Portraying Animal Viewpoints

Recently I've read several bestselling first-person, canine-viewpoint novels by W. Bruce Cameron, the trilogy A DOG'S PURPOSE, A DOG'S JOURNEY, and A DOG'S PROMISE, plus a stand-alone book, A DOG'S WAY HOME. (I've watched three movies adapted from them, too, and I recommend those films. They stick as close to the novels as practicable within their running times.) The latter is realistic, aside from the literary convention of having the canine protagonist narrate her experiences in articulate, grammatical English. The author's afterword mentions the extensive research he did to ensure that her 400-mile cross-country travels would be plausible and also discusses two important motifs in the story, breed-discriminatory legislation and therapy dogs for veterans. The trilogy is fantasy, since it deals with a dog's many lifetimes, reincarnated over and over as he/she strives to fulfill his/her purpose. (Even if I believed in reincarnation, I'd classify these novels as fantasy, since we have no way of knowing what the afterlife is like or exactly how the rebirth process would work.) These books portray the world through a dog's mind and senses, smell and hearing preternaturally acute by our standards, but an understanding of human words and actions necessarily limited. The canine narrator acts like a living video and audio recorder. He or she sees and hears everything that goes on within sensory range, but a lot of it goes over the dog's head. Therefore, the reader understands what's happening even when the narrator doesn't. The dog recognizes many words but is often puzzled by the context. For instance, why do people frequently mention the names of other people who aren't present? Why don't humans appreciate the importance of chasing squirrels or checking out intriguing scents? In a funny scene in one of the books, the dog thinks his owners are encouraging him to bark louder when they yell at him to stop barking. The dogs in Cameron's works don't talk among themselves. They infer the moods, motives, and emotions of other dogs from smells, nonverbal vocalizations, and body language. I highly recommend these novels. Yes, they're tearjerkers with sentimental happy endings, but I love that if it's done well, and the human characters have believable, non-trivial problems.

Fictional animal autobiography goes back at least to BLACK BEAUTY in 1877 (and earlier, according to Wikipedia). Again, the horse narrator tells his life story within a framework of equine perceptions and concerns. Human actions are described and interpreted as they directly affect him. Like Cameron's dogs, he and his animal companions don't talk. Aside from having a horse tell the story, BLACK BEAUTY sticks to events that could actually happen. Indeed, the author's principal purpose was to awaken people to the real-life sufferings of horses and incite reforms in the treatment of animals.

There's a similar level of animal verisimilitude in BAMBI (Felix Salton's novel, not the Disney animated film). The main difference is that the deer do converse verbally. Otherwise, they behave like normal woodland creatures.

The rabbits in WATERSHIP DOWN represent a step away from completely naturalistic wildlife behavior. They have not only a language but culture and mythology. The author, however, researched the actual lives of rabbits, making his characters behave like their nonfictional models. For example, extreme fear can make them go "tharn," paralyzed with terror.

Diane Duane's feline wizard trilogy, THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON, TO VISIT THE QUEEN, and THE BIG MEOW (the latter available only through the author's website), being fantasy, depart further from strict realism. This series features cat wizards with human-like intelligence and a complex feline language. Nevertheless, aside from their wizardly duties, they view the world and human society from a feline viewpoint. For instance, they make a sharp distinction between neutered and sexually active members of their species, and intact males, even cat wizards, still act like tomcats.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from BAMBI and Cameron's dog stories, we have books such as George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM. Although the pigs and other farm inhabitants retain many animal traits, they essentially serve the function of satirizing human political structures rather than attempting to portray the actual lives of domestic livestock.

At its best, deep-dive immersion animal viewpoint fiction can allow the reader imaginative access to minds unlike our own that we can nevertheless empathize with.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 1: You Can't Fight City Hall by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Symbolism Integration
Part 1
You Can't Fight City Hall
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous post on Symbolism:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Is fighting City Hall romantic?  You bet it is! 

But first I want to point you to a short post by Margaret L. Carter here on Alien Romance.  She surveys the effect of going back in Time by watching very old TV Series and how those series depict characters.

The dissonance she refers to measures the sudden change in social norms.  It's too sudden for humans to adjust without psychological stress, according to Alvin Toffler in FUTURE SHOCK change in social norms.  I think we are still in the midst of that change, and therefore Romance Writers can leverage the chaos into massive commercial success bigger than mere destruction-derby, action, raw sex, or violence.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/values-dissonance.html

So let's journey back in time, then apply what we can learn.

One of the hottest hunks of an era was the guy who brought down the mob-corruption in Chicago when the mob had total control of "City Hall."  And the actor who portrayed that sexiest guy was likewise a heart stealing, larger than life, ultimate target for any woman worth her salt.

Here is an Amazon Video page with some of the titles available for a refresher course in that era.


