Dialogue Part 13 - Writing Inner Dialogue Of A Hero by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue

Part 13

Writing Inner Dialogue Of A Hero

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of Dialogue series are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

And depiction posts are indexed here:

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

Depicting a Character is tricky if the Character's dialogue does not match what you, the writer, assert is true about the Character.

Dialogue is usually considered to be what a Character says aloud to another Character -- but in science fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, and all our favorite variations, one must consider telepathy as part of Dialogue, even when not worded-thoughts.

Realistic Characterization includes the Character being unaware of his/her own true motivations.  Most silent, inner dialogue -- the things we repeat to ourselves -- are rationalizations for how we feel, justifications for feeling that way, and consequent "reasons" for why we act that way.

Real humans are complicated.

Characters have to be ultra-simplified, at least in the first few novels you write to introduce them.

Hollywood screenwriting insists Major Characters have 3 (and no more than 3) Traits that distinguish them from other Characters.  But in screenwriting, you don't usually get to reveal inner dialogue.  The Actors supply that counterpoint embellishment,and you, the writer, don't get to telll the Actor what the Character is thinking or in what words (telepathy being an exception).

But note how telepathy has been handled in Star Trek -- silence, leaving the audience to guess what Spock learned from the Horta until he interpreted -- and we don't know if he told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Here is a bold and inconvenient truth for Romance writers to ponder.

Readers judge Characters by the Character's inner (silent) dialogue with him/herself.

You can tell the reader this Character is a highly placed, powerful executive whose word is law in an international corporation (the "How To Marry A Billionaire" story needs a Billionaire readers can believe is real) -- but if the Character is not thinking (inside their own mind) like a successful Billionaire, the readers won't believe a word in the entire novel.  In fact they won't finish reading it.

But since writers aren't Billionaires, or action-heros of any sort, how do you learn what your Character (human or Alien) should be thinking in a crisis, where the stakes are saving the Galaxy, where failure is not an option?

We see in the remake of the TV Series, MACGYVER, how the ultimate problem solver thinks when everything he tries fails.  He "innovates."

Usually, in real life, that doesn't work, which is why it is so fascinating to see on TV.

What does work, what allows humans to survive on this fragile world, is team work.  But every team has a point-man, a leader, a person who thinks faster about more things, who sees the big picture and charts the course through the current mess.

A Hero in a 3 piece suit and tie.  Or coveralls and boots.

Every team has a Leader or it isn't a "team." (at least for humans).

However, at any given time, any particular Team may follow any one of the members -- whichever one has the Big Picture and a Plan.

Which team member is the Leader is not a distinguishing Characteristic (among humans).  Any follower might become a Leader in the right circumstances.  Take for example, a ship's crew in battle, and the Captain and First Officer get killed (or beamed off the ship), -- so a Lieutenant steps into the Captain's role and does what they've seen the Captain do.

Leadership is not a property of a given Character.

Leadership is a property of Inner Dialogue.

A lot of the mystique of Leadership is shrouded in Silent Dialogue.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/dialogue-part-10-silent-dialogue-from.html

We discussed Culture and physical movement (all humanity has body-movement "codes" alike such as eye-blink-rate and mirroring or matching another's micro-moves), but Cultures differ in what means what.

Robert J. Sawyer has written a solid science fiction (somewhat Romance, too) about a psychiatrist who discovers a way to identify sociopaths by micro-movements of the eye.  We are, in fact, close to being able to do such fine tuned work.  The novel is QUANTUM NIGHT.

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Night-Robert-J-Sawyer-ebook/dp/B00X59368Q/

The Characters are well depicted scientists (both the man and the woman) with real emotional lives, and a solid grasp of the sciences they are known for.

Now, put this all together, and study this article about how NASA trains mission control folks to avoid panic in an emergency.  It is so much better, more effective, and more realistic than the British WWII "Stay Calm" nonsense.

Telling someone to stay calm just makes them more acutely aware of all the reasons not to.

Read this article:

http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-flight-director-stress-crisis-2017-11

Note this list of questions -- these will guide you to creating the thoughts.  Your Characters will not be thinking these questions -- but rather listing in their minds all the answers they know, and what specifically they can do to find more answers.  Study, internalize, practice using this list in your own life's panic-situations, until you have polished the performance.

---------quote from NASA Flight Director--------------
Mission control has a strategy for staving off panic
This intense focus is partly how the flight controllers are able deal with potentially catastrophic situations. Instead of "running down the halls with our hair on fire," Hill said the team would focus on a series of questions.

• What was everything they knew — and did not know — about the situation at hand?

• What did the data actually say about the situation at hand?

• What was the worst thing that could happen as a result of the situation?

• Did the team have enough information to know for sure — and how could they get more information?

