The Fates of Magazines

Arley Sorg's "By the Numbers" column in the March-April 2023 MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION is titled "The Lifespan of a Magazine." After rereading the LOCUS "Magazine Summary" for the year 1989, he decided to explore statistics that might answer the question implied in the title. "Do magazines just pop up and die out all the time, or does it only feel that way?" Of the professional magazines discussed in that LOCUS issue, only the big three—ANALOG, ASIMOV'S, and FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION—survive today. FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION holds the distinction of having published continuously for over seventy years, a bona fide "miracle," as Sorg says. He summarizes the rise and fall of a variety of notable periodicals, print and electronic, professional and semi-pro. As a criterion for "notability," he cites the Hugos and other prestigious awards won or finaled for by the magazines or stories they published.

Some of his conclusions: Notability is no guarantee of longevity. Neither, it seems from his numbers, is the involvement of a big-name editor or the payment of high per-word rates to authors. Financial problems, although a frequent cause of death for magazines, aren't the only reason. Interpersonal conflicts have destroyed some. On the other hand, changes in editorship or ownership don't necessarily mean a periodical is doomed to a short life. And both print and electronic venues are vulnerable.

I was surprised not to see any mention of CEMETERY DANCE, which has published stories by many distinguished authors. Although it hasn't released a new issue in a couple of years, it thrived for a long time, its website remains live (with back issues for sale), and the company regularly publishes limited-edition books.

This topic raises the question of what qualifies as continuity. WEIRD TALES, as mentioned in the article, opened and closed several times under different ownership and even had a hiatus of almost two decades. At one point the "magazine" consisted of a few paperback anthologies edited by Lin Carter. (No relation. He accepted a story from me for his incarnation of WEIRD TALES but died before he got around to printing it; it was later published in an anthology called THE SHUB-NIGGURATH CYCLE.) Yet the current WEIRD TALES claims continuity with the vintage pulp magazine founded in 1923. In what sense can the present-day publication be considered the "same" periodical, other than sharing the name?

Sorg's final message: "Support the magazines and authors you love. It just might help them stick around."

This issue of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION will stay on newstands until April 24, so if you want to read about the lifespans of periodicals in meticulous detail, you have time to pick up a copy.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Quantitative and Qualitative

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column analyzes the difference between quantitative and qualitative measurements and the pitfalls of depending solely on the former:

Qualia

He begins with examples from the COVID-19 pandemic. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign became the epicenter of a COVID outbreak as a result of putting too much faith in an epidemiological model produced by "a pair of physicists." (The article doesn't mention why they were chosen to work the calculations instead of specialists in epidemiology.) The predictions didn't take into account the variables of human behavior, the "qualitative" element. The article cites contact tracing as another example of similar problems. Regardless of how accurate the math based on the data may be, do the infected people trust contact tracers enough to supply reliable data? Those who work with quantitative elements such as statistics and mathematical models have to restrict their research to elements that can be quantized. As Doctorow puts it, "To do math on a qualitative measurement, you must first quantize it, assigning a numeric value to it," a difficult and dubiously reliable process. (E.g., "How intense is your pain?" I never quite know how to answer that question on a scale of one to ten.)

Quantitative disciplines, as he summarizes the issue, "make very precise measurements of everything that can be measured precisely, assign deceptively precise measurements to things that can’t be measured precisely, and jettison the rest on the grounds that you can’t do mathematical operations on it." He compares this process of exclusion to the strategy of the proverbial drunk searching for his car key under the lamppost—not because that's where he lost it, but because that's where the light is.

Doctorow applies the principle to an extended discussion of monopolies, price-fixing, collusion, and antitrust laws. As an example of the potential injustice generated by "treating all parties as equal before the law," he mentions the designation of Uber drivers as "independent contractors." When treated as equivalent to giant corporations, those drivers are forbidden to "form a collective to demand higher wages," because that's legally classified as "price-fixing."

Although Doctorow doesn't mention writers, the same absurdly imbalanced restrictions can be made to apply to them. If an authors' organization promulgates a model contract and puts pressure on publishers to adhere to it, that's prohibited as "collusion" in restraint of trade.