The Untouchables Instant Video

And here is a Kevin Costner remake of that story:

The background theme in the mob story is "corruption."  Corruption is the way to "do business" and/or "Corruption is Dishonorable" and/or "Corruption is a figment of the imagination of those who want to control you."

The themes of Corruption are a theme-bundle, a set of independent but related themes that can be used to drive the stories of a whole set of characters who are in external conflict (plot), but each learning different lessons from being opposed.

Outside of a mere dictionary, the term "corruption" will be defined in a myriad different ways.  "This is corrupt."  No, nonono! "THAT is corrupt!"  "No actually neither is corruption at all." 

"Corruption" is a term with a huge, negative semantic loading (like EVIL, and we all admire the kickass Heroine who fights EVIL and protects our world from invasion and domination by Evil), but unlike Evil Corruption doesn't doesn't come in "Black" vs. "White." 

So with the shift of Generations, as time marches on, we see our very language morphing, words taking on new connotations, new definitions, and being used in new ways. 

Compare that Kevin Costner remake of The Untouchables with the earlier version from 1959 and watch that difference:




Now, consider "Corruption" in the abstract.  The concept lends itself handily to Thematic Statement -- what particular action in which situation actually equals "corruption" and what action does not qualify.  This is potent stuff, and crazy-sexy stuff, too because it makes or breaks Relationships. 

A woman looks for a "strong" man, a man who will stand for what she believes in, fight to the death to protect her and his children, never break his promises. 

Marriages founder on such broken promises, even if "Oh, that's not what I meant" comes into play when accused of breaking a marriage vow.

You see this argument unfolding in today's headlines, all the dodging and weaving to redefine what an oath actually means, what the US Constitution actually means (nevermind meant long ago) and what that has to do with "reality." 

Nobody knows how to resolve such an argument.  The internal parameters are fuzzy, foggy, blurred, and there's no concrete definition of what's right and what's wrong, nevermind what's legal and what's illegal.

This befuddlement affects people of different ages differently and thus your Target Audience is divided by age group.  To capture more than one age-group, you need characters of different ages bespeaking the attitudes and values of their own generation.

Remember how we broke down the Generations among your target audience according to what Sign of the Zodiac Pluto was in at their birth? 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

---------quote from that Part 6-----------
Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.

PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.

There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.

That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)

The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.

Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)

The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.

But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.

Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!

YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.

TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.

Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.

That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.

The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).

The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!

Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreign published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).

Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)

The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.

When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)

The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.

If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?
----------end quote-------

Yes, it's a long post, and that is a tiny slice out of the middle.  It was posted in 2009.

I still think understanding the generations, and the attitudes they have toward Government (what it should be used for, what it can do effectively, what it must never do, etc) is a vital key for writers who are aiming at a particular Demographic which is seen by publishers or producers as currently gobbling up a certain type of fiction.

The full effect of a generational obsession is not seen until that generation has a) money they earned, and b) power over others (e.g. getting promotions to management positions).  The effect is not seen in politics unless there is a significant portion of the total population born in that time-span.

For commercial purposes, industry (Public Relations Firms mostly) have named the generations and assigned them boundaries in years, then attempted to parse the statistics of the mass-behavior of these people.

Forbes Magazine did an article in July 2014 examining the breakdown of generations, and highlighting individual biographies to illustrate a point.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/07/30/the-recession-generation-how-millennials-are-changing-money-management-forever/

And it contains the key graphic writers can gain from, a chart defining the generations in percent of population, and their behavior at different life-stages.

 

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

Constructing The Opening Of Action Romance

Story openings are difficult to construct and even harder to troubleshoot once constructed.

Information must be coded, compact, subtle, "off the nose" and at the same time explain to a totally disinterested reader why they should read (or viewer why they should view) this story.

I've discussed openings and how to construct them in the context of many other posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com -- posts on theme, character, plot, and the other working parts of story.

Here's some posts on structure which reference the skills of constructing an opening.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

And here's one on first chapters by Linnea Sinclair

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/first-chapter-foibles.html

And my usage of the words "story" and "plot" just to be clear about that.  Theme is what glues them together.

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


If you've been trying to apply these techniques, I now have a really great example to illustrate them. 

Here is the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette - a writer I met via twitter and #scifichat #scriptchat and others.

Immortal

The structural issues make this a very borderline book, and it may not make it into my professional review column for that reason alone.  However, there is a compelling resonance here that makes this a "can't put it down" read.

The structural issues that are a put-off for me might well be the real source of interest to others.  Structure is not absolute.  There are elements of taste involved.

So I have to say that the structure chosen to tell this story seems unnecessarily involuted to me.  It's too complex for the material.

What is this structure?

The first-person narrative does hold to the POV of first person (an Immortal born so long ago language was only grunts).  So I have no complaints there.

The structure is clever. 