• What immediate steps could be taken to continue making progress in the mission or keep everyone safe?
--------------END QUOTE-------------

It is vital not to fall into the habit of assuming that things will now go as they always have before.  Old solutions can not be relied on in new situations.

That is the source of the non-Leader Character's paralysis before fear in a crisis.

When time closes in, and a correct action must be chosen and executed perfectly without thinking, Characters who have graven habits will fail.

Characters who avoid letting habit rule them, but who use habit as a tool, subordinate habit to achieving objectives, who go to the trouble to understand all the moving parts, will succeed in an emergency.

It is the same sort of training that is done in Martial Arts.  The objective is to identify an incoming threat and counter it WITHOUT THINKING.

In Martial Arts this is "muscle memory" and reflex -- in Mission Control it is Situational Awareness and a holistic grasp of the Big Picture.

Thus, Billionaires and other successful people generally have a sports hobby -- whatever is most popular in their circles.  Handball or MMA -- whatever uses the body-brain interface, because that same brain circuit provides the instant response to emergencies -- new emergencies never dreamed of before are met with smooth idea processing and solution generation.

Study the new TV Series, MACGYVER.  It is silly, contrived, not nearly as cleverly done as THE A-TEAM or the original MACGYVER -- but well worth studying for the depiction of smooth response to crisis.

The Successful Billiionaire, and the (still alive) Astronaut respond smoothly, and stay in control of the moving parts of a complex Situation gone awry, by drilling constantly (starting as toddlers) in that series of Questions from NASA Mission Control.

The Character who can meet a bizarre - ever seen by humans before - Event, parse it, decide, and act successfully, will not be telling themselves inwardly "don't panic" -- they will not be thinking of all the ways things could go wrong, they will not be picturing their messy deaths, they will not be AFRAID for their Soul Mate.

The Hero Character -- to be convincing -- must be working the problem using that list of bulleted questions.  Not one at a time, but the whole list all at once.

The Leader of the team will be taking what information the team can supply from that list of questions and DEVISING (improvising) ways to acquire more answers.

This process occupies so much of the brain, all at once, that the Hero Character's inner dialogue convinces the Reader that this is a Hero.

More than that, it convinces the reader to practice being like that in their own lives.

Ultimately, this is why we read novels -- to find role models that are not present among those we know personally.  Or perhaps, are present but not recognizable until we start practicing these habitual thought patterns.

Note, processing problems via NASA's list of questions will make sure that this Character is never a victim, never thinking of him/herself as a victim.  But this Character is also never -- ever -- an attacker, a victimizer.

Successful people are not attackers, not victimizers, not bullies.

If you see success and you see a bully -- suspect there is something else going on that you don't yet know about.

Make your Characters realistic by giving them an inner-voice commentary on events that reveals a true understanding of Life, of human psychology, of History, and Reality.  Such Characters are always questioning, always curious, always marveling, always certain they don't know everything -- and their awareness of their ignorance does not make them afraid.

What you don't know can kill you.  So what?  Don't bother me.  I'm busy solving this problem.  Focus.  That's the secret to inner dialogue.  Unfocused, random, wandering, distracted inner dialogue is the sign of a very weak Character who will not succeed.

Depict your Hero Character as able to deal with catastrophe with his hair on fire, and people will believe that Character is heroic (but the character will deny it.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelictenberg.com

Reviews 11 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Artificial Intelligence

Reviews 11

Artificial Intelligence
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Robert Heinlein created the AI "Mike" who "runs" the Lunar Colony infrastructure.  He was absolutely adorable and readers just fell in love with him.

Mike wasn't the first AI in Science Fiction.  Heinlein had created smart cars and other writers added all kinds of AI scenarios.

Of course, the Horror writers grabbed that and ran with it.  The human phobia against things smarter than ourselves (or more powerful or ubiquitous -- lions or Army Ants, Ebola, West Nile Virus, ) is the main subject of Horror.  Frankenstein "monster" is another example of what we create being more powerful than ourselves.  Jekyl and Hide also show this problem in symbolic ways. 

Horror is about why you can never win.

Romance is about how you can always win.

Put the two "genres" together and you have an unbeatable combination.

That combination is symbolized by Artificial Intelligence.

Asimov created R. Daneel Olivaw -- a robot/android figure many female readers had a crush on.  Roddenberry modeled Data on that.

And of course Star Wars contributed AI examples.  Oddly, the less humanoid R2D2 is the most crush-worthy.

The trend continues as we get closer and closer to real AI.

Here is a grab bag of good reads to consider if you want to play with the story potential of Artificial Intelligence.

First we have a novel by the award winning, immensely popular writer Robert J. Sawyer (who is very justifyably famous). 

