Defining And Using Theme Part 2 - Love vs Politics by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 Defining And Using Theme

Part 2

Love vs Politics

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Part 1 of Defining and Using Theme, listing some previous posts that are relevant to Theme, is here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/defining-and-using-theme-part-1.html

We touched on A Spoonful of Magic by Irene Radford in Part 1, continuing the focus from Dialogue Part 14 - Writing Inner Dialogue of Person Being Lied To.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/04/dialogue-part-14-writing-inner-dialogue.html

This post is an exercise in generating usable theme statements, not advocating a particular political position.  But a theme-statement is, grammatically, an advocating of a position.  So read this with your writer's glasses on.

A Spoonful of Magic 
is mostly about liars in love, so it can be regarded as about lies and when it is OK to use them.  Think about today's politics and the first element that leaps out at you is Fake News.  Thus family politics is a related subject.

Theme is a very slippery element in Art, generally, but fiction writing in particular.  As in music, "theme" usually means some snippet that is repeated at specific and identifiable points throughout the piece.

Themes recur in real history, as we discussed in the context of the cycle of Generations based on the signs Pluto (profound change) occupies during each 20 years.  Some themes surface only once or twice in thousands of years, and are predicted by some prophetic writing.

Here is a video about the spooky similarity between the story of Purim and the story of Hitler, using a mystical explanation, illustrating how the motif of "recurring theme" has to be used in novels because it happens in reality - you need the drumbeat of recurrence to create verisimilitude.

https://www.facebook.com/JTVTheGlobalJewishChannel/videos/583579778644015/

And it is exactly that in fiction, too, slippery and recurring in spooky ways.

Theme is especially prominent in Romance genres in general, and in Paranormal and Science Fiction Romance as well.

When you mix genres (any 2 or 3 genres), the "spoonful of magic" you use to make the ingredients blend is Theme.

Each genre is defined by theme -- and subdivided by "setting" (time, place, social status) -- and then subdivided by plot type (Mystery, Romance, Western, Horror).

For example, the theme of "Horror Genre" is "Evil Can Not Be Conquered."  The theme of Romance is "Love Conquers All."  It is very hard to mix those two equally, so in any work of art, one of those themes must yield (at least temporarily) to the other - as in "Happily Ever After, For Now."  Evil can be sequestered, buried, put away for centuries or millennia but it can not be vanquished and will come back to bite you.

Theme is the invisible substance of the lens through which a Character views reality, life, the universe and everything.  Theme both limits and expands that view.

So "theme" essentially defines the market, the target audience.

Thus publishers create "imprints" or "lines" of product all with the same core theme, artfully dressed up in surface detail to seem like different products, but appealing to and satisfying a specific readership.

One example is Star Trek's intro: "...where no man has gone before."  The change in target audience is illustrated in the shift of that phrase to: "...where no one has gone before."  Either way, exploration of the unknown is both the theme of Science Fiction and of Westerns -- face it, of Romance, too.

Mastering "theme" is the writer's secret to selling fiction, and so to become a prolific writer, a person should ponder what the theme of their own life is, then look at other people's lives and find themes (by reading biographies.)

The other source of themes that tie our society and civilization together is, of course, Headlines.

The business of journalists is to spot themes surfacing in society and present a "narrative" that defines and sticks to that theme.  The result is reinforcement.

As mentioned previously in these blogs, one of the ties that bind us together is the animal-human (the basic primate) need to "blend in" and to "belong" to a Group (Tribe, Pack, Gang, Family).  There is a physiological basis in the brain -- a compartment of sorts -- designed to contain this material of unconscious assumptions, and beliefs that are not your own, but that you MUST adopt to survive.

We, on a basic animal level, believe what those who protect us believe.  We oppose, fight, reject, and run from other beliefs because those "ideas" impact the neurological system of the body as "killing blows."

Once cemented, our "theme" of life, the outline and framework, a honeycomb of compartments designed to contain information, and the lens through which we "see" and understand survival, can not be distorted, shifted, altered, expanded, or re-shaped without experiencing "fear-fight-flight" responses.

For some of us in the most recent generation (say, born from the 1990's on) politics has been one of the honeycomb compartment walls that defines the notion of the shape of reality and how to survive in it.

The conflict (essence of story, remember?) is rooted in the theme of "what is government"  -- and also, "what is the purpose of government."  Ayn Rand was catapulted to world fame with her work, Atlas Shrugged, as she challenged the basic notion that groups of humans "need" government.

We have, as humans (consider how your Aliens might differ) generated various governmental forms for maybe 8 or 9 thousand years (maybe more).

Perhaps we could do without government, but apparently we don't want to.

So we always make one.

And then we make another.

And then we fight over which is better -- trying our best to kill everyone who disagrees about the role of government in reality.

Government ranges from Head of Family living in a cave to Kings governing an area with arable land and peasants working it, to High Kings like King Arthur, to Emperors like Napoleon or Alexander The Great.

Hitting on the Emperor model, humans lived centuries with wars, conquering, and marrying off daughters to opposing Kings to make peace by blending families.

Then in the 1700's the world rebelled and overthrew monarchs, after weakening their position with the "Constitutional Monarchy."

And a bunch of nerdy science fiction writers geeked out on Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman Literature and then-modern French thinkers works and wrote the Constitution of the United States of America, a work that should have won a Hugo for inspired imagination.  It is all about humans governing themselves -- neither democracy or republic, but self-governing hybrid form.

It was the first (and so far pretty much the only) attempt to structure a government that is prevented from governing but works just fine, thank you.

Many Amendments have diluted that structure so it is hard to discern now.  For example, having Senators elected by a State's voters instead of by State Legislators dilutes the "Republic" aspect and emphasizes the "Democracy" aspect.

The US Constitution was constructed by two opposing groups that agreed to disagree.  Remember, one group wanted George Washington to be King!  The other wanted to do away with the very concept King in favor of a chief department manager (president).

The disagreement was over the essential question of "what is government for?"

They did not have time to argue that into the ground and hammer out an answer because the little, individually weak, colonies were about to be "brought back under the King's control" by the British soldiers.  They needed a "common defense" so that's what they created.

As a result of not being able to settle this question of the function of government (in the abstract) thus chasing away everyone who couldn't adopt this "unconscious assumption" as part of their mental honeycomb structure, we currently have BOTH types of believers in the USA voting public and at the family dinner table.

As with the warring Kings of old, families have intermarried.

Thus Thanksgiving Dinner has become the flashpoint of the year for many families, a political holiday with warring factions married.

No longer does everyone in the family adopt the Head of Family's politics.  Conflict ensues, and conflict is not so great for digestion.

An entire Romance novel could unfold during Thanksgiving Day!  (and has).

There is the situation where you bring home a new boyfriend for Thanksgiving Dinner, the political discussion erupts, and the new boyfriend is revealed -- either outspoken and opposing the Head of Household, or obviously trying to blend in and pretend to adopt the acceptable view.  Which is lie, and which is true?

Dating a guy is one thing - bringing him home another thing altogether, as that brings into play the physiological human need to belong, to be accepted.

As a result, today we have Internet Dating Sites dedicated to matching people by political persuasion (this is serious business; I know marriages that broke up over politics.)

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-singles-trump-dating-websites-for-maga-supporters-2018-2

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

• A Tinder study found 71% of online daters consider differing politics a dealbreaker in a relationship.

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

But most people who argue one side or the other at Thanksgiving Dinner are advocating or opposing answers, plans of action, and maybe the rightness or wrongness of the answer to the problem chosen for Headlines by Journalists.

Defining the unconscious parts of these cemented, do-or-die, political positions on issues is the job of the fiction writer -- not the journalist who is trying to write non-fiction.

The fiction writer, the artist, can pare away the surface decoration and reveal the eternal truths behind beliefs -- e.g. describe the honeycomb size, shape, transparency, and above all the structural integrity and strength of the "belief system" for which my "honeycomb" metaphor stands.

So stating the theme of these family arguments is our job as purveyors of the Happily Ever After Ending.

There are many (many-many) correct answers to the question, "What are they really arguing about?"

Each correct answer can be a theme for a novel, or series of novels, in any genre.  It all depends on how you state the theme.

The writer's (artist's) trick is taking a complex mess of a warring situation and reducing it to its bare bones, then re-clothing it in different packaging.

So let's just take some examples, and then you can search for other examples in the Headlines.

THEME: "Humans want government to protect them from Alien Invaders."

THEME:  "Humans want government to protect them from their fellow citizens."

THEME: "Humans want government to protect them from government."

Each of these stated purposes is, of course, subject to "mission creep."  As a result, dinner table arguments wander far afield.

One reason family dinner table arguments wander is simply that to remain a protected member of the family (i.e. to survive) you must all be organizing your perceptions of the world into the same (or very similar) honeycomb structures.