Each chapter is introduced by a few paragraphs set in italics that are happening while the main character is a prisoner (hung hero) in a laboratory setting where they are obviously investigating his immortality and immune system.

If the novel were told starting with his capture and going through his escape attempts until he succeeded, it would be a drag, long, boring hung-hero dealing with distractions rather than advancing the plot.

The plot is not about him escaping prison. 

The actual narrative tells the story of this Immortal discovering that someone is after him.

This "someone" is rich and powerful and hires "demons" as hit men tasked with taking him alive.

Other people, though, die all around him. 

So the straight-through plot is this Immortal being chased by humans, hit-men, demons, (actually some online gamers being used as dupes) and there are vampires, and a female who may be as old as he is (or older) he isn't sure.  There's another woman involved, too, so you have a sort of "triangle" situation which isn't made clear even at the end of this volume.  But the ending leaves us eager to read the next installment in this guy's Relationship problem. 

He's been playing tag with this Immortal woman for millennia.  (I told you this is good stuff.) And in the end of this novel, he learns some things about her, and his Relationship to the woman he meets in this novel changes substantially -- so the plot is advanced and there is a solid "ending" leading to a sequel. 

At JUST THE RIGHT POINT (I told you the structure is well done for what it is) we get to the event where he gets captured at just the point where he hatches a successful escape attempt.

All the elements (characters and tools) to create this escape have been properly introduced in prior scenes.  The possibility that he can die permanently has been made real. 

So what's "wrong" here?  This plot rumbles along like a well oiled machine.  Why is it a chore to read? This is a good writer with a solid track record.  What happened here?

There are 2 very abstract technical problems with this absolutely fascinating novel (don't worry, there's a sequel in the works that'll be better).

#1) The point in time chosen for Chapter One is wrong.

#2) The innate "character" of this character may be either badly presented or actually formulated wrong. 

OK, let's start with #1 because that's easy to fix once you understand why it doesn't work.

------SPOILER ALERT -----

As often stated in this blog, I don't believe a good story can be "spoiled" by knowing what's going to happen in it.  If it can, it's not a good book.  If you understand that, read on fearlessly.  You'll still love reading this book.  In fact you may love it more after reading this discussion.  

The first characters introduced after the main character wakes up out of a drunken stupor end up dead right away. 

It is established that this dissipated and dis-likeable main character telling the story actually holds this pair of unlikeable college men in some affection -- mostly because they enjoy getting drunk and watching ballgames on TV with him.

This is a portrayal of college students that does not "work" for me.

What rule is violated by this portrayal? 

Many 1940's SF novels elevate and laud drunkenness as a means to accessing higher consciousness or even one's innate intellectual skills.  I used to like those novels.  I know too much now to find such an attitude laudable. 

Opening a story with a guy (apparently homeless bum) crashing in a college student's apartment and supplying beer and liquor to keep them drunk just doesn't work for me.  I feel no sense of identification with this main character and couldn't care less what happens to him.

The information fed into the story-line by this opening situation is that this guy is not homeless, not poor, is capable of affection for these young men, and is -- ta-da! Immortal. 

He ended up in the apartment having been brought there to a party by a friend (not-human not-magical iifrit) who also plays dissipated drunk convincingly. That friend later returns to move the plot forward, solidly and convincingly.

So I don't like this immortal character because he gets humans (who can be harmed by drunkeness) drunk while he drinks to a stupor but can't be harmed by it.  He stays drunk for centuries just for the fun of it. 

We see a portrait of an individual blessed with long life, not invulnerable but Immortal (so far). 

I dealt with this problem of being immortal among mortals in my Dushau Trilogy, but my immortals there were aliens (I do vampires in other universes such as Those Of My Blood.)

Dushau (Dushau Trilogy)

My Dushau Immortals studiously avoid close personal relationships with mortals because they have perfect memories and too many bereavements can lead to insanity.

Doucette saw this problem as well, but handles it differently and with some intriguing twists.

In the course of the opening set-up chapters of this novel, we see this Immortal experience affection and friendship for a number of humans.  His heart opens and he bonds easily with all and sundry (even vampires). 

This makes him, to me, an irresistible character.  Could not put this book down.

But at the same time, there's the "gritty realism" that this character has murdered -- over thousands of years, for many reasons, causing death has become no great big deal.  And we see him murder mercilessly.  Maybe with some justice, but with a callous attitude. 

Now here we come to the Information Feed issue.

Go back to SAVE THE CAT! (the 3 books by Blake Snyder on screenwriting).

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

What does the title say?

To engage your viewer INTO bonding with the main character whose story you are about to tell, you MUST first reveal something about him that will arouse viewer sympathy, empathy, identification or a yearning to become "like that."

The first thing we learn about the dingiest, dirty-harry character you want to present has to be LAUDABLE, universally laudable.

