Business Model of Writers In A Changing World Part 4 - Patreon and Teaching

Business Model of Writers In A Changing World

Part 4

Patreon and Teaching 

Previous Parts in this series

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/03/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html which is about Google + which is gone, now, in 2019.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/03/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html

Here is a perfect website presenting and giving access to Cat Rambo, one of the most famous best selling writers in our sprawling and ever-morphing field of fiction.  Study it.  You want to be able to present yourself and your work like this. 

http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/the-fashion-of-worldbuilding-clothes-technology-and-taboos/

You know how we've discussed how to build the world up around your Characters, Plot, Story, and most of all THEME.  Details such as discussed in this course are not chosen at random or because they seem exciting ideas.  They are chosen to convey information without expository lumps.

She has her own novels, plus some books on writing craft on Amazon: 

https://smile.amazon.com/Cat-Rambo/e/B002LFMXGG


Cat Rambo has a Patreon link on her website:  http://www.patreon.com/catrambo

I've seen more and more very famous, widely published, very versatile, long established writers joining the Patreon business model.

Patreon is an online way of allowing everyday people to become Patrons of the Arts, just like old time Aristocracy. 

By subscribing to an author's work, you not only get something from them every month, but you also get to influence the direction of the artistic field's development. 

Patreon is the professional manifestation of the oldest fanzine based fan activity. 

Study Patreon's business model and use it to leverage your zone of influence. 

I don't do a Patreon group, but if I had more time I probably would.  In fact, if I were starting my career today, I'd start with Patreon.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Failure of Imagination Part III: Education

We're going to look at an article that surfaced in July 2010 in Newsweek Magazine, of all places, that unintentionally reveals a lot about the fiction marketplace and how that fiction market is morphing as we begin this new decade.

Who would think Newsweek would give writing lessons?

The overall general topic I've been tackling in these posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is how to improve the general reader/viewer's opinion of the Romance Genre - particularly SFR and PNR.

Part I of this sequence on Failure of Imagination is not labeled Part I because I had no idea the topic would spread so far:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html
Part I is about professional romance writers unable to imagine the HEA is actually a real part of everyday mundane life.

Part II is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/failure-of-imagination-part-ii-society.html
Part II looks at our failure as a society to imagine solutions to some problems -- and therefore we must suspect we fail to imagine and actualize solutions to other problems. It's not a failure to solve A problem - it's a failure at problem-solving-methodology. I wrote this before the Newsweek article came out.

Part III is this post where we will look at why Americans are wearing such blinders on the Imagination.

We put blinders (those leather cups around the outside of the eyes) on race horses to help them concentrate on running where the jockey points them and not spook at every movement close by, especially when being put into the starting gate stall. They also protect the horse's eyes from flying mud kicked up by a horse next to them.

It's a kindness to the horse, and a way of getting the horse's best out of him/her.

But should humans be treated that way?

When some of our data-input channels (mental and emotional bandwidth?) are blocked by "blinders" do we perform "better?"

Well, if you prevent certain sorts of human behavior before the behavior is even conceptualized, the human might become more tractable, more easily directed into certain group coordinated activities like running in a herd.

How can you put blinders on a MIND???

I don't mean how can you get up the nerve, the gumption, the chutzpah to do that -- but rather how can a mind be "blinded?"

Well, it's psychological of course.

And isn't psychology what fiction is about -- while Romance genre specializes in microscopic examination of the psychological?

You know me and cliches. Here's another old one I haven't harped on before. "As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows The Tree."

People can be bent psychologically if you can get at them early enough in life. The rule of thumb is give me a child until he's 7 years old, and you can do anything you want with him after that. (Is that from the Jesuits?)

We know this from child-abuse studies. A person abused in childhood turns out to be an adult with "issues" -- if overcome, those issues can be a strength, but if not overcome then they can cut swaths out of the individual's total potential.

People are bendable. Thus humans can "adjust" culturally, physically, psychologically, to almost any environment and circumstance.

Humans inhabit this world from the Arctic to the Tropics, on tundra and in deep forest. Humans live packed into cities, and spread onto prairie. Humans live under dictators and alone in single families or tribes. Humans can do anything if they start young enough.

This is what gives us the scope to postulate human-alien Romances, galactic civilizations, lost human colonies on worlds peopled primarily by Aliens (Examples: C. J. Cherryh's fabulous FOREIGNER series and my own Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends. Find free chapters of my novels at http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com )

This bendable trait of human beings gives fiction writers much fodder for character development, story arc, plot and worldbuilding.