Of course, famously, the Battle of the Sexes
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html
 and the Battle of the Generations,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-3.html
happen because the honeycomb shapes that we brutally hammer our information into are just a bit different.

So by gender and generation, we believe differently even if we think alike.

For the most part, Romance happens within a generation.  Yes, there are exceptions where Soul Mates have been scattered more than 20 years apart in age, and that makes for High Drama, but we usually dream of a mate closer in age.

So look at those 3 theme variants on the nature and purpose of Government.

Consider how imicible Romance and Horror genres are, why they conflict.

Romance belongs to the broad theme bundle, "Love Conquers All."

Horror belongs to the broad theme bundle, "Evil Can Not Be Conquered."

Now look at the statements about government in terms of conquering not protecting.

THEME: Government exists to Conquer Alien Invaders.

THEME: Government exists to Conquer unruly fellow citizens.

THEME: Government exists to be Conquered by its citizens.

THEME: Love Conquers All.

THEME: Evil Can Not Be Conquered.

This juxtaposition reveals a whole set of themes that are (perhaps) uniquely human.

THEME: Humans Must Conquer.

Being human, living a human life is ultimately about conquering.  The "what" that is to be conquered is irrelevant.  As long as there is something to pretend to conquer, we're fine with it, even if it is another human.

Now, suppose your Aliens do not have that seminal urge to "conquer" -- that is, do not dominate (human sexuality seems these days to pivot on dominance).

Consider meeting up with a species that simply does not "versus" -- does not oppose, or contest.

Since, for human audiences, the essence of story is conflict, could you write about a Romance with an Alien without conflict?  What cognitive dissonance would that create?  Could you make art out of lack of conflict?

Romance is not about sexuality -- the experience of the physical body.  Romance is about the Soul.

The physical body has a mind of its own.  Sexually fueled urges to dominate, conquer, exhibit prowess, and be the "Defender" of all that's mine form one side of the argument raging in all humans (think about your Aliens with different biology).

The Soul has a mind of its own.  The Soul yearns for its mate, fueled by beliefs about the Soul's own unique identity and thus what size-and-shape the mating identity would take.

In other words, the body seeks to hammer other bodies into a desired shape, obedience and compliance, while the Soul seeks that which is already shaped to fit.

The Soul has no desire to conflict, conquer, prevail or dominate.

The body must conflict, conquer, prevail AND dominate.

The Soul and the body are are odds, just as Romance and Horror genre themes are at odds.

Conflict is the nature of this Reality -- the Soul seeks a different reality.

Love conquers All, not by reshaping by force but by inspiring the body to reshape itself.

Love makes the body want to fit in, not hammer down.

Love changes what the body wants.

Change is the essence of plot, and plot (conflict) is the essence of story.

So the details of how a Conquering Hero is Domesticated by Love is our Novel of Choice.

Do we want to "be protected" -- or do we want to "be the protector."

Is "government" about "protecting" or is it about mating, fitting together, covering each other's flanks?

The Happily Ever After Ending is about attaining a joined-state in marriage, in mating, where the two individuals become "one" -- become unconquerable, impervious to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

If "unconquerable" is the essence of "Evil," is it also the essence of "Love?"

If "Politics" is about hammering others into accepting your beliefs so you can be a "member of the Group" and satisfy the body's urge to belong, is "Love" the urge to belong without hammering or being hammered?

To generate even more fascinating questions about the nature of Love and the impact of Romance, ponder the Biblical Commandment to Love The Lord Your God With All Your Heart and All Your Strength."

If Love Conquers All, and you Love God, then what happens?

There is so much more to be said on Love vs. Politics.  Say it in fiction.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 24 - Writing About The Future And For The Future by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World

Part 24

Writing About The Future And For The Future

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

The Index to previous posts in this series can be found at

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Recently, I was told by a contact on Facebook who was systematically reading through my Star Trek fanfic series, Kraith
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
that Star Trek should have picked up my vision of Vulcan Culture when they came to "reveal" the world where Spock grew up.  I've been told that before, but this was a new reader currently living in the modern context.

Meanwhile, I followed the political developments as the Republicans won and the Democrats lost, not just the Presidency but in States and local contests up and down the ticket.

Officially, publicly, the professional politicians are telling their bewildered constituents how shocking, unfair, wrong, unprecedented, and just plain unacceptable these losses were. 

I was not shocked, bewildered, or even mildly surprised.  But I ranged far and wide among news sources (even abroad) and from long experience, interpreted the news media "story" or "narrative" in terms of what I knew about the players and the Constitution.

I understand (as few do) both Journalism and the Electoral College -- artifacts of my odd upbringing.

So I saw the "game" Trump played was for the Electoral Votes and never mind anything else -- it took him a while to get a grip on that process, but he swept up advisers who know what I know, and he believed them and altered course to scarf up all the Electoral Votes that were "low hanging fruit."  And he ignored the rest.

Meanwhile, any sensible person could see that Hillary won the popular vote -- and with good reason.  She ran a well funded campaign.  I have noted over decades that all you have to do to predict the winner of a Presidential Contest is to find out which candidate has raised the most money.  Then you can ignore all the noise that money makes with advertising. 

This works well on local contests, too.  The State and County nominees with the most money win.  That's it.  Follow The Money.  Nothing else matters.

At least it has been that way until 2016.  In many contests it did go that way.  But it is no longer a certainty.

If you, as a futuristic Romance writer, intend to write novels that can be read (as Kraith is being read) decades hence and still captivate and stimulate readers to their own creativity, then you should think long and hard about how the 2016 Presidency went.

Trump ran almost no TV advertising -- got almost no newspaper endorsements -- and spent money mostly on his airplane, very tiny staff, and huge venues for his overflow crowds.

Frankly, it beats me why anyone would go to such a "rally" -- to hear him say in person exactly what you've heard him say on TV.  After a while, he honed his pitch down to a boringly repetitive set of points woven around his random, stream of consciousness commentary. 

Now think about this thing he did with the hats.  Tiny slogan fits on front of the hat - his first appearance was with a white hat and that slogan.  He threw the hat, just like they do at the Stock Exchange when the Dow hits a milestone, like 20,000.

Remember all the posts you've read here on SYMBOLISM. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-5-how.html  -- has links to previous parts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-16.html

Trump built a fictional world right before your eyes. If you want to gain greater respect and prominence for Romance as a genre, but science fiction romance in particular, for the concept of the Happily Ever After, consider what you can learn from what Trump did.

Remember Trump is a marketing genius -- not-so-terrific-products (often failing, often bankrupt) hitting TOP TIER, or just below that and making enough profit to offset losses on other products. 

Court costs of one "settlement" are just added on to the sale price of some other product of the business.  Likewise with "taxes" -- it is a principle of bottom line truth -- corporations don't pay taxes; customers do.  Tax on corporate profits is just figured into the sale price so the corporation makes the same or better profit.  It takes years to level it out because there is resistance by customers to paying more, but with time the corporation prices their product up to cover the taxes they pay, and the customers scream at the government to make the government stop inflation because the price of what the customer buy has gone up.

It is a game governments play, flimflammery misdirecting public attention.

In fact, it is a precise mathematical formula called Public Relations.  Using Big Data, this crowd management methodology is now targeting audiences with pinpoint accuracy.

Trump saw an audience that was starved for a product, and created that product, then sold it to that audience. 

Which product and which audience is irrelevant to you as a writer of fiction. 

Understanding the process of finding an audience, understanding what that audience wants before that audience knows it wants it, crafting the product to captivate that audience, and informing the potential buyers of that product where to find it --- those things you must understand.

Marketing Fiction In a Changing World is about foreseeing where the audience will be decades hence, way before that audience exists, and writing for that non-existent audience.

However, at the same time, you must craft your fiction for the current, contemporary, modern audience.  It has to be readable, understandable and about the modern issues.

Where the future's issues (themes) and the current reader's issues (themes) overlap, and where they differ (or conflict) will provide you with the big canvas against which to throw your characters.

Trump's campaign connected the past with the present and with the future.

Instead of compartmentalizing issues as separate things to be solved any-which-way was politically expedient, he connected all the apparently different issues into a coherent picture.

And he made the issues coherent by speaking incoherently.

It's impossible to follow that man's speeches unless somebody writes them on his teleprompter.  But he still includes -- makes up on the fly -- "applause lines."

Fiction writers who want to spin the most impossible (paranormal) tales and get readers to believe them should study speech writing - especially famous political speeches.

Trump captured the images, the symbols, churning through his audience's mind, and projected those images with conviction and power.

Hillary did the same for her audience, but with less power when speaking in person to audiences.  Why did she come across with less power?  Because the speeches were not in her own words.  She was smooth, polished, incredibly presidential, projecting a vision of how we all want our world to be.  She nailed the results we expect from a President.  And most of the time she was letter perfect - very studied, very focused on her audience.

So why didn't she win?  Her speech writers were even better at symbolism than Trump's stream of consciousness.

