In Celebration of Happy Endings

In fiction, is a sad conclusion more "realistic" than a happy one? "The belief seems to be that tragic or unhappy endings are 'real' and therefore 'worthy' while happy endings are an easy cop-out." This essay on the Word Wenches blog strongly objects to that belief:

Word Wenches: Happy Endings

The insistence that happy endings are unrealistic seems based on the undeniable fact that the real world contains lots of horror and suffering. Yes, admits this blogger, but it also contains "a lot of happy stuff," which she wants us to "celebrate. . . not push it under the carpet and call it mindless fluff." People who hold the latter position apparently believe writers and readers of such "fluff" are evading reality, hiding from the grim truths of life. As if the grimness and suffering were somehow MORE "real" than the joyful bits. Is a house in the suburbs with two cars and a jacuzzi any less "real life" than a roach-infested apartment? (During our fifty-plus years of marriage, we've lived in both as well as various environments in between.) Every work of art constructs its effects by selecting elements from the total mass of lived experience. Why shouldn't we preferentially select the good rather than the bad sometimes? Dwelling solely on the bad and labeling it "realism" reminds me of a passage in C. S. Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS: The senior demon advises the junior tempter to induce the human "patient" to consider his feelings about the impact of bombs on human flesh as a reflection of "reality" and his feelings about sunshine and happy children as mere wishful thinking.

I suspect a large part of "serious" critics' dismissal of romance arises not just from its predominantly female audience but also from its generic requirement for a "happily ever after" or at least a "happily for now." Yet if it's actually true that half of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce (which I've read is a faulty claim based on a misinterpretation of the statistics), then it's also true that half of all marriages last a lifetime.

Not that the Word Wenches blogger is saying no fiction should conclude with a sad outcome. What she objects to are stories (in whatever medium) that "are needlessly miserable at the end." If the disastrous or tragic conclusion grows naturally out of the story, as an inevitable result of the characters and their situation, that can work for her. That's different from a pointlessly sad ending designed for shock value or to flaunt the author's commitment to gritty "realism" -- or "simply because the writer thinks it will make for a better, more dramatic ending." I agree. "Sad" fiction isn't necessarily depressing. The finale of a tragedy by Shakespeare feels uplifting, not depressing. Seemingly meaningless destruction of the characters and their goals, to me, IS depressing. The purpose of art is to impose structure on, or discover it in, the apparent chaos of "real life."

In one of his books on literature, C. S. Lewis approaches the issue of "realism" from the opposite angle, addressing critics and readers who think the down-to-earth content of comedy is more "realistic" than the solemn grandeur of tragedy. He points out that the zany coincidences required to make a good farce work are just as artificial and therefore "unrealistic" as the plot of a well-crafted tragedy. Every genre includes some details of mundane life and excludes others, according to its particular requirements.

So we have no reason to apologize if we love to read and write upbeat fiction.

Margaret L. Carter

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

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 6 - Romance and the Ph.D. Thesis

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic

Part 6

Romance and the Ph.D. Thesis

Previous parts in "How do you know if you've written a classic?" series are:

Part 1 in this Series is about writing a "classic" illustrating the long time fan discovering new entries in a series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 2, Spock's Katra, is a long answer to a request for material for an online blog.  My answer focused on Theodore Bikel and his roles in Star Trek.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 3 answers very insightful interview questions from a Podcast host.  The verbal podcast interview is very different, but here are answers done with some time to think of how to explain the invisible connections between Star Trek, my deep study of the fan dynamics of the TV Series, and my own original universe Sime~Gen novels.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/07/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 4 - Fifty Year Test
Best Sellers made into movies or TV from the 1960's, James Clavell's Tai-Pan
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 5
James Clavell Move Over
 Current Science Fiction carrying on the classic tradition.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written_25.html

In Part 4 of this series on Classics, we looked at James Clavell's Tai-Pan, then in Part 5 we noted James Michener's The Source which was contemporary with Tai-Pan.  Today, these works are available in all modern formats, and still noteworthy.

Science Fiction writers are still working with these grand themes, so it is easy to see how Romance blends seamlessly into Science Fiction.

The envelope theme of Romance Genre novels is the profound concept "Love Conquers All."

The word "conquers" indicates a conflict resolved and the word "all" indicates the vast universe out there that is inimical to Romance.  Any obstacle, including the prohibition against traveling faster than light, can be conquered by Love.

But "love" is not defined, leaving writers to create different definitions of love and different ideas about what "all" might be, how and why it resists the force of Love.

So at its core, Romance Genre is a Ph. D. thesis about the nature of the human being, and the world(s) that humanity is embedded in.

In other words, the very nature of reality itself.

Each world the Romance writer builds to contain a novel is actually a Ph.D. thesis - a unique, original contribution to the sum total of human knowledge.

What do you have to say that has never been said before, or never been stated in exactly this way?

Problem solving, as we've noted in previous posts, is the art of restating the problem until the problem itself reveals its own solution.

Problem solving is the art of posing questions - unanswerable questions - the Art of the Impossible.

Science Fiction is the story of solving impossible problems by expanding the realm of science.

Science Fiction is the literature of ideas.

Romance is the literature of an idea - Love Is Real.

So what exactly is love?

Choose a definition for your Characters to use and you've begun to build a world for them to live in.

As with these Classics we mentioned in Parts 4 and 5 of this series, to find the issue relevant to today's readers, look back in history - even pre-history.

Archeologists have retrieved bits of pottery and statues, foundations of buildings, tools, weapons, and artwork that reveal some of the religious convictions, and social values of civilizations long past, and peoples whose names for themselves aren't even known.  We know a lot about the elements of human nature that have never changed.

