answers to those questions have to be derived consistently, precisely, and absolutely from the Theme in order to convince readers to suspend disbelief and enter your fantasy world, take a spin in your flying saucer.

And don't forget con-artists do this all the time, artfully.  A con artist Character makes a great foil for a Hero.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 6 - A Character Under Influence by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Conflict Integration

Part 6

A Character Under Influence

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this Theme-Conflict Integration Series are Indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/index-to-theme-conflict-integration.html

One of the oldest story driving conflicts is termed, "Man against himself."  But of course, today, we read that as "Person against self," stripping it of sexual innuendo.

Women can oppose their own interests subconsciously, as well as men (maybe better!)

And of course non-humans might very likely be the same.

The most interesting non-humans would, of course, lack the ability to be their own worst enemy -- in many ways, Spock was originally depicted as such an alien.

So to depict a Romance between a human who can thwart their own interests and a non-human who lacks that trait (and thus doesn't really understand it), one must first examine the issue of "Internal Conflict" and how such a conflict is resolved to reader satisfaction.

Once the writer has a clean, easily expressed theory of how humans oppose themselves internally (and why, and when), then it becomes easy to design the Alien Soul Mate for the human main character.

Concocting a Science Fiction theory of human psychology has at least two main parts:

A) Name the two parts inside humans that could possibly conflict?

B) Name the part that wins.

We have extant theories of Conscious/Subconscious, Yin/Yang, and Body/Soul.

Maybe all of them operate simultaneously -- or maybe none of them are true, just useful approximations.

Choose which maybe you want to use for your Worldbuilding.

Yes, these 3 choices for the 2 parts of humans that cause inexplicable behavior (like falling in love, for example), define 3 separate and different "worlds" you can build.  They are elements of world building, and each defines a sort of "magic" that can (or can't) work in that world.

Humans have been striving to define "what it is" inside us that gives us such trouble, as individuals and whole societies, for thousands of years.

So choose (or invent) a dichotomy to insert into the axioms defining the world you will tell your story within, and then choose the Rules of Engagement -- how they fight, why, and to what end.

The most obvious and natural one for a Science Fiction Romance world is Body/Soul.

Romance is about the sweeping force that dissolves the personality's bonds to "reality" -- to the practical, the everyday, to responsibility (Saturn) and accountability (Mercury ruling Virgo).

People swept off their feet falling "in love" behave unrealistically (Romeo and Juliet), immaturely, or as if they are ignorant of the strictures of reality (an office affair between a Boss and a Janitor, when both are married-with-children).

Romance (Neptune) dissolves common sense, and makes everything and anything possible.  The mental "executive function" becomes paralyzed.  There's nothing inside, no self-discipline, that will stop you, and no awareness of how you will feel about or deal with the consequences.

You do what you want and to hell with the consequences.

That is a favorite excuse in Romance novels for having sex with an inappropriate (or forbidden) individual.

So when Neptune transits hit full force, igniting ferocious sexual urges between a couple, Neptune wins.  There is no internal conflict because the Executive Function of the personality is not functioning.

NO CONFLICT = NO STORY

Thus the "irresistible hunk" story is not actually a story at all.  If the hunk truly is irresistible, there is nothing to oppose his advances, nothing there saying "no!"

Or vice-versa, a guy can run across a woman he can't resist.

But if he can't resist, there is no story to tell.

Story (and plot) are all about RESOLVING CONFLICT, so if there is no conflict there is no resolution, thus no satisfaction in reading about it.

So in a universe where humans are constructed with an internal dichotomy best expressed as Body/Soul, it is the physical (pheromones, physical arousal) of the Body that can (and often does) conflict with the spiritual fulfillment the Soul seeks.

You can use the "model" of Body vs. Soul to create Soul Mates whose bodies won't cooperate.

Romeo and Juliet is again a good analogy, as they were spiritually attracted Soul Mates born on opposite sides of a feud.  Hatfields and McCoys.  Israeli and Palestinian.

