alien romances: Theme-Plot Integration

Showing posts with label Theme-Plot Integration. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Theme-Plot Integration Part 15 - Protecting a Community by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Plot Integration
Part 15
Protecting a Community
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Part 14 of the Theme-Plot Integration series,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/theme-plot-integration-part-14-ruling.html
we took a hard look at Ruling a Community -- what it takes to worldbuild a social environment for your Fantasy World, or for a Contemporary Romance, or a Historical. Science Fiction on other worlds likewise takes a great deal of hard thinking about the social matrix your character is embedded within.

We noted:
--------quote-----------
1st House defines the Self. 7th House defines the one-to-one Relationships, but in some forms of Astrology 7th House represents also The Public.

What does it take to be a RULER of a Community?

Well, first, the only times Ruling ever works historically, you see that the Ruler was a member of the Community (not an outsider -- that always fails dramatically which makes good story fodder).

So in effect, a Ruler from a Community is subconsciously imposing his own personal values on the community, but he got those values by growing up inside the community, so though "ruling" implies "imposition" what he's imposing was there already.

Think of it as singing on key in a choir and the Ruler just steps out and does a Solo. Has to be a solo from the same song everyone is singing behind him. The Ruler's values have to harmonize with those of the Ruled -- or the Community fragments.

So Humanity has been on a millennia long search for the operational relationship between Self and Other.

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

You'll find a list of the posts on Theme-Plot Integration here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And the series on Theme-Character Integration is listed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

And as you know, I'm a big fan of fiction based on themes "ripped from the headlines" -- as long as it's the THEME you rip, not real characters, places etc. If you are writing non-fiction, you have to get permission to use copyrighted work, so be careful what you rip out of the headlines.

In order to transform a "headline" -- or generally spotlighted public issue -- into a story or novel, you have to bore down deep into the material and extract the theme.

That's what we're going to do in this post today.

One of the hottest political topics in the USA, and maybe the world right now, is the issue of cyber warfare, Identity Theft, Industrial Espionage, Patent and Copyright infringement.

All of this rather abstract warfare is going on within the context of the transgression of national borders.

In the Middle East, Isis renamed itself the Islamic State and trampled right over national borders from Syria to Iraq to Lebanon, and shows no signs of wanting to stop. They are trying to carve out a new nation, then expand into a replay of the Ottoman Empire.

Some of the best Romances I've read have been set in the historical venue of the Ottoman Empire. Think about Elizabeth Peters.

In Africa, similar groups are trying to move the borders of nations.

In the Americas, people from Iran, Syria, Iraq, etc. and Central American countries have poured over the US southern border at a time when there is a cultural movement among Mexicans living in the USA asserting that Arizona, New Mexico and parts of California and Texas actually must be re-possessed by Mexico. (I didn't make that up!)

I follow these news headlines and park stories in a flipboard "magazine" called Pluto in Capricorn
https://flipboard.com/profile/jacquelinelhmqg
because at this time Pluto is transiting Capricorn. Pluto is about power, about transformation, and Capricorn is about government, discipline. Capricorn is "The Power Behind The Throne" while Leo is about "The Throne" and its occupant.

Leo is about leadership, ruling, reigning. Capricorn is the power behind that leadership that puts it in place then keeps it in place.

Today, that means Leo is about who has won the Election, and Capricorn is about the source of power that made that happen (Money, Media, Scandals hidden). Pluto transits tend to open hidden scandals to the light of day -- and that generally happens with explosive power. It's not a surprise (that's Uranus) but it is a revelation, sometimes a religious one.

Pluto is rules Scorpio, and thus is all about Secrets. The Power Behind the throne, not on it.

So one of the objectives of those "in power" who remain behind the throne, invisible, out of the media spotlight, is simply to remain in power, to be able to predict what large "masses" of people will do under given circumstances.

Thus the primary tool today of the Power Behind the Throne is Public Relations -- the now math based analysis of how to instigate herd movement in huge numbers of people (e.g. win an election).

The current trend is away from making LAWS to enforce behavior and toward making REGULATIONS to enforce behavior.

Regulations are made by appointees, often not subject to legislative approval, (EPA, NHS, NSA, IRS, Department of Education and other alphabet soup agencies), and thus not responsive to voters.

If there's a regulation that you don't like, you are absolutely helpless to protest.

If there's a law you don't like, you can vote against your Representative at the next election.

You can speak out against that elected representative who voted for the law you don't like.

That open discussion keeps the conversation between the Throne and the Community.

It does, however, circumvent the Power Behind The Throne. It can derail the plans of the Powers That Be.

Regulations are made to please the Powers That Be. Laws are made to please the voters. The two interests, in a well knit community, will largely coincide and become indistinguishable from one another.

The Powers That Be behind the throne strive mightily to keep all control initiatives as regulations, not law.

They need to keep them out of the headlines and away from the knowledge of those who would object and call elected legislators to do something about it.

So I was scanning my feed on Google+ and got interested in a conversation on reading, and disallowing children to read certain things.

This is a conversation about, long ago, students reading Nancy Drew in school were "forbidden" by parents and teachers from reading such terribly bad books. It's bad to be exposed to such bad art. Others chimed in with lists of their most cherished kid's books that parents and teachers tried to prevent them from reading, and their strategies of defeating such restrictions. Readers vs. non-readers.

The conversation got quite long and far-reaching, and a comment emerged:

Another person joined the conversation and noted that in High School, she had to attend a compulsory pep rally for school spirit, held during school hours. She did, but kept her text books open and studied, intent on college and a bright future. She was sent to the Principle for discipline, argued and won the case, didn't have to serve detention.

The incident the comment cited was some while ago. Would that happen in today's world? Would a teacher order a student to not-study during school hours in order to participate in whipping up an artificial emotional peak?

I thought about that problem carefully, and realized it is a Headline Issue teased apart down to the thread of theme behind it. But connected to that thread of theme are many other themes forming the warp and woof of 21st Century attitudes.

These themes form the perplexing set of fallacies upon which our current, real-world decisions are being made. Politicians are now calling each other "liars" and applying euphemisms to avoid using that incendiary world. Soon the word liar won't be incendiary simply from being used to describe someone who is telling the truth.

All that brings us back to the series of posts on the use of Fallacy in creating fiction.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/03/theme-plot-integration-part-7-fallacy.html

The real-world fallacy under discussion here today is the fallacy of Protection.

Protection is very sexy, and a core element in any good Romance.

It's deep in human nature. The pregnant female must be protected by a capable male, or the offspring will not survive birth. The child must be protected by parents.

The world is full of predators that eat humans (including human predators who eat souls), and those who can not protect themselves must be protected for the good of the community (or family).

A community that can not protect the young does not survive.

It's that primal.

But how does a community produce capable protectors?

By what process are protectors made?

Those are questions spearheading the explication of A Thematic Statement - the core of your reason to write this novel.

The theme is the reason your intended readers want to read the novel. To get a browser to buy your novel, you must state the theme in the first sentence, with an enticing hook, a concretization of that theme.

A question is one way to construct a hook.

For a novel with the theme "How A Community Produces Protectors" might be something like, "I never let my little brother get his feet wet."

And then a conversation between the brothers indicating that the little brother, as an adult, does not feel capable of protecting (possibly a pregnant wife, or pregnant ex-wife?). Something about the big brother always yanking a problem out of little brother's hands and fixing it for him, then being steaming mad that he has to do everything himself.

See? That is a show-don't-tell explicating the theme of "how protectors are made."