While, according to Doctorow, "Discarding the qualitative is a qualitative act. . . . the way you produce your dubious quantitative residue is a choice, a decision, not an equation," that doesn't mean quantitative measures are useless or inherently evil. The quest for objectivity has its legitimate role—"just because we can’t rid ourselves of the subjective, it doesn’t follow that we must abandon the objective." Reliable empirically based outcomes result from balancing the quantitative and the qualitative components of the available evidence.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Benford's Law

On a Netflix series called CONNECTED, I recently watched an episode about Benford's Law, a theory new to me. Here's the Wikipedia article on this theory. It's dense with equations and mathematical terms, but you can get a general idea of the concept from the explanatory sections:

Benford's Law

In brief, it states that in any large set of numbers, about 30% begin with the digit 1, about 17% with 2, about 12% with 3, and so on, decreasing predictably with each digit. The larger the sample, the more reliably this pattern shows up. "As a rule of thumb, the more orders of magnitude that the data evenly covers, the more accurately Benford's law applies." It doesn't matter what kind of statistics we're examining. Population figures of cities, a list of the sixty tallest structures in the world, death rates, house prices—all follow the pattern. Furthermore, it doesn't matter what units of measurement are used. The data are so predictable that this principle has been used in fraud detection and granted legal status in court cases.

This phenomenon seems downright spooky, especially since nobody knows for sure why numbers work that way. The Wikipedia article explains various hypotheses in detail, with mathematical terminology and symbols that I skipped over because they made my head spin. The host of the Netflix program raised an existential question: What does Benford's Law mean for human free will? If the statistical outcome of such a wide variety of human activities is so predictable, are our individual choices freely made?

I believe the two levels of phenomena don't negate each other. Patterns of large numbers of events in the aggregate follow the "law." Nevertheless, the decisions of any particular person in a given situation can't be reliably predicted. For instance, at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, a half-serious rule was discovered that every couple stationed there eventually got a pet, a baby, or a divorce. My husband and I had our third baby while he attended the school. But that decision wasn't compelled by the "rule." Somehow, by acting freely in their own lives, human beings collectively fulfill demographic "laws." Yet each action is still chosen, not compelled.

Maybe it's as C. S. Lewis proposes in his allegorical novel THE GREAT DIVORCE: From the perspective of eternity, predestination and free will are not incompatible. Likewise, there's no contradiction between predictable statistical probabilities and individuals' conscious choices.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy Part 8 - Science of the HEA

Soul Mates and the HEA Real or Fantasy

Part 8

Science of the HEA

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

This post might fit very well into the series indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

Today, let's look at happiness as a scientific phenomenon.

Mostly, today, scientists (grad students at least) are making "original" contributions to the body of human knowledge by doing statistical analyses of data long ago collected.

Some original studies, though, have been going on for decades, and still collecting data.  Recently, Harvard reported on such a long term study of humans.  We'll get to the Harvard study below, but first consider whether "science" can have anything to say or do about "happiness."  Science studies absolutely everything about the real world, so if it can't study happiness, does that mean happiness isn't of the "real" world?

You can't "experiment" on humans but you can "study" behavior, and you can collect and analyze what humans SAY about this or that, and how a particular individual's assessment changes with time.

Nobody knows if this is because of age, per se, or if humans are actually changing. 

Self-assessment is tricky, and science seems convinced that it is impossible for a person to assess themselves accurately (yet doctors still rely mostly on what people say about where it hurts or how they feel).

People are studying, and "correcting" statistics for, a phenomenon called "The Flynn Effect" which identifies reasons for differences in I.Q. measurements between 20 year olds, and 80 year olds.  Do we really get stupid as we age?  Is that why we seem to "mellow" out and become happier with our lot?  There is so much to know!

--------quote-------
 Thus it appears that people in 1950 were a lot less smart than they are now, that is if you define intelligence in IQ scores. How is that possible? According to the Flynn effect theory, the increase in IQ scores can in part be ascribed to improvements in education and better nutrition.
--------end quote------

But the gap seems to be narrowing, or measurements are improving.  Nobody really understands this while we still use I.Q. tests for college entry evaluation.  Grades and social involvement -- and parental contributions to the university -- all figure into "who" gets educated, but they also track who gets well fed.  And we also have a raging argument about what, exactly, constitutes "healthy" food!  Nobody really knows, but certain opinions get huge promotional money pushing them into general awareness because there are products for sale based on those opinions.

