Theme-Character Integration Part 11: Creating A Prophet Character

Theme-Character Integration
Part 11

Creating A Prophet Character

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

The last few weeks we have discussed the use of Prophecy in crafting a world against which to showcase your Characters.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/11/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-17.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/11/depiction-part-34-depicting-prophecy.html

Note, Prophecy, like ESP of any sort, or "Magic" by enslaving a Djinn, speaks to the way the laws of physics (and maybe even math and Chemistry) differ in your world.  The reader very often buys a book based on whether it is set in "real reality" or a reality made up by the writer.

The difference in the Laws of Nature between your Romance Novel's reality and the reader's reality is the primary SHOW DON'T TELL element that defines your THEME.

The general rule is to allow only one such difference per novel.  That's a corollary of the K.I.S.S. rule.

In other words, you can't insert a Prophecy into a real-world novel without informing the Reader that your world is not "real."

It is the same for the Soul Mate thesis -- if Soul Mates exist, then Souls exist, and that is not part of all your reader's realities.

But if Souls exist, then it is very likely that Prophecy exists in your world.

Souls, by definition, are "immortal" or transcend our physical reality.  Neuroscience is busy proving that everything about human life and perception can be explained by brain functions.

Here are a couple of recent articles about how your reader thinks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-list-of-cognitive-biases-2017-9

They have identified a multitude of cognitive biases, assumptions that cloud our thinking and cause us to misinterpret new data or discard it as unreliable.  Robert Heinlein wrote Hero Characters who called this type of thinking "lazy thinking."

Here is the infographic featured in that item:

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/every-single-cognitive-bias/

Here is an article showing how they are still discovering new organs in the human body, changing the scientific view of how our immune system connects to the brain.

http://www.corespirit.com/mind-can-protect-us-diseases-researchers-find-link-brain-immune-system/

Since we are considering the use of Prophecy in Science Fiction Romance, let's explore one way to use the Theme of Prophecy.

In this World where Prophecy is real, but Science still works and exists, (i.e. in a Science Fiction Romance), we need Characters whose internal conflict centers on the Theme.  So we need first a thematic statement about Prophecy and Science.

THEME: Science Disproves Prophecy - (astrophysics about how Time works)

THEME: Prophecy Disproves Science - (Spirituality about how Time works)

THEME: Prophecy Can Come True Only If Source is Creator of the Universe.

THEME: Anyone Can Foretell the Future With The right (scientific) Device/Gadget

THEME: Reality is fungible: Prophecy and Science do not conflict.

The cliche plot would work out a conflict between a True Believer and a Scientist.  X-Files is an example.  There are a few newer shows using this conflict, and a wide variety of themes.

So if you are using your reader's "real" world, and changing only the element that says "Prophecy Is Real," then you can design several sorts of Characters to place in conflict to each other.

Theme is the statement derived from the outcome of that Character vs. Character conflict.

If the Character who accepts Prophecy as real is proven correct, the THEME is PROPHECY DISPROVES SCIENCE.

If the Character who debunks Prophecy is proven correct, the THEME is PROPHECY IS BUNK.

You can save yourself 20 years of rewriting (I am not kidding; I know writers who worked and reworked novels for that long, finally selling it only when the theme was clarified).

If you have to change the theme of a novel on rewrite, you are in for a world of hurt.

There is another theme that goes with using The Unseen as a concrete element in your world:

THEME: I am correct and if you don't believe me, you will be sorry.

Or put another way, a Character whose life revolves around The Cassandra Complex -- remember Apollo gave her Prophecy and cursed her with not being believed.  Many science fiction and fantasy novels have been written around this theme: "I know something you don't know."

Would two Characters be able to stay in love, get married, raise children, after one proves to the other that their entire worldview is incorrect?

It has happened in real life via Religious Conversion epiphany type experiences.  But can you make it plausible to your target readership?

You can use three major Characters, perhaps a love triangle, where one is the Prophet, one the Scientist, and one the Believer (but not necessarily a True Believer; perhaps a skeptical Believer.)

You can use an Ancient Prophecy and the True Believers who accept it is about to come true.  And in that context, you can bring that Ancient Prophet onstage in your novel, via flashback (a very, very difficult technique to master), and show don't tell your reader the Prophecy the contemporary Characters are dealing with was a) made up as a scam, b) was genuinely Received from the Creator of the Universe, c) has already manifested fully and is moot to your modern Characters.

I'm sure you can think of other possibilities.