Little brother was not allowed to mature into a protector -- and by disallowing that maturation, big brother managed to wreck his own emotional maturation. Why? Drunken parents? Choose something that fits your theme to explain why these brothers just didn't make it to adulthood.

Or is that a fallacy? Are protectors born, not nurtured? Are only males capable of protective instincts? (well, there wouldn't be any humans if human females weren't protective of their young). What kind of Alien would have no protective instincts?

We all know the sexy jolt of suddenly finding yourself the object of someone else's protective instinct. Like sucking, it is a primal reflex.

We suck at the breast for LIFE. And our lives depend on being PROTECTED. Sex is about protection. (rape is the opposite)

But how does the CHILD become a protective ADULT?

Is that romance novel material?

So I thought about the issue of censoring kids' reading, prohibiting certain material, forcing other material.

Everyone on the Google + discussion seemed to agree that Nancy Drew and similar works should not be prohibited, especially not by school teachers who had an urge (or directive from The Powers That Be) to regulate children's reading material.

So I thought about other current school campus regulations that have only recently been enacted.

Just as contradictory as prohibiting Nancy Drew is the current regulation enacted ostensibly for Security (a euphemism for Protection) of policing campus visitors.

We all know the shooting incidents highlighted by the media, but few of us know that the amount of such violence and the damage it does has actually decreased over decades. Research some statistics and see what you find. Many studies claim an increase; many claim a decrease. It seems the current goal is zero incidents.

There's another theme in that. "Is perfect control of all human behavior the responsibility of the government?"

To defend students from all potential incidents, there is a new regulation (possibly not in your community yet) of not just forcing school visitors to identify themselves with photo-ID (guilty until proven innocent), but also to surrender said ID into a non-secure location.

Campus visitors must surrender a driver's license or unique photo-ID to a secretary who doesn't have even a Snowden-level security clearance, working behind a desk that doesn't even have Bank level security screens -- and in order to gain access to meetings on the campus, one must leave that secretary without a receipt for your unique identifier.

Such a card that actually identifies you is a card which is worth a bundle on the black market what with all the illegal immigrants a small portion of whom may be criminals, but all of whom are desperate for legit ID. There's a whole industry devoted to turning stolen ID cards into illegal ID's.

But most people don't know such an industry exists.

Until you've had your Identity stolen, you have no idea how precious it is or how easy it is to steal (or the raped feeling that comes with that theft.)

Without your ID card, you are trapped on that campus as if it were an actual prison with barbed wire atop cement walls. If you surrender your driver's license (and are law-abiding), you are a prisoner, and you've done that to yourself "voluntarily" in exchange for the privilege of attending whatever meeting you might be there for (PTA or whatever.)

If someone with authority doesn't like what you say at that meeting, you might want to walk out and leave, but you can't if they won't give you your ID back until the Police arrive (even if you didn't do anything illegal). Or you then would commit the crime of driving without a driver's license (unless you can get a ride -- maybe that's why UBER is so disliked by Authority?)

Do you see plot-threads spinning out of the core theme here? Plot is fabricated out of theme -- remember that. Character (strong and otherwise) is fabricated out of theme. And the themes that sell books are the ones that make headlines.

A Strong Character is likely to be a mature adult with full blown Protective Tendencies. Such a person is likely to attend PTA and other community meetings, often held on school campuses (a lot of Hot Guys turn up at such meetings).

A strong character with protective tendencies who loves his/her Community is very likely to upset someone in authority from time to time. That's the nature of being a Strong Character.

THEME: Should such Powers That Be have the ability to constrain the movements of a Strong Character?

PLOT: What if the Power That Is makes a regulation and requires a hireling to enforce that regulation -- thus avoiding being available to Strong Characters who object to the regulation? Powers That Be types of people are spotlight averse by nature. They put a patsy up to take the fall for them.

Already you see a cast of characters unfolding from a simple thematic element, and plots galore abound as soon as a Strong Character steps onto the stage.

So back to Regulations Today. So after the meeting, you must (MUST -- the powers that be decree, must!) stand in a long, slow, line to turn in your visitor's pass and get your ID back provided nobody ahead of you in line has claimed it and absconded with it.

A theft would make a nifty plot complication, but it works also as a plot-driver (the problem that must be resolved at The End.)

What if the stolen ID belonged to your female lead character, and the Hot Guy steps in and chases down the thief, tackles the Regulation-Maker and forces the State to make a law against denuding school campus visitors of their ID.

Identifying yourself to gain entry to a public place is a reasonable invasion of privacy because the place is public. Surrendering your Identification, thus imprisoning yourself, is not a reasonable invasion of privacy and could make a plot-driver if the Hot Guy at the meeting turned out to be a Lawyer, or have a little brother who is a lawyer.

Theft is a good plot-driver because for hours, your ID has been available to Identify Thieves for copying.

I know a bit about what can be done with hot-ID, and it is a card you NEVER let out of your sight.

Even in supermarkets now, clerks don't swipe your card, you do it with your own hands.

FALLACY:
Stripping the honest of their ID prevents the dishonest (or crazy) from performing illegal acts on school premises.

How could attacking the law-abiding PROTECTORS (parents) benefit the PROTECTED (kids in school).

Students in CUSTODY of a school gain no protection from adults surrendering their Identity.

Custody. That's a legal term for in jail.

Kids are guilty until proven innocent. It's more like The Inquisition than like modern courts -- you just can't prove your innocence if you're a kid, because some other kid somewhere MIGHT actually do what you're being actively prevented from doing (even if you wouldn't.)

Immaturity is a sin. The punishment is custody.

But the sentence is only 18 years, and you might live to 100, so shrug.

You've heard the term "over-protective parent."

Good parenting consists of total protection of the new-born, gradually (ever so gradually and not in a steady progressing way) lifting that protection. Protection of children is like training wheels on a bike -- left on too long it creates dependence.

If, all through High School, we are kept in a vacuum sealed campus and protected from ourselves, as humans we remain children even after sexual maturity.

The Powers That Be behind all Political Parties, find an adult population expecting life to be "safe" (without risk -- because such over-protected humans never learn risk-management by getting hurt and paying a price for bad judgement) much easier to manage, to control, to sell things to, to get votes from.

Such adults, oddly enough, become much more amenable to launching into a war just because someone in authority points at a threat and tells them the only way to deal with that threat is war.

A child who hasn't learned risk-management the hard way becomes an adult who lets "someone else" manage risk for them. Such an adult is not a "Strong Character."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/theme-character-integration-part-6-hero.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/theme-character-integration-part-7.html

So that's what happens to a child who goes all the way through college on campuses that are "protected" as if they are playpens, not the real world.

But what of the parent who goes to meetings at such campuses all the years of raising their children?

Parents required to do such things as surrender their Identification for the privilege of exercising a right lose all sense of requiring of themselves self-discipline and honorable behavior.

Keep in mind, schools are funded by the taxes that the parents pay. Schools work FOR the parents attending meetings. Yet they treat the parents as if the parents were still children, imposing regulations, requiring this and that. The thematic message is that no matter what you do, how old you are, how many children you have, or who you vote for, you are never -- ever -- going to be a decision-maker. You are a school kid when you come back as a parent.

So throughout life, to survive (at work, play, and while parenting) one must be absolutely submissive, and set aside one's Identity.

OK, a card is just a symbolic identity, but we're talking fiction-writing and in fiction symbolism is a key ingredient. It is key in fiction because in real life it is very powerful. Read up on the math behind Public Relations and see how they use symbolism to sell cars and perfume.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations

Practice makes perfect.

