Theme-Plot Integration Part 5 - A Great Steampunk Example

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

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

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

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

Here are the previous 5 parts of this series: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But his editors gave bad advice. 

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

START FINISHING READING THIS POST HERE AFTER READING THE NOVEL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope.  Not the way entertainment works. 

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

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

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

You won't recognize it! 

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

Here are three examples from my own work:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's what I see after finishing the novel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go back over those three PLOTs carefully. 

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

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

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

What THEME do these 3 plots have in common? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Vampchix and Worldcon in Reno

Now there's a combination of topics, but it'll make sense in a moment.

On the day after New Year's 2011, Michele Hauf invited me to do a guest post at her bog VampChix - which is about what it says it's about. 

Of course I said yes without thinking -- after all, Vampires are my beat.  You see a lot of familiar names over at Vampchix.blogspot.com

I was at that moment preparing for the annual IRC Chat with the Sime~Gen fans and domain crew folks.  This year we announced the reprints and new volumes of Sime~Gen novels that the Borgo Press imprint of Wildside Press plans to bring out in 2011.  We have turned almost all of them in -- my original novel FARRIS CHANNEL (not First Channel, that's a reprint -- this one is FARRIS Channel) will be the last turned in some months from now.

Wildside wants to list these novels as a series with numbers, and chose the following list:

THE SIME~GEN SERIES from The Borgo Press
House of Zeor, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#1)
Unto Zeor, Forever, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#2)
First Channel, by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#3)
Mahogany Trinrose, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#4)
Channel’s Destiny, by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#5)
RenSime, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#6)
Ambrov Keon, by Jean Lorrah (#7)
Zelerod’s Doom, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah (#8)
Personal Recognizance, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#9)
The Story Untold and Other Stories, by Jean Lorrah (#10)
To Kiss or to Kill, by Jean Lorrah (#11)
The Farris Channel, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (#12)

Here is our chronology internal to the fictional universe:

-533 First Channel by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg
-518 Channel’s Destiny by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg
-468 The Farris Channel by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
-20 Ambrov Keon by Jean Lorrah
-15 House of Zeor by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
0 Zelerod’s Doom by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah
1 To Kiss Or To Kill by Jean Lorrah
1 The Story Untold And Other Sime~Gen Stories by Jean Lorrah
132 Unto Zeor, Forever by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
152 Mahogany Trinrose by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
224 Unity – “Operation High Time” by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
232 RenSime by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
245 Personal Recognizance by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Both chronologies are being printed in the Borgo Press editions and will be used to create promotional material.

-------------

The full chronology with details is available at
http://www.simegen.com/CHRONO1.html

So then I went to http://vampchix.blogspot.com/ and looked closely at what folks had been talking about lately.

Oh, way too much to say on all that.

Besides Michele had invited me to do a post for February 7, 2011 (yesterday), and I'd no idea what might be discussed in the meantime.

But reading recent posts on VampChix brought a new focus to the Sime~Gen project.  So I decided to write about Jean Lorrah's fateful review of the first Sime~Gen novel, House of Zeor, titled VAMPIRE IN MUDDY BOOTS.

A few days later, I did that and sent it off to Michelle for the February 7th posting.  At the same time I was in the middle of the weekly #scifichat on twitter where Bob Vardeman was the Guest @bobv451 (go check him out on Amazon - he's amazing).  Like Jean, he'd written a couple Star Trek novels for Pocket Books, and the topic for this chat was Starship Captains.  

Someone else on that chat commented about how averse they were to the concept of a Star Trek/Loveboat mashup.

Guess what I want to talk about here next?

Meanwhile, I'm trying to lay plans to go to Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention.

Gene Roddenberry gave the first sneak-debut of Star Trek at the 24th Worldcon, Tricon, in Cleveland in 1966 with about 850 in attendance.  (more than 1,100 people have read some of my posts on this blog). 

So anyone planning to be at Renovation, drop a note here please or email me.

Oh, and guess who turned up on Backlist Ebooks group -- Vonda McIntyre.  C.J. Cherryh is also a member.  The members who have Kindle versions of their backlist novels available are listed at
http://backlistebooks.com/ -- click the "store" tab at the top.  It's a who's who of writing craft. 

So you see, 1966 to 2011 -- it's all about social networking, only today our networks are much bigger. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Wrting As An Artform - A Performing Art

I've written extensively about writing as an artform in my review column

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

but right after returning from Denvention III, the World Science Fiction Convention of 2008, I had another blazing, blinding insight into the mysteries of ART and storytelling.

