Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 5

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
Part 4 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_31.html

We're examining the potential of Maggie Anton's trilogy, Rashi's Daughters:



We ended off last week talking about how a writer uses philosophy to paint a picture for the reader of "life, the universe, and everything" that's different from the picture the reader usually sees. 

Anton nails several bits of philosophy with exquisite precision.  She shows how Rashi's family owned and operated a vineyard and produced exemplary wine.  She researched the details of wine production in that era and inserted a lot of detail about it, using most of that detail in the production of her fascinating incidents.  For example, at one point a character dies by being overcome by fumes from the grape juice as it's being extracted from the grapes.

Anton discovered that the town where Rashi lived was a trading center through which a wide variety of goods flowed.  She details how the taxes from transactions on the trade fares interacted with the prosperity of the Jewish community and its relationships with the surrounding Christian communities. 

Most readers who know anything about Medieval Europe remember the later centuries when Jews were prohibited from various activities, rather than these early years of the collapse of the Roman empire.  Readers of today still have their impressions of the 20th century colored by vilification of the Jews for financial dealings.  We all know stories of financiers who lie, cheat, steal, and trick their way to wealth.  Anton is no doubt well aware of this attitude toward financial dealings and business in general. 

She no doubt knows that, for her readers, the attitude toward business as a profession is as incendiary as the attitude toward uppity women.  Yet all three novels, though they depict Rashi's daughters as ambitiously engaged in business, walk right by all the Talmudic material on business -- mentioning it offhandedly, off-stage, involving other characters, and focus Rashi's daughters' attention entirely on their feminist issues.

Anton does note Rashi's famous training of his Talmud students in the art of the vintner because scholars must have a profession.  She gives us a lot on that art, and a lot on the physician's art, but not the driving emotional reality behind choice of profession.

That focus on feminism is a philosophical choice.  So for a moment, let's look at another philosophical point she might have lit up instead of darkening out.

-------------EXAMPLE OF A PHILOSOPHY--------

Let's consider a philosophical "pixel" from Tzvi Freeman. 

Here's a long item with much to think about:
http://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/1675738/print/true/jewish/Take-Wall-Street-Please.htm

--------Quote from Tzvi Freeman article -- Numbers refer to his footnotes--------------

There are those professions that society considers noble callings, such as doctors, judges and professors. Society respects them for what they do. Then there are business people. Society respects them, too—but are they respected for what they do, or for what they get? Do we respect their occupation, or do we see them as doing a worthless job—making money out of money?

Where is business respected? Take a look in the Talmud.

In the Talmud you’ll find spiritual and earthly duties lumped together in ways that sends the modern mind spinning:

    Rava said, “When a soul stands before the heavenly court, it is asked, ‘Did you buy and sell fairly? Did you fix times for Torah study? Did you attempt to be fruitful and multiply? Did you look forward to the messianic redemption? Did you debate matters of wisdom? Did you understand one thing from another?’”2

Do you see that? Marrying, procreating and making an honest living are good and wonderful occupations—in the same breath as Torah study, gaining wisdom and keeping the faith.

Why? Because they benefit the world. As in the common talmudic term for making a living, that dignified and ennobled phrase, “settling of the world”3 —for, as the prophet states, “G-d did not create emptiness; He formed a world to be settled upon.”4

Maimonides sums up the Jewish position with strong words:

    Anyone who comes to the conclusion that he should involve himself in Torah study without doing work and derive his livelihood from charity, desecrates G-d's name, dishonors the Torah, extinguishes the light of faith, brings evil upon himself, and forfeits the life of the world to come, for it is forbidden to derive benefit from the words of Torah in this world.

    Our Sages declared: "Whoever benefits from the words of Torah forfeits his life in the world." Also, they commanded and declared: "Do not make them a crown to magnify oneself, nor an axe to chop with." Also, they commanded and declared: "Love work and despise Rabbinic positions." All Torah that is not accompanied by work will eventually be negated and lead to sin. Ultimately, such a person will steal from others.5

And so, the laws concerning earning an honest living and thereby making the world a more settled and civil place also belong in the holy books.

The medieval Augustinian view, on the other hand, saw all these as curses of the snake, the product of original sin—since they were directed by man’s evil impulse.6 Such, as well, was the view of the ancient Romans and Greeks, who looked askance at craftsmen, merchants and others who lived by toil.

And so, whereas the Jew saw work as good for the soul and moneymaking as of benefit to everyone involved, the society which enveloped them saw it as a tolerable sin. Not lending money alone, but almost every form of business was labelled “usury”—using someone else for one’s own benefit.7

Life began to change radically when European society adopted the Jewish attitude—that which Weber prudently coined “the Protestant ethic.” The Jews, wrote Montesquieu, “set the stage for the rebirth of European commerce, and with it the beginning of the decline of prejudice and the rise of a more gentle, less ferocious way of life.”8

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

Remember, Maggie Anton authentically put the daughters of Rashi into "business" -- married to traders, the daughters of a Vintner  -- and that one became a money might be true or not. 

The women's business endeavors, while quiet and out of the spotlight for the most part, were not a source of conflict but just mere background, an excuse for them to run around and have technical conversations about things they already knew about. 

Business and earning a living in a Torah Yeshiva was not what Anton's story was about. 

A story's conflict focuses a story, and exemplifies the theme by how the conflict resolves.  The essence of story is conflict, but that's not enough if the conflict doesn't start, progress, morph, and resolve. 