There's the story of overcoming childhood trauma -- the story of frigidity being overcome by Love -- the story of a weakness becoming a strength as someone takes their trauma and say, founds an organization to fight that issue in the general public.

Say a kid witnesses their elder sibling being killed by a drunk driver and grows up to found a National Chain of Bar & Grill joints which fight alcoholism and drunk driving, hiring real Psychologists to be bartenders?

There's no such thing as a life-event that is inherently ALL BAD. But there is trauma that changes people in ways they would rather not be changed.

As I've detailed in my series of posts here on Tarot and Astrology, all these life-events are just made of ENERGY - and it's how we bring that energy into manifestation and make choices which put the energy to use that determines whether the energy does more damage than good.

That's the essence of the "Beat Sheet" -- a "beat" is a BANG made by ENERGY - kinetic energy turned into sound. Or in the case of a story: emotional energy turned into action. It all has rhythm. The energy builds, the energy is released in a BEAT.

The rhythms of the world these fiction-beats are derived from are well depicted in Tarot and Astrology (and dozens of other fields of psychology) in a way that writers can use them to create characters, life stories, and plots.

Find the series of posts on Tarot and Astrology listed in these posts:

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html (this one lists a group of very esoteric essays I did for my professional Review column on Snyder's Beat Sheet - and Snyder agreed).

So people (humans and most of the aliens we write about) can be "bent" as children, and very often, without warning and at great inconvenience to the "benders" they can, as adults, "snap back."

And those snaps can be used by writers as beats for fiction -- beats that mirror the rhythmic drumbeats of real life.

So what has all this to do with Newsweek Magazine?

Well, Newsweek featured a story which came out of scientific research.

The importance of this article is largely in the fact that it is a subject taken up by Newsweek. People will read this who would not read the peer reviewed articles in a Journal.

Read this article on Creativity Quotient if you missed it in your dentist's office:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

----Quote From Newsweek--------
Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
----End Quote From Newsweek------

Go read that article.

Creativity Quotients had been steadily rising, just like IQ, until 1990 when among American children, the CQ scores suddenly bent down, and kept dropping.

For this CQ test, they target 8 year olds, 3rd graders.

Kids who were 8 in 1990 were born in 1982.

See my blog entry on the character of generations as described by the position of Pluto in their Natal Chart, and what that means for writers looking to target an audience.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html
followed by
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

I just got an advertising email for a seminar on screenwriting about how to pitch your screenplay to producers. The pitch for the pitch-course asks, "Do you know how to answer the most common first question producers will ask in a pitch session?" If you can't answer it, you won't even be considered.

Q: What demographic does your screenplay target?

See my series on WHAT EXACTLY IS EDITING -- 7 posts in a row, Tuesdays starting August 3, 2010.

This Producer-pitch question is the editor's and agent's primary question.

Several tweets from Agents on twitter have pinpointed the first sentence of the query letter as crucial, and the information in that sentence has to be WHAT this novel is, meaning the demographic it's aimed at.

That doesn't mean you should write "This Novel is aimed at girls 8-14 years old" -- but it does mean that whatever you say has to IMPLY STRONGLY that you have a direct bead on a specific demographic and what that demographic is.

In fact, the first sentence of your pitch or query letter is an opportunity to show-don't-tell that you have the ability to "show don't tell" as well as that you know the demographic, can hit the demographic, and can specify that demographic.

Marketing is all about demographics, and today everything is so advertising supported that demographics is the be all and end all of saleability.

So in 1982 where was Pluto?

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)

Those born in 1995 were 8 years old in 2003.

The Newsweek article points at video gaming and the TV as babysitter (a 1970's 80's phenomenon) as possible culprits in blunting American creativity.

But then it looks at the various attempts to "reform" our education system, and the current "teaching to the National Tests" format.

People born in 1984 are raising kids now. In fact many may have 6 year olds now. That critical first 7 years of bending the twig is in its second generation.

The Newsweek article makes some assumptions that writers working in Contemporary settings need to take into account.

The most glaring to me is the assumption that kids are the product of the school system, and how school is taught determines how the kids turn out.

Well, it's a big part, to be sure.

And perhaps in today's world, the current 20-somethings raising kids with both parents working 40 hour weeks (they should be so lucky these days), perhaps the school and daycare center is in fact the biggest influence on a child's direction of growth.