By surrendering a driver's license to a non-secure location run by a non-Security Clearance secretary, we are practicing submission to authority instead of practicing being the authority that we must be to execute Parenting well.

So how can we teach children to manage the power of authority when they are adults if they do as we do rather than as we say, and we do not take responsibility for our own actions?

Identity is Responsibility (Saturn, Capricorn). Identity is defined by boundaries, borders, just as countries have borders.

You can't develop a Strong Character without a strong Identity (an identity with borders.) It's the invasion of your borders that wreaks destruction in the aftermath of rape. Rebuilding those borders is a process that gives your Main Character a colorful history and a clear reason to Be A Strong Character.

Strength doesn't come upon one without effort, without pain to create the gain. That is called GROWING PAINS -- growing up hurts.

Good parenting is about gauging how much pain it takes for your child to grow, and where exactly the border is beyond which pain leads to destruction not growth. One gains that judgement by having been well-parented. It's not inherited. It's learned.

Here is a news item related to the "don't read that book" decrees of teachers long ago via the Privacy Borders themes.

http://www.slashgear.com/facebook-also-uses-photodna-to-prowl-for-illicit-images-07340312/

And here's the counter-argument on "privacy" -- at what AGE do you gain the right to privacy? An infant has none, a teen some, but when do you get all the privacy a human is going to get?

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/08/facebook-messenger-privacy-fears-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

Privacy is about being able to read under the desk in class, choose what books to read, (or not-read), read all night on a school night then perform well the next day despite that expenditure, try out something your associates disapprove of, and pay too much for an item.

Privacy is about doing your own risk-assessment, then making your own decisions accordingly, acting on your own judgment and reading the book anyway, or studying during a pep rally anyway.

Getting the right answers in your risk-assessment process takes much practice, and without that practice, no matter how old you live to be, you will never be able to make reliable judgement calls for yourself, or your children.

If privacy is violated at the age when judgement is developing, then the individual will never mature into an adult, no matter how many years are lived. To find plot-threads from that set of Protection-From-Privacy or Protection-Of-Privacy themes look carefully at who benefits from either set of regulations and/or laws.

WHO BENEFITS gives you the Cast of Characters.

WHO PREVAILS gives you the Main Character.

WHO HOLDS THE KEY TO PREVAILING gives you the B-story character, or the Secondary Character, the Main Character's lover, or second point of view character.

When you use two points of view, you need two themes, but the themes have to both be derived from the same Master Theme.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

Privacy is about the right to secret ballot, and personal Identity.

That decree to exclude Nancy Drew (a series designed for a pre-privacy age-group) is offensive because it violates privacy and therefore thwarts the development of a personal Identity capable of relying on a personal risk-assessment, and then acting.

All of this reminds me suddenly that I did tackle many of these issues in a novel, PERSONAL RECOGNIZANCE though many in this theme bundle were not addressed.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Theme-Plot Integration Part 8 - Use of Co-incidence in Plotting

The posts with "Integration" of two skills in the title are "advanced" discussions.

Here's the index to the previous 7 parts in this series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

Now we'll tackle the entire STEN SERIES by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole. It is not Romance, so we can be more objective about the story and how it's constructed.

To do the kind of study I intend to show you how to do with a Romance genre novel would be impossible. You'd get too caught up in the particular dimensions that we resonate to and not be able to discern the structural bones behind those dimensions.

For a while now, I've been searching for an example I could use to illustrate the techniques that create widely selling, big hits, that are not shallow. You see the kind of book I'm talking about in Regency Romance where an entire world of technology and psychology cradles a story which is deceptively simple on the surface, unutterably profound within.

But readers who dislike Romance don't see the profound depths.

There's something of the same effect in action-based Science Fiction. Readers who dislike "science" often don't see the profound depths in an action galactic-war novel.

But sometimes it is those invisible depths that produce the gigantic, explosive, (bewildering to the publisher) sales track record of a series.

And oddly enough there are some techniques that power action/military Science Fiction sales that can easily be applied to Romance, but seldom have been, or where you have found it, it isn't done Blockbuster Style.

I love action/romance genre novels - particularly space-military-romance -- double-particularly with a human/alien romance. When the theme and plot are integrated using the techniques that drive the Sten Series, those mixed-genre Romances sizzle!

When you add sizzle to profound, you will get that explosive sales pattern that you see at the top of the Romance Genre lists.

Sten, of the Sten Series, is a sizzling hot hero who can't settle into a Relationship -- well, read all 8 novels for how that ends up.

I think you'll find the ending of the series a springboard into a human/alien romance of your own -- completely different but the same. (Isn't that what Hollywood is famous for demanding "the same but different?" Well we're going to study how to do that by examining what a writing team that DID THAT consistently to make a living in Hollywood, wrote in their novels.)

I've talked about Allan Cole in previous posts as someone with a career worth studying if you plan to be a successful writer in today's swiftly changing world.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/career-management-for-writers-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-2.html

We're going to examine how he and Chris Bunch achieved what they did with the STEN SERIES.

The point here is that the The Sten Seriesis a genuine "series" (with a masterplan behind it like Babylon 5) -- a single story in 8 volumes. Click the title to see my reviews on Amazon, on Kindle versions.

It is not romance genre. It's action, military SF. We're going to reverse engineer it and apply what we learn to ROMANCE GENRE.

Remember, the point behind all these posts dating back to 2007 is to figure out why Romance genre is not held in the high esteem we think it should be, and how to change that. Sheer sales volume won't get us that kind of respect. But sales volume is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for garnering that respect.

Sales volume achieved in spite of, rather than because of, professional promotional support does gain the kind of attention that can lead to the respect we're talking about.

THE STEN SERIES is a major clue. Read this from Allan Cole, co-author of STEN. Follow the link in this email letter, and read about how the series was originated and sold.

-------quote from email from Allan Cole -----------
...
The tale of how Sten came into being has to be one of the weirdest stories in writerly history. I told the story in one of the early Hollywood MisAdventures: "Sten - The Fast Turnaround Caper." And it goes into some detail. Here's the link:

http://www.allan-cole.com/2011/07/sten-fast-turnaround-caper.html My guess is that it'll have you on the floor. >g<

As for the publisher's sales efforts - they were sorely lacking. The books basically sold themselves. And sold so well in fact that our agent (Russ Galen) got well over six figures for each of the last two books. I don't think Del Rey ever realized what they had until the series was complete. This worked to our advantage. We had no NY literary rep at the start. After Wolf Worlds came out, Russ Galen - a young agent at Scott Meredith, then - called us and asked if he could represent us. Then he made Del Rey contract for the books one by one, upping the ante each time.

Around about Fleet Of The Damned, he sweetened our kitty by forcing them to give back the foreign rights, which they never really attempted to sell. Then the foreign sales took off like crazy. We kept telling the editors (Owen Locke and Shelly Shapiro) about how well the books were doing overseas - and all the mail we were getting from readers. (snail mail at first, then Compuserve), but they didn't pay much attention. In the Nineties, Del Rey let the books go out of print one by one. Meanwhile, foreign sales were soaring. We were making way more money abroad than at home - and also getting more respect. (In the late Nineties, my foreign editors flew Kathryn and I to Europe for a six-week Continental book tour... London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Geneva and Moscow... The crowds at the Moscow book-signing alone went around the block.)