RED PLANET BLUES is a novel work that starts with the material of his Hugo and Nebula award nominated novella, "Identify Theft."



It's an odd read if you have read the novella.  The characters, setting, and mystery-plot (the main character is a Private Eye on Mars) are all so memorable you get disoriented, "I've read this before, haven't I?" 

But after you get beyond where the novella ended, the whole thing is just one whopping good read, filled with characters driven by their Relationships.  Romance is not the main factor here -- but you can see in the way they related to each other that pairings are in the thin Martian wind.

And the technology that drives an old space ship buried in the dunes of Mars is operated by the onboard A.I.  -- gotta meet that one to appreciate what we might be able to do. 

It's a Hard Boiled Detective On Mars story -- and there aren't many of those.  Maybe you want to write one.

Second comes some great humor in a Fantasy Universe.

Simon R. Green has been working two series of novels, two sets of characters, all set in one, huge Fantasy Universe complete with dimension travel, "forces" unknown, and massive amounts of politics.

I can't say which is my favorite - the Nightside or the Secret Histories series, but when you need to energize your sense of humor, try some of these novels.



This is one of those $10.99 Kindle e-books that Amazon fights publishers about -- with authors caught in the middle.

The "Secret Histories" are about a family of Guardians who wear magic-seeming armor (from another dimension) and fight Evil across dimensions, defending Earth. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_History_(book_series)

Should give you a list of the books in order.

Third we have a series by Laura E. Reeve that I find absolutely captivating.

And this one has a hot love-story -- well, actually there's good serious Romance threading through the whole series which is labeled A Major Ariane Kedros Novel.

Ariane Kedros is an alias this character wears.  She was in the armed services in an interstellar war and carried out a mission that ended the war -- but probably destroyed a Star and its inhabited planets.  When mustered out of the service, she was given a new Identity.

Now she is partners with a guy who owns a space ship and prospects for Alien Artifacts among the stars.  Together they found one, and it's being explored by the xenologists -- there's big money at stake.

Meanwhile, they ran afoul of the interstellar version of The Mob via a friend who was kind of in the gray area between law and crime.  This fellow bequeathed them an AI which now resides (illegally) on their space ship, but the law is after them, which will entail the discovery and perhaps destruction of this AI (who you will love).



4th is another new series discovery that I found to be a high-impact, refreshingly different, nice-old-fashioned, unique Universe, with great, tightly worded writing (hits all my requirements), and has made me a fan of the author, Alex Hughes.

The series is titled Mindspace Investigations (yes I love Private Eye novels).

This series has been likened to another favorite of mine, The Dresden Files, (the forensic wizard who is a Private Eye ) but though the plotting methodology is as intricate and brilliant, the tone and flavor is totally different.

Hughes captures a tone and flavor using details of her background world that just sizzle with possibilities.



The Dresden Series borders on "The Dark" but Mindspace Investigations has dark-horrible things in it yet (like reality) is basically a "Light" universe.

Dresden Files In Order

In Mindspace Investigations, people do nasty-bad things with horrendous Powers that Hughes calls "Ability" -- and the main character is pretty much beaten down to a bare shadow of his former self -- yet the total picture comes out with a Star Trek like optimism that is stronger than Jim Butcher creates with Dresden's universe.

Hughes' main character tells his story in First Person, and adroitly informs us of the history of his universe.

On Earth, we gott to the Internet of Things years before this series starts.  With all the smart-devices connected an AI is born.  The AI tries to take over the world.  The people with Ability (espers) fight the AI and win, and in the end (long ago) hacked out a treaty with Normals that allows the Guild of the Abled to have complete sovereignty over the Abled.

Our main character is a high level telepath who was a professor of telepathic skills until various political things happened at the Guild and he ended up expelled to die on the streets.  But he didn't die.  He got a job as a consultant for the police.

Now he is seconded to Homicide on occasion to "read" murder scenes for what exactly happened and who did it which is apparent in "Mindspace."

Because of budget cuts, he has to get a certification, and the only thing he can go for is a Private Eye license -- but he's a felon by technicality of the law, so he's having trouble there.

Now you see why I love Mindspace Investigations -- I get ESP, a Private Eye, oh, and a MENTAL LINK between the private eye and the homicide cop (a woman I can really admire who gets migraines), plus a Guild as interesting as the Telepath Guild in Babylon-5. 

Lots of emotional ebb and flow -- lots of intrigue, mystery, suspense. 



If you want to top that, give me a Romance WITH an AI who is, maybe a Private Eye.

Alex Hughes has compiled all my favorite things, and INCLUDED a history of AI impacting our real world to create this really odd future world with backwards seeming technology.

Really, you MUST catch up on Alex Hughes and then follow how this develops.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

WWW:WATCH by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is the author of the novel FLASHFORWARD upon which the TV Series FLASHFORWARD is based.