Love is one of those things - an intangible motivation so strong it can redirect a whole civilization.

We look back at the foundations of modern civilizations, and we find one of the oldest that still exists is the Judeo-Christian Bible in which the Creator of the Universe commands his people to love him, as if love is an act of will, a choice.

The Oral Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, a memorizable song or chant,  was, according to Rabbinic tradition, given to Moses at Mount Sinai in the year 1312 BCE, one thousand three hundred twelve years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

That is only 3,332 years before this year, 2020.

In those three thousand years, our civilization has struggled to find a definition of "love," and to live by it.  Love your neighbor as yourself has proven much more difficult than anyone imagined.

Many Romance Novels have detailed how marriages can be founded on a love for an imaginary person superimposed over the real person.  Beauty and the Beast -- at some point the Beast beneath the illusion is revealed.  Or conversely, at some point, the truly lovable treasure of a person is revealed from under the illusion of a Beast.

In other words, we "project" an image onto other people, then establish an emotional reaction to our imaginary image, not the actual other person.

If humans do that today, it seems likely they did it three thousand years ago, and more.

Study the Classics we have mentioned, see how they draw the picture of human traits that persist even when presented with new problems.  Find a new problem, ripped from today's headlines, apply a human habit from thousands of years ago to that problem and generate a new solution.

There you have your Ph.D. thesis.  That is what a Best Selling Classic novel is - a unique, original contribution to human knowledge.

If the subject you choose is Love, chances are you will create a Classic Romance.  If you use the science fiction method of posing questions, chances are you will create a Science Fiction Romance that has the potential to become a Classic.

Remember, Romance is about Soul Mates teaming up to create their own unique Happily Ever After - a stable life.  The Classics we've noted declaim loudly there is no such thing as stability, or a stable life.  Those Classics don't deal directly with the Soul in all its theoretical complexity as discussed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/soul-mates-and-hea-real-or-fantasy-part.html

Romance is about doing the impossible, that which has never been done, creating stability.

It could take a Ph.D. thesis to convince a generation of young readers that stability is possible in this world, for human families and nations.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How To Marry A Rich Man

This was posted on Google+ by a photographer:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107023475113646570269/posts 

But it raises the quintessential Romance Writer's Question -- How To Marry Rich (or above one's station in life).

Here's what Baber Afzal
Film Maker, Experimentalist and an HDR/Portrait Photographer
Posted (I've no idea if this particular CEO actually said this, but it doesn't matter for this exercise).

-----------QUOTE--------------
A reply from CEO of J.P. Morgan to a pretty girl seeking a rich husband


A young and pretty lady posted this on a popular forum:

Title: What should I do to marry a rich guy?

... I'm going to be honest of what I'm going to say here.

I'm 25 this year. I'm very pretty, have style and good taste. I wish to marry a guy with $500k annual salary or above.

You might say that I'm greedy, but an annual salary of $1M is considered only as middle class in New York.

My requirement is not high. Is there anyone in this forum who has an income of $500k annual salary? Are you all married?

I wanted to ask: what should I do to marry rich persons like you?

Among those I've dated, the richest is $250k annual income, and it seems that this is my upper limit.

If someone is going to move into high cost residential area on the west of New York City Garden(?), $250k annual income is not enough.

I'm here humbly to ask a few questions:
1) Where do most rich bachelors hang out? (Please list down the names and addresses of bars, restaurant, gym)
2) Which age group should I target?
3) Why most wives of the riches are only average-looking? I've met a few girls who don't have looks and are not interesting, but they are able to marry rich guys.

4) How do you decide who can be your wife, and who can only be your girlfriend? (my target now is to get married)

Ms. Pretty

A philosophical reply from CEO of J.P. Morgan:

Dear Ms. Pretty,
I have read your post with great interest. Guess there are lots of girls out there who have similar questions like yours. Please allow me to analyse your situation as a professional investor.

My annual income is more than $500k, which meets your requirement, so I hope everyone believes that I'm not wasting time here.

From the standpoint of a business person, it is a bad decision to marry you. The answer is very simple, so let me explain.

Put the details aside, what you're trying to do is an exchange of "beauty" and "money" : Person A provides beauty, and Person B pays for it, fair and square.

However, there's a deadly problem here, your beauty will fade, but my money will not be gone without any good reason. The fact is, my income might increase from year to year, but you can't be prettier year after year.

Hence from the viewpoint of economics, I am an appreciation asset, and you are a depreciation asset. It's not just normal depreciation, but exponential depreciation. If that is your only asset, your value will be much worse 10 years later.

By the terms we use in Wall Street, every trading has a position, dating with you is also a "trading position".
If the trade value dropped we will sell it and it is not a good idea to keep it for long term - same goes with the marriage that you wanted. It might be cruel to say this, but in order to make a wiser decision any assets with great depreciation value will be sold or "leased".

Anyone with over $500k annual income is not a fool; we would only date you, but will not marry you. I would advice that you forget looking for any clues to marry a rich guy. And by the way, you could make yourself to become a rich person with $500k annual income.This has better chance than finding a rich fool.

Hope this reply helps.

signed,
J.P. Morgan CEO

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

My comment was:

There's a question that's gone unasked here, and the CEO POV almost captures the issue but not quite.  "What qualities do high-income jobs imbue into a prospect that "I" (the not-so-rich pretty one) would find attractive?"  In other words, what do I need in a husband that would inevitably cause him to be a high-income-earner?

The CEO worked the problem from the high-income-earner's POV, but not from the low-income-earner's POV.