So Blake Snyder says -- show your hero SAVING THE CAT.  Taking a risk for the helpless, or otherwise revealing an admirable character trait BEFORE you reveal the gritty traits that make the 6 problems the character has to solve.

Nothing in the introduction to Doucette's Immortal is in any way "saving the cat" -- drunkenness itself which is not a real PROBLEM for the Immortal but which harms those humans he associates with is not laudable.  Bumming around among college parties with an Iffrit with dissipated habits is not laudable.  That this is done by choice because he has nothing else to do is cause for reader disinterest.

So, while there are many traits about this Immortal character that are absolute grabbers, what we learn first are put-offs.

The put-offs will eventually become the problems that establishing Relationships will solve.

But as depicted in the opening, this Immortal has no conflict (internal or external) in forming friendships. 

The first real plot event is the news that the college students who hosted him have been murdered by a demon -- and the assumption that the demon had been aiming at the Immortal while the college students just got in the way.

The structural problem with this plot event is simply that the Immortal was not in the apartment when the demon killed the students.  The event happened off stage.

The Immortal actually feels a little sad and maybe miffed that the humans he felt affection for (briefly, in passing, without depth) had been murdered because of his presence in the apartment.

If not for that feeling, he'd have just blown town.  But the murder of the humans made it more personal. He wants to fight back. 

So from there on, the story gets interesting.  The plot advances, and you begin to see where things are going with the bits at the beginning of chapters showing he's going to be captured.

The next structural innovation that is unnecessarily complicated is a shift in the narrative voice at the point where the two narratives (the chapter headings during captivity and the chapters leading up to being captured) come together.  The standard first-person past narrative suddenly becomes first person present.

This is unnecessarily jarring, a real put-off.

In a different sort of story, it wouldn't be a put-off.

In fact, the entire structure could be the best artistic choice for some stories.  Stories that involve say, time-travel, could work this way.  Or stories about known historical events -- a King Arthur legend, The French Revolution, etc. 

But in this particular narrative, the device seems like an erroneous choice because the material itself is strong enough to carry the reader straight through the plot.

So what we seem to have is a story-concept, a very intriguing character, that needed introducing to a readership.

There is a huge over-burden of background to work in.  This character is 10's of thousands of years old and his development as a human being has direct relevance to how he relates to the modern century.  He admits that at first his people were barely self-aware.  He still has long-distance running skills from running down game for days at a time.  He has trouble relating what happened to him in his life to the various calendars that have come and gone. 

There's a lot of background to work in.  A lot of information to feed.

The Immortal's story is being picked up when two women come into his life and that changes things significantly.  But that means the story has to portray how things were for him "before" so that how things become "now" and will be "after" these relationships start to affect him. 

How can you plot that when it's all information feed.

How can you avoid expository lumps? 

The story and the plot are totally stationary in this Immortal's life all through this novel. 

He's a "hung hero" on two levels -- being captured and imprisoned to be studied, and being chased down to be captured but he doesn't know by whom or why until the last third of the novel.

So the author cleverly structured the two stories against each other to give the illusion of movement.

Without the headings at the beginnings of chapters, we wouldn't anticipate him being imprisoned or why or how hard it would be to escape.  It's foreshadowing by expository lump, cleverly translated into show-don't-tell (yes the chapter headings read very well, no mistakes there).

Without the story of his being chased down and captured, the story of escaping from prison wouldn't carry the novel.

So given that you have this terrific character with a huge exposition needed to introduce him, and NOTHING HAPPENING in his life to make a story, what do you do?

The solution to clever-up the structure is actually a work of genius. 

But for me it just doesn't "work" because the story there is to tell about this Immortal does not require artsy-craftsy tricks of structure.

This Immortal's story actually begins when he meets the woman who will change his life, his self-concept, cause him to become involved in the modern world, in humanity and humanity's future by using all his past experience in the service of a greater good.

For any man, that change is always caused by a MATE - a SOUL-MATE (for most it's female, but not always). 

The element is LOVE.  The journey is from today's misery to "happily ever after." 

When that story starts to move, the novel begins.  All the rest is throat-clearing. 

The story starts where the two elements that will conflict first come together. 

So for this Immortal, that point is where he meets this human woman who will become significant forevermore.

But the story of his being captured and escaping is an incident, an excuse for action scenes, not the story, not the path to resolving the conflict.

Taking Blake Snyder's advice, the story starts where SHE sees HIM "save the cat" -- i.e. do something that endears him to her, that makes her willing to RISK something to save him.

Do you see where this is headed? 

We have a classic PASSIVE HERO - he fights, he takes action, but his decisions do not actually make a real difference.  This very clever, very skilled author has hidden this salient fact under some virtuoso writing, but the fact itself spoils everything in this novel.