OK, FLASHFORWARD is not Romance at all - it's very mundane and very simplistic SF with a mystery plot.

That's why it got made into a TV show by a network, not even scifi channel. It's aimed at that broad audience we've been talking about luring into the Romance genre with mixing genres.

Sawyer is an excellent writer, a seasoned craftsman and major award winner in the spotlight, which is another reason he got a novel made into a TV show by a network.

He doesn't write ROMANCE, or even Intimate Adventure actually, but he has been starting to toy with adding Relationship genre motifs to his SF.

And that could be why his SF is thriving while many other brands are wilting.

Last week, Tuesday June 8, 2010, on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com my post was about a question asked of me for an interview on SF Signal's mind-meld feature.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/06/mind-meld-what-science-fiction-series-is-underrated/

The question was about whether there is an inherent incompatibility between SF and Romance genres which causes a taboo response by SF readers to Romance elements.

My response was like this:

--------
Ten years from now, nobody will remember that it was ever possible to write SF or Romance as separate genres.

The reason for that is that both SF(including Fantasy) and Romance are "Wish Fulfillment Fantasy" genres.

We enjoy the stories that show us how to get our heart's desire.

SF delivers the heart's desire of someone who wants to be loved as the one person who actually understands what's going on and can solve the problem innovatively, thinking outside the box.

Romance delivers the heart's desire of someone who wants to be loved because they are more important than war, work, politics or sports - loved, admired and valued because they are understood completely (no matter how far outside the box the guy has to think in order to grasp the intricate complexities of who this very special person (me!) is.

Now you explain to me how those could possibly be incompatible objectives?
---------

Robert J. Sawyer has captured the essence of that blend of wishfulfillment in his WWW trilogy.

DISCLAIMER: the publisher sends me these novels free for my professional review column. But many publishers send me many novels, as I have discussed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/glimpse-of-reviewers-life.html

I don't bring you all or even a substantial part of what I read.

Sawyer's work however is of interest in our analysis of how to raise the prestige level of mixed-genre-Romance in the eyes of the gatekeepers and the general public. Go to Amazon and read the customer (somewhat mixed) comments on these novels and think about the reader resistance to adding relationship threads.


WWW: Wake (WWW Trilogy)


and now

WWW: Watch


...soon be followed by WWW:WONDER

The worldbuilding premise is geekish wish fulfillment. The lost packets floating around the World Wide Web somehow reach critical mass and WAKE to become conscious, an AI personality, that is in the second book WATCHED by USA and other national intelligence agencies. A political decision is made to kill the AI.

The main human character is a blind, geekish (math whiz) girl of 16 who is given an implant behind one eye which allows her to see. The signal for her eye streams through the web, and she participates in the waking (and watching) of the AI.

She acquires a boyfriend who is also a math whiz, off the charts kind of guy, whose face is deformed by a birth defect and so he's also a social outsider in the teen world, not just for his brains.

WATCH is really the story of the AI learning to read everything floating on the Web (even private email) and interact with humans. The girl is his main tutor, and this project (bring up AI) becomes her main interest until she falls for the boyfriend.

So a boy and girl geek interact with an AI that emerges to consciousness and developes a personality -- while the Authorities of the world try to kill it. Pretty much a 1950's Heinlein plot.

There is a B-story that hasn't matured yet, about some scientists who have taught a Bonobo-Chimpanzee crossbreed American Sign Language, and had him sign via web-cam with an Orangutan. That thread seems intrusive and annoying at times, even though it's intrinsically interesting. Thematically, it's tightly related to the emerging AI because it's all about the definition of "person" of "consciousness" and "self-awareness." Very philosophical, symbolic, and scientific.

The AI does interact with the Bonobo-Chimp without humans knowing.

I expect that thread, along with some political actions from Japan and China to climax in the third novel.

But here in the second novel (which as you can see from Amazon didn't satisfy all readers expectations raised in the first novel) we have a very smooth integration of human sexual emergence (boy meets girl) with the geekish "raise an AI to self-awareness" story.

Thematically, the two are related, and there is an expository lump or two making sure the reader can see the relationship between genetics, evolution, survival of the fittest, survival of the species, and the survival value of consciousness itself.

As boy and girl start to make out in the girl's parents basement office, they discuss the reasons she doesn't want to have children, and how evolution has allowed self-aware consciousness to continue to exist because conscious decisions can over-ride genetic-survival of me-and-mine for the greater good.

There is also a tutorial on games theory included, all subjects of intrinsic fascination for geekish math types, but also philosophically integral with the artistic worldbuilding, not overly long, and not boring to the general reader.

