Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 7 - Another Use of Media Headlines by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 7 -
Another Use of Media Headlines by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previously, we looked at how you can integrate current headlines into your writing by distilling the headline into a theme, then sinking it into the World you are building (e.g. creating objects, customs, Holidays, politics, in your world that illustrate your theme, so one single line of dialogue can crystallize that theme without belaboring it).

Below, we're going to discuss an example of that from the TV show Royal Pains and an illuminating article from Fortune Magazine on the famed 1% who are the subject of Royal Pains, and how to put the two together.

Here is Part 6 of this series with links to the previous parts. (Because I put lists of links in these posts, Google shuns them.  Google has a lot to learn.)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

Before we get to this (hot) topic of Theme-Worldbuilding Integration, here's an annecdote about the Sime~Gen RPG AMBROV X the story-driven Science Fiction RPG that could become the thin edge of the wedge to change the way the general public looks at the Romance genre (and its writers!). 

Recently, I was at a doctor's office, and there was an intern following the doctor around. 

I mentioned the elements of this blog entry flying into my face that morning ( while watching Royal Pains via DVR), and how the following range of topics dovetails into the whole Ambrov X video game project.  The Fortune Magazine article I want to talk about here was in the magazine I'd been reading in the waiting room.

This intern was a twenties-something woman, thin, attractive, with eyes dancing with delight.  As I was leaving, she came up to me at the counter and mentioned that she loves science fiction. 

Oh? 

I handed her a flyer for the Sime~Gen novels and again mentioned that they are the foundation for a video game. She said SHE PLAYS VIDEOGAMES!

There is a huge prejudice (well known in gamer circles) against the women-gamers and women-game-writers.

Ambrov X has a woman in charge of the story writing (not me, and not Jean Lorrah). This splash-back against women in gaming is something I also found in an exchange on the Science Fiction Romance Brigade Group on Facebook.

So I handed this young doctor a flyer for Ambrov X.

http://ambrovx.com

Her smile lit the room.

I also mentioned that I had been watching the TV Series ROYAL PAINS.  Turns out that, too, is a favorite in that doctor's office.

On this one particular episode of Royal Pains that I had just viewed, there was a bit of dialogue writing that was placed and framed to perfection, and forms the basis of this topic on the integration of Theme and Worldbuilding with the current NEWS HEADLINES.

Hankmed (the concierge doctor practice on this TV Series) is under threat from two sources. 

On the one hand, the zoning regulations have been used to threaten to close down Hankmed because the local hospital had been closed and bought by a national chain of hospitals and Hankmed had picked up the slack by hiring more doctors and running a kind of mini-clinic in a residence not zoned for business.

On the other hand, the new hospital owners want to buy out Hankmed, hire the doctors, and run a concierge practice out of the hospital.  (eventually they do that, but this episode was part of the debate -- see "debate" as one of the "beats" identified by Blake Snyder in the SAVE THE CAT! trilogy on screenwriting.)

So Hankmed is fighting on two fronts.  The CFO (Hank's brother) wants to hire lawyers to fight the zoning board issue.  His wife knows a more efficient way to deal with it.  She delivers the THEME STATED (see SAVE THE CAT! Beat sheet) moment at exactly the right "beat" in the script.

"New Money hires lawyers to settle disputes; Old Money does it over cocktails." 

She proposes throwing a cocktail party gala/extravaganza. 

They try it - preparing swag to give away to make their case with the rich neighbors that Hankmed won't disrupt the neighborhood and should therefore get a zoning exemption.

As they are staging a speech to make this point, one of the older women of the neighborhood preempts the speech and declares that Hankmed can't help but disrupt because patients would be running in at all hours screaming for help. 

As that is being rebutted, a patient (carefully foreshadowed earlier) runs in crying in pain, disrupting the party.  Hankmed mobilizes to the emergency, thus making their opposition's point for them.

Crushed, Hank's brother insists he must hire some lawyers.  Just about then, flower arrangements arrive thanking them, and Hankmed gets some new contracts from the rich neighbors, BECAUSE they responded to the emergency.

Old Money settles things over cocktails. 

And that is a relevant point I want to make about our society today that points you to how to build a world and its society in such a way that it is totally alien to your reader, yet familiar enough to make sense.

We are, today, an extremely litigious society - we settle things with Lawyers at ever-increasing levels of fees for the lawyers.  And we keep settling things by making new complicated laws that will make more lawyers richer.  It used to be that to get rich, you became a doctor.  Now, you must get a law degree. 

---A side note:---

Decades ago, families raised their children to "follow in their father's footsteps" -- to go into the family business, etc.  I'm not talking Middle Ages guilds.  This was the early 20th  century strategy for a cohesive family.  ( Duck Dynasty meets The Waltons ) The strategy for beating a path out of poverty -- however grinding -- was to build a dynastic fortune.  Each generation was tasked to take the meager inheritance, double it, and pass it on, again and again until the entire family rose to the top 1% .

The actual vision was that by building dynastic fortunes this way, that "top 1%" would become the top 10%, 20% etc -- and eventually everyone would be very comfortably rich.

It was a war on poverty with a multi-generation strategy.  The current legal structure of Welfare, Food Stamps etc etc. was launched as "The War On Poverty" right after the tax laws were changed to PREVENT the building of dynastic wealth (e.g. the INHERITANCE TAX was one piece of that strategy.) 

Most of your readers will not be old enough to remember the dynastic-war-on-poverty that was launched after the Civil War freed the slaves and created that dynastic view of wealth building out of the old Plantation Owner model.  Most of your readers will believe that repealing an inheritance tax would destroy all hope of the poor person eeking out mere survival on government assistance programs.  Your current readers don't remember how well the dynastic approach succeeded (which it did), nor do they remember any of the pitfalls created by dynastic wealth (the ne'er-do-well of the Victorian Romance was believable because people knew them in real life). 

The Art of the Best Seller is founded on the writer's ability to articulate the beliefs, yearning desires, and wish fulfillment fantasies of the primary audience.  And that Art is now finding its way onto the TV Screen in such bits of dialogue as: "Old money settles matters over cocktails."  Memorize that line, and then go search your current world and create a bit of dialogue that encapsulates your theme.  

