Plant Intelligence

A new nonfiction book, THE LIGHT EATERS, by Zoe Schlanger, delves deeply into the potential of plant intelligence. According to the blurb, she explores the abilities of plants "to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents." Here are two articles about THE LIGHT EATERS and the amazing ways plants interact with their environment:

Being Green

The New Science of Plant Intelligence

This topic raises the question of what "intelligence" means. I've always thought of it as a product of consciousness. Yet most people accept that advanced computer programs are in some sense intelligent without being conscious. If plants have intelligence, that quality must not necessarily require consciousness. And what does "memory" mean when applied to a creature without a brain? Do plants engage in "behavior," or should that word be restricted to animals? Botanical research has come a long way since THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS (1973) popularized the claim that they enjoy music and benefit from being talked to.

The second article linked above meditates on these questions and related philosophical issues. We human beings have an innate compulsion to "order the universe into comprehensible categories" and a tendency to "rank ourselves at the top." About plant communication, the author of this essay advances the astonishing proposition, "It also changes the notion of what a mind is. We have taken it to be the product of a brain attached to a nervous system, but perhaps a mind is a complex, self-organizing system networked across the entire organism. Perhaps the whole plant is a mind."

Schlanger defines intelligence as "the ability to learn from one’s surroundings and make decisions that best support one’s life,” a criterion plants fulfill. However, the temptation to anthropomorphize them should be resisted. For one thing, as many SF authors have highlighted, they must surely "think" on a different time scale from us. Rather than trying to see plants as human-like, we should appreciate their very alienness.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Guest Author Post

This week we have a guest blog, in Q & A form, from multi-genre author Karen Hulene Bartell:

"What inspired you to begin writing?"

IMHO, reading is the inspiration for and entry into writing.

Born to rolling-stone parents who moved annually--sometimes monthly--I found my earliest playmates as fictional friends in books. Paperbacks became my portable pals. Ghost stories kept me up at night--reading feverishly. Novels offered an imaginative escape, and the paranormal was my passion.

An only child, I began writing my first novel at the age of nine, learning the joy of creating my own happy endings…However, I got four pages into my first “book” and realized I had to do a lot of living before I could finish it!

So here I am all these decades later, still creating my own happy endings…

"What genres do you work in?"

More often than not, I write paranormal romances, but I also write political-suspense thrillers and frontier romance.

"Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?"

Mostly, I “wing it.” Occasionally at the end of a day, I’ll make a brief outline of the action I want to write about the following day, but overall, I’m a “pantser.”

"What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?"

Actually, I have two books coming out this spring. Kissing Kin was released March 13, and Fox Tale will be released April 8.

Kissing Kin Overview:

Maeve Jackson is starting over after a broken engagement—and mustering out of the Army. No job and no prospects, she spins out on black ice and totals her car.

When struggling vintner Luke Kaylor stops to help, they discover they’re distantly related. On a shoestring budget to convert his vineyard into a winery, he makes her a deal: prune grapevines in exchange for room and board.

But forgotten diaries and a haunted cabin kickstart a five-generational mystery with ancestors that have bones to pick. As carnal urges propel them into each other’s arms, they wonder: Is their attraction physical…or metaphysical?

Fox Tale Overview:

Heights terrify Ava. When a stranger saves her from plunging down a mountain, he diverts her fears with tales of Japanese kitsune—shapeshifting foxes—and she begins a journey into the supernatural.

She’s attracted to Chase, both physically and metaphysically, yet primal instincts urge caution when shadows suggest more than meets the eye.

She’s torn between Chase and Rafe, her ex, when a chance reunion reignites their passion, but she struggles to overcome two years of bitter resentment. Did Rafe jilt her, or were they pawns of a larger conspiracy? Are the ancient legends true of kitsunes twisting time and events?

"What kinds of research do you do for your Western novels?"

I enjoy researching all my novels. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the parts I like best about writing, but the research for Kissing Kin, Book II of the Trans-Pecos series, was especially complex--as well as physically demanding and a whole lot of fun!

Why do I describe Kissing Kin’s research as complex?

A big reason is that the manuscript underwent several iterations before being published. The first version was a story about two generations linked by Covid and (via journals) the Spanish Flu of 1918. However, publishers passed on it, saying readers were sick of pandemics.

Because the second version would have been part of a series set in Colorado, I changed the location, names, and family relationships. I also adapted the story to fit the series’ outline and removed the flu, but that version didn’t fly, either. My third attempt is the version being released March 13th, which required further revisions and, occasionally, restorations. Try, try, and try again…

Greed and a checkered family history shaped the property lines for Kissing Kin, where some of the characters swindled the land from its rightful owners. This aspect led me into a hornet’s nest of legal research: warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds, squatters rights, and a process called adverse possession. Both Texas and Colorado are ‘notice’ states, which means that recording documents legally notify the public of property transfers. But the state laws differ, and I had to research both sets of laws, rewriting the second version with Coloradan laws, and then redrafting the third version, while reverting to the Texan laws.

Karen’s “legal” advice 101: Warranty deeds are better than quitclaim deeds, but recorded warranty deeds are rock solid--unless squatters rights and a process called adverse possession come into play. Then you have a legal fight on your hands--as well as a thickening plot…

Kissing Kin is mainly set in a vineyard. As vintners, farmers, and ranchers know, nature can be cruel. Pierce’s Disease attacks grapevines from Florida to California, where insects called sharpshooter leafhoppers spread the bacteria. I’d never heard of Pierce’s Disease. I have no background in vineyards, and I have a brown thumb. Plants would rather die than live with me. Because of my total lack of knowledge, I had to research the disease, its carriers, and the way to control it.

I learned a new, nicotine-based pesticide eradicates the leafhoppers. I also learned from my grandmother’s hand-printed recipe book, that she treated chicken lice in the 1930s by painting their roost perches with nicotine-sulfate. Apparently, nothing’s new under the sun.

PTSD was another new area of exploration. Two of Kissing Kin’s characters suffered from its symptoms, which wreaked havoc on them--as well as their relationships.

However, the most entertaining research included picking and stomping grapes in two central-Texas vineyards. (I love hands-on (and feet-on) study 😉)

Why do I describe Kissing Kin’s research as physically demanding and a whole lot of fun?

After learning how to prune the vines and harvest the grapes, I did a Lucy-and-Ethel grape stomp--which was sloshing good fun! Of course, the best research was the wine tasting that followed the stomping!

"What are you working on now?"

My WIP is Silkworm, a political-suspense thriller set in Taipei, Taiwan, that portrays a US Senator’s daughter caught between two men, two cultures, two political ideologies, and the two Chinas.

A love triangle is the metaphor for Taiwan and China (the two dragons) competing for geopolitical and technological accords with the US. As mainland China seeks to recover the third of its lost provinces–Taiwan–Rachel Moore struggles to escape the triple nightmare of impending war, a marriage of convenience, and an assassination plot against the man she loves. Silkworm weaves their stories with the trilateral events currently erupting in Southeast Asia.

"What advice would you give to aspiring authors?"

I’ve received little writing advice. However, I started life as an actor and received an immense amount of advice for that career.

The best advice I received was to keep at it--in that case, acting, but the same words apply to writing. Keep at it. Don’t quit. Keep honing your craft and, eventually, you’ll succeed.

The worst advice I’ve received was from an editor--translation: a frustrated author—who demanded I indiscriminately follow her redrafting of my manuscript in an attempt to overwrite my style with hers.

However, my advice for writers is to R E A D! Read everything that interests you. Read when you’re bored. Read when you can’t sleep. Read at the beach…in front of the fire…in bed…waiting for doctor appointments…

Then begin reading genres that are similar to the style in which you’d like to write. Analyze what works and what doesn’t. Find common denominators or rules of thumb between the characters or plots. What makes memorable characters? How does the author maintain the story’s fast pace or add to its suspense? Decide specifically what you like about each author’s style.

Next, start writing about what interests you. Express yourself as honestly as possible. Write about what you know, what you’re familiar with—even your childhood. Keep a notebook. Jot down ideas as they come to you!

