Reformed Villains

I love a good "redeemed villain" story, but creating a good (i.e., plausible and emotionally engaging) one isn't easy. The chief villain of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, Duke Frederick, undergoes a sudden conversion at the end of the play, repents of usurping his brother's dukedom, and enters the religious life. Not very believable in real-life terms, but since the change of heart occurs in a romantic comedy, we can suspend disbelief. Usually, redeeming a bad guy is more complicated. How can his or her character arc be made convincing?

A traumatic backstory that arouses audience sympathy can help. So can showing hints of goodness in the character, however tenuous (the "save the cat" moment Jacqueline often mentions). Regina, the Evil Queen in the TV series ONCE UPON A TIME, commits several murders, both by her own hands and by proxy. Her reign is characterized by tyranny and cruel atrocities. She magically curses not only Snow White but the entire realm. Flashback episodes, however, show Regina as a victim of her dictatorial mother, who slew Regina's true love and forced her to marry the king. Although kind to Snow White at first, Regina developed bitter hatred for her because young Snow's carelessness betrayed Regina's secret love and led to his death. As mayor of Storybrooke in our world, Regina adopts Henry, illegitimate son of Snow White's daughter (who initially doesn't know her own true identity—yes, this series is complicated). Regina's love for her adopted child, at first mostly—though not entirely—autocratic and self-serving, gradually develops into a deeper, unselfish affection, which plants the seeds of her repentance and desire for redemption. While I enjoyed seeing the Evil Queen grow into the heroine she becomes by the end of the series, I did, however, have trouble suspending disbelief in her redemption at times, because she commits some horrifically evil deeds in the flashbacks. But the series does show her growth toward goodness as she struggles with the terms of her redemption and her reconciliation with former enemies. For instance, whereas in her youth she pursued implacable, disproportionate revenge against Snow White for the results of Snow's childish mistake, in a later season Regina demonstrates maturity in forgiving a mistake by another character that also threatens to destroy her happiness.

Jaime Lannister in the "Game of Thrones" novels and TV series doesn't have a "save the cat" moment early in the saga. Instead, he's introduced with a "shoot the dog" moment. Caught in an incestuous act with his sister, Cersei, he pushes the witness, young Bran, out of a window, maiming him for life. This is one of several evil deeds Jaime recently mentions in rebuttal to the lady knight Brienne of Tarth when she calls him a "good man." His self-awareness about his dark past highlights the change in him over time. Among other changes, his relationship with Brienne has evolved. At first, he treated her with mocking scorn; now they are friends and lovers. Some details by which the series lays groundwork for Jaime's redemption: He slew the former king, gaining the title "Kingslayer," from sound motives, effectively saving the country from a mad tyrant, but as the nickname indicates, he's regarded negatively for this act. Most of his evil deeds are inspired by love and loyalty toward his twin sister and their mutual children. Yet when she crosses lines in ways too extreme for him to accept, he breaks with her, showing that he possesses a core of honor and decency. The audience also feels sympathy for him when his sword hand is cut off. By the current climactic season, he has demonstrated his reformation in action by offering his services to the heroes trying to overthrow Cersei.

Some fans may feel his past crimes are too serious for any credible redemption, though. What does it take to achieve a plausible reformation and redemption arc for a character guilty of egregious evil? Is there ever a "moral event horizon" that, once crossed, can never be re-crossed?

For fans of vampires, werewolves, witches, and demons, Brian M. Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg edited an anthology on this very theme, THE REPENTANT (DAW, 2003). I reviewed it here in my "retro-review" monthly blog post series on VampChix:

VampChix

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 5 - How To Create Using SHOW DON'T TELL

Theme-Symbolism Integration
 Part 5
How To Create Using SHOW DON'T TELL
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg  

Here is the article, published August 2015, that we'll discuss today.  It contains the clue to solving a fiction writer's income problem.

http://www.redstate.com/2015/08/26/donald-trump-takes-page-history/

Here are the previous posts on use of theme.  Keep all these points on THEME in mind while reading about the comparison of Trump and Reagan in that redstate.com article.  (yes, it's a far right website, but this particular article reveals a truth writers need to absorb and use to crack the income problem.)

Foundation Posts on Use of Theme:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
-- on structuring nested Themes into a novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html
-- defining the terminology I use in these posts to distinguish plot from story and why they are indistinguishable.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html
-- compares use of Theme in a movie with the use in a Novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html
-- explains something arcane about how to create a symbol to explain a truly Alien Civilization to modern Human readers.

Remember, I pointed out that fiction writers in general do not even make minimum wage if you consider the hours spent vs the income over the years.  You need to get up to where they are making blockbuster movies from your books to have a decent wage, and when that happens at the end of your  career, they tax your income as if you always made that amount and always will.

They cancelled the provision in the tax code that writers always depended on to allow them to recoup the losses on time invested.

It was called Income Averaging, and allowed you to pay taxes on your average income over the previous 5 years, not on the "windfall" that comes through when your publisher suddenly decides (probably because of a writer's organization audit) to pay what they've owed you for 10 years.

As a result, fiction writers are trapped in pauper status virtually forever.

To smooth out income and make up the difference, most fiction writers do something else to earn a living.

One way out of the trap is to write non-fiction as a "work-for-hire" which earns you current income as wages, not royalties.

Here is where I discuss that:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Here is the point that redstate.com article makes that applies to fiction writing, and how to create using SHOW DON'T TELL.  It also ILLUSTRATES (shows without telling) exactly why fiction writers must master this technique.

-----------quote-----------
Someone else had a talent for doing this. Ronald Reagan. (heads up, if you accuse me of saying Trump is another Reagan I swear by the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress that I will ban you)

From Hedrick Smith’s epic and under-appreciated 1987 book The Power Game: How Washington Works.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Game-How-Washington-Works-ebook/dp/B009QJMU1S/
This is the set up. CBS News’ Lesley Stahl was convinced that Ronald Reagan is an empty suit. A nincompoop. Someone who was skating along on imagery and who was pretty shallow and inconsequential. So during the 1984 campaign they took advantage of Reagan’s visit to a flag factory to use that as a metaphor for just how bad Reagan was. This is some of the text from the television report (what follows are jpgs via Google Books because I don’t have access to my library right now).

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

Here are the png images included in that article excerpted from Google Books.  I recommend you look up this book on Google Books or Kindle or whatever.  It was a best seller for a reason.  You can make your fortune using your fiction skills to write books like this one.  Here are the 3 excerpts the article writer chose to include, without the comments interpolated between.  I recommend you read the actual article on redstate.com (nevermind, just read it.  It won't kill you to read it.)

----------excerpts from Google Books----------------

-----------end excerpts----------------

-------QUOTE from redstate.com article-------------

The reason Stahl had to rely on those visuals for her hit piece was because Reagan and his staff carefully stage managed the visual aspect of all of his appearances. They knew, as Scott Adams says up top, that the visual is about 10 : 1 in impact when compared to the verbal. No matter what Reagan said, the imagery was going to be what the television viewer remembered.

This is what people are failing to understand about Trump. The political class thinks he is a buffoon (a buffoon who could buy and sell his critics by the truckload, mind you) because he refuses to play by the traditional rules. As Leon pointed out, he is operating so far outside the political experience of the rest of the field that no one is even sure how to attack or criticize him. The media can criticize Trump for tossing this Ramos character but to do it they have to show the video. Once they show the video, no one hears what they say because Trump dominates the imagery and the conversation.

The way Trump handled Ramos should be the way all of our candidates handle the mindless gotcha questions like those that characterized the first GOP debate.

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

I remember reading The Power Game: How Washington Works, full of "Aha!" moments.

This one, however, did not surface in my mind until I saw this article flick by me on Flipboard.com where I collect items on various topics of interest to fiction writers:
https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg

So here's the point.  Mastering SHOW DON'T TELL, mastering what screenwriters call "story in pictures" -- mastering the non-verbal arts -- is the real key to communication.

SAVE THE CAT!
http://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-%C2%AE-Strikes-Back-ebook/dp/B004QT6Z0A/
will save your butt as a writer.

I can't emphasize that enough. It's a series on screenwriting but it is the key to novel writing, for exactly the reasons sited in this redstate.com article.

Words,  vocabulary, spelling and grammar, lexicon, all of that matters.  It matters vitally.  It makes all the difference.  But "difference" from what?

The difference from confusion, mixed messages, which vitiate the effect of your Conflict and Resolution.

The visuals you select, all of them without exception, must precisely and exactly illustrate and depict your theme -- the theme and the images must say the same thing, or you get the effect described in The Power Game: How Washington Works, and the effect Donald Trump produced evicting a reporter from his press conference.

People, readers, accept and believe the images and ignore the denotation of the words.

First comes the visuals.  They penetrate the mind, connect to the autonomic nervous system, elevate and activate and communicate with the animal brain.  After that point, the only words that are "heard" are the ones that agree with, expound upon, and adorn the image.

Yes, words are mere decoration wrapped around visuals.

There are animals with far superior vision to humans, but most of them are predators with fairly small brains and one focus, hunting.

Humans are multi-purpose creatures, flexible -- which is why we survived the last Ice Age and can survive the coming Global Warming whatever the reasons for the shift in conditions.  (we can, but will we? -- that's the question fiction writers play with: "Will we?"  "Will we?" is all about politics.)

So what do our multi-purpose eyes and brains glean from images?

What element of a novel does the basic-animal-brain extract from a wall of type, an impenetrable page of fiction in words?