Finally, a year or so after Chris died I talked to his widow, Karen, who agreed to let me see if I could get the U.S. rights back. Thanks to Shelly Shapiro, who had by then become a good friend, the deed was done with little effort. Wildside did the U.S. paperback and e-books. Books In Motion bought the audio rights. Immediately, the British sat up and took notice. Called my foreign agent (Danny Baror) and grabbed the UK rights. The other foreign publishers became newly enthused and there has been a flurry of new contracts, new editions and new readers.

I'm hoping that there is going to be a major Sten revival.

One of these days I'll finally get Sten on film. It's not a matter of "if," but "when."

So, as Laurel might tell Hardy, That's my story - and Sten's - and I'm stuck in it.

allan

Allan Cole
Homepage: www.acole.com
Allan's Bookstore: http://tinyurl.com/l9mpr5
Allan's E-Books: http://tinyurl.com/684uos8
Allan's Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/allansten
My Hollywood MisAdventures: http://allan-cole.blogspot.com/
Tales Of The Blue Meanie: http://alcole.blogspot.com/
------------End Quote---------

We'll pick this topic up again very soon, so go look over the Sten Series, especially my reviews on Amazon Kindle.

Read the books with particular attention to the PLOT aspects, and the use of co-incidence in shaping Sten's military career all the way up to admiral. Then read VORTEX (Sten #7) with particular attention to the science of tornadoes.

In fact, from Book 1, read with attention to the behavior of tornadoes. You'll find by Book 7 that the THEME aspect lies within the concept of tornado.

Ask yourself what is the Romance genre equivalent of a Tornado? When you find the TORNADO within the structure of the whole STEN SERIES, you'll have the answer to that question, and you'll know what you can do to elevate the reputation of Romance.

Also as I read the STEN novels on Kindle (all but one, which I got in audiobook) I used the SHARE feature to share significant quotes. If you "follow" me on Kindle, you can see the excerpts I selected to "share" as I was thinking of doing this series of posts.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Index to Theme-Plot Integration

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Theme-Plot Integration - Part 7 - The Fallacy of Trust

First of all, Happy Passover, Easter, whatever! It's SPRING!!! This is the time all young men turn their fancy to love, right? So let's talk about the mood of the season.

LINKS TO PREVIOUS PARTS:

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-5-great.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-6-fallacy.html

All Romance situations revolve around TRUST because when swept off your feet by the discovery of true love, "romanced" into daring to love, the backlash of that dive off the cliff is DISTRUST.

The sweeping, sinking, falling-in-love feeling is a loss of "control" -- of yourself, your emotions, your life, your ability to make choices.

It seems in that moment that a major life-direction choice has been made for you, and there's nothing you can do about it -- THIS IS MY MAN (or WOMAN). This one is MINE.

But what if you can't, don't, won't, TRUST that person, or that decision, or even yourself to deliver to that treasured person what that person deserves because that person is a treasure to all humanity?

Discovering the true value of a PERSON -- another person other than yourself -- is one of those moments when Divine Force opens your inner eye and shows you the stakes you are playing for in this world.

And that is an awesome experience.

The stakes of "falling in love" -- of recognizing a Soul Mate -- have nothing at all to do with yourself in that moment of recognition of the stakes. The stakes you play the love-game FOR are the children -- and their children and their children, long after you're gone. The stakes of love are eternal.

And if you make a mistake, you are responsible for the Souls yet to enter the world for their turn.

Oh, boy!

That is why all "Falling In Love" is about FEAR -- and why Romance itself is a genre of exemplary courage on display. It takes far more courage to LOVE than it does to murder someone or commit suicide.

In fact, it takes more courage to hug than to shoot a gun into a crowd or an army.

That's why all Romance is about fear, the bigger internal fears we bury when we think we leave childhood behind.

Puberty is a time of eruption of sexual adult hormones, a transition to what we call adulthood.

But sex alone doesn't create adults out of children. In fact, it can stunt the development of the child into an adult.

When that happens, and later the pseudo-adult who encountered sex too early in life, at too immature an age of character, then the encounter with the Soul Mate and the "falling in love" experience of true Romance is fraught with eruptions of sheer terror, fear like nothing ever felt before - fear of failure as a person, fear of having children.

If you can't trust yourself, you can't trust anyone else -- ever!

This is the stuff of true drama and and it is the core of the reason that ROMANCE -- as a genre -- deserves much more respect than it has ever (yet) garnered in the public square.

OK, then if TRUST is your core theme for your new novel -- what's the plot? Where do you find a plot that has all the opportunities to explore the issues of TRUST buried in all current young adults?

And I really think that "all" current young adults (anyone under say maybe 30) are in this category of having been introduced to the adult world of sexuality too soon in their character-arc. You can connect with this audience directly if you can understand all sides of this issue, and why these fears and trusts have to be revisited in the encounter with a Soul Mate.

Oh, yes, it's very possible that these fear/trust issues have been laid to rest in a prior incarnation and so, the pre-teen child is actually beyond them in this life, ready for adulthood at a very tender age.

And that individual makes a great character for a Romance novel - simply because they're "different" and have to wrestle with the fact that lot of their contemporaries (most likely the one they've fallen in love with) have not surmounted these issues.

OK, so given a theme of TRUST -- what's the plot?

If you can nail a theme and a plot before you even begin to think about characters who will live through that plot, you will very likely be able to produce saleable fiction on second draft. The knack of writing fast, lean, easy-to-read stories is all about getting the structure right before you start drafting.

With that structure laid out, you can find characters who will advocate each side of the thematic issue you're tackling.

You find the SIDES that you must illustrate with the backgrounds and current issues of your characters by reading non-fiction about the thematic substance you're working with.

One of the best, clearest argued, sources I've found for these kinds of "all sides of the issue presented without bias" is actually a religious source.

In the case of FEAR/TRUST the issue roiling through America today is GUN CONTROL.

And here is a very cleanly structured, all sides of the problem laid out clearly with references, article on the position of Judaism on gun control.

http://www.chabadofscottsdale.org/library/article_cdo/aid/507002/jewish/What-Does-Judaism-Say-About-Gun-Control.htm

Read that article -- you don't have to know anything about Judaism to see instantly that this is Romance Novel fodder.

When you get to the end of the article, see if you have found my question nagging your mind.

It isn't what the article says that's important. It's what it does not say, or ask, or question, or approach. Look for the fallacy. By now, you've trained yourself to find those fallacies everywhere, especially in news stories -- but look for it underneath this article. Here it's harder to spot.

Remember, this series of blog posts is about Theme-Plot INTEGRATION (i.e. doing both at once, putting your theme into your plot so you never ever have to articulate the dry, boring, repellant philosophy in a self-indulgent expository lump). In fact your characters should not know diddly about philosophy, or care. And your characters should never know the reader is there listening. So they don't explain their philosophy to the reader in expository lumps disguised as dialogue.

Philosophy creates emotions -- show don't tell the character's emotions and you have your theme and plot integrated cleanly and you have made your story a joy to read.

That is the secret I learned from the greatest writers who mentored me.

PHILOSOPHY IS THE SUBCONSCIOUS SOURCE OF EMOTION.

What you subconsciously believe causes you to feel. What you consciously believe leaves you cold.

Fiction writing is all about your reader's subconscious beliefs. Not the conscious ones.

And it is within the subconscious of your reader that you will find the neatest, and most powerful, fallacies you can use to generate plot.

Search that article for the FALLACIES you can use to discuss the hot-button issues of TRUST in love, war and marriage.

The author of this piece (and it may have had a number of authors other than the ones cited) harbored a fallacy shared with the intended audience.

