Reviews 48 - The Kickass Heroine Lifestyle

Reviews 48

The Kickass Heroine Lifestyle

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Reviews haven't been indexed.

In the Mysteries of Pacing series ...

Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

Part 4 Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

Part 5 How Fast Can A Character Arc?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html

Part 6 How to Change a Character's Mind
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

...we looked at some of the fundamentals of how Theme, Story and Plot fit together to create Pace.  There's more to be said on that topic, and it gets more interesting as we add Style and Voice to the mix of skills.

Here, we pause to look at some examples where the breakneck pacing leaves no room for relationships, or romance.

Here are the three novels to compare.

https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Seed-Magic-Spellcrackers-Novel-ebook/dp/B005ERIRH2/










https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-San-Angeles-Book-ebook/dp/B06W549MRS/

https://www.amazon.com/Salvation-Day-Kali-Wallace-ebook/dp/B07JD1CBKN/




When mastering a skill, it pays to look at where others "fail" to incorporate that skill.  What does a novel look like if it is "fast paced" and what sorts of Characters spend a part of their life in the fast-lane of life?

Many of the most popular novels ever written - and most popular now being published - are extra-fast paced.  Historically, that hasn't been the case, but popular, mass market, fiction generally reflects the daily realities that people deal with in their real lives.

Some genres specialize in opening a window into a differently paced world.  For decades, Romance, Historical Romance, and suspense and crime novels provided a markedly different pace than life was taking on.

We talked a lot about "The Information Explosion" as computerization took shape, communications went Satellite, CNN delivered real-time battlefront news, and topics proliferated.  The speed at which Universities published new discoveries on a wider and wider variety of fronts, from Medicine to Astrophysics, increased perceptibly.

And then everyone just got used to Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, E-Newsletters, and the tsunami of information flowing over them every day.

We are now in a period of consolidation and digestion of this increase in human life's pace.

A new generation is growing up taking online devices for granted from the age of maybe 5 or so - maybe younger.  Parents are worrying about how young brains can be differently wired because of the pace of digital experience, and the "blue light" of screens having unknown effects on the whole body.

But these young children are adapting to the world they enter, just as previous generations have adapted.  Humanity's most potent survival trait is adaptability -- but individual human adults don't adapt.  Each generation fossilizes in a certain configuration, adapted to conditions of their youth, and decries the deformation of their children by new circumstances.

This is a new phenomenon in human evolution.  For millions of years, parents taught their children how to cope with the world the parents grew up in, and that knowledge worked fine, with a few minor tweaks, for the rest of that child's life.  Change took many generations.

All that changed with the printing press and movable type.

The speed of change is still increasing.  What once took more than a hundred years now happens in twenty (or less).

Science Fiction Romance has arisen (along with Paranormal and Fantasy Romance) because those purely technological changes have now soaked down deep into our cultures -- and cultures are fighting back.

For astrologers, this is a change cycle traceable by Pluto.  Pluto (whether it's a planet, or not doesn't matter - the effect is perceptible if you know how to look) is now transiting Capricorn.  Pluto is sexuality and the raw, basic urge to reproduce and survive, which includes "war" in the sense of grabbing the territory and resources of others.  Pluto "rules" Scorpio, the natural 8th House, which is other people's resources, opposite the natural 2nd House, your personal resources.

Values are a resource.  That makes Values an 8th House, Pluto/Sex (not Romance or Love, just Sex/Reproduction) phenomenon.

Starting in the 1950's and erupting onto the Headlines where writers could rip it off and craft novels about it, the Sexual Revolution has attacked the very foundation of the cultures (all of them) that existed before the printing press and movable type.

The women who suffered, died, worked themselves to death to win (or elsewhere, lose) World War II, stood up and screamed ENOUGH ALREADY!

The children they raised, raised another generation that knew nothing about the oppression their great-grandmothers lived and died under.

They didn't know they were free because they didn't know there was such a thing as legalized, culturally embedded, values (a whole system of values) based on the unconscious assumption that female-ness automatically meant slave, non-entity and stupid.

The generation born with Pluto in Scorpio grew up on the concept of the "kick-ass heroine," completed "the sexual revolution."

For decades the pants-suit and short haircut was the uniform of the liberated woman. "I'm as good a man as you are," was the fashion statement.  Anything a man could do, a woman could do (probably better).

