alien romances: Theme-Plot Integration

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

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Theme-Plot Integration Part 3: Fallacy Analysis

This is Part 3 of Theme-Plot Integration, and here we'll look at some glaring fallacies in our world.

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

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

I'm collecting stuff here for future reference on the aftermath of Election 2012 - and what all that has to do with THEME-PLOT Integration. In this part of the series on Theme-Plot Integration we're using the classic "fallacy" as the focus of the exercise.

Here are websites that may still be available with statistics on the Election.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-election-results/#

http://nation.foxnews.com/2012-presidential-election/2012/11/07/fox-exit-poll-summary-2012-presidential-election

I just happened to click on a fox link and found these by accident -- nice technology, but CNN is probably better.

Here's a DICK MORRIS newsletter:

http://www.dickmorris.com/why-i-was-wrong/

Read what he thinks led him astray in predicting the outcome of Election 2012 which differs so markedly from what he predicted.

Morris highlights is important stuff about how fallacies work in drama illustrated in a real-world context. Here he's digested a lot of information into a "briefing" that is perfectly constructed for busy writers to study. And it tells you something very important about your target audience, the people you have to entertain to get them to buy your next book.

The gist of it is the same comment I saw on CNN from their somewhat new commentator Van Jones. Here's a clip with Van Jones reacting to CNN's re-election call.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/07/gergen-election-outcome-shows-desire-for-moderation/

Here's an article about who Van Jones is and how he got to be a CNN commentator.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/06/van_jones_resigns.html

The United Stages Demographics Have Changed.

I'll bet you already knew that. Thing is, do you know from what the demographics changed and into what they changed -- but maybe most importantly, why?

"Why?" is important because in the worlds you build around this theme of "fallacies" need that aura of verisimilitude to draw your readers into your reality. Your world must be in flux, and that flux must be driven by a reason. Why does your built world have to be in flux? Because your audience's world is in flux, and any world not in flux will not seem "real" to that audience.

This theme-plot integration series of blog posts is pointing out how to use popular fallacies in weaving Theme-Plot Integration -- this is subtle philosophical stuff. But it's not difficult to master.
See how I have plucked out just one tiny bit from all this election data and found an element to include in your worldbuilding that will improve your sales? In this case, demographics in flux changes the politics.

Now, "world in demographic flux" also has to be woven into theme, and then plot.

Consider that one demographic segment that might flow like a tidal wave over an established, static world upsetting the whole balance of power in your fictional world could be -- oh, say Religion, as a wave of conversions sweeps through. Or a plague might upset the male/female balance. Or an invasion of aliens (think of the TV show ALIEN NATION -- but increase the number of refugees to say 3/4 of the indigenous population.) Each cause for a change in the demographics of your built world points to a different set of themes. Within each theme, you can find a pivotal fallacy to generate your plot.

Remember fallacies are fallacies because they reside deep in the subconscious, behind the assumptions that make life livable. And that is where your Hero's main Adversary comes from, that's the origin from which the Villain is projected. Psychology has uncovered how this works. Each of us is a Captain Ahab bound to our Whale. The whale isn't Ahab's problem. The binding is the problem. Those bindings are made up out of the fallacies we harbor.

Identify and articulate the fallacy in your Main Character's subconscious, and you have determined not only who/what the Adversary is, but also what the Conflict Resolution is. That Resolution defines what the Conflict is. Follow the conflict back to its origin, and you'll discover where exactly your story begins -- and be able to craft a narrative hook that will grab a very large audience.

Again and again, I need to emphasize that I'm not telling you what to think about which fallacy, but showing you HOW TO THINK LIKE A WRITER (which is very, very different from how a reader thinks). This is about how to look at current events, find the widely-held fallacy, identify it inside yourself (if it's not inside you, it won't produce a great novel), and create the "argument" that dispels the fallacy. That "argument" is your plot.

The argument goes like this:
a) Hero believes Fallacy because (X)
b) Villain or Adversary believes differently and attacks X
c) Hero defends X (Ahab scrambling to stock his ship and get that damn fish -- or Columbus begging money from royalty to outfit ships to sail off the edge of the world)
d) Villain wins - disproving X (that's the middle, the low-point for Hero)
e) Hero realizes he's believed a fallacy - what he knows to be true is in fact not true (grand angst moment)
f) Villain takes advantage of angst-moment to attack
g) Hero gathers himself and creates a NEW BELIEF (which might be partially fallacious if you need a sequel) and attacks Villain
h) Villain gets away
i) Hero pursues and triumphs having freed himself of the bond to the villain by eliminating the cherished fallacy

If it's a Romance, Hero and Villain might be the couple -- or the Villain might be vanquished by the Hero and Heroine getting together ( as in the Prince who elopes with the milkmaid redefining the King's view of reality.)

Whatever the genre, the argument over the validity of the fallacy is in the plot, and never (ever) articulated in actual words, not exposition or dialogue. The argument is articulated only in action, in change of situation. Plot is not about "what happens" -- but about what the characters do. What happens is the result of what the characters do. The plot is what the characters do, and the story is all about how the results of those actions change the fallacy they hold most dear.

All my traditionally published novels are formulated on such "fallacies" that become entrenched in popular thinking, different fallacies for different times, and the shifting demographic served by the particular publishing company I was working for.

Oddly, the Sime~Gen Series is based on a fallacy that hasn't yet gone out of fashion. For the Sime~Gen videogame, though, we are adding another fallacy and setting it in the space age.

Fallacies you find in general media always work very well for generating popular fiction.

I saw a factoid flick by me (while watching data feeds on my cell and flipping channels on the TV, so I don't know where this came from) -- that last minute deciders cast ballots on the basis of the TV commercials they had seen, believing those political ads, just the way Bernays predicted people would behave (way before such tech as TV ads existed).

Here's a quote from Part 1 of this series leading you to study this fellow:

--------QUOTE FROM PART 1----------
Here's a link to Wikipedia (incomplete article in need of fact-checking)

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

-------------QUOTE--------------------------------
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[2] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[3
---------------END QUOTE------------

Thus "Public Relations" is a field that grows out of one genius's deep rooted fear of the behavior of his fellow humans, and a terrible need to "control" that powerful and evil force called "humanity."

---------END QUOTE FROM PART 1 ----------

PUBLIC RELATIONS wielded by the invisible hand of power behind the throne could make a NIFTY reason for the CHANGE IN DEMOGRAPHICS in your built world. It could also work as the source of the fallacy that binds the Hero to the Villain just as Bernays' purported belief that society was irrational and dangerous because of the "herd instinct" and therefore more evolved people must command the direction of the herd -- members of which can't be allowed to make individual decisions about the course of their own lives.

One good fallacy to base fiction on might be a belief that Bernays was mentally ill, that society isn't irrational and dangerous and there is no herd instinct among humans. But Bernays created the herds of humans and drove them insane. That situation would make a nifty alien planet for your invading refugees to come from - landing on Earth to find the same nightmare situation in play, and changing the demographic by simply being here.

Finding, articulating, and challenging such fallacies is the main source of ALL science fiction.

Here's a post from Facebook by David Gerrold, a master of this plotting technique. Read what he wrote about our current shifting demographic and how that affects fiction audiences and see why you must explore the worlds he's created. Remember, he broke into screenwriting at an early age with his first sale TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, an iconic Star Trek Episode, but went on to write some of the best, and most widely read novels in Science Fiction.