However, that one kissing scene is cut strategically short when the AI tells them that "he" is under attack.

Yes, the girl chooses to regard Webmind (the AI) as a "he." And that is not properly discussed or explained.

But here's the thing. This very SF, very geekish novel has a pattern of RELATIONSHIPS rooted in deep characterization -- and that pattern actually resembles the pattern formed by the packets that are the substance of the AI's consciousness.

There is symmetry within symmetry.

And the whole, very sophisticated, very philosophical, very abstract, very geekish novel is set in an absolutely contemporary (Obama Administration - the Obama name as President is actually mentioned once in print) setting.

The worldbuilding is totally mundane, just like FLASHFORWARD, except for one thing that the ordinary science going on today MIGHT POSSIBLY produce.

Sawyer has created a formula for engaging the general, non-SF audience, in SF. Contemporary, mundane setting (just like many urban fantasies), plus detailed characterization -- and now adding just a hint of Relationship.

If you study these novels carefully, noting how Sawyer handles the geekish expository lumps, how long they are, what precedes them, what is built later on the knowledge imparted to the reader (the lumps include only the barest essence of what you need to know to understand what comes next) -- then in your mind substitute the typical ROMANCE GENRE passages of emotional introspection and speculation about others feelings, and the conversations about emotions -- you will come up with a pacing formula that could let Romance reach a broader general audience.

Sawyer's success is built on his firm grasp of this purely mechanical pacing technique together with the artistic and philosophical symmetry, and symbolism.

For example, our geek-girl heroine's father is an autistic Physicist at the very top of the field of Physics (works with Stephen Hawkings). Her mother is a Ph.D. in economics who specializes in games theory.

The geek-girl's mother and father exemplify an Alien Romance relationship. The geek-girl's relationship with the AI exemplifies an Alien Romance (but just in the way the girl's affections are engaged) that reminds me of Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY where a human male interacts with a very alien Alien developing an inter-dependency.

That kind of Relationship is exemplified on another level between the geek-girl and the geek-boy. While at another point, the Bonobo-Chimp hybrid declares he wants to be a father (he's being threatened with castration).

The loving, stable, emotional Relationship between the geek-girl's parents (which allows her to engage them in fostering the AI) mirrors all the other Relationships, and continues to probe the question of what is self-awareness and what has awareness of OTHERS to do with self-awareness.
What is the role of consciousness in Relationship?

Watch FLASHFORWARD (it's about to be cancelled, but I'm sure it will be on DVD, online, and rerun) and/or read the novel. Study the WWW Trilogy. Apply the lessons you learn to Alien Romance, and we may have the start of a formula for changing the perception of the genre.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current availability)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (complete biblio-bio)

Denvention 3 = Walk-a-con

I had a wonderful time, overall, and made several new acquaintances, learned a great deal and brainstormed some new screenwriting ideas. The overall theme of most conversations I was in was MARKETING -- promotion, advertising, blurb writing, pitching, salesmanship.

I arrived Tuesday Aug 5th. Jean was late in due to thunderstorms. We crashed that night and picked up our badges and program participant materials on Wednesday. That took an hour and a half. Some program participants stuck in the pre-registration "get your badge here" line, which you had to go through before getting your final panel schedule, were late to their panels because of this.

We were told there were hotspots for Internet access in the area, but until Thursday, I had no Internet access. We finally decided (Jean Lorrah and Torun Almer and I) to split the cost of a T-Mobile temporary account to get Torun's notebook online.

T-Mobile has a grand reputation. We thought the monetary expense would be the only expense. Instead, in order to complete and maintain the T-Mobile connection, Torun spent several hours over 4 or 5 days on her cell phone on tech support with T-Mobile, and it was a struggle. But we were able to file brief con reports and get a number of business emails attended to. Frankly, I don't recommend T-Mobile from hotels. The hotel access that was offered, though, was slower than T-Mobile. T-Mobile wasn't fast enough or enabled enough to allow sending a short video from Jean's camera or you might have had a video report. It was just a hassle all around.

Wednesday I attended a panel where Kristin Nelson was giving a slide presentation on how to write a cover blurb. Kristin is Linnea Sinclair's agent and it was marvelous to discover that Kristin is the bright, splendid, energetic and erudite person I'd expect for Linnea to choose as an agent. She really REALLY knows her business. Kristin used Linnea's covers as examples in her presentation.

Jean Lorrah took these notes (it was that kind of lecture you needed notes):

-----------------------------
The cover blurb (and the query letter, which ideally becomes the cover blurb) should be no more than nine sentences, but may be more than one paragraph. It should include these four elements and nothing more:

Catalyst

Backstory

Character

Inter-related Plot Elements

Any sentence that does not address one of those four elements should be removed.
------------------------

http://www.nelsonagency.com/ -- somewhere on there or a related URL there should be a FAQ page by Kristin with more details, but we can't seem to find it. Someone who knows the FAQ URL Kristin referred to, please drop a note on this blog.