And it occurs to me to wonder if the pretty woman was actually a low income earner.

Which begs the question, why does income-status (or asset status) difference matter in marriage?

Or does it matter, really? 

We've seen all this mulled over in thousands of "trash romances" -- read-and-toss romances, all cut from the same cloth. 

And we've seen it tackled in long Romances, with wide, deep, wrenching themes, or in Fantasy Universes where the marriage twists the course of history for several civilizations.

This is an issue in today's world where we are wrestling with whether human cultures actually create CLASS DIFFERENCES inevitably, or should we strive to erase "CLASS" from social structure? 

Crossing "Class" lines for marriage in any culture is an Alien Romance -- it's romance with someone so different they may as well not be human.  Well, you could probably make a case for that for any male/female marriage, Venus and Mars and all that.  Add a class barrier (or a age gap) and you're talking Alien Romance. 

Is there even really such a thing as "CLASS" -- as a permanent attribute of a human being.  (My Fair Lady)

What this pretty woman was pondering was the methodology of changing her CLASS by an act of will.

She may be unable to answer the question because it's not framed well.

The marriage "transaction" is (as we noted last week) one of GIVING and RECEIVING -- not TAKING and RECEIVING. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

The question the CEO was dancing around is, "What have you got to offer in return for wealth?" 

What have you got that wealth does NOT have? 

If you would RECEIVE you must first GIVE -- and what the CEO was perceiving was an attempt to TAKE instead of GIVING.

In a real Soul-Mate match between someone hugely wealthy and someone not wealthy, usually you find that the not-wealthy one brings some talent, ability, or magic to the Relationship that actually causes the entire family's system to function. 

"Behind every successful man is a strong woman." 

Very often, the earning power of a man goes way up after he commits himself to a woman.  When you commit to GIVE, then the means to do that giving will come into your life (it's called the Law of Abundance in Magic, and just God in most Religions.  But the function of it does not depend on belief.)

Sometimes a very wealthy man (say who inherits wealth) marries a woman who is a great wealth manager.

Sometimes a wealthy woman marries a man who is a great wealth manager.

But consider the woman above -- she presents herself (perhaps coyly) as having nothing but beauty.  To whom is a woman of great beauty valuable?  To an artist, producer, or other purveyor (modeling agency owner) of beauty. 

Suppose, however, that the pretty woman has some other attribute than beauty, an attribute that will appreciate with time provided there is wealth available?

An example would be a woman who needs an expensive education to invent or discover something to change the human misery index in this world?

Say for example, this is a young woman with the Vision of how to create a cure for a disease or disorder, but she needs a doctorate and can't even get a scholarship?

Or suppose she is an entrepreneur type person who needs an investor.

In neither example is marriage the necessary component to make the business transaction work.

The fodder for a novel can be found in these situations though when you ask, "Why hasn't he found the cure for this disease, or gotten this or that education, or started up this or that business?"  Why didn't he do it himself? 

Then you ask, "Why hasn't she found a way to get the education, or team up with someone who has it?"  or "Why hasn't she just started a little garage business and demonstrated to neighbors that they should invest $100 in her business?"  (other than that this current government is making such startups impossible by making it illegal to do any of these little things without expensive permits and compliance and lawyers.)

Find answers to those "Why" questions for the high-income earner (could be either the man or the woman), then solve the entire problem by putting the two of them together into a marriage made in heaven -- where the spirits intertwine so cleanly and so naturally that each is energized, given vision, ambition, abilities they never had before BECAUSE OF the spiritual union between them supporting emotional health.

What happens when two such souls join in marriage?  Sometimes just a business partnership is needed; sometimes it needs marriage to pull off the trick -- either is 7th House.  What happens is that the spiritual energy circulating between them in that closed circuit called marriage creates the magical equivalent of the magnetic field circulating electrons create.

That magical/magnetic field can do "work" -- change things in the vicinity -- cause opportunities to arrive, trigger the actions necessary to take advantage of the opportunity, and then cascade on into a full materialization of the opportunity's potential energy. 

We discussed this magical/magnetic analogy last week.

In the Magical (Paranormal Romance) view of reality, the magic CAUSES the result.

In the God centered view of reality, the Soul reaches for contact (closes the circuit) with God, and spiritual energy flows into Reality through the person and imbues their actions with more effectiveness than when that circuit with God is open.

Either explanation will work for some readers -- but the trick the writer has to pull off is to present the vision of this process working out (a fulfilled marriage) and producing concrete results that one character explains one way, another character explains another way, and a third gives a totally different view.  None of these explanations are, (or should be) those of the author or the reader.  They are certain individual characters applying archetypical principles to the problem presented in the novel -- leaving the reader to puzzle over what really happened, knowing that the events depicted are possible in their own life.

To do that, the writer must be able to assume the point of view of each of these fully rounded characters, and for a time, to believe their explanation of why the universe works the way it does, to believe that philosophical point of view.

You have to be able to argue all kinds of points of view that are not your own.

To do that, you have to explore philosophy that is not your own.

To do that, you have to shelve your prejudices.

You see around you (just read some blog comments on the larger media sites) opinions you know in your gut are absolutely despicable -- that no honorable or reasonably value conscious human being could possibly espouse. 

You live in a world that doesn't know the difference between opinion and fact, or between opinion and a question!  But you, as a fiction writer, (most especially Romance which makes too many assumptions that aren't properly questioned in the plot), must know the difference between your own opinion, your character's opinion, facts, reality, and fiction.