Now reread or just remember my older posts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/greed-is-good.html

And you might want to ponder:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/orson-scott-card-mormon-jack-campbell.html

And:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/tree-in-forest.html

As I've said in previous parts of Research-Plot Integration, Anton chose the annecdotal structure rather than an actual plot structure for her trilogy.  So she doesn't have a conflict that starts at the first chapter of Book One and climaxes at the last page of Book III, leaving the reader gasping and crying, yet understanding their own life in this real world much better.

Anton mentions the stark distinction between the Christian views of the surrounding community and the close and isolated views of the Jewish community.  But she shrugs all that off by saying during this interval there was relative peace between the two communities.

Yet, Rashi lived at the threshold of the Crusades, the paroxysm of Europe draining the strength of the young male population into a killing-field of the Middle East.

Could any setting be more ripe for an in-depth discussion of the philosohical issues between the Middle East and Judaism and Christianity? 

Anton gives us the impression that the (historical fact of) learned daughters of a towering figure of Europe knew nothing but the scrapts of war news that get tossed into this story with little consequence.  Yes, Anton tells us how Spain was more hospitable on the one hand, and more corrosive of Jewish learning on the other -- but to do that, she breaks viewpoint and follows one of the sons-in-law who gets caught up in the study of Astronomy in Spain. Fine.  Very interesting.  Another annecdote whose only consequence is the angst and misery of the wife left behind who invents a whole new business model to get her husband to stay home -- only to find out that he'd rather study Astronomy than Talmud. 

Each annecdote is very strong, composed of very strong material -- but ultimately leaves the reader floating weightlessly without direction.

So what could Anton have done instead? 

What would an envelope plot, beginning on page 1 of Book 1 and climaxing on the last page of Book 3 -- with each Book having a plot that begins on page 1 and climaxes at the end just before the plot-advance of the envelope plot -- have added to this trilogy?

Remember my post on nested plots 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
Anton's problem -- "write about the little known daughters of Rashi" -- is just the sort of writing problem the nested-plot structure, built on the nested-theme structure, solves. 

But to create a trilogy using that nested-plot structure, you need 1 single theme from which you derive 3 separate themes that "harmonize" with it, poetically, (as in Poetic Justice In Paranormal Romance).  Given the Medieval attitudes toward demons and angels, the setting is perfect for a Paranormal Romance complete with magical practices that work. 

Each of Anton's "anecdotes" has a different theme, and few of them are related.  So the only thematic statement that comes through to a reader who has no suspended disbelief is "women should not be distinguished from men." 

This is exemplified in the emphasis on how Rashi's daughters (reputedly) wore Tefilin (a Commandment binding on men) and did other things women aren't forbidden to do, but are exempt from doing. 

More on Tefilin, what's inside the leather cases, the blessings for donning them, etc:
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/102436/jewish/Tefillin.htm

But mystical Judaism holds that the female soul is permanently and emphatically distinct from the masculine soul.  Mystical Judaism (which Rashi didn't pay attention to) holds that the feminine soul is a little closer to holiness. 

Instead of these practices being incidental color on the lives of three exceptional women, it is left to be the only point of the story without any real "show don't tell" exploration of mystical Judaism.  Rashi did not encourage mysticism in his household (that's fact), but the surrounding Jewish culture was peripherally affected -- mostly in a superstitious way rather than a Kabbalah studies way. 

Although they enjoy praying with Tefilin, (achieving that practice is an incident referred to repeatedly later), Anton's characters don't seem to find a deepened spiritual existence, a greater insight, a prophetess's wisdom, from the practice. 

Anton depicts the practice of draping Tefilin on the headboards of beds where women are being delivered, and indicates this saves women's lives.  We see many births, some disasters, but can't make the connection. 

Anton also has the daughters resorting to specially written Mezuzah scrolls that purportedly embodied the mystical dimension. 

More on the Mezuzah:
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/278476/jewish/Mezuzah.htm
All the information Anton unearthed in research is there in these books - with incidents contrived to make it seem logical to include that information -- contrived being the operative world.

How do you cure the problem of the "contrived" effect?

What cures the contrived, and gets rid of expository lumps full of deliciously interesting information you just have to include because you worked so hard on it, is internal conflict.

If you rely on the incident structure, you don't have any real conflict that can be resolved -- it's just "this happened" then "that happened."

If you don't have a conflict, you don't have a plot.

If you don't have a plot, you don't have a story -- because either the story generates the plot or the plot generates the story, but they go together like two sides of a coin.  That's why most writers (and readers) can't distinguish story from plot. 

The story is generated by the internal conflict.

The internal conflict is the character motivation -- and it works best when the character does not know they have an internal conflict at all.

Real people don't usually know they have an internal conflict until it's resolved -- or just at the point where they can name it, then they can resolve it.

So characters who don't know what's driving them, what's compelling or impelling them, seem "realistic" -- and cause the reader to suspend disbelief and fearlessly explore the made-up world the character lives in.

The internal conflict drives the character to act.  The action (or decision) of the main POV character is what initiates the plot.

The main character acts.  The antagonist re-acts.  (that's how you can tell the hero from the villain -- that's how you can tell who to root for -- always the hero acts first because it's the hero's story.  When the villain acts first, the villain becomes the hero and is rooted for.)

The main character, the main POV character, is "playing white" to use a chess analogy, and moves first.

Or put another way, the writer joins the action at the point in the character's life where she ACTS, and thereby causes her world and the people around her to react.  At other times in her life, she's not the hero of her story but a pawn in someone else's story. 