What really happened in this election - and how can you understand the Event and use it to write about the future in a way that will not seem "dated" to those who live in that decades-hence future?

Here's the thing.

They both won!

It was the Battle of the Titans - a classic Armageddon - and they both won.

Hillary won the popular vote and Donald won the power-vote.

Everybody loved Hillary, but everybody else trusted Donald to beat up their opponents.

This is shown clearly in the astrology of their Natal Charts.  Most astrologers missed it because it didn't seem important by most systems astrologers use.  But Hillary reached a lifetime peak of popularity on Election Day, and Trump reached a peak of unpredictable use of power, of explosive growth of power which will come into even higher focus on Inauguration Day. 

America elected a Champion, a Superhero. 

Note that Trump had started to run for President several times, flirted with the media over the notion, and backed off.  This time he drew out the flirting and stretched and stretched, then made a production number (very SYMBOLIC) of declaring candidacy coming down the Trump Tower elevator (down, not up).  He could have held the news conference UPSTAIRS and been seen going UP in that golden elevator.  He chose DOWN. 

The hats, the slogan, the direction - all symbolic.

The slogan is a succinct (have you ever heard him be succinct?) declaration of the theme of the novel he is writing before your eyes.

He could have done this years ago, but chose 2015 -- why?  Because he found his audience -- not through his TV Show (APPRENTICE) -- but through those who don't watch the commercials.

Note how the amount of money spent on political campaigns has escalated in recent decades.  The advertising, robocalls, actual person calls, signs, billboards, TV commercials, online commercials, emails, -- all is done by hiring and paying people to do these things.  The best, most expensive, advertising experts who have sold terrible products at vast profits for failing companies, are hired for Big Bucks to hammer the public with the candidate's "message."

In the post-mortem of the election, the Democratic Party is dissecting their "message" to see why it did not produce the predicted votes in the correct places.

Hillary Clinton should have won -- and she did win by millions of votes -- but her message did not draw her voters to the polls in the exact spots necessary to win the Electoral College.  So the Democratic Party is considering how to change their message -- not their behavior or the hearts of their people, but just their words -- to make people vote for them.

Just like the Republican Party (remember how emphatically the Party rejected Trump? He ran against the Republican Party - with a plethora of traditionally Democratic "messages." ) had used the same Public Relations "tricks" to make people vote for their candidates, the Democrats blame how they phrase their "message" not what they do when in office.

Fiction structure works the opposite way -- what the characters do is weighted more than what they say.  Readers decode Character by Behavior - not words. 

Readers - in the past, in the present and probably in the future - are intrigued by a disparity between what a Character does and what that Character says.

Compare that Reader preference to the 2016 political campaign.  The term "Liar" was thrown back and forth (facts were distorted no more than usual, but exposure was much more frequent.) 

Each of the Candidates was vetted by the media, comparing what they had done in the past with what they said in the present.

The Candidate who had done what she was saying she would do in the future as President garnered more votes.  The Candidate who had done things in the past that were starkly at odds with what he said he would do in the future, won a strategic victory.

Look at Trump vs Clinton as the "conflict" line of a novel - the typical love/hate novel.  You know that Clinton attended one of Trump's weddings - and other High Society Events hosted by Trump.  They "move in the same circles."

Study the history of that and you will find a Regency Romance in there.  You could write the same story set in the Roman Empire. 

Why did Trump focus all his energy on rallies, not TV ads?  But more importantly, why did that stupid strategy work?

Was it Trump's message, or his target audience?  Was it his war-gaming the Electoral College?  The Democrats have always been great at war-gaming the Electoral College - they carried California, a whopping prize.  Why did they lose Pennsylvania? 

Figure out a theory of why the election went to Trump and turn that theory into a theme, project that thematic truth into the far future, and write a novel for today's contemporary audience -- and you will have created a "Classic" that will be appreciated in the far future.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Think historically - from way back in Roman Empire times to now, and into the far future.

Have "messages" changed?  Or have audiences?

The reason ancient Greek and Roman plays are still performed and studied is that the messages, the politics, and the romances have not changed.  The reason those plays pull small audiences is that audiences have changed.

To write a classic, figure out what the audience of the future will be.

To understand audience change, consider the evolution of the media -- the medium through which a message must travel to reach a given person who wants that message.

That is what Trump did -- he understood that audiences have changed, are changing, and continuing to change.  I'm sure he saw and understood the advertising numbers from The Apprentice garnered between 2004 and 2015.  He knew that TV Advertising effectiveness was on the wane, and other political contest results (votes gained per dollar spent) bore out what he was seeing.

TV Cord Cutters are on the rise - college age people generally just don't subscribe to Cable, and won't waste time trying to find an over-the-air signal.  They access news and entertainment streaming.

The younger people seem to still prefer printed paper books, but watch TV on phone, tablet or sometimes a TV screen attached to a little Roku or Apple box (maybe game boxes are more common).

Tivo lets you click to skip a whole run of commercials. Nobody watches commercials - even if they play, everyone talks or leaves the room.  TV commercials don't deliver.

But there's a bigger trend behind that than cord cutters or inattentiveness. 

The real reason broadcast or cable TV commercials don't deliver value any more is very simple -- the audiences for each show is shrinking.

Here's the century long trend.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Radio was being deployed widely, radio sets came down in cost, and slowly 3 Radio Networks knitted the country together, CBS, NBC, ABC.

At any given evening hour there might be as many as a bewildering 3 choices of what to listen to.  The shows had sponsors -- usually one product or company would sponsor an entire half hour show - (fiction, news, music, standup comedy, variety). 

Eventually, there were some local stations that weren't part of the nationwide networks, and some shows on network affiliates were not broadcast nationwide. 

TV per-empted the explosive growth of Radio, but the same Big Three networks prevailed.  In the 1950's there were many hours during the day, late at night, even during Prime Time that there was only one show on TV.  Gradually, that exploded as TV Sets came down in price and were deployed into every living room (yes, max one per household!). 

So at any given time during the 1950's and even well into the 1960's, people talked at work, over the back yard fence while hanging out laundry, in grocery store lines, everywhere about whatever show was on last night.

About a third of the country would have seen the same show.  There was no way to record a TV show, so if you didn't see it, you never would, and would be out of the conversation.  Radio kept going strong through the deployment of TV (just as it is strong today via Web Radio and Podcasts), and not everyone watched TV. 

Companies that sponsored TV and Radio sold products so well, the market - the audience - for that product basically created the Supermarket (a store that carried a wide variety of products). 

In other words, the Mass Market was born of Radio audiences - huge percentages of the total number of people in the country.

Old World War II movies will show you how Baseball (broadcast on Radio, then TV) was used to source passwords and identify "real" Americans.

All Americans had certain things in common with each other that were not in common with those living in other countries.

America was unified by Radio - then TV.  Mass audiences became targets of Mass Marketing.  Concurrently - right before, during and after, the turn into the 20th Century - fueling the perfection of PR, Public Relations.

We've discussed PR and its effect on our fiction marketing efforts previously:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_25.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html (with links to previous parts in that series).

So media (from the first "broadside" published in the 1700's all the way through Newspapers and magazines to the Internet) has knitted a whole country into one market, unified our thinking, given us all something in common with each other that prevails over our differences.

And with that united Market, that Audience, to study, mathematics and psychology unite with statistics to produce Public Relations, the art and science of hammering individuals into identical consumers of identical products (because mass production is cheaper so everyone can have what only aristocrats could afford a few centuries ago.)

Then, the very success of Television and "networking" local stations into national syndication, took that unified audience and fragmented it.

We are in a massive fragmentation trend right now.

With distribution via DVD turning into Amazon Prime Streaming, Netflix Streaming, Hulu, various cable systems offering "On Demand" -- and other methods of getting entertainment without commercials had become commonplace rather than a yearned-for goal.

In the 1960's, people used to videotape (VCR) record TV shows they loved, with a finger on the PAUSE button, to stop the recording during commercials, thus producing a commercial-free copy they could watch or share with friends.  Copying VCR recordings was deliberately (by VC R manufacturers under laws created under the hammer of lobbyists) prevented from making good copies of copies.  Each iteration degraded until you got mostly snow.

There is a market for fiction that does not come interrupted by commercials.

People, having gotten Netflix and a taste of commercial free TV, now take it for granted.

Theaters run commercials but not DURING movies. 

As a result of commercial-avoidance and the advent of vast diversity of entertainment sources (Game Machines, DVR, DVD, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Tivo, or just hooking your laptop to your TV), and a proliferation content providers (Indie Movies, Foreign Movies and TV with sub-titles, all the networks, and now Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix Originals (and many more launching Originals) -- there is no appreciable percentage of the 330 million Americans that watch any given Show or Movie.

In 1964 there were fewer than 200 million people in the USA.  The TV show The Fugitive pulled 78 million viewers.  Typical audience size for a TV show that was wildly successful was about 60 million.  In 2010, when the population had increased 30% or so, it was 42 million.

