Theme-Character Integration Part 13 Soul Mate Of The Kickass Heroine

Theme-Character Integration

Part 13

Soul Mate Of The Kickass Heroine

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of Theme-Character Integration Series are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

We discussed the nature of Theme and how to identify it early in the posts about Theme.

We discussed how to create a theme, how to state a theme in a usable format, and how to integrate theme into all the other basic storytelling skills a professional writer must master.

But we've not yet identified exactly "what" Character is.

We all assume we know what character means -- but writers can't make the assumptions they want to artistically lull a reader into making or the writer will produce fiction that screams amateur at every editor.

You can't write a Romance in any sub-genre without exploring at least 2 Characters to the depths of their Souls.  You can write porn by staying on the surface of Identity, skating quickly around the essential ingredients in a Happily Ever After ending (the HEA).

All you have to do to write steamy-sexy books (not novels, mind you, just a story long enough to bind into a book) is take a male Action Novel, break it into scenes, count the pages in the fight-combat scenes, and replace the fight-combat scenes with sex scenes.  I've read a lot of novels using that ploy.  No Characters Allowed.

You can't have a Relationship-driven plot without a Relationship -- which requires at least two Characters.

Do you know "what" a Character "is?"

You can probably wing it, fake it until you make it, in most Romance fields because the Characters are all human.

But in Alien Romance, one of the main plot driving Characters is not human, and is making decisions based on biology and the culture that biology forces the Character to live.

If you don't know what a human Character is - how can you artificially create an Alien Character, especially one destined to Soul Mate to a human?

You not only need to know what Character is, but what Soul is, and where "Destiny" (karma etc) fit into your THEME.

As discussed in Theme-Plot Integration series...

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

...what happens to change the situation depends entirely on the THEME you are showcasing in this particular volume (which might or might not be part of a Series).

It all starts with THEME -- and theme generates the Characters who will Conflict to generate the Plot.

Some writers start by consciously sketching Character traits -- for others this just kills the need to write the story.  Sometimes the writer just doesn't need to know.

The most famous advice from major Science Fiction writers, such as Robert A. Heinlein, is "Just tell the story."  And, "Just tell a whopping good story."

You don't have to know, consciously, what you are saying.  Twenty years later (other famous writers have revealed) you might discover what you said is not at all what you thought you were saying.

Writing is a dangerous profession, as it can reveal far more of the private you than you want known.

The need to write and make public a particular Story bespeaks your own character (small c, the real-world human you are.)

Readers recognize character within your fictional Characters because, whether they know it consciously or not, readers also have character.

So we all know what character is, and by extension what Character is.  Why discuss it?

We discuss it because fictional Characters are constructed to illustrate your Theme for this volume, this story, this segment of a series.

If you plot to illustrate one theme, but the Characters in the Relationship do not illustrate that same theme, you might sell the novel, but regrets about that will haunt you into changing your byline.

A Work that lives to go through many printings survives because it has an inner, invisible to the naked reader, cohesiveness of Theme-Character.  That integration of theme and Character makes the Characters walk off the page into the reader's dreams because the Characters SAY SOMETHING just by existing.

A Character is an artificial construct that reveals some ineluctible Truth about human nature.

Gene Roddenberry wet the mats to get Spock into Star Trek - he knew he needed an Alien to showcase the abstract element of human nature that would transform a simple Wagon Train (TV Series) replica into real Science Fiction.

Most people think the science fiction in Star Trek is the phasers and transporters.  It isn't.  Those were invented to facilitate story telling in the TV medium.  Hence they plastered on a "shuttlecraft" after several episodes - just whipped it out of nowhere, not from the Series Bible - because they had to move the plot within the minutes between commercials.

The real claim of Star Trek to being Science Fiction is the ongoing discussion of human Nature triggered and illustrated in show-don't-tell by Spock's "the same but different" plot-choices, views, and capabilities.

If you want to write Alien Romance, one of your Characters has to be a "Spock."

If your Alien is a human with funny ears, you will have Wagon Train instead of Star Trek -- you will write a simple Romance not Science Fiction Romance.

Gene Roddenberry created the Spock Character (then folded into the creation another Character, Number One, the female First Officer because Paramount would not allow a woman on the bridge giving men orders).  Number One, the emotionless woman was to be GR's commentator on Emotion, while Spock was simply not human.

Gene Roddenberry often said that Kirk, Spock and McCoy represented the three aspects of himself.  That's why Star Trek is not a "Mary Sue" -- and that is how you keep from writing a "Mary Sue."

To perform this factoring of yourself into fragments, setting them into a Team with Inner Conflicts and tolerance, you factor your own character into Characters.

Characters aren't real people - they are simplified and distilled people, but people none the less.

To simplify and distill real people's character, you have to know (consciously or unconsciously) what you are factoring out of what.

What are you?

Not "who" but "what" are YOU?

The answer to that question is the main tone in your writer's "Voice."  We discussed Voice briefly, here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/reviews-3-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/06/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-8.html

The Soul Mate is a "mate" -- like left and right hands are opposite but fit together, or mirror images, or plug and socket, or the printer that works with your computer but won't work if you upgrade or change your computer.  COMPATIBLE is not identical.

Your statement that answers the question "what" are you is your major theme, the identification of your Voice (Soprano, baritone, bass?)

Voice Type: Soprano, Range: B3 – G6.
Voice Type: Mezzo-Soprano, Range: G3 – A5.
Voice Type: Contralto, Range: E3 – F5.
Voice Type: Countertenor, Range: G3 – C6.
Voice Type: Tenor, Range: C3 – B4.
Voice Type: Baritone, Range: G2 – G4.
Voice Type: Bass, Range: D2 – E4.
What's My Voice Type? - What Are The Different Singing Voice Types
http://choirly.com/whats-my-voice-type/

Writers' voice comes in similar divisions.

It is a "characteristic" that reveals one component of your character.

Character (real and fictional) is a composite of many things.  Theme is a lens through which you run Character to select out the specific attributes that the story will reveal and explain.  Or you can do it by selecting a Character and looking at the life-arc of that Character to find the spot where the Character's Theme first surfaces as a Lesson.

Character, as the old saying goes, is built by adversity.

Novels are about adversity overcome and put behind -- so the Characters sail on into an HEA.

Like voices, writers have a "range" of themes to talk about, and there are themes they can't talk about, as there are songs certain singers can't sing.

Finding your Voice is not just finding your theme - but finding what you can say about that topic, about the nature of the reality your reader lives in.

"What are you?" can not be answered by, "I am a writer."

In this search for the Soul Mate of the Kickass Heroine we are looking for how to create a Theme that generates a Character and then split and/or recombine the components of that Character into people who can benefit from living a particular Plot (Kickass Heroine Finds Her Soul Mate).

The range of themes that fit (artistically) within the Kickass Heroine Finds Her Soul Mate plot-arc is virtually unlimited, so you have only to sing the song in your voice range to make it originally, specific, and memorable.

Writing is a Performing Art, so you must

"What" are you is defined by how (in what pattern, at what Voice Range) the components of your character are connected.

Character is defined by the connections between components, much more than the nature of the components themselves.  All humans have the same inner components -- but those components come in varying sizes, shapes, prominence, and versatility of connectivity.

So let's take a Theme and find an answer to "What Are You?" that creates a Soul Mate suitable for a Kickass Heroine.

THEME: character is measured by the connection between Soul and Body.  Strong Characters have the Soul fully occupying and in charge of the Body.

PLOT: The Soul Makes Friends With The Body, resolving Inner Conflict so HEA is inevitable.

This THEME-PLOT combination makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of Reality that readers don't normally make, therefore it is serious fodder for Science type Fiction.

As we noted in a previous entry some years ago, scientific studies show that when a female overpowers or conquers or wins against a male, the male's testosterone (aggression driver) level goes down.

