Last week we explored genre and archetypes with respect to Science Fiction Romance targeting a specific type of reader.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-6.html
That post has links to previous posts in the Targeting A Readership series.
On a #scifichat one Friday, Valerie Valdes and I had a brief exchange like so:
JLichtenberg : To be a good springboard for a story, a science doesn't have to be "hard," just well known among intended readership #scifichat 12:32pm, Feb 22 from TweetChat
valerievaldes
valerievaldes: @JLichtenberg I'd go so far as to coin a phrase and maybe call it an intentioned reader? You create interest, I create intent. #scifichat 12:35pm, Feb 22 from Web
JLichtenberg
JLichtenberg: @valerievaldes #scifichat I love that - "intentioned reader" - write a guest post on it for http://t.co/YR5WzTuuLF ?
So she wrote the following for us to ponder. She had not seen last week's post and I hadn't mentioned the post I was discussing last week in my post. This came out of the blue while #scifichat was discussing a definition for sociological science fiction.
-------GUEST POST---------
A lot of writers worry about reaching a particular, intended audience with a work that may require specialized knowledge to be fully appreciated. We walk a fine line between trying to appeal to people who aren’t avid followers of the latest news in scientific advancements, or scholars of medieval animal husbandry, or whatever it is that drives us to obsession, and everyone else--a much larger group, to be sure.
Many times, though, we needn’t be so concerned about reaching that select, elusive clique of intelligentsia. Introducing something novel to a reader unfamiliar with the topic won’t necessarily shut them out. Instead of failing to target an intended reader, you may instead create an intentioned reader: one who is so intrigued by your subject that they intentionally educate themselves on it in order to better understand and enjoy your work.
This phenomenon isn’t restricted to any genre: a story may spark interest in history as easily as science or technology. For example, the slipstream works of Jo Walton encourage research into real history in order to better understand her modifications to the existing chronology and historical figures. As another example, Peter Watts’ interweaving of geothermal energy production, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering in Starfish may find a handful of readers knowledgeable about all three topics, but more likely will reach people interested or educated in one (or none!) but eager to learn more about the others.
As the movie quote goes, “If you build it, they will come.” The trick, of course, is to build something worth coming to, in a way that will spark the interest that creates an intentioned reader. A good story, not matter how obscure the topic, will never fail to find an audience.
Cheers,
Valerie Valdes
http://candleinsunshine.com/asthemoonclimbs/
------end Guest Post ------------
Don't just think about what Valerie has said here. Think hard about what it means THAT she just blurted this out in response to my invitation (in less than half an hour!).
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Tuesday, April 02, 2013
Guest Post by J. H. Bogran - Settings Part 1
Here below you'll find a Guest Post by J. H. Bogran.
I ran into J. H. Bogran on #scifichat and without having read any novels under that byline, decided that I'd found someone so intrinsically interesting that all my readers need to hear his Voice.
Unable to get marketing to work for SF/F published in Spanish, Bogran took the bold step of writing in English, in order to reach -- well, YOU!
Anyone who gravitates to #scifichat on twitter is going to be intrinsically interesting, but to find a writer I can talk to every week -- who lives in Honduras? Honduras! and on that same chat, we have people from England, from both coasts of the USA and the middle, too.
Watching these diverse people interact gives one a new perspective on where novels come from, so when I invited him to do a guest post for you, I just left the subject open.
And so, here's a discussion on a topic we haven't yet tackled on this blog, SETTINGS.
Choice of setting is intricately tied to character and theme, but the first consideration in choosing setting is genre. By changing the setting, you can change the genre.
That's the lesson we've seen worked out with Star Trek, which was first sold as "Wagon Train To The Stars" (pitched using one of the most popular and long-running TV Series t the time, Wagon Train.) In fact, most all genuine SF at that time was the typical Western adventure story set in space -- same story, same characters, transported to space and given knowledge of technology and science.
Well, knowledge of technology and science was also vital to the survival in the Old West -- one had to know how to repair a saddle, cast bullets, doctor a horse, build a wagon wheel, and avoid rattlers.
And the same is true in The Hobbit -- Bilbo had to learn fast on his adventure.
The same is true of the TV Series Scarecrow and Mrs. King, where "Mrs. King" learns fast to be a secret agent with a double life, but applies the housewife&mother skill set to international intrigue -- changing the "setting" from "Brady Bunch" or "The Waltons" to "International Murder and Mayhem."
So to find the genre market you can sell into, consider setting carefully. The story you're trying to write might be unsellable if written in one setting, but sell big time if transposed to another. You can tell the same story about the same character with the same conflicts and even very similar tools of his/her trade in various settings.
But take care because though the character can affect the setting, the setting also affects the character. If you do not bring that interaction to the surface in your composition, the story will seem ludicrous to those who know the setting and the people native to it.
Without further ado, here's J. H. Bogran:
---------------GUEST POST---------------
A Study on Settings
By J. H. Bogran
There I was, thrilled to be a special guest at #scifichat—my first, by the way—when out of the blue came an invitation to post on this blog. I agreed wholeheartedly, and so, here I am!
Regardless of genre, “location” for any work of fiction is important enough that, when done properly, the setting becomes an integral part of the tale. Think of The Hunchback of Notredame, The Fall of the House of Usher, Pillars of the Earth, Dune, The Dark Tower, or Star Trek.
With works in genres as varied as thrillers and fantasy, it is not surprising that I use different methods to find, research, and select locations for my stories. Let’s deal with thrillers first, as the genre has the marginal advantage of settings being found in our world.
My debut novel, Treasure Hunt, is a suspense thriller about a thief hired to rescue some money stolen twenty years before. The action is set in 1998 because that’s when I began the first draft; little I knew that it’d be published until 2011 where the era might be considered historical. Anyway, for Treasure Hunt, I used locations found on planet Earth: London, New York, a Federal penitentiary, and a fictional Caribbean country named Istmo. Istmo turned out to be a pretty stylized version of Honduras, with honest politicians, cleaner cities, really low violence levels; you can say it is Honduras 2.0.
Choosing the setting for a novel in a foreign country can be tough, but not impossible to research via internet, interviewing people who have been there, studying maps. The introductory chapter of The Falcon, a thief who rents out his skills, is set in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Great, nobody resists a tour of the Big Apple, right? Except, at the time I had never set foot there. After a couple of hour-long phone interviews with a couple of friends who’d lived there I was able to paint a decent enough picture. So good in fact, that during the novel’s launch party, a person came up to me and congratulated me for transporting him back to the city of his youth!
The opposite side of the spectrum, in fantasy, the locations are not found on Earth (most of the times), reducing the amount of research to a minimum. Not! For Deeds of a Master Archer—a portal fantasy short story of two modern-day men trapped in a world where they become a village’s last line of defense against a pack of dragons—I had to create a world, believable enough to feel real, even when populated with creatures that had never existed. Okay, I may have cheated a little as the villages all conveniently speak English, and the place is very akin to medieval Europe; except for the dragons, of course.
In building new worlds, with their culture, religion, languages and all of accompanying prerequisites, the writer must spend considerable time because, if these places don’t exist, they still must make sense. At least, sense enough to suspend a reader’s disbelief for the duration of the story.
So, what if Alderan never really existed? What if the lead character always catches the bad guy, stops the atomic bomb from going off, and kisses the girl? What if the Doctor will never lend you his sonic screwdriver? Who cares! You enjoyed the trip, and that’s what count!
Author Bio and links:
J. H. Bográn, born and raised in Honduras, is the son of a journalist. He ironically prefers to write fiction rather than fact. José’s genre of choice is thrillers, but he likes to throw in a twist of romance into the mix. His works include novels and short stories in both English and Spanish. He’s a member of the International Thriller Writers where he also serves as the Thriller Roundtable Coordinator.
Website at: http://www.jhbogran.com
Blog: http://www.thetaleweaver.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jhbogran
Twitter: @JHBogran
https://www.amazon.com/author/jhbogran
Treasure Hunt trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEaG5CjDmG8
Direct links to books:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009DPAO7C
http://www.amazon.com/gp/B004MDLSWK
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007BOC0OW
--------------END GUEST POST-----------------
Next week Settings Part 2
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
I ran into J. H. Bogran on #scifichat and without having read any novels under that byline, decided that I'd found someone so intrinsically interesting that all my readers need to hear his Voice.
Unable to get marketing to work for SF/F published in Spanish, Bogran took the bold step of writing in English, in order to reach -- well, YOU!
Anyone who gravitates to #scifichat on twitter is going to be intrinsically interesting, but to find a writer I can talk to every week -- who lives in Honduras? Honduras! and on that same chat, we have people from England, from both coasts of the USA and the middle, too.
Watching these diverse people interact gives one a new perspective on where novels come from, so when I invited him to do a guest post for you, I just left the subject open.
And so, here's a discussion on a topic we haven't yet tackled on this blog, SETTINGS.
Choice of setting is intricately tied to character and theme, but the first consideration in choosing setting is genre. By changing the setting, you can change the genre.
That's the lesson we've seen worked out with Star Trek, which was first sold as "Wagon Train To The Stars" (pitched using one of the most popular and long-running TV Series t the time, Wagon Train.) In fact, most all genuine SF at that time was the typical Western adventure story set in space -- same story, same characters, transported to space and given knowledge of technology and science.
Well, knowledge of technology and science was also vital to the survival in the Old West -- one had to know how to repair a saddle, cast bullets, doctor a horse, build a wagon wheel, and avoid rattlers.
And the same is true in The Hobbit -- Bilbo had to learn fast on his adventure.
The same is true of the TV Series Scarecrow and Mrs. King, where "Mrs. King" learns fast to be a secret agent with a double life, but applies the housewife&mother skill set to international intrigue -- changing the "setting" from "Brady Bunch" or "The Waltons" to "International Murder and Mayhem."
So to find the genre market you can sell into, consider setting carefully. The story you're trying to write might be unsellable if written in one setting, but sell big time if transposed to another. You can tell the same story about the same character with the same conflicts and even very similar tools of his/her trade in various settings.
But take care because though the character can affect the setting, the setting also affects the character. If you do not bring that interaction to the surface in your composition, the story will seem ludicrous to those who know the setting and the people native to it.
Without further ado, here's J. H. Bogran:
---------------GUEST POST---------------
A Study on Settings
By J. H. Bogran
There I was, thrilled to be a special guest at #scifichat—my first, by the way—when out of the blue came an invitation to post on this blog. I agreed wholeheartedly, and so, here I am!
Regardless of genre, “location” for any work of fiction is important enough that, when done properly, the setting becomes an integral part of the tale. Think of The Hunchback of Notredame, The Fall of the House of Usher, Pillars of the Earth, Dune, The Dark Tower, or Star Trek.
With works in genres as varied as thrillers and fantasy, it is not surprising that I use different methods to find, research, and select locations for my stories. Let’s deal with thrillers first, as the genre has the marginal advantage of settings being found in our world.
My debut novel, Treasure Hunt, is a suspense thriller about a thief hired to rescue some money stolen twenty years before. The action is set in 1998 because that’s when I began the first draft; little I knew that it’d be published until 2011 where the era might be considered historical. Anyway, for Treasure Hunt, I used locations found on planet Earth: London, New York, a Federal penitentiary, and a fictional Caribbean country named Istmo. Istmo turned out to be a pretty stylized version of Honduras, with honest politicians, cleaner cities, really low violence levels; you can say it is Honduras 2.0.
Choosing the setting for a novel in a foreign country can be tough, but not impossible to research via internet, interviewing people who have been there, studying maps. The introductory chapter of The Falcon, a thief who rents out his skills, is set in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Great, nobody resists a tour of the Big Apple, right? Except, at the time I had never set foot there. After a couple of hour-long phone interviews with a couple of friends who’d lived there I was able to paint a decent enough picture. So good in fact, that during the novel’s launch party, a person came up to me and congratulated me for transporting him back to the city of his youth!
The opposite side of the spectrum, in fantasy, the locations are not found on Earth (most of the times), reducing the amount of research to a minimum. Not! For Deeds of a Master Archer—a portal fantasy short story of two modern-day men trapped in a world where they become a village’s last line of defense against a pack of dragons—I had to create a world, believable enough to feel real, even when populated with creatures that had never existed. Okay, I may have cheated a little as the villages all conveniently speak English, and the place is very akin to medieval Europe; except for the dragons, of course.
In building new worlds, with their culture, religion, languages and all of accompanying prerequisites, the writer must spend considerable time because, if these places don’t exist, they still must make sense. At least, sense enough to suspend a reader’s disbelief for the duration of the story.
So, what if Alderan never really existed? What if the lead character always catches the bad guy, stops the atomic bomb from going off, and kisses the girl? What if the Doctor will never lend you his sonic screwdriver? Who cares! You enjoyed the trip, and that’s what count!
Author Bio and links:
J. H. Bográn, born and raised in Honduras, is the son of a journalist. He ironically prefers to write fiction rather than fact. José’s genre of choice is thrillers, but he likes to throw in a twist of romance into the mix. His works include novels and short stories in both English and Spanish. He’s a member of the International Thriller Writers where he also serves as the Thriller Roundtable Coordinator.
Website at: http://www.jhbogran.com
Blog: http://www.thetaleweaver.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jhbogran
Twitter: @JHBogran
https://www.amazon.com/author/jhbogran
Treasure Hunt trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEaG5CjDmG8
Direct links to books:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009DPAO7C
http://www.amazon.com/gp/B004MDLSWK
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007BOC0OW
--------------END GUEST POST-----------------
Next week Settings Part 2
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Guest Post Experiences From Twitter: RIXSHEP on Cons and RPG
On #scifichat on twitter, in September, we set a topic for convention experiences for the following week, and one of the more interesting twit-folk @rixshep found me on Facebook and gave me the following information to relay during the next week's chat -- when he would not be able to attend.
Since RPG and especially online RPG, Star Trek, with a counterpoint undertone of my own Sime~Gen Novels, are going to become an ongoing topic on this blog next year, I wanted to give you these URLs.
---------QUOTED EXCHANGE FROM FACEBOOK----------
Howdy, Ms. Lichtenberg!
I know I don't get to #scifichat as much these days, or to your blog page, as much as I would like. Probably won't improve much in the near future. But, considering next week's #scifichat topic, I wanted to pass some items along to you, that I thought you might appreciate.
Back when I had a lot more time, I used to do a lot of role play on a site known as The Keep. Chat based stuff. Over time, I created a couple of rooms and characters that got a lot of mileage.
One was a typical Dungeons and Dragons / Forgotten Realms type fantasy tavern that was very successful. It was called The Prattling Pirate Inn and Tavern. The other was a scifi tavern that never got used as well, imo. It was The Stardust Lounge on Starbase 12. This one is based on Starbase 12 from Ishmael by Barbara Hambly, and the lounge itself is loosely based on Draco Tavern by Larry Niven.