But a new generation is now emerging into adulthood, bolder, more self-confident, and happily adorning themselves in long hair, dresses, skirts and wearing pants to every sort of event as they please.

These women devour the Kickass Heroine novels and model themselves after action-hero figures, in novels, games, movies, and TV Series.

We are seeing the chip-on-the-shoulder confrontation against masculinity wane, even as men complain of the attack on masculinity.

We are seeing a cross-cultural revolution.

We are seeing Values morph.

We are seeing sharing of values diminish, leaving culture crumbling.

Into this real-world mixture of change, comes the Science Fiction Romance, boldly going where no one has gone before.

We are watching, in our real world lives, how Love is Conquering Culture Shock.

Alvin Toffler's 1970's books on the physiological effect cultural change has on humans, and how this accelerating pace of change is creating change, is a must-read even today for Romance writers.
https://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/0553277375/

The readership you are targeting is in the medical condition called "shock."  The interlocking physiological systems are dysfunctional because of this shock.  We don't know yet, medically, how dire this may be, but we know that "stress" unrelieved, unrelenting, "fear-fight-flight" states wear our bodies out.

Fiction can be an anodyne to culture shock.

Fiction about Relationships, Love, and Romance, about people (human or not) coping with super-stressful, action-packed, blinding-speed, high-stakes games of survival amidst crumbling cultures may shape our future reality.

Star Trek is one of the examples of fiction informing reality.  As with Robert A. Heinlien's novels, the portrayal in Star Trek of human beings using advanced tools, tools that current science declared impossible, released the imagination of a generation that created many of those impossible tools.

That's the "science" part of science fiction.  The tools change, and the power of a single individual to do harm, or good, increases exponentially.

That increase has, in itself, not been a problem until recent decades when the foundation of shared values has dissolved.  Both the Values themselves have changed (women aren't born to slavery), and the sharing has diminished markedly.

The digital revolution diminished the "sharing" component of Culture.

The printing press kicked off the information explosion, and the digitalization of the world disintegrated the audience.

In the 1950's there were 3 US spanning TV networks, and they stopped broadcasting about 10:00 PM (then came Johnny Carson and midnight talk shows.)  Everyone watched the same shows - especially the big hits.  Everyone could carry on a conversation using those referents.  It was a common, shared, culture.

Today, there are hundreds, maybe thousands if you count streaming from other countries, of TV Series, Movies, Variety entertainment, Cooking Shows, National Geographic channel, -- just try to find 5 people in the grocery store at the same time who all watched THIS OR THAT last night!

Only small Groups on Facebook gather around discussing a particular print novel.  Nobody else knows or cares.

We simply don't have a universe of discourse in common, and so the dissemination of Values is not working the way it has in previous generations.

You might not believe it, but only a small percentage of the population pays attention to politics.  It's the loudest thing in the media right now, but only a small percentage of the population grasps enough of the subject to define a "value."

This fragmentation is an important consideration if you want to market fiction.

I have here three novels you probably never heard of, and most likely won't read, possibly don't care about at all.  They are mass market publications by very big, traditional publishers, mass market to tiny fragments of the 5 or 10% of the people who read books.  Yes, they are in ebook formats, too, but none of these by themselves constitute a large enough "reach" to matter.

Taken together, however, they make a point you should consider.

What do these 3 books have in common?

All 3 have a female protagonist, though Salvation Day by Kali Walace also has an alternating Point of View Character who is male.

Any of these 3 novels could have been published as Science Fiction or Fantasy in the 1970's.

Read the blurbs on the covers, and the "Look Inside" snatch on Amazon.

Now substitute male names for the Main Character.

Any of these books could be old fashioned "neck-up science fiction" the teen-boy-aimed genre which excludes all complications of the plot due to the story, the psychological morphing due to falling in love.

All these novels are about the same length (one of the requirements for mass market), and because of that length requirement, if there is to be "action" there is no room for "relationship."

Some exquisitely skilled writers can fold in a strong, plot-driving, internal-conflict-resolving Relationship even with a strict length requirement, but the current market does not have an appetite for that sort of novel.

These female, kick-ass heroines are just heroes. There is nothing feminine about them. It is as if half the Character's character is lopped off with a carving knife.