----------POST ON FACEBOOK BY DAVID GERROLD ---

http://www.amazon.com/David-Gerrold/e/B000AQ1PQM/ is his author page on Amazon. READ ALL HIS BOOKS!

-----------QUOTE FROM DAVID GERROLD----------
I haven't been reading a lot of science fiction lately, and I've skipped a lot of movies too. And it finally hit me after seeing Cloud Atlas what was bothering me.

I grew up in an age when science fiction movies were about vision and courage. Things To Come was about humanity triumphing over ignorance and leaping into space. Destination Moon and Conquest of Space were vivid predictions of what was possible. Forbidden Planet took us to far stars and 2001 was one of the great inspirational landmarks of the twentieth century. Star Trek, the original series, was about a future of exploration and partnership. All of these taken together said that human beings would survive our darker impulses, would learn how to live together in harmony, would assume the responsibilities of true sentience. And it's no coincidence that those stories helped motivate one of our grandest adventures -- the Apollo program that took us to the moon.

Today, too many books and movies and TV shows are about the failures of humanity. We see big impersonal cities or dystopic soul-crushing cities. We see failure and futility and hopelessness. We do not see people laughing, building, exploring, seeking, discovering, or rising to new heights -- no, we see them struggling for survival, squabbling with each other-- not uniting in common cause, not surviving as communities, but devolving into deranged and panic-stricken animals.

I know from personal experience that view of human nature is wrong. I've been at the center of a disaster and I watched as strangers came together to help each other, as neighbors gathered to make sure that everyone was safe and cared for.

I think that since the sixties, science fiction authors have become more and more overwhelmed by the future -- there's too much knowledge, too much research, too much technology for any one single human being to keep up. The "singularity" is crushing down on us even before it arrives. So it's easier to write about the collapse of civilization than to imagine a future where civilization has leapt to a new level.

But the history of our species is an astonishing chronicle of invention, innovation, and stubborn mean cussedness over the obstinacy of the physical universe. There is still so much we can be looking at, imagining, predicting, postulating, extrapolating, and describing so vividly that the reader will be certain we're time-travelers from the future. We have a whole solar system to explore. Getting into orbit, getting to the moon and Mars and the asteroids and the moons of the gas giants, all of those locales are opportunities for amazing tales of unknown possibilities.

This is my point. Everything in the world starts as a conversation. Everything. The conversation can be "I hate it when..." or "why can't we..." or "I wish it were possible to..." or "what if..." or even "that's odd..." -- but those conversations are the beginning of possibilities. Science fiction is about possibilities. It's the consideration of those possibilities that creates probability. And after probability, the next step is inevitability.

Science fiction is about the choices ahead of us. Every moment of every day, life is about choices -- not just the choice of the moment, but the results of that choice. Science fiction is about the results and the opportunity to make choices that will take us there. Science fiction is the conversation that illuminates the unknown landscapes of tomorrow.

That's the science fiction I want to read, that's the science fiction I want to see in the movies. Because science fiction is an opportunity to rekindle the enthusiasm for science as a world-changing adventure.
---------------END QUOTE---------

David -- being the genius I've always known he is -- nailed the core of the fallacy producing this crazy quilt of "results" -- elections with margins too narrow to reflect an actual, considered consensus.

The reason for this -- well, it's for fiction writers to speculate and write about, to turn the problem every which way and imagine different courses out of it, to find academic theories that account for it, to put American's peculiar constitution (peculiar in the sense of not being duplicated anywhere else in the world) into world-context, and human history.

Go out into the galaxy, find some aliens you invent, and explore what traits of human aggregate behavior are the source of this situation.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 5

Part 1 of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html

Part 2 of this series is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_17.html

Part 3 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_24.html
Part 4 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_31.html

We're examining the potential of Maggie Anton's trilogy, Rashi's Daughters:

We ended off last week talking about how a writer uses philosophy to paint a picture for the reader of "life, the universe, and everything" that's different from the picture the reader usually sees.

Anton nails several bits of philosophy with exquisite precision. She shows how Rashi's family owned and operated a vineyard and produced exemplary wine. She researched the details of wine production in that era and inserted a lot of detail about it, using most of that detail in the production of her fascinating incidents. For example, at one point a character dies by being overcome by fumes from the grape juice as it's being extracted from the grapes.

Anton discovered that the town where Rashi lived was a trading center through which a wide variety of goods flowed. She details how the taxes from transactions on the trade fares interacted with the prosperity of the Jewish community and its relationships with the surrounding Christian communities.

Most readers who know anything about Medieval Europe remember the later centuries when Jews were prohibited from various activities, rather than these early years of the collapse of the Roman empire. Readers of today still have their impressions of the 20th century colored by vilification of the Jews for financial dealings. We all know stories of financiers who lie, cheat, steal, and trick their way to wealth. Anton is no doubt well aware of this attitude toward financial dealings and business in general.

She no doubt knows that, for her readers, the attitude toward business as a profession is as incendiary as the attitude toward uppity women. Yet all three novels, though they depict Rashi's daughters as ambitiously engaged in business, walk right by all the Talmudic material on business -- mentioning it offhandedly, off-stage, involving other characters, and focus Rashi's daughters' attention entirely on their feminist issues.

Anton does note Rashi's famous training of his Talmud students in the art of the vintner because scholars must have a profession. She gives us a lot on that art, and a lot on the physician's art, but not the driving emotional reality behind choice of profession.

That focus on feminism is a philosophical choice. So for a moment, let's look at another philosophical point she might have lit up instead of darkening out.

-------------EXAMPLE OF A PHILOSOPHY--------

Let's consider a philosophical "pixel" from Tzvi Freeman.

Here's a long item with much to think about:
http://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/1675738/print/true/jewish/Take-Wall-Street-Please.htm

--------Quote from Tzvi Freeman article -- Numbers refer to his footnotes--------------

There are those professions that society considers noble callings, such as doctors, judges and professors. Society respects them for what they do. Then there are business people. Society respects them, too—but are they respected for what they do, or for what they get? Do we respect their occupation, or do we see them as doing a worthless job—making money out of money?

Where is business respected? Take a look in the Talmud.

In the Talmud you’ll find spiritual and earthly duties lumped together in ways that sends the modern mind spinning:

    Rava said, “When a soul stands before the heavenly court, it is asked, ‘Did you buy and sell fairly? Did you fix times for Torah study? Did you attempt to be fruitful and multiply? Did you look forward to the messianic redemption? Did you debate matters of wisdom? Did you understand one thing from another?’”2

Do you see that? Marrying, procreating and making an honest living are good and wonderful occupations—in the same breath as Torah study, gaining wisdom and keeping the faith.

Why? Because they benefit the world. As in the common talmudic term for making a living, that dignified and ennobled phrase, “settling of the world”3 —for, as the prophet states, “G-d did not create emptiness; He formed a world to be settled upon.”4

Maimonides sums up the Jewish position with strong words:

    Anyone who comes to the conclusion that he should involve himself in Torah study without doing work and derive his livelihood from charity, desecrates G-d's name, dishonors the Torah, extinguishes the light of faith, brings evil upon himself, and forfeits the life of the world to come, for it is forbidden to derive benefit from the words of Torah in this world.