(By the way, Yesterday's Son by Crispin and Ishmael by Hambly are two of my favorite Trek novels. Another big one with me is How Much for Just the Planet? by John Ford. It is a parody musical, and one of the characters in it is Ann Crispin!)
For various reasons, I think you would appreciate some of what was done with these fantasy/scifi taverns. So, here are the links to these two places. I think you will like the scifi one better.
The Prattling Pirate Inn:
http://www.freewebs.com/jon_teela/
The Stardust Lounge at Starbase 12:
http://www.nexxushost.com/rpg/thekeep/whois_popup.php3?L=english&power=weak&U=Starbase12
I will be traveling all day next Friday, so may not get to participate, and if I do, I won't have any of my files available.
Meanwhile, good luck with the contract work on the game!
Rick Shepherd / rixshep
Prattling Pirate Inn
www.freewebs.com
JL: Oh, thank you! I'm going to put those links into the aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com blog, if you don't mind.
Rick: Not at all. The link for the starbase is in The Keep, and it goes away after a couple of weeks, if I don't renew it. Eventually I will get it added as a distinct page on the other website where I keep the pic of the Prattling Pirate Inn. Hope you like them! Btw, I was thrilled to hear you had a hand in Ann Crispin getting started! Very nice!
-----------Chat Conversation End--------------
You can follow Rick on twitter as @rixshep
He mentioned YESTERDAY'S SON by A. C. Crispin because I had mentioned on this week's chat that I had agented that book -- a topic which came up because the guest for the chat was:
James Kahn who was a (terrific) guest on #scifichat today.
http://www.jameskahnwordsandmusic.com/
He is @thatjameskahn on twitter
Here's the transcript of the chat:
http://flyingpenpress.com/DavidRozansky/blog/scifichat-script-120921/
He has a new book out titled World Enough And Time. Here is a whole page on Amazon with his Star Wars novels and other great stuff:
James Kahn on Amazon
And I connected James Kahn with one of my favorite talk show hostesses, Lillian Cauldwell. She wrote to him thusly:
------excerpt------
Dear Mr. Kahn:
Jacqueline Lichtenberg recommended that I contact you and see if
you're interested in doing an interview over PWRTALK's airwaves.
You can find the station at http://pwrtalk.ning.com and http://pwrtalkondemand.com or the newly upgraded http://pwrtalklive.com/
In the first six months of 2012, PWRTALK received an additional one million and one-half
new listeners from RETWEETS alone.
The network is heard in over 200 countries and our largest demographic base is college
and university students worldwide.
The following days and times are available for an interview. All times are Eastern.
All programs are LIVE, 30 minutes, RECORDED, and posted on the website,
social media, and heard for the next 3 months via PWRTALK's automatic
radio software. Over a 3 month period, your interview will be heard over 400
times. You can include a 30 second commercial advertising your books should
you wish.
Best regards,
Lillian S. Cauldwell
---------end excerpt ----------
Lillian's show will be running Black Friday author-specials Nov 22, 2012. http://pwrtalklive.com/
Lillian included a number of times, and he chose Monday, October 8th, 2012. So now, in November, that interview should be available in the on demand section at Lillian's website.
And James Kahn wrote back to me thanking me for connecting him to Lillian and saying we should keep in touch. We're planning to meet at Worldcon in San Antonio.
Now let's see who else we can connect to whom! It's all about networking.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Finding a Good Paranormal Romance
And once more twitter friends spark a subject we need to cover in Alien Romance:
I Retweeted this tweet from @dearauthor:
JLichtenberg: RT @dearauthor: I feel like my reading mojo is back. I've actually liked a few books in a row. 2 of them PNRs.
@freyasbower answered @dearauthor and tagged me in the answer thusly:
freyasbower: @dearauthor @JLichtenberg Perhaps it's not your mojo so much as the books. (g) 2:48pm, Jun 14 from Twitter for Mac
So I answered but forgot to tag @dearauthor
JLichtenberg: @freyasbower That's my thesis. I believe the creative torch has passed to the PNR field. Even non-PNR readers will find mojo there 3:00pm, Jun 14 from HootSuite
freyasbower: @JLichtenberg I have always been a fan of well-written PNR. It's finding it that can be challenging. 3:06pm, Jun 14 from Twitter for Mac
JLichtenberg: @freyasbower I need to blog about HOW TO FIND well-written PNR, why it's necessary, and why it's hard to find 8:07am, Jun 15 from HootSuite
freyasbower: @JLichtenberg you do. I am sure there are more authors out there who write it, but it gets buried .... 8:08am, Jun 15 from Twitter for iPhone
So let's tackle the issue of FINDING the "good" books among the undifferentiated flood of novels coming from a multitude of new small publishers, from the giant presses of mass market machines, and even more titles than both put together coming from self-publishing authors.
All these writers are trying to "stand out" or to get the readers' attention, to get "reviews" on Amazon or any blog that has traffic.
Even writers publishing via the mass market machines have to do their own "Me! LOOK AT ME! BUY MY BOOK!!!" publicity.
In most genre fiction, but especially Romance and Science Fiction/Fantasy it's always been that way, though in science fiction and Romance to a certain extent, a writer who said "buy my book" in any form lost credibility. With self-publishing, that's once more becoming a problem.
Mass Market writers were supposed to step aside, fold hands, put their eyes down, and meekly let the professionals market their books.
A mass market publisher generally does 4 to 10 titles a month, some of them reprints (though not in Romance usually). The publisher has a monthly budget to promote the books, and decisions are made in committee which books to promote. Usually the whole budget goes on the Lead title, with a little left for the second title, and the rest of the books fall where they may without promotion.
The most effective "promotion" done by publishers is not seen by readers. These are not TV ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads that readers might see. The magazine and newspapers that these ads go into are subscribed to book wholesalers and retailers, not consumers -- though some specialty magazines like LOCUS may be included and reach some readers of a genre.
Here's a typical list of targets for a heavily promoted major release:
National review and feature attention
Print advertising campaign to (whatever) interest groups
Advertising campaign at major general-interest sites like the New York Times book blast or NewYorker.com
Pre-publication buzz campaign through Shelf Awareness, Goodreads, Library Thing, and Read it Forward
Major blogger outreach to literary, historical fiction, and (whatever special)interest blogs
Included in all launch promotions of that publisher's imprint
Extensive bookseller, library, and academic mailing
Outreach to (whatever special interest) organizations
Major book group outreach
Author tours and Events
Where it says New York Times, it mostly means getting them to review or discuss it, sometimes website ads. A few titles get actual ads to readers printed on review pages.
The promotion that costs the most money is done to get the books into stores, before readers eyes, into the front window of the store, into a "dump" (a box set up in the aisle), or splashed at you on amazon etc, and to get it sold at a discount at certain huge outlets (like Sam's Club, B&N, and Amazon). Promotion money is also spent on getting super-spiffy art for the cover, and sending out review copies. As mentioned on #scifichat in June, the cover is the foundation of the marketing campaign. If there's no campaign, they don't spend much on the cover. Big money these days is spent on YouTube book-trailers, but many of those are paid for by the author.
Promotion money is spent and campaigns announced like that to force reviewers for major publication such as big city newspapers to review the book, interview the author, etc. If you are major newspaper or magazine reviewer, you don't dare not-cover what everyone is talking about or pretty soon you aren't "major" anymore! So shouting about the publicity budget for a book gets books into bookstores. Note that item Pre-publication buzz -- that's for real, and it is what actually does the trick to sell lots of copies. They put that list on the back cover of ADVANCE READING COPIES (the ARCs reviewers get before all the typos are fixed) to shame reviewers into reviewing the book that "everyone" is buzzing about.
A title that is not #1 or #2 on the publisher's monthly List has NO REVIEW COPIES sent out to newspapers, magazines, and these days, bloggers. None of the things on that list are financed by the publisher for books that aren't at the top of their monthly release list. Publishers shout like that to try to "find the readership" for that particular book.
They "shout" like that about books they think will sell enough copies to more than pay for the "shouting" budget. It's all about perceptions and economics. If they promote an author's book like that and it does not sell big enough, the author's next book is not bought or not promoted at all. Sometimes shouting works and gathers the audience. Sometimes, even with a worthy book, it doesn't gather enough of an audience to be worth the expense of the shout. Paying for an author to tour some big cities and sign autographs is another item in the budget for an author whose previous promotions have more than paid off.
If the publisher shouts about the book, or if the writer does (and finances) the shouting, it amounts to the same thing -- advertising. It's a way of saying "I want you to pay me money." Or "I want you to pay attention to me."
The publisher lacks credibility because the publisher has an investment in the book they want to make back and then some.
The writer lacks credibility for that reason and the inherent lack of judgement the creator of a work has about their own work.
Publicity is the publisher or the writer, the one who invests in creating the work, looking for an audience. It's not working well these days, so maybe the process needs scrutiny and re-evaluation.
Paper publishing is dying because of the economics of printing, warehousing, trucking, and returning unsold copies. Amazon's marketing innovation helps a lot, but they don't warehouse a lot of books all at once. You see that "only 2 copies left" sign on pages "more coming" and you know they don't stock what they sell. That's killing paper publishing.
But now that there's a good reading screen technology, e-books are taking off. Paper is moving to print on demand except for those books with a pre-assembled mass market. Check out Glenn Beck's best-seller statistics -- every book he releases is a category killer on Amazon. He is reaching an audience of about 30,000,000 per month, (yeah, thirty million) and most of them are voracious readers, just not in Paranormal Romance!
That's the number Beck himself gives for his "reach" and it includes all his media outlets - radio, print books, email newsletters, the online newspaper The Blaze (drawing about 7,000 hits per day he says), and about 300,000 paying subscribers to his web-only TV network gbtv.com (which is viewable in full HD and has state-of-the-art color). He's in the midst of combining The Blaze and gbtv.com putting more news shows on his network and building it to a 24-hour operation.
By studying what Glenn Beck has done for books about his (hobbyhorse) topics, we can discover how to find PNR novels that please us as keenly as Beck pleases his audience. Nevermind what his books are about, they please his specific readership so perfectly his readership is growing by leaps and bounds and you see his books in Sam's Club! Want to see our books in Sam's Club? Costco? Study what he's done.
Since he was a teen, Beck has been a radio broadcaster -- talk show host. His original training is in humor, comedy, standup I think, and maybe clowning. He reverts to that schtick often, and sounds a discordant note that destroys his credibility where he actually has a bit of fact that needs thinking about buried under his behavior. It's almost as if talking about a real fact embarrasses him.
But his target audience eats up the clowning about facts and begs for more.
It seems that Glenn Beck has FOUND HIS AUDIENCE, just as publishers try to "find an audience" for a book they believe they can make money by selling.
I am not at all sure (I don't study Beck closely enough to tell) if he understands what has happened to him, and what he has done that's resulted in having this audience, but studying the phenomenon can tell us how to winnow out the great PNR novels that we need to read from the background noise of millions of novels that should have gone through another 10 drafts before being published.
Years ago, when Radio talk-show hosts began "breaking into" TV, Beck got jobs with Cable TV channels.
I'm not sure of his resume before he worked at CNN where I first saw him (or heard of him). I think he had been at a broadcast network before that. CNN was a trial and a half for him because they keep commentators on a short-leash as do the broadcast networks ABC, NBC and CBS. CNN is has hit its lowest ratings in Spring 2012 and subsequently changed a number of their anchor personalities, bringing onboard at least one "Conservative" commentator. Watch how that works out -- it is just like publishing, searching for what the audience wants.
A viewer of these commentators thinks she's looking at a person and hearing what that person thinks. Nope, not what's happening, any more than when you pick up a book from a mass market publisher's imprint, you are reading the book the writer wanted to write! Those 10 drafts mentioned above that self-publishing writers tend to skip, and that "short leash" mentioned above that networks use on commentators are similar marketing/publicity mechanisms. The catch-all term for the whole process is "packaging" -- news segments have to be "shot" and then "packaged." It's a complex process aimed at "finding an audience."
See my series on EDITING to get this into your head.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html has links to previous 6 entries.
Writers who aren't able or willing to conform their output to the specifications of mass market publishers don't sell to mass market publishers. It is very possible that those non-conformists are the writers who are writing what you want most to read - what you would enjoy most! The content of Mass Market books has been "watered down" to reach a broader audience via mass market "packaging." Even small publishers have to do "packaging" or go out of business. Self publishers will give up after a while, if it's just not worth the effort, or they'll learn packaging.
It's about effort/return ratio -- you've got to have a ratio that's considerably less than 1.00 or you'll quit.
You can't write and self-publish on smashwords a 100,000 word novel and sell 1 copy and then do it again. Very soon, you'll just stop publishing unless 1 becomes 2 becomes 4, 8, 16, etc. - positive feedback works.
EDITING - (and with books, agenting) - all goes in between the reader, and the writer's imagination.
Being a "good writer" means being able to write what the editors and the publishers editors work for THINK will sell. Agents are in the business of slush-pile-reading to find the exact books editors have been instructed by their publishers to package and send to the bookstores. "Bookstores" are in the business of finding and presenting what their customers want. Agents are the people who find or train the authors who consistently perform those novel styles that are selling best at bookstores at this moment.
Writing is a performing art, remember? You don't write a book, you PERFORM a TROPE of a GENRE, just as a pianist performs Chopin. We've covered that in many previous posts. I learned it in 7th Grade from a professional writer, Alma Hill, who mentored me then! And it's still true today. Writing is a performing art, just like standup comedy.
So what Glenn Beck has done that's given him an audience of 30 million about 1 million of whom buy each book with his name on it (even if he didn't write it all by himself) is exactly what PNR writers need to do -- FIND THEIR AUDIENCE.
Publishers who invest in marketing as noted above are expecting to "target an audience" -- to find a pre-made, pre-assembled audience, a social-network, that's going to want to buy that book the instant they hear of it. Successful self-publishing writers already have made an audience like that, just one too small or too scattered to be worth the kind of money big publishers spend promoting big titles.
Authors running around looking for an audience for something they wrote rather than performed, have no more success than Glenn Beck did when he was just a radio broadcaster! And they have even less credibility than Beck has now when they say "buy my book."
Beck's stint at CNN let him shoot off a few arrows of his own opinions in various directions, and they struck home with a small segment of the CNN audience (which was much bigger then than it is now).
I recall seeing Beck do a whole segment on the Mexican border and drug running issues, cartel wars, and the terrorist infiltration of the action at the border when he was on CNN. The segment promised a lot more on that topic -- but every time I cruised through (I comparison shop news and don't believe ANY of it) he wasn't on that topic again.
Then he moved to Fox, and I caught most of his opening show there (totally by accident because I was cooking at the hour he was on, my hands too greasy to flip the channel) -- and he promised to do a whole, in depth, never let it drop expose of the Mexican border issues on successive shows. He ranted on about being so happy to have moved to a network that would let him cover the Mexican border issues.