---End side note---

So right after watching that ROYAL PAINS episode, I was reading this article from a very old magazine in the doctor's office.

You'd probably do well to read the whole article, if it's still available, but I want to particularly point out that it cites statistics indicating that the 1% Big Money Fortunes belong to people who have made that money themselves (i.e. NEW MONEY -- within one lifetime, not inherited.)

There is a rapid churn in "who" owns those fortunes, so the "money" is always "new" not accumulated dynasticly.

Those are the people with the money to BUY books (rather than borrow from a library or pick up a pirated copy.)  OK, not maybe the 1% -- but the middle-class on the way up, or struggling to hold their own against the down-rushing tide of fortunes being shredded by the business cycle coupled to inheritance taxes that force the sale of businesses to pay the tax on capital transferred. 

So here is the link and an excerpt -- and while reading remember that we already have a detailed history of "lifting everyone up" on record between about 1865 and about 1910 - 1935.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/06/stop-bashing-rich/

SUBTITLE:  Instead of taking them down, shouldn't we figure out how to lift everyone up?

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

FORTUNE -- Alexis de Tocqueville famously chronicled American society's love of equality -- and its equally passionate pursuit of money. "The love of wealth," the French historian wrote in the 1840s, "is … at the bottom of all that the Americans do." America stands out among Western nations for its grudging, and often fawning, admiration for the wealthy classes it produces. With the road to riches seemingly wide open, Americans favor aspiration over resentment, envy over animus.

Except when they don't.

Rebellions against the rich are as much a part of the fabric of American life as the Horatio Alger myth. One year ago this month, that rebellion crystallized at lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, with the start of a series of autumnal protests called Occupy Wall Street.

During summer organizing meetings, anthropologist and former Yale professor David Graeber had hit on a brilliant marketing formula for the rebels: "Why not call ourselves the 99%?" he recalled asking fellow plotters. "If 1% of the population have ended up with all the benefits of the last 10 years of economic growth, control the wealth, own the politicians … why not just say we're everybody else?"

In a hotly contested presidential election year, that formula found easy political resonance. The 99% doesn't just mean the poor or the unemployed or even the hardhat crowd. It includes the vast middle class of blue collar and white collar and pink collar -- even the upper middle class. It's the 99% that defined America's post-World War II economic might and remains the target of any serious aspirant to the Oval Office. With head-spinning speed, the 1%-99% divide entered the vocabulary of journalists, politicians, and voters. More than ever in recent memory, both a presidential election and critical policy debates in Washington are being fought through this prism.

Sadly, it is a confusing and flawed prism, marred by hyperbole, half-truths, and unnecessary pessimism about what it means to succeed in America. Yes, in politics, perceptions do matter. Reports of CEOs making 231 times the average worker's pay, news of fat Wall Street bonuses often unhinged from performance, and images of executives flying to Washington on private jets to beg for bailouts feed fears that the system is hopelessly rigged toward the rich and powerful. But it's wrong to lump the 1% into a monolithic group of greedy, tax-avoiding, selfish capitalists. They are a lot different from what you might think.

MORE: Obama - a president ready for a showdown
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/16/obama-election-economy/

Most of the 1.4 million taxpayers who make up the top 1% gained their wealth through their own efforts rather than by inheritance. This group consists of a large number of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and small-time entrepreneurs, many of whom are working hard to create jobs. To vilify them is the wrong debate. It's a conversation that tends to cast blame on people who have made it to the top or anywhere near it, since Obama's tax proposal labels as "wealthy" households making more than $250,000 a year -- a comfortable income in Indianapolis (where the median home price is $102,000) but barely enough to afford a studio apartment in Manhattan, where tax rates easily hit 50%.

It's also a conversation that misses the point. Stirring resentment and pitting Americans against one another distracts from the harder and far more important conversation: how to jump-start the escalator for 23 million unemployed and underemployed -- and for those whose incomes were stagnating well before the 2008 recession. Diatribes against the 1% are provocative and ...

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


Referencing my "side note" -- we want SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE novels to "enter the vocabulary" of journalists etc with "head-spinning speed" and need a coinage like that "1%" concept. So study this article's notation about the origin of the 99% phrasing.  

Here's an article I found via a tweet from Random House that claims half of the adults in the USA read a book for pleasure last year -- a book?  Harry Potter?  Shades of Gray?  Who knows, but half is the highest figure I've seen.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-american-adults-read-books-for-pleasure-in-2012-20130930,0,4379575.story

Usually, the figure I see (worldwide and including children) is that only about 5% of humanity (sometimes 10%) ever has read books for FUN -- or read "text stories" for fun.  But a much larger percentage will watch TV Series, movies,  videos, YouTube clips, and play videogames.  There's something about text as a delivery medium that just doesn't have the "reach" to get beyond that 10%.  And don't forget that is A BOOK, not "books" (as in every day spending 2 or 3 hours reading.)

Romance genre has a much bigger "reach" than the text medium can allow.  Our subject, here on this blog, for the last few years has been how to present Romance genre to that larger audience in such a way that the HEA ending seems plausible to those who have no real-life model for it (e.g. the Romantically Impoverished).

More reading on the Estate Tax:
http://american.com/archive/2010/december/the-roosevelts-would-be-appalled

So back to the FORTUNE article.
 
FORTUNE also covers the opposite side of the argument, as I keep telling you good fiction must. In Romance, that means any given novel or story must cover the inevitable plausibility of the HEA as well as the view that the most one can get out of life is a Happily For Now. 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/19/news/economy/top-income/index.html

Keep in mind, it's NEW MONEY that you are writing about and to. 

Since the advent of the Inheritance Tax laws (or Estate Tax or Death Tax), the entire concept of "ever after" has been erased from our purview (yes, it did dominate our views before 1910-1935).  Wealth, and thus worry-free living -- the feeling of stability, is gone, and we have only "for now."  

Your primary audience is probably lower-middle-class, flush enough to buy a book, but not to think of themselves as rich (yet.)

Your THEME to build into your WORLD can be fleshed out with the thought processes taught in the older book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.



That book outlines how to answer the challenge in the sub-title of this Fortune Magazine article: 
SUBTITLE:  Instead of taking them down, shouldn't we figure out how to lift everyone up?