Spot that fallacy and you've got a Romance Genre series -- or a blockbuster film rivaling the blockbuster novels/film series by Robert Ludlum THE BOURNE IDENTITY etc.

Here's the fallacy I see in that article that just drips Romance Genre Plot.

"What if the government is the one with "Evil Intent"?" What if it's the government you can't trust?

OK, a lot of people are running around the world today ranting and chanting about not trusting government.

If you've read the book I've been discussing in this Theme-Plot series, You Can't Lie To Me, you know why we elect folks who are honest just like we are, and then those same folks turn dishonest without our noticing the transition. When we notice it, we rant and chant about how untrustworthy they are.

Has anyone noticed that those in charge of the USA's government today (and even of the UN) are the very ones who ran around ranting and chanting in the 1960's that they didn't trust the government?

Is what you rant and chant against what you fear -- or what you love and then become?

Is loving what you fear a sign of sanity? Is becoming what you fear inevitable?

The question that is not asked in the article is "What if...?" (an SF keyword question) "What if the government -- i.e. the majority -- is the source of Evil Intent?" As I said, that is the one question the intended readership for this article would never, ever, consider asking.

That's the kind of fallacy you can use to generate plot because it is so widespread.

As this Theme-Plot Integration series has pointed out, the writer who can depict the reader's subconscious philosophy's contradictory beliefs commands the reader's attention. If that subconscious belief is held by a large number of people and is fallacious, that writer gains a Robert Ludlum size audience.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Plot Subtext Integration Part 1

I'm going way out into uncharted waters here to invent, whole cloth out of nothing, an entirely new term, maybe a new concept, in writing craft.

I'm terming it Plot-Subtext Integration.

Plot you all know by now is what I call the sequence of EVENTS in a story, the "because line" of what people do, what that causes to happen, and what other people do about that happening.

Story is all about what the characters learn from the events that happen -- to make a story work, a writer has to create Events that happen TO the characters, i.e. plot events that drive the story, which then causes character motivations that drive them to act creating further plot events. That is the integration of plot and story.

If you missed this post, look through it now:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

The key ingredient, you'll notice, is character at the nexus of plot, story, conflict, -- all of the moving parts of the composition come together at character.

Sometimes in SF (even Science Fiction Romance) you have "characters" who are machines (R2D2 or Data), and characters who are actually Forces of Nature.

But what makes all this interesting, what makes it a story, is how all these separate ingredients interact.

Characters act generating plot, and characters speak revealing story -- sometimes they speak to themselves inside their own heads.

Characters speaking is dialogue. We studied dialogue, and will come back to it in the future.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

One key ingredient in great dialogue is subtext.

What exactly is subtext? It's what the character really means to say, but does not or will not exactly put into words.

In sarcasm, for example, the character says one thing and means the opposite. A prime example is the word, "Wonderful!" delivered with just that sarcastic intonation. The un-wonderfulness is the subtext while the actual text is the word WONDERFUL.

Very often subtext is carried on a change of subject:

"So when will you invite me to the Opera?"
"Would you like more coffee?"

Ostensibly, the subject is fishing for a date -- the subtext is "I want this." and "I'm not ready for this." Or depending on the context, and the business (for example, texting while talking) the actual subject, the subtext, could be almost anything. Consider if the exchange were between two spies trying to seduce each other.

So the "subtext" is what the dialogue is really about, and the text can be ostensibly about almost anything else other than the actual subject.

I've rarely seen the term "subtext" applied to elements other than dialogue.

Dialogue can be wordless -- coded into actions, gestures -- one staple of Hollywood films used to be smoking a cigarette, a series of actions that defined character, gave indication of the character's mood, station in life, relationship to the other characters, etc. Consider the cigarette holder. Consider the very long cigarette holder. Watch some old movies if you've missed this. It's called (in screenwriting) "business" -- the things actors do to communicate subtext.

Well, if subtext can be encoded into cigarette smoking - i.e. actions - then it can be a component of PLOT.

However, I never realized that before I read this book:

And as I read this "can't put it down" book by an author I love and admire no end, Tanya Huff, it suddenly hit me that the plot lacks subtext.

It hit me only by its absence.

I thought I'd be the only one to notice, but one of the comments on Amazon which gave the book only 3 stars and became the most critical review, noted just in passing that somehow the plot seems to wander.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R282ZQT8Q5RUOZ/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R282ZQT8Q5RUOZ

I think I've found the reason for this review/comment.

Now this is a good book by a very good writer, and is well worth its Kindle price.

It reads like a story that she just had to tell, just had to write out, scene after scene that's just engrossing, characters revealing themselves -- it reads like raw material that was just typed out. Then there were a lot of typed words, so the author looked at it and decided it had to be a book because to tell the rest of this story, there has to be this character development. So she searched her worldbuilding notes and decided to use an Environmental activist group to generate some kind of plot.

Why do I think that's the tacked-on element (and I haven't asked her! I'm just guessing.)? Because environmental activism is not argued from all sides in the plot.
When I got to that point in my analysis, I realized that the THEME (what the novel is really about) has to be the SUBTEXT of the PLOT.

That's the relationship between Theme and Plot discussed at such depth in the 6-post series in January 2013 titled Theme-Plot Integration and all about how to use FALLACY as a plot generating device.

Here are the links to those posts, and there is a 7th one in that series coming March 26, 2013.

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-5-great.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-6-fallacy.html

Once plot and theme are fully integrated, you have an inseparable whole it's impossible to "analyze" (i.e. take apart into its components) because the theme becomes the subtext of the plot. The theme is what the Events of the plot "really mean" not what they "say they mean."

Usually, that "sub" level of an artistic composition comes from the artist's own "sub" level - the subconscious.

A book without such a sub-level is extremely rare in print -- and it is even more rare from a writer who is fully steeped in her craft. That's why this example of a novel with a subtext-less PLOT is so valuable.

The Wild Ways has plenty of subtext in the dialogue, in the characters, in their learning and practicing of their musical arts -- and in their advancement in their magical application of their musical arts.

It has subtext in family relationships, and all the dialogue with the "Aunties" (power-users among the magical family) and every other aspect of this novel is perfect.

That is what makes the absence of plot-subtext easy to identify.

I can't tell you, "Don't write like this," because obviously there's a nice, huge, market for this type of composition.

But I do suggest that if you do it, you do it with conscious deliberation and, if you will, "Malice Aforethought."

Note also that it very likely won't work for readers who have not read the prior book where the worldbuilding is set out with great care to crafting the theme.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Theme-Plot Integration Part 5 - A Great Steampunk Example

We did weeks of Theme-Worldbuilding discussions ranging all over how philosophy shapes our real world, and how whatever philosophical issues (themes) are driving your customer's real world have to be incorporated in the foundation of your fictional world in an "off the nose" way. And this is the 5th in the Theme-Plot Integration series.

Theme-Worldbuilding-Plot -- it all has to end up being "of one piece, a single unified whole when you get done writing.

That is, the issues have to be there, but a direct and forthright discussion of the day's hot topics just isn't amusing when you have to live amid a morass. You read fiction to get a birds-eye-view of your life, not to relive it!

Getting that mix right is an artform, a performing artform.

Here are the previous 5 parts of this series:

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

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

Now, in November I posted a report on Chicon7 -- the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in September 2012.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/chicon7-con-report.html

At that convention, I was touring the Dealer's Room and happened to be drawn into a discussion with a fellow who was minding a table -- upon which was the following novel:

As a reviewer, I became interested, and I really liked the pitch for this novel. It just sounded so very promising that I accepted a review copy. I'm glad I did.