There's a linkage, a series of synapses, that young people either develop -- or not -- at a certain age when they can learn languages and reading.

Pretty much by age 7 or so, the ability to create these synapses begins to wane -- and it's fairly gone by age 10.

With vast effort, such things can be learned later, but the effort is vast so the reward has to be obvious.

Watching someone staring at pages in a book, (or an e-reader) for hours and snarling at interruptions does not convey the magnitude of the reward.

What happens when you read print?

You interpret.

The brain cells involved in grasping the words hand off the "meaning" extracted from the black squiggles on the page to other parts of the brain.  The synapse we're talking about here is the hand-off of language to images.

When people who love to read fiction immerse in a book, they SEE the images, smell the smells, feel the velvet tingles -- senses engage.

Words translate into the activation of other senses.  It isn't strong as if you were actually seeing the image.  It's a bit "removed" so it is easier to read about something ugly or repellent, and still feel as you would if you had actually seen it -- just not so strong you have to run vomit.

VISUALS ARE VITAL

Using the words that tickle the visual cortex for the reader is what a writer does for a living.

Symbolism is all about visuals.

If a word becomes a symbol, then it is stylized -- you use a special font to register a trademarked word.  You can't trademark a lexicon word, but you can trademark the image of a word.

The IMAGE triggers the associations to the company or product, but the lexicon word does not.

That is the nature of humans.  Writers are artists who know how to use that nature.

The images you choose to evoke with your words are the "symbolism" component of your romance story and your romance plot.

What the symbols mean and why you need them in your novel is called the "Theme" component of your work of art.

You don't TELL the theme; you SHOW the theme in symbolic images.  If you tell the theme and say THIS IS WHAT I MEAN! but the images say something different, the images will be believed and the words ignored.

The symbolism is more compelling than any word, just as with the Reagan/Trump comparison in this article from redstate.com.

Donald Trump is a businessman, a graduate of a premier business school.  I'm fairly sure they don't teach the art of fiction writing to such Business Majors.

But they do teach THE ART OF THE DEAL.  That's the famous book Donald Trump wrote that you should read to learn how to write dialogue scenes.

Here it is in Kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J-ebook/dp/B000SEGE6M/

Donald Trump's book is as popular and informative as The Power Game: How Washington Works.

Put the two together, you have a Romance Novel of gigantic proportions - sex and politics, power and fame.

Dealing, negotiating, is an art.

You don't get what you deserve.  You get what you negotiate.

Everyone knows this truth, but few think about it consciously or articulate it.  It is stored in memory as the dejected posture of the loser walking away from a meeting, being fired from a cushy job, or being rejected by a lover.  

Therefore, you as a fiction writer can use negotiating in scene structure.  And you the non-fiction writer can use negotiating in speech writing.

Speech writing is akin to writing a sex scene.  Think about that.  Listen to some famous speeches and graph the emotional peaks and valleys, overlay that graph on a graph of a famous sex scene and see how they match exactly.  It's called wooing an audience for a reason.

If you are writing a dialogue scene, the Characters are negotiating -- i.e. they are at war, they are in Conflict, they are at cross-purposes, they are communicating in words, but they will each be understanding what is really happening via imagery-symbols.

They call that, in theatrical stage writing, "business."

"Business" is actions that have nothing to do with what is being said, but everything to do with what is meant.

An old fashioned example of "Business" is how famous, sexy actors and actresses added sexual innuendo and power-talk to dull dialogue scenes by lighting a cigarette then mashing it out on the floor, punctuating the end of the scene.  Today, they play with their smartphones.

Negotiations turn on actions, and the visual impact of actions within the cultural context of the Characters.

When Trump just quietly nodded to his Security guy to remove the fractious reporter, that was a visual symbol of power.  It was an actor using "Business" to convey meaning without words.  It was the entire theme of his campaign in one tiny movement of his head - power, greatness, decisiveness.  When he immediately announced he'd be bringing that reporter back to get his turn at asking questions, and then did that with great aplomb, he used show-don't-tell to illustrate the theme of reasonableness and compassion.  At the end of the exchange, when the reporter admitted that Donald Trump was correct in one assertion, Trump praised that reporter for his honesty and invited him to lunch.

Most observers agree, it was not scripted but spontaneous on Trump's part.  But screenwriters recognized the underlying "scene structure" template, and all viewers saw (visually) Trump in the role of the Main Character, even maybe the Hero or possibly the Villain depending on what other visuals they had absorbed.  Trump knew what to do and how to "play" that scene just as Reagan did -- because he'd played that scene many times before.  That's why he did it so smoothly.

There was another such scene that deserves consideration as you learn how to create using show don't tell.  It is the famous one when a shoe was thrown at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq in 2008.

To the USA audience, it was a stupid act of aggression of no meaning except to illustrate the boorishness of the uncivilized people.  To the Iraqi audience to whom turning the sole of a shoe toward someone is an unforgivable insult, Bush's reaction showed them that the USA culture is stupid and weak, without moral fiber.

Both audiences saw the same IMAGE -- each extracted a different THEME.

You can do that between a human from Earth and an Alien from Elsewhere if you create the Alien civilization using theme-symbolism integration to the point where you can show-don't-tell the meaning on a non-verbal level.

Your Alien may "play the scene" out of practiced habit, and your human can totally miss the point, causing the human to take actions that cause the Alien a lot of trouble at home.

Here is another neuroscience article from August 2015 to consider.  We know how images affect people, but we don't know all the mechanism behind that.  So when creating your alien species, mull over some of the research like this:

http://www.deepstuff.org/brainbow-reveals-surprising-data-about-visual-connections-in-brain/

Theme-symbolism integration is the secret to getting a reader of a page of text to burst out laughing or melt down sobbing.  It's just words -- but the meaning blossoms into parts of the brain that have no words.  That's the most powerful part of the brain, the real decision making part.  Most of the time, words just "rationalize" the decision the "gut" has already made.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Information Feed Tricks And Tips For Writers Part 4 - Keep The Press Out Of It by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Information Feed Tricks And Tips For Writers
Part 4
 Keep The Press Out Of It
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series on Information Feed:

Part 1 was on the Definition of News:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

-----------QUOTE FROM PART 1 of Information Feed--------
When is it fun to acquire information?

When you have been harboring a burning question you need the answer to, AND when you have found that answer for yourself, by your own efforts, without anyone TELLING YOU.

Information someone tells you is boring.

Secrets you unravel for yourself are interesting.

That's what editors mean when they say they want to read a well written manuscript that "holds my interest."  That's code for "make me figure it out." 

Information that is kept from you is irresistibly interesting.

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

That quote relates to Story Springboards, Part 7, where we discuss in detail what it means to write an "interesting" story -- what constitutes INTERESTING and how do you identify it? 

Here is Story Springboards Part 7
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/story-springboards-part-7-knack-of.html
----------
Part 2 of Information Feed Tricks and Tips is also on Definition of News:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for_23.html

Part 3 is about the publishing business model
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

Prior to the series on Information Feed we discussed some of the ingredients here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

So now we're going to look at the role of the media in fiction, and how to use the element of media intrusion life in a novel. 

As noted these last few months, to construct an "interesting" piece of fiction, one must consider the world in which the intended reader is living.  You must know more about that world than the reader of your novel would ever want to know. 

Information is boring.  What you are TOLD is boring.  What you figure out for yourself (as discussed in Story Springboards Part 7) is inherently interesting and memorable.  Even if it's the same thing!

So look at how today's public is tuning out the information in "Current Events."

That was the course where 6th grade children learned how to read a newspaper and understand what "The Press" does as the watchdog set to hound our elected officials and expose everything they do (or don't do). 

In the 1940's, people who voted got their news from Newspapers, while Radio News was a bit dubious and superficial.  Though TV had been officially invented, and even deployed commercially, the general public didn't have it, and there was no TV News. 

Visuals of what was going on in the world were distributed via theaters where a short (10 minute) "Newsreel" was shown between the films of the "Double Feature."

A "Double Feature" was two films, one with big name stars called the Feature or A-Picture, and a second with lesser known actors and usually a not-so-good script, cheesy effects, a cheaply made movie called the B-Picture.  You can now get most of them streaming on Amazon.

Between them came cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck,) and sometimes a weekly Serial (Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon), and the Newsreel (when most went out to buy popcorn.)  This would be 3-5 hours of entertainment for 25 or 50 cents depending on your age (about the price of a 1lb loaf of bread or a gallon of gas.) Oh, and no commercials before, during or after these segments.  Theaters made all their money from concession stands and box-office.  And they did WELL indeed.

So a tidbit of NEWS was delivered amidst fictional entertainment, fantasy, and humor aimed at kids (but laced with racial and sexual innuendo only adults would notice.)

People didn't go to theaters in order to see the Newsreel about World War II or the Korean War or whatever.  They went to see FICTION, and that was because there was no TV in most homes.  Where there was TV, there was only one to three channels that broadcast maybe 3-4 hours per evening. 

Why the summary of ancient history?  Those people are not part of the modern Romance writer's audience.  Who cares?   

This blog entry is about the role of the MEDIA in Romance Genre and sub-genre, mixed genre. 

Why is this of interest to fiction writers?  Especially to Romance Writers?

Well, concurrently with this "tune-out" of the general public, we've also seen a complete revolution of the Romance field in general, and the gradual addition of MIXED GENRE sub-categories to Romance genre.

We saw the rise of the Victorian, the Historical, the Regency Romance, the Gothic Romance, the Western Romance, each taking a turn in the spotlight.

But it was still just a Romance story transplanted to another venue. 