At the end when Kristin Nelson opened the discussion to the audience, I interjected several comments to the audience full of writers about how reviewers use cover blurbs to extract a book from the avalanche of books publishers send us. And from the writer's point of view, in order to penetrate the reviewer's mind and be reviewed, it's best to write the cover blurb FIRST, then write the novel to fit it (which I've done on books of mine that got New York Times, Library Journal etc etc reviews). When I got home, I discovered Kristin had mentioned my comment in her blog.

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/

And that was mentioned in other blogs:

http://jennakrumlauf.blogspot.com/
http://www.lisashearin.com/blog.cfm

Thursday morning, Jean Lorrah and I opened the SFWA Suite -- made coffee and put out breakfast foods. A few dozen SFWA members (Science Fiction Writers of America -- see sfwa.org ) dropped by to tank up on coffee before their early panels. We met some people we hadn't known before and had catch-up conversations with old friends. The hours melted away!

Thursday afternoon I was on two panels that will remain memorable.

The first had an odd topic title about how large a galactic empire could be.

As I arrived for the panel, three fans with armloads of my books ambushed me for autographs. The program had me listed as doing autographs on Saturday, but the fans knew that wasn't going to happen because I don't do autographings on Saturday. I had put in a program change to a Sunday slot with Jean, but the daily newsletter hadn't published it yet. And they'd lugged all these books here. It had to be a mile or more from their hotel room.

There were 7 hotels scattered around the side of the convention center that was opposite where our convention space was. Even by Thursday it was clear we would spend more time walking than talking at this convention, and so it was. But my heart went out to those who carried so much extra weight so far in such thin air just to get my autograph.

So, sort of against the rules, I sat down at the panel table to sign autographs real-quick-like because the panel was starting. (usually you autograph after a panel)

In fact, the moderator came over and wanted me to leave because the next panel was about to start -- then I said but I'm on the next panel, not the previous one, and she laughed as everyone else took their places and found their name cards.

As panelists were being seated, a woman came up to me from the audience -- and I didn't get her name, but I remember her face. She said I'd analyzed one of her short stories at a previous convention and she'd done what I said had to be done to the story -- and had just a few days ago SOLD the story, her first sale. I told her to tell the audience what she'd told me, and she did. BIG CHEER!!!! I'm so bummed that I didn't write her name and the story title and publisher down so I could be sure everyone reads her story! (I do remember I liked it!) This may be Linnea-Sinclair-the-next-generation!

Most of the people in the audience were writers, so I ended up sketching a formula for how to use this question about the size of a galactic empire in WorldBuilding.

First we talked about TIME -- how long does it take to get information and/or goods from one end of the Empire to another? Any political structure is limited in size not by geography but transit time. I cited Ursula LeGuin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and the ansible technology.

Then we talked about MOTIVE. Why would anyone want a political organization that big? Why would any species (humans included) want or need to organize on such a scale. In all fiction, the key to plausibility is MOTIVE. In this case it has to be the motives of the non-humans (based in their biology) and the motives of humans based on the usual plus unusual circumstances.
The list of motives I have scribbled down here are:

a) PROFIT $$$ and otherwise, sometimes emotional

b) KNOWLEDGE and/or DATA (I was thinking of but did not mention Robert J. Sawyer's novel ROLLBACK which postulates aliens trying to get into touch with Earth by sending their own genetic code to Earth so we can create a breeding circle of members of their species. I later sat beside Sawyer at the con's autographing session but forgot to mention that!)

c) CURIOSITY -- just because you want to know what's on the other side

d) RELIGION -- maybe to convert everyone, or maybe because your religion says you must go see what's out there.

e) Uniting against an external threat -- maybe you need to organize the neighborhood against an extra-galactic threat. Maybe it's not a threat but you think it is.

f) ART -- often the first trade a newly discovered people engage in is "native art".

g) EXCESS POPULATION -- maybe finding colonizable planets and offloading criminals or just plain huge numbers of people is the motivation. Some mathematicians have shown you can't export excess population.

h) everything we haven't thought of -- those ideas make the BEST galactic novels

And then we discussed how such a galactic sprawl of a political unit might be governed, and why writers default to the "Empire" or central-control model. I mentioned the place of background in an artistic composition such as a novel, and we talked about sociological SF a bit.

It's amazing how fast an hour goes!

The second intensely memorable panel was on whether Star Trek has made a difference in our modern world. Well, I doubt anyone here has an answer to that other than "yes" which ends the panel in one word. However the four or five panelists raced on and on talking and talking about all the various contributions that one bit of fiction has made to our modern way of life.