Anton started her story at a very good point, where Rashi's mother had become incapable of running the vineyard, and his wife called him home to "take care of the business." 

So the whole Talmudic teaching on the relationship between learning and business, earth and heaven, could have made a terrific envelope theme over the 3 books.

So Rashi comes home, meets his nearly grown daughters, and begins teaching them -- which leads to the Tefilin incident. 

Note that - Rashi meets his daughters (he was away learning Talmud as they grew and came home for holidays).

See?  Rashi meets.  It's not the girl's story, it's Rashi's. 

OK, the girl meets her father -- a fine beginning, but what does she do?  She does not act.  She is acted upon at that point -- Rashi begins to teach. 

Anton contrived the narrative so that the eldest girl becomes intrigued and wants to learn what Rashi is teaching, so she takes her spinning work and sits and listens -- passively.

That's why there's no plot, only incidents.  There's no plot because none of the 3 Daughters has a point in their lives when their story starts. 

Now suppose Anton had solved the problem differently.  Suppose she'd set out to use the nested themes, what could she use as the overall trilogy conflict?

Rashi vs. Mystical Judaism

In the trilogy, Rashi starts out a fairly young man - at that time, one didn't start studying mysticism until the age of 40, maybe much older.

The trilogy ends just about the point where Rashi dies.

History records that he never quite finished his Talmud commentary -- his sons-in-law and grandsons took over. 

DEPART FROM HISTORY - with a fantasy "what-if?"  --

What if Rashi did indeed study the mystical aspects, knew them cold, and maybe that's why his commentaries weren't completed?  What if Rashi learned the mystical teachings, and flat out rejected them?

What if his DAUGHTERS embraced the mystical with a fervor and a passion they, themselves, never understood? 

Father-Daughter conflicts over huge philosophical issues. 

That would give you their internal conflicts, each individual yet derived from a main unified conflict, thus lending itself to trilogy treatment. 

The internal conflicts would prompt non-rational or supra-rational actions which the daughters wouldn't understand themselves, which would cause the world to react in ways that might be interpreted as mystical - or not - depending on the reader's bent. 

You would have an internal conflict generating an external conflict that could resolve neatly at the end of the third book. 

What Anton left out of this trilogy is the "story" and internal conflicts generating actions which produce meaningful emotional maturation.  If there were a story, there would be a plot.  The girls are older at the end of the trilogy, but not different than they were at the beginning.  They don't have epiphanies, about-faces, massive disillusionments with philosophical certainties, even when faced with marital infidelity.

Anton's characters don't "arc" in the way Hollywood characters must.  If sold to film these books would be massacred in the attempt to create character-arcs. 

The trilogy is a chronicle, yes, but not a story.  It reads like a diary or a record of events that occurred -- but does not give you that clear picture of a world that's the same world you live in, but different. 

Father vs. Daughters over a conflict that is rampant in today's world would produce that character-arc without the "contrived" effect. 

Just look at all the Paranormal Romance on the shelves, the fantasy on your TV screen.  Magic vs Mundanity is the core of Harry Potter, etc.  It's a hotter commercial topic than feminism, but actually does have its roots in feminism and many related societal concerns. 

What if, at his death, the Daughters, steeped in the paranormal, finally understood Rashi's response to the mystical and changed their minds completely about incorporating the mystical into life?

Of course, to achieve that as a reader-awakening the writer would have to understand Rashi's objections, all the counter-arguments that convince the girls, and finally the one argument Rashi might have left in an unpublished text that would change the girls' minds.  To do that, the writer would have to be able to think like Rashi.  May as well try to think like Yoda or Gandalf. 

What if, after Rashi's death, the daughters then expunged all trace of any mystical activities they had participated in during his life and taught their children to turn from mysticism?

What if that's why the Kabbalistic writings don't appear for a few more centuries?

It would be a rewrite of history, complete with cover-up, that would allow for:

a) Character Arcs
b) story
c) plot
d) a reader's journey through what it means to be Jewish and female
e) suspension of disbelief
f) Poetic Justice via karmic, paranormal, highly improbable event sequences

The list of points could go on and on. 

The author could not have achieved all that by "rewriting" these volumes.  It's a "toss it all away and start from scratch" situation.

An editor could not guide a writer through this kind of restructuring.  I don't know any editor who could even begin to explain explosive marketing potential in this concept to a writer who's stuck re-running the outworn feminist fight.  The books I want to read are not the books she wants to write.  She achieved her own objective and you can see the result in the comments on amazon. 

The difference I'm describing has to be generated on the conceptual level, the level of Idea that happens before the writer is conscious of the need to write that story.

So studying these novels can be of benefit to the student writer a few years before that writer is struck with the highly commercial Concept that will make or break their career.

Just in case you might be such a writer, read at least some of Anton's trilogy or something comparable.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
For more on Gemara, check this out:
http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/gemara.htm

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 3

 Two weeks ago I introduced this odd hybrid historical romance trilogy, Rashi's Daughters:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html

Last week ...
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_17.html

... I made a few spoiler comments and showed you one of those bizarre karmic links that pepper my existence -- how Maggie Anton inserted a bit of dialogue in her third novel that had no business in her novel but was just about the most illuminating and important bit of data to randomly pop up before my eyes in decades.

Anton had researched the 1040 C.E. era to a fair-the-well, and given her main character of the third book, Rashi's Daughters: Book III Rachel, a task, a goal, and the ability to learn an entire craft and invent a business model for it.  She put Rachel into the textile industry and had her discuss wool cloth manufacture and dye. 