For most people, this will seem boring, complex, abstract and maybe trivial or absurd. But this is an example of how I learn.

I suspect this insight was sparked by several factors I will identify below. It is a "perfect storm" of input and experiences that brought me what I want to share with you.

I think that reading -- and then writing about what you've read -- as well as writing original stories of your own, is a process, an adventure in consciousness. As you can't learn anything by reading books ABOUT that thing -- you can't learn to write by reading about writing. You have to do some writing -- but there's more to the homework. You have to assemble and express what you've learned. The apprenticeship method -- "See one. Do one. Teach one."

I want to point you to my review column of June 2008

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/

Where I discuss Spiderman 2 (which is a Romance, you know). I wrote that column nearly 6 months before this huge insight which came to me while I was watching (again) Spiderman 2.

Long ago, when I was in grammar school, Alma Hill, a professional writer who ran the first (free) writing workshop I ever joined which was under the auspices of the N3F (National Fantasy Fan Federation), a companion organization to SFWA ( Science Fiction Writers of America), taught me something that forms the foundation of this massive new insight. I use it for the motto of the WorldCrafters Guild (the free writing school we run on simegen.com).

Writing is a Performing Art.

As you can't learn acting or dancing or playing a musical instrument by reading about them, you can't learn writing by reading about writing. But likewise, just practicing in a room by yourself won't give you the skills of an actor, dancer or musician -- you must get out on stage before people and PERFORM because the art is a performing art. And WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART. It sounds so simple. I told you, therefore you know it. Ah, but it doesn't work that way. This is a very abstract notion that brings together a thousand theories of the universe into one package. It is profound!

WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART.

When you finally come to internalize that bit of wisdom, you begin to be able to flip your point of view from "outside looking into a story" to "inside looking out from the story into the world" -- onstage/offstage -- and then to flip back and forth so rapidly you can hardly tell which way you are looking at a piece of fiction.

So this insight I'm going to try to describe will sound obvious and useless from one point of view, and "the key to the universe" from another point of view.

It's complex because it is a synthesis of a huge range of experiences I've had at Denvention 3, then afterward, but goes back to grammar school, and includes much of the writing and working that I've been doing this last two years.

On the other hand, it is soooo obvious, that in retrospect I wonder how I could be so dull witted as not to have seen it and understood the implications before this. I suppose the whole world already has understood this and I'm the last to learn it. But I believe I can see it now because of a series of experiences. Here's a short list of those experiences.

At Denvention 3, right at the beginning of the convention, Kristin Nelson (Linnea Sinclair's agent) gave a talk on how to construct a query letter description of a novel you have written and are trying to sell. I listened raptly because she was painting what I knew already for years, but knew it as if it were an analog video. But she was painting me the same picture in DIGITIZED form. She made it soooo clear. So vivid. So sharp-edged.

I quoted Jean Lorrah's notes on Kristin Nelson's the method of formulating a novel description in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/denvention-3-walk-con.html

At the end of Kristin's talk, I commented from the audience and Kristin paraphrased my comment about writing the cover copy before you write the novel brilliantly:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2008/08/straight-from-reviewers-mouth.html

In my con report blog entry, I forgot to mention an encounter with Lois McMaster Bujold outside the Dealer's Room when we were headed in opposite directions at con speeds. She rattled off the startling news that she would be quoting me in her Guest of Honor speech at the Convention and sped away (remember, the mean free path of a pro at a con is about 15 feet, maybe 30 if you move fast enough).

So I sped off in the opposite direction and about 30 feet later, it hit me what she'd said. Wow. Amazing. She's quoting me in the Guest of Honor speech at WorldCon.

Here is her blog entry with a transcript of her speech which is about genres and particularly the blending of Romance and SF which is a hobbyhorse of mine.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?useaction=blog.view&friendID=164952151&blogID=423204224

Here's a quote out of the middle of Lois's magnificent speech:

So the two genres -- Romance and SF -- would seem to be arm-wrestling about the relative importance of the personal and the political. My solution for The Sharing Knife was to align the two levels by making the central characters be each a representative of their respective and conflicting cultures. Even so, to balance the elements I still had to divide the tetralogy into two halves, the first pair of volumes concentrating on cementing the relationship, and the second pair looking outward from this now-firm foundation once again to the larger stage. Most of all The Sharing Knife as a whole does not have a villain-driven plot, fun and cathartic as those can be. (I know: I've written a boatload of them.) For the political side, I set Dag and Fawn to wrestle with a much more difficult and diffuse problem, a demographic problem, not of merely destroying the villain du jour, but of building connections and friendships and fresh ways of doing things that will allow both their peoples to meet the challenge of many new dangers in their future. Building is harder than destroying. "Winning" in the usual sense is not what's going on, here, but the prize is certainly their world. Seeing where the books' argument is finally going to end up must wait for February 2009, and the last volume, Horizon.