You can't craft a Soul Mate for a Character like that -- because such half-character Characters have no "Soul" you can find to build on.

They are powerful, tough, and desperate, as well as goal directed and emotionally engaged in their projects.  They have enemies, and meet those enemies.  They can tell the good guys from the bad guys, and they all oppose badass villains with true grit.

That's how they are just like men - and it is a portrait of the modern woman - but the other half of the novel is missing.  How are these women different from men?

We live in a culture in flux, and it is currently a very fragmented culture where the definition of masculinity, femininity and humanity are all changing.

Different groups espouse different values, and as always with humans, those most cherished values are held subconsciously, as beliefs. See Mysteries of Pacing Part 6, How To Change A Character's Mind.

Most of our beliefs are non-falsifiable hypotheses about the nature of life.  We don't question them, or prove them, or test them.  So any "ass" that gets in our way is fair game for kicking.

These 3 novels all draw a stark, black vs white, picture of right and wrong, and don't provoke the reader to ask hard questions about these currently changing aspects of our everyday world's cultures.

While delving deeply into the qualities of character necessary to surmount overwhelming odds, these three novels do not share the depth of thinking behind Science Fiction and Fantasy published in the 1960's.  That's not to say the older novels were "better."  Those novels were aimed at their readership, and these novels are aimed at a different readership.

None of the three is, in itself, particularly outstanding. They are all well written, could use a more vigorous editing for repetitions of information and lame dialogue, and tackle the job of extrapolating current trends into the near future or an alternate reality.

They may all be taken as cautionary tales, but none point the way out of this current cultural fragmentation.

It will take a Science Fiction Romance to illuminate that path out of the current state of affairs.

Children born with Pluto in Aquarius -- 2024 and on -- will be the ones to crystalize a new culture from this fragmentation.  They will be of age in 2050, and current predictors are skeptical that Earth's biosphere can support human life past 2050, at least not "life as we know it."  Civilization may be doomed, so we'll need to crystalize a new one.

I haven't yet seen any Science Fiction Romance novels about that coming epoch.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mysteries of Pacing Part 6 - How To Change A Character's Mind

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 6

How To Change A Character's Mind

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts in this series:

Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

Part 4 Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

Part 5 How Fast Can A Character Arc?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html


One of the top five glaring errors that beginning writers make in crafting a novel is to start it in the wrong place.  The usual mistake is to start the opening scene after the actual end of the novel.

How can that be?

The newest writers open the first scene with the Main Character already having learned the lesson the novel's plot events teach.

Remember, we established previously, that one reason readers read novels is page-one, the narrative hook.

On Page One, the main Character does something (Save the Cat!) that endears the Character to the reader, and at the same time lures the reader to see, "Oh, has that one got a lesson to learn!"

We read to watch Characters learn their lesson, -- both lessons we have learned (to validate our own understanding of the world), and lessons we have yet to face (to glimpse our future and reinforce our courage to face it heroically.)

If the Main Character has already learned the lesson contained in the Plot's challenges, the Main Character can not "arc" (or change in response to the blows the plot delivers.)  The Character's Arc is the story.

As discussed previously, there are two moving parts to a novel that have to be "paced" -- or move in a way that
a) keeps the reader enthralled, and
b) convey an element of verisimilitude.

Those tandem elements (called by different names by different writing teachers and editors) are Plot and Story.  All agree that there are two elements, and that they must work together.

Like two horses hitched to a wagon, they must move in concert, and render the most impressive, smooth ride when trained to keep to the same rhythm in the same direction.

Imagine one horse goes one way, the other charges off in the opposite direction, the wagon tree and tackle break, the wagon overturns.  That overturned wagon is a symbol for the rejection letter.

Here, I use "Plot" to mean the sequence of external events, what happens next, or what I call "the because line."  I use "Story" to mean the assessment of "Life, The Universe and Everything" which motivates the Main Viewpoint Character.

The plot is driven by the External Conflict 

Joanne vs Government.

The story is driven by the Internal Conflict

Joanne vs. "Go Along To Get Along"

This year, rumors are resurfacing that the US Government has possession of the wreckage of a UFO.  It hasn't been identified, so you can't say it's the ship of  alien from outer space or an experiment of some other Government on Earth.  There has been nothing about there being the remains of an occupant.