Now we've seen a full pivot to the Kickass Romance Heroine, a completely different story and plot.  The shrinking violet and wall-flower are still around, and you can catch up on those via Kindle re-issues.  But today's Romance characters are heroic characters whose decisions are implemented. 

Reprints in general were essentially forbidden in Romance publishing for decades.  The stories were too much alike, and one writer (sometimes under several pen names) would write the same story over and over in different settings, with details and characters that differed slightly, and all of them would sell big time.

That era is almost gone.  Almost.  Now there's Paranormal Romance, Vampire Romance, Werewolf Romance, Interstellar Romance, Alien Romance, Military Romance (where the Heroine is a high ranking military fighter, pilot, strategist, troubleshooter, etc.), and women who are CEO's, COO's, etc -- some who are villains, thieves, blackmailers, spies, etc etc. Even hard-boiled Detective Romance has a place.

In other words, the feminist revolution opened up the roles women live in real life, and now that there's a new generation of teens entering the Romance readership which has internalized the idea that just because you're female doesn't mean you can't do THIS (whatever this is.)

It's not happening worldwide, (yet), but it is seeping into every country, even those under theocratic dictatorship.

In fact, the entire story-line (or Romance sub-genre) of a woman coming into her sense of person-hood under the thumb of an autocratic male regime is still hot-stuff.

In the 1960's writers played with the idea of women in the role of the oppressor (the role-reversal ploy). Even Gene Roddenberry tried that in a couple of failed Pilots.

The Millennials are beginning to drag the culture back to a "norm" of some sort.  If you study TV News, (just turn the sound off and watch), you will notice how men still wear shirts, ties, and jackets while women guests and anchors wear shrink-wrapped sheaths cut down to HERE, over spandex. 

Women TV News anchors wear 3 or 4 inch spike, platform shoes. 

And the hair style has reverted to the 1940's "look" of long, dangling hair with shreds tickling faces.

My mother noted, when she hit 50, that all the styles she had been forced to wear 30 years prior had suddenly come back.  She advised, "Never throw anything out.  It'll come back into style again." 

It's taken about 40 or 50 years, but here comes the 1950/60's sheath dress with spiked heels and lanky, artfully un-done hair.

Gene Roddenberry made a RULE for his TV shows (in the 1960's).  Women had to wear their hair UP or cut short.  If they didn't, it was a "signal" that they were sexually available.

To whom, and under what circumstances (home, work, playground with the kids, night out on the town, on school campus?) are we now sexually UNavailable?

The big difference between the 1950's and now is birth control.  These days a woman is expected to be sexually available with no fertility -- or carrying a morning after pill.  Sex is for fun only unless both parties deliberately choose to make it about procreation. 

That is a huge change in self-perception for women that isn't going away any time soon.

But that perception has not cut into the market for Romance novels.  It has, however spawned a multitude of new kinds of stories told in the search for Love, for a Soul Mate, and the thesis that a sensible woman test-drives the guy before getting deeply "involved." 

Now look at the rest of the picture, searching for where this alteration in female style came from and is going (OK, the answer is "around again" as my Mom noted.)

Where we are in this cycle of Sexual Politics -- reflected in dress, speech, work roles, ball-busting, kickass heroines to shrinking violets -- seems to be in a reversion to some kind of "norm."  

In Biblical Times, daughters who had no father were apportioned Land in his stead, by decree of God. 
In Roman times, a widow had property rights and other powers.  By the Middle Ages, all those rights were gone.  By Victorian times, the pendulum on women's rights was starting to move again, widows first. 

As writers, we search for a principle that works in any kind of fiction designed for marketing via any medium from paper print to webisodes. 

Why do we need that principle?

The Romance Genre professional of the 1950's didn't need any such principle.  In that era, a Romance novel was trash, fit for a single reading and tossing into the fire, or the trash (there was no recycle and no e-book.)

Publishers, as noted above, would never reprint a Romance Novel.

If you worked in Romance, you were a second class citizen (maybe third class) among writers.  The scorn was beyond the belief of today's Millennials.

And we still feel the sting of that scorn.  But it's a lot less now than then.  It just hurts more.

Why has the scorn abated at all? 

Romance novels are now considered re-printable -- if only as re-issues in e-book by their own authors. 

Today, there exists such a thing as the Romance Series.  That, too, is new (in both Science Fiction and Romance, as well as in the SFR or PNR mixed genre).

The existence of the mixed genres may be attributable to female contraception, which unleashed women to take over the world.

Or, as some say, Fanfiction (which is written mostly but not exclusively by women) to take over the world.

Here is an academic study to which I contributed an essay titled FIC, or why fan fiction is taking over the world.



What has fanfic to do with media intruding into a fictional world you have built?

Oh, just about everything. 

Birth control unleashed women to finish college, found careers, and relate to men in general as well as to a Soul Mate in particular, in a fashion that fulfilled the human potential inside that female.  This realization of potential found very early expression in fan fiction, where women raised in the 1940's and 1950's sought to create a model of a male/female Relationship between equals.

In the 1940's 1950's and well into the '60's, science fiction invented the fanzine and practiced (and perfected) individual, personalized magazine publishing. But at first fanzines carried nothing but non-fiction written by fans about writers or their professionally published science fiction novels, about the lives and ambitions of people who read those books and magazines, and about why they read them.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/101100368553209934322/albums/5971007155107206257/5971007161129801506

The professional magazine was a main communication channel in addition to Newspapers and Newsreels.  There were a lot, and there were a few "everyone" read (LIFE being one of those, TIME another.) 

Spirit duplication (that purple ink stuff) was used in business and in schools.  Fans used it to copy and distribute (by snailmail) "fanzines" (fan magazines written by and for fans) to fandom.

Fandom was a word that applied not to what you think of today, but to a well organized group of people all over the USA (mostly who hadn't met in person) who paid dues to one or another fan organization.  It had its own language and etiquette that differed markedly from that of the general public.  It spawned the World Science Fiction Convention in the early 1930's, suspended it during WWII, and resumed in the late 1940's.

As science fiction fandom grew, the number of copies of a fanzine grew -- and the larger circulation ones went to mimeograph (Gestetner is the name to research.)

If you look at the pictures of the World Science Fiction Conventions in those decades, you'll note it's mostly men (the writers were men), and you will see a number of women at formal dinner events (where the Hugo was awarded).  They were the SO's and wives,  often who worked hard and made the Event possible, but were not those listed for achievement.  There were exceptions, women who wrote under male bylines.

If you trace this kind of Event through the decades, you'll see that change in fandom in parallel to how it changed in the general population -- Science Fiction people didn't lead this "revolution."  Today science fiction fandom is about 50/50 male/female, as is Gaming, but the purveyors of these story-forms have not yet admitted that.

Science Fiction provided the first outlet for the children of those women you see in those early pictures, the decorative add-ons to what men did.

You may look down on those add-on women, but you might change your attitude if you just sit and imagine what it felt like to be them. 

Very possibly, you are in your thirties, maybe you have one or two children or plan to have them in your thirties.  That's a very different life, and different self-image than those add-on women had.

My grandparent's generation looked at life from that older perspective, and I know a few women who, today, are living that life.  If you know what it feels like to be pregnant, to have a baby that just doesn't sleep for months then barely naps, to get pregnant again before that kid is toilet trained, and so on for 9 to 12 pregnancies starting at age maybe 16-20 years, and turning 40 with two toddlers in tow -- just think about that weary drag on strength, spirit, and self-image.

Think about burying two of those hard-birthed children.

Think about having your body's strength drained away like that while having to do all their laundry by hand (and iron it all) and shop on a shoestring budget and scratch-cook almost everything they ate. 

It isn't a Regency Romance lifestyle.  There are no servants.  And you have to keep all that off your husband's shoulders because he has an even more draining challenge to keep a job and bring home a paycheck. 

Those women didn't monitor the News of the Day via some internet feed.  They knew almost nothing about what the men were up to in Washington D.C. and frankly, couldn't care less. 

Those women were (and still are all around the world) kickass heroines of the first class.

That lifestyle defines what it means to be a woman -- it means indomitable will, keen judgement, crafty budgeting, fiscal responsibility, and an iron fisted control of the husband and his paycheck. 

Remember, too, in those days women died in childbirth -- mostly, that was what any girl had to look forward to as her fate.

Don't feel sorry for them.  Respect your ancestors.

But now consider the women TV News anchors wearing shrink-wrap dresses cut down to HERE and spike heels that serve no purpose but to make it hard to walk around the set as a man does.

ASIDE: If you note the apparel in most videogames, it's shrink-wrap because animating flowing robes, skirts, even loose fitting pants, is one huge (expensive) technical challenge (even though Disney's been doing it for generations.)  So today's Millennials are used to the image of heroic people in shrink-wrap clothing.  Perhaps they are mimicking game-clothing in real life?  Or it just "looks right" to them?

I called that News Anchor apparel change from women in pants suits or at least long sleeved jackets, or dresses with long sleeves and high necks, a "reversion to the norm." 

But what is the "norm?" 

Is it the early 1900's -- the Old West? -- or Regency ballroom low-cut open bosom -- or the cult-modern version of the shirt-dress look?  What's "norm?" 

A writer doesn't need to know the correct answer to that -- but a writer must have an answer.  The answer the writer has (at the moment the Idea For A Story occurs) contains the Theme of this story.

You can make an answer up, especially when worldbuilding an alien culture that will spawn your Leading Man.  A differing "norm" can create conflict.