To create a universe full of characters who walk off the pages into your readers' dreams, you must find for yourself a vision of this universe, how and why it functions as it does, and then how and why all these different people (your potential readers) see a totally different universe around them.  Then you have to explain to your readers the visions of the universe held by your other readers. 

This is a process that Walter Breen called "Shifting Subjectivities."  I can't think of a better name for it.

We all live in a subjective world where the self is at the "origin" (the point where the X, Y, and Z axes of our coordinate system cross), but each and every one of us is the "origin" of a totally different coordinate system.  We do have one immutable thing in common.  We all are at THE origin of A coordinate system. 

We are all unique individuals -- but we're all the same. 

That's why Hollywood is always calling for "The Same But Different." 

Create that effect among the characters of a novel and no matter how whacked out your Paranormal Romance worldbuilding has to become to tell the oddball story of Love overcoming Impossible Odds - your novel will have a powerful verisimilitude that will vibrate the subconscious minds of your readers.

By creating these individual characters living in their individual worlds, you create an opportunity for them to have Relationships.

The more stark the difference between two characters, the more powerful the attraction.

Thus the poor-but-beautiful girl can marry the rich-but-socially-awkward boy, and the two make a team that can achieve miracles.

The way to marry a rich person is to study what changes riches make in a person -- and contrast that transformed person with yourself.  Then make those changes in yourself, (My Fair Lady) even without the riches. 

Another reason "the rich" don't want to associate with "the poor" closely enough to form a Relationship is simply that so many of "the poor" don't see themselves as "rich." 

There's a Chassidic story about a Rabbi who was very poor (in money) - living in a hovel, barely able to feed wife and children - and he was known for his Wisdom and for being a very happy individual whose good cheer was infectious.  A miserable rich man came to inquire how this Rabbi could be so happy while penniless, and the poor man looked around his dirt-floored hovel and basically asked, "Poverty?  What poverty?" 

You live at 0,0,0 in your coordinate system - at the origin.  Each and every individual is in a place at the center of their universe, but only one person at a time can occupy any given place.  How one fictional character sees their life is not how the other fictional characters in the story see theirs.

How you see your life may not be how your life really is.  You can look up the Z axis -- or out the X axis -- or 90 degrees over there on the Y axis -- or 45 degrees out into the fields in between in any combination of directions -- and in each direction you will see something different, yet all these views are the truth.

You can't change your birth time, and thus your "life" (at what age certain things MIGHT happen).  But you can change how you view these events.

When you invent a character, invent their direction of view at the start of the story -- hammer them with Events -- wrench them around to look in another direction at their Life. 

Show this process in your Romance stories, show how looking in one direction all you can find are medium income potential spouses, but looking in the other direction from where you "are" you can see very rich people. 

Show how this change of direction of view can change the direction of a life's progress -- for better or for worse.

So, how do you marry a rich man?  Look at the man you've married and find where he is rich!  Look at yourself, find your riches, and give them.

That bit of advice won't help you write a MARRY A RICH MAN ROMANCE all by itself, but coupled with last week's post and the posts linked at the bottom of it,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html
you will begin to understand Giving, Receiving and Taking at a level where you will have something important to add to the "Marry Above Your Station" Romance Genre.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Do Your Lovers Live The HEA

I'm blatantly borrowing John Rosenman's excellent blog post title, "Do Your Lovers Live The HEA?"

You all know, if you've read my novels, that my answer is yes, but it's not so easy as all that.

Heather Massey at The Galaxy Express, on July 6 reviewed John Rosenman's novel Beyond Those Distant Stars http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/07/reflections-on-john-b-rosenmans-beyond.html

He gave the discussion another spin in his blog post
http://storytellersunplugged.com/johnrosenman/2010/07/13/do-your-lovers-live-hea/comment-page-1/#comment-323

And then Heather pointed me to his post and I commented, he answered, others commented, Heather is brewing another comment, and I commented back on John's comments -- you gotta read this thing.

Here's his thesis reduced to a sound-byte:

-------Quote John Rosenman--------
My point is that romances need to be less restrictive and more open to possibilities in order to explore more fully the often painful and difficult realities of life. Romances can be complex. They can be literature.
-------End Quote---------

We, at Alien Romance, of course agree that Romance genre not only "can be" but actually is "Literature" upon occasion. Many occasions, in fact. Many more occasions when combined into SFR or PNR.

In the comments on John Rosenman's post, Heather pointed out that I had explained how "the ending" is defined not by the content of the event (resolution of the conflict) but by where in the character's story-arc you stop writing.

Heather quoted me in her comment:
-------Quote---
Jacqueline Lichtenberg said it best, noting that “There’s HEA potential in every other genre, even or especially Horror.” ( http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html )

In this post ( http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/failure-of-imagination-part-ii-society.html ), Ms. Lichtenberg notes that

“Why does Romance genre absolutely require it? And SF also has an ending-point formula — called “upbeat.”

These are actually identical requirements. It’s all about where you start telling the story, and where (in time) you end it. Life is a sine-wave. It has high points and low points and neutral points but never stops waving. Storytellers just CUT a section out of that sine-wave to structure a plot.

The publisher’s end-point requirement determines the starting point.”
-----End Quote---

There are a couple more points I want to bring to the surface here because we've been discussing the Editing process for the previous 7 posts which relate to this "ending" issue, and why we have defined endings. This series was posted on:

Aug 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, Sept 7 & 14, 2010

The HEA is an editorial requirement when the editor is filling a publishing line with consistent, identical product under the Romance Genre label.  

The HEA is not an editorial requirement for lines that do not advertise the "Romance" genre label, but they may have other requirements.  

Why is the HEA ever a requirement?