Since distrust of government and media is so very high, right now, it is very easy to believe Government has been lying about UFOs.

Another reason to disbelieve all government denials of the UFO rumors is that telescopes, orbital observatories, etc are mapping the galaxies around us and identifying many planets.  A few decades ago, mathematicians "proved" planetary systems around stars had to be so rare that our solar system might be the only one.

Also a few decades ago, the argument against the UFO rumors included scientific (mathematical) proof that even if some stars had planets, there just couldn't be many in the kind of "life zone" that Earth is in -- liquid water, etc..

Well, now math and astrophysics has produced evidence that there are many stars with planets - in fact, it's common.  Some of the stars not very different from our Sun even have planets in the "life zone" -- often too large or too small, but there are a lot we have detected so the "facts" have changed.

Here is a video - running a bit over an hour - about defining the core essence of a human.  What makes us human? What distinguishes us from animals?  This video suggests how we could identify Aliens who should be treated as we treat human beings (poor Aliens!).

https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/video_cdo/aid/2480059/jewish/Is-There-Life-on-Other-Planets.htm

The fellow in the video seems to me to be widely read in Science Fiction and understands how science fiction writers think.

What is your "mind" and how do you "make it up?"

If the facts change, does your Main Character change her mind?

We like to believe that sane people change their mind when presented with new facts.

We like to identify with characters who are sane, level headed, goal directed, and resilient.  Characters who can say, "Oh, I was wrong about that."

But the thing is humans discard ideas and attitudes readily only when they are not rooted in belief.

Just as plot and story are yoked in tandem, 

so are thinking and belief.  

Plot and Story pull the wagon of the novel.  Thinking and Belief pull the wagon of the Character Motivations.

In structuring your Characters, you as the writer must know not just what your Characters think, but what they believe, and how they came to believe it.

How the Characters came to believe it (the backstory) is important in Science Fiction Romance because there is a human tendency to believe in science.

You find both kind of humans - the born skeptic and the born believer - in the world of computer science.

The current push to recruit women into "STEM" majors will scoop up more and more of the True Believer mentality type (which type has hitherto been diverted).  Meanwhile, the social trend toward Secularism will predispose the True Believer type of human to "believe in" Science instead of Mysticism, God, Magic.

You can change a scientist's mind with a new peer-reviewed paper contradicting what the scientist was taught in school.

But you can't change a True Believer's mind with ONE simple declaration of a contradictory fact.

Could this be the definition of "human?"  Could the ability to cling to Belief despite facts be what we must identify in life on other planets - to decide if that life is to be granted "Human Rights Protections?"

All humans have a mental compartment where they store what they Believe. The contents of that compartment generally manifests in unconscious ways, motivating responses to situations that the person is not even aware of.  Illogical behavior may be mostly rooted in unconscious Beliefs, and be rigorously, logically derived from that Belief.

A mis-match between contents of the Belief Compartment and the contents of the Knowledge Compartment can tear marriages apart.  I know of some where that happened, even over Politics, not Religion!  We believe in our favorite celebrities, and favorite politicians, even when we "know" nothing about them but the public image.

What your Character knows is subject to abrupt revision as the plot unfolds,   but what the Character believes must never be called into question unless the Theme demands it.

Any opposing Character who attacks such a belief will meet with vigorous rejection, scorn used as a weapon, character assassination in the workplace, and so forth.

If your theme needs the kind of raging fire ignited by the Catholic/Protestant furor in Northern Ireland that gave rise to video cameras and gunshot detectors all over London, then let the Plot attack Belief.

One example of a collision of Beliefs with Facts would be the place and role of masculinity in the workplace.  The reason we still have very real sexual harassment, favor trading, career advancement  for sexual favors, and even forced sex as an act of dominance, is the cultural belief in the role of masculinity in society.

The knowledge regarding the role of masculinity has changed over the last few decades -- the belief has barely been touched.

So now we have a generation of men in charge of corporate offices who suffer a mis-match between what they know and what they believe.  Belief will dominate, for some of them, from time to time.  For others, it always dominates.

The exact same thing is going on with women, the core readership for Romance of all sub-genres.  The mismatch between what is believed and what is known may actually be growing.