The most important part of creating a Prophet Character is that the Character's Internal Conflict (and thus his behavior under the impact of Plot Events) has to be about the Message to be delivered.

The Prophet Character can be conflicted over the very Reality of Prophecy, or like Jonah who fled to sea rather than deliver God's message, resisting the Message itself as well as his own Agency in delivering the information.  \

In the Biblical story of Jonah, Jonah was not in internal conflict over the existence or dominion of God.  He did not want to be the bearer of this message to those people.  After being swallowed by an ocean creature and barfed up on land, Jonah went and delivered his message, and many people believed him and took his advice, to their benefit.

One (of many) points of the story is simply that if God tells you to deliver a message, do yourself a favor and just go say what you're told to say.

If a Prophet Character is your skeptical scientist Character, he might well resist saying this nonsensical message or be loath to say it to the target audience.  In the film, OH, GOD!, John Denver is non-religious but becomes convinced this is God who is telling him to get the Word out.  It only takes a few little miracles.  But he can't convey that conviction to his listeners.

And the message is not a Prophecy that will come true, or not, and thus be proven real.  It is simply that the world is designed to work, but only if you stop killing each other.

Making a film for a wide audience, you can't come down on one side or the other.  They presented God as real (George Burns at age 100 did a fabulous job playing God), and wrote the Message in the way of most Prophecy -- wide open to interpretation, and dependent on what people choose to do.

Thus you can make a tight case for either side of the argument.

But that is film.  A novel reader, especially in the Romance sub-genres, wants something more substantial and unequivocal.

Once you inject that substantial element into your Prophecy, it can be proved or disproved.

Note that in the study of Philosophy, the hypothesis of God is considered non-falsifiable.  There is no way to disprove God's existence, therefore there is no way to prove God is real.

So if your Prophecy can be proven, then its Source is proven real.  If that Source is God, you might be able to sell the novel only to the Christian Press -- but they won't go for ad hoc Prophets walking contemporary Earth.

The market for proven Prophecy is the Best Seller Blockbuster Biblical Code market -- like The Davinci Code:

https://www.amazon.com/Vinci-Code-Novel-Robert-Langdon-ebook/dp/B000FA675C/

That novel revived an old Genre.  Note how Amazon will pull up books about demons in the same search with Davinci Code.

There is room in that market for a whopping, James Michener sized Science Fiction Romance - maybe with more than a touch of Paranormal.

So select your Theme by considering what your target readers want.

Many read novels for the ideas, or a view of far away places with strange sounding names.  Many read novels for stimulation or to whet the appetite for aspiration.

Would any in your target readership want to be inspired to become a Prophet?

Is your Prophet Character the Hero, or the poor sucker being used by a relentless paranormal force?  Was he/she a good guy turned corrupt by this outside influence?

Does your Prophet Character need rescuing from this Controlling Force?  (Cassandra style).

"Who" is your Prophet -- inside, subconsciously, what needs and ambitions beset this individual?

How does either being infected with Prophecy from childhood, or blossoming suddenly into a Prophet affect the priorities of that individual.

Would Love and ultimately Sex relieve the individual of Prophet duties?

Consider what the answers to those questions reveal about your THEME.

A theme is a non-verbal, show-don't-tell, statement about what is "right" in life, and what the price of doing the "right thing" will be because of the nature of your well-built World.

So the answers to those questions define your Theme.  The theme is what you have to say on this topic.  How you say it depends, as in any conversation, on who your audience is - what they already believe, and how you argue your point until you convince them.  Maybe you can't convince them that your theme is correct, but you might plant a doubt about whether their notion of reality is fully formed.

"The Truth Is Out There" - was the theme of X-Files, and it is still a theme that works today.  Truth is not fact, information or data.  Truth is not "in here" inside your mind.  It is external, objective, and often unknowable.

Most Cognitive Bias functions to relieve us of the need to think through the ramifications of what we "know."  It is lazy thinking, and feels good because we never have to consider the nature of Truth.

Cognitive Bias often leads us into Royal Pickles and Adamantine Plights, Horns of Dilemmas, and dark miseries.

At the peak turning point of those Situations we often have to break out of our Cognitive Bias and stare Objective Truth in the eye.  Those who don't do that do not survive the moment.

The Prophet Character will be, like the hapless Grocery Clerk in OH, GOD!, the one who has penetrated Cognitive Bias and found a new truth.

The film dealt with the Prophet Character from the inside, telling his story of wrestling with the truth of the Impossible.  Taking a different point of view for a novel would lend the air of mystery and suspense.  Your erstwhile Lovers might well be fighting each other over the genuineness of your Prophet Character.