John points out that the fun, enjoyment, and fascination inherent in reading a story that pivots on a Relationship is the uncertainty of how that relationship will be at "The End."

To generate that uncertainty, some novels must end differently than the HEA.

Otherwise, you have something like a TV Series episode where you know the main characters won't get killed. So the threat to their lives is not piercingly immanent to the viewer.

John points out that the HEA itself is not unbelievable, but in reality it doesn't always happen. It does happen sometimes, so it's plausible in fiction but should not be inevitable because if it's inevitable, there's no suspense, and thus no ultimate payoff.  His underlying thesis seems to be that inevitability itself is unrealistic enough to destroy reader enjoyment, and an inevitable HEA is worse than other sorts of inevitabilities. 

And I think that's the core of the issue. Inevitability. Realism.

We are attracted to fiction that discusses "life the universe and everything" in terms of a philosophy (theme) that we either have internalized or wish we had internalized.

Fiction reading either reinforces our assumptions about the world, or holds forth an ideal that we want to assume and shows us how it is possible the ideal could really be true.

Good fiction does both while at the same time calling both assumptions and ideals into question. That's called "depth" and you usually find it in "Literature."

You seldom find it in films because of the nature of the visual medium. But the classics, the films that last for generations and still speak intriguingly of our dearly held ideas, do reveal "depth" on re-viewing. That kind of screenwriting is very difficult. I think it happens very much by "accident."

See my blog post on what you can do in a novel that you can't do in a film:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

I have been contending that the essence of the Romance Genre - the essence that we extract and combine with the essence of the SF Genre or Fantasy Genre (or both) - actually is the essence of "Literature" in its highest form.

See:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/mutants-as-aliens.html

where I discussed how

Romance Genre embodies two core principles:

a) Love Conquers All
b) The Soul Is Real

The HEA is a "requirement" because HEA is what results once Love has Conquered All. If all is conquered by love, there's nothing left that can sunder the couple, not even death.  

If the HEA is not the "ending" of the novel, the theme that distinguishes Romance from all other art forms is not present in the novel and it is therefore not a genre romance novel.

Love Conquers All might be a sub-theme, but it would be there to be disproved so that a larger theme "life is nothing but misery" -or- "happiness comes in bright sparks that fade quickly" -- can be fully presented.

Here's one of many of my discussions of the uses of theme in novel structure:

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

Those readers looking for reinforcement of their belief that Love Conquers All and/or The Soul Is Real, and those looking to indulge in a few hours of hope that these things are true, will be bitterly disappointed by an ending that is not an HEA -- and they will want their money back.

You can work with either core premise of Romance in a non-romance. You can construct a non-Romance genre novel to culminate in an HEA and that will not make the novel a Romance.

As I said in the comments discussion to:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/toystory-3-analyzed-for-beats.html

Romance Genre is distinguished by specific choices for the elements that a novelist can fill in with a number of different choices when writing other genres.

Those choices for a Romance are:

A)In a Romance the Relationships IS the plot, and all else is commentary on that relationship.

B)The conflict is the Relationship, what creates the attraction and what blocks the attraction.

C)The story is all about how each person is changed by the need for the Relationship.

D)The beginning is where the couple first become conscious of each other.

E)The ending is where the Relationship roadblocks are removed and it's full speed ahead into a Happily Ever After life for the couple.

Any given reader may, at whim, prefer to sink into a novel where they know what the rhythm and theme will be - a Mystery, Western, Action, Intrigue, Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, any genre. At other times, they may want "general fiction" -- which also has a very strict, set formula.

See my post on the reasons why we have such a thing as genre fiction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/genre-root-of-all-evil.html

The Romance genre, and all its hyrbids -- SFR, PNR, Action Romance, whatever criss-crossed mixture -- if the "R" comes last in the nickname, it means the plot-structure follows the 5 elements I listed above.

Sometimes we read fiction for a realistic view of our real world. We want contemporary maybe urban settings like where we live with people who are up against the same problems we are (TV sets as babysitters, cell phones always on, carpooling nightmares), and sometimes we want to get away to impossible places with other problems.

If you go for the kind of Romance where not only does love conquer all, but also The Soul Is Real (where lovers find their Soul Mate and there's something spiritual, transcendent, bigger than "reality" that enters their lives because of that mating) then you are in the set of Themes where the HEA is not only inevitable but also realistic.

If you combine both Love Conquers All and The Soul Is Real, you walk into a world where there is no other possible ending than the HEA.

The story isn't over until the Soul Mates have ignited Love so bright that it illuminates and dissipates all darkness - and the world is revealed to be truthfully what it seems to be under the blurring veil of "falling in love."

The illusion of perfection is torn aside to reveal the truth that perfection already exists - and continuous, solid, strong, pervasive happiness is the stable foundation of life, not a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

It's not that the couple will face no further challenges, but that those challenges will only strengthen their love and their ability to make life better for all those around them.

This is the thematic statement about the true nature of reality that the Romance Genre focuses on.

The story can only end where the couple (and the reader) understand the inevitability and realistic condition of life, the HEA.

If the writer quits writing before that point, the reader feels as if she has read a story-fragment, three chapters without the outline! It's incomplete because happiness is the goal and it has not been achieved.

Achieving that goal of steady-state happiness though, isn't easy. It isn't realistic enough even for a Fantasy if the goal is achieved easily.

If the Soul Is Real - then all sorts of PNR genre stories are possible where soul mates try and fail and die and are reborn and try and fail and die and are reborn and grow painfully until they finally succeed. That can take lifetimes and a whole series of novels strewn across all of human history and possibly to the stars and beyond.