But I don't think that book highlights (it's not a Dad kind of thought) the principle illustrated by Hank's sister-in-law: Old Money Settles Things Over Cocktails.

That is a particularized statement of an even more abstract principle, or philosophical paradigm.  The theme element is behind that statement, while the statement is a particular application of that theme. 

Put another way: "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

That's to say that there are at least two ways to say the same thing.  The "same thing" you are saying is the theme, not the two different ways of saying it.  Get at the abstraction behind what you are saying with the way you arrange the history, architecture, laws, mythology and sexual mores of the world you are building.

Here we're discussing a theme about problem-solving that says there are many solutions to any one problem.

A "problem" is a PLOT-CONFLICT, a synthesis that arises from the main character's internal conflict and illustrates the philosophical lesson the character is learning because of the events of the plot.

I have often said here that the flaw in many books I read (well published ones, too) is that the Events of the Plot do not HAPPEN TO the main character.  The events happen, but not TO the character -- i.e. the character does not recoil under the impact of the event, then rebound along a different story-arc. 

To avoid that kind of failure, you take a character, and you present that character with a problem.  What the character does to solve the problem is the plot.  What the character learns from the mishaps along the way to success is the moral of the story, the thing that changes the character, matures that character and causes the character to "arc." That's what I mean by Events happening TO the Character.

So take a financially poor character, present him/her with a problem and a choice among solutions, then, via the events (and deeds of others in the story), teach your character to problem-solve like "Old Money." 

Consider the same Old Money/New Money dichotomy in another venue: the Martial Artist.

The beginner in Martial Arts, however fast-and-strong in a fight, goes into a fight with "something to prove" because his skills are New Skills.  The winner, the mature fighter goes into a fight with nothing to prove, just a problem (the younger fighter) to solve.  The mature fighter has Old Skills, and uses them differently.  The Old Skills allow the mature fighter to solve the problem more efficiently.  (remember the Karate Kid movies - or watch them again!)

Physical prowess, financial prowess, or romantic prowess, is all about how you apply power, not about how much power you have.  It's about cost-efficiency.  It's about elegance and strategy -- it's a video game RPG where you build a character who has Dynastic Prowess - training from the cradle in certain cultural attitudes. 

Another cliche I love: The Bigger They Are; The Harder They Fall. 

What Hank's sister-in-law (in the TV Series Royal Pains) said about how Old Money solves problems opened the possibility of solving the problem by a different (more cost-efficient) method than calling in the lawyers.  She found another way to skin the cat by saving the cat with cocktails.

The CFO of Hankmed loves cost-efficient.  In fact, your boss in any job will love cost-efficient because it's likely to get him (not you) a promotion. 

Which brings us back to the Romance element here. 

Common wisdom insists that what women want from their man is to be treasured for their personal, idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind-among-all-humanity traits, not physical beauty which is an attribute of most adolescent girls, or barely post-adolescent women.

Physical "beauty" is generally speaking a trait that blossoms at puberty (called pulchritude for a reason), and fades with the fading of reproductive proclivities.  The flat stomach just begs a man to fill it with a baby.

But a marriage of Soul Mates can't be based on a trait that fades after a few years or few births.  "What worth am I after my beauty fades, if all you treasure in me is my appearance?"

Here is an article worth an in-depth discussion on the nature of sexuality in humans. 

http://news.discovery.com/human/smaller-testicles-linked-with-caring-fathers-130909.htm

One suggestion this article hints at is that male testicle size might be reduced by hands-on nurturing of their own children.  Smaller testicle size is associated with good fathering and faithfulness.  Maybe that's not true, but it's a dynamite plot thesis!  Which is the cause; which the effect?  A novelist can play that idea from every direction.

A science fiction romance novelist might conclude that all the cultural and religious systems created by and for humans are about domesticating the male of the species to fatherhood, and to that end, the building of dynasty is paramount.

Males must have a stake in their children, and their children's lives, so they won't run wild.  That could be a Worldbuilding thematic element.  A theme is a Philosophy, and Worldbuilding is the process by which a writer makes an abstract idea behind a Philosophy into something that the audience can SEE, something concrete, a symbol that has meaning. 

For example: 

If Life is all about offspring domesticating and taming the wild male, then the male of the species must build dynastic wealth ( create something to pass on to offspring ), so offspring will climb out of the inefficient beginner's mindset of New Money solutions and acquire the suave, smooth and efficient methods of the 1%'s  Old Money (or Old Martial Arts skills) method of problem solving.

A theme/worldbuilding structure could be built to argue that destroying Dynastic Wealth (shades of the TV Show DALLAS !!!) via the tax code has destroyed the nuclear family and increased the incidence of warfare or violence as a method of problem solving (violence being the preferred method of dispute settlement for the testosterone driven male, the victim of large testicles.) 

Read up on "performance enhancing drugs," which is a term I should add to the blog on misnomers. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

Here's a CNN article summarizing legal moves on steroids:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/us/performance-enhancing-drugs-in-sports-fast-facts/index.html

General theory is that such steroids in high doses have been responsible for uncharacteristic violent out-bursts. 

Just what kind of "performance" is being "enhanced" by the disproportionate elevation of male hormones?  If a little is good, does that always mean a lot is better?  Do they enhance a male's ability to be a good father?  Is being a good father what it really means to be a Man?  Is fatherhood manly?  These are questions that can become thematic statements in the hands of accomplished writers. 


Soul Mates mate not for "life" but for many "lifetimes."  Just as in Dynastic Wealth, the strategy is multi-generational, and you will remember the vast popularity of the multi-generation saga.  I expect that type of story to become very popular again, soon.  

Therefore the attraction between Soul Mates can't be based on something transitory and incidental such as appearance.

So a woman wants to ignite a man's ardor via physical beauty, but needs to ignite a man's loyalty because of a trait that becomes better with age.

And it should be a trait the man doesn't have in himself and never knew he needed in a woman.

Hank's brother and sister-in-law portray the potential for such a Relationship -- she is beautiful (now), and growing in stability and wisdom under the influence of the CFO view of the world in terms of cost-effectiveness.  And she is cultivating a career based on an interest in Art, and "now" works for an art auctioneering firm.