What do you do to solve a PASSIVE HERO problem?  What do you do to avoid expository lumps?  What do you do to find a new opening for the novel that does not focus on a hung-hero who can't do anything about his problems and about whom the only important facts are odious to the very readers who would most enjoy the novel? 

The solution is excrutiatingly simple. Think hard. It is a tried and true classic any seasoned editor would toss at a writer who sent in a chapter and outline like this.  Why is this writer fumbling to tell this story when he obviously knows how to write novels?

See my 7 part series here on editing -- here's the 7th which has a list of links to the previous parts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Now, think-think-think. 

If you've read the novel now, you may see the obvious solution. 

This whole thing is not the Immortal's story.

The expository lumps cleverly avoided by having the first person narrative allude to events in past millennia (a literary device that works) are filled with information we don't need to be TOLD -- on the nose. 

And though these allusions are cleverly phrased to appear incidental, they are "on the nose" data-dumps.  The data is mostly irrelevant to the Immortal's story.

How do you avoid that?  What do you change? 

I loved reading this Immortal's "voice" -- but that didn't change the fact that the expository lumps disguised as clever narrative that carried characterization just don't "work."

Why don't they "work?"  Because the information in each memory is not something I wanted to know before I read it.  No suspense.  No revelation.  I didn't have to work for it.  I wasn't asking the question "what happened to this guy in Egypt?"  I didn't NEED TO KNOW in order to solve the mystery of who's after him. 

Because of that I didn't care who was after him or why.  He felt it was ho-hum, being chased another time -- yawn.  So it bored me.

At the opening, in the college student's apartment, this Immortal wakes up from a drunken stupor. 

If ever you are tempted to start a story (and yes, I've done it!) with the main character "waking up" in some improbable circumstance or confused -- STOP WRITING and go back to the drawing board.  Something is wrong conceptually with the structure or the character. 

The story opens where the two elements that will conflict to generate the conflict which will be resolved in the last chapter first come together.

What happens in the last chapter of this novel?

The woman the Immortal meets pretty well into this novel finally gets what she wants, positions herself where she wants to be. 

The Immortal succeeds in achieving NOT ONE THING that he SET OUT TO ACHIEVE in the opening.  He wasn't either setting out or achieving.  He was stationary in his life when SOMETHING HAPPENS TO HIM. 

The two types of plot that go with this kind of material are:

1) Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out

2) A likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal.

In the opening to this novel, the Immortal does not DO ANYTHING, decide anything, take any action, learn anything, or even pray for anything that CAUSES anything else to happen.

Thus the Immortal (Johnny) does not GET his own fanny caught.  That is he does not take an action that initiates a because-line. 
In this novel the Immortal is not introduced by any trait that is even remotely likeable by any substantial audience-demographic.  He is by any measure no hero and most importantly, he has no goal. 

All of these fatal flaws are totally hidden by the superb writing craftsmanship. 

And hereby hangs a cautionary tale.

When you are writing a story that has hold of you by the guts, a story you just have to get others to read, a compelling story -- and you find that you have to HIDE THE FLAWS, then STOP RIGHT THERE and go back to the drawing board.

Readers may not know how to tell you what's wrong, but they will sense something wrong and many of the very readers who should read the book just won't finish it.

Don't use your skills to hide flaws.  Use them to eliminate the flaws.

The flaw in the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette is the very most common flaw I see in manuscripts (and even published novels in Mass Market), and I see the very readers who would enjoy the novel most putting it aside.

It's a simple flaw and it's easy to fix.  You know it's there when you face pages of utterly essential expository lumps. 

YOU ARE TELLING THE STORY FROM THE WRONG POINT OF VIEW.

Now re-imagine this novel, IMMORTAL, from the woman's point of view.

She is the online gamer.  She has an eclectic education, a vast imagination, an embracing nature.  Her story starts when she gets the first inkling that such a thing as "an Immortal male" exists.

Her goal, which she pursues as relentlessly as the Immortal once ran down game animals, is to meet a living Immortal man. 

When she meets him, her GOAL shifts to getting him into bed. 

Her goal shifts when her heart opens to embrace this Immortal as a person, not just an icon. 

Her goal shifts again when she realizes she wants this guy, she wants to be with him. 

And that final goal, at the end of this novel, seems to have been achieved.

She is the one whose life changes, by her own actions, by her own determination, by her own will, by her own heroism.  And that change is a WORTHWHILE GOAL that can be achieved only over SEEMINGLY OVERWHELMING ODDS. 

She is the likeable hero who struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal - one she only sees dimly when she takes that first, fateful, step. 

This novel is her story.

Here is a marvelous post by Linnea Sinclair on Point of View.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/heading-into-danger-choosing-point-of.html
Now from within her point of view, FINDING OUT, or discovering, or unfolding, or digging up the information about how The Immortal interacted with the ancient past, what his opinion of it is, and any relevant detail of his past experiences, becomes the main story-imperative.