How many parents teach their kids to stand up to the teachers and show the teachers where the teachers are just plain wrong to teach "what to think" rather than "how to think" -- and just how far would the poor kid get with that? In fact, would it do the teachers any good? Teachers must do exactly what the Principle and Board and so on tell them to, not what they believe is right. Kids don't understand "the system."

How much face-time do you have with your 8 year old (and younger).

Will that sparsity of face-time with their parents make them turn out to have different "issues" than you do when they grow up?

Cruising the web, I saw an article about education advancements. Kids in K-8 grades are using handheld devices to interface with classroom servers. Teaching is high tech because the jobs these kids will eventually need to do will be even higher tech.

Even car mechanics work with "chips" now -- and if they don't do it right, your car stalls or accelerates out of control.

With all of these factors shifting in less than the span of a mere 20 years or so during which a person can go from being a child to being a parent, which way should we bend our children to give them the best chance in the world we can't even imagine?

Because our imagination fails, we don't know how to bend and blinder our children for their success - or even survival.

With the torrential information explosion, overload, blasting at us all from every direction, do our kids need to have "blinders" installed to protect them from the flying mud kicked up by the kid next door inventing something in their garage that will change the world?

Do we need more information, or less, or someone "up there" in authority controlling our information?

Do we need totally free access to anything anyone wants to put up on the Web (including things we'd rather our pre-adolescents not be exposed to?)

Do we need blinders so we don't see those things that would spook us and distract us from our job?

Or would such blinders "bend" our imaginations so that we can't even imagine that we might imagine a solution to a problem that nobody has ever imagined existed?

What if we imagine a solution to a problem that nobody has ever solved before?

Isn't that the beginning of a Ph.D. thesis?

Those questions each can be morphed into a Theme and used to generate incredible fiction very relevant to today's demographics.

But the writer needs to look at that Newsweek article from another perspective, the demographics of the writer's intended audience.

Pitch a "concept" at a producer who was 8 years old somewhere between 1990 and 2000, and if that "concept" is in the youngster's imagination-blindspot he/she won't be able to see it as a commercially viable concept.

You might have the best idea ever for a High Concept novel-film-TV show, a potential multi-media empire seething through the worldbuilding you've done. If the producer, agent, editor can't "see" it because their imagination has failed - then they won't buy it from you.

And that producer would be correct to pass over your property.

Why?

Because your property would fall into the imagination blindspot of the audience demographic that producer is aiming for. It would mean nothing to that audience, certainly not what it means to you.

So a writer must know what blinders her audience is wearing, blinders the audience is not aware exist. The writer must know the limits of the audience's imagination.

What happened when Star Trek first went on the air - say 1967?

It set off an explosion of imagination among young college students - 20 year olds born in the baby-boomer years.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)

Pluto in Leo folks have a magnified emphasis on being leaders, commanders, examples that others follow. Pluto is a magnifier and Leo represents "The King" - the chief. Gene Roddenberry had Sun in Leo.

And Leo rules the natural 5th House, so it's associated with entertainment, and children and siblings, with personal CREATIVITY in general.

Star Trek dropped into the minds of 20-somethings who already had an excess of creativity. That generation, fans and non-fans, produced the Internet, the Web, home computers, satellite, GPS navigation, genetic engineering, even matter-transmission and the discovery of planets around other stars, all in the last 40 years or so.

That didn't happen worldwide. It happened in the USA. But then it started, and is now continuing to happen in other countries where Star Trek has reached. It's slacking off in the USA, and many patents corporations have filed are actually in the names of folks born and raised, even educated elsewhere.

Star Trek may not be the "cause" -- but its popularity, its appeal, is to the imagination. It energizes imagination that already exists. It can't be popular where that imagination fails.

But now the USA is not producing such imaginative people though other countries are.

So the position of Pluto in natal charts and other factors that exist worldwide doesn't account for the change the Newsweek article notes in creativity in the USA as opposed to creativity in other countries.

So where are these blinders on the imagination of USA youth being implanted? In school, by daycare, in sports and other group activities, or in the home, in TV, Internet, and gaming hours?

And what will happen when this generation, or two generations, snap back, rip off the blinders and look at the world again?

Did we implant these blinders on our children to protect them from the excess amount of change the information age has created?