    Our Sages declared: "Whoever benefits from the words of Torah forfeits his life in the world." Also, they commanded and declared: "Do not make them a crown to magnify oneself, nor an axe to chop with." Also, they commanded and declared: "Love work and despise Rabbinic positions." All Torah that is not accompanied by work will eventually be negated and lead to sin. Ultimately, such a person will steal from others.5

And so, the laws concerning earning an honest living and thereby making the world a more settled and civil place also belong in the holy books.

The medieval Augustinian view, on the other hand, saw all these as curses of the snake, the product of original sin—since they were directed by man’s evil impulse.6 Such, as well, was the view of the ancient Romans and Greeks, who looked askance at craftsmen, merchants and others who lived by toil.

And so, whereas the Jew saw work as good for the soul and moneymaking as of benefit to everyone involved, the society which enveloped them saw it as a tolerable sin. Not lending money alone, but almost every form of business was labelled “usury”—using someone else for one’s own benefit.7

Life began to change radically when European society adopted the Jewish attitude—that which Weber prudently coined “the Protestant ethic.” The Jews, wrote Montesquieu, “set the stage for the rebirth of European commerce, and with it the beginning of the decline of prejudice and the rise of a more gentle, less ferocious way of life.”8

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

Remember, Maggie Anton authentically put the daughters of Rashi into "business" -- married to traders, the daughters of a Vintner -- and that one became a money might be true or not.

The women's business endeavors, while quiet and out of the spotlight for the most part, were not a source of conflict but just mere background, an excuse for them to run around and have technical conversations about things they already knew about.

Business and earning a living in a Torah Yeshiva was not what Anton's story was about.

A story's conflict focuses a story, and exemplifies the theme by how the conflict resolves. The essence of story is conflict, but that's not enough if the conflict doesn't start, progress, morph, and resolve.

Now reread or just remember my older posts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/greed-is-good.html

And you might want to ponder:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/orson-scott-card-mormon-jack-campbell.html

And:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/tree-in-forest.html

As I've said in previous parts of Research-Plot Integration, Anton chose the annecdotal structure rather than an actual plot structure for her trilogy. So she doesn't have a conflict that starts at the first chapter of Book One and climaxes at the last page of Book III, leaving the reader gasping and crying, yet understanding their own life in this real world much better.

Anton mentions the stark distinction between the Christian views of the surrounding community and the close and isolated views of the Jewish community. But she shrugs all that off by saying during this interval there was relative peace between the two communities.

Yet, Rashi lived at the threshold of the Crusades, the paroxysm of Europe draining the strength of the young male population into a killing-field of the Middle East.

Could any setting be more ripe for an in-depth discussion of the philosohical issues between the Middle East and Judaism and Christianity?

Anton gives us the impression that the (historical fact of) learned daughters of a towering figure of Europe knew nothing but the scrapts of war news that get tossed into this story with little consequence. Yes, Anton tells us how Spain was more hospitable on the one hand, and more corrosive of Jewish learning on the other -- but to do that, she breaks viewpoint and follows one of the sons-in-law who gets caught up in the study of Astronomy in Spain. Fine. Very interesting. Another annecdote whose only consequence is the angst and misery of the wife left behind who invents a whole new business model to get her husband to stay home -- only to find out that he'd rather study Astronomy than Talmud.

Each annecdote is very strong, composed of very strong material -- but ultimately leaves the reader floating weightlessly without direction.

So what could Anton have done instead?

What would an envelope plot, beginning on page 1 of Book 1 and climaxing on the last page of Book 3 -- with each Book having a plot that begins on page 1 and climaxes at the end just before the plot-advance of the envelope plot -- have added to this trilogy?

Remember my post on nested plots

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
Anton's problem -- "write about the little known daughters of Rashi" -- is just the sort of writing problem the nested-plot structure, built on the nested-theme structure, solves.

But to create a trilogy using that nested-plot structure, you need 1 single theme from which you derive 3 separate themes that "harmonize" with it, poetically, (as in Poetic Justice In Paranormal Romance). Given the Medieval attitudes toward demons and angels, the setting is perfect for a Paranormal Romance complete with magical practices that work.

Each of Anton's "anecdotes" has a different theme, and few of them are related. So the only thematic statement that comes through to a reader who has no suspended disbelief is "women should not be distinguished from men."

This is exemplified in the emphasis on how Rashi's daughters (reputedly) wore Tefilin (a Commandment binding on men) and did other things women aren't forbidden to do, but are exempt from doing.

More on Tefilin, what's inside the leather cases, the blessings for donning them, etc:
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/102436/jewish/Tefillin.htm

But mystical Judaism holds that the female soul is permanently and emphatically distinct from the masculine soul. Mystical Judaism (which Rashi didn't pay attention to) holds that the feminine soul is a little closer to holiness.

Instead of these practices being incidental color on the lives of three exceptional women, it is left to be the only point of the story without any real "show don't tell" exploration of mystical Judaism. Rashi did not encourage mysticism in his household (that's fact), but the surrounding Jewish culture was peripherally affected -- mostly in a superstitious way rather than a Kabbalah studies way.

Although they enjoy praying with Tefilin, (achieving that practice is an incident referred to repeatedly later), Anton's characters don't seem to find a deepened spiritual existence, a greater insight, a prophetess's wisdom, from the practice.

Anton depicts the practice of draping Tefilin on the headboards of beds where women are being delivered, and indicates this saves women's lives. We see many births, some disasters, but can't make the connection.

Anton also has the daughters resorting to specially written Mezuzah scrolls that purportedly embodied the mystical dimension.

More on the Mezuzah:
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/278476/jewish/Mezuzah.htm
All the information Anton unearthed in research is there in these books - with incidents contrived to make it seem logical to include that information -- contrived being the operative world.

How do you cure the problem of the "contrived" effect?

What cures the contrived, and gets rid of expository lumps full of deliciously interesting information you just have to include because you worked so hard on it, is internal conflict.

If you rely on the incident structure, you don't have any real conflict that can be resolved -- it's just "this happened" then "that happened."

If you don't have a conflict, you don't have a plot.

If you don't have a plot, you don't have a story -- because either the story generates the plot or the plot generates the story, but they go together like two sides of a coin. That's why most writers (and readers) can't distinguish story from plot.

The story is generated by the internal conflict.

The internal conflict is the character motivation -- and it works best when the character does not know they have an internal conflict at all.

Real people don't usually know they have an internal conflict until it's resolved -- or just at the point where they can name it, then they can resolve it.

So characters who don't know what's driving them, what's compelling or impelling them, seem "realistic" -- and cause the reader to suspend disbelief and fearlessly explore the made-up world the character lives in.

The internal conflict drives the character to act. The action (or decision) of the main POV character is what initiates the plot.

The main character acts. The antagonist re-acts. (that's how you can tell the hero from the villain -- that's how you can tell who to root for -- always the hero acts first because it's the hero's story. When the villain acts first, the villain becomes the hero and is rooted for.)

The main character, the main POV character, is "playing white" to use a chess analogy, and moves first.

Or put another way, the writer joins the action at the point in the character's life where she ACTS, and thereby causes her world and the people around her to react. At other times in her life, she's not the hero of her story but a pawn in someone else's story.

Anton started her story at a very good point, where Rashi's mother had become incapable of running the vineyard, and his wife called him home to "take care of the business."