As we sink into her point of view, we adopt her urgent need to know, and feel sparks of triumph every time we worm some new tidbit out of the Immortal.

All the expository lumps disappear and we learn his story through her eyes.  What we don't know becomes spice, incense, and erotic triggers. 

Saving him from the laboratory (which she does very cleverly) becomes the plot which culminates in conflict resolved and if not an HEA at least an "off into the sunset" ending leading to a sequel where we chase the HEA which is now suddenly possible - but maybe not going to happen.

So this opening novel, the introduction to the Immortal as a character, is not his story because his life is static at that point. 

Yet through her eyes, we can enter into his life, understand what makes him tick better than he does himself, and see what he needs to do to learn what he must learn in order to change and grow, i.e. to be alive in a real sense, not just immortal.

Sometimes a character's story can be more compelling, more dramatic, easier to write and easier to read when that character's story is seen from outside.  Remember Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. 

Always turn your material around and around, looking at it through the eyes of various characters before writing. 

Notice here the power of THE OUTLINE.  Given an outline of the plot, it would be immediately clear that the ending does not match the beginning and the middle doesn't hit the right "mid-point" tension note.

Once you see that the ending happens where one character achieves a goal, and the other character acquires a goal, you will know where the story starts.

Maybe you'll read this book and totally disagree because the character revealed in the smart-ass inner dialogue is just too interesting to lose by switching points of view.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com  

ps: in a few weeks we'll walk through the step-by-step process of stitching all these disparate techniques together and invent a world bursting with story-potential. That'll be at least a 7-part series of posts.

Pointing and Viewing Conflict

We've had a couple of fun discussions going on over on my Yahoo group where several of my students from recent online class have decided to take up residence. We've been discussing both point of view, and conflict. As I say i every one of the classes that I teach: it's almost impossible when talking about the craft of writing fiction to talk about solely one aspect of that craft. Commercial genre fiction is more than one aspect of writing, just as a a cake is more than an egg.

The point of view you choose in writing directly impacts upon the kind of conflict you end up working with. Not only the point of view character you choose to write from, but also the style of point of view: first person, third person, tight third. In first person point of view you are likely going to have a lot more internal conflict than you would in regular third person point of view.

A side note: you may notice that when I talk about writing. I tend to use the word "likely" a lot. That's because there is no one 'every time -- all the time' rule in writing, except of course things like grammar and spelling. I have this fear --- and yes it does happen --- that if I say something like "first person point of view has far more internal conflict" that I'm going to get comments on this blog, pointing out specific stories where first person point of view lacks internal conflict. I know that. As I said, there is no every time -- all the time rule.

So back to point of view and conflict. If you're writing first person point of view or tight third point of view, you are likely going to have a lot more internal conflict. I think one of the reasons for this is obvious. But if not, here it is: you're dropping the reader tightly and intimately into the character's skin. When you do that, the character's thoughts and feelings are in the forefront.

The point of view character you choose, whether in tight third a regular third, greatly affects the form of the conflict. Each character starts out in a story with a goal or a set of goals, which likely will change or morph as the story progresses. The thwarting of these goals is what creates conflict. How that conflict is structured depends upon how you build your character. Is he an introspective chap? Is she a gregarious gal? Does he say one thing and think another? Was she raised in a home where her opinions are not valued? All these kinds of things, many of which are back story, impinge on conflict.

I apologize if to any of you, this sounds simplistic. But I judge a lot of unpublished writing in national contests, and I teach a lot of classes to unpublished writers. Sometimes the most simple things are the ones that are overlooked. This includes the integration of the various segments of the craft of fiction, which is why I'm talking about point of view and conflict.

One of the most common questions --- that Jacqueline has addressed here many times --- is whose point of view should I be in? The obvious answer is the point of view of the character, who has the most to lose at that point in the story. Or as Jacqueline puts it: the character who is on the positive pole of the transaction. The character whose actions will make a difference. Obviously, if the character's actions make a difference, this creates an emotional reaction in the reader, because it changes the flow of the story. So the two are really very well intertwined.

So when you're creating your characters remember to create them with conflict in mind. Structure them in such a way that the plot allows you to question and challenge their goals and their values.

I love literary agent Donald Maas's tip: "Take your character's greatest strength and make it his greatest weakness."

That's the purest form of choosing the proper point of view, and integrating it with conflict.

~Linnea

HOPE’S FOLLY, Book 3 in the Gabriel’s Ghost universe, Feb. 2009 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

She fought the urge to salute and instead watched him head for a striper standing in the corridor, realizing she didn’t know his name or rank. Not that it mattered. There was something very familiar about him, something that resonated in a distant yet warm part of her heart. Something that told her she not only trusted him but that she’d follow him into the jaws of hell and out again. And never regret it.