Finally, start drafting a story that “grabs you.” Push through that first draft to the end, no matter how painful. (There’s a magic wand called rewrite that allows you to complete any half-baked thoughts later.) The point is to finish the first draft. See it through. Only then should you go back and develop your story.

Occasionally, you’ll find that the story--and even the characters—will seize the pen (AKA your imagination) and draft the story for you!

Sometimes, it’s good to take a vacation from your manuscript. When you return to it, you’ll find your thoughts will have gelled and expressing them comes more easily.

Then rewrite. If necessary, rewrite again and again until your story accurately expresses your message.

Finally, polish your prose. Go back and read each line out loud. The ear catches what the eye misses. Refine your words and phrases until they sparkle.

Before you know it, you’ll have found a genre, even--dare I say it?--your style!

How did I start writing? My first published books were cookbooks—now, thanks to Google, recipes appear online in milliseconds. Cookbooks may no longer be your entry into the published world, but I still recommend writing non-fiction before fiction, be it via textbooks or any form of technical writing.

"What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?"

Website – Author Website

Connect – Contact

Buy Links –

UNIVERSAL LINK: Universal Link

AMAZON: Amazon

GOODREADS: Goodreads

APPLE: Apple

BARNES & NOBLE: Barnes and Noble

Social Media Links –

Facebook: Facebook

MeWe: MeWe

Twitter: Twitter

Goodreads: Goodreads

Website: Karen Hulene Bartell

Email: info@KarenHuleneBartell.com

Amazon Author Page:Amazon

Instagram: Instagram

BookBub: BookBub

LinkedIn: LinkedIn

AUTHORSdb: AUTHORSdb

Putting the Fact in Fantasy

I've just finished reading an essay anthology titled PUTTING THE FACT IN FANTASY, edited by Dan Koboldt. The contents, contributed by over thirty different specialists, explore a wide range of subjects writers of fantasy may need to know about in order to make their fictional settings feel authentic. The foreword emphasizes the importance of getting the mundane background right. Readers will accept the wildest flights of fantasy if they're grounded in a world that functions believably. Conversely, if errors appear in details supposedly faithful to how things function in the real world, the audience won't trust the author enough to suspend disbelief in the fantastic elements. As a famous line from THE MIKADO puts it, we need those realistic background features "to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." The introduction, titled “How to Ask an Expert,” contains practical advice on getting help from people with firsthand knowledge and experience.

Regardless of the depth and breadth of an author's research, flawless accuracy is seldom if ever attainable; minor goofs will inevitably crop up. Thus, the foreword bears the title "The Point Is to Screw Up Better." This book aims to help authors avoid errors in portrayal of environments, social structures, animals, weapons, etc. that might jar the reader out of the imaginary world. The anthology is divided into six parts, covering the broad areas of actual history as inspiration, languages and culture, world-building (e.g., money, food and drink, plants, ecology, politics, among other topics), weapons and warfare, horses, and wilderness adventure. Each category includes a wide range of sub-topics (aside from the horse section, which is more tightly focused). Entertaining as well as useful, the book could be picked up and dipped into in any order. The contents tend to consist of short, quick reads.

Therein lies its one drawback. Most of the essays comprise broad introductions to their topics. Some contain suggestions for further reading, but many don't. On the other end of the scale, some contributions list highly specific content such as popular myths about horses, fascinating material but touching on only one aspect of a wide field. Still, PUTTING THE FACT IN FANTASY, although subtitled "Expert advice to bring authenticity to your fantasy writing," includes information that could benefit authors in almost any genre. If nothing else, it's a fun read that may spark ideas for adding depth to the physical and social environment of your story.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Most Writers Are Writers

This is the name of a page on the TV Tropes site, referring to the countless works of fiction with authors, playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, or poets as protagonists, a not unreasonable consequence of the hoary precept to "write what you know.":

Most Writers Are Writers

Taking this principle to its logical extreme leads to the situation satirized in a quote from SF author Joe Haldeman at the top of that trope page: "Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to Write What You Know, which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery."

Strict obedience to that "rule" would, of course, mean no fiction could be created about places or ethnicities other than the author's own, much less science fiction or fantasy. TV Tropes has another page discussing, with examples, the difficulties of writing about nonhuman protagonists such as extraterrestrials or animals. Yet even these characters have to exhibit as least some human-like traits, or readers couldn't identify with them:

Most Writers Are Human

Henry James critiques the advice that an author should write only from his or her own experience in this famous passage from his 1884 essay "The Art of Fiction" about the need for a writer to be someone "on whom nothing is lost":

"I remember an English novelist, a woman of genius, telling me that she was much commended for the impression she had managed to give in one of her tales of the nature and way of life of the French Protestant youth. She had been asked where she learned so much about this recondite being, she had been congratulated on her peculiar opportunities. These opportunities consisted in her having once, in Paris, as she ascended a staircase, passed an open door where, in the household of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a picture; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was experience. She had got her impression, and she evolved her type. She knew what youth was, and what Protestantism; she also had the advantage of having seen what it was to be French; so that she converted these ideas into a concrete image and produced a reality. Above all, however, she was blessed with the faculty which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which for the artist is a much greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place in the social scale. The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it--this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience, and experience only,' I should feel that this was a rather tantalising monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!'"

To put it more briefly, it has been said that instead of "Write what you know," the rule should be, "Know what you write." In other words, thoroughly research whatever you aren't already familiar with from personal experience or study.

I admit I've usually adhered to "write what you know" in terms of my characters' occupations. Most of my heroines work as librarians, proofreaders, bookstore clerks, college instructors, or, yes, authors. Since their work usually isn't the central focus of the story, I figure it's just as well to give them jobs I know enough about not to make blatant errors. Where the protagonist's vocation does play a major role in the plot, I default to "writer."

The internet makes research easier than ever before, provided one takes care to distinguish accurate sources from their opposite. And for in-depth exploration, reliable websites can direct the searcher to books, which can often be obtained through interlibrary loan—which can also be arranged online. A public library might even have access to that one necessary book in electronic format, eliminating the need to go out to pick it up. For example, once when I wanted to insert a few sentences about a heroine's psychic vision of a mountain trail in Afghanistan into a story, typing and clicking on a single search phrase gave me all the images I could wish for. We truly live in wondrous times for "knowing what we write."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Science in SF, Continued

The second part of Kelly Lagor's LOCUS article on "Putting the 'Science' in Science Fiction" is here:

Putting the Science in SF

As in the previous essay, she quotes opinions from various authors and editors, including Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Pinsker, Lee Harris (editor at Tor.com), and Sheila Williams (editor of ASIMOV'S), among others. Some bits of advice on the "delicate tightrope walk" of "getting the level of detail just right so as to not be so technical you alienate your readers, while avoiding being needlessly inaccurate":

An SF author should keep up her "baseline knowledge of popular science" (in Elizabeth Bear's phrase) at a level sufficient to make her aware of what's going on in the scientific world and where she needs to seek out deeper research into any particular topic or sub-field. Academic journals and popular science books and articles each provide useful resources, which should be consumed in the proper balance. Other comments logically point out that the amount and kind of research needed will depend on how much the author already knows about the field. The level of scientific detail required to make a story plausible also depends on the subgenre. Readers of different types of SF have different expectations; as Lee Harris observes, "we’re much less critical of the science in the latest superhero epic than we would be in a hard science fiction story." Another observation states that "with great familiarity can come great reluctance"—a writer might hesitate to delve into the technical details because he or she finds it hard to resist including excessive exposition that might turn off the reader. Some other suggestions: Don't hesitate to consult experts firsthand. The kind and degree of technical specificity varies depending on the viewpoint character—what would he or she notice and care about? And getting the depth and scope of detail correct ultimately grows out of knowing how much the reader needs to understand to enjoy the story. "Sometimes, when it comes to details, less is more."