There are, at least right now, no products to buy to boost your HEA score.

In Fantasy, of course, there is the magic love potion.  Find something else to write about!

A good science fiction romance could be crafted around such a discovery, but you'd need to study neurology and psychology to craft such a story.

Standardized "tests" of I.Q. have been relied upon to distinguish one type of human function from another, but even that is changing as various sorts of intelligence are identified as different from one another.

In other words, science is finally acknowledging that such a thing as Talent actually exists, distinguishing one person from another.  Emotional Intelligence, mechanical, mathematical -- different parts of the brain are responsible for producing different sorts of effects on human behavior.  The map still has "Here Be Dragons" around the edges.

Nobody knows if children can be raised to develop parts of the brain that were underdeveloped during gestation.  Education and training do change brain development in humans, but studies are also showing new brain cells are constantly produced, even into old age.

See this Forbes article, also well covered by the BBC:

The Brain Can Give Birth To New Cells Throughout Life, Study Finds

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2019/05/26/the-brain-can-give-birth-to-new-cells-throughout-life-study-finds/#58b4cf4763c9

So can Talent be infused by training?  Is I.Q. a "Talent?"

See Part 7 in this series on Soul Mates and the HEA for a theory of how Soul and Spirit figure into human consciousness.

When you put it all together, we are only beginning to discover how MUCH we just plain don't know.  That area, the Unknown, is the province of Science Fiction -- and Fantasy thrives there, too. 

On Quora, I found a Question ...
Is someone with an IQ of 130 typically aware that they have gifted intelligence?

...and thoughtful answers ...

https://www.quora.com/Is-someone-with-an-IQ-of-130-typically-aware-that-they-have-gifted-intelligence

...that might help you sketch out the Characters for a (really hot) Romance, involving body, soul, and I.Q., wrapped in a package of Talent.

This one addresses self-awareness -- or in writer's terms, Internal Conflict.

Who you think you are vs. who other people think you are is a Conflict.

--------quote--------
Is someone with an IQ of 130 typically aware that they have gifted intelligence?
Emmanuel Brun d'Aubignosc
Emmanuel Brun d'Aubignosc, Self Employed IT
Answered May 11 · Upvoted by Lauren Adele, MBA Psychology (1999)
No.

An IQ 130 (SD15) is higher than 98% of the population. It is quite high, but not genius level either.

People with an IQ of 130 are intelligent enough to understand the scope of what they don’t understand, to have an idea of how little they know. Therefore they have a tendency to feel stupid more than anything else. Doing IQ tests might be a validation, but they will question them too.

I talked to someone who scored 155 on WAIS IV. He always insisted on that he isn’t that intelligent!

The more one knows, the more they are aware of how little they know. The smarter one is, the more they are aware of how little they really do understand. Only idiots think they are smart.

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

This may not be objectively TRUE -- but it sketches out an opinion  your readership may hold firmly.  That gives the writer a springboard into a dynamite plot.  "You think you're so smart!  I'll show you!  So there!"

So clearly "intelligence" (whatever that is) does not guarantee an HEA, and in itself, doesn't "make" people happy.  Neither high nor low scores correspond to happiness. 

Related Questions
Could you list differences between moderately gifted (I.Q 130) and profoundly gifted (I.Q. 160)?
What is it like to have an IQ of 130?
How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?
Do people with 140 IQ see normal people (IQ 100 to 130) as stupid?
How can they tell how smart you are from an IQ test?
What are the characteristics of someone with a 125-130 IQ?
Is the difference between IQ 190 and 130 as big as between 130 and 70?
What are some signs of intelligence?
How can you increase your IQ?
I'm an elitist. What is wrong with thinking that smart individuals should only associate with other smart people?

Notice how none of the questioners are linking I.Q. to Happiness.  Why?

Is there a link nobody has noticed?  Could you create a hypothesis to use in a novel?