The writer's job is to convince the reader that this Character has had a change of belief.  To be convincing, the writer must craft page one from a point at which the Action of the Plot begins, where the Main Character has not yet changed Belief, but does something that will rebound to teach them a lesson (the hard way).

We want to see the Bad Guys get their comeuppance and the Good Guys learn their lesson.  The "lesson" is your theme.  The Good Guys come to a brighter understanding of the truth of the universe.

Which brings us right back to Targeting An Audience.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

Each specific genre has an audience that is selected for the distinctive process by which that audience routinely changes their Beliefs.

I doubt any Editor has ever looked at the target audience for an imprint in quite this way, but though it is dynamic, it is the coarse sieve through which the general public passes on the way to choosing what to read or view tonight.

We enjoy books about Characters who regard their beliefs the same way we do, even if the Characters don't believe what we do.

We enjoy stories about Characters who change (or don't change) their Beliefs and their Knowledge using the same method we do.  Those Characters seem real to us, people we can identify with, walk in their moccasins, and enjoy wondering, "What would I do faced with that problem?"

Would what I would do actually work in that Character's world and situation?

Ayn Rand pegged "Psychological Visibility" as a human need, vital to sanity.  We need people to validate our existence by understanding what we feel when we say certain things.

We enjoy fiction where the Character is internally visible to us, and what we see in that Character validates our own unique individuality, our hodge-lodge of contradictory Beliefs stored in that walled off mental compartment.

In humans, that compartment can not be empty.  Maybe you can portray an Alien (or an Artificial Intelligence) who has no belief compartment, or has the option of leaving it empty, but with humans, something will crawl in to inhabit and proliferate in that compartment.

That is why it is so important to limit and control what a young child is exposed to, and in what order they encounter information and situations.  The parent fills the Belief compartment, stuffed brim full, and then whatever facts come along may be known,  but likely not believed.

There is a segment of the population that wants (even needs) to control how parents dominate and control their children, feeding the children only certain beliefs, and not others. The old adage, "As the twig is bent; so grows the tree," is being used by people who don't want others to believe in bending twigs.

Another old saying, "Give me a child until he is seven years old, and you can do what you want with him after that - he will always be mine."  And that, too, has enough truth in it for writers to use constructing fictional Characters.

So, if you set out to Pace your Story - the development of the Character's internal conflict toward an internal resolution - advance both knowledge and belief in tandem.

As a writer, you need to know more about knowledge and belief, as well as the relationship between them, than readers do.

Learn a few theories extant - both the theoretical work done in universities, and the everyday practical usage of the general public, or at least your specific Target Readership - about how people internalize beliefs.

One good source of discourse on Belief is non-fiction autobiographies about religious conversion.  The "Come To Jesus" moment people talk incessantly about is worth your close study.

Understand your own Beliefs, especially the ones you don't know you have.  You will find them in your responses to non-fiction, to news, to TV Series.  You see them reflected in other people -- you generally approve of, and want to be friends with, people who share some of your beliefs.  You will find yourself repelled  by those whose beliefs are incompatible.

Usually, around college age, people choose which beliefs to internalize and found their whole lives upon.  Very often the set of beliefs are chosen so that the individual can "fit in" to a certain group.  Humans need that "psychological visibility" and the validation of their Group.  So some people, at college age, find their Belief Compartment enlarging as their views expand.  Humans (maybe not Aliens) can happily hold contradictory beliefs.

Contradictory knowledge, on the other hand, demands current, real-time, choices.

For example, we don't know if the US Government is holding a crashed UFO, but we do know that a reporter said that a government employee said that the US Government has possession of a "something" that might be extraterrestrial.

Since we know the reporter said that someone said, we will choose to believe it (or not) based on our current beliefs about the Government.  So some people will accept as incontrovertible fact that the Government has been hiding the truth about UFOs from the citizens for decades. Others won't accept that idea.

Why would some Characters reject the idea that the Government is hiding the facts about UFO's?

The reason the Character rejects the IDEA matters to the plot of your novel.

A) The U.S. Government is unique in the world, elected by a free people, monitored by a Free Press.  The U. S. Government doesn't lie, the way a Communist dictatorship does.  There's no reason to lie about UFOs.

B) Only crazy people with an ax to grind talk about UFOs as if there really is life on other planets. I don't want to be seen as crazy, so I won't believe in UFOs (but yeah, they spook me).