When the Immortal Soul is involved, the story possibilities for Romance Genre then truly do verge on the immense vistas that John sketched in his blog post.

From John's description of the kinds of stories he likes to write, I deduced that what he (and many others who feel as he does about the HEA) is writing is the "backstory" of a Romance, the "try and fail" lifetimes before the Soul Mates can achieve the HEA.  He seems to be writing the growing pains of Souls.

For some readers "The Soul Is Real" is a fantasy premise. For others it's a pragmatic fact of everyday life. In either case, the novels produced by combining that premise with Love Conquers All have the potential of reaching the kinds of audiences that Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet has been proven to reach.

In my comments on the TOYSTORY 3 post linked above, I raised one question we should address at some point.

---quote of myself----
Westerns reached a level of respect during the years they dominated TV. Why shouldn't SFR (science-fiction-romance blended) reach the same level of popularity?

How would that change the world? Would that change be for the better? Is it the writer's responsibility or role to effectuate such change, or do we wait with folded hands for others to decide?
----end quote of myself----

Why is the inevitable HEA such an imperative element in defining "Romance Genre?"

Why do so many people feel the HEA is not realistic? Why do they feel that pain, parting, sorrow, frustration and loneliness are the hallmarks of a realistic fantasy that draw readers in to a built world?

And then turn the question around and look at it this way:

Why does John think the Romance Genre should relax it's stricture about the HEA being necessary?

Consider other possible ways to solve the (very real and important) problem his post points out.

He looks at Romance Genre and says it should change its formula and that would solve the problem of dull boring books with a predictable ending.

But maybe there's another (better????) solution.

Maybe people should change?

Maybe people should change their ideas about what reality really is?

Well, if that's the solution, then what ideas should be changed from what to what? And how?

Oh, this is one huge topic, the HEA!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg
twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Genre: the Root of All Evil?

I've just finished reading P. N. Elrod's latest installment in the VAMPIRE FILES, DARK ROAD RISING.

Dark Road Rising (Vampire Files)

It's a vampire series with a little bit of a love-interest on the side but not as a major focus.

So it's not Vampire Romance, but that doesn't keep me from loving the series! It is Intimate Adventure with a good-guy vampire.

http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html

Jack Flemming is a Reporter who had an affair with a female vampire, then got killed by the Chicago Mob (in the 1930's), and tossed into the lake, to wake up on the shore cold and hungry and unexpectedly a vampire.

He was befriended by a human Private Eye (British living in Chicago) and went to work being a detective for the Private Eye. He made some money fighting the mob with his self-discovered vampire powers, and bought a (haunted) nightclub. He's been successful ever since, but his life just gets more and more complicated because of the mob connection.

As he has mastered his Talents and used them (for good), he has been pulled deeper and deeper into the dark mists of vampirism, fighting to stay himself.

So what is this novel? It is so criss-cross-crossed genre it couldn't have been published before the Vampire Romance became distinct. It's the Vampire-As-Good-Guy, with no real HORROR genre in it, but most of the plot isn't directly about the problem with being a vampire. It's about the Chicago Mob circa 1933.

It's a historical gumshoe/chicago-mob story.

It's a hard-boiled mystery story (Flemming was a NY Reporter, and that means TOUGH).

It's a Mob Politics story.

It's a deep, complex character study via pure drama using themes about human nature.

It's an Intimate Adventure, where the plot is driven entirely by the Relationships, and the main character learns and changes because of the people he (or she) knows and cares for. You can't do that in an action novel because it's against genre rules (or used to be!)

It's an Hard Boiled Action story with lots of explicit blood and gore, but no horror. A little sex but not too explicit by modern standards.

It's Fantasy.

It's Urban Fantasy in the modern vein.

In other words, this series is my FAVORITE kind of reading because it has no category, no genre, or it's a genre of its own.

DARK ROAD RISING is lightly and artistically laced with anachronisms appropriate to Chicago in the 1930's and a little maybe from Hollywood. Every once in a while, Elrod drops in a perfect bit of archaic slang that makes you feel you're THERE in the 1930's. And she avoids modern slang, and even 1950's slang.

But like really great writers, she uses this slang sparsely, for flavor, and never to confuse or confound the reader, nor to impress everyone with her scholarship. The word meanings are clear from context, and of course many readers remember anyway. All that is the ART of this word-usage thing.

There's an artistic hand behind this word usage as well as a scholar, and the blend tickles me and makes me laugh, hoot, and giggle my way through the book searching for the next word.

When a writer begins to get advice on writing, the one thing that comes up again and again is DO YOUR RESEARCH. But the truth is, the story comes out better if you don't do so much research. Writers often try to cram in ALL the neat stuff they've learned doing research, instead of carefully choosing just a bit here and a bit there to spice up the narrative but not display their scholarship.

P. N. Elrod has gotten the spice just right!

In this entire novel, I found only ONE word out of place.

On page 371 of 389 in the trade paperback, a cigarette is smoked 'down to the filter' -- after so many pages of perfect-perfect-perfect anachronisms, I almost leaped out of my chair over that one. I "knew" there were no filter cigarettes until the mid-1950's.

BUT GUESS WHAT??? She's right!

By my memory, the FIRST filter cigarette came in the 1950's.

But Wikipedia says the first filter cigarette was invented in 1927 (but uptake was slow).

Google also produced the factoid that R. J. Reynolds Tobacco produced the first filter tipped menthol cigarette (Salem) in 1958, which is what I remember.

That this character would go for this experimental and obscure type of cigarette actually reinforces his character portrait.