Which brings us to Harvard University's long term study.  This one went for 80 years searching for a scientific answer that (as far as I know) everyone already knew.

Science is like that, you know.  After centuries of argument, science declares to be true what everyone knew all along.  What everyone knows is "folk wisdom" or "old wive's tales."  What science knows is to be understood only by the high I.Q. individuals among us.  Right? 

Here's what Inc. Magazine said about the Harvard study.

https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/harvard-spent-80-years-studying-happiness-we-now-know-1-key-habit-that-makes-people-happier-the-problem-most-people-never-even-try.html

Harvard Spent 80 Years Studying Happiness, and We Now Know the 1 Key Habit That Makes People Happier. (The Problem: Most People Never Even Try)
If you're not happy, at least now you have a roadmap.

----quote------
Over time, it's turned into one of the most extensive longitudinal studies ever, and has revealed a trove of insights. Perhaps the most famous and useful insight is this oft-repeated quote by Robert J. Waldinger, who is the current head of the study:

"The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period."

That's wonderful, right? But how do you fix your life if you don't happen to have good relationships?

An 'epidemic of loneliness'

To be honest, this is what's bugged me about this study for a long time: the clarity of the answer with no real guidance on how to get there.

Because it's one thing to say if you want to be happy, nurture good relationships.

And it's another to suggest that with a straight face in the context of the "epidemic of loneliness" that Americans largely feel today, in the words of more than one writer.

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

Considering the divorce rate, the delay in the current generation of marriage and children, and from the 1960's and 1970's, the breaking of communities by moving high I.Q. workers employed by corporations from city to city to climb the corporate ladder, and current increase in lifespan, it's no wonder we have about 40% of the population living in loneliness.

------quote-------
A few alarming statistics from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, just to back this up:

40 percent of Americans say they "sometimes or always feel their social relationships are not meaningful."
20 percent describe themselves as, "lonely or socially isolated."
28 percent of older adults live alone.
From a pure physical health perspective, researchers say loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

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

We have a generation of adults (book readers) who have not had the part of the brain responsible for "bonding" properly nurtured and developed as children.  They have done OK for themselves, but have not been able to teach their children how to "bond" and form steady, solid, rooted communities.

And now the advent of social media is shifting relationships and bonding online, to the virtual world.

Is that a good thing?  Or crippling?

Is it a part of the brain that is underdeveloped, or overdeveloped?

Or is it a component of the complex Soul (described in Part 7 of this series)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/soul-mates-and-hea-real-or-fantasy-part.htmlthat is starved, over developed, under developed, or impaired? 

What part of us BONDS?  What part of the human being is responsible for relationships?  Are we just primate bodies jerked around by pheromones?  Or is something else going on? 

Pick an answer to one of those questions and build a world around that premise.  It will generate a long series of complex Romances. 

The blush of First Love, the Romance condition, is an activated radical condition where all the parts of the human being (body and soul) are energized and able to break apart and reform into something new, emitting the energy of formation (e.g. children).

Somehow, Romance has been blunted, shunting aside, starved for energy in this new, dawning, culture of A.I. 

Explain that and solve the problem - see if Love can conquer that All.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A changing World Part 14 -- Analysis Of 2015 Fiction Market

Marketing Fiction In A changing World
Part 14

Analysis Of 2015 Fiction Market

Here is the index to the previous 13 posts on this topic:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Understanding the turning of generations is how great classics become great classics.

There are Eternal Truths -- but there's always a new way of expressing or explaining in terms of the experiences of the current readers. 

At some point in life, a generation turns to "seeking" eternal truths, but most of the time humans are too busy to be bothered by eternity.  Now is all that counts -- a little bit like sex.  NOW!!! 

But as a writer, your primary skill set is based on the ability to view any situation from multiple viewpoints at once.  In this case, the viewpoints to master are the classics of the distant past (Shakespeare, the Greek Plays, the Bible), the classics of the recent past (anything written in the 1900's), and the current classics in the making ( written since 2000). 

That encompasses three disparate points of view on the Human Condition.  Three points give you a "line" or curve along which to extrapolate into the future -- writing the novels that will become "Classics" 40 years hence.

I do highly recommend reading back-lists -- yes, and my own back-list as well -- as research for how to create the effects you aim for in your readers.