Here are 3 discussions of testosterone:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-21-depicting-alien.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/09/depiction-part-32-depicting-brain-to.html

Pay special attention to Part 19 of the Depiction series - Depicting the Married Hunk With Children (that is the HEA personified.)

As in most cases in reality, where a little is good, a lot is not better.  We need our men to be aggressive enough to protect our children, but not so aggressive they take out drunken anger on us.

"Mating" in physical terms means that the constant and continuous presence of the female (sex several times a week with the SAME female) keeps the male at a comfortable and functional level of aggressiveness.  He feels good, and she benefits from having a guy around the house.

"Mating" in spiritual terms means that the two souls become one -- or theme might be that Souls come in halves, and don't work well singularly.  Like the magnetic monopole - or maybe an axel with only one wheel - a person who is single is going to be hampered in some way.

"Marriage" is the process of bringing that Soul-Merging process to the physical level.

Thinking in terms of "Voice" again, consider a male and a female voice merging in a duet.  The resulting sound as they hit notes in a chord may originate in two different sets of vocal chords, but the SOUND that impresses on the recording medium will not be that easily factored back to individual sounds.  They merge into one (assuming both are on key).

In the Real World, we seldom see marriages this perfect.  Most couples hit it on a few subjects and just bicker about the other subjects.

The rarity of harmony makes this image of a functioning marriage and how to achieve it a marketable story.

But to sell that story, you need a theory of "what" a human is, and then a theory of how that physical balance between dominant female and submissive male might work.  You don't want the male's testosterone to go too low - but must not let it run amok, either.

Rip an idea from the headlines.  Earlier this year, the media jumped on President Trump for calling immigrants "animals."  Then it turned out the media had artfully altered the sound byte clip -- he really did say they are animals, but the "they" referred to was not immigrants.  He referred specifically to MS13 Gang Members -- because that particular international gang of drug smugglers are famous for ugly murders, dismembering humans while alive, and a long list of atrocities they brag about and are proud of.

The quote referred to all MS13 Gang Members -- but was specifically about the atrocities not a political affiliation or the misdemeanor of crossing a border without permission.  Not all the Gang members are involved in the atrocity business.  And many have been recruited from locals who are not immigrants at all.

The general, common American reaction to calling any humans "animals" is a savage rejection of the person doing the labeling.  Objectifying other humans is the first step in exterminating them.  In WWII, US solders -- ordinary folks, not professional warriors, but accountants and roofers and train conductors, had to call their enemy some derogatory name to survive spiritually.  Normal people don't kill other people.

To kill, ordinary humans must de-classify a person into a thing.  Otherwise, they would stay their hand from the blow.  Just can't do it.

Knowing that, the American public rose up against President Trump when they thought he was calling all immigrants animals, and were still revolted when the correction filtered out.  Most people never heard the correction.

But just think back on those weeks of uproar over "They are just animals."

It bespeaks a THEME: "What" you are (human or animal) depends on your behavior.

THEME: it is possible for a human to revert to a feral form, becoming just an animal.

Is that something the human IS -- an animal -- or a temporary condition he might fall into?

Is humanity determined by the physical primate body?  Or is it an attribute solely of Soul?  Or is it the nature of the connection, contact, signal-strength, between body and soul?

THEME: A human that has become an animal has lost contact with his Soul.

If Character is the connectivity between Soul and Body, then a human with almost no contact with their Soul can be viewed as an animal without objectifying for the purpose of exterminating without guilt.

A human capable of committing such atrocities (you can Google up a list if imagination fails), is functioning purely as a primate animal.  Without the firm grip of the Soul on the basic primate body, a human being will behave as any other primate would.

Study Chimps.  And other primates.  Males have been known to eat their female's newborn babies.

What prevents humans from doing that?  Nothing.  But we don't.  Why?  Soul.

That is a theme -- human self-control or values are a product of the welding of Soul to Body.  Left to itself, the body will behave like any other animal.

Body and Soul are two separate things, but exist in this reality as a fully merged whole.

Or maybe you can Build your World such that all humans have a degree of connection (a degree of character) between body and soul.  Maybe in some future that connectivity may become measurable, or maybe a chip-implant will "correct" miscommunications between body and soul.

Maybe Aliens will come along who have a system or method of "developing character" or repairing the connection between body and soul.  Maybe that's the secret to beating death?

Death has been defined as the Soul leaving the Body.  What if that were not possible? Zombies? Vampires?

But among your readers, you will have people with varying Soul-Body Connections, some Souls not being compatible with the Body (as some printers are not compatible with your computer).  Or if compatible, maybe they need an adaptor to plug in.

If it is true that being whipped and bested by a female reduces a male's testosterone level, the kickass heroine is out of luck.  No man will mate with her, and if she conquers one, the husband he turns into won't be the kickass hero she so yearns for.

So what mechanism (again this is Theme-Worldbuilding practice) ...

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

... could regulate male testosterone levels in a home where the Kickass Heroine commands all.  That's what "kickass" means -- can not be dominated and therefore is always in command.

"Regulate" does not mean "suppress" or "eliminate."  It means add or subtract as the situation requires.

Perhaps the secret is that the Kickass Heroine's mate has to have a free-flowing, wide-open connection to his Soul, so that the Heroine's mate does not over-react to his inability to dominate her.

Maybe the Relationship settles down to him not feeling any testosterone driven urge to dominate?  Maybe she, likewise, doesn't need to dominate him, or kick his ass.

How could that situation possibly be, or possibly lead to an enduring HEA?

Perhaps each of the two individuals (might be human female and Alien male) has a maximized Soul-Body connection, attuned and optimized.

If humans can revert to feral-animal style living -- earn the appellation "animal" from other humans -- by a lack of Soul-Body integration, then it follows that a very non-animal behavior will be evident in people with a strong, wide-open, freely flowing, wide-bandwidth connection between Soul and Body.

After the tussle of Soul vs Body, if theSoul wins the Body's loyalty and friendship, the person's behavior won't ever revert to "animal" level.

So if the kickass heroine has kicked enough ass to meet her own soul and embrace it, become a whole, integrated person, with very stable emotional responses, sensitive but indomitable, her Mate will recognize that she does not have to be dominated in order to behave well.

She will recognize that this matured kickass hero has full integrated with his Soul, and does not need his ass kicked.  His behavior will not revert to animal level.

At that point, both these individuals will have evolved to reach a level they are Relating Soul-to-Soul, not body to body, not animal to animal.

When the Souls are married, they create a Unity that functions smoothly in the world -- and the world does not respond to their actions in the same way it responds to animals.

They are not animals.  They have become Soul Mates.

At first, they are both answering "What Are You?" with a profession or species, or perhaps social station in life.  At the end, they are both answering, "A Body hosting a Soul."  "I'm a person."

How they get there is the Story all Romance readers yearn for.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Depiction Part 32 - Depicting Brain To Computer Links - Online Bullying Prevention

Depiction

Part 32

Depicting Brain To Computer Links

Online Bullying Prevention 

Previous parts of this series on how writers can depict (eliminate details, sharpen symbols, transform "reality" as observed into enjoyable fiction) what the writer observes in their real world are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Writers are born observers of "reality" -- people watchers who can spin a life's history from a few details seen on a shopper at a Mall.

It doesn't matter whether the tale spun has any relationship to the actual reality of that person -- it is a story, a potential possibility, a flight of imagination far more interesting than the person's reality.

Writers look at people -- and see Characters.

Getting good at the craft of writing means perfecting the ability to distinguish between people (readers, for example) and Characters.

We all look at people and see someone other than the person who is really there.

We all fill in the blanks, make wild and unsubstantiated assumptions, and then deal with the real person as if that person is actually the Character we have imagined.  All your readers do it -- and most people who do not ever read fiction do it, too.  

The human brain is hardwired to take shortcuts, to recognize patterns from a few real details then imagine the rest of the details to fit that pattern.

That's how viewers guess the criminal in a TV whodunit.  It isn't TV (or videogames) that cause us to learn to do that, nor is it novels.  We do it in all our life's endeavors.