My problem then is the blase acceptance of the onlooker, who likely had never seen a filter cigarette (people used ivory HOLDERS back then, not a paper filter attached to the cigarette and designed to be thrown away after use.)

But I learned something, and it was only in that one spot that the factoid or anachronistic language stopped the smooth flow of the narrative for me. I rather doubt anyone else would even notice if they don't remember the 1950's.

So THE VAMPIRE FILES by P. N. Elrod is an exceptionally smooth blend of genres that reads with an easy, natural rhythm for modern readers.

If you have read anything written in the 1940s, you know the difference.

Dashle Hammet's Sam Spade is a case in point. You should try to find some of Hammet's work and read it for the flavor and style remembering it was for an audience that had NEVER HEARD any of this invective or slang. The readers and their friends just didn't talk like that, and people who talked like that didn't read novels.

Here is a neat website with loads of information about the evolution of genre.

http://www.vintagelibrary.com/fiction/genres/hardboiled.php

I've written a number of posts on genre for this blog and have more to write. But recently, a connection on LinkedIn asked me to define genre, and for quite a while I drew a blank on that. Then I came up with this sketch.

Genre is a term which focuses on the reader's taste as seen by the editor, and creates a trope the writer dares not break because readers want it unbroken and editors know that.

But ideas don't come to writers (usually) in genre format.

In my previous post here,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

I began to discuss finding the readership, and writing for a readership which is the key to the perennial success of the Romance genre.

I intend to take a very close look at readerships and their composition, plus the reasons why certain types of stories become popular with certain demographic segments.

If you look at that Vintagelibrary.com site about pulp fiction and think about it, you may get ahead of me in sorting readerships out.

But let's look again at the differences between genres -- this is not absolute, but just one way I have of looking at it.

To understand the explanation of differences among genres, you have to be able to distinguish what I call "plot" from what I call "story" -- nomenclature varies among writers and the reason for that is in one of my writing posts.

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

With that in mind, we can think about genre ingredients.

"Action Adventure" has a plot driven by "Adventure" (which is defined as the main POV character moving from inside a comfort zone (such as home) to outside that zone, (such as a foreign country).

One example is Bilbo Baggins by his fireplace; then climbing through a wilderness scared to death but brave in a good cause.

"Action" genre signature is also plot defined. The plot's basic problem has to be solved by PHYSICAL (not psychological) action (shooting people, rescuing dangling people, RISKING LIFE AND LIMB to TAKE CHARGE).

Typically the blurb for Action/Adventure (A/A) says something like "only XYZ can save ABC from WQ"

And the hero must rise to the occasion by going outside the comfort zone of home and risking "everything" to do whatever.

Vigilantes (Batman) are a perfect example -- the law says you can't touch this criminal. OK, we'll do it ourselves and risk getting caught, or we'll just defy the lazy Sheriff and get the criminal and nevermind "rules of evidence" in court. Courts fail, the argument goes, because they let real criminals go free. So it's up to the citizens to keep the neighborhood clean.

CRIME FICTION has the plot driven by the crime and the need to either prevent the crime or punish it.

Like SF, CRIME has a huge plethora of sub-divisions. The Detective and the Private Eye are only two. And there are novels that show the crime from the criminal's point of view with the criminal being the sympathetic hero.

But the thing to remember is the genre is defined by the nature of the plot.

Now you can do CRIME SF too -- Asimov's Black Widow series is a perfect example.

Gumshoe fiction. Private Eye fiction. Detective. Mystery (Murder She Wrote). Police Procedural (where the plot is driven by the need to keep the evidence trail clean and make a court case that will stick because it's better to let a real criminal go than to convict an innocent).

Each genre is named for the single most prominent plot element.

HORROR is defined by the Hero or main POV character being an innocent victim of something huge, overwhelming, unstoppable, unbeatable. The key plot element is that the Hero can NOT WIN (which is the exact nuance that turns a dream into a nightmare). It's not that the Hero is not capable or brave or strong. It's that the Evil stalking the Hero is a part of Nature and by definition can't be destroyed. At the most, it can be immobilized for centuries, (silver chains, sigils, incantations, magic jewels, djinn bottles) but never destroyed. The Hero can not win but only put off defeat to future generations.

Take a regular Action/Adventure story, but make the adversary an Elemental that can not be destroyed, and the Hero can not win. Leave out "winning" and that turns A/A into Horror.

My personal sorting definition is that genre is not defined by what you put in, but by what you LEAVE OUT.

By selectively leaving out many obvious issues, you create a genre that is focused cleanly and clearly on one thing.

Now the genre lines are changing as cross-genre like THE VAMPIRE FILES is (finally) coming into prominence. (YAY!!!)

But take Romance for example. It has to have a certain Neptune driven "mood" and an HEA ending. You break the "romance" mood if you sprinkle in a lot of really ugly issues that people feel strongly about in real life. (politics; religion; Death; Failure; Depression; Suicide).

Neptune is also the main driver of "Horror Genre" -- where "the unknown" is "unknowable" and "unconquerable" and creepy.

The feeling of falling in Love is very similar to falling into Hell. The plot dynamics of the story are also very similar which is why you get things like Jurassic Park with a love story, a scientific based puzzle, and the genie breaks out of the bottle and you have UNSTOPPABLE wild animals. The couple might escape the wild animals THIS time, but Science is still out there ready to spring another uncontrollable surprise on us.

There is a whole sub-genre of tech-phobe fiction that is essentially horror turned into SF. Star Trek: The Original Series episode CAPTAIN DUNSEL is a case in point. Technology replaces people ruthlessly. Science or Technology becomes the root of all evil.