Rick Sternbach (Star Trek art director) was on the panel, as was Roberta Rogow (Star Trek fan writer turned pro). And I was seated next to Marc Zicree whose Star Trek: New Voyages episode WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME was up for a Hugo. I have known Marc for at least twenty years, since he started in the TV business. He really deserved that Hugo but didn't win. (this time)

Marc kept saying things that were on the tip of my tongue and it was delightful to feel how someone currently working (hard and fast) in the thick of things in Hollywood sees and understands the forces shaping what I call the "Fiction Delivery System" in very much the same way that I do. That lends me a feeling of confidence in the future.

Marc Zicree is one of the leaders -- will be one of the most powerful leaders in Hollywood. It's not just that he can do so much. It's that he understands what he's doing and can teach it, as can (and does) Blake Snyder with his SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting.

Jean Lorrah said that she and her collaborator, Lois Wickstrom had taken Marc's telephone seminar on how to pitch a screenplay and it had made a big difference in how their ideas were treated by various studios.

Friday we toured the Dealer's Room. Well, no, we entered the Dealer's Room to shop.

But we got caught in conversations here and there -- one Dealer had none of our books shelved with "Authors at this Convention" -- but a few of them over in "Autographed Copies". Then we ran into a new publisher from Canada who had some classic volumes displayed, new editions of oh, I can't remember, I think Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. Our kind of stuff.

I don't have his card or his name written down, but I remember a long conversation in which we explained some of our more harrowing experiences with publishers and the kinds of writing we do. Rarely do writers have the chance to discuss publishing in depth with someone who is "a publisher" -- rather than an editor who works for a publisher. The running of a publishing business lends an entirely different perspective. This particular conversation gave me more material for my concept of "the fiction delivery system" as it is functioning today. Things are still in flux, and our times are "interesting" so I will remember this rambling conversation for a while.

Friday night, one of the most skillful organizers of fans of Sime~Gen, Kaires, put together the Sime~Gen Party, which we combined with the Broaduniverse party and the EPIC party. The room was ultra tiny and taken up mostly by the huge king size bed (maybe it was a California King). I kept telling people who came in that this was a 3-fer party, and we got it all in because the room was a Tardis. Everyone knew exactly what I meant! I love fandom!

People flowed through the room constantly from 8PM to Midnight and Jean Lorrah and I kept explaining what Sime~Gen is or what it has to do with Broaduniverse and EPIC.

Short form:
"Broad Universe is an organization of professional women writers; EPIC is the organization of e-Book professionals; Sime~Gen is a series of novels by two women who also have e-books."

Our party got a nice mention in the evening edition of the daily newsletter of the Con. There were dozens and dozens of parties, most of them lavishly decorated and serving liquor (two attributes we did not have). But WE got mentioned along with our raffle of Sime~Gen novels.

Jean and I set ourselves the objective on Saturday of seeing the Art Show. We didn't make it.

I have no idea why. We were late getting up because we were out after mid-night at the Sime~Gen Party. We talked and talked that morning -- mostly plot, writing theory, and screenwriting ideas and techniques of MARKETING. Jean and her screenwriting collaborator Lois Wickstrom (who wasn't at Worldcon) have read SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES! by Blake Snyder, which gave us a paradigm in common to talk about. Market-market-market. It's a topic we really haven't spent much time on during our careers! We need to learn more about marketing.

Somehow it was 2PM or so before we got to the Colorado Convention Center top floor where the Art Show and Dealer's Room were located. And the Art Show closed on us so they could tear down for the Art Auction.

Jean was bound and determined to shop the Dealer's Room and said that she just had to do it without me because between her own getting caught in conversations and my getting caught in conversations there was no way we were going to do it together! She was right. We separated and both of us managed to see most of the Dealer's Room.

This re-confirmed my old saying that the mean-free-path of a pro at a con is about 15 feet.

Sunday, Jean and I did the convention autographing session. About 7 or 10 people sitting at a long table, each doing a 45 minute stint, but not all arriving or departing at the same time. Complicated.

People with books formed long lines, and sometimes a second segment of a line would hold back until the next writer swapped seats with the previous writer then flood forward. People who had more than 3 books to get signed had to go through the waiting line twice or more.

I was amazed that after the folks that ambushed me, and the other things I'd signed on the fly, there were still quite a few people who had read the program changes and arrived on time for my autograph slot. I signed only ONE copy of the Denvention III program book, so that will be a collector's item.

I keep thinking I've signed every copy of FACES OF SCIENCE FICTION ever printed -- and someone brings yet another copy! And I signed a pristine copy of STAR TREK LIVES! plus a first edition HOUSE OF ZEOR. The others are a blur because, as I noted above, somewhere in the middle of my signing stint, Robert J. Sawyer sat down next to me. I do love his books! That grabbed most of my attention.