The TV Show Royal Pains is not a Romance per se, but it has Romances in it - one that seems to be succeeding after a rocky start, and another that has failed after a promising start. 

Royal Pains is a TV Series that is story-driven, and Relationship based, liberally decorated with bits of "science" (medicine).  Science, as a subject, is supposedly reserved for a 1% -- a tiny fraction of those who read. 

Royal Pains is not science fiction but has all the elements of science fiction (the science is sort-of real, the story fiction).  It has all the elements to intrigue and satisfy the Science Fiction Romance crowd without attracting the opprobrium we seem to be the target of these days, both in women writing Science Fiction and women in videogaming.

As I said above, thin edge of the wedge.  Easy Does It.  More Than One Way To Skin A Cat.  Old money does it at cocktail parties.

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Story Springboards Part 2: The TV Shows FRINGE and ROYAL PAINS

Part One of this series is a Guest Post on Art Heists by a writer who is also a  fan of the TV Series White Collar, It Takes a Thief, etc:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/story-springboards-part-1-art-heists-by.html


With all the shifts in Publishing since the big publishers all ate each other up and turned over the editorial policies to committees and bean counters, the entire structure of "Gatekeepers" has morphed into something truly different.

By "Gatekeepers" writers usually mean folks who can say "no" to an author and make it stick, keeping the author away from the author's natural audience. This can be at the Agent level, the Editorial level, the Marketing level inside the big publishers, or the Bean Counter level.

Many authors whose books finally make it into traditional publishing channels, find their next book being rejected because the computers (also a new kind of gatekeeper that grew to dominance in the 1980's with the chain bookstores) just aren't returning the numbers.

When that happens, writers often take special notice of the immense drain that pirating has had on their sales (immense). 

Writers whose books take off to become New York Times bestsellers usually don't notice that drain so soon.  They're too busy writing their next book.  Publishers, though, notice.  They just can't do anything about it, (yet).

Everything they've tried has failed, and now Amazon is picking fights with distributors over the pricing of ebooks -- mostly because of a button TAG they put on some pages where people can note that the price is too high, or DRM deters them from purchasing.

In this environment of being swept round and round the tornado of change in the fiction delivery system due to ebooks, Print on Demand (POD) and Kindle and Nook readers, writers who are burning up with something to SAY feel they are not able to "reach" their audience.

Many tools have been launched in the last couple of years, and all those tools come and go (such as self-publishing, social networking promotion campaigns, YouTube Book Trailers). 

But the question remains.  How do you "reach" the audience you are writing for? 

You'll see statistics that people are watching less TV -- less network TV, less Cable TV, canceling cable subscriptions for internet-only TV -- and here comes Apple TV.  But the networks still exist.

By all accounts, profits are being made -- OK, it's more like the airline industry if you track the stocks -- but people do acquire and absorb TV series.  They just don't slave themselves to a network broadcast schedule, and on the whole, are determined to avoid sitting through commercials.

Video fiction is "churning" under the impact of the digital revolution just as publishing is.  But people still want fiction, and they want a wider choice.

Just as publishing feels they are competing with fanfic posted free online, video-fiction purveyors feel they are competing now on an almost-even footing with the Indie Film Maker, and web-based webisodes, (even webinars compete with classroom instruction).

So what is the creator of fictional universes to do to reach the hungry audience?

What happens next, (yes, this kind of cycle is repetitive throughout history) is  called "Market Making."

To get the notion into your head, think of the publishing history of Harry Potter.  At first it couldn't get sold.  Then it went to an obscure publisher working into an obscure readership (kids) - then Scholastic here in the USA, then kids with cell phones and Facebook accounts took it viral, then it exploded as a "Market" cohered, demanding more-more-more so more books came out creating the series, then movies.  I'm sure eventually a TV Series.

Now go study Vampire Diaries (CW network - and the books), and its history. 

Here's a blog post that arose out of the copyright dispute the originator of Vampire Diaries has had with the publisher.

http://parafantasy.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-is-utterly-ridiculousi-cant-even.html

I dropped a comment on that blog pointing to the blog posts here in recent weeks:

APRIL 10, 2012 POST BELIEVING IN THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER PART 6
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-6.html

APRIL 17, 2012 POST BELIEVING IN THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER PART 7
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-7.html
-----------
I did note that your blog shows that you are young, and so my posts based on this issue are not personally about you, but about how to train to enter the writing profession, what to expect, and how to maneuver into a position where you can negotiate from strength.

Those interested should read up on the trademark and copyright history of "Superman" and other movie Icons from the early days.

Originally, actors did not get "residuals" -- they didn't get paid every time a film was shown.  Then came TV, and reruns, and actors revolved, marched in union picket lines, and won a % payment every time a film they are in is shown on TV. At that point, the number of commercials inserted in films went up (where else would they get the money to pay?)

Every new technology has smashed the creative artists that the business and marketing people use to create the product they market.  Right now, skirmish lines are being drawn again.  You've fingered one of the jig-jags in that skirmish line, the "work for hire" provision of the 1970's revamping of the copyright laws.

I believe your post shows brilliance and a huge potential as a writer.  But it also points up the sore need for people to learn about the 1970's, and how well-meaning actions of that time, rooted in an understanding of the technology shift between 1920 and 1960, are shaping the skirmish lines today.

Artists (writers, actors, animators, film makers) can't win this battle if we don't know what the core of the battle is about. 

What may happen is that, without understanding the import of the impact of the new technologies, the well meaning and morally correct actions may create an even worse problem for artists working in the world that will exist 40 years hence.

So boring as it is, the history lesson is necessary, but I'm not the one to teach that lesson! 

I'm a science fiction writer, a futurologist, and my whole focus is on that world that will exist 40 years hence, and more. 

You do not deserve to be bashed for bringing this point to the surface.  You deserve to be celebrated.

But I for one am crushed that your taste for Vampire fiction has abated, because I write Vampire stories, novels, and now I've just turned in an anthology of Vampire stories by writers of Vampire fanfic who have gone pro with original universe stories.