By the way, Lagor's phrase "needlessly inaccurate" seems to imply the existence of conditions under which inaccuracy is needed, a position I'd find hard to agree with. Whether the density of detail is heavy or light, surely whatever IS on the page should be accurate, within the limits of how technical the particular text gets. Even in fantasy, I find a story more interesting and entertaining if the writer gives the impression of accuracy in mundane matters such as architecture, food, travel times, etc., as well as basing the biology of imaginary creatures (for example) on a plausible analogy with real ones. The more incredible the central premise a reader has to accept, the more plausible the supporting details ought to be.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy Part 8 - Science of the HEA

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy

Part 8

Science of the HEA

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

This post might fit very well into the series indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

Today, let's look at happiness as a scientific phenomenon.

Mostly, today, scientists (grad students at least) are making "original" contributions to the body of human knowledge by doing statistical analyses of data long ago collected.

Some original studies, though, have been going on for decades, and still collecting data.  Recently, Harvard reported on such a long term study of humans.  We'll get to the Harvard study below, but first consider whether "science" can have anything to say or do about "happiness."  Science studies absolutely everything about the real world, so if it can't study happiness, does that mean happiness isn't of the "real" world?

You can't "experiment" on humans but you can "study" behavior, and you can collect and analyze what humans SAY about this or that, and how a particular individual's assessment changes with time.

Nobody knows if this is because of age, per se, or if humans are actually changing. 

Self-assessment is tricky, and science seems convinced that it is impossible for a person to assess themselves accurately (yet doctors still rely mostly on what people say about where it hurts or how they feel).

People are studying, and "correcting" statistics for, a phenomenon called "The Flynn Effect" which identifies reasons for differences in I.Q. measurements between 20 year olds, and 80 year olds.  Do we really get stupid as we age?  Is that why we seem to "mellow" out and become happier with our lot?  There is so much to know!

--------quote-------
 Thus it appears that people in 1950 were a lot less smart than they are now, that is if you define intelligence in IQ scores. How is that possible? According to the Flynn effect theory, the increase in IQ scores can in part be ascribed to improvements in education and better nutrition.
--------end quote------

But the gap seems to be narrowing, or measurements are improving.  Nobody really understands this while we still use I.Q. tests for college entry evaluation.  Grades and social involvement -- and parental contributions to the university -- all figure into "who" gets educated, but they also track who gets well fed.  And we also have a raging argument about what, exactly, constitutes "healthy" food!  Nobody really knows, but certain opinions get huge promotional money pushing them into general awareness because there are products for sale based on those opinions.

There are, at least right now, no products to buy to boost your HEA score.

In Fantasy, of course, there is the magic love potion.  Find something else to write about!

A good science fiction romance could be crafted around such a discovery, but you'd need to study neurology and psychology to craft such a story.

Standardized "tests" of I.Q. have been relied upon to distinguish one type of human function from another, but even that is changing as various sorts of intelligence are identified as different from one another.

In other words, science is finally acknowledging that such a thing as Talent actually exists, distinguishing one person from another.  Emotional Intelligence, mechanical, mathematical -- different parts of the brain are responsible for producing different sorts of effects on human behavior.  The map still has "Here Be Dragons" around the edges.

Nobody knows if children can be raised to develop parts of the brain that were underdeveloped during gestation.  Education and training do change brain development in humans, but studies are also showing new brain cells are constantly produced, even into old age.

See this Forbes article, also well covered by the BBC:

The Brain Can Give Birth To New Cells Throughout Life, Study Finds

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2019/05/26/the-brain-can-give-birth-to-new-cells-throughout-life-study-finds/#58b4cf4763c9

So can Talent be infused by training?  Is I.Q. a "Talent?"

See Part 7 in this series on Soul Mates and the HEA for a theory of how Soul and Spirit figure into human consciousness.

When you put it all together, we are only beginning to discover how MUCH we just plain don't know.  That area, the Unknown, is the province of Science Fiction -- and Fantasy thrives there, too. 

On Quora, I found a Question ...
Is someone with an IQ of 130 typically aware that they have gifted intelligence?

...and thoughtful answers ...

https://www.quora.com/Is-someone-with-an-IQ-of-130-typically-aware-that-they-have-gifted-intelligence

...that might help you sketch out the Characters for a (really hot) Romance, involving body, soul, and I.Q., wrapped in a package of Talent.

This one addresses self-awareness -- or in writer's terms, Internal Conflict.

Who you think you are vs. who other people think you are is a Conflict.

--------quote--------
Is someone with an IQ of 130 typically aware that they have gifted intelligence?
Emmanuel Brun d'Aubignosc
Emmanuel Brun d'Aubignosc, Self Employed IT
Answered May 11 · Upvoted by Lauren Adele, MBA Psychology (1999)
No.

An IQ 130 (SD15) is higher than 98% of the population. It is quite high, but not genius level either.

People with an IQ of 130 are intelligent enough to understand the scope of what they don’t understand, to have an idea of how little they know. Therefore they have a tendency to feel stupid more than anything else. Doing IQ tests might be a validation, but they will question them too.

I talked to someone who scored 155 on WAIS IV. He always insisted on that he isn’t that intelligent!

The more one knows, the more they are aware of how little they know. The smarter one is, the more they are aware of how little they really do understand. Only idiots think they are smart.

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

This may not be objectively TRUE -- but it sketches out an opinion  your readership may hold firmly.  That gives the writer a springboard into a dynamite plot.  "You think you're so smart!  I'll show you!  So there!"

So clearly "intelligence" (whatever that is) does not guarantee an HEA, and in itself, doesn't "make" people happy.  Neither high nor low scores correspond to happiness. 

Related Questions
Could you list differences between moderately gifted (I.Q 130) and profoundly gifted (I.Q. 160)?
What is it like to have an IQ of 130?
How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?
Do people with 140 IQ see normal people (IQ 100 to 130) as stupid?
How can they tell how smart you are from an IQ test?
What are the characteristics of someone with a 125-130 IQ?
Is the difference between IQ 190 and 130 as big as between 130 and 70?
What are some signs of intelligence?
How can you increase your IQ?
I'm an elitist. What is wrong with thinking that smart individuals should only associate with other smart people?

Notice how none of the questioners are linking I.Q. to Happiness.  Why?

Is there a link nobody has noticed?  Could you create a hypothesis to use in a novel?

Which brings us to Harvard University's long term study.  This one went for 80 years searching for a scientific answer that (as far as I know) everyone already knew.

Science is like that, you know.  After centuries of argument, science declares to be true what everyone knew all along.  What everyone knows is "folk wisdom" or "old wive's tales."  What science knows is to be understood only by the high I.Q. individuals among us.  Right? 

Here's what Inc. Magazine said about the Harvard study.

https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/harvard-spent-80-years-studying-happiness-we-now-know-1-key-habit-that-makes-people-happier-the-problem-most-people-never-even-try.html

Harvard Spent 80 Years Studying Happiness, and We Now Know the 1 Key Habit That Makes People Happier. (The Problem: Most People Never Even Try)
If you're not happy, at least now you have a roadmap.

----quote------
Over time, it's turned into one of the most extensive longitudinal studies ever, and has revealed a trove of insights. Perhaps the most famous and useful insight is this oft-repeated quote by Robert J. Waldinger, who is the current head of the study:

"The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period."

That's wonderful, right? But how do you fix your life if you don't happen to have good relationships?

An 'epidemic of loneliness'

To be honest, this is what's bugged me about this study for a long time: the clarity of the answer with no real guidance on how to get there.

Because it's one thing to say if you want to be happy, nurture good relationships.

And it's another to suggest that with a straight face in the context of the "epidemic of loneliness" that Americans largely feel today, in the words of more than one writer.

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

Considering the divorce rate, the delay in the current generation of marriage and children, and from the 1960's and 1970's, the breaking of communities by moving high I.Q. workers employed by corporations from city to city to climb the corporate ladder, and current increase in lifespan, it's no wonder we have about 40% of the population living in loneliness.