So the whole Talmudic teaching on the relationship between learning and business, earth and heaven, could have made a terrific envelope theme over the 3 books.

So Rashi comes home, meets his nearly grown daughters, and begins teaching them -- which leads to the Tefilin incident.

Note that - Rashi meets his daughters (he was away learning Talmud as they grew and came home for holidays).

See? Rashi meets. It's not the girl's story, it's Rashi's.

OK, the girl meets her father -- a fine beginning, but what does she do? She does not act. She is acted upon at that point -- Rashi begins to teach.

Anton contrived the narrative so that the eldest girl becomes intrigued and wants to learn what Rashi is teaching, so she takes her spinning work and sits and listens -- passively.

That's why there's no plot, only incidents. There's no plot because none of the 3 Daughters has a point in their lives when their story starts.

Now suppose Anton had solved the problem differently. Suppose she'd set out to use the nested themes, what could she use as the overall trilogy conflict?

Rashi vs. Mystical Judaism

In the trilogy, Rashi starts out a fairly young man - at that time, one didn't start studying mysticism until the age of 40, maybe much older.

The trilogy ends just about the point where Rashi dies.

History records that he never quite finished his Talmud commentary -- his sons-in-law and grandsons took over.

DEPART FROM HISTORY - with a fantasy "what-if?" --

What if Rashi did indeed study the mystical aspects, knew them cold, and maybe that's why his commentaries weren't completed? What if Rashi learned the mystical teachings, and flat out rejected them?

What if his DAUGHTERS embraced the mystical with a fervor and a passion they, themselves, never understood?

Father-Daughter conflicts over huge philosophical issues.

That would give you their internal conflicts, each individual yet derived from a main unified conflict, thus lending itself to trilogy treatment.

The internal conflicts would prompt non-rational or supra-rational actions which the daughters wouldn't understand themselves, which would cause the world to react in ways that might be interpreted as mystical - or not - depending on the reader's bent.

You would have an internal conflict generating an external conflict that could resolve neatly at the end of the third book.

What Anton left out of this trilogy is the "story" and internal conflicts generating actions which produce meaningful emotional maturation. If there were a story, there would be a plot. The girls are older at the end of the trilogy, but not different than they were at the beginning. They don't have epiphanies, about-faces, massive disillusionments with philosophical certainties, even when faced with marital infidelity.

Anton's characters don't "arc" in the way Hollywood characters must. If sold to film these books would be massacred in the attempt to create character-arcs.

The trilogy is a chronicle, yes, but not a story. It reads like a diary or a record of events that occurred -- but does not give you that clear picture of a world that's the same world you live in, but different.

Father vs. Daughters over a conflict that is rampant in today's world would produce that character-arc without the "contrived" effect.

Just look at all the Paranormal Romance on the shelves, the fantasy on your TV screen. Magic vs Mundanity is the core of Harry Potter, etc. It's a hotter commercial topic than feminism, but actually does have its roots in feminism and many related societal concerns.

What if, at his death, the Daughters, steeped in the paranormal, finally understood Rashi's response to the mystical and changed their minds completely about incorporating the mystical into life?

Of course, to achieve that as a reader-awakening the writer would have to understand Rashi's objections, all the counter-arguments that convince the girls, and finally the one argument Rashi might have left in an unpublished text that would change the girls' minds. To do that, the writer would have to be able to think like Rashi. May as well try to think like Yoda or Gandalf.

What if, after Rashi's death, the daughters then expunged all trace of any mystical activities they had participated in during his life and taught their children to turn from mysticism?

What if that's why the Kabbalistic writings don't appear for a few more centuries?

It would be a rewrite of history, complete with cover-up, that would allow for:

a) Character Arcs
b) story
c) plot
d) a reader's journey through what it means to be Jewish and female
e) suspension of disbelief
f) Poetic Justice via karmic, paranormal, highly improbable event sequences

The list of points could go on and on.

The author could not have achieved all that by "rewriting" these volumes. It's a "toss it all away and start from scratch" situation.

An editor could not guide a writer through this kind of restructuring. I don't know any editor who could even begin to explain explosive marketing potential in this concept to a writer who's stuck re-running the outworn feminist fight. The books I want to read are not the books she wants to write. She achieved her own objective and you can see the result in the comments on amazon.

The difference I'm describing has to be generated on the conceptual level, the level of Idea that happens before the writer is conscious of the need to write that story.

So studying these novels can be of benefit to the student writer a few years before that writer is struck with the highly commercial Concept that will make or break their career.

Just in case you might be such a writer, read at least some of Anton's trilogy or something comparable.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
For more on Gemara, check this out:
http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/gemara.htm

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 4

In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on a desire for thrills and taking risk -- a building block of adolescence; but, they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully.

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

Indications in this research are that the brain continues to change with age, and especially with usage. Thus a teen who reads ends up with a different brain than one who does not. A teen who reads THIS as opposed to THAT may actually end up with a different wiring. Given that books (cold text) delivers different emotional experiences, it could be that subject matter actually does make a difference. Sexual excitement induced by reading cold text may differ from that associated with images, and from that coming via reality.

It has already been shown that adult and elder brains can repair or relearn function after motor injuries. So targeting your reader by age, and by experience is important in delivering the emotional roller-coaster ride a novel is expected to carry.

The adult's emotional triggers are the hooks or handles by which the writer can take hold of the reader.

Back to art, music and now dance. The writer is dancing with the reader, rhythmically moving with the reader's emotions, leading them into other emotions, and onwards perhaps into unexplored territory and new emotions.

As with music, it is the pauses in the dance that give it meaning, just as the silence gives the musical beat it's rhythm.

A fictional theme is composed of abstract ideas, each one lit up like the pixel on a TV screen or computer monitor -- the clarity of the piece of fiction, it's penetrating ability, it's gosh-wow-gasp effect depends not on what is said but on what is not said -- on the stark, absolute darkness and silence surrounding each idea. But the theme is not "art" unless all the ideas composing it add up to a picture of "Life, The Universe, And Everything" - on matters of ultimate concern.

This can be done in many ways. The bestselling way is to use the writer's craft to depict the universe in the exact way that the majority of readers either see it or wish it were. The "genre way" -- the smaller, more defined audience way (i.e. Romance fans, History buffs, Geeks, Murder Mystery fans, Western Action fans) is to depict the universe in a way that the target reader has never seen or thought of before - to say something that has never been said in fiction, to astonish, mesmerize, and impress.

If you have something new to say, genre rules and strict structure can give you the backbone of a story which can be the vehicle for that theme. By using an established structure the reader knows (like picking a "theme" for your email), you can showcase your idea in the forefront. The security of already understanding the structure lets the reader focus on what you have to say.

If you're saying the same old thing everyone already knows, you invent a new way to say it, a new genre structure or variation, or you find a new setting against which to fling your old-hat idea as Maggie Anton has done.

If you put a new idea into a new structure, the reader gets the impression of a "busy" field of view, a 'cluttered' page, something they can't sort any sense out of and so don't pay money for.

To get rid of the "cluttered" or "busy" impression, the writer integrates the story-structure elements into a unified whole. You smooth and blend, to get that effect, you shake not stir.

So how do you "shake not stir" Research into Plot?

What's the exact mechanism a writer's mind uses to achieve that smooth blend of hard facts the reader already knows and the Events in the story that happen to the character?