The difference between Horror and Romance is that in Romance you can win, and you have Love on your side which conquers all evil. In Horror, you can't win because the force that conquers all good is on the OTHER side. It is exactly the same plot, from a different point of view.

It used to be that if it had a Vampire in it, a story was automatically Horror genre. Today very dark Vampire characters are Romance heroes because there is a sexy attraction to the "other."

Look again at the Pulp Fiction site. See how the sheltered and protected public embraced a sanitized depiction of some distant part of their world.

-----------
The hard boiled detective was a character who had to live on the mean streets of the city where fighting, drinking, swearing, poverty and death were all part of life. This new type of detective had to balance the day to day needs of survival against the desire to uphold the law and assist justice.
-------------

And part of the trope was the detective's ability to turn vigilante and see justice done with his own independent hands.

Since I've been talking about how we can change the world's attitude toward the Romance genre, possibly with a TV show or a film, let's note here that Dashle Hamit had the exact effect on his world that we want to have on ours, just with a different subject matter. What we're trying to do would rewrite that quoted paragraph like so:

-----------rewrite-----------
The Soul Mates are characters who have to live on the clean suburban streets of the suburbs where consideration, folk dancing, careful speech, razor-thin financial margins and home-hospice care are all a part of life. This new type of Soul Mate couple has to balance the day to day needs of their family and neighbors against the desire to uphold the law and assist justice.
----------------------------

What do you think? Try a rewrite of that paragraph for yourself and see if you can invent the Romance genre anew.

Don't forget there's a genre called Action Romance that's well recognized, and often blended into Futuristic Romance.

Note how "Futuristic Romance" is not SF Romance.

SF Romance plots are driven by a scientific puzzle or scientific fact that turns the plot, and that you must understand the science of in order to understand the story.

"Futuristic Romance" can be based on any silly vision of the future with or without any scientific understanding. It's just romance set in some future. For me, these novels succeed to the exact degree that the futurology does, and so J. D. Robb's future doesn't work well for me, even though I like the In Death series.

So genre names are all about the plot driving mechanism, and what you must exclude in order to keep the mood and focus on that driving mechanism.

CRIME can be ugly as sin (True Crime) or sterile and intellectual (Sherlock Holmes).

Rarely is an author allowed to challenge the very premise of the genre within a story in that genre. Genre is based on ASSUMPTIONS that are not challenged. That's my definition. Things you leave OUT define the genre, and one of those things is the same in all genres -- don't challenge the genre premise in the plot.

In Romance, it's Love Conquers All that must not be challenged.

In SF it's Science Conquers All that must not be challenged.

In Crime it's Crime is Wrong that must not be challenged.

In Adventure, it's "the solution is not here but somewhere else" that can't be challenged. (home is not a fun place to be).

In Action, it's "There Is No Other Possible Solution Than To Kill The Bad Guys." You can't make friends with the bad guys and turn them into good guys in an Action genre story. (all the rules are changing, remember?)

I'm an Amazon Vine Voice (a pre-release reviewer) and they send out a newsletter listing books reviewers can choose from. One thing I've noticed lately is that many of the books just labeled fiction, not SF or Fantasy, have strong SF elements or Fantasy settings. SF/F has actually become recognized as MAINSTREAM. You can get away with putting a vampire, or a supernatural creature such as a djinn, into a plain fiction story and it won't be labeled Horror or Fantasy by publishing.

Since Star Trek and Buffy, the general reader/viewer has become more accepting of the supernatural. Genre barriers are breaking down. They will reform in a different configuration.

This is the biggest chance Romance has had to redefine itself as legitimate, respectable literature in decades. To pull that off, Romance writers (and readers) need to understand what is happening in genre and publishing, and not just let it happen but take charge of the direction of change. Romance needs a Gene Roddenberry.

Here's more on genre you can find on this blog. Not all these posts are by me.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/request-for-discussion-of-genre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/genre-beginning.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-genre-tini-dash-of-adventure-drop.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-genre-tini-dash-of-adventure-drop.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/so-which-genre-is-not-even-genre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/02/more-on-genre.html

Genre is a lot like style. It's very hard to explain because it's always changing. Identifying it is more art than science.

And every once in a while, a book or series becomes VERY popular, so that publishers run around trying to get authors to imitate the elements in that popular series. When the editors succeed, a genre is born, and publishers vie for the privilege of naming it.

Today new criss-crossing mixtures of genres are breeding new genres faster than they can be named, and because of the Web and social networking, publishers no longer have the sole power to identify and name a new genre.

It's vitally important that new writers (even those writing "best sellers" and general fiction) understand genre.

Only at the moment, there may be nothing to understand.

Readers create genres by popularizing certain titles, and editors create genres by trying to figure out why this title sold so much better than that title.  What do readers like about a particular story?  Why is it popular?

By letting genre definitions become so rigid, publishers have fooled themselves into thinking they're making more money than they could without genre requirements.  Publishers have only now begun to consider (with a sense of horror) publishing books like P. N. Elrod's Vampire Files.  Note her track record though with other books.  That's why she gets the chance to do this series. 

As a result of genre rigidification, many really magnificent books used to go unpublished.  Today there are e-books, but that industry is still in its infancy (and thus an opportunity).  Readers aren't accessing it well enough yet, and much of what is produced is not well written enough to be satisfying and worth the money and effort. 

So Genre has been the eclectic reader's horror nightmare.  "What great stories am I missing?" 

Requiring writers to produce within marketable genre categories, yet being wholly unable to define those fluid categories, may make genre into any writer's root of all evil, the unconquerable adversary that can only be stuffed into a bottle for future generations to deal with.

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