Consider a hunter in a jungle -- gotta bring home dinner.  He's got to spot the game animal and kill it, then retrieve it before scavengers eat it all up.

How does the hunter sort the cluttered jungle mess into information?

Like distinguishing between people and Characters, we must learn to distinguish between data and information.

These skills are developed at the brain's circuits, synapses, and even the sizes of brain regions, are developed from infancy through maybe 20 years of age.  

A writer's depiction is information.  What is being depicted is data.

Today, there is a massive push on among (swiftly grown to vast proportions) Tech Companies to create Artificial Intelligence that can learn to depict!  

I'm not sure any of them knows that is what they are doing - rewriting the world  - but the analogy between what a fiction writer does and what a self-driving car must do seems crystal clear to me.

In childhood, we learn to understand our world (green jungle, concrete jungle, down on the farm, King's Court Aristocracy, street smarts, etc.) by internalizing an Archetype -- a pattern, a "template" of reality around us that we then keep plugging data into, trying to transform data into information.

The current war between and against Media News can be described as a war between "Reality Templates" -- one template describing a well governed world where life is tranquil, and another describing a well governed world where life is strife-conquered-daily.

Anything that challenges the compartments of the template (think Microsoft Powerpoint or Microsoft Publisher where you download templates divided into little boxes, then insert your own images and text which magically re-formats to be beautiful), is immediately rejected with a glaring and stubborn error message.

Everything in one Media News template rejects every single bit of content from the other Media News template.  It's wrong. It's evil to disturb or distort the template of reality because that is what allows either tranquility or strife-conquered.

The two templates are incompatible.  One belongs to, say, Powerpoint and the other belongs to, say, Adobe In-Design.  There is a lot of acceptable material overlap, but incompatibility produces a mess or nothing at all.

We live in a reality where some people have internalized one template, some people the other template, some people have switched preferred templates, and others are trying to invent new templates and promulgate them.

Humans seem to thrive on this jungle like lifestyle.  It is now called multi-culturalism where each template is a culture.

Can we expect A.I. (robots, androids, smart thermostats and autonomous cars and trucks) to master all our templates, mix and match them to create new templates, overlap them and use two incompatible templates at once while ignoring incompatibilities?

The single most distinctive trait modern primates possess is adaptability and nowhere is that more evident than in the homo sapiens species.  

We might be the most adaptable intelligent species in the universe -- or the least adaptable -- and many grand Science Fiction Romance stories can be spun against backgrounds built from either premise.

But to spin such stories, the writer has to create a "template" that is being used by a Character to sort the tangled jungle of data, the heaving sea of data, the firehose of data, into information upon which to act.

Information is critical for survival, while data is not so critical.

Think about "Big Data" -- the enormous product of the Internet is massive tangles of data, but it becomes useful only when Google sorts it for you.  That's why Google has become so dominant - they solved the problem of "how do I find what exists on this topic?" and then they solved the problem, "how do I get rid of this spam."

Both solutions were based on algorythms that "crowd sourced" data collection and used their proprietary template to sort that data into information, then sort the information into organized files that could be searched.

Some of you may not remember the ludicrous answers Google search first came up with, or the world where to determine if an answer was online you had to use at least 5 search engines stating the question in different terms.

Then social networking became a possibility, a mere glimmering of an idea.  Facebook probably was not the first -- there were many forums and email Lists, and so on before Facebook.

The Prodigy Forums and Fido Net connections were all based on the existing ways that humans formed social groups.

Family, city, town, county (geographical regions where everyone has something in common - the Old West's Barn Dance), plus idea based groups (the Masons, Churches, Knights of Columbus, Science Fiction Fandom), and political parties, -- readers of a certain magazine or newspaper -- or people who bought from the Montgomery Ward Catalog or the Sears Catalog.

People who owned race horses, people who were accepted at Court -- whatever binding a group had in common, very often economic success depended on being an accepted member of that Group.

We are hard wired to seek acceptance in a Group.  Primates are not loners, though as a Group we do produce individuals who go out exploring (Mountain Men, the pioneers who found a way across the Rockies, etc. around the globe).  Those loners will probably be the first to settle on Mars.

But socialization is our primary survival trait.  So while it is true that, "You didn't build that," it is also simultaneously true (different Templates sorting the data into information) that "The Group didn't build that."

Among all primate species, there has always been an uneasy truce between the individual and the group.  No group can survive without strong and independent individuals -- but no group can survive without taming, harnessing, civilizing the strongest of those individuals.

The process of taming and harnessing those individuals starts with Romance, and all its associated elements from the highest spiritual plane of soul mates, to the grittiest necessities of physical sex.

It is the FAMILY UNIT that "tames" the wild individual to the purposes of the Group, so that individual survival becomes identical to Group survival.

The root of it all is testosterone and related gender identity hormones, all working in harmony (or disharmony).  

We discussed some articles about the effect that being bested by a woman has on a man - or being bested by another man has on a man.  Conquering or being Conquered actually has a lasting, permanent and continually reinforced effect on behavior and self-image.

Here is an entry in this series citing scientific research about depicting the married hunk - the hugely gorgeous, testosterone perfected, male molded into a father.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html 

And here is an entry discussing how to use what you learned in Part 19 to expand the romance to include Aliens.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-21-depicting-alien.html

What happens in that transformation of the wild male into a father can be viewed as a Template Replacement.  

Before replacement, the Male sees the world as one thing - afterwards, as another.  Same DATA, same world, arranged differently.  

You can do this to a blog on blogger.com by changing the "template" and suddenly all your words take on a different arrangement.  At one point in blogger.com history, doing a template transformation wiped out all the comments that had been made.  The exact same world just looks so different, and new meanings emerge.

Humans in our civilized jungle undergo several template transformations, but at increasing intervals. It is called "growing up."  

A lot of the template shifting occurs because of physiological brain growth -- as the capacity increases, more data can be arranged and rearranged into more templates, giving wider, bigger, deeper, richer pictures of reality.

The more that inner picture of reality aligns with the actual data reality pours onto us, the more likely that person is to survive to become a parent.  

The more conscious the child is of the process of acquiring, sorting, and combinging templates into a personalized view of reality, the more flexible the adult will be as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things changes what it takes to survive in the world.

It is possible the generation being born now, the generation that will regard your current W.I.P. as boring, antique, false because it is old fashioned, will live in an Artificial Intelligence world, a world crafted by and for A.I. and thus demanding humans adapt.

In every generation for the last few hundred years parents have adamantly refused to "let" their offspring do whatever new-fangled activity was now possible because of technology.

In other words, "good" parents prevent children from acquiring the adaptations that will insure their survival.  

Parents do that because we have survived dire threats to our survival only because of the adaptations  (the templates that transform data into information) we have internalized.  The goal of a loving parent, therefore, is to transmit the successful Template to their offspring.  

Because of the increasing tempo of change in the world (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock explains this), each recent generation has had to mix-and-match and create new Templates, new survival strategies, new ways to transform data into information that is actionable intelligence.

In the 1950's grammar schools forbid children to take ball point pens to school and insisted on teaching fine-motor-skills by using fountain pens.  The prior generation was forbidden to bring fountain pens and had to learn the proper way to dip a nib and not splash ink.

In the 1960's, college courses forbid electronic calculators and insisted students had to learn to do the calculations on a slide rule.  That insistence lasted fewer years than previous resistences to tool adoption.

And by the 1980's colleges began insisting each student must have a computer to log into the University's system.  Today live, real-time video courses are common, papers, grades, almost everything is done online.

When you choose the story you want to tell, you have to run up and down the sweep of history to find the decade that most vividly showcases that story.  Knowing the details of a historical decade is important, of course, but more important is understanding the connections among those decades.

It is not enough to depict the way parents resist the technology of their era, because you are writing for today's readers, and for tomorrow's readers.  Your story will have more verisimilitude if you explain (in show don't tell, not exposition) why these specific Characters are resisting whichever technology is swamping the development of their offspring.