Of course, I also write many other sorts of novels, so maybe you'll find one you do enjoy.  House of Zeor might be a likely candidate.  Or if you like doctor novels, try Unto Zeor, Forever.
--------------

So studying these Market Making works, and contrasting and comparing with the two TV shows Fringe and Royal Pains, what do we learn?

Consider the elements I focused on in this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

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

Now remember this post from my writing craft blog on constructing openings:
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/03/in-beginning.html

It's about the protagonist's goal at the opening -- and of course, how that changes by The End (i.e. how the character arcs).

In one of the comments, I pointed out how it is possible to telegraph the Protag's goal to the reader without the Protag actually knowing what his/her goal is. That is the goal that will be achieved at the ending in order to resolve the conflict, but the protagonist might have his/her conscious mind focused on a different goal, or even on avoiding the actual goal.

Now that "telegraphing" has to do with "symbols" and images and icons that we've discussed at length.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

That's my post on Icons and iconic book covers and movie posters.

Icons are two things simultaneously. 

A) They are a shorthand representation of some complex, mostly subconscious, notion shared by a large group of people.

B) They are a means of planting, germinating and spreading that notion to the subconscious minds of others. 

Think about that as the answer to the conundrum of Violence on TV being the cause of violence among children (and among the adults they will become) and the counter argument that no-way can mere stories affect the behavior of sane, well balanced, well parented children (or adults). 

It's one of those chicken/egg problems.

In our current "Learn This In One Minute A Day" and "Computer Programming Made Simple" world, we default to the assumption that every question can be posed and answered as an either/or proposition (the duality view of reality, the binary view, the zero-sum-game view).

The question is formulated as "does violence on TV cause children to misbehave -- or NOT?" and then everyone rushes to take sides, without ever questioning the question itself.

Critical thinking (questioning the question is an example) is not taught in school by teachers who don't know their subjects but do have degrees in "Education" -- degrees they achieved because they didn't ever stand up in class and tell the Professor off for misleading the class into thinking that there exists such a process as "teaching."

In my personal view, there is no such thing as "teaching" -- but there is such a thing as "learning." 

Brain research has shown how "learning" changes brain synaptic pathways, the generation of brain cells and their connections, the configuration of the brain is changed which is what learning is.

But where's the research that shows how "teaching" changes the teacher's brain? 

THE KING AND I - wonderful book and film, (stageplay too) -- "by your students you'll be taught" -- sing it often.

So there's a world-view built on the idea that it's possible to "teach" without learning -- i.e. that imparting knowledge and skills is a one-way process.

More, that imparting knowledge and skills is a process that can be achieved on purpose, by training and skills in imparting knowledge etc.

In my personal world view that's nonsense.  In my personal worldview knowledge and skills can be acquired.  An environment rich in knowledge and skills may surround a person who is not (at a particular moment) being acquisitive, and that person will not acquire anything.  When they turn acquisitive, they may acquire all kinds of things the "teacher" or "parent" had no clue they were imparting! 

So as I see it, you can't deliberately, on purpose, make a person acquire a particular notion.  People, even little ones, will take away from a situation the lesson that they, themselves, select -- regardless of what the teacher wants them to learn.

That is, kids are perverse and stubborn for the most part. 

So how is it that notions get transmitted generation to generation?  Where does culture come from and where does it reside within us?

I work on the model that culture resides in the subconscious which speaks the language of symbols.

By symbols we transmit notions.

Symbols in wide usage become Icons.

Icons that link a multitude of subconscious minds, giving them a "language" in common, create "markets."  People who've found meaning in an Icon want to learn more about it.

"The Vampire" has become such an Icon today, and now The Zombie is cycling into that iconic role, and other "supernatural" and "mythological" creatures are being cycled into that niche. 

Now look at the two TV Series, FRINGE and ROYAL PAINS.

FRINGE is about the structure of time, and the parameters of the Universes, collisions between Universes, the displacement of characters between universes, and how the human brain can be altered to facilitate Universe-travel. 

FRINGE is a very complex, abstract, piece of "worldbuilding" -- and it actually has a "real science" base -- a "what if...?" question based on current suspicions about stars, galaxies, time, space, and sub-atomic particles. 

The character of Peter has become iconic -- with the machine he gets spread-eagled into and transmitted across Universes.  It's a Crucified position. 

Who is "Peter"?  He died in one universe, and his genius father then went to another universe where he was deathly ill and rescued him, brought him back to "our" universe where he'd invented a cure.  Our character Peter grew up in our universe, only to discover he'd been kidnapped before he was old enough to remember.  He tried to get back to his own universe, had problems (several seasons of TV shows worth of problems) and has been displaced into yet another universe. 

In this built world of multiple universes, there are Time Cops of a sort, bald guys who flicker through Situations trying to straighten out the timeline.  They tried to get rid of the individuals who were messing up the timeline.  They tried to get rid of Peter - and he popped up in a lake in this third universe. 

It's all very abstract, very confusing, and the "science" seems more ridiculous than the Star Trek science seemed in the 1960's.  But guess what?  Mundanes, people who don't particularly enjoy science fiction, watch and like this show.

It's a story about people, and about two Soul Mates with a cross-universe affinity.  It's got a "mad scientist" stereotype with a twist, and with a heart who simply loves his son.  For love, he will bend the universes into pretzels -- at least he will until he realizes the harm he's causing.  Then he tries to fix it.

Now we're down to the thematic level with FRINGE.  When you get to the level of people, what they do, what happens, and WHAT THEY LEARN FROM THE RESULTS OF THEIR ACTIONS, you are at the level of theme.

And that's where you encode the lessons learned into icons that communicate, generate markets, and proliferate imitations of a type of story.

FRINGE is a science based science fiction universe with a science fiction theme -- actions have consequences, choices have consequences, and even mad scientists are highly moral about taking responsibility for the results of their actions, especially actions based on knowledge they have that others do not have.

As with most science fiction, the TV series FRINGE just barely acknowledges the possibility there could be Divine fingers stirring up lives and events.  If it's hinted at, it's more spooky than the science. 

ROYAL PAINS is a totally mundane TV series about a doctor (Hank), a very creative Emergency Room physician with an ethical streak a mile wide who gets himself fired from a top tier job at a hospital because he put the immediate emergency of a poor patient ahead of an (apparently) less urgent medical issue of a very rich donor to the hospital. 