What is it Maggie Anton didn't do with her novels?

She did take the old, worn, done to death, feminist vs. the establishment conflict and fling it into a new setting -- 1040 C.E. in Rashi's family.

She astonished us by showing Rashi's family just barely resisting the feminist daughters who won all their freedoms with barely a struggle (while in the rest of their world, women were killed for less but Anton doesn't discuss that except via one character, the daughter of a parchment maker -- from whom we learn a lot about how parchment is made). And Anton got the Rashi's Daughters trilogy published without a genre label.

That's a fairly solid publishing success, but what do you do if you want to go Anton one better?

You ask yourself questions - certain HARD questions about the reality in which the characters are embedded and how the character would see the world differently than the writer would in the same circumstance.

Instead of projecting yourself onto your characters (Mary Sue) - you project your characters onto yourself and look for the life lesson to be extracted from the events, a lesson you wouldn't be aware of if you were living through the events because it would affect you subconsciously, not consciously.

The life-lesson is the origin of the theme; the events become the plot.

Here are some previous posts I've done on theme and how to apply it to plot and story generation:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
which has links to the previous parts in that sequence.

The post topics are:

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 1, Stephen King on Potter VS Twilight
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 2, The Power of Theme-Plot Integration.
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 3, Standardization vs Customization
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 4, Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other

So I'm going to proceed on the assumption you've read those posts and the posts referred to inside them.

Of course we're talking about HISTORICAL (actual, factual) fiction here, Rashi's Daughters.

We all know how unhappily ever after the European Jewish population lived. We know that the era in which Rashi's family lived had been preceded by a number of really horrendous slaughters, and that more slaughters were to come. That was Maggie Anton's problem - to depict convincingly the flourishing years of that historic community through the eyes of one generation of that historic family who knew the past and weren't oblivious to where it all was headed.

Anton had the historic fact and the ambition to show us how strong, heroic women might have survived in and contributed to that flourishing intellectual culture. She had a feminist mindset to project onto historic figures, proposing the notion that our current feminist breakout may have had its roots in the spiritual heritage all Jewish women share.

Anton hit on a hellishly commercial fictional CONCEPT -- like in "Hollywood High Concept" that I've written about at such length.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/converting-novel-to-screenplay.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/religion-in-science-fiction-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

I wouldn't be surprised if these novels are made into films or a TV miniseries -- this stuff is high concept to the max.

Assuming you've got the principles discussed in those posts fully internalized, let's move on.

Anton just didn't use the writing techniques to blend her HIGH CONCEPT into the historic facts without distorting them. She didn't generate her fictional facts from the historic facts to create characters with enough depth to make readers such as I quoted in Part 2 of this sequence of posts suspend disbelief long enough to entertain the notion that Rashi's daughters might have been feminists in an anti-feminist society.

The hard-fact research truth is that Rashi's daughters did not live in an anti-feminist society because that's not the kind of atmosphere Rashi's community generated -- as the commentator I quoted in Part 2 mentioned, that's the truth. The surrounding Christian community, though, is a totally different kettle of themes.

If Anton's research is as well done as indicated, Anton knows that truth. In a number of places, she indicated that the customs lived in Rashi's times were different from the customs later introduced by an even more beleaguered Jewish community after even more slaughters, so I can only assume that she also knew that Rashi's community was not anti-feminist. Even today, in a certain corner of the community that lives the world-view that Rashi chronicled in his commentaries, feminism is a non-issue because there's no oppression to spark it. Therefore, to those in that community, Anton's novels seem to lack verisimilitude.

But the novels didn't have to fail to engage that corner of the community if suspension of disbelief had succeeded.

Remember the connection between plot and story is the character whose decisions and actions cause events which splash-back to affect the character. Those decisions and actions are the only real clue the reader has about the theme.

The story is the sequence of emotional states and reactions the character experiences when impacted by events that leads the character to CHANGE -- to "arc" -- to learn a life lesson in the school of hard knocks.

The plot is the sequence of events that ensue BECAUSE the character acts prompted by emotion.

The story is the sequence of inner emotions the character experiences that CAUSE the character to act in specific ways, that cause the plot to happen.

The character's actions cause reactions which deflect the character from his/her intended course of action -- the plot is the sequence of events that take the character either back to their original target (achieving an objective) which is the "Likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal" plot, or to a new destination that is either a) better than the original target or b) worse (in which case there's a sequel coming) -- which is the "Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out" plot.

So where does theme come in? How can theme integrate Researched facts with Imaginary facts (worldbuilding) and with plot?

The theme embodies what the character learns about life, a transcendent truth that becomes customized specifically for that character.

A life-lesson has a practical, concrete component, but it also has an emotional component. After one of those hard-knocks that only "life" can delivery, our emotional triggers are changed, and we react differently to situations, colors, tastes, the sound of a voice, the flash of a camera in the face.

For example, consider a rape victim learning to love and have sex freely again. Consider a soldier who dives under the bed every time it thunders learning to walk in the rain and laugh.

Those kinds of turn-arounds happen because of a deep and meaningful Relationship moving through various stages, impacting the person on many levels. Those turn-arounds are the story, and what changes inside the character is emotional.

What brings a reader into a story, making the reader want to suspend disbelief, and willing to work to shut off the mental jangle of "that's ridiculous" is the way the character's emotional responses connect to the reader's emotional responses.

Where do emotions come from?

The various answers to that question that you as the writer have, and that your target readership has or wants to have, will determine how you work with theme.

With my novel that I discussed last week, Unto Zeor, Forever, I used the theory that emotions come from your philosophy -- and vice-verso, your philosophy comes from your emotions. Yeah, chicken and the egg -- they interact with and cause each other.

Think of that TV screen analogy again. When the screen is turned off, the pixels are still there but they are as black as the surrounding background. The screen still has a pixel array structure, but you can't see it without special instruments.

The structure is a certain number of pixels in rows across and columns down - an array. The pixels are all the same size, the rim around them, separating them is also uniform.

That all-black pattern, or array of pixels is your philosophy. It's a structure that is fixed and unwavering, a screen UPON WHICH you project your reality.

The specific choices you make about story, plot, setting, characters, will light up the pixels, and each succeeding choice will reveal more of the whole picture. But whether that picture is intelligible to your reader will depend on the blacks around each pixel. In other words, your reader's suspension of disbelief depends on what you leave out.

You will "see" your mental reality only as clearly as the blacks around your pixels. The smaller the pixels, the more numerous the pixels (or axioms and postulates of your philosophy) the finer your picture of reality will be.

Some people work on their philosophy and achieve a picture quality like High Definition. Some have LED quality screens, some have Plasma quality colors. Some are still living with analog screens, large fuzzy pixels, a blurry picture of reality.

The artist's job is to show the consumer of the art how the world would look with deeper blacks around the pixels, with LED back-lighting, with clearer vision.

The artist draws a picture of reality the consumer would never sort out by themselves by sorting the signal from the noise, and suppressing the noise until the signal reveals a coherent picture of life, the universe, and everything. The artist distinguishes signal from noise by filtering the signal through a philosophy -- not necessarily the artist's own philosophy, though most beginners start there.

The writer has a philosophy, her characters each have a philosophy, and the reader has a philosophy. Very likely, all are different.