Good parents have the objective of equiping their children to survive -- maybe also to thrive -- but to present grandchildren and great-grandchildren as soon as possible.  

Over the last century, there have been any number of books on how to raise your children.  Lately, there are more titles, not just because it's easier to publish now, or just because more people can read, or just because more new parents are so estranged from their parents that they have no source of reliable in-person advice, but because times are changing so fast.

New parents today know that whatever Template they acquired in childhood would lead their children to destruction because it is no longer valid in this world -- and change is accelerating in a direction that makes the truisms of twenty years ago deadly today.

So new parents go looking for books on raising children, new books based on current scientific research.

And of course, News Media interviews form a major source for stressed out, overworked new parents struggling to found a career.

The loudest thing new parents are hearing today is how Facebook Is The Source Of All Evil.  Facebook is rampant with Bullies.  Cyber-bullying on all the social networks is driving teens to suicide.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/19/popular-social-media-sites-harm-young-peoples-mental-health

To me, this sounds just like the ban on ball point pens.  Ruination will be the result of allowing teens to access current, modern technology.

That is a result of sorting many dozen News Items through a Template of my own crafting, composed of a multitude of Templates I've mastered (if not adopted, just learned how to use so I can depict Characters who see the world differently than I do).  

Like ball point pens and electronic calculators, social media is something today's teens must master, not be protected from.  

But how does a parent who did not grow up on Facebook teach their child to stay out of trouble on Facebook?  You can see how the writer's mind transforms reality into a Plot Conflict and thematic statement.  The writer's mind poses questions nobody else is asking, nevermind answering.

What is cyberbullying?  Why does it happen?  What is the mistake being made, and what Template does a parent have to train a child to use, to avoid becoming a Bully or a Victim of cyberstalking?

Develop a theory that can supply answers to those questions and you will be able to extract, clarify and symbolize a THEME -- one large enough to support a galactic war and powerful Alien Romance.

Such a theme will be a statement of what the human primate really is, how it cam about that we survived to dominate this planet, and whether we are adaptable enough to survive in a galactic civilization.

There are thousands of such themes.  How do you find them?

Study people.  Invent Characters from them.  Find the Character's "story" and his internal conflict, then generate the plot that supports the story of his life.  

So we have a Character who we first meet as a teen of Romance-Susceptible age.

And we have a world of social media where Facebook Must Be Forbidden Because It Is Full Of Nothing But Cyber-Bullies.  Using Facebook turns you into a bully - it must be so because everyone on Facebook is a bully and generally, everyone isn't a bully.  Facebook must be at fault.  

Good parents must ban Facebook.  It is the root of all evil.

What will children raised under such a ban, ban their children from doing?

Is banning and preventing the best way to raise children to survive in a rapidly changing, A.I. world?

A first set of the Characters in your novel would affirm that thesis, and their Tempate would justify banning as a parent's duty because children are impressionable and can be harmed for life by a bad experience (which is a scientific truth we have to live with.)

Another, second set of Characters might reject the thesis out of hand, and their Tempate would sort the data stream into true and false based on the thesis that research comes out the way those paying for it demand.  It's not a "conspiracy theory" because nobody conspires with anyone to produce this behavior - it is intrinsic human nature to want to please your employer.

This second set of Characters might permit their children to do any sort of online thing the child wanted - including porn - and possibly online bullying, forming online gangs to beat the rejected child for the sheer joy of beating up on the weak.  After all, being beaten up is how you learn to hit back harder and become a strong adult. (that's a THEME)

A third set of Characters creating the conflicts in this novel-series might use a Template that was bigger, and required much more data to fill it up into a textured and nuanced picture of reality.

This third set might look at the natural growth stages of youth, look at the social networking scene, and use a Template which not only distinguished between data and information, but also distinguished between the Tool and the Tool User.

The first of the 3 sets of Characters (maybe 3 families?) would use a Template that arranges incoming data according to a picture of a well governed world where tranquility is the goal.  The way to craft such a world is, of course, to prevent children from experiencing strife and fighting their way to the top of the heap.  A fighter is relegated to the Template's compartment labeled Bully. All fighting is wrong and must be stopped by Authority (parental or governmental).  

Today, for example, there are a lot of STOP BULLYING campaigns. 

We all know (even the bullies) that bullying is wrong - but how many know why it is wrong?  How many know what in society has changed concurrently with the increase in bullying in schools -- and the advent of school-hall bullying leaping into Facebook and other social networks?  

Perhaps you know what is happening, but as a writer constructing a novel around a Conflict that is Resolved satisfyingly in the end (by Love Conquers All, to a Happily Ever After) you must also have a theory about why it is happening.

So lets back up to the science of what a primate is.  Basic Bonobo and Chimp behaviors include bullying.  

The most powerful and dominant male hammers his way to the top.  In other species, that dominant male acquires the top position by murdering the former top guy.

We adore werewolf romance where wolf physiology blends and sometimes dominates primate physiology, producing a pack led by an Alpha Male who recognizes and mates for life with an Alpha Female.

Romance loves a Bully!!!  

Why not raise our kids to be the best bullies on the block?  That's how you get to dominate the pack, how you get to mate and have lots of children, how we gain immorality -- by bullying, right?

But bullying is "wrong" and we must stop it.

Google up the plethora of images generated by the stop bullying movement.  It has become a cause -- alter human nature, don't master it.

We must expunge a behavior, not understand and harness it for the survival of the Group?  

Look carefully at the images you can find if you Google stop bullying meme.

They are about some figure with power and authority commanding those of lesser power or authority (adult to child for example) to go out and stop other people from bullying.  Or to alter your behavior so that I don't think you are a bully.  Nobody notices they are exhorting people to bully people into not bullying.

In that group of memes are also memes about those with issues pleading for others not to bully them because of those issues (weight, gender, ethnicity, a wide variety portraying their group as begging not to be bullied).

I see few if any memes noting that authority commanding bullies not to bully is bullying the bully into not bullying.  

What exactly is bullying?  And why is it wrong?  

The answers to those questions become your THEME.  There are hundreds of valid answers to both those questions.  If you are writing Science Fiction Romance using an Alien-Human couple, you have to invent the Alien physiology.  Consider primates incorporate the bullying behavior in all the species we know of -- what if your Aliens don't have the bullying gene?

At what age do humans begin serious bullying?

I'd bet it is sexual maturity.  Kindergarten kids jostle and fight for place in the pack, but until sexual maturity begins it isn't so much dominance behavior as it is currying favor with (parents, teachers) Authority.  

That jostling for position in the pack, tribe, or family becomes bullying when testosterone floods the virgin system.  Girls bully, too, but mostly other girls.  

In both male and female, bullying is a method of eliminating competition for a mate.  That's a THEME.  Or you could take the opposite statement as your theme -- that bullying has nothing to do with sex.

But consider that the worst bullies, alone or in packs, do it because they enjoy it, they get a physical endorphin payoff from making another human cower.  And they also love the feeling of power over others -- it is a rush.  

Some studies show how bullies become bullies by having been bullied -- as a way of getting revenge on their abusers, they abuse others who had nothing to do with abusing them.  

Thus, (THEME) parents who are too strict cause their children to become bullies because the parents have taught (by show don't tell) that Might Makes Right.

If you can force someone to behave as you prefer them to, then you are teaching them that in order to be able to behave freely, they must simply gain the strength to use that much force.  

One definition of bullying includes the idea that it is "bullying" only if the person who wields the most force (or authority) is using that superiority to alter the behavior of another, weaker person.  

PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE used to be the school-yard mantra that taught pre-teens not to bully.

Why wouldn't a natural bully actually bully?  Because early in the impressionable teen years when social acceptance becomes the major goal of life, PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE was shouted at them by mobs of other children, dripping contempt for punching down.

Fighting, and violence are just fine as long as it is kept between equals, each with the same chance to damage to the other.