He didn't go on to cover that topic, and because I know what "editing" means, I knew someone had shut him up. They (networks) pay thousands of dollars for pollster tracking of audience not only after a show, but the pulse of tune-ins/tune-outs during a show. Very complicated, very expensive stuff -- Beck's border presentation probably pulled really low interest. Or it may have just discomforted someone high in the organization -- I'm guessing, here I don't know and I don't really care much. They squashed him.
My objective here is to solve the problem of getting GOOD PNR to the RIGHT readers who will actually glean something important from reading the novel. Paranormal Romance Novels are where the fire is in our field right now, just as the border war and terrorism is where the "fire" of interest was in one segment of CNN's audience when Beck mentioned it.
If PNR writers lose credibility (and audience share like Beck apparently did at CNN) when they go searching for an audience, then writers can't do what all editors and agents insist the writer must do herself, and FIND HER AUDIENCE.
I'm beginning to wonder about the standard interpretation of how publicity works.
Maybe the writer can't find the audience.
Maybe the audience must find the writer.
BUT HOW????
What did Glenn Beck do? By the end of his stint at Fox he was reaching maybe 35 million a month, through all his media -- website, email newsletters, books from his Mercury division, blogs, and while at Fox he founded the news organization that publishes the online newspaper THE BLAZE.
When he left Fox and began his own network, gbtv.com he lost a lot of those people because gbtv.com is a network you can get only via the web, not on cable or broadcast.
But as his organization has produced some truly high-polish, slick, and informative (and serious, not comedy schtick ridden) SPECIALS on various news subjects, the web-tv-subscription audience has grown. The one Special he said brought a substantial increase in his viewers was the third in a series, and it's topic is the Mexican border/drug cartel/terrorist wars issue he got squashed for talking about on cable news, twice.
That one subject has let his audience FIND HIM AGAIN -- and he's up to 300,000 subscribers (which is more than watch some shows on CNN or Fox). It's been less than 1 year since he left Fox and launched his web-network. Audiences of Beck's size are not coalescing around broadcast network TV -- see my blog entry on TARGETING AN AUDIENCE part 5 on this blog, July 31, 2012.
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html
Note Beck doesn't have just one show. He's been adding shows fast, and has I think maybe 5 different shows and his daily radio show done with cameras and up in video on his gbtv.com website. And he's gaining advertisers, many who advertise on regular networks.
Likewise note this news item that appeared Aug. 3, 2012:
http://news.yahoo.com/forget-cord-cutters-cable-companies-worry-cord-nevers-161055968.html
---------QUOTE----------
Cord-never numbers are particularly hard to measure. A cable company, of course, can't report the amount of people who never subscribed to them in the first place, but we can do some piecing together to get an idea of the changing trends. U.S. census data found that 1.8 million new households were formed, but that only 16.9 percent of those signed up for pay-TV services, according to Ad Age's Dan Hirschorn. The TV industry has been flat for years; U.S. households continue to rise. Meanwhile, as cable subscription rates have stayed flat, Internet subscriptions are on the rise. Comcast added 156,000 net broadband subscribers, an 8.4% increase; Time Warner added 59,000 residential high-speed Internet subscribers. While something like 100 million U.S. households subscribe to TV services, the U.S. 2010 census data had 120 million households with Internet -- those numbers have only risen since then, with these companies reporting increased subscriptions. And what do people do on the Internet? Watch things. Though the most popular Internet activity, as of 2010, was social networking, video saw a 12 percent increase, according to a Neilsen report. Though, those numbers include people with cable.
-----------END QUOTE-----------
But also consider this item from June 2008, just 4 years ago:
http://dealnews.com/features/Unplugged-Trading-Cable-TV-for-Internet-TV/231073.html
-----------QUOTE from end of that article----
One Month Later
It's been over a month since I gave up cable TV and a lot has happened since my first week of Internet TV. Content-wise, Hulu continues to refine its service introducing full episodes of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. In addition, the site is running a Hulu Days of Summer promotion where new content is introduced every weekday. A nice way to bring people back to the site each day. Meanwhile, Univision.com has launched a new portal and streamed its first, full-length, online concert by Latin Grammy winner, Fonseca. The micro site, which is called En Directo, is sponsored by Toyota (the ads are very aggressive) and will feature additional concerts, downloadable songs, backstage footage, and more. I'm not a fan of the artist, but I am impressed with the amount of online video you can find on Univision.com. It appears the site has even struck a deal with CNET.com and is translating many of its tech reviews into Spanish (it'll be interesting to see how this relationship plays out once CNET.com is owned by CBS.com). Although I speak Spanish fluently, I was never a heavy Univision watcher, but having more video options online never hurt.
On a more personal note, I'm back to my old TV-viewing habits, watching TV in the morning and in the evening when I get home from work. When I miss an episode I want to watch, I now turn to Hulu (when appropriate) instead of recording shows onto my DVR. I'm also more comfortable bringing my laptop into the kitchen and watching Internet TV from my kitchen counter — something I felt awkward doing before. Ironically, I also turn to the Internet for new shows (shows that I've never seen like "Dexter" or shows that are no longer shown on TV like "Arrested Development") and if I like them, I look for them on TV. Unfortunately, I didn't lose any weight during my cable-free month, and I have once again associated eating with watching TV.
But perhaps the biggest change in my everyday routine is the amount of time I spend online. Whereas before I would go online just to check e-mail, I'm now online the minute I get home. Most of the time I'm reading new blogs I discovered during my cable-free month, but the amount of time I spend online has spiked dramatically since the month of May.
----------END QUOTE---------
So compare 2008 to 2012 (Beck's web network started in 2011 and is about to expand again). In fact, in 2008, Beck hadn't even moved to Fox and rocked the world with his ideas. That's how fast this world is changing - the world of connectivity, of fiction at your fingertips, and thousands of other ways to spend/waste your time.
The potential and possibilities for living without cable or broadcast TV are expanding just that fast.
Glenn Beck's audience wanted his product and searched him out. They found him; he didn't find them.
No matter what you think of Glenn Beck's message, study the process by which he's come to have the means to deliver that message to the target audience.
Many of his audience are older people who owned old TV sets that couldn't connect to the internet. Many don't have computers, though most do. I haven't seen smartphone distribution figures among seniors either, but according to the Verizonwireless website's offer of a $20/month discount to seniors for a low-call, charge per text, very low data amount plan, Seniors can be relied on to NOT use the features of their smartphones.
So Verizon is offering seniors that discount on all the phones they sell. And their stock is up over the last four years.
That tech-reluctance of seniors may change quickly as a new generation becomes senior. Apparently many older seniors have upgraded their technology this year to get at the one product they wanted, Glenn Beck's opinions.
Nevermind that you don't want Beck's opinions. The PNR novels you write are your opinions, and they are of as marginal an appeal as Beck's opinions on the Mexican border were when he was at Fox.
Speaking of the Mexican border, here's another article from Aug. 2, 2012 on that subject, asserting that what Beck predicted several years ago, actually is happening now. The Mexican border topic is one of Beck's hobby horses that has gotten him a lot of attention because nobody wanted his opinion on it.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/08/economics-mexican-drug-tunnels/55387/
Nobody wants your opinions right now either. And as a reader or writer of PNR, you are searching for the opinions of someone as marginalized as Beck is! Your problem is really the same problem that he had, and he's solved it. Figure out how he did it!
Analyzing his audience, I have found it isn't ALL older people. There's a wave of 20-somethings, and even teens, who are absolutely caught up in what he's doing. Those 20-somethings are not likely to be readers of PNR either, but they found what they want in Beck's program.
Again, forget what he's doing and focus on how he's doing it.
People will say HE FOUND HIS AUDIENCE -- but as I noted above his audience found him.
Beck says George Soros spent millions "discrediting" him -- some Soros funded organizations funded other organizations that funded organizations that hired bloggers to use filthy language emphatically lying about what Beck said on the air, thus discrediting Beck.
I don't know about the hiring part, but I've seen the blog comments -- the exact same blog comments word for misspelled word turning up on news commentary threads on various articles having nothing to do with the filthy-language comment on Beck. I've seen copy/paste clones of those comments on Beck turn up day after day - the same comments, on different news item blogs, on different days, posted under different poster-handles.
Being curious, I started watching the actual broadcasts and listened to what Beck said exactly, then looked for what the blog commentators said he said. The claim that someone hired people to paste filthy-language comments all over the blogosphere is a logical way to interpret what I've seen. But I have no knowledge of how these things happened, only that Beck never said most of what's attributed to him, but as the furor increased so did Beck's audience share.
Maybe we need George Soros to fund an anti-PNR campaign complete with filthy language? Naw, that wold never work.
But just like Beck, PNR doesn't say what most people say it says. Same campaign was waged against Dungeons & Dragons years ago and it got more popular the more it was opposed.
I'm not nearly as interested in Glenn Beck (and his hobbyhorses) as I am in the audience response to him -- his audience found him. HOW DID THEY DO THAT???? (other than the discrediting campaign blog comments)
If I can figure out how they did that, I can figure out how to FIND the PNR novels that need finding and develop a readership of millions (30 million readers -- think about that! It's not unreasonable for an audience size: there are 330 million people in the USA alone!).
Note my most current novel, THE FARRIS CHANNEL is Paranormal but not Romance (has an offstage love story or two, but love/romance does not drive the plot). I'm not telling you "buy my book" or "be my audience" or "find me!" -- though that might be nice -- I'm trying to figure out how PNR readers can find their "Glenn Beck."
If we can't gain respect in one-step, maybe we can attain it by becoming vilified first? I just don't like that idea. No. There has to be another way.
You, as reader don't need to find the writer of PNR novels you want to read, but you need to find a "Glenn Beck" a spokesman that gathers a book-buying public. That spokesman has to be someone we can rely on to bring to our attention 'the best PNR novels.'
We have some great Romance blogs like Galaxy Express but they don't have 30 million readers! (Million; think about that 30 million.)
Here's a web-radio talk-show that interviews authors and loves SF, Fantasy, Romance and PNR. If you're a writer, contact them. It's not 30 million (yet) but it's a start.
-------QUOTE FROM THE PROMOTION-----------
EDUCATES -- ENLIGHTENS -- ENTERTAINS
PWRTALK is the network with the best experts and programming that provides a conduit for voices not otherwise heard in this noisy techno and digitalized world. In the first 6 months of 2012, PWRTALK received 1 million new listeners. In the first 2 weeks of July, PWRTALK received another 1/4 million new listeners. For WebTV and audio interviews, please contact Lillian Cauldwell at 734-827-9407 or email
----------END QUOTE-------------------
Oprah Winfrey has lost and not regained her audience as she moved to create her own Cable network, but she was this kind of spokesman for her kind of "personal expose" book.
When Beck has a guest on his show who's written a book, that book shoots to the top tiers on Amazon just as Oprah Winfrey's guests' books did. Beck's audience listens to radio (and web-radio), watches TV, and behold -- READS BOOKS.
When he left Fox, by contract he couldn't take the research he'd done there on their dime. He can't use clips from his own Fox show. And he can't afford to re-do that research from scratch (it was hugely expensive, though his show overall was cheap-cheap). So he's been gathering sponsors, and subscribers (you have to have internet access (Roku but not Amazon will get the show for you) plus a gbtv.com subscription which is I think $100/year) to get his shows. I absolutely must figure out how his audience has found him. He didn't find them, though he tried for decades. Suddenly, they found him!
Once he got feedback for his passionate presentation of the Mexican border situation (being squashed indicates there's something there), he began researching, asking questions, looking for answers, searching out the roots of movements under the surface of US culture. That quest became the core of his Fox show, and when he did a months long presentation on American History, his ratings soared. His audience found him.
The audience's responses and interest guided his research, his efforts, and touched something in him that ignited his personal curiosity, a need-to-know just like any writer's fascination with a story idea. He's half journalist, and he had grabbed hold of a journalistic subject. His audience touched off his explosion of interest in American History that led to the series of "revelations" he's presented that keep attracting more viewers. He's a showman by nature -- anything that ignites an audience to enthusiasm will ignite him to out-perform himself, but he's also a shrewd business man (I have a sketch of his natal chart). Once he mentioned a topic that got a ratings spike, his own interest in it spiked -- maybe it was dollar signs, or maybe it was his need for applause (he's a comedian by training).
All writers are like that, PNR writers most especially are on the lookout for feedback, for applause, for understanding. What gets audience response, gets more attention from the writer in the next book.
Beck's audience found him sitting there on CNN like an unlit candle, and they touched fire to his wick. He took that fire to Fox and found a bigger audience and became a much bigger candle.
Beck's audience used him to get what it wanted. The audience milked him, not the other way around as observers always think! As a writer, I know what that feels like. When an editor wants more, I find more!
The PNR audience needs to find a Glenn Beck of PNR. Who? How? Where?
I don't have the entire answer yet, but I do have an "app" on my iPod and Kindle that gets "radio" and can get internet radio shows. Apple has subscriptions to podcasts. This is a growing business while paper publishing is shrinking.
You can dock your iPhone or iPod in your car's dashboard and make internet radio come out of your car's speakers while you commute. Or subscribe to sat radio.
Other than commuting, I don't know where people find time to "listen to radio" -- but they do! See TARGETING AN AUDIENCE PART 5 again and that link above to unplugging from cable TV -- people are abandoning cable TV, broadcast TV, to the point where there are fewer and fewer TV Series, and the ones that exist do fewer shows per year. People are doing something with their time. Ebook sales are UP. People watch movies streaming on Amazon on their TV screens and smartphones! You can watch movies on Kindle Fire wherever you can get a fast wi-fi connection.
There's a huge audience, a veritable tsunami of an audience, sloshing around looking for the Glenn Beck of their field, whatever that field may be. PNR is only one of many fields that needs a Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck just about invented his field -- this whole schtick he's done on American History, and his examination of the cultural shifts we've been living through is put together from scratch. He's going into the music business and the feature film business next. He's holding huge "Events" people go to just to have a good time bringing the whole family exploring American history and cultural roots. Imagine filling a football stadium with lovers of PNR! He filled Cowboy Stadium with 65,000 people July 28, 2012 and there's a video of that program on his website (or maybe on gbtv.com ).
How can we do that? There are podcasters and web radio talk shows interviewing authors, pulling in audiences numbering in the thousands. But not 30 million. 65,000 yeah, probably, but not 30 million.
Why should we bother trying to ignite a Glenn Beck or Oprah Winfrey of our own? What has PNR got in it that our lives "need" the way Beck's audience thirsts for whatever it is they get out of watching him? (I haven't figured that out, yet, either.)
Until he started talking about the Mexican border and got squashed by his employers for it, he didn't have this kind of mojo.
What topic lies within PNR that has the same relationship to PNR that the Mexican Border does to American History? And where can we find someone to set on fire with that topic?
On twitter, they now show you this notice if you click on the CHANGE link on TRENDING NOW on their page: Trends offer a unique way to get closer to what you care about. Trends are tailored for you based on your location and who you follow.