------quote-------
A few alarming statistics from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, just to back this up:

40 percent of Americans say they "sometimes or always feel their social relationships are not meaningful."
20 percent describe themselves as, "lonely or socially isolated."
28 percent of older adults live alone.
From a pure physical health perspective, researchers say loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

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

We have a generation of adults (book readers) who have not had the part of the brain responsible for "bonding" properly nurtured and developed as children.  They have done OK for themselves, but have not been able to teach their children how to "bond" and form steady, solid, rooted communities.

And now the advent of social media is shifting relationships and bonding online, to the virtual world.

Is that a good thing?  Or crippling?

Is it a part of the brain that is underdeveloped, or overdeveloped?

Or is it a component of the complex Soul (described in Part 7 of this series)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/soul-mates-and-hea-real-or-fantasy-part.htmlthat is starved, over developed, under developed, or impaired? 

What part of us BONDS?  What part of the human being is responsible for relationships?  Are we just primate bodies jerked around by pheromones?  Or is something else going on? 

Pick an answer to one of those questions and build a world around that premise.  It will generate a long series of complex Romances. 

The blush of First Love, the Romance condition, is an activated radical condition where all the parts of the human being (body and soul) are energized and able to break apart and reform into something new, emitting the energy of formation (e.g. children).

Somehow, Romance has been blunted, shunting aside, starved for energy in this new, dawning, culture of A.I. 

Explain that and solve the problem - see if Love can conquer that All.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Latest Cyborg Leap Forward

Medical researchers at Ohio State University have invented a device called NeuroLife, which enables a quadriplegic to move his hand:

Brain Implant

One end of the device is implanted in his brain, with external cables that run down to his hand, bypassing the damaged spinal cord. NeuroLife transmits nerve impulses generated by algorithms based on recordings of activity in the motor cortex (if I understand the explanation correctly). The experimental subject has regained enough precision control of his hand muscles to pick up objects and even play video games. I wonder whether he can use a keyboard; the article doesn't say. That would really be a leap forward. (I know about speech-to-text programs, of course, and many people seem to love them; if I were paralyzed, though, I would have a lot of trouble "writing" by dictation and would wish for the ability to type.)

This technique took a decade of development, and the patient had to undergo months of training to get the full benefit. So it won't be an instant fix, even when it becomes publicly available (and the article doesn't mention when that might happen). Still, it's a wondrous achievement.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 4

Part 1 of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html

Part 2 of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_17.html


Part 3 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_24.html

This series is ostensibly about Maggie Anton's trilogy, Rashi's Daughters.  Actually, it's about how you can write a better historical novel than that trilogy (as good as any novel is, you can always do better). 

This blog series is most especially about how to craft Paranormal Romance.

My Jan 2012 release, The Farris Channel is extremely Paranormal, not so extremely Romance, and very "Future Historical" since it answers the fans' questions about the historical background, the worldbuilding behind novels set later in the Chronology.  So my thinking has been focused on Paranormal Historical Romance, hence this relentless pursuit of the inner mechanisms of the Rashi's Daughters trilogy. 

The question is how to lure hostile readers into a suspension of disbelief that will let you ask them a question they'll never forget.  If you can achieve that, readers will force their friends to read your novel because they can't talk to anyone who doesn't have that background reference, and they want to talk about finding the answer to that nagging question.  Posing questions is what "science" is all about, which is the core essence of what "science fiction" is about.  Posing those nagging questions about the Paranormal as it relates to Romance is much harder than posing questions about simple physics and he-man Action Adventure.   

So here we go with the 4th part of this series, exploring what a writer does with their mind to integrate Research into Plot using Theme as the integration tool, to break up the lumps of exposition to create a smooth, unified product, "shaken not stirred." 

Last week we ended off with this idea from a musical analogy:

A theme is composed of ideas (beats) but defined by the "silence" between them -- by what is not mentioned, by what is ignored, deemed unimportant or non-existent, by how the idea is spread across time.

Consider the pixels on a TV screen.  The clarity of the screen is created by the deepness of the black surrounding each lit pixel, not by the brightness of the pixel itself.  You can research that on amazon or just remember what the Sony Trinitron screen had that nothing else on the market had -- and that was true-black surrounding each pixel.  Today, it's the Panasonic plasma screen (tightly held patents) that lead in BLACKNESS. 

It's the lack of signal, the lack of picture that makes the picture comprehensible.

And so it is with philosophy, the mother of theme.  What does not exist lets what does exist come together in meaning.

This sorting skill is usually learned in the earliest experience in school of "writing a term paper."  You have to learn what to exclude as well as what to include. 

The fiction writer, though, is an artist whose medium is emotion. 

The fictioneer can't transfer their own emotion to the reader.  The writer must activate emotions the reader already has.

That's why children's lit is so different from adult fare -- as we age, we acquire more emotions, more mixtures of emotion, and more emotional triggers. 

A baby's eyes at first only distinguish the primary colors -- and the brain can only experience the primary emotions (mostly in isolation from each other - hence the ability of a baby to be distracted).  A baby really only does one emotion at a time.  Adults can experience all the primary emotions at once, and many mixed emotions each with an identify of its own.   

Here is some recently reported research you've all heard by now on the development of the teenage brain, which gives a clue why YA novels have to be different from those aimed at older people.

-------------
http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm
QUOTE:
It now appears the brain continues to change into the early 20's with the frontal lobes, responsible for reasoning and problem solving, developing last.
The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood as grey matter wanes in a back-to-front wave as the brain matures and neural connections are pruned...


AND QUOTE:

In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on a desire for thrills and taking risk -- a building block of adolescence; but, they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully.

 ---------end quote------------

Indications in this research are that the brain continues to change with age, and especially with usage.  Thus a teen who reads ends up with a different brain than one who does not.  A teen who reads THIS as opposed to THAT may actually end up with a different wiring.  Given that books (cold text) delivers different emotional experiences, it could be that subject matter actually does make a difference.  Sexual excitement induced by reading cold text may differ from that associated with images, and from that coming via reality.

It has already been shown that adult and elder brains can repair or relearn function after motor injuries.  So targeting your reader by age, and by experience is important in delivering the emotional roller-coaster ride a novel is expected to carry. 


The adult's emotional triggers are the hooks or handles by which the writer can take hold of the reader. 

Back to art, music and now dance.  The writer is dancing with the reader, rhythmically moving with the reader's emotions, leading them into other emotions, and onwards perhaps into unexplored territory and new emotions.

As with music, it is the pauses in the dance that give it meaning, just as the silence gives the musical beat it's rhythm.

A fictional theme is composed of abstract ideas, each one lit up like the pixel on a TV screen or computer monitor -- the clarity of the piece of fiction, it's penetrating ability, it's gosh-wow-gasp effect depends not on what is said but on what is not said -- on the stark, absolute darkness and silence surrounding each idea.  But the theme is not "art" unless all the ideas composing it add up to a picture of "Life, The Universe, And Everything" - on matters of ultimate concern. 

This can be done in many ways.  The bestselling way is to use the writer's craft to depict the universe in the exact way that the majority of readers either see it or wish it were.  The "genre way" -- the smaller, more defined audience way (i.e. Romance fans, History buffs, Geeks, Murder Mystery fans, Western Action fans) is to depict the universe in a way that the target reader has never seen or thought of before - to say something that has never been said in fiction, to astonish, mesmerize, and impress. 

If you have something new to say, genre rules and strict structure can give you the  backbone of a story which can be the vehicle for that theme.  By using an established structure the reader knows (like picking a "theme" for your email), you can showcase your idea in the forefront.  The security of already understanding the structure lets the reader focus on what you have to say.

If you're saying the same old thing everyone already knows, you invent a new way to say it, a new genre structure or variation, or you find a new setting against which to fling your old-hat idea as Maggie Anton has done. 

If you put a new idea into a new structure, the reader gets the impression of a "busy" field of view, a 'cluttered' page, something they can't sort any sense out of and so don't pay money for. 

To get rid of the "cluttered" or "busy" impression, the writer integrates the story-structure elements into a unified whole.  You smooth and blend, to get that effect, you shake not stir. 

So how do you "shake not stir" Research into Plot? 