That happened in the premier, and the TV Series Royal Pains is about this doctor's adventures when, on vacation in the Hamptons after getting fired, he solves a medical problem on the fly for a very rich person.

Hank goes into "Concierge" medicine, being on contract to the rich and famous who vacation in the Hamptons and ritzy surroundings.  The "Royal Pains" of the title are the complaints of the rich and privileged, the very kind of people who, in the TV Series Leverage which we've discussed ...

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

... are the ones who cause all the problems which the hero's group of barely reformed criminals must solve for the ordinary people who are the victims of the rich and famous.

In Royal Pains, most of the rich and famous, or rich and very not-famous-on-purpose (I mean that's really rich), turn out to be very nice people who don't deserve ill health, who do a lot of charity and public service, and are open to learning a lesson or two from Hank.

Hank "models" (without teaching) ways of solving problems and of getting along with people, of paying attention and taking people seriously even if they happen to be rich.  Hank models respect for other human beings, regardless of what they appear to be on the surface. 

We live in a world which is, right now, very conscious of the very different ways people live at different income levels.  Hank completely lacks that consciousness.

He had a high paying job in a wealthy city.  The next week he was impoverished, and on vacation only because he'd bought tickets already.

The next he was living in a mansion's cottage posher than anywhere he or his family could ever afford to live. 

And he barely notices. 

If he were a Magician, you would have to say he is living "On The Law Of Abundance."

He doesn't think about or worry about money or where it comes from.  He focuses entirely on doing the right thing, the moral thing, the ethical thing. 

Of course he has a brother who is an accountant who takes over the practical part of his life and creates the business known as Hankmed. 

So where's the "Icon" -- it's "Concierge Medicine" -- and that business model is the modern doctor's equivalent of  the writer's bizmod of the  "self-published."  He doesn't take insurance.  His customers pay cash and never notice the expense.  Or he treats people free because they're living hand-to-mouth.

Just as with the TV Series Leverage, the icon is the business model.  But with the TV Series Royal Pains, we see a business model based on serving the rich and famous and thus imparting a notion to those who are receptive to it that their privileges are not due to their personal superiority.  In the TV Series Leverage, the business model is based on the assumption that all the wealthy are irrevocably convinced of their inherent personal superiority, and the Team's mission is to disabuse them of that notion forcibly.

In the TV Series Fringe, we see an iconic Mad Scientist -- who has a sense of morality and an open hearted love for his son, who becomes an Icon.

In the TV Series Royal Pains we see a new icon, a Concierge Doctor who is part "McGiver" -- who has a sense of walking the world unthreatened, without fear, and with love for all.

Strip off the decorative details of either of these shows' Icons - each show with a nice, solid Market - and use the Icon as your springboard into a story in an original universe aimed at a Market that's already been Made.

Just be sure that your philosophical (i.e. thematic) statement is encoded in an Iconic Image that is understood by the target market.  That can take some market-testing, but don't use people who know you personally. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Bits and Pieces of Catchup

I think one of my greatest ambitions is to write SHORT blog posts.

Didn't make it today. I did try. Really, I did!

I'm way behind on getting packed for Westercon which will be held in Tempe, AZ, right up the road from me over the July 4th weekend. I've just filled out the speaker questionnaire but don't have my schedule yet. Anyone reading this blog who's planning on Westercon? I didn't see any Alien Romance panels, but signed up for everything that might lead into such a discussion. Come help me open (warp?) some minds.

http://www.westercon.org/

I hope you have had time to read my previous post and all the stuff linked to it. Could take you a week to wade through all that.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html

Waiting for everyone to catch up, here's some bits and pieces of followup on other open topics woven into a writing challenge.


I know there's a novelization of the Trek movie, and I haven't read it yet. (yet being the operative word -- I sooo want the DVD and book; I'll pass on the action figures.)

There's a wild and thriving ongoing set of posts on twitter about people seeing the new ST movie 4 and 5 times and more. Some posts saying "what's so great about ST?" and others in goshwow shock. Other long time fans of Trek are still seeing it FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Twitter is carrying some criticism of the actors, some snearing at the entire concept.

I saw one review that really lowered my opinion of both the reviewer and the publication, calling the ST movie melodramatic.

It isn't.

But I can see how someone assigned to review a movie set in a universe they think of as kiddie stuff or teen-action-stuff (SF has borne that perjorative all along) would find this script "melodramatic." That's a point of view that always happens when someone is not engaged in the fictional universe. If you're wholly engaged, the emotional tension does not seem overblown or out of proportion to the issue. But that works only if you really understand the issue.

If everyone is running for the exit in screaming panic, and you're just standing there, you should ask yourself, "What do they know that I don't know?"

Reviewers who slap the label "melodramatic" on a piece of fiction generally haven't asked themselves that question about the audience that does not see the story as melodramatic. In fact, the rest of the audience may be seeing the story as understated while "sophisticated" reviewers trash it as melodramatic. This is in general, not just about this particular Star Trek movie.

It's not the writer's fault usually. "Melodrama" is not a property of the text or script. It exists only in the reader/viewer's mind. (You won't likely find anyone else who holds such an opinion).

There is one flaw a writer might introduce that could give some viewers the impression of melodrama, and that's failing to display in show-don't-tell the character motivations, sensitivities, hot-button issues, loyalties, friendships, and relationships, all clearly derived from the theme.

The JJ Abram's Star Trek movie is written to give you as much of these character and situation traits as possible in the time alotted (and fit in all the commercially requisite action). Anyone have an opinion on what the envelope theme of this film is? Perhaps it's "The Challenges Temper The Character Strengths?" I.e. what character strengths are there already get made stronger by challenges.

When a reviewer sees a movie as "melodramatic" it may not be the reviewer's fault for being unobservant, disinterested, or prejudiced. It might be the "fault" of the review publication for assigning the wrong person to do the review. If someone has a strong emotional reaction to a piece of fiction, a reaction which embarrasses them deep inside, they might slap a distancing label on the fiction -- as if the fiction is at fault for their own refusal to confront their own emotions. You can't tell if that's the case just be reading a review of a film you have seen.