Maybe that 'trending now' feature will help us find our very own Glenn Beck to aggregate the PNR audience, our Oprah Winfrey.
Here's a QUOTE from a recent item on what Oprah is doing from a Financial News item in June 2012:
http://news.yahoo.com/whos-landing-big-interviews-oprah-072652495--finance.html
--------------QUOTE-----------
Faced with the potential failure of her money-pit cable network OWN, Winfrey is working the phones hard to secure big-name interviews for her show, "Oprah's
Next Chapter." Back-to-back episodes last Sunday featured the
Kardashian family and rapper 50 Cent, and the Kardashians will be back
this weekend. Michael Jackson's daughter Paris and the late Whitney Houston's family made news with their interviews in recent weeks.
The open question is whether she can have the same cultural impact on a smaller stage. Winfrey's
daytime talk show was generally seen by around 6 million people in her
final years; "Oprah's Next Chapter" with the Kardashians was seen by 1.1
million viewers, according to the Nielsen company.
------------END QUOTE-------------Beck's viewership isn't in Oprah's ballpark there, but his "reach" including all his media is bigger.
I'll get back to this topic when I do figure it out. Meanwhile, don't get blindsided by the video gaming industry. Study that, too.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The Amateur Goes Professional
The Nanowrimo exercise always has beginning and professional writers talking all over facebook and twitter about how many words they produced in a day, or week, and declaring failure and dropping out of the race if they can't produce words by the yard.
Measuring of success at writing as a number of words has two sides to it:
a) many markets do pay by the "word" so the faster you produce the more money you make. Words/day = $/day = professionalism
b) but novel markets don't pay by the word but by the well turned, completed, plot with all supports in place to make it fun to read without much editing.
And then there's the non-fiction markets. Newspapers, print and online, pay by the article -- with a total subject covered within a specified number of words, K bytes, or space (lines, whatever).
Good writing is not measured by the number of words you produce -- if it were, then only short words would be professional. (one could argue that's the trend!)
However, there is something to be said for professionalism being measured in SPEED of production.
This measure is entirely market driven. Novels usually produce an advance against royalties and after the book has earned the advance, the author gets a little bit each time a copy sells. But that business model is dying very quickly.
The e-book market pays no advance, but a bigger royalty per copy sold. And books don't go out of print in a couple of weeks.
The e-author's business model then is not to write quickly, but to write something that will be talked about, tweeted about, commented on, and recommended on goodreads etc. The author's objective under the new business model must be to write solidly.
But there are bills to pay now. You can't mount a social media campaign if you can't pay your internet connection bill. So you must produce quickly, but also solidly.
This is a dilemma brought to my attention by the following tweet.
---------
SheviStories 11:44am via Tweet Button
Improv for Writers, Part 3: Speed Writer--learn to write FAST! shevi.blogspot.com/2011/11/improv… #litchat #kidlitchat #YALitChat #WritersRoad #NaNoWriMo
----------------------
Improv and Nanowrimo have something in common - training.
I've made this point many times in this blog - you don't "learn" to write, you "train" to write.
As I was taught when I was in elementary school, by the professional writer, Alma Hill, "Writing is a performing art."
This is also true of journalism where one must go out, get the story, come back and type it up for publication within the hour. The words have to be there, making sense, covering the entire topic with all the facts straight, and most of the spelling correct.
There's a college degree in journalism that gets you started, but nothing except practice actually brings that skill online for you.
And the same is true of fiction writing. Fiction is a performing art. Fiction writing is brought to professional levels and standards only by practice against a clock, against a deadline, or in competition.
That's the good thing in the nanowrimo exercise. Many people need "pressure" in an open forum, a classroom atmosphere, a newspaper's bullpen, or a filmmaker's pitch session to perfect these skills. Others master the skill set faster in private, and alone.
Most fiction-writer personalities actually do better in solitude -- at least up to a point.
So we are seeing a variety of these online open, public forum exercise halls appearing where creative people practice their skills. This crop of online trained writers will be the top tier of the profession within then next 20 years or so, the core of their career building years.
But the participants in such open exercises where they obsesses on words-by-the-day output as being "writers" will also be the occupants of the bottom tier of always-rejected writers. Those will be the folks who practiced their errors until their brains had literally incorporated the errors into their synapses and no further lessons can fix their errors.
Since the measure of professional success is $$$ income, which is caused by words-by-the-day output goals being met, and all the books on writing craft come to the same bottom line -- a million words for the garbage can before you produce anything worth selling -- how do you avoid ingraining errors?
I've seen careers go both ways -- each successive published novel a vast improvement over the last, or each successive novel repeating the same errors.
What can a beginning writer learn that can prevent that from happening to them?
That may be the wrong question. Let's phrase it another way.
Where can a beginning writer find out how to write fast? And just how fast is the right speed?
Back to the model of writing that Alma Hill taught me. Writing is a performing art. So look to the training processes in performing arts to find the best model for mastering novel writing at the professional level.
Look at the training of little girls in ballet class -- then look at a Master Class at the New York Ballet.
Look at a little boy's first violin lessons -- then look at the "lessons" taken by a member of the Philadelphia Philharmonic.
Look at piano lessons for 6th grader -- then look at jazz pianists jamming.
Is the measure of professional ballet dancing how fast you can dance? Well, yes and no.
Must a violinist play fast to earn money at it? Yes, and no.
What makes the difference between the amateur performer and the professional?
It's not the actual speed with which they do the performance but how fast they are able to understand instructions and produce what is required on the first try.
A professional actor comes onstage with a troupe from a High School, knows the whole play from having done it dozens of times, looks around the stage, sees the taped on marks for the actors, asks the director a few questions, listens carefully, then just does the performance -- with precision, effortlessly.
"Effortlessly" is the key -- as I learned from Robert Heinlein's characters, sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation.
How do you get to where you can project the seemingly effortless performance of something which is inherently difficult? Repetition. Practice.
But what exactly do you practice and how? Does just doing it over and over produce that ability?
Think of the ballet mistress drilling a professional troupe. She walks among them as they do routine stretches and moves, jogs an elbow here, prods a knee there, lines them up, pokes a chin, scolds for a sour expression -- correcting and correcting their errors and never letting them practice an error, not by a fraction of an inch.
That's what editors do for writers.
It's feedback. Writers can't get it from readers because "the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote." Reading is a very personal experience, a creative experience, a unique experience. A good story can be reread many times, and become a classic down the generations, because if there are none of those "errors" the ballet mistress corrects, the performance is "effortless" and the reader can't see the writer at all.
Each time the reader reads that book, the book is different because the reader has changed.
The editor, on the other hand, is not reading subjectively but objectively. The editor's job is to judge the work by how well it conforms to its trope, to its genre signature.
See my series of 7 posts on editing. Here is #7 with links to the previous ones.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html
Training in writing as a ballet dancer trains in ballet, or a violinist, pianist, actor, singer, football player or martial artist trains, will allow the writer to produce product at an optimum rate to allow the product to change with the reader.
The trick is to train under supervision, not just do the same thing doggedly over and over.
What Events like nanowrimo and the "games" suggested on the blog entry I found on twitter lack is that kind of feedback from supervision that a ballet mistress or voice coach provides, immediate correction, immediate discipline. The immediacy, the interruption of the move to reposition precisely, causes the training to be effective.
Haven't you wondered why working professional actors go to "voice lessons"? Surely after all these years, they don't need "lessons."
They aren't "lessons" -- nothing to learn. They are training, with instant correction of errors to prevent the ingraining of the error.
"But," you may be thinking, "there is no wrong way to write, no wrong way to tell a story!"
That's true. There is no wrong story, and no two writers achieve their end-product via the same path. In fact, any given writer will choose a different path for different works.
But just as music has a structure which is innate in the structure of the universe, so too fiction has a structure which is innate in the structure of the universe -- which is fine, because each human being is a unique bit of the structure of the universe (very possibly containing the whole universe, too).
Yes, Chinese musical scales differ (markedly) from European scales - mid-Eastern scales - etc. But each scale works in its own way from the mathematics behind sound.
Many musicians grow up playing and then composing music "by ear" -- having internalized the scale they're familiar with so they create with it. Many writers, likewise, fall right into storytelling effortlessly, by sheer talent. Emotion is to storytelling as sound is to music. There are 7 cardinal emotions behind the structure of fiction, just as there are 7 tones in an octave (two do's, different but the same). Some of us are born with a Talent for seeing those 7 emotions, others not. (this is a sub-set of the Chakras and we have to talk about Chakras and Cardinal Emotions together with how a writer can use language to stimulate the reader's Chakras, but that's a tiny bit off topic today.)
Other writers have to learn, and then train, to be able to produce their stories for a wide market. Even the talented have to train to make the top tier of worldclass performers in the scales of emotion.
So how do you train?
#1) you learn - you find out what you must do, get it into your head what the objective is.
You do that by reading blogs like this one, lots of books on writing, reading about writing, and then reading a whole lot from the field you want to write in and analyzing as I've shown you in previous blogs. And of course, you construct your business model.
#2) you practice - you train in your dojo every day, morning, noon, and night, and in between.
That means you write, just as a would-be violin soloist for a Philharmonic orchestra or a beginning opera star would practice. Six to eight hours a day, you practice.
And just what is the secret to practicing an instrument?
Tempo. That's it in a word, tempo.
First you go very slowly, striking each note with careful, precise deliberation. But not unevenly -- in tempo. The spaces between the notes, the silences, are as meaningful as the sound in forming the ultimate product, the song, the poetry of emotion. So you start by striking those notes.
In fact, you learn to touch-type and become speedy at it the same way. Careful, singular, deliberate strikes, one plodding strike at a time, but in the correct rhythm. Go slowly enough that you can do it accurately.
Once you have the basic process down, one note after another, you do it again and again, nice and even, but with a relentless BEAT -- you make a mistake, you don't stop, you just plonk right onwards. Next time through, you focus on that missed-spot and you hit it, staying in tempo. And then again, and again, until you get it right. If you stop every time you make a mistake, you learn to make a mistake right there and stop. It ruins the performance. So you play through the mistake, and plod on.
If you try the nanowrimo too soon in your mastery, you'll fail because you aren't ready for full speed. It's just like martial arts training - you get fast by going slow.
Gradually, you pick up the tempo, but not so much that the speed makes you make mistakes. And you do it at that speed until you don't make mistakes. Then you pick up the tempo, and do it again and again. Then faster.
Once you've learned a number of songs that way, you begin to find that the next one you learn is easier to learn.
Now a "song" in music is like a "genre" in fiction -- a song, a piece, a symphony, a quartet, and so on -- each has a structure, a protocol, an appeal based on expectations. In dance, choreography has "composition" -- (competitive figure skating too) -- each type of artform has its "rules" comprised of the elements that have been successful with large audiences.
Becoming a professional writer is just like becoming a professional musician able to play "requests" at a party, or an audition for a movie, or to be in the orchestra at a circus performance. Yes it takes practice, but you must not practice your mistakes. Speed is not the objective. Just because you can play it fast doesn't mean you played it well. The "speed" the professional has that the amateur doesn't have lies in the ability to do new things as easily and proficiently as doing old things.
That "speed" comes from spending one's whole work-day on just this one skill, acquiring, practicing UNDER SUPERVISION so errors get corrected before they get ingrained, teaching, and performing -- a whole life focused on this one skill.
That's why you must get paid for your work -- because there's no time to do anything else, no strength or attention.
To get paid, you don't write a certain quota of words per day, you write the appropriate amount at the appropriate tempo for this performance. Professionalism allows you to judge what is "appropriate" in each instance and be right -- because your very life depends on that judgement. If you're wrong, you don't get paid and can't buy food.
Trust me, money sharpens the judgement remarkably.
Look at the career of Johnston McCulley -- historical yes, and in an era with a slightly different business model than we can use today -- but well worth learning from:
----------FROM "Tales of Thubway Tham" Wildside Press 2011 on Kindle ----------
Johnston McCulley will be forever famous as the creator of Zorro, the Robin Hood-like hero of old California. But few realize how truly prolific and creative McCulley was throughout his long career as a writer. McCulley (1883-1958) made first true specialist in pulp-fiction periodical, Detective Story Magazine, a special home for his work. In its pages he launched series after series . . . The Avenging Twins (who appeared in a series of eight adventures between 1923 and1926), the Black Star (fourteen stories from 1916-1930), The Crimson Clown (seventeen stories from 1926-1931), The Man in Purple (three stories in 1921), The Spider (eleven stories between1918 and 1919), Terry Trimble (four stories between 1917 and 1919), The Thunderbolt (three stories between 1920 and 1921) but most especially Thubway Tham (who appeared in more than one hundred and eighty stories between 1916 and 1948, at first in Detective Story Magazine, but later in such places as Thrilling Detective, with later reprints in The Saint Mystery Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and others). The Thubway Tham series, you will note,starts before and lasts longer than all of McCulley’s other mystery series combined! Clearly Tham was a favorite character, one to whom the author returned time and again.
Thubway Tham is a small, short-tempered gnome of a man, a professional pickpocket with an annoying lisp. But he is no mere thief . . . he is the king of his chosen profession, a master “dip” who works only in the subways of New York City. Like all such villains, he faces a cunning adversary in Police Detective Craddock, who is always half a pace behind. Craddock has sworn to put Tham behind bars, where he belongs. But Tham is clever enough to always remain one step ahead of Craddock and everyone else.
Johnston McCulley; John Betancourt. Tales of Thubway Tham (Kindle Locations 48-50).
------------------------
There are echoes of the pulp era business model with the advent of e-publishing, Indie publishers and self publishing. The similarities may far outweigh the differences, so study the careers of famous writers of that era for how they learned and honed their craft.
Nanowrimo is trying to simulate that pulp era honing, and may just be the tonic you need to get you going and keep you going. But remember the ballet mistress training already famous professional ballerinas, pounding her cane and shouting ONE-TWO-THREE-ELBOWS OUT CHIN IN - FOUR FIVE!
Improv has a lot to be said for it, but as with acting, it's more a matter of with whom you improv than what you improv.
If you can find an elderly Johnston McCulley to watch you write, smack your jutting elbows and elevate your chin and remind you to smile while you type, you may find these online exposures to writing/pacing well worth while.
Just remember success isn't counted by a certain number of words per day but by the appropriate number of words per project.
You want to earn the title true specialist in the e-book world? Practice, practice, practice performing your art.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Measuring of success at writing as a number of words has two sides to it:
a) many markets do pay by the "word" so the faster you produce the more money you make. Words/day = $/day = professionalism
b) but novel markets don't pay by the word but by the well turned, completed, plot with all supports in place to make it fun to read without much editing.
And then there's the non-fiction markets. Newspapers, print and online, pay by the article -- with a total subject covered within a specified number of words, K bytes, or space (lines, whatever).
Good writing is not measured by the number of words you produce -- if it were, then only short words would be professional. (one could argue that's the trend!)