Thus, if two toughs square off in a back alley, one with a gun and the other with a knife, they both throw their weapons aside and go at it bare knuckled.  The winner is honorable and the loser concedes.

Go read those articles on testosterone mentioned in the previous posts on turning a Hunk into a Father.  After certain definitive experiences, a man's testosterone level subsides -- losing a fight is one of those experiences, and losing a fight to a woman is emphatically more-so.

So the "bully" is formed from the childhood experience of fighting to the top of the pack in class, on the streets of the neighborhood, or just in the family or the orphanage.  The urge to keep on fighting a fight that's already been won is intrinsic in human nature.  So when testosterone surges in the teen years, it fuels the aggression of the male and sizzles through all the nearby females.

If the child has not grown up surrounded by other children who insist that a powerful person must never "pick on someone weaker" -- but may hammer it out with someone "the same size," -- then testosterone focuses that campaign for dominance on the weaker targets, the easier targets.  

Thus, with the understanding of how testosterone works in humans, we can understand why the oldest wisdom about stopping bullies simply is to stand up to them.  Beat the bloody hell out of a bully, and they will never touch you again -- if the bullying is testosterone driven.  

If the bullying is merely verbal - speak up, speak out.  

If it is physical, deck them. 

There is also the case of the weakest in a family or class learning the art of passive-aggressive bullying, playing the victim, framing others for their crime.  Wonderfully complex themes about the use and abuse of power lie in that.  

But consider carefully, how the world has changed, and the trajectory of change in the near future.  

Should today's parents ban the ball point pen of this age -- social media?

Are total permissiveness and total banning the only possible parental responses?  

They are the only possible choices for those who do not understand why teenagers are the way they are.  

Social media will have a worse impact on an 18 year old who moves out, goes to college, or joins the army if they have never been exposed to it during teen years.  But since social media never existed when these parents were growing up, they have no clue how to step their children through this adaptation.  

Think about what the teen years actually are for.  Watch elementary and middle school children in the school yard.  Watch the 7th graders and compare to the 4th graders.

The 4th graders run around, organize sports contests, climb and swing on the slides and monkey bars, and generally compete with each other to perform spectacular feats.

The 7th graders begin to spend their yard time standing around in circles, talking, sharing.  The girls start standing around in groups at a younger point than the boys, but they all end up grouping.  And then groups become rivals.

The early years are to develop a sense of self, of "I can do it," and the teen years are to develop socialization -- "Who Am I Among This Group" -- status, clothing, hair, sexual attractiveness, other-oriented thinking develops.

Young children have a circle of acquaintances, maybe from pre-school play-dates, through kindergarten, and then classes of 10 or 20 other kids the same age.

Generally, we now divide schools into elementary and middle-school to keep the naturally separate ages apart.  It's not developmentally healthy to mix too wide an age range -- never mind our great-grandparents grew up in the one-room school of all ages and one teacher.

So by the end of middle-school, children have a social circle of a few dozen people their own age, and even fewer than that older and younger.

The human brain develops gradually through the teen years, but critically.

A young teen can't do what an 18 year old can -- and the 18 year old is a crippled baby next to the 25 year old.

The purpose in the teen years is socialization, readying to join civilization.

The brain is being conditioned to the modern world (pre-agriculture, societies required different brain synapse configurations -- a person might never know more than 200 people in a lifetime).  

The teen brain is being wired to function, to adapt to, modern social requirements.

But the teen is driven by testosterone flooding a virgin system, prompting that system to develop aggressive tendencies.  (teens rebel against parents - it's what they do!)

So if you present your 12 year old with a smartphone, in about an hour or two, that 12 year old's social circle will have gone from 150 people total, of all ages, to hundreds of millions on Facebook.

That is way too big a shock for the human brain to adapt to.

Thiis is especially true if this teen boy has not had all his contemporaries circling around him shouting, "go pick on someone your own size." 

Not "don't pick on anyone, ever" -- but pick only on someone who can fight back in a way that will hurt you as much as you hurt them.

True, your 12 year old will "connect" first to others in his class, church group, family, people he knows -- but it is called a social network for a reason.  All the people in his class have relatives in other states -- in other countries, and they all have "liked" "pages" selling, purveying, explaining everything under the sun.

It is a culture shock situation -- overwhelming and horrible.  

It hits hardest on those teens who have been prevented from talking to strangers or otherwise walled and protected from the public square --- those without street creds.

THEME: proper parenting requires protection of helpless children even if that protection keeps the children from developing self-sufficiency, so children never grow up to become bullies.

THEME: proper parenting requires teaching children that they are responsible for the consequences of their actions.  Teach them to use tools, not to be used by tools.  The knife did not cut you; you cut yourself with it.

THEME: proper parenting requires gradual, stepped, programmed introduction of children into how to talk to, behave around, and interact with strangers, especially adults.  How to spot predators, how to disengage from seducers.  Proper parenting requires inoculation of children against predators gradually and systematically.

Now, consider all 3 sets of Characters with their different beliefs and different Templates sorting data into information.  All 3 sets of Characters identify their information as FACTS, and are dedicated to the reality of facts.

The three sets of Characters are fighting over control of a School -- say in a PTA Election, or a Board of Education Election (or even a Mayoral race).

Set just 50 years from now, you can weave in an Artificial Intelligence designed to run schools according to some world-wide agreed on (actually imposed by the U.N.?) nice-sounding but insidious curriculum.

How do the 3 sets of Characters vie for the attention of the A.I. -- how do they convince the A.I. the programming given to it is wrong, evil, monstrous, and setting humanity up for failure, death, extinction?

Worse, what if the A.I. already knows that's true, and is doing it to drive humanity (or at least the smartest ones) to extinction?

How can Love Conquer All and lead this group of 4 major conflicting elements (make it at least 4 long novels) to a Happily Ever After?  

Can the 3 groups (who loathe each other, of course) jointly convince this A.I. individual, and get this A.I. to go up against the swarm or gaggle of A.I.'s now running the world and enlighten them about why humanity is worth preserving (because we are capable of Love)?

Could the solution to countering a dictatorship of Artificial Intelligence be to directly connect human brains to machine intelligence, to communicate without words?  

To convince A.I.'s that humanity is worth saving, would you first have to expunge the bully-tendency from human nature?  Could that be possible?  Would you still have "humans" if they were incapable of bullying?  

Or are these Artificial Intelligences programmed in our image, to be bigger, stronger, faster bullies than we can ever be?

Presumably, an Artificial Intelligence would be the more powerful in a match up with a human, so any force the AI used against a human would (technically) by definition be bullying.

Would humanity, then, in logical self-defense adopt the passive-aggressive counter to bullying, sniping from the cover of being the victim?

Do we beg the A.I.'s to stop bullying us -- or do we beat the stuffing out of them?  

It is possible our entire food and energy supply will be run by Artificial Intelligence by then.  If we beat them into submission, they retaliate by turning off the food and energy we need that they don't?   White Mutiny?  Going on strike?  

Do the streets fill with robots demonstrating for equal rights?  

How can love conquer such a situation?  

Pick a theme.  Pick a time in future history.  Pick a Character and generate his opposition from his internal story.  What does he want to do, why does he want to do it, and who wants to stop him and why?

Can Love between a human and an A.I. actually resolve this problem?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Depiction Part 21 - Depicting Alien History

Depiction Part 21
Depicting Alien History
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in the Depiction Series can be found listed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

The best way to depict Alien (non-human) anything is to use a pattern that has appeared in human history -- and preferably reappeared cyclically.

Long, broad, historical trends are very hard to see by studying history.

It is hard to trace the connections among events occurring centuries apart in different parts of the world, and different parts of culture.

Here is an example from the History of Government that is easy to use, easy for your reader to comprehend, and potentially easy to write.

There is a theory (lauded in science fiction circles) that all species of non-human peoples will have forms of government derived from their sexuality.