The Presidential Debates of 2016 pulled around 84 million, considered record viewership, but percentage wise of total US, not so impressive.

126 million, maybe a bit more, voted. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#Most_watched_series_episode_of_the_decade

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/

So while our total population has been growing, viewership of any particular item has been shrinking percentage wise. 

Audiences have been fragmenting, and skipping or avoiding commercials.

The Democratic Party did not take that into account in 2016.  They did better at it in 2008 when they exploited online advertising -- but Trump used very little online advertising (if you don't count Twitter).  He posted YouTube videos on his campaign website, and some went viral.  Mostly his Tweets made TV News.

And there's the crux of the difference.  Commentators have repeatedly analyzed Trump's style as "dominating the news cycle" -- dominating being the operative word.

Remember I said above that he was in an astrological transit situation of massive POWER and unexpected growth.  He won by DOMINATING -- and what he dominated was the part of the world he understands best - the media, and branding.

Branding is a sub-set of advertising.  Trump branded each of his opponents in turn with a sobriquet -- and because the one or two word label accurately described the person, his sobriquet stuck. 

With ever more outrageous and unpredictable Twitter-storms and offhand remarks at rallies, Trump had the media focused on his every minute because (in competition with the other outlets) they had to have a camera trained on him every second in case he "said something." 

Unpredictable and Dominant -- all in the Natal Chart and Transits in effect during this time.  His disastrous mistakes were also highlighted in the astrology. 

Hillary Clinton could not match him for outrageous -- even her biggest controversies did not dominate the news cycle as much as Trump's commentary on her controversies did.

Why did Trump do that?  Because he saw his audience, and showed that audience a potential future (just as any Romance writer shows readers the potential Happily Ever After, leaving out the sleepless nights and smelly diaper changes.)

The 2016 Election has become notorious for being a low-turnout election, just over 50% of the voting age population voted, and made the decision for all the rest.

Again, though there are a third more people than in the 1960's in the USA, the number of people who know any one, given, thing about current events is smaller.

We are a fragmented society. 

Hillary Clinton tried to Unite this society using expensive mass marketing techniques  -- Donald Trump assessed the fragmentation and used it to his advantage using targeted marketing techniques (techniques that are still being invented and perfected.)

In other words, Trump played to his future audience as well as the present one.  He created a "classic" with his Election Campaign, a unique work of art that probably will never be copied.

So, what you as a fiction writer can learn from studying Donald Trump, is pragmatic marketing.

It wasn't Hillary Clinton's messaging that failed, but her assumption about the uniformity of America.  Trump and Clinton are of the same generation - he saw the change, she didn't.  We are a fragmented culture and each fragment has its unique taste.  No single medium reaches all the fragments.  As we have splintered over a century of technological change, so also will we unite over the next century.  Write for the audience of 2100, a united audience, but take into account that your current audience is an isolated fragment. 

Will one of the current fragments obliterate all the others, leaving only one fragment to dominate?  Or will all the fragments drop their unique signature brands, and unite via what they all have in common? 

Study how the 1800's and the Dime Novel turned into the 1900's and 300 Cable Channels, all with 24 hour programming.  Reverse that trend using the futurology we've been studying.


Take an Ideal Future -- such as Happily Ever After or Love Conquers All, the core themes of Romance Genre -- and sell it to the fragment of the current market that is hungry for it.

 So Kraith was written in a time when the TV audience was more unified, and still hits today's audience that is almost as fragmented as the world was before the Printing Press -- only today we have instant world wide communications (with Google Translate and subtitles!).  Nobody was predicting this social shift.  Will you predict the next swing of the pendulum?

If you guess correctly, work with a specific fragment of your audience, and that specific fragment's Brand becomes the Uniting Element among all our fragments -- then your fiction will be read a hundred years from now, and people will wonder how come it wasn't more popular back when.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Writing in Dark Times

Kameron Hurley's essay in the current LOCUS is the most overtly political piece I've ever read in that magazine:

There Have Always Been Times Like These

Hurley writes in apocalyptic terms, as if we're now living in Mordor. In her view, "We are going to lose much in 2017," because "a darker power was elected into office in the United States by a slim minority." She laments, "I see that hopeful ray of light we have all been shining out into the world smothered once again in darkness during this latest backlash." She frames the recent election as one phase in the "long war between the light and the dark, between our better selves and our darker natures."

Even though ours isn't a political blog, I suppose there's no harm in mentioning that I also voted against Hurley's "darker power." I'm optimistic enough, though, to hope that the immediate future won't be quite so bad as she forecasts.

The central message of her essay, however, isn't to curse the darkness or declare that we're all doomed. Rather, she celebrates, as quoted above, the "hopeful ray of light" writers "have been shining out into the world." Speculative fiction has value because of "our hopeful stories, our ability to tell dif­ferent futures." Science fiction and fantasy offer both cautionary tales (warning us against paths to potential dystopias) and images of better worlds we may transform into reality. Storytellers "create the narratives that help us all make sense of the world."

I would add a third valid function of speculative fiction, a temporary escape from the anxieties of mundane life into another world. Entertainment for its own sake, as a distraction that sends us back to "normal life" refreshed, is not to be scorned. Of course, using fantasy in this way might incur the charge of "escapism" in a negative sense. Indeed, we've all run into critics who dismiss ANY form of counter-factual fiction as "escapism." J. R. R. Tolkien answers this charge in "On Fairy Stories." Who's most likely to be obsessed with preventing escape? Jailers! As Tolkien says:

"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. Just so a Party-spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the Führer's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery."

To those who dismiss fantasy as "unrealistic" and therefore a waste of an adult's time, Tolkien provides this rebuttal (although he isn't addressing precisely that point):

"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make."

Or, as Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, imprisoned in the green witch's underground lair in C. S. Lewis's THE SILVER CHAIR, retorts to the witch's claim that her world is the only world that exists, "I'm going to live as much like a Narnian as I can even if there's no Narnia."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 17 - Depicting First Contact - Take Me To Your Leader by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 Depiction
Part 17

Depicting First Contact

Take Me To Your Leader 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of the Depiction Series are listed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

This Tuesday blog is generally about Alien Romance Novels, about how to blend science, fiction, and romance into romance stories where love conquers all and brings a couple to a happily ever after "ending."  Science Fiction is largely defined as, "The Literature of Ideas."

So you wouldn't think politics was our beat.  Just look at current election coverage, political ads, and punditry of political analysis.  What could politics have to do with Leadership or Literature of Ideas?

However, this blog is about science fiction romance, and in science fiction one must build the entire world behind the characters around some one, single, unique, new, concept or premise.

There is an entire sub-genre of science fiction called sociological science fiction where the science being fictionalized is Sociology.

Such novels examine the fallacious assumptions humans make about "reality" -- such as which traits are inherently just human, and which traits human infants acquire from parents.

What is cultural, and what is genetic?  What precisely defines "human."  Are we just another species of Great Ape, or something else?

And if we're just another Great Ape right now, does that mean we will be nothing more than a Great Ape thousands of years from now?  Or thousands of years ago?

We are now accumulating data about exoplanets, and how common the conditions for life are in the galaxy.  What would Aliens on other planets have in common with Great Apes?

One common organizational theme among chimps and bonobos is that there is a single, dominant individual in each group.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/07/opinions/mothers-day-chimps-bonobos-safina/

With chimps, it is a dominant male, and with bonobos it is a dominant female who creates order in the grouping.

It can be argued that humans likewise pick an "alpha" male, a leader to follow, such as Donald Trump, or any of the 15 other men and 1 woman, Republicans, who ran for the office of President of the United States in 2015-2016.

And on the Democratic side, in US Politics, we have Hillary Clinton.  I see Bernie Sanders as an alpha male, and Hillary as an alpha-female.

To "depict" a human grouping, do you (the writer of romantic fiction ) have to designate a "Leader?"  Does the definition of human grouping include a Leader?

And if so, are we chimps or bonobos.  Do read that article.  It depicts chimps as war-like, belligerent, because they are dominated by a male, but bonobos as peaceful, easier to negotiate with, because they are dominated by a female.

If you look at humanity around this Earth, you see we seem to have some of each kind, but the problem is any particular human can be this kind on Monday and that kind on Tuesday.

The USA has never had a female president (yet), but other countries have been "led" by females.  Has that change in gender of leadership changed the behavior of those groups?

If you listen to the political rhetoric bandied about today, you will hear the word Leader (or related leadership, leading, etc) quite frequently.  The pundits analysis seems to be that everything that's "wrong" with the USA is due to a lack of "leadership."  That may be one of the fallacious assumptions we discussed in parts 3, 4, 6, and 7 of the Theme-Plot Integration series.