Throughout history there have been many political conflicts conquered by Romance.  Kings married their daughters to sons of the main enemies to settle disputes, and history records how many generations hence that settlement lasted.  Very few historical texts detail how the daughter-and-son actually felt about it.  Those novels are being written now.

The body can be born a non-human on some other planet (or space station) arriving at Earth's solar system carrying a Soul which is the Mate to a Soul born human on Earth.

Such a "love" has to conquer all the seething dynamics of First Contact, or worse, the ending of a long interstellar war.

Now we come to the Influence part.  If you choose Body/Soul as your world building dichotomy, then you must decide (sometimes by writing the whole book first) which "wins."  Or more broadly put, how the conflict resolves.

What are the options for resolving a conflict between civilizations?

Well, we have a pattern laid down for us thousands of years ago, which has repeated a few times, and may actually turn up again as we make a First Contact with non-humans.

The story is told in the Bible, and by Hollywood (Cecil B. DeMille), as THE EXODUS.

And the style of the conflict resolution writers can rip from this classic, is Persuasion.

As humans, pure physical bodies, basic primate species, we behave toward each other in a "dominance" pattern, always conquering, opposing, WINNING.  It's in video games, sports, politics, war.  You just have to win.  It starts in infancy with screaming until large hands bring relief.

Toddlers learn to insist until they get their way.  Toddlers learn that Might Makes Right because parents will oppose their insistence with forces the Toddler can't match (pick him up and just put him in the car seat.)

Sometimes, parents have the leisure to distract the toddler or just let the screaming exhaust him.  But the parent always wins.

Later, the parent may try persuasion, but by then the twig is bent and the tree growing robustly.

Basically, primates survive toddlerhood by having their Will overridden.  Toddlers who win the battle run out in the street and get run over by a car.  It happens.  All our toddlers would do that, given the chance.  Having that Will thwarted by Adults grabbing him up just teaches Might Makes Right.

After Toddlerhood, other lessons split our population into those who bend under force, and those who fight to the death.

Any given individual may choose (free will) either strategy, any combination, or invent a new one to try.

But in the end, how we influence each other comes down to a dominance exercise.  How do we get each other to behave properly?

Today's readership is swamped with discussions about violence and the use of violence.  The language of violence is used in News Headlines to describe mere words said to or about someone.  "...Ripped Into..."  "...blasted..."

This is all about one human forcing another to change an opinion or course of action.

In The Exodus story, we see 10 "plagues" (natural disasters, we'd call it today).  The conflict that makes this a "story" is between the Creator of the Universe and Pharaoh.  They vie for possession of a "people" -- the Jews.

Having granted humans "free will," the Creator first demonstrated the reason Pharaoh should release the Jews as that He was better at controlling Nature than Pharaoh's Magicians.  That went on for 5 plagues and Pharaoh tended to give in, but didn't change his opinion.  Then the Creator argued for 5 more plagues to persuade Pharaoh to change his own mind.  The Sages point out that we can learn from Pharaoh's eventual agreement that Persuasion works better than logical equations about brute force.

Of course, we also learn that Pharaoh sent chariots after the fleeing mixed multitude (which included a lot of Egyptians throwing in their lot with the winner.)  Their fate is depicted by Cecil B. DeMille even though Cecil got the "parting" of the sea wrong.

Nevertheless, original sources notwithstanding, all of your readers will probably visualize the Hollywood version of the parting of the sea and wipe-out of the chariots.  The general public has been persuaded.  The general public is under the influence of visual artists whose tools are limited.

The general public, your reader, does not fight that influence.

So, how does one Character exercise Influence over another in such a way that the influencer "wins?"

Which prevails, Body or Soul?

The human primate Body uses Force -- force of muscle, force of size, force of authority bestowed by Kings or Presidents, force of pheromones, force of intellect (strategy, tactics, blackmail), force of Power (I'll make you a star, or ruin your career).

The Body argues by making it abundantly clear that it is to your advantage to do something against your better interests.  Go along to get along.  Bend (as Pharaoh did) then snap back when attention is elsewhere.  Agree to anything under duress, defy later.