Readers of Sime~Gen already see my hair standing on end.  Coincidence abounds in this world, but folks, there's a LIMIT you know!

The datum that blew me out of the water was simply a reminder of something I had known for decades but had no memory of ever having learned -- that BLACK wool cloth is very difficult, rare, costly, and that at the beginning of the dye industry, the true black dye was a trade secret for each dyer. 

It was knowing that obscure fact about the early cloth dye industry that caused me to assign BLACK as the single most special color in the Sime~Gen novels, Farris Black. 

And those few lines of dialogue Anton wrote, which I quoted last week, prompted me to assemble my observations about these novels into this advanced writing lesson, the integration of Research and Plot which creates the foundation for every Paranormal Romance novel. 

The "paranormal" has an immense amount of non-fiction literature to research, everything from mythology to ESP research, and all the way into the depths of theology -- down deep enough to get into Kabbalah.  You can assemble facts to support almost any kind of worldbuilding you need for your particular Romance. 

Anton knew about wool dye what I had known long before building it into the Sime~Gen novel, House of Zeor, associating it with the Farris family, but Anton used her knowledge in a different way than I used mine -- and the result is a set of totally different reader responses.  I pointed you to those on amazon last week, and picked out two contrasting ones, one from her first novel and one from mine. 

As I've said, it seems to me that the Rashi's Daughters trilogy (he had only three daughters and no sons) should be classed as Paranormal Romance, and with only very slight changes in the stories, would fall right into the model for some of the very best Paranormal Romances. 

The Medieval world Anton has built includes all the beliefs and practices of  Jewish Astrology, and the demonology extant among the general public.  Disease was caused by demons and other supernatural influences, and could be averted or cured by charms, sigils and signs, and chanting. 

Anton even sites the first thing anyone starting on the Occult Studies path learns - that the more advanced on that path you get, the more of a target you become for the negative forces that abound in the world (and mostly leave ordinary people alone).  Rashi, being extremely advanced spiritually, was such a target as were his family members - simply for being his family members.  Once the daughters embarked on spiritual advancement, they too became targets in their own right.  That's a principle from Kabbalah.  But Rashi, himself, did not study Kabbalah.  Anton walked right by the most incendiary plot-elements her hard-fact research turned up.

Anton does have her characters cure or avert evil influences with Kabbalistic practices, but without internal consequences to the characters.  The actions don't adhere to what I've termed in my posts on plotting, "the because line."  Any one of these incidents could have supported the entire envelope plot for the trilogy, but because she has just inserted these simple facts, the plot events become incidents and vignettes interesting in themselves but without consequence to the story-line.  (remember plot and story are different, but must be connected by theme). 

To us, today, such ideas as disease caused by demons sound ridiculous.  But we have no problem with them when reading Paranormal Romance -- even television series incorporate witches and spells, otherworldly occurrences and magic.  For the most part, the worldbuilding behind Paranormal Romance novels is not nearly as coherent, interesting, deep, and plausible as the very real Medieval belief systems Anton only refers to briefly.

Few of the comments on amazon even mention the demonology, or criticize or critique it.  It's throwaway techno-babble to most general readers, even historical fiction experts.  Yet Anton walked right by a chance to explain that dimension of reality to modern readers, what it could mean in modern terms and what it means to those on a spiritual journey.

Maybe she didn't know how, or maybe she didn't explain it because Rashi, himself, is famous for his entry-level, beginner's explanations of the Torah, Mishna and Gemara.  Rashi didn't incorporate any of the far out, mystical, Kabbalistic material in his explanations.  Most of the literature on Kabbalah that we use today wasn't written down until a couple hundred years later, but there were scholars who knew and practiced it in Rashi's day.  

Anton does mention a Mezuzah scribe who uses some Kabbalistic knowledge, and has her characters use such a Mezuzah to protect and heal sick people and bring them back from death's door.  But then the incident just sits there - having no consequence to the inner, subconscious or spiritual life of the Daughters.  It's just that the person lives a little longer.  That's not plot, that's incident. 

How do you tell a plot event from an incident?

A plot event changes the main character's understanding of his/her reality.  That is a plot event affects the story-line.

An incident illustrates something the writer wants the reader to know about the main character's understanding of his/her reality, but does not change the character's behavior or the menu of options the character has to choose from. 

In a plot-event, the reader walks in the character's moccasins.  In an incident, the reader learns that something happened or how it happened, but it doesn't happen to the reader. 

Anton constructs her narrative line from the researched facts about the lives of this family, then inserts incidents along that narrative line, giving the strong impression of a plot without having an actual plot. 

As I pointed out last week, in the Rashi's Daughter's trilogy, interesting hard-fact details of Medieval life are tossed in on top of Anton's narrative about three women living in Medieval times who possess a modern feminist self-image and attitude -- pure fantasy, a kind of fantasy that works fabulously well with Paranormal Romance writing techniques and fails abysmally with only Historical Novel writing techniques. 

The incident-structure causes us to be informed that Rashi's Daughters had a modern feminist attitude -- but not how they acquired it, what their attitude did to them, and what they did to our world because of their attitude.  Because of the incident-structure, readers who don't already have a feminist attitude don't come to walk-a-mile as a feminist.  Readers who do have a feminist attitude may feel nice about having their attitude validated, but will not come away from these novels with a usable impression of life in Rashi's home. 