After the autographing, there was a group of soft tissue massage professionals offering writers who autographed a free massage. I raced right over there and I got a massage from Patricia "Pat" J. Peterson, NCMT, who does Swedish, Polarity, Sports Massage as well as Cranialsacral Therapy -- boy, is she GOOD.

She apparently doesn't have a website and has all the clients she can handle. She's local to the Denver area. Email me if you need her phone number.

After that, I did another tour of the Dealer's Room. I stopped to look at some jewelry and the table next to that was from INTERZONE (the British magazine which carries science fiction and fantasy). I got to talking (well, I wasn't WALKING for a change) and gave them a copy of my newsletter. They insisted on giving me a copy of the magazine and I selected at random a 2006 edition. Then I went to meet Jean in the Green Room and set the magazine before her with the full back cover advertisement for a novel showing. "What do you think of this advertisement?"

As I said, the theme of all the convention for us, every conversation somehow, was marketing, promotion, advertising. Even a couple of email notes from Lois Wickstrom were about marketing, and believe me that's not the only topic Lois knows about! So it was fitting that the magazine I was given had this giant ad on the back with a single sentence in huge red letters on black, a bit of artwork at the top, the book cover at the bottom.

It was so "professional" on the surface, and so out of step with all the marketing stuff we'd been hearing and talking about that I wanted to see if Jean saw what I saw. (Keep in mind it's British.)

Jean basically did agree, which is unusual, so you can pretty much depend on it being true. The ad was totally generic but so generic it seemed more confusing than projecting the message "You want to read this book!"

So as people came in for one last cup of coffee (there actually was some food left; the Greenroom staff did a splendid job!!!) and sat down at our table (which was next to the coffee) I kept showing them (all men, writers and editors) this advertisement and asking what they make of it.

Some thought it was horror genre, some thought it was vampire, some thought it was poorly done -- nobody said the ad made them want the book.

So some people left, new people came, and I kept showing this ad for evaluation. I think we sat there for over an hour discussing that advertisement and MARKETING -- wrapping up the convention on the same theme it had started with at Kristin Nelson's panel on Linnea Sinclair's cover copy.

None of those who passed through our discussion sited Kristin Nelson's rules for cover copy writing though the ad violated them all. No matter how long you've been in this business, there is always more and MORE to learn.

Some of my memories of this convention are encapsulated in bright light and detached from Time.

At one point, in the Green Room, we met a new writer, Fancis Hamit, who is self-publishing and promoting a historical novel titled The Shenandoah Spy about a woman (who really existed) who became an Army Captain at age 18 in 1862. We talked marketing.

At another point in the Green Room, we ran into Beverly A. Hale who recalled when Jean and I had helped her teach a course in composition by providing some marked-up manuscript pages proving that professional writers REWRITE. We have a testimonial from her to post on our writing school. ( http://www.simegen.com/school/ ) That of course, has everything to do with Marketing because to sell and get published you must rewrite to specifications and today those specifications are dictated more and more by the Marketing Department.

In the airport van on the way home, I found myself sitting behind Mike Shepherd who writes the KRIS LONGKNIFE series for Ace Books. I love those books and give them my top recommendation every time I review one. He told me his motive for writing about this very strong but very feminine character, Kris Longknife is so that his granddaughter will have a hero to relate to as she grows up.

I can't think of a more worthy motive for writing -- but I tell you, those books are SPLENDID. If you like Linnea Sinclair's stuff, read Mike Shepherd.

My husband and I got to the airport to discover that United Airlines had cancelled our flight and wanted to put us on a flight the NEXT DAY. But one of the United Employees who worked the alternate arrangements desk, a Mr. Doherty who said he had a relative at the WorldCon, went out of his way to find us two seats together on US Air that would get us home approximately at the same time that the United flight would -- but we had to change planes in Colorado Springs. He walked us to the front of the Security Line or we'd never have made that flight (which was loading as he was typing into his computer!).

So the next time you see someone with an employee badge walking someone through the line reserved for flight crews, don't be too upset by it, please. If we'd missed that hop to Colorado Springs, I wouldn't be home yet (THANK YOU MR. DOHERTY). And we had to do all the security things, including take our shoes off!

When we got to the US Air desk in Colorado Springs, we were told they had never heard of us, but apparently we got there before their computers could update the database because we were put on the flight, there were two seats together numbered as our boarding passes said, and we weren't boarded last on standby! THANK YOU MR. DOHERTY!!!

All in all, it was a wonderful 6 days, but now work is so badly backed up I don't know what to do first. Everything on my desk is top priority and there's only one me!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/