The Soul argues right and wrong, ethics, morals, living a Code of Conduct which is to the advantage of the Soul even when it costs the Body dearly.  The Soul adopts Causes, Crusades, Movements, Idealism, Aspirations.  But the Soul habitually Loves -- loves all humans, loves all Bodies, even when they are staunchly opposed to the Soul's purposes.

Which wins?

In Romance genre, including Science Fiction Romance, Love Conquers All is the basic theme, the tenet of all the worlds that belong to the genre.

Soul Mates always gravitate toward each other, like two magnets, snap!  Bodies have to accept that, even when it thwarts the body's purpose.  Souls win, if not in this life, then in the next incarnation.

Bodies, brains, minds woven of the stuff of this concrete reality often embrace "being influenced" -- which essentially means adopting the Group's prevailing opinion, agreeing with opinions shouted forcefully in public, accepting the opinion of "authority" or "experts" who know better than you do.

Souls, aware of being eternal, do not need to "fit in" to survive.  Souls strive and struggle to get their Bodies to live up to ideals, like a horse trainer "breaking" a horse -- or perhaps the wiser ones use less force and more persuasion, luring the physical body with physical pleasure as reward.

Souls resist Influence; Bodies seek it.

Humans have both a Soul and a Body welded inextricably to the physical world.  Any human will sometimes fight being Influenced, and other times adopt the Influencer's ideas as their own.  In other words, humans flip-flop between body and soul dominant.  Any given human might flip-flop on you at any given time -- and not be able to explain why they changed.

If you start a story in Chapter 1 with a Character succumbing to the Influence of another Character, the end of the last Chapter, the very last page, depicts the first Character throwing off that influence.

That is the innate structure of "story" -- short, medium or long -- the beginning is where the two forces that will conflict to generate the plot (to generate the deeds, motives, and Events) first come into contact.

Thus choosing your opening scene as the point at which one Character willingly adopts the opinion of another, you telegraph to the reader that Influence is the conflict.

The Theme is what readers read for, whether they know it or not.  The feeling of satisfaction at The End is powered by dawning comprehension of the Theme.

The master theme of Romance is Love Conquers All.  But it has many sub-themes - and in fact, almost any theme can be subordinated to Love Conquers All and still remain congruent to everyday reality.  I've never found a theme that can't fit Love Conquers All.

If the story opens with a Character Influenced by (an equal, a superior, Good, Evil), the story is about the gyrations necessary to fight off that Influence.

Once free, the Character may choose to adopt that same opinion, and might even become an Influencer disseminating that opinion.

But the story ends where the Character is free of Influence.

THEME: Humans must be free to choose.

THEME: Humans always choose wrong.

THEME: Humans can't be trusted to behave well.

THEME: Alien Values Are Better For Humans Than Ancient Human Values!

THEME: Non-humans are incompatible with humans.

THEME: Certain non-humans aren't so bad.

THEME: It's all right to be human.

THEME: It is not all right to be human.

Keep going to find your best theme that reveals the natural laws of your world and how those laws conflict or contradict each other, creating Characters who fight to exist in your world.

If the inner conflict is Body vs Soul, then the Themes can be fabricated from adages such as the proverbial, "If there are two wolves fighting inside you, which one wins?" "The one you feed the most."

So if you feed your Soul the most, practicing idealistic decision-making, then your Soul will dominate your body.  If you feed your body the most, indulging carnal appetites, then your body will dominate your soul.  Is that true in your fictional world?  Do your Characters have a choice which to feed the most?

In other words,
THEME: Humans are creatures of habit.
THEME: Humans rebel against habit, periodically.  (Uranus transit; mid-life crisis)
THEME: Humans prize freedom from the influence of other humans.
THEME: Humans prize the influence of other humans who (fill in the characteristic, sweet, kind, beautiful, rich, powerful...).

Always remember your THEME is what the main characters' thinking finally evolves into, not what they start out thinking when the conflict is joined, or before the conflict is resolved. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com