Verisimilitude VS Reality

Before we start, let me point you to the comments on Linnea Sinclair's post just before this one.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/heading-into-danger-choosing-point-of.html

A comment on Linnea's post raises the question of how to avoid the abrupt and reader-losing Point of View Shift which I discussed in:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html

Here below in Verisimilitude Vs. Reality is one of the information feed techniques I referred to in my answer to that question on Linnea's entry. Clever concatenation of information feed techniques is how you get the reader to know something without telling them, and here is how you get them to believe it.

This below is one information feed technique used to avoid commiting the Expository Lump. So here are links to my discussions of Lumps.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

---------------
Early in my writing career, I learned how dialogue differs from real speech.

Dialogue is the ILLUSION of speech, not the transcription of speech.

Before you grasp that distinction, you have no hope of creating dialogue that enchants the reader, moves the story forward, characterizes and informs the reader all in one single reposte, retort, dig, jibe, offhand comment.

The best one-liners that make it into common usage, (i.e. "Make my day.") capture common moments of life with an original sound-byte an actor can elevate to pure art. Other examples: Hannibal on the A-Team: "I love it when a plan comes together." Quantum Leap: "Oh, boy." Or the myriad Buffyisms we all loved so much -- smart-alec comments during a fight to the death.

A real person in a real situation just doesn't think that fast. So when Art supplies the right comment for the type of situation, it enters common usage.

Note we can quote the Television show's name, or the film, the actor and the line. In Television, for example, those lines are created by committee which can include the actor playing the character out based on a previous episode's line ("Logical, Mr. Spock.") ("He's dead, Jim.") ("Oh, one more thing.")

How many of you know the writer's name who came up with that marvelous line for that spot in the action? Think about that.

If you want fame and glory, find something to do other than be a writer. It's hard work, requires an enormous amount of education, and over a lifetime rarely amounts to more than minimum wage per hour invested.

So here's another long installment on that education in writing. It'll take a while to read this and apply it with practice.

Characters don't say what people would say -- because characters aren't people.

Characters are the illusion of people. So they say the illusion of what people say.

And the difference between fiction and reality is the same for most all elements in a story, not just dialogue. In worldbuilding, we build the illusion of a world, not an actual world; the illusion of a culture, not a real culture; the illusion of war or combat, not actual combat; the illusion of a government, not a real government; the illusion of mansions and hovels, not real mansions and hovels. So how do we make that illusion "work" for the reader?

How do we get readers to believe our illusions are real, so real they adopt our character's one-liners? (there are Sime~Gen fans who regularly conjugate the Simelan word SHEN when they experience the Ancient version.)

As story tellers, we are spinning illusions, not imparting information.

Yet the power and ultimate usefulness of our illusions depends on our crafting a foundation of correct information underneath our illusion.

Verisimilitude requires something to be truly similar to. And that's "information" that we build our illusions upon.

It may not be "correct" information that we need, but information matching that which readers already "know." Even if the readers "know" something that isn't actually true, the writer must start crafting the story based on what the reader believes to be so and gradually, step by step, work in the illusion of a new truth.

If that process is done well, it will end up making the reader so curious that he/she will go research the topic on their own, maybe dedicate their lives to it. Many Star Trek fans discovered Science Fiction via Star Trek when they were in college, and went on to change their majors to one or another science. Today, a new generation in college grew up on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.



I have fan letters from readers of Molt Brother and it's sequel City of a Million Legends (both available in e-book on Fictionwise, and on amazon.com in paper) indicating that the books inspired people to choose Archeology as their major in college.


Fiction speaks. Fiction influences. Fiction is illusion. But Fiction is sometimes more real than reality. How can that be?

Because a particular work of Art can reach into the subconscious and activate something within a person that we have no name for other than Soul, fictioneers have real power. Awesome power.

That's why so many books on writing craft emphasize knowing your audience, choosing to write to a particular, defined sub-set of all humanity so that your book will be marketable. But not just marketable! Memorable.

You have to choose "who" you are writing to in order to make the illusion of reality work for those people. Even in America, various sub-cultures harbor different convictions about the nature of reality, so writing with "verisimilitude" for each one means starting with different assumptions about the facts you have in common.

Only about 35 million in the USA watched Obama's Inaugeration. In the 1970's you needed a TV audience of 20 million just to stay on the air and there were only 200 million people in the USA. Today there are well over 300 million in the USA. The percentage watching television is shrinking.

In fact, the percentage of us in the USA that do or know any particular thing -- have anything at all in common -- is vanishingly small and still shrinking. So it gets harder and harder for a writer to identify a cohesive "Market" large enough for a product that would have costly production and distribution.

The business of fiction is in massive flux as is the business of news distribution.

The more your fantasy world diverges from the reader's everyday reality, the more careful you must be to craft on a platform of reality based facts familiar to your reader/viewer.