The writer's job is to know their own philosophy in order to know how it differs from the character's philosophy. That's how you avoid writing a Lt. Mary Sue, who is just yourself idealized.

Most ordinary people don't know their own philosophy -- don't know they have one, and barely have a notion of what the word means. Normal people don't enjoy discussing philosophy. Writers thrive on it. Artists thrive on it.

The other thing writers thrive on is "research" -- most of us grow up reading the dictionary and encyclopedia for FUN not profit! We love words, their meanings, their implications, their emotional nuances and semantic loading. We collect facts like a dragon collects gems and brood on our hoard of trivia for years before hatching an idea for a novel using those facts.

Maggie Anton, in a comment on one of the reader comments on Amazon, says she studied Talmud for 10 years in order to make the story of Rashi's daughters authentic -- she believes she did it. She also amassed a lot of information about the technologies and practices of the time period and location.

So this week we'll leave off there and give you time to finish reading Anton's trilogy and/or the comments on Amazon or any other online source you can find.

Next week we'll finish up this study with a brief description of what Anton might have done instead, and how it could be done - what tools she might have used that you've seen discussed on this blog.

Remember, this blog series is about Research-Plot Integration, not a critique of a trilogy about a Medieval Jewish community.

Wherever the Jewish elements are mentioned, substitute the worldbuilding elements you might make up from the historic facts you might have amassed.

Soon, we'll talk a little about the Television Series, Once Upon A Time which has an odd thematic relationship to this Rashi's Daughters trilogy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 3

Two weeks ago I introduced this odd hybrid historical romance trilogy, Rashi's Daughters:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html

Last week ...
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_17.html

... I made a few spoiler comments and showed you one of those bizarre karmic links that pepper my existence -- how Maggie Anton inserted a bit of dialogue in her third novel that had no business in her novel but was just about the most illuminating and important bit of data to randomly pop up before my eyes in decades.

Anton had researched the 1040 C.E. era to a fair-the-well, and given her main character of the third book, Rashi's Daughters: Book III Rachel, a task, a goal, and the ability to learn an entire craft and invent a business model for it. She put Rachel into the textile industry and had her discuss wool cloth manufacture and dye.

Readers of Sime~Gen already see my hair standing on end. Coincidence abounds in this world, but folks, there's a LIMIT you know!

The datum that blew me out of the water was simply a reminder of something I had known for decades but had no memory of ever having learned -- that BLACK wool cloth is very difficult, rare, costly, and that at the beginning of the dye industry, the true black dye was a trade secret for each dyer.

It was knowing that obscure fact about the early cloth dye industry that caused me to assign BLACK as the single most special color in the Sime~Gen novels, Farris Black.

And those few lines of dialogue Anton wrote, which I quoted last week, prompted me to assemble my observations about these novels into this advanced writing lesson, the integration of Research and Plot which creates the foundation for every Paranormal Romance novel.

The "paranormal" has an immense amount of non-fiction literature to research, everything from mythology to ESP research, and all the way into the depths of theology -- down deep enough to get into Kabbalah. You can assemble facts to support almost any kind of worldbuilding you need for your particular Romance.

Anton knew about wool dye what I had known long before building it into the Sime~Gen novel, House of Zeor, associating it with the Farris family, but Anton used her knowledge in a different way than I used mine -- and the result is a set of totally different reader responses. I pointed you to those on amazon last week, and picked out two contrasting ones, one from her first novel and one from mine.

As I've said, it seems to me that the Rashi's Daughters trilogy (he had only three daughters and no sons) should be classed as Paranormal Romance, and with only very slight changes in the stories, would fall right into the model for some of the very best Paranormal Romances.

The Medieval world Anton has built includes all the beliefs and practices of Jewish Astrology, and the demonology extant among the general public. Disease was caused by demons and other supernatural influences, and could be averted or cured by charms, sigils and signs, and chanting.

Anton even sites the first thing anyone starting on the Occult Studies path learns - that the more advanced on that path you get, the more of a target you become for the negative forces that abound in the world (and mostly leave ordinary people alone). Rashi, being extremely advanced spiritually, was such a target as were his family members - simply for being his family members. Once the daughters embarked on spiritual advancement, they too became targets in their own right. That's a principle from Kabbalah. But Rashi, himself, did not study Kabbalah. Anton walked right by the most incendiary plot-elements her hard-fact research turned up.

Anton does have her characters cure or avert evil influences with Kabbalistic practices, but without internal consequences to the characters. The actions don't adhere to what I've termed in my posts on plotting, "the because line." Any one of these incidents could have supported the entire envelope plot for the trilogy, but because she has just inserted these simple facts, the plot events become incidents and vignettes interesting in themselves but without consequence to the story-line. (remember plot and story are different, but must be connected by theme).

To us, today, such ideas as disease caused by demons sound ridiculous. But we have no problem with them when reading Paranormal Romance -- even television series incorporate witches and spells, otherworldly occurrences and magic. For the most part, the worldbuilding behind Paranormal Romance novels is not nearly as coherent, interesting, deep, and plausible as the very real Medieval belief systems Anton only refers to briefly.

Few of the comments on amazon even mention the demonology, or criticize or critique it. It's throwaway techno-babble to most general readers, even historical fiction experts. Yet Anton walked right by a chance to explain that dimension of reality to modern readers, what it could mean in modern terms and what it means to those on a spiritual journey.

Maybe she didn't know how, or maybe she didn't explain it because Rashi, himself, is famous for his entry-level, beginner's explanations of the Torah, Mishna and Gemara. Rashi didn't incorporate any of the far out, mystical, Kabbalistic material in his explanations. Most of the literature on Kabbalah that we use today wasn't written down until a couple hundred years later, but there were scholars who knew and practiced it in Rashi's day.

Anton does mention a Mezuzah scribe who uses some Kabbalistic knowledge, and has her characters use such a Mezuzah to protect and heal sick people and bring them back from death's door. But then the incident just sits there - having no consequence to the inner, subconscious or spiritual life of the Daughters. It's just that the person lives a little longer. That's not plot, that's incident.

How do you tell a plot event from an incident?

A plot event changes the main character's understanding of his/her reality. That is a plot event affects the story-line.

An incident illustrates something the writer wants the reader to know about the main character's understanding of his/her reality, but does not change the character's behavior or the menu of options the character has to choose from.

In a plot-event, the reader walks in the character's moccasins. In an incident, the reader learns that something happened or how it happened, but it doesn't happen to the reader.

Anton constructs her narrative line from the researched facts about the lives of this family, then inserts incidents along that narrative line, giving the strong impression of a plot without having an actual plot.

As I pointed out last week, in the Rashi's Daughter's trilogy, interesting hard-fact details of Medieval life are tossed in on top of Anton's narrative about three women living in Medieval times who possess a modern feminist self-image and attitude -- pure fantasy, a kind of fantasy that works fabulously well with Paranormal Romance writing techniques and fails abysmally with only Historical Novel writing techniques.

The incident-structure causes us to be informed that Rashi's Daughters had a modern feminist attitude -- but not how they acquired it, what their attitude did to them, and what they did to our world because of their attitude. Because of the incident-structure, readers who don't already have a feminist attitude don't come to walk-a-mile as a feminist. Readers who do have a feminist attitude may feel nice about having their attitude validated, but will not come away from these novels with a usable impression of life in Rashi's home.