Here's the index to theme-plot integration:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And we built on those concepts later:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

To create a theme and a plot for romance novels set among the stars, you need to build your Aliens (maybe not their World, but the Alien species itself) using the human template but with some, single, element different.

Only one difference (per alien species) is not an unbreakable rule, but it is the most reliable rule.

Since this is science fiction romance, you formulate the aliens using the kind of thinking trained into students of science. When designing an experiment, science teaches us to vary just one element at a time -- one feature -- one parameter at a time, and compare the results.

Note how Gene Roddenberry created Vulcans with the single "difference" of being non-emotional.  Yes, there's a long story behind that -- originally Number One (a female First Officer) was un-emotional and the Vulcan science officer was emotional but extra-smart.  To get the show on the air, Roddenberry had to eliminate the female bridge officer because no viewer would believe a man would take orders from a woman.  (how times have changed!)

So we ended up with the non-emotional Vulcans, and Roddenberry redesigned his aliens to suit the network executives so that their entire world culture, perhaps biology, was non-emotional.  Then to make the drama work, of course the non-emotional Vulcans turned out to have raging emotions.  But for Depicting First Contact, we learn to hide all differences except one.

Take C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novel series, which I have been reviewing here for years.  Most recently #16 Tracker #17 Visitor :

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/reviews-27-foreigner-series-by-c-j.html

Cherryh depicts her human "lost colony" as having all the varied traits humans have, included complex politics.  Her aliens on this planet, the Atevi, are at first depicted the way Roddenberry  presented the Vulcans to us, as having a single trait at variance with humans, and most everything else pretty much similar.

That single different trait is the first defining attribute presented, and often repeated in various forms.  For the Atevi it is that they don't love, and can't understand Love, but have all other emotions plus one humans can't understand.  They bond in couples, and have vast and complicated political alliances often based on family relationships.  In other words, they're more human than we can realistically expect any aliens we meet (or find the ruins of) to be.

The Atevi form their political alliances around a Leader - a single dominant individual.  And the dominant individuals vie with each other to be the most dominant among all dominants.  But with Atevi, that dominate individual may be either male or female, and the distribution seems fairly random.

We have also seen Gene Roddenberry's Vulcans at least revere an elderly but dominant female, T'Pau.

So, according to that article on chimps and bonobos, there is a distinct difference in brain configuration that developed when a river formed and divided their mutual ancestors geographically.  They evolved in separate directions, and today that brain distinction manifests as a difference in gender of the Leader.

So, should that cliche opening line for a First Contact story be, "Take Me To Your Dominant Female?"

And if so, then what for?  I mean why would Aliens land and make a bee line for a Leader?  Doesn't that plot-element require that the Aliens only do business leader-to-leader?

Is there a fallacy embedded in the whole concept of Leader?

Note, Roddenberry and Cherryh both depict their main Aliens (who will produce individuals who bond with humans) as having leaders.  The Atevi need leaders.  All hell breaks loose among Atevi if Leadership fails.  They are essentially evolved from herd creatures and physiologically need a Leader.  Vulcans, on the other hand, appear to have chosen a social structure organized around a Leader, and a group of Leaders creating a structured government.

The question a writer of romance stories should address when designing an Alien Lover is, "Do humans need leaders?"

When you have a vision of human "society" (as opposed to generic Great Ape society), what humans absolutely need and what humans choose as convenient (because we're lazy apes) or what we choose because some among us are big bullies and grab leadership, then ask yourself what humans need Leaders for.

What purpose or function do human leaders serve?  What happens among leaderless humans (such as a random collection of survivors of a lost colony -- or maybe a colony on Mars).

What is the connection between social Leadership, and Command of "the economy?"

What is "economy" -- where does it come from, who makes it happen, why does it happen, what is it for, and who needs it anyway?

Does an "economy" need a leader as society does?

Now presumably, aliens operate their economy according to the same laws and principles that humans do.  It is something we ought to have in common with any space faring species.  Many famous First Contact stories ...

(such as In Value Decieved In Value Deceived by H.B. Fyfe
Analog/Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950, pp. 38-46
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AnalogSF-1950nov-00038  )

...depict Trade as the first transaction, not friendship, love or even war.

C. J. Cherryh took that approach with the story of how the first human colonists moved from the Space Station around the Atevi world, down to the ground.  At first meeting, the humans managed to start trading with the local Atevi -- much as the first colonists in North America traded with the Native Americans.  It was only later that misunderstanding due to that single Atevi trait that differs from human caused war to break out.

In human sociological history on Earth, we have seen trade precede war many times.  Trade (or an economic transaction -- Value for Value) is perhaps more fundamental to human nature than even sex or war.

Language evolves rapidly and diverges when there is isolation.  If you are writing Historical Romance, you should keep in mind that modern characters could not pop back in time and understand spoken English.  Even written English is not that easy, if you look at some actual manuscripts.

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/25/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and-still-understand-english/

Even today, with the internet, populations that do not communicate with each other (such as the age-gap) evolve different meanings for the same words. Thus on this blog, I try to define the difference between what I designate as Plot and what I designate as Story, many times.  Plot is the sequence of events or character actions; story is the characters' reactions to those events, feelings and motives, lessons learned. Plot is generally external, Story is generally internal. Many writing teachers reverse the meanings of the words, but all identify these two separate moving parts of the novel's mechanism.

So when you are building an Alien Civilization from scratch, keeping in mind the "one-difference" rule, you might decide that since C. J. Cherryh has already done "Love is Incomprehensible" and Gene Roddenbery started to do "Emotion is Incomprehensible" then chickened out (but I did it in Kraith
http://simegen.com/fandom/startrek/  ),
you might want to explore what single difference your Aliens might have in the realm of Commerce that would make, say, MONEY incomprehensible.

We make many assumptions about "money." It is such a common idea, dating back before Biblical Times, that we often assume that all creatures in the cosmos have money.

But really, what we use for money now is very different from what it was 4 thousand years ago.

Coin of the Realm is a term which had literal meaning.  The reason Julius Ceasar's profile was on coins was that The Leader was the creator of COIN.  The coin was "of the Realm" -- the kingdom or empire struck the coins.  The original concept was that the coin was made of something that had intrinsic value (gold, silver).

Common practice was to shave slivers off the edges of coins and then pass off the light-weight coin as a whole coin.  Also coating wood -- the wooden-nickle -- to look like money was done.  Counterfeit Money has always been with us since money was invented.  Today it's hacking into the bank computers and jiggering the numbers.  Or the Federal Reserve (Central Bank) just printing more of what looks like money but is as counterfeit as any criminal's coin, having the same effect on the economy as counterfeit money does.

Remember, counterfeiting was weaponized in World War II to bring down whole countries by flooding their economy with bogus bills.

So would such deception be the expected practice with your Aliens?  Or would they have an economic system which was immune to counterfeit coin of the realm?

How would you design an economic system that was impervious to a counterfeiting flood (or hacking, identity theft and taking out a mortgage in your name which essentially counterfeit's your personal realm's coin?)

Note how Roddenberry created Aliens lacking all emotion, but Cherryh created aliens lacking only Love, but replaced "Love" with another emotion rooted in different biology.

Look at chimps and bonobos. They trade in mutual grooming, share food, and create an "economy" based on sex and dominance.  Yet they're smart enough to figure out how to cooperate to get food.  Wolves bring down large prey in packs, cooperating for food but then letting the dominant wolf apportion the meat.  Apparently, human tribes can develop a society based on that cooperative model on a tribal level.

One question you, as world builder, have to answer is, "Once food (wealth) is acquired by cooperation, does The Leader apportion the wealth among His/Her followers as he chooses, or do the individuals who cooperated snatch what they think is their own portion?"

Poul Anderson, among many early science fiction writers, pointed out the way to build Alien Species that "make sense" to modern, human readers is to examine the basic biology of animal species that really exist on Earth and extrapolate what kind of civilization that biology would generate, given evolved intelligence.  He founded a long and prolific career on that method, and modern science fiction writers tend to follow that rule successfully.

Understand the biological drives shaping human cultural choices about Trade (such as they may be free will choices), then find one parameter to change to create your Alien.

Which parameter you change, and from what to what you change it, will define your THEME.

Your plot will explode outward from that premise with natural inevitability. You will have depicted an abstract statement about the nature of Reality in concrete terms as we discussed.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Or in this entry on depicting Dynastic Wealth:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html

To do that as well as Roddenberry or Cherryh have done with emotion, you have to understand what money is to humans, and why we created it, then change that why to make your Aliens.

Humans started with barter -- trade.  I'll trade you this horse-halter for that bushel of corn?  No, no not THAT bushel, it's wormy.  This nice halter is worth that other, nice fresh clean bushel of corn.

Trade is object for object -- and it is all about what an object is worth to you, right then.

I'll trade you this gold coin for that bucket of water?  No, this water was too hard to come by -- I'll give it to you if you give me that horse.  Well, if I don't have a horse, I don't need a whole bucket of water.