The reader-response from the skiffy crowd so far has been exactly as my hypothesis predicted -- once the focus shifted back to the political in Book 3, they perked up and decided it was really a story after all. Except for the usual holdouts, who only process action as significant when it takes the form of "guys hitting each other", who are likely not the audience for these books in the first place. Although I am reminded of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's tart description of action scenes, roughly paraphrased: "The story is going along, but then stops while guys hit each other. Guys hit each other for three pages, then stop. The story starts again." (I've been watching a bit of shonen (that is, boys') anime lately, and I must say that describes those episodes to a T.)

Lois's comment on a casual comment I had made about action plotting (probably made the same comment on a number of panels over the years -- but didn't quite HEAR myself) finally penetrated all the way when I saw it paraphrased in print on her blog. I learn from reading not hearing.

At another point at Denvention 3 I was on a panel with Marc Zicree and once again thinking through what he has done with Star Trek and other SF in the visual media.

I'm also on the social network LinkedIn where from time to time writers ask very insightful questions that I feel impelled to answer. Sometimes I'm surprised at what I say! I answered a few questions on writing --

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinelichtenberg

is my profile, and LinkedIn members should be able to find my answers (and link to me) on that profile.

So, these experiences are sinking in as I finally get some time to plop down and watch what's collected on my TV recorder. The oldest thing on there is taking up 3 hours of space and it's SPIDERMAN 2. Well, I can't erase it without watching it again. That's one I don't have the DVD for. So I watched it again.

Here's a quote from my June review:

Look more closely at Spiderman 2. Ostensibly about a guilt ridden Superhero fighting a monster created by pride, this movie discusses in depth the issue of what makes a human being a hero just as Elf discusses what property of the world creates the kindly generosity of Santa’s annual ride.

Where does the power come from? Where does magic come from? How does being the focus of the magic generated by public attention (Santa has his moment, but Spiderman is always expected to perform miracles) change a person? Where inside the ordinary human psyche does this magical power come from? And what can break it?

Are we all just broken superheroes or supernatural beings who could change the world if only we were fixed?

We all have our favorite answers. For Elf, the power comes from belief, which once restored let Buddy find his place in his world. For Spiderman, the power comes from a clear conscience purified by confession.

Power, which the world views as magical, or Star Wars dubs "The Force," is viewed as connected to the foundations of what many cultures call morality. But as Theodore Sturgeon advised, we must ask the next question, not just stop thinking at "Right Makes Might".

Well, I stand by all that. But now, out of the stew of experiences noted above and more, I see something in Spiderman 2 with that kind of DIGITIZED clarity Kristin Nelson achieved in her talk on query letters.

Amidst this stew of experiences, I had occasion to remember an insight I had into the genre of Comedy while watching the Mary Tyler Moore show.

I saw how the script writers took everyday human embarrassments, saying or failing to say something at just the right point, foibles, failings and pure NIGHTMARE ( like showing up at school in only your underwear ) -- experiences that we all think about in passing but then shun, flinch away from thinking about -- and then the screenwriter portrays those experiences on the screen in SHOW DON'T TELL.

At full concert pitch, the writer PERFORMS the experience for the viewer. The fictional situation and characters are "caricature" sketches of reality, not photographic recordings of reality. These are all analog experiences, analogous to but not the same as our everyday reality.

"The same as" wouldn't be funny.

The actors are tools the writer uses to evoke that exquisite pain, keeping it just short of the viewer's conscious recognition as pain.

I saw the mechanism by which comedy writers turned ordinary people's ordinary experiences of the ordinary world inside out and exposed the human's interior life for all the world to see.

That "exposure" of what is personal and private is what makes it funny.

I saw the mechanism that makes comedy "work" -- that gets a laugh.

And the great spiritual benefit of laughter lies not just in the physical release of tension and the physical exercise of the diaphragm -- it also lies in sharing our innermost subconscious reality with OTHER PEOPLE. Sitting in an audience (or watching TV alone, knowing others watch alone too), you can experience the subconscious and painful reality others live in and recognize yourself in those people.

Comedy, when done right, is a binding force of society as strong as love. And thus the Romantic Comedy rules the roost in films!

This Mary Tyler Moore insight came to me years and years before Blake Snyder wrote his definitive books on screenwriting, SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES!