What's the exact mechanism a writer's mind uses to achieve that smooth blend of hard facts the reader already knows and the Events in the story that happen to the character? 

What is it Maggie Anton didn't do with her novels?

She did take the old, worn, done to death, feminist vs. the establishment conflict and fling it into a new setting -- 1040 C.E. in Rashi's family. 

She astonished us by showing Rashi's family just barely resisting the feminist daughters who won all their freedoms with barely a struggle (while in the rest of their world, women were killed for less but Anton doesn't discuss that except via one character, the daughter of a parchment maker -- from whom we learn a lot about how parchment is made).  And Anton got the Rashi's Daughters trilogy published without a genre label. 

That's a fairly solid publishing success, but what do you do if you want to go Anton one better?

You ask yourself questions - certain HARD questions about the reality in which the characters are embedded and how the character would see the world differently than the writer would in the same circumstance.

Instead of projecting yourself onto your characters (Mary Sue) - you project your characters onto yourself and look for the life lesson to be extracted from the events, a lesson you wouldn't be aware of if you were living through the events because it would affect you subconsciously, not consciously.

The life-lesson is the origin of the theme; the events become the plot.

Here are some previous posts I've done on theme and how to apply it to plot and story generation:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html 
which has links to the previous parts in that sequence.

The post topics are:

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 1, Stephen King on Potter VS Twilight
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 2, The Power of Theme-Plot Integration.
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 3, Standardization vs Customization
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 4, Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other

So I'm going to proceed on the assumption you've read those posts and the posts referred to inside them. 

Of course we're talking about HISTORICAL (actual, factual) fiction here, Rashi's Daughters.

We all know how unhappily ever after the European Jewish population lived.  We know that the era in which Rashi's family lived had been preceded by a number of really horrendous slaughters, and that more slaughters were to come.  That was Maggie Anton's problem - to depict convincingly the flourishing years of that historic community through the eyes of one generation of that historic family who knew the past and weren't oblivious to where it all was headed. 

Anton had the historic fact and the ambition to show us how strong, heroic women might have survived in and contributed to that  flourishing intellectual culture.  She had a feminist mindset to project onto historic figures, proposing the notion that our current feminist breakout may have had its roots in the spiritual heritage all Jewish women share. 

Anton hit on a hellishly commercial fictional CONCEPT -- like in "Hollywood High Concept" that I've written about at such length.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/converting-novel-to-screenplay.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/religion-in-science-fiction-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

I wouldn't be surprised if these novels are made into films or a TV miniseries -- this stuff is high concept to the max.

Assuming you've got the principles discussed in those posts fully internalized, let's move on. 

Anton just didn't use the writing techniques to blend her HIGH CONCEPT into the historic facts without distorting them.  She didn't generate her fictional facts from the historic facts to create characters with enough depth to make readers such as I quoted in Part 2 of this sequence of posts suspend disbelief long enough to entertain the notion that Rashi's daughters might have been feminists in an anti-feminist society. 

The hard-fact research truth is that Rashi's daughters did not live in an anti-feminist society because that's not the kind of atmosphere Rashi's community generated -- as the commentator I quoted in Part 2 mentioned, that's the truth.  The surrounding Christian community, though, is a totally different kettle of themes. 

If Anton's research is as well done as indicated, Anton knows that truth.  In a number of places, she indicated that the customs lived in Rashi's times were different from the customs later introduced by an even more beleaguered Jewish community after even more slaughters, so I can only assume that she also knew that Rashi's community was not anti-feminist.  Even today, in a certain corner of the community that lives the world-view that Rashi chronicled in his commentaries, feminism is a non-issue because there's no oppression to spark it.  Therefore, to those in that community, Anton's novels seem to lack verisimilitude. 

But the novels didn't have to fail to engage that corner of the community if suspension of disbelief had succeeded. 

Remember the connection between plot and story is the character whose decisions and actions cause events which splash-back to affect the character.  Those decisions and actions are the only real clue the reader has about the theme. 

The story is the sequence of emotional states and reactions the character experiences when impacted by events that leads the character to CHANGE -- to "arc" -- to learn a life lesson in the school of hard knocks. 

The plot is the sequence of events that ensue BECAUSE the character acts prompted by emotion.

The story is the sequence of inner emotions the character experiences that CAUSE the character to act in specific ways, that cause the plot to happen.

The character's actions cause reactions which deflect the character from his/her intended course of action -- the plot is the sequence of events that take the character either back to their original target (achieving an objective) which is the "Likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal" plot, or to a new destination that is either a) better than the original target or b) worse (in which case there's a sequel coming) -- which is the "Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out" plot.

So where does theme come in?  How can theme integrate Researched facts with Imaginary facts (worldbuilding) and with plot?

The theme embodies what the character learns about life, a transcendent truth that becomes customized specifically for that character.

A life-lesson has a practical, concrete component, but it also has an emotional component.  After one of those hard-knocks that only "life" can delivery, our emotional triggers are changed, and we react differently to situations, colors, tastes, the sound of a voice, the flash of a camera in the face. 

For example, consider a rape victim learning to love and have sex freely again.  Consider a soldier who dives under the bed every time it thunders learning to walk in the rain and laugh. 

Those kinds of turn-arounds happen because of a deep and meaningful Relationship moving through various stages, impacting the person on many levels.  Those turn-arounds are the story, and what changes inside the character is emotional. 

What brings a reader into a story, making the reader want to suspend disbelief, and willing to work to shut off the mental jangle of "that's ridiculous" is the way the character's emotional responses connect to the reader's emotional responses. 

Where do emotions come from?

The various answers to that question that you as the writer have, and that your target readership has or wants to have, will determine how you work with theme. 

With my novel that I discussed last week, Unto Zeor, Forever, I used the theory that emotions come from your philosophy -- and vice-verso, your philosophy comes from your emotions.  Yeah, chicken and the egg -- they interact with and cause each other.

Think of that TV screen analogy again.  When the screen is turned off, the pixels are still there but they are as black as the surrounding background.  The screen still has a pixel array structure, but you can't see it without special instruments. 

The structure is a certain number of pixels in rows across and columns down - an array.  The pixels are all the same size, the rim around them, separating them is also uniform. 

That all-black pattern, or array of pixels is your philosophy.  It's a structure that is fixed and unwavering, a screen UPON WHICH you project your reality. 

The specific choices you make about story, plot, setting, characters, will light up the pixels, and each succeeding choice will reveal more of the whole picture.  But whether that picture is intelligible to your reader will depend on the blacks around each pixel.  In other words, your reader's suspension of disbelief depends on what you leave out.

You will "see" your mental reality only as clearly as the blacks around your pixels.  The smaller the pixels, the more numerous the pixels (or axioms and postulates of your philosophy) the finer your picture of reality will be. 

Some people work on their philosophy and achieve a picture quality like High Definition.  Some have LED quality screens, some have Plasma quality colors.  Some are still living with analog screens, large fuzzy pixels, a blurry picture of reality.

The artist's job is to show the consumer of the art how the world would look with deeper blacks around the pixels, with LED back-lighting, with clearer vision. 

The artist draws a picture of reality the consumer would never sort out by themselves by sorting the signal from the noise, and suppressing the noise until the signal reveals a coherent picture of life, the universe, and everything.  The artist distinguishes signal from noise by filtering the signal through a philosophy -- not necessarily the artist's own philosophy, though most beginners start there. 

The writer has a philosophy, her characters each have a philosophy, and the reader has a philosophy.  Very likely, all are different.

The writer's job is to know their own philosophy in order to know how it differs from the character's philosophy.  That's how you avoid writing a Lt. Mary Sue, who is just yourself idealized. 

Most ordinary people don't know their own philosophy -- don't know they have one, and barely have a notion of what the word means.  Normal people don't enjoy discussing philosophy.  Writers thrive on it.  Artists thrive on it.

The other thing writers thrive on is "research" -- most of us grow up reading the dictionary and encyclopedia for FUN not profit!  We love words, their meanings, their implications, their emotional nuances and semantic loading.  We collect facts like a dragon collects gems and brood on our hoard of trivia for years before hatching an idea for a novel using those facts.