For your characters to become real people to a readership, the characters must be presented via details from that readership's experience. That's not necessarily "real life" experience. What readers have read in other stories is just as "real" to them and something a readership has in common.

So how do you cast your illusion of people? How do you create a character that seems real? Do you tell the reader everything about this character's biography and behavior tendencies in a 2 paragraph "character sketch" when you first bring them on stage? Do you even need to write a "character sketch" for yourself, as almost all writing textbooks recommend?

No. You don't tell the reader -- in fact, the less you tell the reader (or let the reader know via other techniques) the more realistic the character will seem.

Why is that?

Because in a text based narrative, you SHOW NOT TELL who the characters are.

Why does SHOW DON'T TELL create the most powerful illusion of reality?

Show Don't Tell works because the reader becomes actively engaged in fleshing out the details of every scene, every room you walk the character into, and every thought in the character's head. In fact, the character's internal monologue is much more powerful when you don't let the reader hear everything the character is thinking or especially feeling.

How can that be?

An engaged reader is garbed in the character, becoming the character and looking at the surroundings through the character's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

So you INDICATE a tiny (artistically chosen) detail derived from the THEME of the story -- like the strokes of a Japanese Brush Painting -- and the reader uses your details to make a fully dimensional 256 toned picture of their own. The reader becomes enveloped in your world because it is not your world -- but their own.

That's one reason children must be taught to "read" (beyond sounding out words) -- there is a mental technique of translating cold text into full-dimensional pictures in the mind that must be learned. The most common way of learning the technique is to read a lot of books -- until you find one that engages you fully -- then follow that author or that genre, building a set of experiences and facts "in common with" the writers of that genre.

The writer's function is to trigger the native imagination of the reader, not to inject the writer's own story into the reader's mind.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me an old adage, and I can never remember the originator of it. "The story the reader reads is not the story the writer wrote."

No two readers "read" the same story, even when reading the same text.

Better yet, when a story is well written (well crafted to energize the reader's imagination) then the same reader can re-read the text and discover a totally new and different story -- because the reader has changed.

The writer's function is to evoke emotion, energize imagination, arouse anticipation and deliver satisfaction. The writer is an artist whose medium is the reader's emotion.

When a reader gets all that emotional satisfaction from a text, they will remember that text as having TAUGHT THEM something.

There are two main ways that a human being learns. From instruction and from experience. Instruction is hypothetical, requiring cognitive activity. Experience is concrete and practical, requiring engagement.

The fiction writer teaches via vicarious experience, not instruction.

People remember what they learn when it comes wrapped in a vivid emotion. ("A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go doowwwnnn!")

Now let's take a concrete example of facts upon which to build Verisimilitude.

Here is an actual, real-life biographical fact that could become such a hard foundation for a fictional or fantasy scene or incident that would ring bells for the readers.

If presented wrapped in a powerful enough emotional context, this little episode could engrave these (actual) facts on readers' minds in such a way that, should this ever happen to them or someone with them, they would recognize the experience and respond in such a way as to save a life.

Though not all readers know it, it is an established fact that women often experience heart attacks with a totally different set of sensations than men do.

The challenge to you, as writers, is to use the facts below to create this scene within a story in such a way that a man reading it will recognize it happening to a woman he knows in reality. Convince husbands and brothers. Make the men understand what the woman feels.

This below came to me in one of those round-robin emails with "pass it to ten people" -- which is a real bad idea, because once it infects a circle of friends, you'll get 200 copies back.

-------------------

> FEMALE HEART ATTACKS
>
> I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I've ever read.
>
> Women and heart attacks (Myocardial infarction). Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.
>
> 'I had a heart attack at about 10 :30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might've brought it on.
>
> I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, 'A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.
>
> A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a d ash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you've swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation---the only trouble was that I hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.
>
> After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasming), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).
>
This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. 'AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening -- we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack!
>
> I lowered the footrest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn't be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else ... but, on the other hand, if I don't, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in moment.
>
I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics .. I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.
>
I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don't remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the Cardiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like 'Have you taken any medications?') but I couldn't make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stents to hold open my right coronary artery.
>
> 'I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the Paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
>
> 'Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.'

> 1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not the usual men's symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn't know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they wake up ... which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It is better to have a 'false alarm' visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!
>
> 2. Note that I said 'Call the Paramedics.' And if you can take an asprin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the road. Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what's happening with you instead of the road. Do NOT call your doctor -- he doesn't know where you live and if it's at night you won't reach him anyway, and if it's daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn't carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.
>
> 3. Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there.
>
> Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep.
>
-------------------

Now try to use that factual foundation, keeping in mind that many readers in America don't believe it or have never heard it, and weave something emotionally powerful around it so that none of your readers will ever mistake this experience for heartburn.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com

PS: Romance genre news in publishing -- romance and sports.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090127/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_rugby_romance_1