The Thunderbolt Affair is a "steampunk" novel with a twist -- the technology is more SF than Fantasy, and the History is alternate universe but with a strong logic behind it. Both the History and the Science "work" in this novel's "worldbuilding." This sets it apart from other things published under the Steampunk genre label.

As with all good Steampunk, you get more out of it the more "real" history you know. Steampunk and other alternate history exercises are a playground for historians as galactic science fiction is a playground for inventive scientists.

So all in all The Thunderbolt Affair is a very worthwhile read, a lot of fun, and a pleasure to return to when you have to put it aside.

Here's the official back cover copy that so intrigued me, copied from Amazon:
------------QUOTE----------------
“What you will be working on is underhanded, unfair, and damned un-English.”

1887
The British Empire is in danger of collapse and teeters on the brink of war with the Kaiser Reich. Spies and saboteurs play at deadly games in the British shipyards as each side seeks naval superiority.
Ian Rollins is collateral damage in their shadow war. The “accident” and his grievous injuries are about to bring his naval career to an ignominious end. But with the aid of a former Pinkerton detective, a clandestine agent for the Admiralty, a brace of Serbian savants, and one, mostly sober valet, he might survive. If he can master the skills necessary to command the world’s first fully operational combat submarine, the HMS Holland Ram, and protect the secrets of the Thunderbolt.

Historical Note. The Fenian Ram, fictionalized for this novel, does exist and is currently on display at the Paterson Museum in Paterson, NJ.
-----------END QUOTE------------

I don't just rave about novels I discuss in this blog. I dissect them and look for ways they could be improved. I look for reasons why a book went to a small publisher rather than a larger house, or vice-versa. I look for things that enlarge the potential market and things that restrict it to a smaller market. I look for characteristics of the piece that identifies who will enjoy it -- and who won't.

I started to read The Thunderbolt Affair -- mostly just because I was given a copy. I kept on reading because I got caught up in -- ok, yes, I admit it -- the love story.

I'm a sucker for a good Romance, and the glaring anachronism in this novel of portraying a female mechanic against this Steampunk background just tickles me no end. Or she may be a technologist -- an implementor who MAKES things, rather than a theorist or researcher who nails the basic science, or an inventor who comes up with new applications of basic science. She fabricates models and prototypes, and by the way, improves the design as she goes. A man who loves that woman, loves me!

I always enjoy the SF novels featuring inventors who just cobble together stuff and get it to work, -- um, sort of work anyway. Then they improve it. I love the thinking behind "improving" inventions -- even though I think the worst swearword in the English language today is "Upgrade."

But then I loved The Thunderbolt Affair for the rich detail of inventing crazy stuff out of nothing much. I am also a sucker for stories of the improbable accomplished by clever people, sometimes from cleverness, sometimes by accident, sometimes by sheer cussed determination.

Reading The Thunderbolt Affair was, though, more like reading a great fanfic than like reading a Mass Market Paperback. I could easily see the structural problems, and even see how the editor should have fixed those problems, but because it was a roaring good story, I didn't care.

Toward the 3/4 point, I realized I had to point you at this novel because it's a vivid example of how to limit your possible readership to a very small group. You can get this in ebook - and it is worth the ebook price.

The author admits editors told him he had too much technical detail about the things they build (these things include a couple of submarines and some artificial mechanical limbs, even a mechanical eye that eventually should be able to let the wearer "see").

The point of the novel, the thing that drove the writer to complete the project, was his love of Steampunk technology, and he wanted to show off what can be done with the basic capabilities and materials of the 1800's and a lot of imagination.

But beta readers and editors prompted him to trim, cut, condense the technical explanations -- which he said he did. I think he did, from the way the tech stuff reads. It's expository lump after expository lump.

But his editors gave bad advice.

Now, if you're serious about learning to do what I've been describing in this blog since 2006 when I started posting here every Tuesday, go get a copy of The Thunderbolt Affair, read it and take notes, figure out what went wrong inside this writer's mind, and then come back here and finish reading this post.

START FINISHING READING THIS POST HERE AFTER READING THE NOVEL.

OK, now that you've read the novel, and probably some of the reader commentary on Amazon, let's think about what the editor of this novel should have said.

When you are handed a manuscript that has "too much" of something (say for example, too many sex scenes in a Romance -- which is, believe it or not, possible!), do you tell the writer to cut some of those scenes?

When you are handed a manuscript that has expository lumps, do you tell the writer to trim, reduce, condense or break up the expository lumps? Is that the cure for expository lumps (and sex scenes are usually expository lumps technically speaking).

Think about The Thunderbolt Affair -- consider what the full blown technical dissertations on the machinery and ship building must have been like, and why the author wrote them out in full.

I'm betting (though I don't know for a fact) that this kind of expository lump over-kill happens for the same reason that 'too many sex scenes' happens --- it's INTERESTING.

The author is fascinated, interested, engaged, enamored, transported, and somehow fulfilled by these scenes and just massages them over and over and over because it feels good to the author. The assumption is that if it feels good to the author, it will feel good to ALL READERS.

Nope. Not the way entertainment works.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught an old quotation, so old and oft quoted you have to consider it an adage: "The book the writer wrote is not the book the reader reads."

Readers make up their own characters, emotions, even background images, room decorations, clothing, etc. -- they "see" the main characters in their minds, and it doesn't look the way the writer sees it!

How can you convince yourself of this? Find a graphic artist, show your manuscript and ask the artist (without further input from you) to draw the scene.

You won't recognize it!

When you do get anything even a little bit recognizable, it's because you talked to the artist, watched them draw and pointed out changes as they went.

Here are three examples from my own work:

All 3 of these novels (plus 9 more in the Sime~Gen Universe) are now available in e-book, paper, and 2 in audiobook with 4 more in production at audible.com

Now here's the ONE cover that all the inveterate fans of Sime~Gen agree is most representative of the series.

This is the omnibus edition (in hardcover and paper) containing House of Zeor, Ambrov Keon, and Zelerod's Doom.

It's also available as a poster from the artist who is the incredibly famous (justifiably so) Todd Lockwood.

http://www.toddlockwood.com/galleries/books/02/sime_gen.shtml

In the poster print, there's no overprinting -- the title and author names, just the gorgeous art.

I got to talk to the artist for a long time, to explain what this character looks like -- and it's close, seriously close, and very much as the fans see it, and the way all the visual artists see it, but not what I see. Still, it's so gorgeous!

In the course of working with the professional editors for these novels, and interacting with the growing fandom surrounding them, I learned much of what I'm showing you how to do here.

Here's the trick that's so important to master.

When the editor or beta reader tells you there's too much of something, and the cure for that is to CUT THAT SOMETHING -- to reduce the amount of words devoted to it -- that may not be the way to fix the problem the editor or beta reader is having with your material.

Readers, even professional editors, don't necessarily know what's bothering them, though they can point to WHERE it bothered them.

The business of being a professional writer is the business of reverse engineering reader responses to find the cause the reader does not know is there.

Some people learn to do this by having the process explained to them. Others need concrete examples. And others have to have it DONE TO their own work by other hands. Marion Zimmer Bradley did this kind of thing to my own prose -- just took my words and re-did them so they'd work right in a scene.

Bradley was a talented writer. I don't think she really knew how she'd learned to do what she did -- she may have been born with this talent. But I learned from her rewriting of my prose.

So, what do I notice first about The Thunderbolt Affair?