So study Earth's biology, and pattern your Aliens on one of our species reproductive proclivities.  Then figure what sort of governments (through the arc of thousands of years of history) that your Aliens have invented and used -- and to what effect.

Use a pattern you can find in human history (and pre-history) based on human biology.

Well, you probably don't want to muddy your picture with all of human biology, so focus on one aspect.

In Part 19 of this series on Depicting ...
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html

...we discussed testosterone and its role in the insane, incessant, furious, and unreasonable addiction to Winning.  The surge of testosterone caused by defeating and humiliating a foe is actually addictive -- addictive in the sense that with each successive win, it takes a bigger win next time to get the same euphoric effect.

Testosterone is a drug that produces a high that is absolutely addictive.

It has an obverse.  Losing a battle produces a lack of testosterone and consequent listless misery, knuckling under, surrender, and lack of desire to fight.

Being married with children tames human males, lowering and evening out the testosterone spikes (or so current research indicates -- maybe that's not true, but for the purposes of fictional worldbuilding, it is a good model).

Apparently, according to a set of studies (that I find poorly designed and not aimed at the real problem),
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/08/health/sex-olympics-athletic-performance/index.html
just "having sex" doesn't affect a human's determination to win, though these 4 studies (all on men) don't measure addiction to the "high" of being a winner. They were after athletic performance, (speed, strength, endurance) not the addiction effect of winning which all the participants would have in full force.

Remember, we are looking to design an Alien that your human readers can comprehend without effort.

When looking for a model, a pattern, to use for your fictional aliens, you don't need to find the real scientific truth of a matter, but rather what the major portion of your target audience believes is the truth of the matter.  Your objective is to sell them entertainment, not teach them science.

In the process of luring your readers into your fictional universe, you may awaken a thirst for actual science education.

That is what Robert A. Heinlein did so very well, and many other writers followed suit.  But one generation's scientific truth is the next generation's superstitious nonsense, so just start with what your readers think is true, and extrapolate something unthinkable from that.  It is the mental process of extrapolation that is entertaining -- not the content of the facts.

Sketch Of Human History

So looking at human history as various forms of government conducting wars, winning and losing, and the subsequent behaviors of the winning and losing cultures, make yourself a chart or graph that depicts the swing from absolute Totalitarianism to Anarchy and back again.

Go back to, say, the world depicted in Clan of the Cave Bear

 -- alone and having to make everything you need to survive all by yourself from scratch, the concept "wealth" takes on a primal meaning.

We discussed what an Alien Romance Novel Writer can learn from Clan of the Cave Bear in Part 17 of this series on Depiction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/depiction-part-17-depicting-first.html

Work up the "Tribal Structure" ladder, just as you see today in "failed states" where "militia" take over.  Look at how Libya has fallen apart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Crisis_(2011_present)

For our fictional purposes, Wikipedia is a superior source because it represents what most of your readers think is true. You can "set the record straight" in your novel, but you must start with what they think is true to suspend disbelief.

There was a dictatorship, strong-man style (kill the opposition and plow the bodies under in unmarked graves), and now there are militias, and a rising power of better organized but very vicious jihadists forcing their standards on other people at penalty of death.

Same sort of thing happened decades ago in the Balkans.  It happens exactly like that wherever you have a "failed state."  Humans organize behind a strong protector who will fight other humans and bring home food.

So go back to Biblical Times, and Egypt and Babylon -- there arose governments based on the divine right of Kings.  Pharoah was considered a living god.

So operational government "authority" was legitimized by a supernatural mantle.

Through the Middle Ages The Church essentially Ruled, with the first born sons inheriting land and station, and the extra and spare sons going into the Church where the real wealth and power resided.

Kings fought and grabbed Rule.  All the places that have left us records had governments run by a King or Emperor (Queen etc).  The secret to longevity as a Country was centralization of power.

By divine right, Kings owned all the land, and basically owned the very people -- sometimes people owned other people (slaves).  There was a hierarchy that governed, and the only way to change anything was to overthrow the ones in Power.

The Kings who were better at winning wars got control of larger territories, and usually the bigger ones survived and prospered better.  Think of the Roman Empire. Of course it fell apart eventually.

The same kind of agglutination went on in China -- today's China is an amalgam of many old Empires which were composed of an amalgam of Kingdoms.

An Emperor is a King of Kings -- who graciously lets the Kings he conquers stay in power and run their little Kingdoms and pay taxes to the Empire.

In the enormous Roman Empire, we saw the application of the ideas we first found among the Ancient Greeks (which may have arisen previously, but we don't have a record of that) -- the very word Democracy is Hellenistic.

So comes democracy, and the half-assed overthrow of Kings creating the Constitutional Monarchy model -- then the USA and France shook off even that semblance of Monarch and handed the reins of government to ordinary citizens.

Then came decades of fighting over "who" has the "right" to vote. (well, we're still fighting over that).

Meanwhile, the Natural Aristocrats among humans, being mortally offended by the Rule of the RiffRaff, have systematically and patiently (and oh, so aristocratically refined and politely) worked to re-structure the Republic/Democracy model back into Rule From The Throne By Your Betters.

So in the 20th Century we saw the rise of Socialism, Communism, Stalin-ism, Progressivism and other isms all focused on the arduous task of centralizing control of every facet of life.  Kings of old had the power of life and death, directly, by the fact of holding the throne.  Today's Kings hold the power of life and death by controlling the resources the peasants need to keep breathing, electricity, air conditioning, refrigeration, medical care, medicine (controlling what you may or may not have access to according to whether they deem it effective), transportation, import/export permissions, regulations on water, on building reservoirs, on transporting crude oil, on banking, on social networking, and no doubt soon (as Robert A. Heinlein predicted) a tax on breathable air.

All of these regulations come from the Executive Branch, and all the local Laws must conform to Law created at one central building in Washington D.C. or in New York at the U.N.  -- gathered and centralized decision making is efficient, but requires a "one size fits all" solution to every problem.

With all the decision making centralized, decision makers are then in a position to sell (for campaign contributions or other convoluted methods of payment) exceptions to the various rules, regulations and laws.  Exemptions have become the new coin of the realm, just as the Kings of old handed out Favors, and the Popes handed out Indulgences.  So a handful of people who know best get to pick the winners. (keep your eye on the testosterone addiction effect.)

End Sketch of Human History

This is just a thumbnail sketch of human historical epochs.  For your purposes, you may take the same historical (and pre-historical) records of Earth and arrange them into a different narrative.

Your Alien History will have that same shape, but entirely different content.  It may also have a different "period" -- a different length of the sine wave of the back and forth between individual independence and self-sufficiency and absolute monarchy.

Now remember all the philosophical works you've read on War and Human Nature -- how we are just Great Apes and our international wars are just like tribes of Apes fighting.  How humans establish a pecking order just like most animals that live in groups.  This model of human history assumes we are just animals, no Soul or God involved, and any god references are just superstitious balderdash.

Ask yourself is War a product of human sexuality?  Is war the inevitable outcome of testosterone addiction?

Do your aliens have a sexual hormone that they become addicted to, and how does that hormone come to flood their systems?

How do your aliens behave under the influence of that hormone?  How does that hormone driven behavior contribute to their individual and species survival?

Then derive a kind of governmental structure that mirrors human structures (pecking order to warfare included), but is rooted in their addiction to their hormone.

Here, again from Wikipedia, is a list of the areas of life that Government must centralize to regain Kingship and absolute sovereignty over the RiffRaff, so nobody can survive without permission.  It is quite a comprehensive list, and if you cover all these areas within the narrative of your story, you will generate impenetrable expository lumps.  Determine how your aliens handle all these areas, but Depict in Show Don't Tell only the ones thematically germane to your specific story.