You want to know how to worldbuild around a theme to punch a wordless emotional message through to a certain reader looking for a certain experience.

Not every book will "work" for every reader.  Not every content will overwhelm all readers with tears, laughter or personal exoneration from guilt of wrongdoing.

Very often in life, everyone you know turns against you, blasting you with excoriation, destroying your sense of self-confidence, -- basically grandstanding to puff themselves up, but that isn't how it feels to the target being vivisected in public.

Back-list titles (especially in Romance which were written for a pre-Fem-Lib audience) don't "work" for millennials.  The emotional punch is invisible to those raised in a new world.

However, if you are learning to write, studying something that does not "move" you as the author intended  can unlock the clues you need to learn how to construct an emotional punch for your modern audience.

It is a "connect the dots" exercise.  Pick up the "line" of development from decades ago, follow the statistics of significant changes summarized, then contrast/compare then vs. now.

Flipboard.com is an amazing new thing, (actually probably going to be bought out by something huge because it is so neat, and so successful). 

Here is where to subscribe to my Magazines on Flipboard, where you can see what I consider significant developments in terms of audience composition, beliefs, tastes, opinions, and conceptions or misconceptions about science.  The Sime~Gen Futurology magazine is a collection of new discoveries about Space, Galaxies, Stars, and Time itself. 

https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg

Flipboard is a "news aggregator."  You set up an account, then sign up to "follow" various newspapers, magazines (all the expensive big names, plus a lot of the best ones from around the world), and you can follow topics, too.  It produces a rich stream of professional articles you can save into "Magazines" of your own to read later, or share.

I'm using this post to share with you one of the most data-dense, richly enlightening articles I've found in 2015.

I have not checked the data, the statistics, and the sources cited in this Powerpoint Presentation, slide by slide.  But the graphs, curves and slopes seem about right to me.  I think it's close enough to let you grasp the Market you are trying to hit, and why you need to hit that market.

Here's a slide about millennial coming to dominate the work force.  You need to aim for "the workforce" because they are the ones with the disposable income to buy books.  TV Series aim for that market as to films.  You want to write novels that can be made into films.  If you get lucky, you cash in big time.

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8 - Use of Statistics by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8
Use of Statistics
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration, titled Another Use of Media. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

That post has a link to Part 6 which contains links to previous parts.  Here we will build on those posts. 

Part 7 is about a Fortune Magazine article about "The One Percent" of our population (a statistics based argument).  I found that article in a magazine in a doctor's waiting room, which led to a conversation with a young woman who plays videogames. 

Statistically, women videogame players are a minority, but in the 40% range.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/12/women-50-percent-gaming-audience/2411529/

Marketers use statistics like this to shape the creation and packaging of products (like novels, for example) and to "Target an Audience" with advertising.  We've discussed targeting audiences at some length and will no doubt return to that topic:

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

Back in November 2013, a story broke in the Washington Post that caught my eye.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/new-york-post-claims-census-falsifies-unemployment-figures-5436

And here is a set of graphs about employment trends statistically broken down:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/comment/reply/5210

It was a report, which called into question the accuracy of statistics released by a government agency -- a statistic which large numbers of people may have used to decide whether Barak Obama had done a good enough job rescuing the economy to deserve re-election. Later push-back pointed out how these numbers are produced by being passed from hand to hand across agencies, and that the career civil service employees really do take getting accurate figures together seriously.  This would be very hard to disrupt.  So the question becomes why did the Washington Post print that story in the midst of the Obamacare website disaster and not sooner? 

Dancing a political candidate through a "campaign" is all about packaging a product and targeting the market for that product (ignoring the 1% because they don't count, majority rules so the 1% are powerless.)

Marketers call this packaging and targeting "messaging."  You have to use the right keywords to get your message to "resonate" -- e.g. to get retweeted, or repeated as fact, even if what you're saying is not fact. 

For example: "Reverse mortgages are safe and effective" is the message, but the fine print says that you will own your house only until the last owner leaves.  That means if you are 92, get thrown into a nursing home against your will for 6 months, you thereupon have no home to go back to if you should violate statistics and survive incarceration in a nursing home.  ROMANCE NOVEL: Gal's grandmother incarcerated, loses home, gets well, has no place to live unless Gal throws her live-in-Guy out.  Now what?