At the half-way point, I looked up and said to myself, "There are three novels here, loosely packed between two covers. Shaken not stirred. They just aren't blended properly, but I don't know why."

By the 3/4 point, I realized the author apparently had no clue he had fallen off the conflict line. Which he had, but by the time I got to the end, I realized where the issue really was. Theme-Worldbuilding integration, the subject of this series.

Now this is an advanced series. We've been at this writing craft discussion for 6 years or so, and only if you've been digging back into those posts, or have been following for 6 years, do you see instantly what I mean by "falling off the conflict line" or what I call "the because line."

However, even if you've mastered your conflict line and how to stay on that because-line, you probably won't know how to "fix" this novel we're discussing.

It's got three distinct because-lines --- and virtually no theme of enough moment to support three plot-lines.

So fixing this because-line issue won't fix this novel and make it salable to the huge market for Steampunk in general, or for Romantic Steampunk!

Here's what I see after finishing the novel.

We have a sub-strata of the technical because-line -- the British navy stole a submarine, reverse engineered, improved on the design using an outside consultant (Tesla by the way is justly famous in our real world), and built a larger submarine that it then used to avert a war by displaying what a threat that ship could be.

On top of that (very solid and interesting) foundation, we have a Love Story (main Navy character falls for female mechanic-genius). Nothing much ever comes of that infatuation on any because line.

And, disconnected from everything, just puttering along in counterpoint, we have a saboteur and an espionage threat (complete with kidnapping the girl but nothing ever comes of that) and ultimately the theft of the big ship, but NOTHING COMES OF THAT THEFT because the Hero gets the ship back through heroic efforts which are well foreshadowed.

These three separate novels have a few laborious cross-linkages, some "because" connections, but nothing strong enough to drive the three plots together.

The real author-love is lavished on the technology (which I adore!) and the rest is tossed in on top of that just to make a book -- the whole thing just doesn't crystallize as a single unified entity, a NOVEL. It's 2 novels and a non-fiction book.

Why? This author worked so hard, he tried so hard, he's so proud of his work, why doesn't it make a novel?

The three main elements are not INTEGRATED -- they haven't become one thing.

We know whose story it is, the Captain of the submarine. We see his career unfold as he becomes the Captain and trains a crew in this new technology. He falls in love and gets his girl, his promotions, and saves his country while he's at it. Any writer would be proud of that story!

The worldbuilding is as sound as it could possibly be -- Steampunk has lacked this dimension of technological plausibility, so what is preventing this thing from solidifying?

You might conclude, from the "because-line" problem, that the novel won't crystallize because while the story is solidly constructed, the plot is not of the same caliber.

I think that's true. The plot is not as strong as the story, but why is that?

We have a dynamite action-scene opening with the theft of the little submarine. Then we follow the little submarine as it is worked on by an outside consultant-genius, concurrently with building another larger submarine. We have the Captain losing a hand and an eye, and the technologist consultants concurrently working on an artificial limb of the Captain's design. And we have sporadic attacks by "someone" for "some purpose."

There's nothing lacking for plot material, so how could it have failed to crystalize?

Go back over those three PLOTs carefully.

1) Stolen technology improved and employed by a government using foreign national to do improvements.

2) Hero falls in love with fascinating genius-woman mechanic and wins her heart

3) Foreign government spies infiltrate and attempt to steal technology and fail because of Hero and genius-woman

What THEME do these 3 plots have in common?

If you've got 3 plots, you need 4 themes, but they must be RELATED IN A VERY SPECIFIC STRUCTURAL MANNER.

You need a master theme, and 3 sub-themes or versions of that theme, all leading to a single STATEMENT at the end of the Master Theme in a moment the reader will experience as a REVELATION, boosting the reader to a new level of understanding of "Life, The Universe, And Everything."

The Thunderbolt Affair lacks this commonality of structure created by THEME.

It is as if the author had this IDEA -- "write a steampunk that could actually have happened" -- and then said, well I need a love affair and the Hero has to get his girl, and there's no action after the opening on the theft of the submarine so I'll toss in some spies. Well, how should this thing end? The Hero has to do something GRAND (it is steampunk after all; he's got to have some punk in him, break some rules?) So the author cooked up the spies and a grand plot to steal the submarine again so the hero could save the country from a war.

It's very common to see this kind of thing done by new writers. Here's "my book" but it's not good enough yet, so "grab this from this other book and throw it in," then grab something else from some other book and toss that in just to keep the plot moving. And the parts just do not go together because they did not arise organically from a single, central, theme.

Very talented writers do this "theme integration" thing that we've been discussing at such length by innate instinct, never consciously considering theme at all. Others (like me) have to sort out the threads of ideas, and focus and re-focus on the particular theme I really want to talk about.

So what's the theme in The Thunderbolt Affair? Don't steal because it'll always come to naught? Or maybe "If you really need to win, steal first and often?" Or "Hire the best genius inventor around?" Or "Genius inventors are all very fine, but you'll lose crown and country if you don't have a daring-do-Hero on tap?"

Frankly, after reading this book closely, I have no clue what the theme is or what the author wanted it to be. It says contradictory things all at once, and ends up saying nothing.

Why do the 3 plots not crystallize, forming a single articulated work of art? Why is the theme (which I believe the author knows, but doesn't know he hasn't stated) so invisible?

This book has 3 plots -- and not 1 conflict.

The STORY is that of the Captain who succeeds in a) getting a promotion to the new Submariner Service b) getting the girl and c) saving crown and country. BUT WHO IS TRYING TO PREVENT HIM FROM DOING ANY OF THAT?

No preventing force, no plot. There's a great story and no CONFLICT -- without conflict there's no plot.

The author tried to disguise the lack of conflict by tossing in 2 extra plots that shouldn't be there, but those 2 extra plots (whichever 2 of the 3 are the extras) won't mix in properly because they explicate different themes destroying the "composition" of this book.

I can't tell which plots are "extra" because all 3 have equal weight. In a well constructed work of art, one element dominates all others, each of the other elements supports and explicates the details of the main one, illuminating it from all angles. The subordinate elements must have lesser "weight" (fewer words) than the unifying and dominating element.

Yes, the spies are trying to prevent launch of the new submarine, and/or to steal it or the new technology (their goal is never made clear), but that's not preventing our Hero the Captain from attaining his goal -- which goal is never made clear. The Captain doesn't know he has a goal regarding the woman he falls for until way into the book, and nobody is trying to thwart him from "getting the girl." When she is kidnapped, it's by the spies who want her for her expertise, not to thwart The Captain.

And so it goes throughout the entire book -- every place there should be a conflict, there is a complication substituted for it. That's why the thing wanders into loving description of technology during which all progress on all the story lines just stops. There's no development of an urgent necessity to know how the technology works, and the technology is presented in indigestible lumps of exposition. Cutting that down won't help. It would be fascinating reading if we needed to know it -- if there were any suspense causing us to barrel through those explanations determined not to miss the essential clue to the mystery and not let The Hero solve the mystery before The Reader!

You will find this thematic structure I've been describing above in every great novel that's lasted for generations -- though the older ones are much harder to discern because this structural trick was just being invented when they were propagated. Reading from Ancient Greece onwards through the Middle Ages, you can see how the rules of this structure were developed stepwise.