However, there is something to be said for professionalism being measured in SPEED of production.
This measure is entirely market driven. Novels usually produce an advance against royalties and after the book has earned the advance, the author gets a little bit each time a copy sells. But that business model is dying very quickly.
The e-book market pays no advance, but a bigger royalty per copy sold. And books don't go out of print in a couple of weeks.
The e-author's business model then is not to write quickly, but to write something that will be talked about, tweeted about, commented on, and recommended on goodreads etc. The author's objective under the new business model must be to write solidly.
But there are bills to pay now. You can't mount a social media campaign if you can't pay your internet connection bill. So you must produce quickly, but also solidly.
This is a dilemma brought to my attention by the following tweet.
---------
SheviStories 11:44am via Tweet Button
Improv for Writers, Part 3: Speed Writer--learn to write FAST! shevi.blogspot.com/2011/11/improv… #litchat #kidlitchat #YALitChat #WritersRoad #NaNoWriMo
----------------------
Improv and Nanowrimo have something in common - training.
I've made this point many times in this blog - you don't "learn" to write, you "train" to write.
As I was taught when I was in elementary school, by the professional writer, Alma Hill, "Writing is a performing art."
This is also true of journalism where one must go out, get the story, come back and type it up for publication within the hour. The words have to be there, making sense, covering the entire topic with all the facts straight, and most of the spelling correct.
There's a college degree in journalism that gets you started, but nothing except practice actually brings that skill online for you.
And the same is true of fiction writing. Fiction is a performing art. Fiction writing is brought to professional levels and standards only by practice against a clock, against a deadline, or in competition.
That's the good thing in the nanowrimo exercise. Many people need "pressure" in an open forum, a classroom atmosphere, a newspaper's bullpen, or a filmmaker's pitch session to perfect these skills. Others master the skill set faster in private, and alone.
Most fiction-writer personalities actually do better in solitude -- at least up to a point.
So we are seeing a variety of these online open, public forum exercise halls appearing where creative people practice their skills. This crop of online trained writers will be the top tier of the profession within then next 20 years or so, the core of their career building years.
But the participants in such open exercises where they obsesses on words-by-the-day output as being "writers" will also be the occupants of the bottom tier of always-rejected writers. Those will be the folks who practiced their errors until their brains had literally incorporated the errors into their synapses and no further lessons can fix their errors.
Since the measure of professional success is $$$ income, which is caused by words-by-the-day output goals being met, and all the books on writing craft come to the same bottom line -- a million words for the garbage can before you produce anything worth selling -- how do you avoid ingraining errors?
I've seen careers go both ways -- each successive published novel a vast improvement over the last, or each successive novel repeating the same errors.
What can a beginning writer learn that can prevent that from happening to them?
That may be the wrong question. Let's phrase it another way.
Where can a beginning writer find out how to write fast? And just how fast is the right speed?
Back to the model of writing that Alma Hill taught me. Writing is a performing art. So look to the training processes in performing arts to find the best model for mastering novel writing at the professional level.
Look at the training of little girls in ballet class -- then look at a Master Class at the New York Ballet.
Look at a little boy's first violin lessons -- then look at the "lessons" taken by a member of the Philadelphia Philharmonic.
Look at piano lessons for 6th grader -- then look at jazz pianists jamming.
Is the measure of professional ballet dancing how fast you can dance? Well, yes and no.
Must a violinist play fast to earn money at it? Yes, and no.
What makes the difference between the amateur performer and the professional?
It's not the actual speed with which they do the performance but how fast they are able to understand instructions and produce what is required on the first try.
A professional actor comes onstage with a troupe from a High School, knows the whole play from having done it dozens of times, looks around the stage, sees the taped on marks for the actors, asks the director a few questions, listens carefully, then just does the performance -- with precision, effortlessly.
"Effortlessly" is the key -- as I learned from Robert Heinlein's characters, sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation.
How do you get to where you can project the seemingly effortless performance of something which is inherently difficult? Repetition. Practice.
But what exactly do you practice and how? Does just doing it over and over produce that ability?
Think of the ballet mistress drilling a professional troupe. She walks among them as they do routine stretches and moves, jogs an elbow here, prods a knee there, lines them up, pokes a chin, scolds for a sour expression -- correcting and correcting their errors and never letting them practice an error, not by a fraction of an inch.
That's what editors do for writers.
It's feedback. Writers can't get it from readers because "the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote." Reading is a very personal experience, a creative experience, a unique experience. A good story can be reread many times, and become a classic down the generations, because if there are none of those "errors" the ballet mistress corrects, the performance is "effortless" and the reader can't see the writer at all.
Each time the reader reads that book, the book is different because the reader has changed.
The editor, on the other hand, is not reading subjectively but objectively. The editor's job is to judge the work by how well it conforms to its trope, to its genre signature.
See my series of 7 posts on editing. Here is #7 with links to the previous ones.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html
Training in writing as a ballet dancer trains in ballet, or a violinist, pianist, actor, singer, football player or martial artist trains, will allow the writer to produce product at an optimum rate to allow the product to change with the reader.
The trick is to train under supervision, not just do the same thing doggedly over and over.
What Events like nanowrimo and the "games" suggested on the blog entry I found on twitter lack is that kind of feedback from supervision that a ballet mistress or voice coach provides, immediate correction, immediate discipline. The immediacy, the interruption of the move to reposition precisely, causes the training to be effective.
Haven't you wondered why working professional actors go to "voice lessons"? Surely after all these years, they don't need "lessons."
They aren't "lessons" -- nothing to learn. They are training, with instant correction of errors to prevent the ingraining of the error.
"But," you may be thinking, "there is no wrong way to write, no wrong way to tell a story!"
That's true. There is no wrong story, and no two writers achieve their end-product via the same path. In fact, any given writer will choose a different path for different works.
But just as music has a structure which is innate in the structure of the universe, so too fiction has a structure which is innate in the structure of the universe -- which is fine, because each human being is a unique bit of the structure of the universe (very possibly containing the whole universe, too).
Yes, Chinese musical scales differ (markedly) from European scales - mid-Eastern scales - etc. But each scale works in its own way from the mathematics behind sound.
Many musicians grow up playing and then composing music "by ear" -- having internalized the scale they're familiar with so they create with it. Many writers, likewise, fall right into storytelling effortlessly, by sheer talent. Emotion is to storytelling as sound is to music. There are 7 cardinal emotions behind the structure of fiction, just as there are 7 tones in an octave (two do's, different but the same). Some of us are born with a Talent for seeing those 7 emotions, others not. (this is a sub-set of the Chakras and we have to talk about Chakras and Cardinal Emotions together with how a writer can use language to stimulate the reader's Chakras, but that's a tiny bit off topic today.)
Other writers have to learn, and then train, to be able to produce their stories for a wide market. Even the talented have to train to make the top tier of worldclass performers in the scales of emotion.
So how do you train?
#1) you learn - you find out what you must do, get it into your head what the objective is.
You do that by reading blogs like this one, lots of books on writing, reading about writing, and then reading a whole lot from the field you want to write in and analyzing as I've shown you in previous blogs. And of course, you construct your business model.
#2) you practice - you train in your dojo every day, morning, noon, and night, and in between.
That means you write, just as a would-be violin soloist for a Philharmonic orchestra or a beginning opera star would practice. Six to eight hours a day, you practice.
And just what is the secret to practicing an instrument?
Tempo. That's it in a word, tempo.
First you go very slowly, striking each note with careful, precise deliberation. But not unevenly -- in tempo. The spaces between the notes, the silences, are as meaningful as the sound in forming the ultimate product, the song, the poetry of emotion. So you start by striking those notes.
In fact, you learn to touch-type and become speedy at it the same way. Careful, singular, deliberate strikes, one plodding strike at a time, but in the correct rhythm. Go slowly enough that you can do it accurately.
Once you have the basic process down, one note after another, you do it again and again, nice and even, but with a relentless BEAT -- you make a mistake, you don't stop, you just plonk right onwards. Next time through, you focus on that missed-spot and you hit it, staying in tempo. And then again, and again, until you get it right. If you stop every time you make a mistake, you learn to make a mistake right there and stop. It ruins the performance. So you play through the mistake, and plod on.
If you try the nanowrimo too soon in your mastery, you'll fail because you aren't ready for full speed. It's just like martial arts training - you get fast by going slow.
Gradually, you pick up the tempo, but not so much that the speed makes you make mistakes. And you do it at that speed until you don't make mistakes. Then you pick up the tempo, and do it again and again. Then faster.
Once you've learned a number of songs that way, you begin to find that the next one you learn is easier to learn.
Now a "song" in music is like a "genre" in fiction -- a song, a piece, a symphony, a quartet, and so on -- each has a structure, a protocol, an appeal based on expectations. In dance, choreography has "composition" -- (competitive figure skating too) -- each type of artform has its "rules" comprised of the elements that have been successful with large audiences.
Becoming a professional writer is just like becoming a professional musician able to play "requests" at a party, or an audition for a movie, or to be in the orchestra at a circus performance. Yes it takes practice, but you must not practice your mistakes. Speed is not the objective. Just because you can play it fast doesn't mean you played it well. The "speed" the professional has that the amateur doesn't have lies in the ability to do new things as easily and proficiently as doing old things.
That "speed" comes from spending one's whole work-day on just this one skill, acquiring, practicing UNDER SUPERVISION so errors get corrected before they get ingrained, teaching, and performing -- a whole life focused on this one skill.
That's why you must get paid for your work -- because there's no time to do anything else, no strength or attention.
To get paid, you don't write a certain quota of words per day, you write the appropriate amount at the appropriate tempo for this performance. Professionalism allows you to judge what is "appropriate" in each instance and be right -- because your very life depends on that judgement. If you're wrong, you don't get paid and can't buy food.
Trust me, money sharpens the judgement remarkably.
Look at the career of Johnston McCulley -- historical yes, and in an era with a slightly different business model than we can use today -- but well worth learning from:
----------FROM "Tales of Thubway Tham" Wildside Press 2011 on Kindle ----------
Johnston McCulley will be forever famous as the creator of Zorro, the Robin Hood-like hero of old California. But few realize how truly prolific and creative McCulley was throughout his long career as a writer. McCulley (1883-1958) made first true specialist in pulp-fiction periodical, Detective Story Magazine, a special home for his work. In its pages he launched series after series . . . The Avenging Twins (who appeared in a series of eight adventures between 1923 and1926), the Black Star (fourteen stories from 1916-1930), The Crimson Clown (seventeen stories from 1926-1931), The Man in Purple (three stories in 1921), The Spider (eleven stories between1918 and 1919), Terry Trimble (four stories between 1917 and 1919), The Thunderbolt (three stories between 1920 and 1921) but most especially Thubway Tham (who appeared in more than one hundred and eighty stories between 1916 and 1948, at first in Detective Story Magazine, but later in such places as Thrilling Detective, with later reprints in The Saint Mystery Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and others). The Thubway Tham series, you will note,starts before and lasts longer than all of McCulley’s other mystery series combined! Clearly Tham was a favorite character, one to whom the author returned time and again.
Thubway Tham is a small, short-tempered gnome of a man, a professional pickpocket with an annoying lisp. But he is no mere thief . . . he is the king of his chosen profession, a master “dip” who works only in the subways of New York City. Like all such villains, he faces a cunning adversary in Police Detective Craddock, who is always half a pace behind. Craddock has sworn to put Tham behind bars, where he belongs. But Tham is clever enough to always remain one step ahead of Craddock and everyone else.
Johnston McCulley; John Betancourt. Tales of Thubway Tham (Kindle Locations 48-50).
------------------------
There are echoes of the pulp era business model with the advent of e-publishing, Indie publishers and self publishing. The similarities may far outweigh the differences, so study the careers of famous writers of that era for how they learned and honed their craft.
Nanowrimo is trying to simulate that pulp era honing, and may just be the tonic you need to get you going and keep you going. But remember the ballet mistress training already famous professional ballerinas, pounding her cane and shouting ONE-TWO-THREE-ELBOWS OUT CHIN IN - FOUR FIVE!
Improv has a lot to be said for it, but as with acting, it's more a matter of with whom you improv than what you improv.
If you can find an elderly Johnston McCulley to watch you write, smack your jutting elbows and elevate your chin and remind you to smile while you type, you may find these online exposures to writing/pacing well worth while.
Just remember success isn't counted by a certain number of words per day but by the appropriate number of words per project.
You want to earn the title true specialist in the e-book world? Practice, practice, practice performing your art.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Believing in Happily Ever After Part 5 TV Series Once Upon A Time on ABC
Part 4 of this Believing in Happily Ever After sequence of blog posts is
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
It has links to the previous 3 parts and the Verisimilitude vs. Reality series.
In Verisimiltude vs. Reality and other posts linked in that series, we delved into the real world the reader lives in and looked at how that real-world environment shapes the enjoyment of a fictional environment. Eventually, we'll look even deeper into various methods a writer uses to handle theme and how the chosen method affects the size and shape of the audience the writer might reach.
The purpose of this study is to deliver a Happily Ever After ending experience to readers/viewers who flatly disbelieve in the possibility.
Part of the real-world environment a reader lives in is the fiction (video, text, big screen, radio) the reader is immersed in.
The TV Series Once Upon A Time on ABC is part of that environment.
I was reminded forcefully of this in November 2011 by the announcement of the death of Anne McCaffrey, creator of the Dragonriders of Pern. Her biography page says she was born April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 1:30 p.m. and her first novel was published by Ballantine Books in 1967.
My first story was published by Fred Pohl in World of If Magazine of Science Fiction in January 1969.
In April of 2011 Copperheart announced that filming of the first Pern novel, Dragonflight, would begin in 2012.
http://collider.com/david-hayter-dragonflight-dragonriders-of-pern/85654/
The Friday after the announcement of her passing was a #scifichat devoted to Santa, and what SF presents SF readers would give to other SF readers. But the second hour of the chat became a remembrance of Anne McCaffrey, not just Pern but all her other wonderful novels. The discussion branched out into writers she had influenced and what her success with Pern introduced to the entire field.
McCaffrey broke through with not just the overt sexuality of the Dragon/Rider relationship in the Pern novels, but the emotional bonding of a true, committed, to-the-death relationship. That angle resonated with the audience of the 1970's.
I don't know what they're planning to do with the film, but there are Pern fans involved in creating it. From the discussion on twitter, though, I gather different readers remember different components of those novels.
Some people had avoided the Pern novels because they thought the novels were fantasy. They aren't. They're science fiction that looks like fantasy.
Fast-forward to 2012 and take a close look at the TV Series Once Upon A Time.
Is it fantasy or science fiction? Is it Paranormal Romance? Is it kid-lit? What is this series? Is it even important?