If the trilogy had a genuine trilogy plot-structure, all readers would come away from the trilogy with a good, emotional, non-verbal grasp of how Rashi's household lifestyle created feminist attitudes in all the women associated with it, and caused them to blossom into full realized, highly spiritual women. 

One of the researched hard-facts that Anton must have come across studying Mishna is that Jewish culture understands women to be on a higher spiritual level than men, just inherently more spiritually advanced (the opposite of Christianity), which is why men are commanded to listen to their wives.  Women carry a tremendously weighty responsibility because of that position of being closer to G-d (which is why women pray in a whisper when men shout out prayers -- because it's rude to shout right into G-d's ear) -- and therein lies the material for Anton's overall trilogy plot.   But she walked right by that opportunity as if she had no clue how to worldbuild to springboard a plot. 

Remember, we're talking about crafting Paranormal Romance here - not about the realities of Medieval Judaism.  You can replace the "Medieval Judaism" elements in Anton's trilogy with any fantasy world you are building to support your story.  If Anton had used world she built herself here, I'd be making the exact same comments about the incident-structure vs the plot-structure method of storytelling.

Anton's view of Medieval Judaism "works" in these romance books just the way any fantasy world would work. 

With application of the techniques for integrating research into plot, Anton could have "sold" her fantasy to her readers and made them suspend disbelief long enough to finish the trilogy and go off  with a furious hunger for finding out the reality behind the Talmud. 

Her fantasy Talmud would only whet the appetite.  As it is, few of the commentators on Amazon are talking about the Talmud itself or their experience of it in real life. 

Using the string of incidents structure, Anton manages to inform us that Rashi's Daughters loved Talmud as much as Rashi did -- but does not make us love Talmud the same way. 

The reader commentaries on Amazon about the trilogy show either a sense of outrage at  Anton's  "inaccuracies,"  a delight at the upstanding female characters and their stories, or the commentaries get all wound up in the Medieval background. 

Many readers found the second or third books disappointing because they didn't deliver on the expectations aroused by the first book.  Each reader is seeing only one level of this work because the "research" facts lay on top of the character-story like oil on water. 

"Shaken, not stirred" comes to mind.  There are writing techniques for creating a smooth blend of antagonistic elements -- like Talmud and sexuality, or sexuality and willful independence. 

Now keep in mind that I feel Anton intended to do with this series what other Romance authors have done with Historical Romance:  graft a feminist attitude onto female characters who lived in an oppressive world, were raised to be subservient and obedient, self-effacing, and never show their intelligence to a male.  That's alternate-history fantasy, and it's great fun to read, but can be misleading if the reader doesn't know it's a game the writer is playing, not an actual window into the past.

The way Anton's trilogy is written, I can't tell if she knew she was playing the alternate-history-paranormal-romance game with her readers.  The tantalizing thing about this trilogy is that Anton almost got it right, whether she knew what she was doing or not.

Some people need to know what they're doing in order to do it "right" (so they get the results they aim at) -- and some people really need to NOT KNOW what they're doing, how they do it, or possibly even that they're doing it, in order to do it "right."

That applies to how to write books, historical fiction novels, and most especially historical fiction romance novels. 

Knowledge is one level of cognition, but there are many others (intuition, emotion, assumptions) that all operate at the same time.

Each level of cognition can show up on special brain scans as "circuits" or whole areas of the brain energized or activated -- sometimes in one location of the brain, sometimes connecting several locations.  There are a number of studies ongoing now about how our brain functions, mostly with the focus on how to repair damage or correct birth defects.  These studies also have an application to the writing craft, to the understanding of how we respond to entertainment, how and why entertainment is a necessity not a luxury.

We can emphasize one level of brain activity over another,  but we can't shut off the other levels completely.  Consider all the studies you've read about brain damage and how loss of a part of the brain can affect personality, perception and judgement.  We use all of our brains all the time on everything we do -- we just shift the emphasis. 

That's why when we read books and novels, we want the input we're absorbing to trigger brain activity on all our levels -- but emphasize one level above the others, then orchestrate a changing emphasis in a pleasing way from one scene to another, one chapter to another, just as we experience in real life.

Note that word "orchestrate" -- reading a novel is like listening to a symphony.  Every word triggers associations (semantic loading) that light up pathways in the brain.  Every sentence, image, scene, emotional-engagement among characters, is a "voice" of an instrument in the symphony.  The writer is the conductor, bringing one section of the orchestra then another up to the fore (making them louder or softer with a gesture).  The audience feels their pleasure is from the players of the individual instruments (liking one character over another) -- but the actual source of pleasure is the conductor's skills.

The conductor's job is to gently, smoothly shift the way the pathways of the listeners' brains light up, producing pleasure. 

No orchestra is any better than its least skilled player.  But any orchestra can fail abysmally even with world-class players in every seat if the players aren't all playing the same score, or if the conductor puts each section of the orchestra in a separate soundproof booth so they can't hear each other or see the conductor.

That's what I think happened with the Rashi's Daughters trilogy. 

The research on Talmud, the feminism, the political world of Medieval France, the astronomy, the astrology, Muslim Spain, Muslim marriage customs, Medieval midwifery, plagues, textiles, dyes, inter-city trade, numerology, Christian Priests studying Bible with Rashi, the economics of Jewish merchants traveling with ransom money because Jews ransom other Jews, Jewish women in business lending money to other Jewish women in secret from their husbands, raising chickens, open sewers, -- all of that is like the individual instruments in an orchestra all playing different parts of a symphony at the same time, each trying to be louder than the other, grabbing center stage for a solo while all the other instruments scream for attention. 