You might even consider making your Prophet Character a Matchmaker, bringing the two Lovers together for a most improbable match made in Heaven.

Fortune Telling or Foretelling the Future, divination and oracular pronouncements, is an entirely different thing from Prophecy.  In Prophecy some Force from outside reality thrusts a message into the Prophet's mind.  In the various forms of fortune telling, like the Oracle at Delphi, someone asks a Talented person a question and the person uses that Talent to SEEK the answer -- to find out, to observe reality from a different perspective.

The Fortune Teller is making an assumption, a Cognitive Bias, about the nature of Reality -- that what information they can access will remain unchanged.

That is the Fortune Teller is using the Hellenistic concept of Destiny - rooted in a polytheistic view of reality.  The gods decree, and humans suffer.

The Biblical view of the Universe incorporates the (cognitive bias) that humans have Free Will, but that the Creator of the Universe is still Creating it moment by moment, and can (at Will) create a different path for an individual's life.

The Prophet carries a message of the form, "If you keep on doing this, then I will do that."  Or, "if you don't stop doing that, I will do this."  Prophecy is conditional on free will acceptance of the divine Will.

The film, OH, GOD! hedged that message form down to a plain vanilla message without pointing to what humans are doing wrong (except the generally accepted killing each other) and no defining of the penalty for continuing to do wrong.  For an example, read Ezekiel.

So one of the thematic choices you have to make is whether your World incorporates Fortune Telling as efficacious - or if Prophecy is real -- or both.  For example, Fortune Telling and Prophecy might both be real, and the Prophet has been sent to issue a cease and desist notice to the Fortune Teller.

STORY: A pagan gypsy Fortune Teller meets a genuine Prophet of the Creator of the Universe who objects to the Fortune Teller's using cognitive bias as a weapon to cripple the Free Will The Creator gave them. .

Prophecy is usually about the shaping of civilizations, nations, and thousand year spans of history.  Fortune Telling is usually about an individual's personal fate.

Is "fate" real in your World?  Or can an individual "Be Saved" by a Divine Savior, just by believing?  Or maybe you have to save yourself by making amends, fixing what you broke, cleaning up your mess, then relaunching your life along the lines of righteous behavior?

In Biblical times, there were thousands of genuine (well vetted by their guild like organization) Prophets who could be consulted by individuals regarding the proper course of action through a dilemma.  People did consult them, and the advice consistently proved correct.  The Prophets would take the assignment, and then sleep on it overnight, dream the answer, and come back with their best description of what they had "seen."

The Book of Prophets contains the writings of the few great prophets who advised Kings and Princes - whose words moved nations and are still relevant today for the principles revealed.

After you've sketched out the science fiction romance novel you want to write, read the Book of Prophets -- maybe also the first 5 Books of the Bible with the story of the life of Moses.  Moses was different among all the Prophets as he spoke with G-d face to face, not in dreams.  Nothing was open to interpretation.  He repeated what he was told.

Decide if you need to create a Character who moves International Politics, or one who founds a Nation, or one who advises individuals.

Decide what the penalty would be to your Prophet should he speak falsely.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Poetic Justice In Paranormal Romance Novels Part 1

We've been focusing on the plausibility (in real life) of the Happily Ever After ending, employing Astrology and every other philosophical tool we can find to explore how such a wish-fulfillment fantasy can actually be "real."

We added 2 posts on astrology just for writers, part 10 and part 11, to the collection in the last few months, finding ways a Paranormal Romance book can be constructed without ever mentioning astrology or Tarot.

I wrote:
The key the writer needs to grasp is how a character's free will choices combine with the prevailing influence in her life to produce events which, though decades apart in time and place, nevertheless are related poetically.

Two foundation concepts that make the Happily Ever After (HEA) ending plausible are Free Will and the Uniqueness of the Individual.

In the fishbowl analogy:


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html
we discussed how souls can meld while lives remain separate, though reflective and in harmony.

Now we need to consider how these 2 premises, Free Will and Uniqueness, apply specifically to the Paranormal Romance novel.

The most concrete manifestation I have yet found of how these two human properties combine to produce the Happily Ever After in real life is often called Poetic Justice.

Literature teachers sometimes demand that a "book review" written by students to prove they read the novel in question should point out how the ending demonstrates poetic justice. Old classic novels all had this element, though it's harder to find in recently published SF Fantasy or Romance.