Maggie Anton, in a comment on one of the reader comments on Amazon, says she studied Talmud for 10 years in order to make the story of Rashi's daughters authentic -- she believes she did it.  She also amassed a lot of information about the technologies and practices of the time period and location. 

So this week we'll leave off there and give you time to finish reading Anton's trilogy and/or the comments on Amazon or any other online source you can find.

Next week we'll finish up this study with a brief description of what Anton might have done instead, and how it could be done - what tools she might have used that you've seen discussed on this blog.

Remember, this blog series is about Research-Plot Integration, not a critique of a trilogy about a Medieval Jewish community.

Wherever the Jewish elements are mentioned, substitute the worldbuilding elements you might make up from the historic facts you might have amassed.

Soon, we'll talk a little about the Television Series, Once Upon A Time which has an odd thematic relationship to this Rashi's Daughters trilogy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 2

Last week:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html
we looked at a trilogy of historical romance stories about Rashi's Daughters.

I'm discussing how Maggie Anton's trilogy of historical romance novels with paranormal, supernatural, and spiritual elements blended in, fails because of a failure of orchestration of advanced writing techniques, namely the technique of integrating techniques.

Anton's trilogy does not fail because of a failure of either research technique or plotting technique by itself, though her plotting technique is not one that I respond to or use.  But the two techniques applied separately produce an "oil and water" layered effect rather than an emulsion or a new chemical compound with unique properties (i.e. a Romance Novel).

I hope you have had time to consider these novels.  Here's a link to them on amazon:

Maggie Anton

I don't know Maggie Anton personally, and have no idea what went on with the writing of these novels other than what it says in the books.

Here is a reader response on Anton's first novel from Amazon to consider indicating that the author's imaginary Jewish Culture of the Middle Ages stood out from, made an oil slick on top of, and obliterated all the rest of the romance novel stories in the books:

---------QUOTE-----------
3.0 out of 5 stars Good in general but Jewish life lacks authenticity, May 10, 2009
By
D. L. Lederman "leahiniowa" (Iowa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME) 
This review is from: Rashi's Daughters, Book 1: Joheved (Paperback)
I am an Orthodox Jew who happens to deeply enjoy history and well-written historic fiction. I have strongly mixed feelings about this book. I am deeply impressed with the research that went into this book as well as Anton's ability to compile an enjoyable story from her research.

Unfortunately, it is clear that Anton does not know enough about living the type of authentically observant life that Rashi and his family enjoyed to write about these people without over-laying them with a 21st century mentality.

Those of us who follow the traditions given down from parent to child over the generations know that Rashi's daughters did not wear tefillin and learn Talmud because they were rebels. On the contrary, they were very holy women who followed the law to the letter. Judaism is, at its authentic pure level, NOT a sexist religion.

Further, those of us who live the observant lifestyle are aware at a bone-deep level the benefits of abstaining from prohibited activities. E.g., the prohibition against mature, unmarried men and women touching at all (not to mention "making out" or "snogging" or what have you), along with the observance of the laws of married life, create an intense, passionate bond between husband and wife. No intelligent woman (or man) who has lived this lifestyle and learned significant amounts of Torah (the term Torah is often used to include the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrashim, etc. - basically all of the accumulated studies) would be foolish enough to put themselves in a position such as the female characters in this book found themselves with their "beaux."

To clarify what one of the other reviewers stated, yes, Jewish women at that time were mostly illiterate - especially as regards to Judaic studies. But so were most of the Jewish men. Only the special few - those with outstanding mental abilities or those with the finances to pay for an education - were able to learn enough to read and/or write Hebrew. And learning more than that was even harder to accomplish.

On the other hand, Anton's portrayal of Rashi's mother as an active, educated intelligent woman who ran her own business is strikingly accurate. Plus, I enjoyed learning about the lifestyle and history of Jews living during the time of Rashi.

I really would have preferred to give the book 3 1/2 stars or even 3.75 stars, because I do think it is very well-written and interesting. Unfortunately, books which do not portray Torah true Judaism accurately tend to do more harm than good. From the other reviews I have read, this already seems to be the case.

------------END QUOTE----------

And here is a reader response posted on Amazon on one of my novels, House of Zeor, which indicates that applying the integration technique I'm discussing causes readers to be able to absorb the imaginary culture of imaginary characters even when it differs starkly from anything familiar:

------QUOTE------------
5.0 out of 5 stars Only the beginning . . . of a great series, November 4, 2011
By J. A. Davis "firedrake54" (Ontario, CA)
This review is from: House of Zeor (Sime~Gen, Book 1) (Kindle Edition)
I can't tell you when I first read "House of Zeor", but it was back when I was thin and my hair wasn't. I found it amazing, when, last month, after not reading it for perhaps 20 years, I picked it up and was immediately transported back into a fondly (and well) remembered world. This book is one of the most complex, painfully realistic and memorable psycho-sociological thrillers I've ever read, and the foundation for an entire universe of stories, the complexity and beauty of which would definitely win awards at Arentsi (and you'll have to read it to find out what that means).

Ms. Lichtenberg, her eventual co-author for later books, Jean Lorrah, and the entire community of Sime-Gen worldbuilders have imagined characters, societies and situations that embed themselves on your brain and don't let go. I suppose it's indicative of something that I remembered many of the terms used in House of Zeor for decades -- mostly Sime-specific curse words, I confess, but they're used in context so clearly you have no problem knowing exactly what they mean.

I've been reading science fiction for nearly 50 years (yes, really). I can count the number of authors and series that have stuck with me this well easily on two hands, and I've read a LOT of SF in those years. The Sime-Gen books make you want to KNOW these people, and make you CARE about what happens to them . . . and their society, which comes painfully to the brink of collapse and ultimate calamity.

I've heard them called "vampire-analog" stories, "chick books" and more, but at base, what they are is good stories, well told, about characters you can get into.

READ THEM!
-----------END QUOTE-------------



House of Zeor illustrates how readers respond to a "new chemical compound" and how that response differs from the response to "oil and water."

There are also comments on Anton's novels from non-Jews and from Jews who know less about Judaism than most readers of this blog know about Simes.

In the comments on Anton's novels, notice how the Medieval Jewish culture - the truly "alien" culture - of a small town in France leaps out and dominates the reader commentary.

Most of the reader comments on Sime~Gen focus on trying to explain the background to prospective readers because that background is the compelling force that shapes the characters.  Readers feel you won't understand why the characters do what they do without that background, but it's the characters and their effect on their civilization that the reader wants to tell you about.

That's what I feel the effect the Rashi's Daughters trilogy ought to have because all the characters were shaped by Torah and Talmud study an even smaller minority interest in those days than now, and much less accessible then than now.

But the comments on amazon are not explaining points of Talmud that you need to understand the character motivation, or what the reader learned from the novel that they applied to life with some success.

On the SimeGen Group on facebook, fans are always talking about whether they "identify" with Sime or Gen.  Non-Jewish readers of this trilogy are not saying that for the time it took to read Anton's books they knew what it felt like to be a Jew in Medieval France.  They got a glimpse of life in Medieval France, they didn't live there for a time.

Fans of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels often relate how they "grew up on Darkover."

Note how Robert A. Heinlein's fans talk about how his novels inspired them to learn math and science.  Or Isaac Asimov's fans.  Fans of Star Trek talk about how Roddenberry's creation led them into career tracks.

The comments on Rashi's Daughters are not relating how  people are dashing off to learn the real Torah and Talmud after becoming enchanted with her fantasy version of Torah and Talmud.  How many are reporting they enrolled their kids in Yeshiva?  But science fiction fans who grew up on Heinlein have kids on track to become famous astronomers, N.A.S.A. engineers, etc.

Keep in mind, it's my opinion that Anton wrote these novels as a polemic in modern feminism touting feminism to young Jewish women, hoping they would become feminists not Torah scholars.  Oil and water.  Some readers react to the oil and some to the water.