Political Strategists determine what "messaging" keywords to use via statistics generated from "Focus Groups."  All of this is a use of the power of Science to manipulate people using knowledge of what those people do not know -- ignorance is bliss, and blissful people don't rebel. 

Remember this post is about Theme-Worldbuilding Integration and that idea, that "blissful people don't rebel" is an example of a theme cast as worldbuilding, fully integrated. 

A government statistical release is a "package."  It is "Messaging" packaged to be believed, because who would distrust a "non-political" department of government staffed by Civil Service employees who of course have no political opinions of their own.

If you hire a publicist who hates Romance to publicize your book, would you trust their "messaging" about your book to your audience? 

That's not a rhetorical question: it is what publishers do by assigning novels to their publicity department, staffed by people hired by their Human Resources department folks whose degrees are not in Romance Writing.  Such publicists are very likely well schooled in statistics and Public Relations courses abound in their C.V.

If you haven't studied the formulae used to generate statistics such as the Labor Department or Census Department release, studied the vast array of "assumptions" taken as "fact" when generating the numbers, and exactly which direction to reason from the numbers, you may come to incorrect conclusions.

At some point, we must discuss that 1% from Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration again because that 1% statistic is at the heart of this culture's entire sense of "right vs. wrong" and who can and should do what to fix it.  That is a massive theme and a huge conflict we can use to great advantage in galactic Romance, and it is salient to the development of Paranormal Romance novels because the concept of "Right vs. Wrong" bespeaks the mystical view of the universe.

For example, speaking of that 1%, I have just read a wondrous Romance novel, Girl of My Dreams by Morgan Mandel:



Girl of My Dreams is about a TV show where 25 women vie for the favor of a male Billionaire.  It's a contest and the prize is potential marriage to a Billionaire (1%-er)who happens to be quite a hunk, too.  This is a novel worth studying in conjunction with Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration. 

So back to the boring concept of Statistics and what a Romance writer can do with it.

People use statistics as an accurate picture of the entire world around them because statistics produce accurate predictions -- such as the outcome of an election via exit polls --  and if their own experience is at variance with the picture, they assume "It's just me."

For example, if the candidate you voted for doesn't win, you assume "everybody" voted for the other candidate.  Statistics don't lie.  You are the 1% on that issue.  You are the oddball.  You don't count. 

That is a CONFLICT, an Internal Conflict,  -- the exact type of CONFLICT that is at the heart of every story, and especially at the heart of a good Romance because it's all about self-perception vs. your perception of others and what that conflict implies about whether you should change yourself -- or change others. 

That conflict is HUMAN vs. NATURE -- where in this instance what passes for "Nature" isn't grass and trees, storms and earthquakes, but "society."  "NATURE" is the general environment that we never notice - the air we breathe, water we drink, people creating the traffic jam we have to penetrate to get to work on time.

Road engineering is done not just from physics (to calculate degree of embankment on curves) but commuter volume statistics which is as political as employment statistics.

There's a Hollywood adage that explains why low-budget pictures don't get made. 

"You can't steal a million dollars from a million dollar movie budget." 

It's a principle you can use to understand the political component of building commuter roads based on employment statistics and "expectations."  We set, using statistics, a certain percentage of every large-budget project to shrug off as a loss due to "waste, fraud and abuse."  There's a percentage of "we can't account for it" and "miscelaneous" in every budget.  The larger the budget, the larger the absolute value of that number.

That principle is one way writers can implant a statistical theme into their Worldbuilding.

If your Lead Male is an engineer building a road or a website, his job depends on the size of the budget of that project, and his management of that budget to disallow "waste, fraud and abuse" in excess of a certain percentage -- a percentage set by political considerations, but excused by statistics.

If your theme is "Honesty is the Best Policy" then your Lead Female becomes the woman who is, maybe the Auditor for that project or for some agency -- or maybe for a political candidate's campaign looking for dirt on the incumbents who launched your Lead Male's project.

Do you see now why STATISTICS is a matter of Ultimate Concern to Romance Writers?