It's no surprise to me that so many commenters on amazon couldn't make sense of these historical fiction novels.

It's an orchestra without a conductor.

I'm very familiar with this problem from a writer's point of view. 

The Rashi's Daughter's trilogy reads a little bit like the early drafts of my Sime~Gen novel, Unto Zeor, Forever.

As I mentioned last time, that's my first award winner, and it went through 5 drafts to get there. 

Here it is on Amazon in Kindle, but there are paper editions and a forthcoming audiobook edition (unabridged)


It is labeled, by this publisher as #2 in a "series" -- but it's not.  It's the second published in the Sime~Gen Universe, and many people have fallen in love with the novels by entering here. 

I lost the first few drafts, but a very close version of the 3rd draft has been assembled and posted online for free reading.  It's titled Sime Surgeon (like a Nurse Nancy which is what it was at that stage), and has a long introduction explaining the editing history. 

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/  and click the links on the left for the various parts. 

Jean Lorrah commented extensively on the 3rd draft, and I made vast changes because of what she understood and misunderstood (just like the amazon comments on Rashi's Daughters).  Jean saw the "oil and water not mixing" in that 3rd draft, didn't quite know how to explain the problem or the solution, but with close study, I was able to see what she was driving at and made many changes.

The 4th draft was turned in to the publisher, and the editor, Sharon Jarvis, sent it back with numerous notations, plus the advice that if I would delete one character, eliminate one entire chapter, and shift the climaxes so that they rose in a smooth hyperbolic curve to the final one, then she'd publish it.  The Sime Surgeon climax structure rises, falls hard, rises, falls, rises to the end.  She wanted the falls removed by removing one character, which eliminated a lot of techno-babble.  Many fans love Sime Surgeon much better than the commercially smooth Unto Zeor, Forever -- just as some Amazon commenters love Anton's trilogy as it is. 

The final draft of Unto Zeor, Forever was published, and because of Sharon's insistence on unifying the theme, eliminating all elements distracting from the theme, deleting a lot of the researched real-world-facts and the imaginary facts, answering character motivation questions with show-don't-tell, that published version won an award -- essentially because it's shaken not stirred.

But Unto Zeor, Forever was never drafted as a series of incidents.  It had a plot from the first glimmering of an idea, a strong plot welded inextricably to a story that is essentially, at bedrock, a Romance of Helen of Troy proportions, just as Anton's trilogy depicts the Romances of Rashi's Daughters that produced the children whose Commentaries on Rashi shape what we know today of his Commentaries. 

Sharon Jarvis, as editor, could not have brought the manuscript of Unto Zeor, Forever up to publishable standards had Jean Lorrah not "shaken not stirred" the composition into a somewhat finer emulsion. 

Anton's trilogy was published at a development stage somewhere between Unto's 3rd and 4th drafts -- still in layers of historical fact and imaginary fact floating on top of a narrative but not integrated with it.

Her historical fact is what's known about Rashi and his writings, what's known about the world events at the time he lived, and what's known about the technologies and trade practices of that time, and of course the men the daughters married and the children the daughters had.  Her imaginary facts are the personalities and feminist attitudes of Rashi's Daughters.  Her plot is a series of incidents that may have seemed like "show don't tell" application of her research discoveries, but isn't.

It's as if, along with all her research on Rashi, Anton also researched "how to write novels" -- found "show don't tell" and then applied that with workmanlike diligence. 

Anton's trilogy does have a kind of wandering "because line" -- as I've explained in previous posts on plotting. 

Here are some of my posts on Integration that pertain to what's missing in Rashi's Daughters, discussing techniques one at a time:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/gold-under-ice-by-carol-buchanan.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/worldbuilding-building-fictional-but.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/carol-buchanan-on-writing-tricks-and.html

That last post in the list is by Carol Buchanan who is a historical fiction writer whose product is so thoroughly blended you can't separate the layers at all.  And her work is precisely true to the Historical genre -- it's just about an era the big publishers aren't pursuing right now.  But that's true of Rashi's Daughters, also. 

If you've read Buchanan's Gold Under Ice as I recommended, use that instead of Unto Zeor, Forever, and think about it with Rashi's Daughters in mind.  Do a contrast/compare.  Chances are you know more about the Montana Goldrush era and the Civil War than you do about the very early years of the Crusades when Rashi lived. 

Consider the effect that a full blending of techniques can achieve and then decide which effect you want.  A professional writer needs to be able to achieve the effect he/she intends - not at random or by inspiration but on purpose.

Anton's trilogy isn't really romance, or really historical, or fantasy or paranormal genre.  The trilogy is a mixture, a "cross-genre" mashup, just as Unto Zeor, Forever was when it was published.

In the future, we may look back and see how Anton started a new genre!  If you find imitators of her work, please drop a note on this blog entry.  Separating "oil" from "water" may become a popular writing style, and if so, then you need to master it as well as "shaken not stirred."