There are technical, writer-craft, reasons for that contrast in response between Heinlein/Roddenberry and Anton.

It is not a difference in the basic material or the story.  No place or time could be more alien to the modern reader than a Jewish Quarter in a small French town during the Crusades and the fall of Rome -- Darkover was easier to relate to.

Anton's historical Jews are alien to the modern Jew, and the dangers of Medieval France are just the same as in any Historical Romance with knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, and arranged marriages.

It is a difference in the application of writing craft techniques.  It's not that Science is more interesting than Torah.  It's simply a difference in how the "researched" (or factual) material is used to generate the fictional structure.

Being a professional writer means being able to get the reader-response you aim to get by using the tool that triggers that response.

Maggie Anton has probably gotten the reader response she was aiming for -- but not the response I would have aimed for had I decided to write about Rashi's Daughters.

And I'm only guessing, but I think she may not have known that the material about the Medieval Talmud Academies she had become enchanted with could be incorporated into a historical romance novel using the exact techniques perfected by science fiction writers decades ago.

The "technique" I'm referring to here is the "integration" of two (and sometimes more) of the basic techniques I've discussed on this blog in previous posts.  The integration tool that's most useful is "theme"  which we've discussed at length.

Anton has a theme.  I suspect it might best be stated as "Feminism is not new."

To illustrate that theme, she's created an alternate universe fantasy history.  Since she failed to use the Science Fiction techniques I'm discussing (she may know them and just didn't use them) her readers are calling her down for inaccurate or bad history -- possibly because her readers haven't read a lot of alternate-history fantasy such as Katherine Kurtz pioneered.

Her readers are miffed at the historical errors because Anton didn't lull them into a "suspension of disbelief" by telegraphing that she knows the "real" history that the reader already knows, but will now play a fun game re-arranging that history to tell a story that will pose interesting questions.

She could have created Rashi as a cross between Spock and Sherlock Holmes that would have rocked this nation.  She didn't.  Rashi himself hardly gets a word in edgewise, and when he does, it isn't the word "Logical" which would have been the author's wink at the reader soliciting the suspension of disbelief.  

The readers who don't know enough to spot her historical errors believe her version of history and like it, maybe prefer it.  Other readers are distressed by ignorant readers being taught inaccuracies, with never a clue that this is actually fantasy.

And then there are the real nuggets of historical fact Anton has uncovered which contradict what people in the modern world think they know about Rashi's time and lifestyle!

The knowledgeable reader rejects those nuggets along with the warped facts, not being able to distinguish one from the other -- all for the lack of writing techniques, most especially Research-Plot integration.

All that could have been avoided by treating the hard facts, the warped-facts, and the imaginary facts with a science fiction writer's techniques.  Poul Anderson comes to mind.  Vernor Vinge.

The readers who are calling her down for her historical inaccuracies have completely missed enjoying the Romance stories in this trilogy because their attention was distracted from the foreground story to the background setting.

Please note that the number of reviews Amazon has posted on Anton's novels far exceeds those on my novels.  There are a lot of technical (internet world related) reasons for that (Amazon has erased lots of reviews posted on my titles as they upgraded their computers).

But there is also the fact that Anton's work hits a far more popular topic than I have ever tackled, and was very well published to its exact audience at precisely the time Amazon was growing fastest.

One would conclude I have no business dissecting her product, but should rather be emulating it.

But I have read Marion Zimmer Bradley's SF/Fantasy novels, especially the hottest Alien Romance novel I've ever read, her Planet Wreckers.  I have read the Lensman Series (oh, did I have a crush on Kimball Kinnison and a case of envy for his red headed Soul Mate).  I have read C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner and Chanur series.  I have read  Ursula LeGuinn's Left Hand of Darkness.  I have read all of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels, and a lot of her historical horror novels.  I've read a lot of historical novels (a certain Scotland based historical time travel series pops to mind.)  I used to be a Western Romance fan!  I have read dozens of Vampire Romance novels with varying "rules" for the Vampire species.  And I've read all of Robert A. Heinlein, and dozens of others who blend real science, imaginary science, and a special "take" on human personality seamlessly into their plots.

I somehow don't "hear" an echo of that kind of reading exposure behind the reviews of Maggie Anton's novels by those who liked them.

If you don't know what can be done with the Research-Plot integration technique, you won't miss it at all, and you'll think Anton's novels are really fine novels.

If you read the novels that are there, it's true that they are good.  But I'm a writer.  I read the novel that could have been there and compare it to the novel that is there -- if they're not the same, I try to figure out what to change to make them the same.

In this case it's the Integration techniques that are missing.

As I said above, the plotting technique choice didn't work as well as other choices might have.

Anton's books aren't actually "novels" in the structural and technical sense.  They are strings of anecdotes lightly glued together.  That's what produces many reader comments about "couldn't put it down."  The reader will race through the anecdotes with the feeling that the beginning of the story is imminent, and then find themselves at the last page of the volume thinking they've read a novel.   They didn't.  They read a book, yes, but not a novel. 

Perhaps I just have higher standards in Romance Novels than the readers who loved this trilogy because I found the structural and technique omissions glaring and jarring.

None of the writers I admire who have written novels  blending facts you can get out of an encyclopedia with imaginary characters, real historical characters, and a specific idea of how the world's affairs have been managed, are being managed, and might become managed, would ever have failed to make this integration of plot and research smooth and in-detectible.

As far as I can tell just from reading, Anton made no attempt to blend research and plot, nevermind  create a smooth emulsion.

I learned how to do that integration by hatching an ambition to write like those writers I listed above.  I dissected their work to find out how they did it, then applied that technique to what I had to say, and according to the responses I've been getting on the SIMEGEN Group on Facebook, I succeeded.

Most of you who have read this far must be very frustrated because I'm not laying out exactly how to do this Integration yet.  I'm going to try to explain it, but I am pretty sure many busy readers of this column need time to read at least one of the Anton novels and possibly to explore Sime~Gen.

Meanwhile here is an example from Rashi's Daughters Book III, Rachel -- of a bit of Anton's research which sits like "oil" on top of the emotional waters of her story.  And don't yell.  Last week I did promise you a spoiler and a connection to House of Zeor, and here it is.
---------QUOTE FROM BOOK III RACHEL p353 of the Trade paperback --The main character is talking to a trading partner who deals in dye and wool.-------------

..."But why are some black?"

"The abbess at Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains was inquiring after fabric so I asked Simon to prepare some for her," Rachel explained.  Nuns took a vow of poverty, but the local abbess came from a noble family and refused to wear anything but the highest quality fabrics.

Simon turned to Pesach.  "True black is one of the most difficult shades to obtain.  Each dyer has his secret formula; mine involves lamp soot."  He motioned the pair back indoors, where he slowly unrolled a small bolt of brilliant purple.

Rachel gasped.  "This is exquisite."  She couldn't resist stroking the material.  "I thought Eliezer couldn't find any Tyrian purple, or did you mix scarlet and indigo?" 

Simon allowed Pesach to answer.  "I found some, although Eliezer judged it too expensive.  But the other dye merchants in Toledo said Tyrian purple was particularly scarce this year, so I gambled and bought some on credit."

-----------END QUOTE-------
 
Now there are some obscure facts about the beginnings of the dye industry that few people know, and it's inherently interesting.  It is related to the world of this novel because Rachel is in business with another of her sisters who raises sheep for wool and had to import rams from England to get the kind of wool that can take the expensive dyes of the time.  I know this stuff is true from other sources.

This snatch of dialogue advances the plot element of the side-business of cloth merchanting the lead character is in.  It's not wholly extraneous, and it reveals a lot about the trade-world around this little village.  Worse, all the characters in the scene already know all this and have no business talking as if they don't.  Maybe the scarcity and trade details might be discussed in dialogue - but there's really no dramatic reason for this dialogue. 

If you examine the scene this dialogue is in, and compare it to the discussions we've had here about scene structure and dialogue, you'll see that the scene isn't actually a "scene" -- there's no conflict driving the scene, no rising action, no emotional change, and no climax to the scene, leading to a hook onto the next scene.  The author may believe that all these elements are in the scene, because she tags the end of the scene with a worded thought about her husband who is neglecting the cloth business for his studies in astronomy.