Value is subjective and situational.

If you're dying of thirst, water is worth all the gold you are carrying.

The value of your aching back (drawing a bucket of water up from the bottom of a deep well sans donkey) vs. the value of a bushel of corn you could buy in town (5 mile walk away, then back again hauling a bushel of corn) if only you had a gold coin to give to the farmer in the market (provided you could get there before the market closed or all the corn was gone.)

Calculating the value of a gold coin is a vitally important skill, and always has a wild card factor, a gamble involved.

Today we call that arbitrage.

The value of a material object, or a coin, is fundamentally guesswork.

A gold coin, or a hundred dollar bill (actually a 1 ounce gold coin is about $1200 today), is coin of the realm, and medium of exchange.

You can "sell" a bucket of water for the value of the water, plus the value-added by that water being in a bucket at ground level rather than 200 feet down a well.  You might sell the leaky wooden bucket with the water -- or not.  Separate deal.

You give the water, you get the coin, you carry the coin to town, you give the coin, you get the bushel of corn.  Now you don't have any water to cook the corn in and you're 5 miles from home where you can shuck the corn and cut the kernels from the cob, making the burden lighter.  You have to pay someone so you can borrow their wagon?

That's an economy.  The bushel of corn cost someone a sore back, too, and a year's work tilling the soil, pulling weeds, etc etc -- it's not easy growing corn.  In the price of that bushel of corn is also figured the cost of paying soldiers to defend the land from invaders who would steal the corn and kill the farmer.  To pay the soldiers, the Leader has to create Coin of the Realm as a Medium of Exchange.

Aliens might trade in buckets of water, but might not have corn, or any kind of vegetable crop. Maybe they only eat animals, but they surely eat something.

Last week, we examined the very definition of life, itself.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/alien-sexuality-part-two-what-is-life.html

The value of "life" has mystical variables -- which you can pick through to find that ONE element to change to generate your Aliens.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/8-pentacles-kavanah.html

So what is the "value" of work?  A material object (hunk of wood, for example) is worth something -- variable with how difficult it was to acquire, how rare it is.  That same material object plus "work" might equal a Polished Soup Bowl, a Comfortable Rocking Chair, hoops-and-loops to hold clothing together (frogs), table, shelves, hair clasps, whatever you can make out of wood.  To make those things requires a) skill and b) time maybe c) bleeding from splinters.

The work is intangible, but has VALUE in coin-of-the-realm.

Consider that the realm authorizing that coin is your own, personal, only-you, ecology of one person. You are a sovereign individual.

Read Clan of the Cave Bear .

http://www.amazon.com/Clan-Cave-Bear-Earths-Children/dp/0553250426/

This famous novel depicts the economy of the sovereign, lone, individual.

Every collected object used for food, clothing, shelter, has an assigned value in time-effort-energy and in how replaceable it is.  When the hero returns "home" to find his little shelter utterly destroyed, you understand what a dollar actually IS.  You understand what ownership and sovereignty is.  And you understand what Capitalism really is (as opposed to what "they" have told you capitalism is.)

The rule of Fallacy being more popular than Accuracy seems to hold with respect to Capitalism.

But words are as variable in value as coins.

Again, consider how language shifts and changes -- the same words do not mean the same thing to all people.
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/25/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and-still-understand-english/

A word is "worth" (e.g. means) what you say it does, just as a coin is worth what you think you can get for it (fallacious thought or not.)

Today's online dictionaries try to keep up with the ever changing definitions of words.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/capitalism

... defines capitalism thusly:

----------quote---------------
an economic system based on private ownership of capital
Synonyms:
capitalist economy
Antonyms:
socialism, socialist economy
an economic system based on state ownership of capital
Types:
venture capitalism
capitalism that invests in innovative enterprises (especially high technology) where the potential profits are large
Type of:
free enterprise, laissez-faire economy, market economy, private enterprise
an economy that relies chiefly on market forces to allocate goods and resources and to determine prices

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

No, that's not it.  "Capitalism" is actually just a system of describing what the hero of CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR lost when his belongings were destroyed -- belongings he had gathered raw materials for and crafted into items essential to his survival.

"Capital" is not MONEY.  Capital is not COIN (of any Realm).

Capital, like the "Packing Fraction" from physics, is the Money you do not have BECAUSE you have a thing instead.


---------quote----------
The ratio of the total volume of a set of objects packed into a space to the volume of that space. The difference between the isotopic mass of a nuclide and its mass number, divided by its mass number. The packing fraction is often interpreted as a measure of the stability of the nucleus.
Packing fraction | Define Packing fraction at Dictionary.com

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/packing-fraction

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

As in Physics, Capital has stability measured by how much it cost -- how MUCH is NOT THERE, how much it would take to pry your hot fist away from your possession.

Understanding this secret of reality (hidden by changing definitions of words) makes the difference between the rich and the poor.

I've discussed Rich Dad: Poor Dad previously.  The book explains how what we sometimes call the "cycle of poverty" is more a matter of language facility than wisdom or skill at life.  By cycle of poverty, I mean the phenomenon of poor parents raising poor children trapped in poverty all their lives, raising another generation of poor kids.

We have many prominent examples of those who have 'broken the cycle of poverty' among our political candidates in 2016.

We have Dr. Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, even Ted Cruz, -- they all have tales to tell of that steep, hard climb out of having nothing.  They do not seem (from what they say in public) to understand that what they did depended on knowing the difference between money and capital, but look closely at their stories and it is plain as day.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!   Robert T. Kiyosaki

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle-ebook/dp/B0175P82RA

The secret is simply that capital is not money.  You can 'save' capital.  You can NOT 'save' money.  When you put "money" in a bank, it becomes "capital."  (unless it's in a checking account to be spent).

Money (coin) is a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE -- it is worth whatever two entities (Aliens included) think or say or determine it is worth.  The real value of "money" lies in its velocity, the rates and direction of movement of the coins.  Money is a force (mystically, you can consider it fueled by the Soul.)

Capital is fixed, real, tangible asset that is worth to you exactly what you paid for it, what it cost you to acquire, and that includes emotional investment.

This is what the Atevi can't grasp -- humans LOVE the objects they invest their emotions into (grandma's hand-stitched quilt is worth more than the scrap rags she made it from).  We make things, and we "love" those things because we made them.  It is a capital investment of Self.  We even accuse people of "loving" Money.

Your potential work (your aching back) has a value to you, independent of anything anyone else might think it is worth.  Your potential work is your human capital.  It is potential 'value' because it is unrealized.  You can't exchange it. You can't move it.  You can't reassign ownership.  It is capital.

Money and Capital share a property that I expect Aliens would understand.  Money and Capital can both be "made."

As in Clan of the Cave Bear, a single individual can gather material objects in one spot and craft mission-critical items from that material.

The gathering costs expenditure of capital (remember, labor, your aching back, is your capital).  The crafting (learning to do it, then doing it, failing, discarding gathered material ruined by failure, finally succeeding) of the matter into a usable object costs an expenditure of Capital.

Life -- time, effort, energy, health, RISK, combat with others, competing for rare stuff -- is your Capital.  You invest that capital by gathering then crafting.  Now you HAVE an object that is mission critical, and that object is Capital.

For more iconic imagery on this abstract definition of what is money and what is capital, watch the film Enemy Mine.

http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Mine-Dennis-Quaid/dp/B000I9YXOC/

This is a true Love Story, complete with human/alien pregnancy, sans sex!

When corporations report "Capital Expenditure" they do not refer to taking Capital (land, buildings, factory equipment) and selling it.  They refer to taking from incoming cash flow and BUYING land, buildings, equipment.  For example, if you own a house, and it needs a new roof, you do a Capital Expenditure, spending your wages or salary to buy a new roof (or the materials to go hammer a new roof over your head yourself.)

Capital is STATIC -- trapped, concrete -- but MONEY has a value derived from its VELOCITY.  How trade-able is your gold or silver coin?  What is a dollar worth?  Capital is what you exchange (barter) but Money is the medium by which you exchange it.  Money is a SYMBOL.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Coin of the Realm has a value based on the value of the Realm, itself.

Your aching back is the coin of your own, personal, sovereign realm.

I think any living Alien species we meet up with will be able to comprehend an aching back (or carapace), or at the very least, "Whew!  I did it!"

Of course, a hive species might have a problem with "I."  Writing a Human/Alien Romance with a hive species might be a challenge.

But assume your Aliens are individuals, and here they are among 21st Century humans on Earth (or maybe finding a human colony on Mars or "out there" somewhere.)

How will they understand working for a living?  Paychecks?  Cell phone bills.  Starbucks expensive coffee.

The film Starman gives you a start on this problem.

http://www.amazon.com/Starman-Karen-Allen/dp/B004ZCM2Q4/

This kind of story fairly well defines science fiction.  In a First Contact situation, you have to set aside your assumptions because they are all probably fallacious.