Take, for example, the "Lost Colony" scenario where you are writing the Old West set on another planet where explorers from Earth have crashed and are trying to eek out a living. 

You have to get inside the head of a young woman raised on that planet to see no escape from a life of rapid-succession child bearing as she meets an Orbital Lander from Earth and sees her Soul Mate step out proclaiming the Colony Found.

He's from Earth at a time when women don't "bear children" -- but have them incubated in a mechanical womb.  Or maybe there is such a thing as a womb "3-D printed" from the mother's DNA that incubates the fetus without strain on the mother's metabolism? 

What would that do to the psyche of all Earth's cultures?  What of the studies that show fetus responses to music and other environmental effects around the pregnant woman?  Would heartbeat and music be provided?  Everyone the same? Or unique for each fetus?

Maybe women have household robots, (Artificial Intelligence as good as what we now see depicted on the TV Show ALMOST HUMAN?) 



I can hardly wait until they do an episode of Almost Human where the AI has to babysit a family of kids while the mother is in the hospital.  I doubt it would be a challenge for him to deliver a baby -- medical procedures are probably in memory -- but you can't program child-care (yet.)  Kids are known for original thinking. 

Would being raised by an AI au paire change humans?  The answer to that could be a THEME. 

Look, here we have a website agenting in-home child-care.
http://www.aupaircare.com/

So you can see SFR writers have to be able to don the mindset of the woman from a world where there is no such thing as female contraception -- and if there were, it would be anathema because the very survival of the colony depends on a growing population. 

And you should have no trouble adopting the mindset of a young woman with a Talent (for art, music, acting, business management, sharp-shooting) being crushed into a life of continual pregnancy until she's too old and worn out to do anything she dreamed of as a child.

But having adopted your character's mindset, you now have the Information Feed problem mentioned in the title of this series. 

Somehow, you have to bring your reader into that always-pregnant mindset.

That process of bringing a reader into a new mindset is what I term "Information Feed."  You must feed your reader information in small bits deliciously wrapped in emotional significance. 

To provide your reader entre into the mindset of a woman who does, heroically, seek a life of child bearing and child rearing, you must appreciate the current culture's attitudes, and grasp this process of "reversion to the mean" that I've referenced above.

Such a "Lost Colony" novel really is a contrast/compare essay of two extreme positions highlighted against "the mean" -- the central, no strain, position human cultures tend to oscillate around.

Oscillate is the keyword. 

Currently, Millennial women demand contraception as part of their healthcare insurance policy.  I'm not coming down on one side or the other of the Obamacare argument over contraception.  I'm focused here on how the media figures into storytelling, Romance Novel writing and marketing. 

I'm showing you how to observe your world and think about it like a science fiction writer, not a denizen of that world. 

Stand outside of human history and look at the ideas, opinions, and standards of right and wrong as they oscillate around a mean over thousands of years.

To write a novel that will stay in print for 20 years (as my first novel, House of Zeor, did) then get reprinted and reprinted by different publishers for the next few decades (as my first novel, House of Zeor, did), and leap the gap into whatever new media delivery system becomes popular through those decades (House of Zeor went to e-book, and is now in audiobook, and its series is in development at a videogame company), nail that mean and know where your audience is now in that oscillation.

Just as in sharpshooting, you have to "lead your target."  You have to shoot at where your target audience will be, not where it is.

I don't see that changing any time soon.  Even with Indie production (or Amazon subsidized production) of web-distributed feature films, there is usually at least a 5 year lead time between "I've got an Idea" and "There It Is On My Screen!"  Very often, unless you're handed a work-for-hire contract and have 6 weeks to write the script, the lead time can be 10 years.

So assessing that oscillation around the mean can be a critical skill for any writer. 

Upon your assessment of the world you live in will depend your reprintability, your ability to craft a Series, and your ability to leap across tech-upgrades. 

In other words, your retirement fund depends on your ability to assess the harmonic motion underlying our ambient culture(s). 

Once you've arrived at an assessment and tested it out by watching TV News, Magazine and Web and Blog News, and comments on news stories on blogs, and listened to conversations at parties (that's an important element -- eavesdropping and keeping your mouth shut at parties to scarf up the ambient opinion), then you park your assessment in the back of your mind where your subconscious can find it.  Your subconscious will eventually craft an IDEA out of it.

Don't try to do this consciously.  A story deliberately crafted to showcase your own opinion about current culture will come off as "preachy" or as thin, awkward, with cardboard characters riddled with cliche.

Also, remember all the discussions on this blog about how necessary it is for a writer, particularly of Romance, to be able to argue all sides of any issue, including hot-button issues like contraception or abortion.  Remember, if there is nothing you could accept as evidence that you're wrong, you hold a non-falsifyable opinion.  That's not an opinion at all but rather it is a religious belief (even if God doesn't figure in it!).  You always have to image the counter-argument that would convince you to change your mind.

Romance writers of the 1940's were talking to a fairly homogenous readership, pregnant women raising kids and wondering if they had the right husband because their guys only wanted sex and more sex while women in that position need emotional support and admiration from their men, especially admiration for their heroism.

Also remember, in those days, divorce was a horrid stigma that followed the children and stunted their careers -- especially if the woman remarried.  Whisper campaigns killed. 

Put yourself in the position of such a wife/mother who really (truly, deep inside) wanted to be such a wife and mother, a stay-at-home Mom with no other way to make a living.

In the 1940's, Unions and all men solemnly believed that working men had to make more money than women who worked because a man worked to support a family, and women who were stay-at-home-moms actually EARNED half his paycheck by feeding, clothing, and tumbling him to keep him in top shape to do his job.

For a man to have children at all meant that a woman had to be pregnant most of her career-founding years (read sick as a dog, weak, coddled because of her "delicate condition" and rendered stupid and useless to the outside world by "mood swings.")

To have children meant someone had to stay home and take care of them (no such thing as day-care) -- no way could a Mom be employed without doing irreparable harm to the children.  A working Mom was abusing her children.  Think about that.  Get inside that mindscape. 

Remember the 1950's and 1960's post-WWII era saw the advent not just of the Living Room TV Set, but also the electric washing machine (and dryer), permanent press clothing, and a plethora of "labor saving devices" for the kitchen -- including refrigerators with freezers on top.  Less time scratch cooking (more packaged meals; the TV Dinner), and less time shopping and hauling food home every day by hand (women didn't have CARS -- families with two cars didn't become common until the 1960's and 70's).  Women cooked, cleaned and shopped by hand -- but they didn't have to drive carpool because schools were in walking distance of every home.

Any one item taken by itself wouldn't mean anything to the ambient mindset of the era.

Taken all together, they form a pattern of a huge weight taken off female shoulders allowing women to stand up straight, take a deep breath and re-assess their own self-image, independence, and power.  The 1970's whirlwind of change didn't happen because of ONE BOOK -- it happened because men commercialized convenience food and labor saving devices because they loved their wives.

That's a Point Of View -- it's a thematic element that has to be represented by a Character whose dialogue reflects that attitude in subtle ways.

Why would you need to learn that point of view if you're writing a Contemporary Romance aimed at the Millennials market?

The answer is simple.  To depict a character that is not "cardboard" and to reveal motivations without writing long, internal monologues, (motivations such as What Does She See In Him) you need another character, and that other character has to be someone OLDER. 

Parents and Grandparents are good prospects to flesh out your main character, uncles and old mentors, elderly neighbors, a dependable servant, a clever shop owner, the cop on the beat. 

Fictional characters also work to voice the dialogue that argues the other side of a matter -- characters in old novels or old movies that your Main Characters quote or reference.  "Those aren't the bots you're looking for." 

Oh, and speaking of The Force, don't forget the role that organized Religion has played, and still does in other parts of this world.  Religion is generally considered an oppressive force today, but one of your characters has to present the case for Religion as the actual Liberator of women.  This doesn't have to come from Clergy, but likely prospects for minor characters could be a female Rabbi, and other religions are giving women major roles, too.  Remember that this trend is also an oscillator. 

So we have these social and technological trends that oscillate while governing (independently) sexual behavior, reproductive behavior, marriage laws, gender-based self-esteem, career choices, wealth potential, power potential, gender based property ownership laws, sumptuary laws, and many other departments of life that anthropologists study.

Under "self-esteem" place all the categories of a person's access to communication with others, and sources of in-coming information (such as News, Weather, Sports, Gossip).

Would the good wife/mother hang out at the tavern to hear the latest Bard who wandered through?  Not likely.  They'd pump their men for the story.  The story would be edited by drunken inattention, illiteracy, bad memory, disinterest in the topic, and consideration of a woman's irrational emotional responses to men's business.

Such women didn't have blogs and online support Groups, or any of the worldwide associations we have today.  They weren't less intelligent than we are.  They just lived in an information-vacuum.

Which brings us back to what I sketched out at the top of this blog entry.

Today, the Millennials and their parents have "tuned out" -- they don't listen to "The News" the way people did during World War II.  They don't devote an hour a day to absorbing the import of doings and Events around the world, intent on their responsibility as voters to make the right assessment of the behavior of those they have elected.

Yes, that attitude is also oscillating. 

In the 1950's Radio, Newspaper, fledgling TV, Magazines, and Newsreels were commercial endeavors that served an audience keenly focused on understanding what was going on, and why. 

Here's the thing though.  When it came to voting, if a husband and wife disagreed on an issue on the ballot, they would both not-vote in that election because their votes would cancel each other out, so why bother.