See my blog post of DECEMBER 27, 2011 - Dialogue Part 2 - On And Off The Nose

Anton's Rachel character's husband (the son-in-law of Rashi) is, in this fantasy, involved in the studies in Spain where astronomers may have figured out that the Earth revolves around the Sun centuries before Galileo -- and very possibly those Moorish inspired Spanish Jews may be the source of Galileo's inspiration, or he might have originated the idea on his own.  You can see why I love this trilogy!

There's no reason for this scene, though, except to showcase some of the research the writer did.  You could cut this exchange about dyes and you wouldn't lose anything except that "window" into the "world" of Medieval France.  It's decoration.  It's nice.  But it's not essential.  It says to me that the writer just couldn't bear to leave out all that hard work she did, so she couched it in dialogue and used Rachel's business venture as an excuse to include it.  If I were the editor, I'd have cut it with a big red X through it.  (my editors did that to me a lot; I learned)

To me, personally, though, this  bit of dialogue is the best thing in the whole trilogy! 

This obscure bit about black dye being difficult, proprietary secret, and very easy to spot against the kinds of colors cloth had been able to hold in those days was, I thought, common knowledge for at least 10 years before I wrote House of Zeor and invented "Farris Black" as a special color.  I learned it so long before writing House of Zeor that I have no memory of learning it, I just know it. 

Jean Lorrah, who joined me writing Sime~Gen after Unto Zeor, Forever was written, did not know this historical fact about black cloth dye and I had forgotten how I knew it and couldn't prove it when she challenged me.

My fictional House of Zeor is famous in the textile business, in the crude bathtub chemistry of dye manufacture and wool dying.  They do all kinds of small-batch chemistry that's related to textiles, agrochemistry, and medicinals.  Nowhere in any of the 12 volumes in this Universe is there any dialogue even vaguely resembling this snatch I've quoted for you. 

When the Zeor Householding members are faced with the problem of identifying a particular genetic line of people who are medically vulnerable, Zeor does that by clothing them in this very special black -- it's used on edging, fringes, belts, emblems, medical case file flags and chevron stripes, and on entire clothing ensembles at different points in the several thousand years of Zeor's history. 

It's always referred to as Farris Black -- not just any black.  This is a special color, a shade that leaps right out at you.  You can't miss it.  Over the centuries of the Sime~Gen saga, it becomes the custom and eventually a rule with the force of law that ONLY those of the Farris genetic strain may wear this color.  Nobody else would want to -- it could be a life or death issue if you were treated medically as if you were Farris.  Later, when it's not so special, special shapes and items become the label. 

Nowhere in the Sime~Gen novels do two characters who already know all about the dye business discuss the sources or applications of dyes. 

So there's the Sime~Gen/Rashi connection I promised you last week.  Farris Black. 

Eventually here, we'll probably talk about the second published Sime~Gen Novel (a novel I modeled on the typical "Doctor Novel") Unto Zeor, Forever, (my first award winner) and the medical profession research I did for that one -- and what Robert A. Heinlein said about it after he read it.  Of all the novels I've written, that was the only one I deliberately did research for with the specific intent of crafting that particular novel from the research. 

All other research I've used in my novels has been like that Farris Black example, something I've known so long I don't know where I learned it.  Many times, though, I have had to go look up details that I wanted to include to fact-check before including.  In some instances, I've used astronomical calculators and programs that help predict the orbit of a world around another sun.  But Unto Zeor, Forever is a specifically researched-to-write novel.  I hope you won't find any evidence of research in that novel, though. 

So you might want to read Unto Zeor, Forever first and compare it to Rashi's Daughters. 

Rashi's Daughters also has a whole lot of medical research into medieval and Jewish Medieval medicine and especially midwifery larded into the text.  Some of that medical research is well integrated, and some is not.  Many times whole birthing incidents are incorporated simply to illustrate the midwifery techniques.  The birth of a child who will become a significant influence on the course of history makes it seem that the birthing scene advances the plot -- but often that Integration technique just isn't there. 

Perhaps you want to find pair of Historical Romance novels to compare.  You want to find a novel that has obviously been researched for decades, that the writer is so very proud of their research and the publisher is selling it on the authenticity of the research.  And then find one which has even more information in it but you can't tell it's been researched at all -- you can only see that some of the things in it are real facts, and some things obviously made up just for fun.

Your personal library may already have two really good examples to work on.

Once you've tried to figure out what one writer did that the other writer did not do (and which you'd rather emulate) -- then move on to the next Part in this blog series "Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance."

By the way, I learned this method of deconstruction, dissection, and distillation of techniques to discover and apply writing techniques to my own work from a correspondence course on writing from The Famous Writer School (which I do not recommend at all!).

I've seen how Blake Snyder applied this dissection method to create his SAVE THE CAT! film genres -- and I don't think he got it from the Famous Writer's School.

You don't need a teacher to learn this.  But you do need a pair of books you didn't write, one of which represents the kind of book you want to write.  Find and study two such novels, and come back next week for more thoughts on how to learn and apply Research-Plot Integration to your own work.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Google Earth (or the stars, or Mars, or the moon)

It's easy to be seduced by Research!

When I wrote my first draft of my first alien romance, Forced Mate, I got carried away by the fact that there is (or was, in 1993) still a type of plane just big enough to carry a stretch limousine across the Atlantic, but small enough to take off from an abandoned World War II airbase near Cambridge (UK), and fly below radar all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada.

An amateur pilot mapped out the route for me.

Eventually, I came to see that there was no logical reason why a romantically minded space alien would abduct his heroine from Cambridge in the UK and take her (kicking and screaming) to Nevada, no matter how curious he might be to see how Siegfried and Roy made tigers disappear. Duh! He'd take her to his mothership.

Another researcher told me that the most plausible place for a spaceship (a smallish shuttle) to land in the UK would be on Salisbury Ridge, close to Salisbury Plain (and Stonehenge). I've lost touch with that researcher, unfortunately.

So, now I'm on my own, trying to find Salisbury Ridge. I'm using Google Earth. There's a place called Ridge at Chilmark. Another possible place to hide and lose a spacecraft appears to be in the Nile Clumps... I hate to make things up, if I don't have to do so!

I took a spin on Google Earth. My first destination was Ridge, Chilmark, which does look possible, but is a bit far from Stonehenge. I can zoom and bank to view the terrain with a hawk's eye view or with the perspective of a galloping sauropod... one with poor eyesight.

Seriously, I can see hills, trees, fields, crop circles, overgrown gun emplacements, drone launch pads (circular). If I wish to, I can see churches, pharmacies, ATMs, Holiday Inns, roads, fire hydrants... and more. I can also view photographs taken  by tourists.

Sadly, some of the really cool things, such as "pimples" (of the anti-tank kind) that were posted on the Google Earth 3 version, are not on Google Earth 5, but GE5 has more whizz bang stuff and links to Wikipedia.

While virtually scouring the surroundings, looking for places to hide a star-fighter, and enjoying images of stormclouds over Stonehenge --and very useful photos of forks in minor British roads--, I found a fitting backstory for my latest hero. Now to check it out.

There's a Google Earth Community with forums and chats and groups, not to mention a Search function that is everything you'd expect from Google. It's possible to meet a potential source in whatever part of the world interests you. This is too cool!

I daresay, the only reason the CIA hasn't tried to purchase Google (if it hasn't) is that it would be too expensive. And, of course, the CIA like anyone else can use it for free.

Google Earth doesn't stop there. You can look at Mars. It's a separate download. I haven't done that. I doubt I'd find men there, anyway. You can look at the stars, which is a great way to finally get a handle on astronomy and the placement and shapes of the constellations. Finally, there's the Moon and it has flags and icons denoting info dumps, and all sorts of good and useful stuff on its surface.

If you haven't tried it, I heartily recommend it.

Rowena Cherry
Space Snark TM