Snyder's main point is that the essence of story is the PRIMAL experience. He goes to considerable length explaining what "Primal" means in this context. The plot, the life-issues the main character faces must be (in order for the story to be movie material, not a novel) so basic, so purely human, that a caveman could understand it (no insult). It has to be something viewers grasp clearly from the images, something every human being understands because they are human.

What I saw in MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW is exactly what it is that makes COMEDY so very PRIMAL.

It was one of those "flip" moments when instead of being a viewer, watching from the outside, I became a writer, evaluating from the inside. I saw where inside the writer the primal comedy came from -- I saw the mechanism of comedy apart from the art of it. And I saw the art of it as the teasing balance on the edge of unbearable PAIN - emotional pain, primal emotional pain.

You're probably thinking: "Well, everybody knew that already! Where have you been?"

I'm sure you've read this exact same thing in many books about writing.

*sigh* but knowing and understanding are not the same thing. In that moment, watching THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, what I knew became something I understood. I grokked comedy as a writing craft -- consistent and reproducible, methodical and mechanical -- as well as an artform, unique and magical -- and as a performing art.

That insight has stayed with me, and now all these years later, I have another to add to it. This one is on SUPERHERO FANTASY.

One of the questions on LINKEDIN.com that I was intrigued by but didn't get to answer fully was about why it is that Americans are so responsive to the superhero movies today. I still don't know the answer to that question in full, but I have a whole new perception of what a superhero movie is.

What is the appeal of comic books? Graphic novels? Superman. Green Arrow. Lone Ranger. Spiderman. Buffy.

Just as I said in my Spiderman 2 review -- this is the story of every human being living inside him or herself.

Every one of us is a Superhero inside. We all know beyond a doubt who we really are -- and it is NOT that clumsy wimp or clutzy dunce the rest of the world sees.

We fight our everyday battles ( car breakdowns; buses that get us to work late; cell phones out of juice; stains on the white shirt we have to wear to a meeting; stubborn or suborned computers; high gas prices) until we reach total collapse of strength and will.

Our story is the story of confronting and facing down our internal demons, our own personal emotional issues (Spiderman's bout with Guilt is not everyone's emotional struggle; some people don't get disabled by Guild). Spiderman 2 is not OUR story, but it is ANALOGOUS TO the story of all our disparate emotional lives.

We gravitate toward the primal Superhero stories because they are about our own lives -- with ourselves cast as Superhero. We help others at risk to ourselves; we fumble and stumble and fall, cast off that "identity" and stand tall, lower our voices and answer the phone with our corporate voice. We all have many identities.

And we get confused. Are we really the Superhero -- or the wimp?

The primal Superhero story is about Identity. But it's our own search for identity -- the perplexing question of whether we are what the world sees us to be or what we know ourselves to be?

Where does our strength come FROM?

That is the COMIC BOOK STORY.

Like Comedy, the comic book story is about our universal internal life exposed for all to see and all to share.

When a comic book character (think Tom&Jerry) falls off a cliff and smashes flat against the ground, it is ANALOGOUS to what we feel when something unexpected and emotionally painful stuns us. Comic book action makes our invisible emotional responses visible.

The appeal of the comic book is simply that it replicates in art, writ larger than life, our very own internal struggle with that which opposes our will, ethics, morals, or sense of identity.

Just as Comedy exposes our inner, most secret fears of embarrassment and other emotional pain of that social sort -- the Comic Book (especially the violent Superhero ones) exposes our inner struggle with conflicting demands, thwarted will, the pain of being defeated, and the eternal search for the strength to overcome.

The ostensible primal story of the Superhero is the story of Strength coming to the rescue of the Weak and Defenseless.

But the secret to understanding why these stories are so popular among the weak and defenseless is the opposite to what you normally assume.

It isn't the fascination with being rescued that is so riveting. It is the affirmation of the inner conviction that you, yourself are inherently the Rescuer -- but you just have to figure out where to get the strength. The Super Strength.

Thus the most popular (and Primal) Superhero stories are about the Superhero's struggle to find out where to get the strength. Or when having the strength, the power, finding out when NOT to use it.

That isn't someone else's story. That is the story of our own everyday life exposed for all to see. We drive cars that are lethal weapons. Every driver has super-power. Every driver has the kind of super-power and super-problems that Spiderman does.

So contrast and compare THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW with SPIDERMAN 2. What do they have in common?

Writers who know how to use art to expose the mechanism of our internal psychological reality have mastered the hardest lesson in any course on writing -- SHOW DON'T TELL.

Reading about it won't give you any skill at using it.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com/