Or the negative reaction might possibly be the fault of the professional reviewer for choosing to review a product because it's popular so that the review will get read rather than reviewing something else that's less popular.

When I read that accusation of "melodrama" against Star Trek (in the context of "it's not a good enough movie for this much hype and people who are enchanted with it have something wrong with them") it brought up questions about how people interact with fiction, fictional universes, and with their own expectations and anticipations.

There's a lot of hype for the Trek movie, and as usual fans are divided into various camps regarding how well or poorly this or that favorite aspect was handled. In general, and overall, there's a consensus of approval and wait-and-see from the old fans, and some astonished interest from new or younger people. To them, it's just a good action movie without a lot of subtext. To veteran fans, it's ALL subtext.

So public discussion makes non-fans (or even non-viewers of Star Trek) curious, and they go see the movie, and express their reactions in public (on twitter maybe).

That's how you sell a lot of movie tickets, you see. Word of mouth (or tweets) motivates people better than any amount of paid commercial time on TV.

All these thoughts are related to some very abstract thinking I've been doing lately, about how fiction strikes a person at different stages of maturity. (I've been reading a number of children's books for my review column.)

And there are subjects flickering in the back of my mind about how the USA used to have so much of a common language and experience, and how that's all been destroyed.

The base cohesiveness of our society has been shattered. That lack of imagery and trivia in common is taking a huge toll, and most people don't realize why these horrific things are happening. New stuff will arise to take its place, because humans need stuff in common with each other, but meanwhile we've got a generation without a cultural connection to anyone other than those with interests in common. The wireless web is changing THAT, too, but it hasn't taken hold yet.

Not everyone paid attention to the Presidential Election! Those that did formed cliques, as usual in politics. But we can't even say "everyone" heard Obama's speeches other than snippets on news shows. You can read his words on the web, but it's not the same as watching his delivery.

Recently, I met someone who had worshipful, shining, beatific eyes every time she mentioned (often) how much she TRUSTS Obama to do the "right thing." She was absolutely pro-Israel, and seemed totally unaware of Hillary Clinton's declaration that none of the USA's verbal agreements with Israel will be kept, period.

I was thinking, as I watched her speaking to other pro-Israel and not-so-pro-Israel people, that if I put her conversation into a story as dialogue, the editor would X it all out because it's implausible the way she ignored everything everyone else said and insisted on how much she TRUSTS Obama, and that trust solves all problems. (talk about melodrama -- her conversation dripped melodrama -- I could hardly believe I was watching a real person not a character).

Other people listened to her politely, but didn't CHALLENGE her thinking (remember the idea the Star Trek movie is about character tempered by challenge). People just expressed their own opinions, without pointing out the fallacies in hers -- they could see she would explode emotionally if challenged, and that would be disruptive to the group. So she left without having her certainties questioned, as one would expect in DIALOGUE. Her "story" and "plot" did not progress because of this group conversation.

Which of course leads into a point I've made on this blog before, that:

A) DIALOGUE is not CONVERSATION.

B) CHARACTERS are not PEOPLE

Somone who prefers to read non-fiction, but has to watch the Star Trek movie ( because maybe their wife dragged them?) might take the film's dialogue as "melodramatic" because it tries, in a very short time, to lay out for you a set of comprehensible motives.

Also consider this is a feature film. The series was designed to be an ensemble show, and each of the characters got a 50 minute (back when there were fewer commercial minutes per hour - maybe 49 minutes) show in which to be introduced. But JJ Abrams was starting from scratch to introduce these (NEW) characters to a new audience, all in one movie.

The script actually does that introduction fairly well within the time alotted. The characters of course come off shallow if all you know is what you see in this new movie, shallow and perhaps overly impressed with themselves.

One of the requirements for good feature film script writing is that there is ONE star character, and maybe a co-star, and all the rest are SUPPORTING characters. Kirk is of course nominally assigned the "starring role" -- but the truth from the POV of many viewers is that Spock is the star. (yep, I'm one of those). Because this show was (will be again?) a TV show (already another movie is in the works), the ENSEMBLE CAST requires fudging the "star-co-star-supporting" paradigm.

If, in your mind, you're superimposing these characters on the old TV characters, you see disparities and are so busy thinking what the old characters would do that you don't totally engage in and thus BELIEVE the current characters.

The result is that you see melodrama instead of drama because you think the characters are OVER reacting.

Well, is this woman who "trusts" Obama "overreacting?" She doesn't think so, and most of you don't either. She thinks she has good reason to trust him, but can't say what those reasons are. She's just bewildered that anyone might squint sideways at Obama and wonder if WYSIWYG.

It all has to do with how we "judge" people and how we "judge" characters -- how we evaluate the values of another person.

And that brings us to the question of whether politicians (and say, actors?) whose "images" have been professionally built by spin-doctors are "characters" or "people."

And what has this all to do with creating that blockbuster TV show with Alien Romance that will change the world?

That woman was in love with Obama, even though she'd never met him. She couldn't separate the image from the man - the character from the person (as often happens with fans of a TV character who can't separate the actor from the character.)

The adoration I saw in her eyes was soooo totally "romance" -- it was Neptune at it's best, worshipful adoration. I'd seen fans of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Chekov, Uhura, and Scotty with that same beatific expression when discussing the lives of the characters as if they were the lives of the actors, or vice-versa.

I saw in her eyes the experience of JOY in being UNDERSTOOD and being SAFE AT LAST. (I'm not kidding; I saw that, but it may not actually have been there. I am always researching this Alien Romance problem even when wandering around the social fabric of my mundane existence!)

She was not an SF fan. She was ever so mundane. She was an older woman, well and securely married. Her husband was there and totally agreed with her assessment of Obama and apparently had no inkling that there could be a jealousy issue going on there.

Here was a woman so infatuated with a public image that is a "character" more than a "person" that she totally believes she's assessed him correctly.

That's what falling in love does. It cuts the critical faculties out of the circuit and allows you to believe the image you are projecting onto someone is the actual, real person and not a reflection of your own aspirations.

And that's exactly the state of mind you must have in order to "fall in love with" a real Alien From Outer Space.

Here's the thing about Neptune, though. What you see in another person through Neptune's veil is sometimes more TRUE than what you see through your critical faculties.