But for the most part, because women were so focused inside the home, and so bedraggled/exhausted/spent, women believed what men told them and tended to vote the way their husbands said they should.  Nevermind secret ballot, the women voluntarily conformed to their husband's political opinions.  (fat chance of that today!)

The 1970's changed that, and women became News Consumers -- a bonanza for advertisers!  Women control spending in the USA -- pretty much always have. 

So women were "tuned out" in the early 1900's, "tuned in" by the 1970's, and now we're approaching the 2020's (just six years hence). 

Where have News Audiences been this last 20 years?  Tuned-in or Tuned-out?  And where will they go next?  (oscillation, remember - is the mean around which we oscillate creeping because of technology?)

Check the new Core Curriculum that has roiled up so much controversy as the Federal Government tries to control childhood education and make it uniform across the country.  See what your kids are being taught now.

Check particularly for Current Events -- what sources are children told to bring in to class to give speeches on?  The Web?  The New York Times or LA Times?  Local papers?  Video clips?  Huffington Post?  What are the authoritative sources most admired by school children today?

Most likely, all you know about the Core Curriculum standards has been learned from TV News or talk-show coverage.  (pundits and talk-shows are a relatively new phenomenon, too).

Unless you're an activist, you probably have not read the original source material that puts a gag order on local school personnel when talking to parents.  And there's very little coverage in mainstream news - TV Network News, Cable News, just don't focus on the revamping of the education system.

Several forces are at work there.  Fewer people are having children, and fewer of those who are growing a family have time to pay attention to News. 

Since our news sources are commercially driven (except NPR which gets public money and thus is politically grant-driven), they edit the news to be of interest (i.e. deliver eyeballs to commercials) to the life-situations of the viewers. Since fewer viewers have children in school, the news programs don't cover what's going on inside education -- must not bore viewers with information they don't want.

The rest of the country, retiring baby-boomers, 40-somethings who may have kids in school but both mother and father work full time, unemployed Millennials, and laid-off middle-aged people who are in the depressed/hopeless stage, may watch TV but even when watching News expect to be entertained not informed.  As a result, most of what's broadcast as news is really gossip and local news like accidents put up to fill National News time.  They show you video clips because it's more entertaining.

SHOW DON'T TELL is the watchword for good fiction because information is boring. 

That's why mystery and suspense has to be structured by the Socratic Method.

In January, 2014, we discussed how to use the Socratic Method to find and construct your story opening:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/story-springboards-part-7-knack-of.html

The Socratic Method gets the reader to ask questions, wonder, formulate answers, then test those answers.

That mental process is inherently entertaining, and the key skill in "writing an interesting story."  People are inherently interested in their own ideas, not yours.  After all, whose ideas are you most interested in?  What gets you racing to your tablet or computer to write something down or look something up?  The Ideas that energize you are your own, and it is your possession of them that makes them interesting -- not the content of the IDEA.

The questions to ask yourself as you craft your second draft is, "Why does this matter?"  "Why does 'the truth' matter to this character?" "Why does that character care?" Or the Romance version, "What does she see in him?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-2-whats.html

It's the same with Science Fiction -- it's all about showing the reader into a puzzling situation that the reader gets to solve.

As in the Socratic Method, though, the way to hold your audience's attention is to withhold information.  There's an art to that, as well as a craft.

That's why I call this technique "information feed" not "information withholding." 

The core of the technique is to get your reader asking questions, postulating their own answers, and changing their minds about their assessment of the situation and the characters involved.  You can't tell the reader what you already know -- that's boring.  You have to get the reader to figure out for themselves what you already know. 

You do this by feeding information one kernel at a time.  The easiest way to structure that feed into a story is to have your main Point of View Character ignorant of everything you, the writer, knows at the beginning of the story. 

Then "feed" that information to your Character, causing the character to a)doubt what they know, b) seek more information, c) find partial or wrong data, d) reassess what they think, e) act on insufficient data, f) get into a huge mess because of acting on insufficient data, g) find out more, h) act again and succeed.

Now, look again at the title of this entry -- Keep The Press Out Of It.

That is advice from the screenwriting series, SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES! by Blake Snyder (of the 3 book series that I recommend.)



How do you apply it to novel writing?

In Romance, usually, you work with a tight focus on the lives of two people who are working out a Relationship.  So usually the media would not be in the story.

When you create a character or situation which would inevitably (in our real world) attract media attention into what is a private transaction, you destroy the bubble in which your story occurs.  The characters begin to respond to the external force of media attention more strongly than to each other, and the entire plot explodes and dissipates.  Various successive scenes refocus on the external scrutiny, and you lose your way through the story.

Look again at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/story-springboards-part-7-knack-of.html

That's the Knack of Hooking Readers.  The abstract mental process of a writer creating a "hook" is explained via the analogy of a screwtop bottle.  When you let the media into your story, you strip the threads of that screwtop. 

When Blake Snyder was in the midst of writing that series, and propounded the maxim, "Keep The Press Out Of It" - he had a weekly blog.  I went on the blog and explained to him where I had used media reports to move a plot, and he agreed that technique was usable.

What was the example I gave him?

It was in my Vampire Romance THOSE OF MY BLOOD -



- which is set on the Earth's Moon.  The main character sees a news report showing his house, back on Earth, blowing up, and follows the story of who did that and why.  Knowing that information, learning it via the media, he acted in ways he would not have acted otherwise.  The fact that the team on the Moon was in the media spotlight was inescapable via the story's logic.  At the end, the media arrive in force, and that drives the characters to act yet again.

That novel was difficult to write, but the publisher who bought it for hardcover publicized it as my breakout novel.

Keeping that TIGHT FOCUS on the characters' developing and changing relationship, and using media for information feed for items the characters would not ordinarily learn about, not letting media become a major plot-driver, is difficult. 

There is one way to let the media be a character, and still not include reporters as characters.

Consider the high-profile character -- a corporate executive, multi-billionaires, Presidential Candidates, Oscar Winning celebrities, people who have the media lurking in bushes and chasing after them all the time.

Such people treasure PRIVACY -- and much of their energy is spent getting away from media, locking them out, walling them away. 

That's a CONFLICT.  Conflict resolution is what every story is about.

When you introduce media into your story, you introduce a major conflict inside and outside your characters, a conflict so major that it overshadows and pre-empts whatever conflict you introduced on page 1.

The theme shifts from what you wanted it to be to whatever the media represents to your readers.

The story then becomes all about the effect that your characters' actions have on the general public, how the public reacts, and what that reaction does to your characters.

That's HUGE.  Beginning writers generally can't handle that big a mess of themes, sub-themes, conflicts nested within conflicts. 

One example of how to do that well is


In Gini Koch's ALIEN series, one of the minor characters who provides many plot-moving elements as well as thematic statements is a reporter for a scandal rag.  He used to do UFO stories that were real, but present them as the usual crack-pot-nonsense.  Now, though, everyone knows there really are Aliens - some living on Earth defending Earth from others that are powerful and hostile. (If that sounds like THOSE OF MY BLOOD, it is like it.  THOSE OF MY BLOOD is about Earth's native vampires defending Earth from vampires from outer space.  ALIEN series is about Earth's native space aliens defending Earth from other space aliens.)

Yes, I love Earth.  Yes, I would defend it from all comers.  But yes, I do think it very likely most Aliens are good friend material if we handle First Contact well.

The first part of the ALIEN series is about a woman who thinks of herself as an ordinary human who gets caught up in the secret (out of the view of the media) war the resident aliens are waging against invading aliens. 

Little by little, information is fed to the reader as the Earth woman learns "what is going on." 

Gini Koch has gotten both the information feed and the use of the media just right in this series.

But take a good look at these books.  They are HUGE -- very long, very expensive to publish and very expensive to buy because of the size of each volume.  That's what happens when you include the media, or a media-attention worthy Event or plot-line or character.

That kind of material is hard to control, hard to discipline, and it takes strength built through practice to achieve this. 

Note that in the early ALIEN novels, Koch has "kept the media out of it" -- and only gradually introduced this reporter character.  Study how that is done.  It is done exceptionally well. 

All rules are red flags in front of the bulls who are writers -- all rules will be attacked, and sometimes broken.  Most of the time, breaking a rule of this kind will result in unusable material.  But when you do it successfully, you hit best seller ranks. 

The secret is to practice in secret.  Remember, publishing is itself "media" and doesn't always mix well with real life.  Some of what you do does not go into books or onto the web. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 3: Making A Living At Writing by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 3
Making A Living At Writing
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous Parts in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

So here we are in 2014 and the world of marketing fiction is morphing even faster than ever.  In fact, "marketing" in general is under a high-impact game-changer of an ad-campaign.  The targets of this campaign mostly have no idea they've been targeted -- which is the way Public Relations is supposed to work, sneaking through your critical thinking filters. 

The groundbreaking ad campaign was launched for the film Anchorman 2.  Ron Burgundy suddenly appeared all over the place, coming at you from every medium.

http://www.hypable.com/2013/12/04/ron-burgundy-quotes-anchorman-promotional-appearances/ 

I saw several items on the financial news back in December 2013 about this ad campaign for Anchorman 2, during the talk about how the only thing wrong with Obamacare is the lack of a sufficient PR thrust to cause people to sign up for Obamacare (while news items kept appearing about the lack of Security on the back end of the healthcare.gov website.)

In the Entertainment biz, (of which publishing is a part), no matter how interesting your story, if it doesn't have an appropriate ad campaign, it won't make you a profit. 

Do you know how it "happens" that something like the Burgundy promo suddenly appears on NEWS SHOWS?  And everywhere else, while ads are appearing -- most hits on the YouTube video which has been pushed viral?  That it didn't "go" viral but was pushed viral on purpose is the story.  But how did that story make it onto a news broadcast?