Here are some previous posts with links to other previous posts to study if you haven't followed this. Also you may, in the course of analyzing The Thunderbolt Affair, discover that you have found an even better way to get your novel to "crystallize" -- to create a unified matrix of artistic statements that move your reader to the core. If you do, be sure to teach your method.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-5.html

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

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

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

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Theme-Plot Integration Part 4: Fallacies and Endorphins

If you're reading this on New Year's Day, stop and come join us for our annual Sime~Gen New Year's chat -- info and instructions on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook and/or http://out-territory.blogspot.com

Then come back and read about how to use the basic Theme and Plot techniques I've been harping on in these Tuesday posts to avoid expository lumps. Yes, that's what this is all about -- avoiding boring the reader by telling rather than showing. Put all the information into the substrata of the composition, into the structural elements. This is an advanced lesson, combining two techniques, Theme and Plot.

Previous parts in this Theme-Plot Integration Series:
Part 1 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html
Part 2 http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html
Part 3 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

Before we continue with all this criticizing and negativity, let me just point out that the reason we harbor so many fallacies is that our brains are structured to arrange information in such a way that we are most likely to find what we need to know to survive -- and to do that, we just ignore stuff that doesn't seem to pertain to our lives.

This brain structure quirk has kept our species alive but it isn't necessarily pro-individual survival.

The key is of course choosing your fallacies wisely, and ditching the ones that impair your survival, and your ability to accomplish your particular purpose.

The process of ditching a cherished fallacy even has a name which has become a touchstone of writer-craft structure. This is a very specifically formulated moment in film or novel, a singular moment in the entire life of your Main Character.

This exquisite moment is called The Epiphany and it is the main climax of the Story, but not usually the Plot. It is the moment the Main Character realizes where he/she has been oh-so wrong about something, that there has been a fallacy in reasoning, and/or a failure to ask and answer a question, to discover a key fact.

The Epiphany in a Romance is usually the moment that one character finally understands why he/she has been doing these ridiculous things, taking irrational risks to save someone else's butt, or attacking some other person out of virulent dislike that nobody else can understand. The Epiphany is "I Love You."

Religious Enlightenment stories pivot around the Epiphany "God is Real."

Betrayal stories pivot on "My Best Friend Is My Worst Enemy."

Constructing a good epiphany requires first laying down a really plausible fallacy.

One good source of dynamite fallacies is the lies everyone believes.

Here's a blog post on the business of Film Making - and Screenwriting pinpointing 4 lies that have been sold as truths to the unsuspecting. If your main character is trying to break into an industry that markets art (any such industry from oil-paintings sold at street fairs to High Fashion in Paris) these 4 lies are wondrous sources of Fallacy to harbor and Epiphany when the fallacy is shattered.

http://www.raindance.org/hollywoods-4-biggest-lies/

The thesis in that article is that Hollywood is a film MARKETING industry (not film making industry).

For the purpose of studying Fallacies and how they are used in our real world so we can use them in fictional worldbuilding, we need to consider that Marketing is based on PR (public relations) which is, thanks Bernays - (as mentioned previously in this series, see Links above) a science.

I've been talking about writing as a performing art and the business of writing as a marketing problem here for years.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

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

And there is the 7 part series I've done on Editing that has helped a lot of beginners get their start.

This has links to the prior parts all listed at the top:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Marketing now runs on commercials and sound-bytes, YouTube videos and Endorsements. It used to be jingles and slogans when all they had was radio and B&W magazines. But since Bernays came up with his herd-instinct idea driven by fear of the behavior of other humans (a wondrously fruitful fallacy for writers to explore), Marketing has been a Science.

We have had blockbuster TV shows set in Advertising Companies or revolving around a character who writes advertising for a living. Those characters are always rich -- there's a reason for that. In real life, those who've mastered Advertising Copy Writing and TV Ad production are a lot richer than any mere novelist.

Does Advertising work for Marketing because humans really do have a herd instinct? Or does it work for another reason?

Are humans who are conditioned to behave as individuals, who don't need or want a "Leader" because they aren't followers and therefore don't prize Leadership, who aren't subject to any herd instinct or tendency, actually dangerous?

To whom are they dangerous? What exactly is the danger? Who would take damage if humans got loose? The answer to each of those questions could be used to form that Epiphany Moment in a film or novel.

Some of the best romance stories pivot on the subconscious fear of love, leading to the Epiphany that Love Is Not A Threat, that fear of love has a fallacy at its root.

That type of fallacy novel is about the lies we tell ourselves.

See the post on Weaponizing Lies
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

Here is a website devoted to videogames made by Bioware and Lucasarts (now part of Disney) based on Star Wars.

http://www.swtor.com/info/setting

Note, the whole Star Wars saga is based on the current-world's most cherished fallacy -- and nobody, but absolutely nobody, ever identifies this fallacy: that "peace" can be achieved by the process of "fighting," fighting to the death.

This is such a whopping huge Fallacy that once you have that Epiphany that it's utter nonsense, and you no longer wonder why all these millennia of fighting for peace have not resulted in Peace On Earth, then suddenly the whole world becomes incomprehensible. Why would you hire a politician who wants to "fight for you" -- before you have this epiphany, it's so reasonable to want to vote for the Champion who can win your rights for you, and afterwards it becomes clear how Advertising has perpetuated this particular Fallacy.

There's at least a series of novels in finding out who benefits from perpetuating that fallacy.

Star Wars must be the single biggest marketable product to come along selling the "Fight For Peace" fallacy as necessary in the "War Against Evil."

Star Wars may be bigger than Star Trek by now.
Star Trek is based on "when we become wise" (as Gene Roddenberry always said in his speeches at conventions) we will have peace. Peace achieved through acquiring wisdom is the theme. But Star Wars out-sells Star Trek.

Fighting is more fun than becoming wise.

Fighting is fun because of that endorphin addiction noted in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

Endorphins are create by the body, relaxing and triggering a pleasure response.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorphins

----------QUOTE WIKIPEDIA --------------
Endorphins ("endogenous morphine") are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters.[1] They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise,[2] excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm,[3][4] and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

The term implies a pharmacological activity (analogous to the activity of the corticosteroid category of biochemicals) as opposed to a specific chemical formulation. It consists of two parts: endo- and -orphin; these are short forms of the words endogenous and morphine, intended to mean "a morphine-like substance originating from within the body."[5]

The term "endorphin rush" has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress,[2] supposedly due to the influence of endorphins. When a nerve impulse reaches the spinal cord, endorphins that prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals are released. Immediately after injury, endorphins allow animals to feel a sense of power and control over themselves that allows them to persist with activity for an extended time.[citation needed]
---------------END QUOTE-----------

Humans can achieve this kind of response just from imagination. So indeed, the "fallacy" of "fighting for peace" seems on the surface, from personal internal experience to be a "no brainer."

You FIGHT: You feel pleasure.

Just as in the post on Liar Dialogue, Part 5 in the Dialogue Series:

You lie: You feel pleasure

You exercise power over others: You feel pleasure.

The book, You Can't Lie To Me by Janine Driver, illustrates how basic it is to the human animal to feel a rush of endorphins when exercising power over other humans. Lying from a position of power, tricking others into doing what you want by reshaping their idea of reality, produces an addictive rush of endorphins -- it's addictive because you become immune to the effect and thus require a bigger rush or endorphins to get the pleasure hit. You need more and more power over more and more people just to feel normal.

Think about that concept -- read up on the science -- then think about "who" Bernays was, what his biography was, where inside him did the idea of humans as a herd to be controlled by lies come from? Why are humans running loose without anyone controlling them dangerous? To whom are they dangerous -- really, to whom?

How many plots with dynamite epiphanies can you create by trying out different answers to those questions?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com