Note how it does 2 things that have become standard fare on Television.
a) It rewrites "history" as "steam punk" does -- but focuses on the fairy tale universe of Snow White and Prince Charming with the Wicked Witch (complete with mirror and poison apples), not the Victorian era.
b) It juxtaposes this "fantasy" world of the rewritten storybook with our everyday reality, (like Urban Fantasy often uses 2 universes with a door between). You may remember how Forever Knight handled flashbacks to hundreds of years ago.
Yep, I said "between" -- which isn't quite like "Between" of the Pern novels through which Dragons teleport their Riders to fight Thread.
But the principle is the same as Star Trek's transporter, Warp Drive, or any number of "devices" that let characters travel from one spot to another fast enough not to slow the plot down.
Once an audience has been introduced to these techniques -- as in Time Tunnel, Quantum Leap, or Sliders -- producers doing another show can use that technique as a given and get on with their own stories.
So, despite McCaffrey introducing readers to Between in the 1970's, and Star Trek's transporter and warp drive coming online in the 1960's, the Pern movie will be regarded as borrowing or stealing the "device" of Between.
The Pern novels start at the beginning of a period of warfare against "Thread" (a crop-destroying rain of organisms from space), in which misery, starvation, poverty, and perhaps the extinction of humanity on the planet Pern, are the apparent direction of life. An apparently stable society is brought down around the heads of its ordinary people, and it's power brokers, while the disregarded powerless are elevated to hero status.
It's very much what this reality faces today -- the impending or actually in progress meltdown of the global financial system. Or the meltdown may be over by now and we just don't realize we've hit bottom and are going to climb again.
We also have impending war, and war in progress in a lot of places, war that brings the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
That's the reality the audience lives in, and would very much like to escape.
What's better than escaping Reality, though, is coming to understand it in a way that lets you carve out a life leading to your own Happily Ever After. Fiction can provide that kind of "grip" on reality that steadies you down for the long haul up to a better life.
The Pern novels depict a world locked in a frozen feudal system, suddenly attacked by Thread, and saved by the superstitious, traditional, disregarded, way too expensive fossilized organization known as the Dragonriders. Suddenly, the feudal lords can't protect their people, but the poverty-stricken, useless, and widely regarded as nut-fringe folks are the only ones who can protect people.
I think Pern can fly as a TV Series once it's been a successful movie.
Pern does not paint a rosey Happily Ever After picture. It doesn't even give you a "Happily For Now" (HFN) ending. The novels end on the upbeat of a challenge conquered, but with the vista of a new, bigger challenge yet to come.
The Hope in these endings is that during the "action" section of the novels, Relationships form that are solid, perhaps unbreakable, and enable the teams to face bigger challenges with the expectation of surviving. Thus the Pern novels are perfect examples of Intimate Adventure.
The secret of the Pern novels though is in the story the theme its founded on, and how that theme is shown not told.
The Relationships formed have the seeds of real Happiness in them, and the overwhelming force of what might be described as karma.
The characters, dragons and humans, all go through a stepwise process of bonding with a soul mate, and the result always seems - after the fact - to have been inevitable, right, and just.
Yes, Poetic Justice again:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_22.html
The Pern novels are a perfect example of a) Paranormal Romance (the telepathic bonding with Dragons) and karmic marriages, and b) that there really is Justice in the world, and it always SINGS (music is a huge component of the Pern world).
Now, contrast/compare the TV Series Once Upon A Time with the Pern novels of Anne McCaffrey.
Eventually, the Pern series does get to including time travel, so there is another comparison.
Once Upon A Time updates the fairy tale world of Snow White etc. using modern characters and relationships. The story is thus more accessible or believable to the adult audience.
The thing is, when these fairy tales were originally circulating as folk-tales, they depicted the "real" or modern world the intended audience lived in. Today, there aren't many "folk" tales, made up by non-professional story-tellers and passed around to be improved on by others. Most of our fiction, even for children, is professionally created and designed for the broadest possible audience. (YouTube is changing that; urban folk-legends and folk music is reviving!)
So it would seem appropriate to "update" the oldest tales again, and embue them with the moral lessons of today's world, rather than the original lessons inserted by the Brothers Grimm from extant folktales that probably date back before the 1500's. It's done in every generation.
Google "Snow White" and you'll find everything from a new forthcoming movie to scholarship by serious professors. Folk tales are very revealing of the underlying culture.
So consider what this Once Upon A Time TV Series reveals about Hollywood's idea of our culture, of what we are, what we should be, and what we want to be.
There's a lot of philosophical material in this subject, some of it as yet untouched by writers looking for themes.
I want to point you to just one aspect of this series that you can ponder and maybe plunder for story material.
The premise of Once Upon A Time is that the Evil Witch curses the community of Snow White and Prince Charming to be transported to a place where THERE ARE NO HAPPILY EVER AFTER ENDINGS - not for anyone except the Evil Witch herself!
And that place where it is a fact that the HEA does not exist and can never exist is HERE - in our everyday reality.
The Evil Witch is now the Mayor of a small town in the USA where people can't leave - they can't escape. If they try, horrid things happen, driving them back. The Mayor's word is law. She's happy.
The curse can be broken, but only by one woman who was born when the curse was hurled. She was rescued and flung aside into our world before the curse trapped her, too.
Only one small boy knows what's going on because he found the fairy tale book. He lures the woman who can break the curse to the town, they wake Prince Charming from a coma, and then things get interesting.
The premise that sells this TV show to a major network may be taken to be "this world's natural condition is that Happily Ever After can not happen." That's why this world was the Evil Witch's chosen destination. Or maybe the curse only applies to the one small town the Witch dominates? It's fascinating how they dance around this topic, probably waiting for ratings responses to see which direction to take the show.
They appear to be waiting to see if the majority subconsciously believe that Happily Ever After can't happen in this world. And then they'll decide what to do about changing that situation.
By using this premise as the main conflict, the series creators induce a hostile audience to watch (and become addicted to) a fairy tale about restoring the world's ability to produce a Happily Ever After ending to Romances.
They can wait to see the audience response to decide how "dark" to make this world, just as the TV Series Beauty and the Beast danced around the Romance -- the premise being that the couple could never be together (because he was a Beast who had to hide "below" in darkness).
The Once Upon A Time TV series may be the breakthrough Event (the Overton Window Event) we've been looking for. It may be another try at the Beauty and the Beast audience, and it might succeed in reaching beyond that audience. Another show in this line of development is Lois And Clark. The dramatic problem with all these show-premises is that once the inherent conflict is solved, the show is over. If you don't solve it, the audience loses interest. If you do solve it, your job as writer/producer is over and you don't get paid anymore. The only way to avoid solving the problem is to turn the plot in a "dark" direction, away from the Happily Ever After.
The beginning of Once Upon A Time takes our theme, our main problem, and puts it "on the nose" the exact way the TV Series Leverage treats its theme ("The rich and powerful take what they want: we steal it back for you.")
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-2.html
But the TV Series Leverage is structured for an endless sequence of adventures while the main characters barely hang onto life and sanity.
The TV Series Once Upon A Time may herald a change in what's acceptable to particular audiences as Star Trek and Pern did in the 1970's. The producers may tackle the conflict head-on and change our world into a world where Happily Ever After is an available option for most people, including fairy tale characters trapped in a town dominated by an Evil Witch.
Oh, do remember, Star Trek was not popular in the late 1960's when it first aired for barely 3 years. The explosion only came when it went into reruns and sifted into the consciousness of TV viewers during the 1970's. Those were not the same people who were reading Pern, though there were overlaps.
Most people who read Pern (and Sime~Gen) watched Star Trek -- but most people who watched Star Trek did not read Pern or any other science fiction. In fact, even when the Star Trek novels took off as New York Times Bestsellers (an unprecedented event I participated in by being the Agent who sold A. C. Crispin's Star Trek original novel Yesterday's Son), those who bought and devoured those tie-in novels did not follow the established Science Fiction authors who wrote them back into the authors' own worlds.
It took decades (a generation) to bring Star Trek tie-in readers into science fiction.
The main force that I think did it was Star Trek fan fiction (which is what my non-fiction book Star Trek Lives! is about).
Writers of Star Trek fan fiction grew up to be Science Fiction and/or Fantasy professionals, an unthinkable result of indulging in writing fan fiction. The explosion of the adult Fantasy novels mostly by women writers, many of whom had been fanfic writers or readers, opened the door for the modern treatment of sexuality and soul-mate bonding in Paranormal Fantasy.
I don't think it's a cause-effect chain of events. But there is a relationship that we can explore in later entries in this blog series.
In the mean time, watch Once Upon A Time, read the Dragonriders of Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey, and compare them. And see what is done with Pern on film!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
It has links to the previous 3 parts and the Verisimilitude vs. Reality series.
In Verisimiltude vs. Reality and other posts linked in that series, we delved into the real world the reader lives in and looked at how that real-world environment shapes the enjoyment of a fictional environment. Eventually, we'll look even deeper into various methods a writer uses to handle theme and how the chosen method affects the size and shape of the audience the writer might reach.
The purpose of this study is to deliver a Happily Ever After ending experience to readers/viewers who flatly disbelieve in the possibility.
Part of the real-world environment a reader lives in is the fiction (video, text, big screen, radio) the reader is immersed in.
The TV Series Once Upon A Time on ABC is part of that environment.
I was reminded forcefully of this in November 2011 by the announcement of the death of Anne McCaffrey, creator of the Dragonriders of Pern. Her biography page says she was born April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 1:30 p.m. and her first novel was published by Ballantine Books in 1967.
My first story was published by Fred Pohl in World of If Magazine of Science Fiction in January 1969.
In April of 2011 Copperheart announced that filming of the first Pern novel, Dragonflight, would begin in 2012.
http://collider.com/david-hayter-dragonflight-dragonriders-of-pern/85654/
The Friday after the announcement of her passing was a #scifichat devoted to Santa, and what SF presents SF readers would give to other SF readers. But the second hour of the chat became a remembrance of Anne McCaffrey, not just Pern but all her other wonderful novels. The discussion branched out into writers she had influenced and what her success with Pern introduced to the entire field.
McCaffrey broke through with not just the overt sexuality of the Dragon/Rider relationship in the Pern novels, but the emotional bonding of a true, committed, to-the-death relationship. That angle resonated with the audience of the 1970's.
I don't know what they're planning to do with the film, but there are Pern fans involved in creating it. From the discussion on twitter, though, I gather different readers remember different components of those novels.
Some people had avoided the Pern novels because they thought the novels were fantasy. They aren't. They're science fiction that looks like fantasy.
Fast-forward to 2012 and take a close look at the TV Series Once Upon A Time.
Is it fantasy or science fiction? Is it Paranormal Romance? Is it kid-lit? What is this series? Is it even important?
Note how it does 2 things that have become standard fare on Television.
a) It rewrites "history" as "steam punk" does -- but focuses on the fairy tale universe of Snow White and Prince Charming with the Wicked Witch (complete with mirror and poison apples), not the Victorian era.
b) It juxtaposes this "fantasy" world of the rewritten storybook with our everyday reality, (like Urban Fantasy often uses 2 universes with a door between). You may remember how Forever Knight handled flashbacks to hundreds of years ago.
Yep, I said "between" -- which isn't quite like "Between" of the Pern novels through which Dragons teleport their Riders to fight Thread.
But the principle is the same as Star Trek's transporter, Warp Drive, or any number of "devices" that let characters travel from one spot to another fast enough not to slow the plot down.
Once an audience has been introduced to these techniques -- as in Time Tunnel, Quantum Leap, or Sliders -- producers doing another show can use that technique as a given and get on with their own stories.
So, despite McCaffrey introducing readers to Between in the 1970's, and Star Trek's transporter and warp drive coming online in the 1960's, the Pern movie will be regarded as borrowing or stealing the "device" of Between.
The Pern novels start at the beginning of a period of warfare against "Thread" (a crop-destroying rain of organisms from space), in which misery, starvation, poverty, and perhaps the extinction of humanity on the planet Pern, are the apparent direction of life. An apparently stable society is brought down around the heads of its ordinary people, and it's power brokers, while the disregarded powerless are elevated to hero status.
It's very much what this reality faces today -- the impending or actually in progress meltdown of the global financial system. Or the meltdown may be over by now and we just don't realize we've hit bottom and are going to climb again.
We also have impending war, and war in progress in a lot of places, war that brings the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
That's the reality the audience lives in, and would very much like to escape.
What's better than escaping Reality, though, is coming to understand it in a way that lets you carve out a life leading to your own Happily Ever After. Fiction can provide that kind of "grip" on reality that steadies you down for the long haul up to a better life.
The Pern novels depict a world locked in a frozen feudal system, suddenly attacked by Thread, and saved by the superstitious, traditional, disregarded, way too expensive fossilized organization known as the Dragonriders. Suddenly, the feudal lords can't protect their people, but the poverty-stricken, useless, and widely regarded as nut-fringe folks are the only ones who can protect people.
I think Pern can fly as a TV Series once it's been a successful movie.
Pern does not paint a rosey Happily Ever After picture. It doesn't even give you a "Happily For Now" (HFN) ending. The novels end on the upbeat of a challenge conquered, but with the vista of a new, bigger challenge yet to come.
The Hope in these endings is that during the "action" section of the novels, Relationships form that are solid, perhaps unbreakable, and enable the teams to face bigger challenges with the expectation of surviving. Thus the Pern novels are perfect examples of Intimate Adventure.
The secret of the Pern novels though is in the story the theme its founded on, and how that theme is shown not told.
The Relationships formed have the seeds of real Happiness in them, and the overwhelming force of what might be described as karma.
The characters, dragons and humans, all go through a stepwise process of bonding with a soul mate, and the result always seems - after the fact - to have been inevitable, right, and just.
Yes, Poetic Justice again:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_22.html
The Pern novels are a perfect example of a) Paranormal Romance (the telepathic bonding with Dragons) and karmic marriages, and b) that there really is Justice in the world, and it always SINGS (music is a huge component of the Pern world).
Now, contrast/compare the TV Series Once Upon A Time with the Pern novels of Anne McCaffrey.
Eventually, the Pern series does get to including time travel, so there is another comparison.
Once Upon A Time updates the fairy tale world of Snow White etc. using modern characters and relationships. The story is thus more accessible or believable to the adult audience.
The thing is, when these fairy tales were originally circulating as folk-tales, they depicted the "real" or modern world the intended audience lived in. Today, there aren't many "folk" tales, made up by non-professional story-tellers and passed around to be improved on by others. Most of our fiction, even for children, is professionally created and designed for the broadest possible audience. (YouTube is changing that; urban folk-legends and folk music is reviving!)
So it would seem appropriate to "update" the oldest tales again, and embue them with the moral lessons of today's world, rather than the original lessons inserted by the Brothers Grimm from extant folktales that probably date back before the 1500's. It's done in every generation.
Google "Snow White" and you'll find everything from a new forthcoming movie to scholarship by serious professors. Folk tales are very revealing of the underlying culture.