If the trilogy had a genuine trilogy plot-structure, all readers would come away from the trilogy with a good, emotional, non-verbal grasp of how Rashi's household lifestyle created feminist attitudes in all the women associated with it, and caused them to blossom into full realized, highly spiritual women.

One of the researched hard-facts that Anton must have come across studying Mishna is that Jewish culture understands women to be on a higher spiritual level than men, just inherently more spiritually advanced (the opposite of Christianity), which is why men are commanded to listen to their wives. Women carry a tremendously weighty responsibility because of that position of being closer to G-d (which is why women pray in a whisper when men shout out prayers -- because it's rude to shout right into G-d's ear) -- and therein lies the material for Anton's overall trilogy plot. But she walked right by that opportunity as if she had no clue how to worldbuild to springboard a plot.

Remember, we're talking about crafting Paranormal Romance here - not about the realities of Medieval Judaism. You can replace the "Medieval Judaism" elements in Anton's trilogy with any fantasy world you are building to support your story. If Anton had used world she built herself here, I'd be making the exact same comments about the incident-structure vs the plot-structure method of storytelling.

Anton's view of Medieval Judaism "works" in these romance books just the way any fantasy world would work.

With application of the techniques for integrating research into plot, Anton could have "sold" her fantasy to her readers and made them suspend disbelief long enough to finish the trilogy and go off with a furious hunger for finding out the reality behind the Talmud.

Her fantasy Talmud would only whet the appetite. As it is, few of the commentators on Amazon are talking about the Talmud itself or their experience of it in real life.

Using the string of incidents structure, Anton manages to inform us that Rashi's Daughters loved Talmud as much as Rashi did -- but does not make us love Talmud the same way.

The reader commentaries on Amazon about the trilogy show either a sense of outrage at Anton's "inaccuracies," a delight at the upstanding female characters and their stories, or the commentaries get all wound up in the Medieval background.

Many readers found the second or third books disappointing because they didn't deliver on the expectations aroused by the first book. Each reader is seeing only one level of this work because the "research" facts lay on top of the character-story like oil on water.

"Shaken, not stirred" comes to mind. There are writing techniques for creating a smooth blend of antagonistic elements -- like Talmud and sexuality, or sexuality and willful independence.

Now keep in mind that I feel Anton intended to do with this series what other Romance authors have done with Historical Romance: graft a feminist attitude onto female characters who lived in an oppressive world, were raised to be subservient and obedient, self-effacing, and never show their intelligence to a male. That's alternate-history fantasy, and it's great fun to read, but can be misleading if the reader doesn't know it's a game the writer is playing, not an actual window into the past.

The way Anton's trilogy is written, I can't tell if she knew she was playing the alternate-history-paranormal-romance game with her readers. The tantalizing thing about this trilogy is that Anton almost got it right, whether she knew what she was doing or not.

Some people need to know what they're doing in order to do it "right" (so they get the results they aim at) -- and some people really need to NOT KNOW what they're doing, how they do it, or possibly even that they're doing it, in order to do it "right."

That applies to how to write books, historical fiction novels, and most especially historical fiction romance novels.

Knowledge is one level of cognition, but there are many others (intuition, emotion, assumptions) that all operate at the same time.

Each level of cognition can show up on special brain scans as "circuits" or whole areas of the brain energized or activated -- sometimes in one location of the brain, sometimes connecting several locations. There are a number of studies ongoing now about how our brain functions, mostly with the focus on how to repair damage or correct birth defects. These studies also have an application to the writing craft, to the understanding of how we respond to entertainment, how and why entertainment is a necessity not a luxury.

We can emphasize one level of brain activity over another, but we can't shut off the other levels completely. Consider all the studies you've read about brain damage and how loss of a part of the brain can affect personality, perception and judgement. We use all of our brains all the time on everything we do -- we just shift the emphasis.

That's why when we read books and novels, we want the input we're absorbing to trigger brain activity on all our levels -- but emphasize one level above the others, then orchestrate a changing emphasis in a pleasing way from one scene to another, one chapter to another, just as we experience in real life.

Note that word "orchestrate" -- reading a novel is like listening to a symphony. Every word triggers associations (semantic loading) that light up pathways in the brain. Every sentence, image, scene, emotional-engagement among characters, is a "voice" of an instrument in the symphony. The writer is the conductor, bringing one section of the orchestra then another up to the fore (making them louder or softer with a gesture). The audience feels their pleasure is from the players of the individual instruments (liking one character over another) -- but the actual source of pleasure is the conductor's skills.

The conductor's job is to gently, smoothly shift the way the pathways of the listeners' brains light up, producing pleasure.

No orchestra is any better than its least skilled player. But any orchestra can fail abysmally even with world-class players in every seat if the players aren't all playing the same score, or if the conductor puts each section of the orchestra in a separate soundproof booth so they can't hear each other or see the conductor.

That's what I think happened with the Rashi's Daughters trilogy.

The research on Talmud, the feminism, the political world of Medieval France, the astronomy, the astrology, Muslim Spain, Muslim marriage customs, Medieval midwifery, plagues, textiles, dyes, inter-city trade, numerology, Christian Priests studying Bible with Rashi, the economics of Jewish merchants traveling with ransom money because Jews ransom other Jews, Jewish women in business lending money to other Jewish women in secret from their husbands, raising chickens, open sewers, -- all of that is like the individual instruments in an orchestra all playing different parts of a symphony at the same time, each trying to be louder than the other, grabbing center stage for a solo while all the other instruments scream for attention.

It's no surprise to me that so many commenters on amazon couldn't make sense of these historical fiction novels.

It's an orchestra without a conductor.

I'm very familiar with this problem from a writer's point of view.

The Rashi's Daughter's trilogy reads a little bit like the early drafts of my Sime~Gen novel, Unto Zeor, Forever.

As I mentioned last time, that's my first award winner, and it went through 5 drafts to get there.

Here it is on Amazon in Kindle, but there are paper editions and a forthcoming audiobook edition (unabridged)

It is labeled, by this publisher as #2 in a "series" -- but it's not. It's the second published in the Sime~Gen Universe, and many people have fallen in love with the novels by entering here.

I lost the first few drafts, but a very close version of the 3rd draft has been assembled and posted online for free reading. It's titled Sime Surgeon (like a Nurse Nancy which is what it was at that stage), and has a long introduction explaining the editing history.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/ and click the links on the left for the various parts.

Jean Lorrah commented extensively on the 3rd draft, and I made vast changes because of what she understood and misunderstood (just like the amazon comments on Rashi's Daughters). Jean saw the "oil and water not mixing" in that 3rd draft, didn't quite know how to explain the problem or the solution, but with close study, I was able to see what she was driving at and made many changes.

The 4th draft was turned in to the publisher, and the editor, Sharon Jarvis, sent it back with numerous notations, plus the advice that if I would delete one character, eliminate one entire chapter, and shift the climaxes so that they rose in a smooth hyperbolic curve to the final one, then she'd publish it. The Sime Surgeon climax structure rises, falls hard, rises, falls, rises to the end. She wanted the falls removed by removing one character, which eliminated a lot of techno-babble. Many fans love Sime Surgeon much better than the commercially smooth Unto Zeor, Forever -- just as some Amazon commenters love Anton's trilogy as it is.