C. J. Cherryh depicts this process with razor sharp precision in the entire FOREIGNER series, but targets it especially well in the novel VISITOR where the language of the new Aliens, the Kyo, has to be puzzled out nearly from scratch.

Finding your own fallacies amidst your assumptions is extremely difficult, but it is in fact one of the primary skills of the working scientific researcher.  Nothing blinds you to facts more than your assumptions, and how assiduously you have examined your assumptions determines how blinded you will be by Romance.

So, what if your Aliens have as many unexamined and possibly fallacious assumptions as the human Characters in your Romance story?  That could be a source of Conflict for your couple, and misunderstandings greater than C. J. Cherryh has depicted.

Armed with that idea, and your own personal take on what an economy is, where it comes from, why bother to have one, and what "labor" is (Capital or Money?), and who owns the resulting material objects, write a 750 piece of dialog for a First Contact Romance novel.

Consider the subject might be the Minimum Wage.  Suppose the Alien is trying to hire a Security Guard for a foray into the White House and an official, "Take Me To Your Leader" meeting.

What should the Alien pay?  What multiple of the Minimum Wage?  And how do you convince an Alien (with an alien idea about paid labor and skilled labor) to pay that much?

Depict that entire Alien culture's economic system in 750 words of dialogue, and spark the hottest Romance in this Galaxy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 14 - Selling the Happily Ever After Ending by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 14

Selling the Happily Ever After Ending

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg  

Here is the index to the series Theme-Worldbuilding Integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

We've been boring down into the core of the problem of why Romance Genre does not get the respect it deserves with the general audience, and why those who do read Romance Genre have begun to reject the plausibility of the Happily Ever After Ending.

Last week, in Depiction Part 14, we circled around the methodology of depicting cultural shifts as part of giving a novel "depth" -- by showing rather than telling the way the protagonist's world has changed from the world their grandparents grew up in.

Now we "get into the weeds" by confronting nasty truths that need to be omitted from Romance Genre in order to create the "mood."

Yet without those truths (theme) being part of the protagonist's world (worldbuilding) there is no verisimilitude.  Without verisimilitude, the reader can no "suspend disbelief" and follow your Romance plot into a relationship with an Alien - a non-human from way out there.

Great science fiction always includes exciting scientific speculation as the solution to the problem, but problem-solving ability in humans always stems from the personal relationships (warped, ordinary, or non-existent) of the problem solver.

Humans are driven to solve problems by the effect of the problem on those they love.   Sometimes it is "self-love" (narcissism) that is the driver, but the power building up behind that dam of emotions will explode outward the moment a Love is spotted.  Even a narcissist can throw him/herself into the breach for Love.  When that happens, Love truly conquers all.

There it is - an unpardonable gaffe in our modern society where your reader resides. Love Conquers All.

The mechanism by which the conquering happens is as imaginary as the "science" used in science fiction.  And in truth, Imagination (Neptune) is the targeting mechanism of Magic and Science both. What humans can imagine, humanity can accomplish.

You've seen that with Star Trek from the 1960's.

How many of the imaginary, impossible, "instruments" and theories behind the Enterprise "depiction" are now in play in our world, changing our world? The A.I. computer that talks, the typewriter that takes dictation, the "communicator" that can reach orbit and back (our whole satellite communications system beams TV shows around the world). We have nailed the science behind the Transporter, and are in hot pursuit of the FTL drive.  Most of that work has been done by a handful of people inspired by Star Trek in their extreme youth.  In another lifetime, we may see Star Wars "magic" of The Force come into play.

Just as the Science Fiction Writer must "convince" the reader (if only for a short time) that FTL travel is "possible," so the Romance Writer must "convince" the reader that the HEA is possible.

The HEA is a hard sell these days. Our objective has been to figure out why it is such a hard sell, so we can solve this problem, and spread out the solution before our readers to energize their imagination the way Star Trek energized the scientific imagination.

The writer must lull the reader into suspension of disbelief as the first step, then argue the point in show-don't-tell.  Show Don't Tell is done by symbolism and depiction, not plot or dialogue.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-5-how.html  has links to previous posts in this series .

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

"Selling" or salesmanship requires the integration of at least two skills (usually more).  You have to know the nature of what you are selling. You have to know the nature of the buyer.

Getting a "match" is very hard, so when a mis-match between product and buyer happens, we call that a "hard sell."  That generally refers to a salesman trying to make a person do something against their nature in such a way as to be against their best interests, and for the salesman's profit.

In the case of a Writer selling the Idea of the Happily Ever After ending, the random reader browsing a bookstore may have a 50% chance of regarding the Idea of the HEA as inimical to their wellbeing.

How can I say 50%?  I don't have an article, a survey, a scientific study to point you to.  All I have is the current Election Issues being bandied about by USA political parties.

Pundits refer to the generation gap we discussed last week as a process of "polarization."

Here is a video clip of Donald Trump as a Guest of George H.W. Bush at the Republican Convention where he said some "Republican Things" when he was in his 40's.

http://patriotupdate.com/discovered-video-trump-1988-republican-convention-said-may-shock/

And the media has been full of clips of Donald Trump saying "Democratic Things" until recently, 2008 onwards, when he started to shade into saying "Republican Things."

Now look at the polls over all those decades.  Look at the election results.  Mostly we only remember who the winner was (we don't recall the losers).  Look at the margin by which winners win -- not at who won or why, just the difference between them in the popular vote.

You'll see a trend of that difference narrowing.

Most of your target readership will be unaware of that narrowing, consciously, but they have grown up in the world created by that narrowing trend - a world of increasing philosophical (thematic) stress.

That shows up clearly in the nasty-horrible tweets posted (often by people who get paid to swamp a target person in vitriol).   Your readers read to step out of that stress-zone, or have their opinions of the nasty folks validated.  Some read to experience vicariously what it's like to destroy someone.  Others want to believe that love is possible, even for them.

So how do you "hard sell" that readership the Idea that the HEA is not only possible but almost inevitable?

As noted above, you have to understand what the HEA actually is, and how it works, why it works, on what occasions it works.  You have to understand the nature of Reality that generates the HEA as a symptom of life itself, not a lofty far-off goal, but a function of the "scientific" reality the reader is embedded within.

There are, of course, thousands of philosophical systems humanity has discovered and invented which assert and demonstrate that the HEA is a natural consequence of being "A Good Person."

Some of those systems are called "Religion" these days.

We class "Religion" as part of the Fantasy Genre, and Fantasy as the opposite of Science Fiction.

Take another look at the cultural shift from the 1980's to today.  Look at the books published and the genre labels on the spines.

Before around 1980, science fiction was the label on far-out fantasy novels that were really about Religion.

In 1979, Katherine Kurtz's first novel, Camber of Culdi, was a product of clumsy writing but profound thinking.

http://www.amazon.com/Camber-Culdi-Legends-V/dp/0345280318/

Camber of Culdi hit the paperback stands and rocketed to the top of the charts. Now it is re-issued and available in all sorts of formats.

Sequels were demanded, and written -- now it's called a Classic Series.  I've used Deryni as an example previously:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/strong-character-defined-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-9-depicting-hero-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-9-depicting-hero-by.html

It was blatantly about Magic and Religion (an oil and water mix, symbolizing the immiscible mix of Science And Religion we deal with today).

Deryni was optioned by Columbia - it is a vivid work that could translate to the big screen.

http://movieweb.com/columbia-picks-up-katherine-kurtzs-deryni-rising/

The Deryni Series (which I highly recommend) was marketed as fantasy, but bookstores shelved it with the science fiction. That publication marked the splitting off of Fantasy from Science Fiction until decades later, the Science Fiction Writers of American added "Fantasy" to their name, "Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers of America" -- not used anymore.

In the attempt, in the 1950's and 1960's to define science fiction, the famous end to the argument was, "All fiction is fantasy."  Which I see as a usable truth for writers, but not for readers.

Any fictional work, regardless of setting or plot, cradles the Characters in a made-up World built by the writer.

What would Hollywood do to Deryni to turn it into a blockbuster film?

Just as with Ursula LeGuinn's Earthsea Trilogy, Hollywood (as TV or miniseries, or film) would change the theme.

That's what they always do - change the book's theme to make it worth the price of producing it as a visual.

Films cost more to make than a book costs to print, but theater entry fees are about the price of a paperback, more or less. So a film must get more people to buy it to make back millions invested plus a profit to invest in the next film project.

As we learned by studying SAVE THE CAT! - the size of the audience depends on the theme-worldbuilding structure that cradles and presents the plot, as black velvet displays a diamond.

So take a look at the re-issue pages on Amazon for the Deryni novels.  The envelope theme connecting all these books is "The Good Guy Wins Against All Odds Because Of His/Her Goodness."

The quality of goodness wins, even when society as a whole labels that goodness as evil incarnate.