So consider what this Once Upon A Time TV Series reveals about Hollywood's idea of our culture, of what we are, what we should be, and what we want to be.
There's a lot of philosophical material in this subject, some of it as yet untouched by writers looking for themes.
I want to point you to just one aspect of this series that you can ponder and maybe plunder for story material.
The premise of Once Upon A Time is that the Evil Witch curses the community of Snow White and Prince Charming to be transported to a place where THERE ARE NO HAPPILY EVER AFTER ENDINGS - not for anyone except the Evil Witch herself!
And that place where it is a fact that the HEA does not exist and can never exist is HERE - in our everyday reality.
The Evil Witch is now the Mayor of a small town in the USA where people can't leave - they can't escape. If they try, horrid things happen, driving them back. The Mayor's word is law. She's happy.
The curse can be broken, but only by one woman who was born when the curse was hurled. She was rescued and flung aside into our world before the curse trapped her, too.
Only one small boy knows what's going on because he found the fairy tale book. He lures the woman who can break the curse to the town, they wake Prince Charming from a coma, and then things get interesting.
The premise that sells this TV show to a major network may be taken to be "this world's natural condition is that Happily Ever After can not happen." That's why this world was the Evil Witch's chosen destination. Or maybe the curse only applies to the one small town the Witch dominates? It's fascinating how they dance around this topic, probably waiting for ratings responses to see which direction to take the show.
They appear to be waiting to see if the majority subconsciously believe that Happily Ever After can't happen in this world. And then they'll decide what to do about changing that situation.
By using this premise as the main conflict, the series creators induce a hostile audience to watch (and become addicted to) a fairy tale about restoring the world's ability to produce a Happily Ever After ending to Romances.
They can wait to see the audience response to decide how "dark" to make this world, just as the TV Series Beauty and the Beast danced around the Romance -- the premise being that the couple could never be together (because he was a Beast who had to hide "below" in darkness).
The Once Upon A Time TV series may be the breakthrough Event (the Overton Window Event) we've been looking for. It may be another try at the Beauty and the Beast audience, and it might succeed in reaching beyond that audience. Another show in this line of development is Lois And Clark. The dramatic problem with all these show-premises is that once the inherent conflict is solved, the show is over. If you don't solve it, the audience loses interest. If you do solve it, your job as writer/producer is over and you don't get paid anymore. The only way to avoid solving the problem is to turn the plot in a "dark" direction, away from the Happily Ever After.
The beginning of Once Upon A Time takes our theme, our main problem, and puts it "on the nose" the exact way the TV Series Leverage treats its theme ("The rich and powerful take what they want: we steal it back for you.")
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-2.html
But the TV Series Leverage is structured for an endless sequence of adventures while the main characters barely hang onto life and sanity.
The TV Series Once Upon A Time may herald a change in what's acceptable to particular audiences as Star Trek and Pern did in the 1970's. The producers may tackle the conflict head-on and change our world into a world where Happily Ever After is an available option for most people, including fairy tale characters trapped in a town dominated by an Evil Witch.
Oh, do remember, Star Trek was not popular in the late 1960's when it first aired for barely 3 years. The explosion only came when it went into reruns and sifted into the consciousness of TV viewers during the 1970's. Those were not the same people who were reading Pern, though there were overlaps.
Most people who read Pern (and Sime~Gen) watched Star Trek -- but most people who watched Star Trek did not read Pern or any other science fiction. In fact, even when the Star Trek novels took off as New York Times Bestsellers (an unprecedented event I participated in by being the Agent who sold A. C. Crispin's Star Trek original novel Yesterday's Son), those who bought and devoured those tie-in novels did not follow the established Science Fiction authors who wrote them back into the authors' own worlds.
It took decades (a generation) to bring Star Trek tie-in readers into science fiction.
The main force that I think did it was Star Trek fan fiction (which is what my non-fiction book Star Trek Lives! is about).
Writers of Star Trek fan fiction grew up to be Science Fiction and/or Fantasy professionals, an unthinkable result of indulging in writing fan fiction. The explosion of the adult Fantasy novels mostly by women writers, many of whom had been fanfic writers or readers, opened the door for the modern treatment of sexuality and soul-mate bonding in Paranormal Fantasy.
I don't think it's a cause-effect chain of events. But there is a relationship that we can explore in later entries in this blog series.
In the mean time, watch Once Upon A Time, read the Dragonriders of Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey, and compare them. And see what is done with Pern on film!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Twitter Chat On Isaac Asimov
On July 8th, 2011, @DavidRozansky the publisher at Flying Pen Press I've mentioned many times here, supplied the #scifichat topic of a tribute to Isaac Asimov.
That hit one of my buttons and I posted way too many tweets all at once, but oddly nobody was upset about it. In fact, several people, David Rozansky included thanked me.
And someone suggested I should post what I'd said as a blog post, so despite Asimov not writing Romance, not even as much as Heinlein did, I'm offering this here as context for most of what I've said here. A lot of what I've learned about writing, and what I've been showing you, comes from Asimov, Heinlein, Clement, and of course Marion Zimmer Bradley as well as many writers currently publishing.
"@" means the screenname of a person on twitter. Some have their own names, some a handle. All of these posts are from me, unless noted otherwise, and I was mostly using tweetchat and HootSuite posting tools for twitter. @Davidrozansky was using TweetDeck which I also have and like. See twitter.com and hootsuite.com and tweetdeck.com and tweetchat.com for all kinds of free twitter tools.
A paragraph preceded by RT is a "retweet" -- something I picked out of the stream and repeated for all my followers to see, so that my response would not be totally out of context. Sometimes I forgot to RT so you see answers here without seeing what's being answered. Infer it. Sometimes what I RT'd didn't have "Asimov" in it so it didn't get picked up by the search I used to retrieve this timeline.
When these tweets start with an @someone it's me talking back to that person. When a paragraph just starts with a word, it's me just saying that. When a parag starts with A and a number such as A3 it is the answer to a Question (Q3) posed by the moderator for people to discuss.
There were a number of my tweets and those of others that said "Asimov's" so my search for "Asimov" didn't retrieve them. And between these tweets below, I bounced tweets around with other people, too.
Social networking is easy and fun. Don't do it for profit, do it for satisfaction of talking to fabulous people.
Here's how it went:
RT @DavidRozansky: Well, I'm late getting #scifichat prepared, and I am 2 questions short of a full set of 8 questions about Isaac Asimov. Sigh. #SciFiChat
RT @PennyAsh: RT @scifichat: Remembering Dr. Isaac Asimov in #SciFiChat today, in 10 minutes.
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:55am via TweetGrid.com
@davidrozansky I heard Asimov speak at a ABA in DC about the future of ebooks when publishing scoffed #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:55am via TweetDeck
RT @DavidRozansky: Remembering Dr. Isaac Asimov in #SciFiChat today, in 10 minutes.
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:56am via HootSuite
David Rozansky said something about researching Asimov for this chat. I responded.
@DavidRozansky I didn't need to RESEARCH Asimov's opinion of GR, met them both at the 1st Trek Con, got many ears-full! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:01am via TweetChat
David said something about how interesting it was that I knew Asimov. I answered:
@DavidRozansky Oh, gee, now I need to take a moment and note to include my Asimov stories in my memoirs! (Asimov at ST Cons!) #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:56am via TweetDeck
Asimov was of "First Fandom" the founders of the disorganization known as "fandom" and they were serious about "futurology" #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:06am via TweetChat
Asimov was always up on the very cutting edge of RESEARCH, but saw science as solving by successive approximations, so ... #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:09am via TweetChat
so, whenever science got wind of something new, Asimov would speculate it to the next higher level. Positrons come to mind. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:09am via TweetChat
Everyone here knows that Asimov was first to write about the "Positronic Brain" 4 his robots, one of 1st to use robot characters #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:10am via TweetChat
I hope everyone here knows Asimov wrote some of the best popular-science nonfic, and did one on the Bible w/o PEER #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:11am via TweetChat
Asimov had an eidetic memory, which is why he could write nonfic without looking things up, so he was FAST. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:12am via TweetChat
Asimov's nonfic spanned all kinds of nonfic subjects because he was interested. But he wrote fic & nonfic on sociology #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:13am via TweetChat
Like RAH (Robert Anson Heinlein) Isaac Asimov had a personal political view that informed and infused his fic and nonfic #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:14am via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky The BIBLE is a best seller. Asimov had opinions and knowledge, but also was market savvy #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:15am via TweetChat
@simonm223 @DavidRozansky Oh, yes, Asimov like most scientists didn't have opinions about things he hadn't studied. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:16am via TweetChat
@simonm223 @DavidRozansky Also the Bible is great source material for HIGH DRAMA, so Asimov mined the classics for material #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:17am via TweetChat
And with all, Asimov's volume on The Bible is referenced today by those who don't know his SF and wouldn't touch it if they did #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:18am via TweetChat
@simonm223 Thank you, didn't know Asimov was today's topic-I missed last week. But he was a good friend I could go on for hours #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:19am via TweetChat
I think the reason Asimov's SF is so memorable and perspicacious is that he was a Scholar and used that to reveal human foibles #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:20am via TweetChat
When you discuss someone as deep as Asimov, a person of vast achievements, you shld keep quirks in perspective #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:21am via TweetChat
RT @DavidRozansky: I am also a fan of Asimov's Black Widowers stories. He was also a great #mystery writer. #authors #books #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:23am via TweetChat
@simonm223 @JasonMHardy At the time Asimov wrote, sociology was anti-science in most ppl's minds. HE CHANGED STUFF! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:24am via TweetDeck
Asimov was socially integrated (social networking isn't new) with First Fandom and hang out in bars & cons with other writers&fen #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:26am via TweetChat
With that fertile Lunarians and other NY SF groups, Asimov knew that a lot of SF writers moonlighted as Mystery writers #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:27am via TweetChat
Ted Sturgeon was one of my all time favorite people, too, but I never saw Sturgeon and Asimov in a room together! Both Trek fans #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:28am via TweetChat
A3 Asimov's work is "endearing" because he wrote series and connected works while others wrote stand-alones #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:30am via TweetChat
@JasonMHardy Right, Asimov asked the questions others weren't able to ask for lack of a wide enough readership #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:31am via TweetChat
Asimov built his readership via the Magazines (which don't really exist now) -- today it's online fiction that builds following #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:33am via TweetChat
I offered folks pdf files of 5 anthologies published by Wildside Press to be distributed free as advertising (whole stories, not a sampler). DM me on twitter ( @jlichtenberg ) if you want them, or by now you may find them on amazon.
@davidlesummers asked if Asimov was in them and I answered.
@davidleesummers No Asimov stories in those free anthologies though. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:33am via TweetChat
@Wyld_Dandelyon Like most SF writers (Hal Clement comes to mind) of that era, Asimov didn't do Relationship well #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:35am via TweetChat
@Wyld_Dandelyon It was Asimov's popularity that made publishers draw a hard line in the sane against ROMANCE in SF #scifichat
@Wyld_Dandelyon Because Asimov, Heinlein, Clement, et. al. could not write Relationship, the readership was anti-Relationship #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:37am via TweetChat
We're talking about Asimov, but Clement was in his circle too, and Hal Clement read my first novel and declared it would sell. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:40am via TweetChat
RT @davidleesummers: @JLichtenberg Were they Asimov et al really anti-relationship, or was it that SF was purely perceived as a "boys" market? #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:42am via TweetChat
Star Trek gathered a 50% female following AND Asimov, Clement, Sturgeon the whole pack of First Fandom! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:42am via TweetChat
A8 most meaningful to me, I can't quote Asimov, but I heard him at ABA in DC trying to convince LIBRARIANS ebooks were future #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:47am via TweetChat
Now to the Asimov annecdotes. He was on a BIG poster for Apple Computer(?) I think it was Apple who gave him a computer #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:49am via TweetChat
Asimov made himself write a novel on that computer he was given, so they could use it in an advertisement. Then he abandoned it #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:51am via TweetChat
I got my 1st computer in 1980 or so, and haven't written any other way since. So maybe I'm more RAH than Asimov-esque #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:52am via TweetChat
A5 - Asimov lived in NYC and really fit in there in many ways. The Cold War gave New Yorkers much pause #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:54am via TweetChat
@simonm223 But then ASIMOV did everything from Medieval Studies through Physics (& nonfic on physics) Rennaisance Man #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:02pm via TweetChat
Asimov's Nonfic was popular because barrier of techphobia was melting just like the Soviet Union (founded on fear of Aristocrats) #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:10pm via TweetChat
A6 I don't think you can separate Asimov's Yiddish background from his New Yorker social milieu which is very mixed #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:12pm via TweetChat
A6 Asimov specialized in thinking the unthinkable, and doing it first. He competed with RAH and Clement etc, racing forward #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:16pm via TweetChat
Asimov was very intelligent, and thought faster than most people. He read faster too. He devoured nonfic and made it fic! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:17pm via TweetChat
Asimov created the concept of a Future History and Psychohistory because he could read & remember so much. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:18pm via TweetChat
You all know that Asimov didn't fly even to cons. He'd only go where he could take the train. & it wasn't ecology at issue #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:19pm via TweetChat
Asimov was a likeable guy, affectionate and warm in person, affable and large of spirit #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:23pm via TweetChat
Now we come to the lecherous part of Asimov-in-person. But let me remind you this is a minor and trivial aspect of his being #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:25pm via TweetChat
He was Asimov-Writ-Large in every personal/public encounter -- and totally different inside his own abode I'm told. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:27pm via TweetChat
Asimov wore drama like a cloak, and exaggerated lecherousness was just another example. His personality was consistent. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:30pm via TweetChat
So, at ST cons where we often met, Asimov would treat me just like every other female within reach, hands-all-over-curves #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:33pm via TweetChat
Asimov was very physical with his hands on women. Today that's seen as sexual harassment & could get him jailed. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:34pm via TweetChat
Back then, it was something you put up with until you could surreptitiously nix it. But Asimov had PUBLIC POWER. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:35pm via TweetChat
Here's the truth as I see it. Asimov was not actually lecherous, or at least not by fannish standards of the time. He PLAYED IT #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:36pm via TweetChat
Asimov played the lecherous sod the same way he played the overweening pride, exaggerated for dramatic effect. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:37pm via TweetChat
And all that play-acting covered a wondrous, warm, gentle, marvelously deep and perceptive Asimov. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:37pm via TweetChat
Asimov's wildest boasts on stage were actually vast modesty, because he seldom touched on his real accomplishments #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:38pm via TweetChat
So Asimov himself, as a person, felt to me like SPOCK. Way super-intelligent, gentle, deep, complex, vastly sensitive. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:39pm via TweetChat
Meanwhile, David Rozansky and others were talking about Asimov's Foundation novels. I chimed in:
@DavidRozansky Of course Asimov nailed "the future" trends as often and as accurately as Heinlein did. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:40pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky Asimov's psychohistory was right-on because of his vast perspective on humanity. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:41pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky I just tried to explain where inside Asimov that future history and other great contribs came from. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:41pm via TweetChat
@ebonstorm @Wyld_Dandelyon I hope I made the point that I personally feel Asimov was actually a very humble person #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:42pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky We couldn't be here were it not for Asimov, Clement, Sturgeon, Heinlein, et. al. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:48pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky So what would Asimov have done with FALLEN SKIES? A simple war-story? Or humanity's opportunity at the stars? #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:53pm via TweetChat
Asimov's visionary books led into an interstellar civilization for humanity, yet he, himself, didn't want to fly in an aircraft. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:56pm via TweetChat
@PHCMarchesi @elizabethkarr Thank you for spreading the word about this chat, this week on Asimov. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:58pm via TweetChat
RT @JasonMHardy: @JLichtenberg That's too bad--a conversation between Sturgeon and Asimov would be epic! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 1:00pm via TweetChat
RT @rfamovie: Check out @JLichtenberg timeline for comments on Isaac Asimov, who she knew personally. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 1:28pm via Nambu
A couple of people retweeted what @rfamovie (a screenwriter) said.