------quote from Wikipedia-----
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Chase

Free Enterprise into 'X'[edit]
On pages 95 and 96 of The Road We Are Traveling, under the heading of "Free Enterprise into 'X'",[12] Chase listed 18 characteristics of political economy that he had observed among[13] Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain between 1913[14] and 1942. Chase labeled this phenomenon "... something called 'X'".[12] Characteristics include the following:

A strong, centralized government.
An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers' pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
The control of foreign trade by the government.
The control of natural resources.
The control of energy sources.
The control of transportation.
The control of agricultural production.
The control of labor organizations.
The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline,community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
Control of industry without ownership.
State control of communications and propaganda.

-------------end quote from Wikipedia--------------

Stuart Chase, the fellow who compiled that comprehensive list of areas of human endeavor, is the originator of the concept called, in American Politics, The New Deal, and was Advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the 1960s, Chase lent his support to the Johnson administration's Great Society policies.

Some of the centralized government functions on that list will translate easily to your Aliens -- natural resources, energy sources, agriculture (provided they eat plants or animals), maybe trade and transportation.

Robert A. Heinlein's (1907-1988 -- contemporary of Stuart Chase) teleporting "doors" would serve to undermine centralized government functions as traumatically as the internet has been undermining the governments so stable during the 20th century.  You know how ISIS (among others) has been using the Internet to convince young, testosterone driven, males that black is white and up is down, murder is holy.  So transportation and communication have both been used.  What other government function might a human-generated technological innovation undermine among your Aliens?

What historical figure among your Aliens contributed such foundational philosophical works on the form and function of government?  Give that Alien a name and a nickname, and title some works of his/hers/its that you can quote.  What technology do your Alien rebels discover, invent, or buy from humans, that lets them overthrow that centralized control?

Never tell your readers about that secret hormone -- show them the results, and the consequences when human testosterone clashes with alien hormones.

The only thing I can see that your readers would find relevant, but is not on Stuart Chase's list, is centralized government control of reproduction -- and that, too, has been done in science fiction.  Still, with today's advances in gene editing, there is much more story potential.

What if your Alien Rebels found a well preserved corpse of their species as it used to be before a centralized government forcibly mandated alteration of their genome?  What would happen, for example, to humanity if we altered the gene(s) responsible for testosterone addiction?  Suppose the alteration didn't work quite as expected, and three or four generations later we have humans who are ultra-sensitive and even more prone to testosterone addiction (which addiction causes the win at all costs, and win and win again and again syndrome).

All our most popular movies, one action scene after another mass destruction scene, all superhero win-win-win oh-do-it-again-because-it-feels-so-good formula movies sell all over the world.  You don't need to do a good translation of the sparse dialogue because the story isn't about what the characters say or think, but just about destroying and winning.

What do your aliens do instead?  What are their most popular films about - historically and "now" as well as the way "now" distorts their history via film and other arts?

Depict their culture with quotes of their famous philosophers and one-liners from their most well known movies.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Depiction Part 19 - Depicting The Married Hunk With Children

Depiction
Part 19
Depicting The Married Hunk With Children
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in the Depiction Series are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Knowing what your readership sees and understands from Headlines is vitally important to evoking a visual response without actually describing with irrelevant detail.

For example, a paragraph telling the reader the color hair and eyes, height, weight, choice in clothes, educational background - etc of the Character does nothing to draw a reader into the story.  Such detail, all lumped together into one paragraph leaves the reader confused, perhaps bored.  There is no reason a reader should memorize all those details about this character -- then wade through memorizing more such details about another character.

Reciting statistics about a character is not describing and it is not portraying.

Instead, to depict a character, the writer must evoke a likeness from something the reader feels is familiar -- then inject a single, stark but very memorable detail that is incongruous.  Two details, half a sentence at most, depict the character.

So let's Depict the Married Hunk -- who has a wife and children.

When we say "Hunk" we generally mean a very masculine, very attractive, perhaps buffed up -- young, strong, healthy, very probably with an attitude, very likely the attitude needs some work, most likely by a woman worth her salt.

Usually, the term Hunk does not apply to a happily married man raising a bunch of girls to be women.  Hunks are pre-domestication, usually.

But this is 2016 -- almost 2017 -- and many revolutionary changes are in store as a new generation steps up into adulthood.

"Adulting" has become a term because our society has kept the newest generation from growing up -- lots of forces from all directions configure young lives into lives of dependency -- and the expectation that parents will come to the rescue.  We have boomerang children -- off to college, back home to wait to find a job.

Once employed (or married off to someone who is employed) that generation encounters all the complications of performing Adult tasks -- banking, saving, stretching a dollar, dropping today's plans to go solve another person's problems, finding an apartment, making mistakes and having to live with the results.

In the pioneering days of the 1700's and 1800's in the USA, 14 year old boys were pretty much considered adults - carrying guns, hunting, fishing, building and repairing shelter, knowing nobody was going to come to their aid if they screwed up.

Today, we have men in their thirties who haven't gone through that Finger In The Dike, I'm The Only One Who Can Do This, realization stage.

That transition to self-reliance is the primary psychological dynamic in Science Fiction Adventure -- the genre is about the transition in self-image from child to adulthood.

Science Fiction blends well with Romance because the core essence of that transition, the real meaning of Adulting, is the establishment of a life-long, permanent, full of obligations, you can't get out of it, it is up to you, RELATIONSHIP.

Today's world does not regard Marriage as a "you can't get out of it" (thus adult) obligation.  Marriage is now conditional, and either party can just bail and forget it, go on to another spouse.

So if a Character fails to domesticate the Hunk she married, she walks.

But what about the children?

Don't forget the 1800's were famous for the Shotgun Wedding (still a favorite type of Romance Novel - often with reasons other than pregnancy).

So a Hunk, as long as he's still attractive, can always walk out of a marriage.

This creates wonderful conflict for Romance novels.

What is the higher calling -- what is the stronger moral position - which character's thinking depicts them as admirable, someone to emulate?

Is ti staying married to raise the children no matter how incompatible the couple has become?

Is marriage about Romance?  Does Romance -- falling in love, being deliriously happy, believing the world will cradle you in luxury all your life without effort -- have anything to do with Love?

Does Romance = Love?

Is Romance a necessary pre-condition to Love?

Does "I Love You" mean something different during Romance than during Life?

What does Adulting mean with respect to Relationships?

Do you choose a man because of his good looks, strength, prowess?

Does a woman even need a man?

These issues are the core themes of Romance, and to work them into Science Fiction, you need to study how your modern reader is seeing the world.

Here is an article published in July 2016 that describes a study on Testosterone correlated financial risk taking.

The truth behind testosterone: why men risk it all
http://www.wired.co.uk/preview/article/why-men-risk-it-all

Testosterone is what we blame for irrational aggression, for two men fighting just to show off in front of a woman they both want -- or sometimes just to win.

This article is about the addiction to WINNING -- in this case, winning at stock trading, but the statistical correlation reveals how judgement is warped by winning or by losing.

The testosterone study also reveals why the defeated, if repeatedly defeated, knuckles under and does not even try to compete again.

In other words, the fight to win establishes the pecking order among humans, just as in a wolf pack -- which could be why werewolf romance is so popular.

The science of wolf behavior applied to humans makes werewolf romance into Science Fiction Romance.

------------quote from THE TRUTH BEHIND TESTOSTERONE----------
The results were published in a 2008 report in the

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Coates found that, on days when traders made an above-average profit, their testosterone levels went up.

Most surprisingly, the testosterone levels in the morning predicted how much money the traders would make that day: high levels forecast high earnings. At the same time, the traders' cortisol was unaffected by how much money they lost. Rather, cortisol levels were sensitive to the volatility in the market, which is a measure of risk and uncertainty. "Cortisol is likely, therefore, to rise in a market crash and, by increasing risk aversion, to exaggerate the market's downward movement," the report states. "Testosterone, on the other hand, is likely to rise in a bubble and, by increasing risk-taking, to exaggerate the market's upward movement. These steroid feedback loops may help to explain why people caught up in bubbles and crashes often find it difficult to make rational choices."