If your education hasn't supplied that drill for finding the poetic justice in a novel, I suggest you adopt it as a regimen for a few years. It will give you a handle on the subconscious beliefs of the largest audiences.

Today's Paranormal Romance novels don't all demonstrate poetic justice.

The reason may be that the writers and editors aren't sensitive to it, or that they don't think the intended audience understands it, or wants it in life, or fantasizes about it, or yearns for it. Since finding Poetic Justice in fiction may not be taught in all High Schools as it once was, those writers and editors might be correct.

So the new writer's job becomes bigger and much harder. To break into the field of Paranormal Romance novel writing, you may need to explain what poetic justice is, where it comes from, how to recognize it in "real" life, and then blindside the reader with a revelation at the ending that will leave them gasping, in tears, or maybe even with a religious experience.

Yes, I said religious -- an encounter with God that brings the reality of the Eternal Soul out of Religion and into real life.

As I've said in this blog, one of the premises of Romance novels in general, but particularly the Paranormal Romance novel, is that the Soul is real.

The Soul may not be tangible, or even subject to definition in words, but it's real, just like gravity and Kepler's Equations are real.

Very often, an individual human's first awareness, first loss of virginity, is in the first blush of Love. The idea of Love At First Sight is based on that kind of touch to the Soul by another Soul.

Think about that. If nothing touches your Soul, you don't know your Soul is there, can't feel it as yourself, your Identity.

If your whole inner world is untouched by anything, anyone, outside you, you don't know you have an inner world at all.

Here's a theory of Soul. Souls are like candle flames. A family is a group of Souls that all have been ignited from one, ancestral, candle. Parents ignite your soul, you then ignite your children's souls. These are not the same flame. Each is individual, each dances in the breeze differently, each candle burns down at a different rate, slanting this way and that according to the substance of the candle and wick. But there is an underlying similarity, a commonality among Souls ignited by the same Flame.

The first Soul, Adam, was ignited by God's breath. We all have been ignited from Adam.

Think about the Soul conflagration that engulfs the whole Earth.

We are one flame, but each is a unique individual.

A child, among family, doesn't feel that "individual" until puberty when the be-all of existence is to separate from The Mother and become an independent individual.

When that sense of individuality is established, the first thing it does is reach out to TOUCH another Soul. Puppy love. Teen crushes.

When the reach is returned, the newly individualized Soul finally gets a sense of having a Soul by being touched by another Soul.

That's the first loss of virginity, something very special that never happens again in a lifetime -- until the actual Soul Mate touches and unites in that special way.

Finding a Soul Mate does not guarantee a Happily Ever After. But it awakens the yearning for it.

That's the yearning the Romance Novel can fulfill. By painting that vision vividly and with depth of detail, the Romance Novel writer can touch the reader's soul and open doors into possible futures. The inspiration can sustain a reader through the search for a real life Happily Ever After.

The Paranormal Romance novel can open bigger doors into a bigger world, just as the Science Fiction Romance Novel can ignite a curiosity about science and the role of science in Love.

The Science Fiction Romance novel deals with the adventures of a Soul in the single, shallow, layer of "reality" that science addresses.

For more on what part of reality science addresses, see my posts on Tarot. 20 posts on Tarot are listed in these posts, but we keep coming back to this subject as we do to astrology and religion.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

The Paranormal Romance Novel deals with the other dimensions of reality portrayed in my Tarot posts.

The Paranormal deals with that which is above, beyond or maybe beneath the "normal."

The assumption is that what we ordinarily see as "reality" is actually only a thin film, a crust, or a "user interface" like the "skin" you can "download" to decorate your Yahoo page.

As in the Potterverse, the "muggles" or normal people, just have no clue what's really out there.

In Horror genre, what's "out there" is truly ugly and a serious threat of which most people must be kept ignorant. There's no way to conquer it at all. The most you can do is closet it away for future generations to deal with (think enchanted chains on the Vampire's coffin, sealed with the Seal of Solomon and magical sigils of angels.)

In Paranormal Romance novels, what's "out there" is scary at first, but with the strength of Love, it can be conquered and perhaps even turned to Good.

Love Conquers All is an assumption of all Romance, but truly vital in the Paranormal Romance story.