So that's why I'm putting this post up. I did other tweets and answers in between these but couldn't retrieve it all in any semblance of order.
And the next morning, an old friend turned up on twitter http://twitter.com/michaelspence and we had a nice exchange.
He pointed me to a blog entry of his that I then put up on facebook. You might want to look at this if you're interested in podcasts. That is one distribution channel Asimov didn't envision - but he could never have convinced the anti-ebook librarians to admit that such a thing as a podcast could ever come into existence, nevermind popularity.
Here's the link he referred me to:
http://marscreativeprojects.com/brotherosric/2006/06/podcasting-frebergs-dream-lives/
And here's his comment he dropped on my facebook "share" of this link:
MichaelSpence: Thank you for sharing this with your circles! When anyone asks me what's so special about radio or podcast fiction, I refer them to this piece. For people who especially like action/adventure with generous admixtures of humor, I also refer them to Decoder Ring Theater (decoderringtheater.com).
That started a whole conversation, and Michael Spence ended up contracted to read House of Zeor
for audiobook release. That project is currently greenlighted while I'm reviewing the audiobook recording of my novel Molt Brother.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
That hit one of my buttons and I posted way too many tweets all at once, but oddly nobody was upset about it. In fact, several people, David Rozansky included thanked me.
And someone suggested I should post what I'd said as a blog post, so despite Asimov not writing Romance, not even as much as Heinlein did, I'm offering this here as context for most of what I've said here. A lot of what I've learned about writing, and what I've been showing you, comes from Asimov, Heinlein, Clement, and of course Marion Zimmer Bradley as well as many writers currently publishing.
"@" means the screenname of a person on twitter. Some have their own names, some a handle. All of these posts are from me, unless noted otherwise, and I was mostly using tweetchat and HootSuite posting tools for twitter. @Davidrozansky was using TweetDeck which I also have and like. See twitter.com and hootsuite.com and tweetdeck.com and tweetchat.com for all kinds of free twitter tools.
A paragraph preceded by RT is a "retweet" -- something I picked out of the stream and repeated for all my followers to see, so that my response would not be totally out of context. Sometimes I forgot to RT so you see answers here without seeing what's being answered. Infer it. Sometimes what I RT'd didn't have "Asimov" in it so it didn't get picked up by the search I used to retrieve this timeline.
When these tweets start with an @someone it's me talking back to that person. When a paragraph just starts with a word, it's me just saying that. When a parag starts with A and a number such as A3 it is the answer to a Question (Q3) posed by the moderator for people to discuss.
There were a number of my tweets and those of others that said "Asimov's" so my search for "Asimov" didn't retrieve them. And between these tweets below, I bounced tweets around with other people, too.
Social networking is easy and fun. Don't do it for profit, do it for satisfaction of talking to fabulous people.
Here's how it went:
RT @DavidRozansky: Well, I'm late getting #scifichat prepared, and I am 2 questions short of a full set of 8 questions about Isaac Asimov. Sigh. #SciFiChat
RT @PennyAsh: RT @scifichat: Remembering Dr. Isaac Asimov in #SciFiChat today, in 10 minutes.
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:55am via TweetGrid.com
@davidrozansky I heard Asimov speak at a ABA in DC about the future of ebooks when publishing scoffed #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:55am via TweetDeck
RT @DavidRozansky: Remembering Dr. Isaac Asimov in #SciFiChat today, in 10 minutes.
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:56am via HootSuite
David Rozansky said something about researching Asimov for this chat. I responded.
@DavidRozansky I didn't need to RESEARCH Asimov's opinion of GR, met them both at the 1st Trek Con, got many ears-full! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:01am via TweetChat
David said something about how interesting it was that I knew Asimov. I answered:
@DavidRozansky Oh, gee, now I need to take a moment and note to include my Asimov stories in my memoirs! (Asimov at ST Cons!) #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 10:56am via TweetDeck
Asimov was of "First Fandom" the founders of the disorganization known as "fandom" and they were serious about "futurology" #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:06am via TweetChat
Asimov was always up on the very cutting edge of RESEARCH, but saw science as solving by successive approximations, so ... #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:09am via TweetChat
so, whenever science got wind of something new, Asimov would speculate it to the next higher level. Positrons come to mind. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:09am via TweetChat
Everyone here knows that Asimov was first to write about the "Positronic Brain" 4 his robots, one of 1st to use robot characters #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:10am via TweetChat
I hope everyone here knows Asimov wrote some of the best popular-science nonfic, and did one on the Bible w/o PEER #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:11am via TweetChat
Asimov had an eidetic memory, which is why he could write nonfic without looking things up, so he was FAST. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:12am via TweetChat
Asimov's nonfic spanned all kinds of nonfic subjects because he was interested. But he wrote fic & nonfic on sociology #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:13am via TweetChat
Like RAH (Robert Anson Heinlein) Isaac Asimov had a personal political view that informed and infused his fic and nonfic #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:14am via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky The BIBLE is a best seller. Asimov had opinions and knowledge, but also was market savvy #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:15am via TweetChat
@simonm223 @DavidRozansky Oh, yes, Asimov like most scientists didn't have opinions about things he hadn't studied. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:16am via TweetChat
@simonm223 @DavidRozansky Also the Bible is great source material for HIGH DRAMA, so Asimov mined the classics for material #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:17am via TweetChat
And with all, Asimov's volume on The Bible is referenced today by those who don't know his SF and wouldn't touch it if they did #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:18am via TweetChat
@simonm223 Thank you, didn't know Asimov was today's topic-I missed last week. But he was a good friend I could go on for hours #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:19am via TweetChat
I think the reason Asimov's SF is so memorable and perspicacious is that he was a Scholar and used that to reveal human foibles #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:20am via TweetChat
When you discuss someone as deep as Asimov, a person of vast achievements, you shld keep quirks in perspective #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:21am via TweetChat
RT @DavidRozansky: I am also a fan of Asimov's Black Widowers stories. He was also a great #mystery writer. #authors #books #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:23am via TweetChat
@simonm223 @JasonMHardy At the time Asimov wrote, sociology was anti-science in most ppl's minds. HE CHANGED STUFF! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:24am via TweetDeck
Asimov was socially integrated (social networking isn't new) with First Fandom and hang out in bars & cons with other writers&fen #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:26am via TweetChat
With that fertile Lunarians and other NY SF groups, Asimov knew that a lot of SF writers moonlighted as Mystery writers #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:27am via TweetChat
Ted Sturgeon was one of my all time favorite people, too, but I never saw Sturgeon and Asimov in a room together! Both Trek fans #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:28am via TweetChat
A3 Asimov's work is "endearing" because he wrote series and connected works while others wrote stand-alones #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:30am via TweetChat
@JasonMHardy Right, Asimov asked the questions others weren't able to ask for lack of a wide enough readership #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:31am via TweetChat
Asimov built his readership via the Magazines (which don't really exist now) -- today it's online fiction that builds following #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:33am via TweetChat
I offered folks pdf files of 5 anthologies published by Wildside Press to be distributed free as advertising (whole stories, not a sampler). DM me on twitter ( @jlichtenberg ) if you want them, or by now you may find them on amazon.
@davidlesummers asked if Asimov was in them and I answered.
@davidleesummers No Asimov stories in those free anthologies though. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:33am via TweetChat
@Wyld_Dandelyon Like most SF writers (Hal Clement comes to mind) of that era, Asimov didn't do Relationship well #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:35am via TweetChat
@Wyld_Dandelyon It was Asimov's popularity that made publishers draw a hard line in the sane against ROMANCE in SF #scifichat
@Wyld_Dandelyon Because Asimov, Heinlein, Clement, et. al. could not write Relationship, the readership was anti-Relationship #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:37am via TweetChat
We're talking about Asimov, but Clement was in his circle too, and Hal Clement read my first novel and declared it would sell. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:40am via TweetChat
RT @davidleesummers: @JLichtenberg Were they Asimov et al really anti-relationship, or was it that SF was purely perceived as a "boys" market? #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:42am via TweetChat
Star Trek gathered a 50% female following AND Asimov, Clement, Sturgeon the whole pack of First Fandom! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:42am via TweetChat
A8 most meaningful to me, I can't quote Asimov, but I heard him at ABA in DC trying to convince LIBRARIANS ebooks were future #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:47am via TweetChat
Now to the Asimov annecdotes. He was on a BIG poster for Apple Computer(?) I think it was Apple who gave him a computer #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:49am via TweetChat
Asimov made himself write a novel on that computer he was given, so they could use it in an advertisement. Then he abandoned it #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:51am via TweetChat
I got my 1st computer in 1980 or so, and haven't written any other way since. So maybe I'm more RAH than Asimov-esque #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:52am via TweetChat
A5 - Asimov lived in NYC and really fit in there in many ways. The Cold War gave New Yorkers much pause #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 11:54am via TweetChat
@simonm223 But then ASIMOV did everything from Medieval Studies through Physics (& nonfic on physics) Rennaisance Man #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:02pm via TweetChat
Asimov's Nonfic was popular because barrier of techphobia was melting just like the Soviet Union (founded on fear of Aristocrats) #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:10pm via TweetChat
A6 I don't think you can separate Asimov's Yiddish background from his New Yorker social milieu which is very mixed #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:12pm via TweetChat
A6 Asimov specialized in thinking the unthinkable, and doing it first. He competed with RAH and Clement etc, racing forward #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:16pm via TweetChat
Asimov was very intelligent, and thought faster than most people. He read faster too. He devoured nonfic and made it fic! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:17pm via TweetChat
Asimov created the concept of a Future History and Psychohistory because he could read & remember so much. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:18pm via TweetChat
You all know that Asimov didn't fly even to cons. He'd only go where he could take the train. & it wasn't ecology at issue #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:19pm via TweetChat
Asimov was a likeable guy, affectionate and warm in person, affable and large of spirit #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:23pm via TweetChat
Now we come to the lecherous part of Asimov-in-person. But let me remind you this is a minor and trivial aspect of his being #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:25pm via TweetChat
He was Asimov-Writ-Large in every personal/public encounter -- and totally different inside his own abode I'm told. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:27pm via TweetChat
Asimov wore drama like a cloak, and exaggerated lecherousness was just another example. His personality was consistent. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:30pm via TweetChat
So, at ST cons where we often met, Asimov would treat me just like every other female within reach, hands-all-over-curves #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:33pm via TweetChat
Asimov was very physical with his hands on women. Today that's seen as sexual harassment & could get him jailed. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:34pm via TweetChat
Back then, it was something you put up with until you could surreptitiously nix it. But Asimov had PUBLIC POWER. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:35pm via TweetChat
Here's the truth as I see it. Asimov was not actually lecherous, or at least not by fannish standards of the time. He PLAYED IT #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:36pm via TweetChat
Asimov played the lecherous sod the same way he played the overweening pride, exaggerated for dramatic effect. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:37pm via TweetChat
And all that play-acting covered a wondrous, warm, gentle, marvelously deep and perceptive Asimov. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:37pm via TweetChat
Asimov's wildest boasts on stage were actually vast modesty, because he seldom touched on his real accomplishments #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:38pm via TweetChat
So Asimov himself, as a person, felt to me like SPOCK. Way super-intelligent, gentle, deep, complex, vastly sensitive. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:39pm via TweetChat
Meanwhile, David Rozansky and others were talking about Asimov's Foundation novels. I chimed in:
@DavidRozansky Of course Asimov nailed "the future" trends as often and as accurately as Heinlein did. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:40pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky Asimov's psychohistory was right-on because of his vast perspective on humanity. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:41pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky I just tried to explain where inside Asimov that future history and other great contribs came from. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:41pm via TweetChat
@ebonstorm @Wyld_Dandelyon I hope I made the point that I personally feel Asimov was actually a very humble person #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:42pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky We couldn't be here were it not for Asimov, Clement, Sturgeon, Heinlein, et. al. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:48pm via TweetChat
@DavidRozansky So what would Asimov have done with FALLEN SKIES? A simple war-story? Or humanity's opportunity at the stars? #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:53pm via TweetChat
Asimov's visionary books led into an interstellar civilization for humanity, yet he, himself, didn't want to fly in an aircraft. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:56pm via TweetChat
@PHCMarchesi @elizabethkarr Thank you for spreading the word about this chat, this week on Asimov. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 12:58pm via TweetChat
RT @JasonMHardy: @JLichtenberg That's too bad--a conversation between Sturgeon and Asimov would be epic! #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 1:00pm via TweetChat
RT @rfamovie: Check out @JLichtenberg timeline for comments on Isaac Asimov, who she knew personally. #scifichat
JLichtenberg Jul 08, 1:28pm via Nambu
A couple of people retweeted what @rfamovie (a screenwriter) said.
So that's why I'm putting this post up. I did other tweets and answers in between these but couldn't retrieve it all in any semblance of order.
And the next morning, an old friend turned up on twitter http://twitter.com/michaelspence and we had a nice exchange.
He pointed me to a blog entry of his that I then put up on facebook. You might want to look at this if you're interested in podcasts. That is one distribution channel Asimov didn't envision - but he could never have convinced the anti-ebook librarians to admit that such a thing as a podcast could ever come into existence, nevermind popularity.
Here's the link he referred me to:
http://marscreativeprojects.com/brotherosric/2006/06/podcasting-frebergs-dream-lives/
And here's his comment he dropped on my facebook "share" of this link:
MichaelSpence: Thank you for sharing this with your circles! When anyone asks me what's so special about radio or podcast fiction, I refer them to this piece. For people who especially like action/adventure with generous admixtures of humor, I also refer them to Decoder Ring Theater (decoderringtheater.com).
That started a whole conversation, and Michael Spence ended up contracted to read House of Zeor
for audiobook release. That project is currently greenlighted while I'm reviewing the audiobook recording of my novel Molt Brother.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
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