The Deryni have a natural "talent" for Magic -- in fact, those that have the gift for magic can't not-do magic, and must be trained and disciplined so as not to be a danger.

There has been a war to exterminate the Deryni because one of them siezed the Throne by using Magical Power and then did serious dirt to the "normal" human subjects of the Kingdom.  So there was a revolution and now only humans can be King. Except for one problem -- interbreeding happens.

So all the novels are plotted to be "about" "Who Will Be King."

And the Bad Guys win a lot -- a lot, and often -- but the Good Guys have triumph and generations of HEA.

Or at least, Happily For Now -- but the "now" is decades.

The Deryni series is liberally laced with love stories.  But the core of the matter is that the universe has nasty forces destructive to life in it, but The Good Guys Win Because of Goodness.

In that, it is like Star Wars we burst onto the scene in 1977 -- contemporary with Kurtz's series -- and integrated elements of Fantasy (The Force; Magic) with Science Fiction's classic galactic war, and the Hero's Journey, one man makes a difference.

Luke Skywalker was a winner because of his Goodness, and the color of his Lightsaber symbolized that while the plot scattered and blurred that message enough for the 1977 audience to eat it up and lick the plate.

Look at statistics through time in America (or wherever you intend to be published.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/big-drop-in-share-of-americans-calling-themselves-christian.html

--------quote NY Times----------
“The decline is taking place in every region of the country, including the Bible Belt,” said Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research at the Pew Research Center and the lead editor of the report.

The decline has been propelled in part by generational change, as relatively non-Christian millennials reach adulthood and gradually replace the oldest and most Christian adults. But it is also because many former Christians, of all ages, have joined the rapidly growing ranks of the religiously unaffiliated or “nones”: a broad category including atheists, agnostics and those who adhere to “nothing in particular.”

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

That's a profile of your readership by the New York Times who thought they were writing about Religion.

What is the connection between Religion (or religious affiliation) and understanding the HEA as a natural consequence of Life?

It is that notion of "The Good Guy Wins" not because he's a Guy but because he's Good.

The entire "feminist" movement (again a 1970's phenomenon) is a red-herring as far as the Romance Writer is concerned.  Oh yes, it's vital in portraying your lead Character as a kick-ass-broad the equal of any man in her world.  Only recently has the Romance Genre allowed the female lead to be A Strong Character because the self-perception of young women has shifted -- for the better, in my never-humble opinion.

But women came out of the mud of the gutter of human society mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore.

As a result, we have a Fantasy genre full of kick-ass-heroines, Kung Fu Masters all, who can take a beating as well as inflict one.  They don't worry about "good vs bad" and which is which -- they go with their gut.

The writers have "read" their buyers correctly and produced Lead Characters whose guts agree with their readership.  It's a soft-sell.

Now we have a generation that has grown up on kick-ass-heroine images as the essence of what it means to be feminine.

We are beginning to see a shift, though. We have 1940's hairstyles come back, shrink-wrap clothing modeled after videogame characters, and the Soccer Mom image of raising kids heroically.

In 1984, we had the TV Series Scarecrow And Mrs. King -- where a typical Mom ventured out as a secret agent and was better than the men (once she got over being Lucy Ricardo-scared).

And in 1982 we had Remington Steele http://www.amazon.com/License-to-Steele/dp/B0010HYINW/    where a woman invented a man to "front" for her private detective agency, then had a guy walk in who impersonated her imaginary boss.

In both those shows, The Good Guy/Gal Wins Because They Are Good.

And the Bad Guy Loses Because He's Bad.

Hollywood doesn't invent these trends or Ideas.  Hollywood is in the business of making a profit "validating" their customer's feelings with visual proof, in show don't tell, that the world really is as they suspect it is.

Hollywood doesn't do "hard-sell" -- Hollywood does "soft-sell" -- Hollywood produces reflections of the audiences, at the budget points that the size of that audience justifies. Hollywood makes a profit.

Today, Hollywood is making new Star Trek (that crushingly disappoints those who grew up in the 1960's and validates those who grew up in the 2000's.)  Retreads of classics abound -- and all of them display a marked shift in theme.

The overall theme revealing the unconscious assumptions of the paying audience in the 1980's was that Goodness Prevails Because it is Goodness.  And more than that, you can determine what is good and what is not-good by checking the Bible.

In the 2010's (we're mid-way at this writing), we see a trend, reflected in the political divisions between the USA Democratic Party and the USA Republican Party, saying "The Bad Guys Always Win Unless We Use Science To Force Them To Behave Properly."  And you can tell the bad guys because they loudly proclaim they are Christians, then behave as anything but Christians (advocating war, cruelty to women, and throwing off all civil discipline.)

Your audience  has become "polarized."  They have separated themselves according to selected "beliefs" and gone to separate corners, waiting for the bell to start a slugfest.

Politicians and social scientists try very hard to label these groupings, to figure out what belief belongs on which side of the boxing ring.

Writers have to speak to both sides, equally, without advocating one over the other, to make sales figures that justify mass market paperback publication.  That's why it is called "mass market" -- because it's bigger than any group.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/12/pew-religious-landscape-survey-2014_n_7259770.html

And here is an article from CNN talking about religious affiliation drop in both parties -- more emphatic in the Democratic Party than the Republican.  It is a general trend, and seen even among older people.  The 2015 survey by Pew Research did assert that 70% of the USA still says they are Christian.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/politics/poll-religious-decline-among-democrats-gop/

From that article, I don't think everyone who says they are "Christian" means the same thing by the word.

----------CNN QUOTE--------
One political issue in particular has benefited from a sea change in religious attitudes -- same-sex marriage. Consistent with the political and legal changes to gay rights that have taken place in the United States over the past year, the Pew survey demonstrates that the share of all Christians saying that homosexuality should be accepted by society increased from 44% in 2007 to 54% in 2014.

-------END CNN QUOTE---------

Trace that political trend (remember the early 1980's was "The Reagan Era" ) next to the decline in acceptance of the HEA, with the rise of the Kick Ass Heroine.

Just because you see a correlation in the graphic curve, don't assume there's a cause-effect relationship.

But you can build a world around the theme that there is a cause-effect relationship between religious views, a particular standard of what constitute's the Good that Wins Because it's Good, and the accessibility of the HEA to your Characters.

You build the world your Characters must puzzle out, build its physics, chemistry, biology, its science, in such a way as to reveal to the reader what is "Good" and how the practice of "Good" generates success.

In our real, everyday world that your reader lives in, we see that Bad always wins. Just listen to what Bernie Sanders has said while running for President.  He's popular because he paints an accurate picture of what his voters see in their world.  He validates their view of their world, deplores it with them, and points to the solutions that seem obvious to his voters.

Donald Trump does the same thing, making it clear he shares his voters' assessment of reality and will apply the rules of Good Guy Behavior to solve those problems.

Both are problem-solvers writ large.  Both engage their audience's sense that Goodness Will Prevail "if only" we do what Good Guys do.

They differ on what "Good" actually is.

Don't forget to check out Ted Cruz and his followers, assessing what they think is the "Good" action that will lead to an HEA for the country.

Tease all this political theater apart until you can see the Theme and the Worldbuilding as separate factors in our real world.  In the everyday reality, they are so entangled very few specialists can ever tease them apart. Practicing separation of Theme from World is what writers do as compulsively and incessantly as we people-watch.

Once you can see your reader's everyday reality as composed of theme and a world that illustrates that theme, you can choose new content for the theme element and new content for the world element, then re-integrate your created ingredients into a story that all readers can believe (for a while.).

We read fiction to believe something we actually don't believe, just to try it on for a while. We read to walk a mile in someone else's moccasins.  We read Alien Romance to grasp an bizarre and impossible problem, and then problem-solve along with the Characters, rooting for the Good Guy to win because he/she is Good.

Here's a post in the Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration series that pertains to this idea of what Goodness is and what properties the world has to have to tilt probability so that Goodness causes Winning, at least when pitted against Not-Goodness.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Ponder the relationship between the world you live in and the forces that shape probability around you. That's what Magic and Fantasy generally depict - a world where human will, emotion, intention, shape consequences.  In science, nothing you think or feel matters in terms of the working of physical laws.

In science, what you do causes what happens.

In magic, who you ARE causes what happens.

Are these two views of reality irreconcilable?

What if you write a Romance between one who lives in a world where who you are does not matter (e.g. where it is stupid to believe in the HEA) and one who lives in a world where the way to achieve the HEA is to  become the Good Guy by strengthening Character (not body).

What does she see in him?  What does he see in her?

You can do that story in any setting and sparks will fly, readers of every stripe will flock to the book.

It is the pattern behind the TV Series, X-Files which we discussed briefly in Part 13 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-13.html

And just for good measure, here is an article about great, bestselling writers telling you that good people don't make good Characters.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/tony-tulathimutte-private-citizens-philip-roth-by-heart/463002/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com