Publicity Release, that's how.

There are a number of online services that promise free or fee-paid distribution to news outlets for a press release you write -- and they even admit that there is a standardized technique for writing such press releases.  They show you how.  But that isn't enough.

Any reporter, editor, etc. is now bombarded with thousands of these things a day. 

It's not enough to "put out" a "press release" -- professional back-channel access to the decision makers is necessary, and before that can be effective, there has to be a "story." 

This is the NEWS GAME, behind the scenes.  It has its own language and buzz-words as well as an entire business model for attracting the attention of large numbers of people who, because of whatever they have in common, will very likely do something with the information.

The most successful novelists I know of (and sometimes know personally) have one of two starting-professions under their belts before they "make it big" in the book biz.

1) Journalism
2) Marketing

It doesn't matter what kind of Journalism and it doesn't matter marketing what.  These two professions ingrain an entire outlook on the world that trains the subconscious to think in certain ways when organizing an Idea for a Story.

So we're going to examine how the News Game has changed -- where it was decades ago, why it was that way, and what forces caused it to change.

ANCHORMAN 2 is a marvelous case in point since it is sort-of about NEWS, but is fiction, and got this groundbreaking Public Relations Campaign.

That's what's "wrong" with self-publishing -- most writers just don't understand Public Relations, or how to create an ad campaign (nor do they have a sufficient budget).  And they don't understand Journalism -- which is the interface between the writer and the audience.  If you get "reported on" you are important.  How do you get "interviewed" on a news show and have them introduce you as the author of a book which they put on screen?

How do you get a cover design on your book that an eye-blink of exposure on a TV screen would give a viewer a need to buy that book?

It's magic, right?  Sheer dumb luck?  It could happen to anyone?  All you have to do is get your book in print?

What do you need a "publisher" for? 

PR, that's what. 

PR is the most expensive part of producing a book.  Just as in film production, the writer gets the least amount of the budgeted money, the book writer gets the least amount in advance from the publishing budget, and the least of the profits. 

Self-publishers who establish a publishing budget covering all the items a big publisher puts into a budget have a very good chance of succeeding. 

One reason writers go to self-publishing is that they learn how the author's contract pays them 6% to 10% of the NET proceeds from sale of the book.  The publisher keeps the rest.

No, actually not.  The publisher SPENDS the rest on staff and tasks required to produce and market that book.  Publishing (like the News Game we're going to discuss) used to be a zero-profit business.  It used to be that big companies owned a publishing company for the prestige of it (I'm not kidding; I know first-hand), and the company policies of the publishing arm of the company were designed to lose money.

The publishing company's job was to lose money AS A TAX WRITE-OFF.

They were in the business of exciting original thought with stimulating IDEAS, of instructing, informing, investigating, and incidentally entertaining.  The business aim was to break even -- make office rent, salaries, printing fees, etc etc -- not to make a profit.  So for every big, best seller, they would deliberately publish really "important" books that just could not possibly earn what it cost to print and distribute. 

The mission statement didn't include this, but the real mission was to lose money and gain prestige for the company that owned the publishing company.

That all changed when the US tax laws that governed warehousing of product changed.

Two decades later, technology swooped in and blindsided paper publishers -- e-books are now the battleground, and self-publishing may be our Renaissance.  (we're seeing this trend in Indie film and Indie everything else.) 

Note also that most all the US operating publishers are actually owned by foreign companies.  The shift in the tax laws gutted US Publishing to the point where we had an era writers called "Pac Man Publishing" where companies ate each other (this is happening with our Airlines now, and Healthcare delivery and innovators are entering that phase.) 

Just remember this:  IT IS ALL ABOUT THE TAX LAWS. 

So let's add a third starting-profession to the list of pre-published-author professions:

1) Journalism
2) Marketing (PR is part of Marketing)
3) Business Administration

One of the items in the BA curriculum is Public Relations and the place and function of the PR Department in the corporate structure.  Accounting is supposed to cover Tax Laws, but if you self-publish, you have to learn all that, too.  Tax laws are the elephant in the room.  You stand or fall as a business on Tax Law.

A self-publisher is a corporation -- has to be!  At least an LL.C.  There's an annual fee imposed on corps by each state -- a tax.  It's all about taxes. 

If you self-publish an e-book, and get sued, they can take your house, car, any other property.  Put the book into a corporation, and all the laws are different, but they are different in each state. 

And a self-publishing writer has to be a Master of administering or managing a PR department -- even if she wears all the hats in this corp, she has to do the PR and be the PR Department manager herself.  Each of these jobs is a full time job, and each requires a 4-year University Degree or at least the knowledge acquired in that degree work, plus the real-world, hands-on, skills gained by working with people. 

So google the following query:
anchorman Burgundy promotion

Study the results from the point of view of 1) Journalism ( a news organization deciding this film's promotion is NEWS - not the film itself!), 2) Marketing (that provides the news organization with the material to make that decision a slam-dunk) and 3) The Business of monetizing an investment in a piece of fiction (watch the film).

From the outside, the results of PR look like magic.  It's not.  It's science so advanced that it looks like magic. 

So beginning writers assume they can write a great novel, self-publish it, and LUCK may strike and boost them into this pinnacle of profit that the Burgundy films enjoy simply because their writing and their story are so much better than that movie (which they probably are). 

It's true: Luck Can Do That.  And the odds tilt in your favor if you write well. 

But self-publishing for profit requires a whole lot more savvy than that. 

It requires understanding business. 

Being a successful self-publisher means understanding the business structure well enough to know exactly where "Talent" resides in the Business Model, and precisely what the value of the content produced by Talent is worth in terms of ROI. 

Remember the old Hollywood saw, "I'll make you a star."  Mostly, the producer saying that was a grifter who just wanted to "make" the girl, but sometimes they could and did "make a star."  How talented an actress was Marilyn Monroe?  How good a singer is Madonna?  Are there better actresses or singers?  Why aren't they as well known? 

Is fame proportionate to ability?

See this entry on FAME:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/theme-character-integration-part-5-fame.html

Making a living at writing (even if you use a publisher) also requires the writer's concept of their product's place in the business model to morph as fast as the business model itself is morphing.  (which in 2014 is fast!  Tax law changes will ensure even faster morphing, never mind Healthcare changes.)

Take the ANCHORMAN 2 promotional campaign as an example of how your PR approach must now shift.

The Business channels carried items noting how the unique aspect of this promotional campaign was because it utilized multiple media forms simultaneously - a timed barrage. 

It's on TV, Radio, YouTube, Internet ads, and I don't know about print, blogging.  The campaign itself is the news item, as much as the sequel to a popular movie.

OK, the subject of the movie has wide appeal -- but the effectiveness of the YouTube ad plus all the multi-channel hype was highlighted on the Business channel coverage when one of the anchors said his whole family wants to see that movie -- the teen from YouTube or Netflix exposure, his wife from another medium and himself from other sources. 

Each channel of communication with potential audience demographics now requires a different medium of communication of the "message."  But "messaging" is still King. 

Apparently, the producers of this film spent more on promotion than on the movie, and one of the stars is getting his cut off the back end (not up front which is usual).  In other words, he gets a percent of the box office, so he's out there beating the drum just before the film hits -- TIMING is the other biggie in advertising.  Messaging (saying it in a way that gets across) and Timing are the keystones of an ad campaign.

And it is a campaign.  It's a WAR between those who can profit from selling you the product, and your resistance to spending that money.  Also the consumer has limited time to spend on entertainment.  You are, as Heinlein said, vying for the buyer's beer money and leisure time.

There is a whole science behind getting "people" to DO SOMETHING. 

That science, PR, works well enough that the cost/benefit equation works better in favor of those who know and utilize that science.

Advertising used to be an Art.  During the 20th century, it became a science (Public Relations is now math based on statistical studies of how large populations respond to messaging).  You've seen TV news using "focus groups" to predict elections or graph public opinion of viewers watching a segment.

PR is founded on the assumption that "people" are a herd -- that people see a person (a leader or influencer -- such as Klout attempts to spot by analyzing your social media interactions) move in a direction and they just follow like a herd.  Therefore, the only way to "make a profit" is to control that herd's movements, and PR is the math behind that control.  We've discussed all that at considerable length on this blog.

Here are 3 previous items on this blog that discuss PR:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html

Control the Influencers - the Leaders - and you control the herd.  Any cowboy/gal can tell you how that works.

For a century, this science has been growing, becoming refined and more accurate -- so successful that the general opinion that an individual has of "people" is that they (people plural) aren't very smart. 

"Yell FIRE in a dark theater!"  It brings to mind that image of a stampede for exits.

One PR principle is to keep that herd in a panic -- or some peak emotional state, pathos, sympathy, revulsion, all do the job.  The key to controlling the herd is whipping up emotion because emotional states (fear-fight-flight) wipe out critical thinking, paralyze the ability to discern the con-game, the grifter's skills at work.

We discussed the TV Show Leverage here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html

If you missed prior discussions involving PR, review them here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-3.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-2.html

If you've studied Leverage, (and the many other TV Shows that focus on con-men tricking "marks" into self-destruction) you are equipped to make yourself PR proof. 

Once you see the strings of greed and fear con-men pull to make their "marks" dance, you will never be a "mark" again.  If you can achieve that mindset, you have a serious chance of being successful at self-publishing. 

Seeing is believing. 