Coates first learned of steroid feedback loops during his regular visits to Rockefeller University. The testosterone feedback loop is known as the winner effect. The winner effect had been observed in nature for many different species, from cichlid fish to rhesus monkeys, and its physiology is well understood. When two animals square off in anticipation of a fight, they experience a rise in testosterone levels. This self-doping mechanism prepares the animal for competition, increasing the blood's capacity to carry oxygen, quickening the speed of reactions, and, via its effect on the brain, increasing fearlessness and appetite for risk.

In the aftermath, winners can emerge with a tenfold increase in the amount of testosterone circulating in their bodies, whereas losers' testosterone levels can be suppressed by the same order of magnitude.

...This doping effect can sometimes last for months. Nature primes winners to keep winning and losers to keep losing.

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

This finding could explain why the business world is configured like a football game.

So where do women fit in the business world?

Here is another quote from that article on Testosterone.

-----------quote------------
Women produce, on average, about ten per cent of the amount of testosterone that men generate. According to Coates, they may therefore be less prone to excessive risks driven by the winner effect; their stress response may also be less sensitive to risk-taking failures.

During the dotcom boom, it always surprised Coates that the women traders seemed to be relatively immune to the euphoria that engulfed most male traders at the time.

Women seemed to know that a storm was coming. When it comes to the financial markets, Coates says, men are more hormonal than women. Male physiology makes men more attuned to high-frequency risk-taking. "Our latest studies suggest that women are not more risk averse than men," says Coates. "They merely prefer to have more time and information before they take risks."

This doesn't imply smaller profits – quite the opposite, in fact.

Studies of gender differences in investment behaviour consistently show that, in the long term, female investors consistently outperform their male counterparts. This is not, Coates stresses, an endorsement of one sex over another. "It's not that one group is better than the other," says Coates. "They're different. It's just that by diversifying the biology of the trading floor you would counterbalance the extreme tendencies."

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

Women have some testosterone - but not so much as to impair judgement.  And women have a different way of assessing risk.

I saw another study, which I can't locate right now, which indicated that a man's testosterone levels go DOWN after being married, and DOWN again once children come into the picture.

In other words, being married, literally tames the wild animal in the man.

This could be one reason the "arranged marriage" social norm dominated for so many centuries -- and the reason it persists today in some religious communities that prize the level headed, measured, approach to risk taking.  Untamed men would risk offending God without a second thought -- according to that study on testosterone and the stock market.

Consider that Hunk who is the flashpoint of most Romance novels -- a woman spots a man in a crowd, and just knows that gorgeous hunk has to be hers.

What is it that makes a man a Hunk?

Mostly testosterone -- it builds muscle, is responsible for "secondary sexual characteristics" such as hair, and in a winner testosterone causes the man to move with confidence, to exude power and pride.

A female response to the hunt for a mate is to look for a male who will protect and raise her children  -- to bring home the bacon as it were.  A female response is to be attracted to a winner, thus a male with high testosterone levels.

But the objective of marriage is to tame that beast, to lower his testosterone levels.

Your readers live in a social order that is in transition.  Thus Romance novels have long been exploring how women find such testosterone driven men irresistible, and Lust must inevitably lead to sex -- there is just no way to resist that force.

In the 1950's, after women had gone to work during WWII and gotten a taste of independence, of adulting, there was a social argument about women continuing to work -- which culminated 20 years later in the feminist movement, and equal pay for equal work.

Your current readership, for the most part, is made up of people born in the 1990's and raised by two working parents, with a good percentage raised by single parents.

In the 1950's there was a lingering stigma on children of a divorced couple, even after remarriage.  It was hushed.  Not spoken of.  Playmates of such deprived children were not told of the parental history.

The 1960's are famous for changing that attitude.

Check this out by reading some ebooks written during these different epochs -- the contemporary settings depict their era accurately, and the historical Romance written during say the 1960's distort history in a different way that novels written today.

The same effect is visible in Science Fiction.  Read Robert A Heinlein of the 1940's and 1950's if you can get through the sexism, and you will learn something major about how to craft a novel for your current audience.

So we come to a study of modern readerships and how to target that readership.

Here is an item that appeared also in July 2016, written by Jill Filipovic is a journalist and lawyer who is working on a book about female pleasure and politics in America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/opinion/campaign-stops/why-men-want-to-marry-melanias-and-raise-ivankas.html

This article is about Donald Trump and came out during the Republican Convention.

Read that article on Testosterone and Winning -- and you'll understand Trump's "win-win-win we don't win anymore" chant.  He's been a winner and the article explains why men like that get addicted to winning rather than settling issues in a more sensible way that doesn't create losers.

The point of winning is to create losers, to alter the body chemistry and brain chemistry of other people.

So we have a generation (younger than Trump) who aren't as enamored by the necessity to create losers in order to "live happily ever after."  While at the same time, that younger generation regards marriage as temporary, a situation that can be shirked off despite children, rather than as a sacred responsibility you can never get out of in this life.  (think Historical Romance, Victorian era was when you saw this attitude begin to change under the surface, but not in public.)

Today's generation of young men (many of whom have not gone through the shock of Adulting), are just as testosterone addicted as the elder generations, and young women see just as many Hunks among them.

Marriages do happen -- perhaps regarded as permanent, regardless of difficulties, --- and young men do get tamed and have children who tame them even more.

So we are raising a new generation of young women torn in two apparently mutually exclusive directions -- these are your primary readership -- women whose fathers demand they found successful (winning) careers, and whose husbands expect (but likely won't say out loud because men don't talk about emotion) a stay-at-home-mom for their kids.

Here's a quote from the NY Times article:

-----------quote-----------
This female empowerment narrative — of the daughter, not the wife — is one Americans are more ready to accept. A man who says he’s never changed a diaper and is on his third marriage to a former model may appeal to a resentful male minority, but will look unfamiliar and unappealing in much of the country. A successful child, though — that’s relatable and desirable. When men have daughters, their attitudes shift and they begin to adhere less stringently to traditional gender roles; no similar effect happens to mothers of girls. Fathers of daughters are also more likely to support reproductive rights than men who don’t have girls.

Men have often given their female offspring more opportunities than their female partners, perhaps seeing their children as extensions of themselves. Even today, many men find themselves newly appalled at sexism after having a girl, a reaction apparently not stoked by being born of a woman, married to a woman or simply seeing women as human. In our reluctantly feminist America, one question this election poses is whether we’ve evolved enough to value women as individuals instead of assessing them relationally, as an attractive wife supporting her husband or as a high-achieving daughter reflecting a flattering light back on her parents.
---------end quote----------

Remember that Conflict is the essence of story, and both the Internal Conflict and the External Conflict are derived from the Theme.

What you think and/or feel about a topic has a Theme at the core of it.

What do you have to say about the mutually exclusive demands placed on today's young women?  Are they really mutually exclusive? Do women have to limit themselves to careers that either pay enough to hire child-care (CEO level pay), or not have children, or have stay-at-home-husbands, or adopt a profession that can be done at home with kids pulling on your elbows.

When pondering the career options of the college age woman who is your Main Character, consider she's been reading articles such as the following:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2102517/Women-need-year-recover-childbirth-study-finds.html

And sometimes some women just don't recover at all because of un-diagnosed injuries incurred during birthing -- broken pubic or pelvis bone, torn pelvic floor muscles, the list is long and mostly neglected by OB's.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a59626/birth-injuries-postpartum-pain-untreated/

This kind of thing is going through her mind as her friends tuck her into her Bridal Gown for that long walk down the aisle.

This is your readership's view of the world.  Use that knowledge to convince them that there is a solution -- there does exist an attainable Happily Ever After, but it is not guaranteed.  There is risk involved.

We'll discuss risk assessment in more depth as we go on.  "Risk" is the foundation of the element in a novel called 'THE STAKES' -- the stakes are what the main character stands to lose if things don't work as intended.  But 'THE STAKES' are also what that character has to gain if things do go as intended.

Risk/Reward calculations are, in the male of our species, testosterone driven.

So are Romance Novels - right?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com