To see how Unto Zeor, Forever affected one woman from the time it was published all the way to a re-reading after the field of Science Fiction Romance appeared, see my blog entry:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/is-there-taboo-against-romance-in.html

Where I wrote:
--------QUOTE-------------
In 2010, I found my name mentioned (via feeddemon search) in an Australian blog and discovered a woman who had read UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER years ago, and only now, on re-reading realized that it is indeed SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE and belongs with the modern books she likes. That's why UNTO stood out to the point where she had obsessed over it.  At that time, it was almost unique as an "Alien Romance" - and now it belongs to a genre.

http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html 

(if that link doesn't work, look in the archive of the blog for the entry of May 13, 2010 )
----------END QUOTE-------------

Isn't it odd that this blogger's name is Rachel?  That's Rashi's youngest daughter's name, and the title of the book which mentions the Medieval techniques of creating black dye for textiles which I used in House of Zeor. 

And here's another karmic echo -- on lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com Rachel wrote:

----------QUOTE FROM LOVECATSDOWNUNDER ---
I’ve been reading historicals as my main genre of pleasure for a couple of years now. Thing was, I’d been resisting reading them because I was such a huge Jane Austen fan, and… well, I don’t know what I thought, but once I found them I was hooked and I realized I'd wasted heaps of years in not reading them!

Obviously I’ve been reading other genres in there as well, but more than 50% would have been historicals. I found some fabulous, fabulous authors who are now autobuys.

But I’m starting to get itchy feet.

I’m thinking the next genre I want to fall into will be romantic fantasy. Maybe with some romantic science fiction thrown in. I read a fair bit of fantasy and science fiction when I was a late-teen early-20’s gal—things like, Mists of Avalon (boy did I love that book at the time); Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (laugh? I *still* laugh at lines I read then); Unto Zeor Forever (the first book I remember being obsessed about, and then trying to glom the author, Jacqueline Lichtenberg); Dune (the whole series); plus a heap of Arthur C Clarke and other sci fi big names.

This was before I found romance. And looking back, the only one on the list that’s really a romance (and probably the only one of all the books I read at the time) is Unto Zeor Forever. Interesting that it was the romance that I obsessed about the most, yes?

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

So what is "getting to" these readers, getting under their skins, invading dreams and creating obsessions?

My answer is "shaken not stirred."

It's the Integration Technique that glues your real-world-research facts to your imaginary facts to your characters to your story to your plot.

The only way I know of to achieve the Integration of all these story telling elements is on the level of  Theme.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, the author of Mists of Avalon mentioned by Lovecatsdownunder taught me to start the final draft by stating the story in one sentence (screenwriting element called the pitch), identify whose story it is, and distill the theme (the point of the tale) into a single sentence.  Tack a 3X5 card (today make a "STICKY NOTE" on your monitor desktop) to the wall behind your desk and test every sentence, every word-choice, against that list.  Anything (and I mean anything) that doesn't exemplify the theme gets deleted.

In the more basic posts, I've examined what a theme is and how to identify it in novels that others have written.

Identifying your theme in a novel you have written is much endeavor.

A "theme" is not a single idea, a single voice in the orchestra.  A theme, just as in music, is a repeated sequence -- a sequence you play with, run variations on, uptempo and downtempo.  A theme can be a sequence of chords -- it can be very complex in music, but is easily identified by the trained ear. Think of the tiny bit of music that plays every time Captain Kirk walks into a scene in Star Trek.  Other shows do the same thing -- identify the appearance of the main character with a theme. 

In novels, a theme is a set of related ideas which trigger a set of related emotions.

In novels, the word-choice relates the theme to a set of emotions.  That's called semantic loading.

Just as in music, the "ear" of the listener may be well trained, untrained, or partly deaf in some frequencies and ultra-sensitive in others.

Readers experience chords of emotions -- whole swaths of related emotions conditioned into them by "life" as they have experienced it, and by their dreams as they wish to experience them.  (two levels - oil and water).  The brain "lights up" in the corresponding areas as the writer triggers those emotions in the reader, bringing first one then another to dominance. 

In Kabbalah there are seven "primary" emotions defined.  Fiction combines those seven in different proportions -- and again, oil and water. 

Think of the color scales and how we obtain certain shades by combining primary colors.

Emotion works the same way.  And like music, emotion has as it's backbone structural element, rhythm.

Rhythm is created not by the BEATS -- but by the silence between them.

Next week, in Part 4, we'll get technical. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
For more on Gemara, check this out:
http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/gemara.htm

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 1

Lately, we've been getting into what I consider "advanced" writing lessons. 

"Advanced" doesn't actually mean you can't do it if you haven't done the previous work.  But it does mean you have to be able to walk and chew gum, juggle some plates, wrangle a passel of kids, and shout at the mailman not to molest the dog, all at the same time.

Some people learn better under pressure, some people don't want to know how they do what they do, and some (like me) prefer to read the last chapter of the textbook first, then browse quickly through the first chapter and try the exercises and problems in the middle before deciding if there's anything worth learning in this textbook.

So here we are in the "middle" of learning to craft a novel, Romance or otherwise.  I'm just more comfortable with the Romance plot dynamics than with plain, pure, action, or the kind of Mystery where the detective isn't personally involved in the issues raised by the crime and criminal.

In searching for clear writing lessons for you, I've stumbled on a trilogy of books, published by PLUME an imprint of PENGUIN BOOKS (huge, international publisher - this is the big time publishing venue, folks!) which I'm sure the author and the editor believe are novels.  And now a lot of writing students will think so, too, just because these got published by a big publisher (and are selling well.)  They will be imitated. 

If you have objected to my explanations of the importance of structure in crafting a novel, you may consider the high profile publishing of these three books to prove your point.  But you might change your mind about that after you read some of one of these novels. 

Some people, readers not writers or editors, who've read these books think they're novels, too. 