Until you see what PR at publishing houses does, and how they do it, and how you have been a victim of it, you have no chance at success in self-publishing. 

You don't need a college degree to do this, but you do need to know what is in those textbooks.  You don't need a teacher.  Teach yourself.  Go to the library or buy some used textbooks (much cheaper now in e-book format!) and just learn it. 

So returning to the grifter's secondary tool of "fear."  That's "Yelling Fire In A Crowded Theater."  Just get the herd moving, and human stupidity will do the rest for you.  Remember, the principle behind PR is that Aroused Emotion obliterates critical thinking.  Once you've short-circuited human critical thinking, you own that herd.

As long as you, the writer with aspirations of self-publishing, are a member of the herd that Publisher's PR Departments own, you will not succeed at self-publishing.  Your indignation and defiance are emotions aroused by the "stupidity" of publishers who refuse to publish the "better" kind of book you write, and thus your critical thinking is shunted offline, and they own you.

As long as you are in rebellion against traditional publishing, you will fail because they own you.

You will not fail because your book is not marketable (though that does cause failure).  You will fail because of your emotional state.

You can master your emotional state easily by coming to understand how the Confidence Operator is jerking you around.  Find where your handles are sticking out, and don't let them get hold of you by your handle.

For writers, that handle is generally, "I write better than that."  And very often, that's true.  What the writer must learn to go professional, especially as a self-publisher, is that there is a low, but clearly defined threshold that a story must meet, and any quality above that just doesn't matter in marketing.

How well you write just doesn't matter.  How important your story is used to matter -- in today's publishing world that publishes FOR PROFIT ONLY -- "importance" of what you have to say doesn't matter.

Once you get that fixed in your mind, you can research why lesser works than your own sell so much better.

But you won't understand the data you're gathering until you understand PR.

Many times great disasters with horrendous death tolls have occurred in public places (such as bars or theaters) with insufficient exits.

"Messaging" is the science of figuring out what to yell in that darkened theater to raise the emotional state to the point where critical thinking evaporates and the mindless herd is created (in politics, it's call a Bandwagon).

"Timing" is the science of picking when to Yell.

Targeting a Market is the science of "getting all those people packed into that theater" -- "finding your audience."

"What Is The Lowest Common Denominator that all those people share?"

That's what "audience" means to PR folks -- not the definition of the word audience, which is about "those who hear" but how to gather those people all together to yell your emotion-raising message causing the herd to lunge all together in one direction.

If you think about what that means, you may see why Science Fiction is not so popular.

Science Fiction has been defined as "The Literature of Ideas."  That is, it is about THINKING.

Only in ROMANCE is it possible to have truly peak emotional experiences while at the same time still thinking critically.  (I said Romance, not sex.) 

Science Fiction is always about the story (fiction) of some revelation about the structure of the universe (science) that organizes (science) the knowledge gained into a pattern than can be used to invent new things.

In the typical, old fashioned, science fiction a young boy (always a boy) who has a brilliant mind discovers some new fact that his elders could never have found.  Using this new fact, the boy invents, fixes, adds-on, or otherwise morphs what tools his elders were using and thus solves a problem older people could not.

The driving force in old style Science Fiction is the boy's emotional need to "prove himself" -- or one of the other emotional issues of teen boys, but never the sexuality inherent in the teen years.  SF was usually set in the time of life of the Rite of Passage into adulthood, and thus defined what it means to be an adult, as opposed to being a child.

That type of Science Fiction has almost disappeared from the shelves (or Amazon). 

Stories about the process of becoming The Adult In The Room via the application of critical thinking and bold exploration of new ideas have not been given the PR push (that Anchorman 2 has gotten) for at least 10 years.

It is as if those selecting books to put PR muscle behind do not want young people to admire and emulate those whose behavior is controlled more by critical thinking than by emotional-herd-behavior. 

People who default to critical thinking when someone yells FIRE, are generally the sort who simply will not respond to advertising for shaving cream, perfume, tooth paste, or a muscle car.  They simply can not be fooled by advertisements, not even for political candidates. 

People who default to critical thinking are immune to advertising, and every other grifter's trick. 

Science Fiction, from the publishers whose mission-statement included losing money, or break-even at best, taught readers not only to admire critical thinking, but also how to do it when the whole mob around you is screaming, "FIRE!"  The science fiction fan was always the one who grabbed the fire extinguisher before the blaze got out of hand -- or set himself to become that person as an adult.

The measure of adulthood was the ability to default to critical thinking, no matter what others were doing.

That's not the same as being "emotionless" (as Spock was portrayed).  It's not lack of emotion.  It's that one trains one's emotions to be subordinate to critical thinking in the decision-making process.  Once that training is complete, one is an adult. 

From another view, Science Fiction is the fiction about people who defy the rules (because that's how science advances -- by people finding the mistakes in previously accepted Laws of Science). 

These individuals have the characteristic that Klout.com is looking for -- the clearly delineated difference from everyone else.

The lowest common denominator of the Science Fiction reader is high intelligence and unique critical thinking in the midst of peak emotion.

That's what makes the Science Fiction hero/heroine a prime candidate for Romance Genre.

For the astrology buffs reading this -- Romance is usually signaled by a Neptune transit.  Critical thinking is generally associated with an easy Mercury/Saturn connection, and/or Saturn transit to the 3rd/9th axis.  When the two are combined, you get prophetic brilliance, or Love At First Sight.  The true Happily Ever After generally results from that combination, whereas the hard Neptune transit "Romance" generally results in a really rough "The Honeymoon Is Over," moment. 

So now I'll give you a week to review Marketing, PR, the history of publishing, and other points I've skimmed through here.

Next week we'll discuss more about why it is that Journalism is a great way to start a fiction writing career aimed at making a living from writing.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Worldbuilding with Fire And Ice Part 5: The Great Raid

In Part 4,

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-4.html


we began looking at the 2005 film, THE GREAT RAID and ended off allowing a week to find it and watch it carefully.  Now I will assume you've seen it recently enough to remember it.  You will remember it differently than I do, and you will remember different scenes than I do.  Comparing our descriptions of this film, and its highlights, will reveal something important about storytelling. 

War is all about death, yes, but it's about survival too.  More, it can also be about defeat and/or victory.

The key historical record of the Pacific in World War II was originally titled BATTLE FOR THE PACIFIC, and it was a TV series decades ago when TV was new.  HBO has redone it, and now you can get it on Amazon by episode or by season, watch it on your Kindle Fire.  The old title now has been co-opted by a video game, which odd fact (co-opting) actually says something about the writing craft topic we're discussing. 



The Iwo Jima battle depicted in THE GREAT RAID is only a small part of that overall war theater's action, but anyone who wants to write fiction should have a working knowledge of how that war for the islands was fought.  It's strategy and tactics melded to drama, and you can use it to shape a similar battle on another world.  In fact  you can use it to go to an alternate universe, then back in History, and write a whopping love story that knows no bounds.  Here's a (long and still going) series that does a great job of that by Taylor Anderson:



Taylor Anderson

When you write about death, you come face to face with the inevitable human questions about "what comes after death?" 

I can't answer that question -- at least not any better than you can!  So the rest of this discussion will be on fitting your worldbuilding into the audience's mindset and changing assumptions. 

Remember how Gene Roddenberry employed the writing-rule of not answering questions with his Star Trek episodes, but just ASKING the questions - posing the conundrum or riddle for  viewers to gnaw on. 

Again here's Part 4 - which has links to previous parts of this series.
 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-4.html

That question, "What Comes After Death" and the need to ask it with its imperative to answer it somehow, is one course of bricks in the foundation of all human culture.  That's why we are currently innundated with novels about Vampires and other long-lived or immortal Beings.  Our culture has been disturbed.  Religions have been challenged, some displaced, some fighting back, some evolving, some disappearing, and some new ones being founded.  This is far more than a "disturbance in the Force" -- this is a disturbance in culture. 

If, in your worldbuilding for your story, you are going to build a culture (rather than use what you think you know about contemporary culture around you), you must have a "course of bricks" for each of the layers of bricks your readers' culture rests upon.  That congruence of shape and size between the cultures of your imaginary world and your readers' "real world" experience gives your story verisimilitude. 

If you build the imaginary culture in the same size and shape as your reader's real world culture, the reader will feel subliminally comfortable there, and every crazy thing you include will be plausible and entertaining not distressing or confusing.  The potential power this gives writers over readers' subconscious minds is obvious.  Pause for a moment of awe about that then use that power wisely! 

To suck a reader into your world using the power of verisimilitude, you must first learn the world your reader lives in.  Most of us are blissfully unaware that we have a culture, nevermind what it actually is!   We bandy the world culture about as if we all mean the same thing by it.  We don't. 

READ:
"The Silent Language" -- and your eyes will open.



From the perspective of the cultural anthropologist, Atheism per se is a "religion."  Agnosticism is the position which allows for "I don't know" as the answer to most of the ineffable questions about Death.  But even that position can be hardened into a superstitious dread, a flinch from all religion and even just spirituality which isn't formalized into a verbalized system of beliefs.

The writer who is a worldbuilder has to take into account what seems plausible and entertainingly novel to the target audience.

There's not much that's "novel" about death, but we are in an era when death is a riveting fascination, not something hidden offstage.  In our current TV and film fiction, blood doesn't just appear on a wall, we see the living person decapitated, the blood fountain in drops, THEN the blood on the walls. 

Look at all the violent videogames -- the thesis is that if there's a problem where someone wants to do something other than what you want them to do, the ONLY solution is to kill them.  The better killer wins and is celebrated, covered in glory. 