If your Lead Male accepts that his bosses "know" the correct percentage to allow for "waste, fraud and abuse" (and maybe wants his own cut of that percentage), and your Female Lead is convinced the correct percentage for "waste, fraud and abuse" is zero, you have a Hot Conflict. 

Which one will prove their idea is correct?  What would the other take as proof their own idea is wrong?  Is it Evil to compromise on a Principle?  Is this percentage a Principle -- or a political whitewash?  Ultimately, what do you let the hottest lover you have ever had in your life get away with, just to keep them in your bed?   

Our perception of our environment is shaped by whatever information flows through our conscious and subconscious awareness (today: the internet news stream does a lot of the shaping.)

I've noted in this blog on writing craft that a savvy writer has to monitor headlines for the context in which their readers actually live, and use what the reader already "knows" whether it's true or not, but craft the ART behind the story that's being written in such a way as to reveal something new. 

If the artist thinks the audience believes incorrectly, and writes a story only to correct the audience's misconceptions - the work will fail as a story. 

If the artist understands what the audience believes, and understands many other points of view from the inside, then the artist can depict the contrast between these various beliefs as CONFLICT. 

When each character speaks sincerely and convincingly from a unique point of view, the conflict among the characters leaves the audience with a question.  The audience members are each free to decide what the answer is, or ought to be.

That clear, convincing presentation of opposite sides of an argument (say about the project management's ability to eliminate "waste, fraud and abuse" entirely) will make the novel or story "resonate" -- i.e. get tweeted and retweeted about. 

The audience won't come out of reading the story with the same opinion as the writer, but they will memorize that writer's byline or subscribe to their releases on Amazon.

See last week's post, Reviews Part 4, for more on following a byline:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/reviews-4-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Capturing of a reader's attention to the point where the reader memorizes and follows a byline is what the Artist does art for.

Art is done by rearranging the bits and pieces a reader already takes for granted, or does not realize that they know in order to show the reader a new picture that is interesting.

Here is a post in the series on what makes a story "interesting."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

There is a rampant assumption loose in the world today that can be used to magnificent advantage by a fiction-artist.

That assumption, which is taught by and supported by the National Curriculum called "Common Core" (a product of the Bill Gates Foundation and Microsoft who definitely do know better), is that statistics can and should be applied BACKWARDS.

What does that mean?  Statistics is a mathematical gadget that manipulates numbers derived from observing specific attributes distributed across a "population."

The "population" sliced and diced by statisticians may or may not share other characteristics.

Statistics have proven such accurate predictors of the behavior of large populations of otherwise dissimilar individuals (people, yes, but this would apply to non-humans as well) that people use those numbers to create their opinions.

And a growing number of young adults are using statistics reports "backwards."

Using statistics forwards means collecting data on individuals and predicting how large numbers of individuals will move together in the same direction.

For example: how many iPads will Apple sell in the next six months?  How many people will upgrade from a Samsung to an iPad (and think it's an UPgrade?).

Those are questions statistics can answer accurately.

Will you upgrade from a Samsung or Kindle to an iPad and think it an UPgrade?

Statistics can't answer that.  It would be using statistics "backwards" to predict your behavior based on the behavior of a majority, or even a significant minority of people "just like you."

But your friend you go to lunch with at work might use released statistics to make a confident assumption about your future behavior.  That lunch conversation can become the core of a novel's conflict by Integrating that THEME (working statistics backwards) into the WORLDBUILDING (contemporary Romance).

For example, the lunch-friend is a Guy your Gal really wants to go out with on a real Date.  He makes this swaggering, sweeping prediction about her trashing her Kindle for an iPad.  She scoffs.  She wants him.  She buys an iPad and flashes it around the office.  He approves and crows his triumphant I TOLD YOU SO.  She pretends he's right.  He invites her out.  At work the next day, he overhears her scorning her iPad to a girlfriend, but praising him as a fabulous Date.

That's a THEME-Worldbuilding integrated CONFLICT. 

It is also a Story Springboard, not the whole story.  It's up to you to finish the story. 

Here is Part 6 of Story Springboards with links to previous parts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/story-springboards-part-6-earning.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com