Sometimes, your critical faculties have been honed by training in very logical, practical ways. And because of that, sometimes your critical faculties will reject information that is actually pertinent simply because the information seems implausible.

That's how a professional reviewer could conclude that the JJ Abram's ST movie is "melodramatic." A reviewer often is trained as a critic (they aren't supposed to be the same function), and an art critic has to view art through his/her critical faculties.

But art, by its very nature, speaks to the subconscious, subverting all critical analysis. Even the art of the spin-doctor creating a politician's image for the media speaks to the subconscious. Spin-doctors work with the fabric of symbolism to get you to believe what they tell you in ways that mere words could never achieve.

The subconscious does not view the world through the conscious mind's critical faculties.

When the subconscious becomes convinced, it over-rules the conscious mind and asserts its opinion as the TRUTH. And subconscious can't be swayed by facts.

So, if we're going to create a TV show, an Alien Romance, that will argue our case the way Star Trek argues the case for SF, we have to include one character like the woman I met with the starry-eyes for Obama. This character has to speak for the human capacity to see past the obvious surface and into the true heart -- as McCoy does in Star Trek, and as this woman believes she has with Obama (which she may have; we'll see).

------and one more bit-------or maybe a piece?------

I've been talking a lot about social networking, the cure for the shattering of our culture as mentioned above.

Found this link on twitter
http://social-media-optimization.com/2009/02/top-twenty-five-social-networking-sites-feb-2009/

and on that page it says:

Interesting information from Compete.com that shows Facebook surging past MySpace in Monthly Unique Visitors and that Twitter has moved from #22 to #3 in the rankings of the top 25 social networking sites by monthly visits.
-------------

And another link on that social-media-optimization page is to an article on the "graying of facebook"

-----------------

http://social-media-optimization.com/2009/02/the-graying-of-facebook/

WHICH STARTS:

Last week I was at a meeting at Facebook and as Facebook was talking about their demographics, one of the statistics that struck me was facebook’s demographics is starting to mirror those of the U.S. of A.

-----------------

Nevermind reading these whole articles (hey, I'm not the only long-winded person on the web!), just those two facts juxtaposed with the snatches on ST from Twitter and various reviews is telling us so much about where to find a lever long enough and where to stand to move the world toward respecting Alien Romance.

Here's another bit of the puzzle.

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/06/8-ways-science-fiction-romance-could.html

quotes my blog entry at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

and reasons to the conclusion:

---------- THEGALAXYEXPRESS.NET ---------------
These days, authors aren’t just writers—they’re entrepreneurs.
----------END THEGALAXYEXPRESS.NET ----------

And that is what Jean Lorrah and I have been discussing with an ever increasing intensity.

Jean Lorrah is researching (she's a professor, you know? Research is her bag.) how to employ the techniques used by web based entrepreneurs to the needs of writers. Basically, it's not really a compatible set of techniques. A writer can't just take what these (big buck$ maker$) do and use it to sell books. Readers would run away in droves. But, as you can learn a lot by watching Mission: Impossible or McGiver or Burn Notice or Royal Pains, you can stoke your creative fires by subscribing to free things around the web.

Jean has found a Free Offer from one of the best teachers in the web-entrepreneur business which will open June 15, 2009 and run for a very short while.

See? That's one of their techniques -- short, quick opportunities that ignite your greed to get something others can't get! But to put our culture back together, everyone has to be able to get some specific thing that that everyone else has. We need things in common, not divisiveness.

Here's a link where you will be able to get the free offer (as of June 15th which is next Monday and I don't know how long it'll run). Jean says this is a good place to learn web marketing from Jim Daniels, who has been doing and teaching since 1996.

http://fc403pw6f3th2ke9upz2l1cngo.hop.clickbank.net/

Now to the writing lesson.

If you want to write a BURN NOTICE type TV program to pitch to TV producers, but using (say) a web entrepreneur ( tall, blond, built, and HOT!) as the male lead, and perhaps the actress who stars in (and probably writes and produces and creates the music for) his YouTube videos, getting this free subscription would be a good start in scoping out the character of these people and finding some of the web-entrepreneur tricks that are like the spy-tricks used on BURN NOTICE.

The web entrepreneur tricks can be used as plot devices as High School Chemistry often served McGiver (and now Royal Pains).

Remember how I discussed the use of SETTING in telling a story when a Producer, J. Neil Schulman, mentioned how a Psychic Cruise could be the setting for a Monk or Murder She Wrote episode?

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

Here's a chance to do an exercise like that "USA Characters Welcome" pitch.

"Wagon Train To The Stars" became Star Trek because Wagon Train was the most popular, longest running, iconic TV show at the time (maybe other than Gunsmoke, but Gunsmoke took place mostly in one town).

What is the most popular TV show today? Or web-show? What is iconic in the USA? What is topping the ratings? What is the longest running or has the widest demographic? How do you pitch an Alien Romance to the general audience? What do kids and parents watch together?

Iconic Current Show into A New Setting.

We have to transpose that woman I met into the setting we need, and build a springboard into a CHEAP TO MAKE TV series. (Star Trek was cheap for its day, considering the state-of-the-art FX; and it looks it!)

A Web Entrepreneur's life would be a great SETTING, (mostly shot on a standing set of an office with lots of electronics; plus some location shots of hotel ballrooms for speeches; stock shots of airports; standing set hotel rooms -- pretty cheap) and I'm sure a worshipful woman would "fall for" his spin-doctored character in each episode, pissing off his Soul Mate.

Are there any Web Entrepreneur TV series yet? Have I come up with something new here? THE APPRENTICE MEETS MY FAVORITE MARTIAN?

Now consider what an Alien stranded on Earth would do for a living? In BURN NOTICE, we have a guy with no visible means of support using his spy skills to help people and make a few bucks in fees. Why wouldn't an ALIEN gravitate to electronic salesmanship to make a living?

Yes, of course there would be obstacles -- which points to conflict.

Today's audiences are filled with people who have been ousted from salaried jobs and are applying their talents to becoming "consultants" or self-employed entrepreneurs.

Tell me the story as an Alien Romance. I do hope you've read Linnea Sinclair's DOWNHOME ZOMBIE BLUES!!!

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