The final draft of Unto Zeor, Forever was published, and because of Sharon's insistence on unifying the theme, eliminating all elements distracting from the theme, deleting a lot of the researched real-world-facts and the imaginary facts, answering character motivation questions with show-don't-tell, that published version won an award -- essentially because it's shaken not stirred.

But Unto Zeor, Forever was never drafted as a series of incidents. It had a plot from the first glimmering of an idea, a strong plot welded inextricably to a story that is essentially, at bedrock, a Romance of Helen of Troy proportions, just as Anton's trilogy depicts the Romances of Rashi's Daughters that produced the children whose Commentaries on Rashi shape what we know today of his Commentaries.

Sharon Jarvis, as editor, could not have brought the manuscript of Unto Zeor, Forever up to publishable standards had Jean Lorrah not "shaken not stirred" the composition into a somewhat finer emulsion.

Anton's trilogy was published at a development stage somewhere between Unto's 3rd and 4th drafts -- still in layers of historical fact and imaginary fact floating on top of a narrative but not integrated with it.

Her historical fact is what's known about Rashi and his writings, what's known about the world events at the time he lived, and what's known about the technologies and trade practices of that time, and of course the men the daughters married and the children the daughters had. Her imaginary facts are the personalities and feminist attitudes of Rashi's Daughters. Her plot is a series of incidents that may have seemed like "show don't tell" application of her research discoveries, but isn't.

It's as if, along with all her research on Rashi, Anton also researched "how to write novels" -- found "show don't tell" and then applied that with workmanlike diligence.

Anton's trilogy does have a kind of wandering "because line" -- as I've explained in previous posts on plotting.

Here are some of my posts on Integration that pertain to what's missing in Rashi's Daughters, discussing techniques one at a time:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/gold-under-ice-by-carol-buchanan.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/worldbuilding-building-fictional-but.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/carol-buchanan-on-writing-tricks-and.html

That last post in the list is by Carol Buchanan who is a historical fiction writer whose product is so thoroughly blended you can't separate the layers at all. And her work is precisely true to the Historical genre -- it's just about an era the big publishers aren't pursuing right now. But that's true of Rashi's Daughters, also.

If you've read Buchanan's Gold Under Ice as I recommended, use that instead of Unto Zeor, Forever, and think about it with Rashi's Daughters in mind. Do a contrast/compare. Chances are you know more about the Montana Goldrush era and the Civil War than you do about the very early years of the Crusades when Rashi lived.

Consider the effect that a full blending of techniques can achieve and then decide which effect you want. A professional writer needs to be able to achieve the effect he/she intends - not at random or by inspiration but on purpose.

Anton's trilogy isn't really romance, or really historical, or fantasy or paranormal genre. The trilogy is a mixture, a "cross-genre" mashup, just as Unto Zeor, Forever was when it was published.

In the future, we may look back and see how Anton started a new genre! If you find imitators of her work, please drop a note on this blog entry. Separating "oil" from "water" may become a popular writing style, and if so, then you need to master it as well as "shaken not stirred."

To see how Unto Zeor, Forever affected one woman from the time it was published all the way to a re-reading after the field of Science Fiction Romance appeared, see my blog entry:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/is-there-taboo-against-romance-in.html

Where I wrote:
--------QUOTE-------------
In 2010, I found my name mentioned (via feeddemon search) in an Australian blog and discovered a woman who had read UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER years ago, and only now, on re-reading realized that it is indeed SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE and belongs with the modern books she likes. That's why UNTO stood out to the point where she had obsessed over it. At that time, it was almost unique as an "Alien Romance" - and now it belongs to a genre.

http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html

(if that link doesn't work, look in the archive of the blog for the entry of May 13, 2010 )
----------END QUOTE-------------

Isn't it odd that this blogger's name is Rachel? That's Rashi's youngest daughter's name, and the title of the book which mentions the Medieval techniques of creating black dye for textiles which I used in House of Zeor.

And here's another karmic echo -- on lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com Rachel wrote:

----------QUOTE FROM LOVECATSDOWNUNDER ---
I’ve been reading historicals as my main genre of pleasure for a couple of years now. Thing was, I’d been resisting reading them because I was such a huge Jane Austen fan, and… well, I don’t know what I thought, but once I found them I was hooked and I realized I'd wasted heaps of years in not reading them!

Obviously I’ve been reading other genres in there as well, but more than 50% would have been historicals. I found some fabulous, fabulous authors who are now autobuys.

But I’m starting to get itchy feet.

I’m thinking the next genre I want to fall into will be romantic fantasy. Maybe with some romantic science fiction thrown in. I read a fair bit of fantasy and science fiction when I was a late-teen early-20’s gal—things like, Mists of Avalon (boy did I love that book at the time); Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (laugh? I *still* laugh at lines I read then); Unto Zeor Forever (the first book I remember being obsessed about, and then trying to glom the author, Jacqueline Lichtenberg); Dune (the whole series); plus a heap of Arthur C Clarke and other sci fi big names.

This was before I found romance. And looking back, the only one on the list that’s really a romance (and probably the only one of all the books I read at the time) is Unto Zeor Forever. Interesting that it was the romance that I obsessed about the most, yes?

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

So what is "getting to" these readers, getting under their skins, invading dreams and creating obsessions?

My answer is "shaken not stirred."

It's the Integration Technique that glues your real-world-research facts to your imaginary facts to your characters to your story to your plot.

The only way I know of to achieve the Integration of all these story telling elements is on the level of Theme.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, the author of Mists of Avalon mentioned by Lovecatsdownunder taught me to start the final draft by stating the story in one sentence (screenwriting element called the pitch), identify whose story it is, and distill the theme (the point of the tale) into a single sentence. Tack a 3X5 card (today make a "STICKY NOTE" on your monitor desktop) to the wall behind your desk and test every sentence, every word-choice, against that list. Anything (and I mean anything) that doesn't exemplify the theme gets deleted.

In the more basic posts, I've examined what a theme is and how to identify it in novels that others have written.

Identifying your theme in a novel you have written is much endeavor.

A "theme" is not a single idea, a single voice in the orchestra. A theme, just as in music, is a repeated sequence -- a sequence you play with, run variations on, uptempo and downtempo. A theme can be a sequence of chords -- it can be very complex in music, but is easily identified by the trained ear. Think of the tiny bit of music that plays every time Captain Kirk walks into a scene in Star Trek. Other shows do the same thing -- identify the appearance of the main character with a theme.

In novels, a theme is a set of related ideas which trigger a set of related emotions.

In novels, the word-choice relates the theme to a set of emotions. That's called semantic loading.

Just as in music, the "ear" of the listener may be well trained, untrained, or partly deaf in some frequencies and ultra-sensitive in others.

Readers experience chords of emotions -- whole swaths of related emotions conditioned into them by "life" as they have experienced it, and by their dreams as they wish to experience them. (two levels - oil and water). The brain "lights up" in the corresponding areas as the writer triggers those emotions in the reader, bringing first one then another to dominance.

In Kabbalah there are seven "primary" emotions defined. Fiction combines those seven in different proportions -- and again, oil and water.

Think of the color scales and how we obtain certain shades by combining primary colors.

Emotion works the same way. And like music, emotion has as it's backbone structural element, rhythm.

Rhythm is created not by the BEATS -- but by the silence between them.

Next week, in Part 4, we'll get technical.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
For more on Gemara, check this out:
http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/gemara.htm