So a Paranormal Romance worldbuilder must include at least some axioms about such topics as:

1) Free Will
2) The Reality of the Soul (otherwise no Soul Mates)
3) Uniqueness of the Individual
4) Love Conquers All
5) Happily Ever After is possible though not guaranteed
6) Poetic Justice is real

Different writers can use different axioms to cover these elements, but failing to cover these elements and make all the components of the worldbuilding behind the story conform to whatever axioms you use will cause readers to respond that the story is "contrived" or "unrealistic" or the villains are cardboard or the hero and heroine are idiots not worth reading about.  Yeah, that's the level of worldbuilding in SF or Paranormal or Fantasy novels that causes willing suspension of disbelief.

The reader doesn't have to believe in God, or find God real in their own life.  The reader just has to be able to relate to the position of the characters on these subjects -- without any single word ever making these philosophical abstractions explicit in the novel.  

If you miss any one of those elements, the Happily Ever After ending will seem more implausible to more readers than you might guess. 

So let's see if we can find a poetic justice definition that can work for authors of Paranormal Romance. It's one thing to unravel a Romance story to find the poetic justice inside, and quite a different thing to portray poetic justice in your romance story. The one process is not the opposite of the other.

Now think about this: God is a paranormal element.

I don't think religion is a paranormal element. Religion is a word we use to designate an organization, or a belief system, more than a law of the universe. Religion is what other people tell you about God. So religion is a different subject that belongs to anthropology and culture, two other aspects of worldbuilding.

Here we're looking for the universal, underlying, principles of reality that can make a Paranormal Romance world seem utterly real to the readers for whom The Paranormal is ridiculous in daily life. The point of the exercise is to find a way to present and explain Poetic Justice to readers, editors, and the general public that adds to their sense of how real a fictional universe is.

Science Fiction writers specialize in imagining a universe where what we absolutely know for a fact turns out to be not at all true.  Happily Ever After is in that category for a lot of readers, the same category as intelligent life on other planets.  

We have to show not tell that the Happily Ever After with a Soul Mate is actually Poetic Justice, even though Happily Ever After is a ridiculous premise in real life.  

If you just slap Poetic Justice into your Paranormal world, it will be one more thing readers have to suspend disbelief about. If you grow your version of Poetic Justice from the core premise of your world, it becomes one of the elements that convince readers your world is real.

So we have to find out what justice is and what poetry is, and why people in all cultures the world over cherish these notions while they only yearn for a Soul Mate and Happily Ever After and call those silly wishfulfillment fantasy.

Do you need God in your worldbuilding as an axiom? A postulate? A premise? Do you need God as an element in your fiction in order to portray Justice in the world?

Does "Justice" come from outside or inside "reality?"

What exactly is justice and how do you tell if it has manifested (yet)?

If you know enough mythology, you have many gods to choose from, fickle ones, ones that come from dysfunctional families, benign ones, neutral ones, bribable ones. You also have a cast of thousands of demons, elves, pixies, trolls, and a plethora of supernatural creatures to include or exclude from your world.

You can use (though you might not be able to sell it right now) Islam and the Prophet, or any Islamic concept of Justice and how it can be arrived at. All of those beliefs belong to the paranormal, and can be inventoried in a Paranormal Romance novel's worldbuilding.

You can study the era of the Prophets in Judaism -- theory is that at one time, during the days of the Temple, nearly everyone received Prophecy from God, but only a few got prophetic visions that pertained to the future history of Judaism, visions that were worth preserving. Most people got information about ordinary things or matters of personal concern. As far as I know, no Paranormal Romances have been set in that time and place -- could blow the whole Paranormal Romance publishing industry to the top of the charts.

Theory in Judaism, particularly Kabbalah, is that today people get real "prophetic" visions in dreams -- personally applicable information, on a routine basis. "Prophetic" doesn't necessarily mean "about the future" -- but it can mean just deep insight into the true meaning, the Paranormal meaning, of what's happening on the surface of events today.

So Prophecy is a Paranormal element that can be used in Romance worldbuilding, and has been. Many stories begin with a dream of the One who will be the Soul Mate.

Fantasy Romance is routinely lumped in under Paranormal Romance. But most people associate the word Fantasy with "impossible" or "unreal" -- or even consider it unhealthy to dwell on, mentally or emotionally.

That's why "wish fulfillment fantasy" is a pejorative.

Paranormal, however, is often associated with "crazy."

Which brings us to the question: Is Justice a figment of the imagination? Or is it a property of Reality?

Is Justice real? Does it exist? Or is it imaginary?

Then there's the problem of what exactly is poetry? Does it mean rhyme?

Maybe the term "poetic justice" is an oxymoron?

We'll explore this a little more next week in Part 2 of Poetic Justice in Paranormal Romance novels.

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