But we hold a contradictory philosophy at the same time: "stay safe at all costs."  Oddly, this philosophy is showcased in THE GREAT RAID, too.  Keep in mind that this film came out in 2005.

In 2012, putting anyone in danger of anything is immoral.  More on that in Part VI of Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice. 

In 2005, the release year of the film THE GREAT RAID, near the end of the film, there's a line of dialogue defining what the commander of this group of US soldiers understands about what they're doing there.  He says his men deserve their chance at glory, and when challenged defines glory not as the opinion others have of you, but the opinion you have of yourself for the rest of your life because in the moment of challenge, the moment of facing death, you did the RIGHT THING.

Now this is a philosophy, and it underlies most of this film very solidly making it a good 10-star level film.

The one hole I might poke in it could be from the actual real-life, true story it's based on, and that is the "senselessness" of who dies.  In a fictional story, if someone dies "senselessly" (without good reasons being depicted in show-don't-tell), the editor sends it back for rewrite.  But in "real life" people die with no apparent reason in sight, and in war the "senselessness" almost becomes the point of the story -- war is senseless.  The best people die for no reason. 

The HEA or Happily Ever After ending requires that there be sense and reason driving destiny, so that when a "happy" point in life's arc is reached, the characters got there in a way they can understand.  With that understanding comes confidence in foreseeing the far vista of their future unrolling in sensible and understandable ways.  Therefore they know they will be "happy ever after." 

Finding that pattern and those "reasons" in real life and laying down the foundation for them congruently in your story is difficult because life, as we know it, just doesn't seem to have that sense to it.  The business of the artist is to find that pattern in real life, just a shadowy hint of it is enough, and replicate that in fiction in such a way that readers can find that shadowy shape in their own lives.  That's the secret to writing the re-readable book or the classic film.

We are studying THE GREAT RAID because I think it is just such a classic film.  It shows us something we would not otherwise look for in real life.

This is a war film.  It's about who survives and who dies, not really so much about why.  So as such it deserves 10 stars, or the highest IMDB rating -- because the only thing that's missing is the "poetic justice."  That lack is very revealing of that shadowy pattern we need to discern. 

Note again the release date - 2005.  That means the film represents the views of the target audience -- a broad swatch of the public -- around the year 2000 when it was being marketed and developed. 

In the twelve years since 2000, the American pubic has undergone a sharp and drastic reversal of philosophy.  The most visible symptom of this reversal is the way all mention of God has been labeled as unacceptable in public -- almost the way any mention of the word "sex" was banned in public in the 1940's (the era this film depicts).

Now naked sex scenes are required in print and on film, and any gesture or word depicting faith, God, or any religion except maybe satanism is banned. 

I'm not commenting on whether that public reversal of values is "good" or "bad" -- I'm focusing on how public values of that kind affect a professional storyteller's worldbuilding choices, as well as plot elements placed in the foreground and plot elements placed in the background.

The 2005 film is a terrific example of this change.  It makes no comment on that change directly.  Its commentary on the subject is totally "off the nose" (film scriptwriting term you must master.  See Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series). 

THE GREAT RAID tells the story of a group of US soldiers rescuing 511 US soldiers who were held prisoner by the Japanese on Iwo Jima for three years. 

Those soldiers  came to believe they were utterly forgotten, written off as dead by the USA -- until their encampment was left unguarded for a little while, and they broke into the Japanese command station and discovered a warehouse fulll of Red Cross boxes filled with food that had been meant for them.  Then they realized the Japanese were eating well and deliberately starving the American prisoners.  The prisoners were riddled with malaria, and survived on the small amounts of quinine smuggled to them by the Philipine Resistance fighters.  Many prisoners in this camp were unable to walk.  The able bodied had been taken elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, we follow a group of raw trainees, essentially farmboys drafted into the war, who've never been in a real battle.  They are assigned to run ahead of the invasion by US forces (the battle of Iwo Jima that is so famous) and get the US prisoners of war out of the way of that impending battle. 

Sweep a random few dozen men off America's streets today, and you won't be able to 'whip them into shape' in 6 weeks as was done during World War II.  The typical American male of fighting age today is not in good enough physical shape to do this kind of work (not many "farmboys" left).  (That statistic from an article I saw recently on the problems the Armed Forces are having recruiting - it's not a lack of volunteers but a lack of robust health among the volunteers.)

In THE GREAT RAID, the prisoners are held in an encampment full of tanks and armed Japanese, a prime strategic target the US forces must neutralize in order to take that island.  But in doing that, they would also be slaughtering those US prisoners.  There are no experienced US forces to spare to rescue the prisoners.  So they send in the raw team that's well trained but never seen battle.  Do or die they must get those men out of the area before all hell breaks loose.  If they fail, they themselves will be sitting on ground zero of an area slated for destruction.

WATCH THIS TRAILER VIDEO:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2547031577/ 

It's important to watch that video especially if you did just watch the whole movie.  Note what's excerpted, and how the concept can be set out in just a few words of dialogue.  Just 29 seconds of the trailer and you know what that entire movie is.  That's a CONCEPT. 

Remember, this is WWII -- there are no computer chipped munitions that only kill what they are aimed at, and all targetting was kinda approximate. 

The Love Story is between a prisoner in the camp who has malaria and (unknown to him) the woman he loves who is married to someone else.  She's a nurse, and who has stayed behind in the Philipines to run a resistance cell that smuggles quinine to the POW's.  The casting is great.  She's a tall blonde among these short-dark folks, really conspicuous for a spy!     

The thesis in this film is that old saw, "There Are No Atheists In A Foxhole" -- that saying is from WWI, and it essentially means that when facing death amidst horror, suddenly the most skeptical among us will pray, whether they believe or not.  It's probably not 100% true today, and it's certainly not "politically correct" to suggest it is 100% true, but it's a real life observation.  This 2005 film makes the point that in the 1940's this saying was still very true.  

In one scene, there are two solders about to go into this battle.  One has one of those Catholic devotional cards in hand.  He gives it to the other solder saying he has plenty.  The other guy asks what he should do with it, kiss it?  He tucks it away.  After the battle, he offers to buy the card for $10 (a small fortune at that time!) but the owner refuses to sell.  He says his mother gave it to him and he only has the one.  The other guy complains, "But you said you had plenty of others."  "I lied." 

This exchange straddles the values of the 1940's (he wouldn't have lied in 1945), and the values of the 2000's when he would have lied, but wouldn't have given him the card.  Today, the headlines are full of armed forces officialdom putting major obstacles in the way of religion in the military.  Even the Chaplain corps which was sacrosanct in the 1940's has trouble today. 

Another such cliche scene that straddles the values is the cliche scene where the hostile occupation forces storm a church and a lone priest stands in the door, or the street intersection, and holds up a hand.

In older films, the charging forces STOP.  In the 2005 film, the charging forces just run right over the priest, batting him aside with casual cruelty. 

Perhaps half the audience now responds to that casual, symbolic batting aside of impotent religion as a good thing, as "progress."  I'm not saying here whether this is good or bad, only that it is a kind of visual symbolism that writers must master.  It keeps the "philosophy" off the nose.  It keeps the discussion of values as subtext which different viewers interpret differently -- thus enlarging the potential audience.   

Half the audience gasps at the sacrilege proving the occupying force is evil, and the other half gasps at the brilliant proof that silly superstition can't stand against armed might.  To win the videogame, you have to be faster and better at killing the opposition regardless of right or wrong.  Understand your audience, and speak to them in all their languages. 

In several scenes, especially the cliche scene where the captors shoot 10 prisoners because 1 prisoner tried something against the rules the captors imposed, you see US soldiers cross themselves.  Mostly, they get killed right after that.  But religious display is not going to be seen in many near future films (Tim Tebow notwithstanding.)

In the middle of THE GREAT RAID, we see the malaria ridden prisoner getting help writing a letter (in pencil on scrap paper) to the woman he loves, and a bit of their story is discussed but not shown.  We understand this love story instantly.  It's a cliche so that they can just plant it and spend no scenes detailing it.  But it does say that love doesn't stop just because of war.  Lovers torn apart by war is a seminal theme, and you can use it in any fictional universe you build and it will work without explanation. 

At the end of the film, the malaria ridden soldier is rescued, but by the time he's transported to the town now captured and held by US forces, he dies just moments before the woman he was writing to (the nurse, resistance leader) gets to him through the chaos in the streets.  His friend hands her the letter he helped write, the letter where he ends off confessing he loves her.

It's a tear-jerker scene, and it's a cliche war-movie scene.  In fact the whole movie has to be labeled cliche. How could it not be a cliche?  It's about the battle for Iwo Jima.  How many films, books, stories, have been made about that?  It's all been done and said many times, so it's cliche by definition. 

http://www.worldwar2facts.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Iwo-Jima-Memorial-Sunset-233x300.jpg

But in 2005, there were already a lot of young people who hadn't studied all the details of World War II, in both theaters of war -- Europe and Pacific.  The first time you see a well worn cliche, it's fresh, startling, brilliant and can change your life forever. 

In the process of becoming a cliche, a scene or situation gets written and practiced many times, all the awkward bits worn down until the modern version is polished smooth and shiny -- better than the original if you haven't seen all the intermediate drafts.

THE GREAT RAID does the cliche scenes very well, which is why I give it 10 stars. 

But it also depicts the pivot point where our public values spun into a new direction. 

Pick out a few lines of dialogue you think represent that values twist-point and we'll discuss them next week in Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice Part 6: Values Twist. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com