C) It's a scientific fact that planets like Earth are rare.  The ones we think we found are so far away nothing could get here - and probably wouldn't get near enough to us to notice it.  Math shows that two space-going civilizations wouldn't encounter each other because one would be extinct before the other emerges.  Forget the whole Idea - you're nuts.

D) My Religion holds that Earth is the center of Creation (if not The Universe), and humans are created in the Image of God, therefore any life out there won't be more than microbes, certainly not spaceship builders.

How would you change that Character to make it plausible to your readers that the Character now believes there's a UFO sequestered by the government?

How would you convince the skeptical reader that UFOs are real, so the Character the reader admires can accept them and still be admirable?

This is the essence of genre --

 not "a genre" but the very concept of genre.

Many (especially editors) think that if the novel is set in space, it must be science fiction.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The essence that binds science fiction writer to science fiction reader is the shared process of how we choose what we believe.

Among humans, the ability to choose what to believe, and the lifelong, intensive practice of actively editing, selecting and choosing the content of the Belief Compartment, is extremely rare.

Intelligence doesn't matter.  Anyone of any I.Q. might have this ability to edit their Beliefs, but among those rare individuals who are able to do it, very few choose to train and exercise to perfect that ability.

Writers, all sorts of Artists, especially performing arts specialists, do generally refine their ability to edit the subconscious to extraordinary levels.  The business of Art is the business of making visible or perceptible, the unconscious beliefs of a generation.

Each of the 4 categories of reasons why a Character might start Chapter One of a novel disbelieving in UFO's, and especially a wreck sequestered by the U.S. Government represent subconscious assumptions driving large swaths of the U. S. population.

Each of the 4 Categories could be fully realized in specific genres.

A) Political Intrigue (let the Character learn that the government lies)

 B) Romance (the Character falls for an Alien. Gini Koch's ALIEN series.)

C) Science Fiction (the Character follows a signal to the craft the government has sequestered)

D) Religious Conversion Romance (the Character falls in love with someone whose religion allows for Aliens but still holds Earth is the center of Creation)

We have discussed many aspects of how Theme connects these separate elements of fiction into a cohesive artistic work, a realistic world the audience can walk into.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/index-to-believing-in-happily-ever-after.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

Theme is the secret to pacing.  Theme is what you, the writer, are saying to the reader.  Theme is what the story is about.

Theme is the lesson the Character is about the learn, preferably the hard way, but just like the reader learned it.

Theme is the glue that holds Plot and Story together - or in terms of the above analogy, theme is the wagon tree that the pair of horses (Plot and Story) are hitched to.  The wagon is the novel, or whole series of novels, moved by Plot and Story.

Romance genre's overall theme is Love Conquers All.

Science Fiction's overall theme is nailed in Star Trek's opening, "...where no one has gone before."

Love Conquers All

 is definitely

 Where No One Has Gone Before

Many people (not me), believe, that our everyday existence belies the idea of love conquering, and the brutality of humanity's past illustrates clearly that Love Always Loses.

This connection between Love Conquers All and "...where no one has gone before," is a big reason why Science Fiction and Romance blend so easily into a new genre.

Both genres require the Characters and the reader to edit their Belief Compartment's contents, scrutinize the tangled mess of the subconscious and make conscious choices of what to believe and what to discard.

In other words, Romance pushes humans toward crafting a logical subconscious, a belief system that shifts and changes as new facts emerge.

Under the impact of Love, a human (maybe an Alien, too) can adjust what they know, and what they believe, to be just a little bit more in harmony with each other, a bit more harnessed in tandem to drive Character motivation.

Internal peace, the relief from internal conflict, is a critical ingredient in happiness, and thus in the Happily Ever After.

To live Happily Ever After, the Character must have a plausible, permanent and reliable reduction in internal conflict, and thus a realistic sense of being at peace within.

The esoteric theory is that our internal conflicts roil the external world into a furious tempest that resists our every move.  By increasing internal peace, we increase our ability to walk the world without being stomped on and trampled at every turn.

Romance and Science Fiction readers both accept this premise at least subconsciously and see the story finished when the Character's internal conflict is fully resolved.  This often takes a long series of long novels to accomplish, as true Hero material generally nurture a stubborn streak.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com