In my judgement, they aren't novels, and I'm going to try to explain why I think that. 

The explanation may not mean anything to you unless you read at least part of one of these books and contrast it to something like, say Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels (or many of her Historical Horror genre items).  But I'm sure most of you have read dozens if not hundreds of good Historical Romances, not to mention alternate history and time travel Romance. 

These books are Historicals, set between 1040 and 1105 C.E.

Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels are set in that period (almost - she uses the 900's as a model) but in an alternate universe.  If you haven't read the Deryni series, you probably need to.  Start with Deryni Rising and move quickly on to see how Katherine's writing craftsmanship developed very quickly -- then contrast that with the 3 novels I'm talking about here. 

Katherine Kurtz structures trilogies correctly.  C. J. Cherryh structures trilogies correctly (though her earliest published work has a few nice flaws that you can learn from). 

This author, Maggie Anton, did not structure her trilogy with that kind of high-craft precision.  She used a different technique, also in wide use, but not nearly as effective.  I don't know if that's because she'd never read Cherryh and Kurtz or if she chose a technique inappropriate to her material on purpose, or if she didn't know there exists a plethora of techniques for handling this kind of material so she didn't know she had a choice to make.  I don't know Maggie Anton personally, though I know Cherryh and Kurtz personally and learned from them (we learned from Marion Zimmer Bradley and I don't know if Maggie Anton ever read MZB or met her). 

Maggie Anton on Amazon

That link goes to the product page on Amazon that lists 4 items by Maggie Anton, this trilogy and a book about the subject.  I couldn't find anything else with that byline, and I don't know if this author writes under other bylines. 

From the list of what I don't know, you can see that I can only discuss this trilogy on the basis of what's actually in the stories and how they are structured -- and what might have been done with the raw research material.  I can point you to where the various techniques I have discussed on this blog were not used, and so you can judge if the lack makes the text awkward or boring. 

The trilogy does contain arranged marriages and true-love marriages, accidentally marrying a gay guy (or maybe he's bi though others he knows are gay), and even a bit of Medieval applied magic to spur sexuality within marriage.  Each novel focuses on one of three sisters who have no brothers to follow in their father's footsteps -- the underlying theme is feminist.  In fact, it's a very strong feminist polemic in spots. 

There are some rather graphically detailed sex scenes, but not many.  If that's what you read Romance for, these books will disappoint. 

There are epidemic scenes where the disease is attributed to demons and the cures include blood letting and amulets against demons, and other standard practices in that time-frame.  Great material for modern fantasy or Paranormal Romance. 

Each of these three is billed as "A novel of Love" -- not specifically genre Romance -- "in Medieval France."  On that, it actually delivers.   

The trilogy seems to me to be even more awkward to market and sell than to write.

I'm going to discuss all three at once here, and I'll be rather more hyper-critical of the writing, the research, and the story itself than I usually am.  I may say some things that might seem somewhat unkind, perhaps undeserved, about the author of this trilogy. 

But I'm not talking to the author, or even about the author or editor since I don't know them.  I'm analyzing a swatch of writing that I think needed more rewrite before publishing. 

The other item in the pitch for these novels is the assertion that the research is good, deep and accurate.  And as far as I can tell, that's mostly true. 

Now to the third element in these novels that you need to keep in mind.

The novels are about the 3 daughters of a Talmudic scholar (the Talmud being the transcription of the explanation of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible, the story of Moses) that was given to Moses by God, the same explanation that was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then on Mount Sinai for Moses to give to the people and lead them to the Promised Land. 

This Talmudic scholar, known as Rashi, is studied today, and most printings of the Torah have either footnotes or extensive commentary by Rashi.  Rashi also wrote a commentary on the Talmud, which is studied today.  Rashi wrote the introductory commentary, the elementary and literal commentary (not the esoteric commentary known as Kaballah).  It's almost impossible to enter the study of this material by any other route than by studying Rashi.

Studying Torah without having heard of Rashi would be like studying Geometry without having heard of Aristotle or Pythagoras. Or maybe like studying astronomy without having heard of Kepler.

So Maggie Anton picked out one whopping HUGE and important subject area to write about, the almost unknown 3 daughters of Rashi whose husbands and sons are also almost as famous as Rashi because of how they continued his commentaries, and commented on his commentaries, and founded Talmudic academy traditions of their own.  Their mothers, the 3 daughters of these novels, are lost in obscurity -- and now rescued by Maggie Anton in a monumental feat of research and meticulous deductive imagination. 

The research had to have been as difficult as what Katherine Kurtz did to write her George Washington saga, (during which research, I was treated to a blow-by-blow description of the feats required to gain access to obscure material)



Or her WWII novel about the magical battle for Britain against the Nazis.



To create the Romance novel trilogy, Anton had to create and add a great deal of material, just as these other writers had to do.  My theory is that Anton was in over her head. 

So here are Anton's novels.  In the next parts of this blog-series, we'll get into spoilers, and even note The Sime~Gen Connection to Anton's trilogy.  And there is a connection, but not philosophical.  It has to do with research into medieval techniques for making dye for wool!  Also for making woolen cloth, though I never mentioned that in House of Zeor. 







There is a Kindle version, but it's in that "overpriced" range at $12.99 at least at the time I'm writing this.  There are a lot of used copies, probably because they aren't rereadable or keepers.

I don't think these books are worth their price, in and of themselves.  If you can get them from a lending library, or find a used copy, so much the better.  You may want to take marginal notes as you learn from analyzing this material. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com