Again, each of these (unimaginable) questions could lead to blockbuster novel sales, films, TV series. Who knows? Can you imagine that?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Expletive-Deleted & Tender Romance

But First! -- Linnea stole my thunder by quoting me and the point I'm making in this post in her post that comes right before this one.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/you-dont-understand-she-shouted-angrily.html

Linnea said:
Real people ramble on with loads of 'umms' and 'yunnos' and 'dudes' and 'uhs.' Characters should keep those kinds of things to a bare minimum. Good dialogue goes for the vital organs, which in this case should be the reader's heart and brain. In that way, it's not unlike poetry or song writing. Good dialogue has impact ...

Linnea goes on to point out how handy a good argument is for sprinkling in crushed-expository-lumps so the reader doesn't notice them.

Anger is a good special case of the general key to great DIALOGUE.

ALL DIALOGUE IS CONFLICT.

That's a principle. Dialogue is generated by PLOT, and the basis is conflict. Every scene must have "rising action" (the tension, anticipation of plot-movement, and the movement of the plot must graph from a low to end on a HIGH NOTE). That's a stageplay writing principle that works on TV and in books.

Even sex scene dialogue is generated by conflict that is resolved at the climax.

If the scene does not encapsulate this principle -- conflict/ resolution -- then cut it. All dialogue must carry the conflict. Anything characters say to each other that isn't CONFLICT gets cut, summarized, happens off stage, is overheard in fragments, or referred to in another confrontation.

One thing people revert to when inarticulate with rage (angry enough to let you insert backstory) is invective, and other words that don't say anything but take up precious space in your story.

So today I want to discuss the interjection and expletive in dialogue, whereas in my post --
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html
-- I was addressing the general problem of creating the illusion of reality, using dialogue as an example because I assumed everyone reading this blog had mastered dialogue.

The principles I discussed in "Versimilitude vs Reality" actually apply neatly to Kimber An's comment (on Linnea's post on dialogue) that Kimber An sees IMAGES and can't do the description well, but has no trouble with dialogue. And I answered in the comments section that when you can't write the description, the problem is in the dialogue. When the dialogue FAILS, the description can't materialize.

That's extremely hard for anyone to grasp who hasn't taught writing, hands-on, with beginner's manuscripts. Most editors can't do this either. But when a story falls off the conflict line at the half-way point, the problem is not at the half-way point, but probably on PAGE ONE -- or possibly PAGE 5. When an ENDING fails to meld properly with the final climax, the problem is very likely at the 1/4 point, or possibly the 1/2 point.

It's kind of like chiropractic medicine. The patient comes in and says "My knee hurts." -- and the doctor pokes and says, "Ah, your neck is out."

A body is an organic whole, a thing of a single piece. The location of the cause and the symptom may not coincide.

Likewise a story is also a work of art (humans are G-d's artwork), and an organic WHOLE, much greater than the sum of the parts we've been discussing. Thus if a problem surfaces at one point, the cause is likely at some other point -- or in some other technique that's not in the writer's tool box.

EXERCISE: Write a radio script -- or a vignette to play out on a limbo set (against total blackness). Or two prisoners in adjacent dungeon cells. Absolutely not one word of anything but dialogue. If you want my analysis of this exercise, post it to
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/ Readers should read this dialogue and post on editingcircle.blogspot.com what the dialogue MADE THEM VISUALIZE.

I've posted the above prolog to Editing Circle, so just click to add your exercise as a comment.

So for now, let's meditate on the idea that in storytelling, description is not description at all - but the ILLUSION OF DESCRIPTION. It is a bare suggestion that the reader then paints by the numbers in their own mind's eye. Part of that suggestion lies within dialogue. When description fails, dialogue is the problem. The illusion of speech has failed, somehow.

The kinds of writers who have the most trouble with this "illusion of" principle are the sort who did well in school, or maybe became teachers (especially HS or College!). They've spent too much time reading and writing the actual thing and can't convert themselves to manipulating the illusion of the thing.

Learning to cast that illusion without limiting what the reader sees (or hears, tastes, smells, etc), learning to get your own visualization of what the location looks like out of the story, is hard.

So practice for the moment on something much easier -- the illusion of speech. Dialogue. And then I have to remember to connect dialogue back to description and show you how they interact. All the individual components of story we've been discussing all interact. In math, you call that "cross-terms."

The principle is the same with all the techniques of fiction writing. Learn this principle and it will affect how you handle description, dialogue, narrative, action, and (gasp!) exposition.

Yes, you do need SOME exposition. To keep exposition from "lumping" -- you learn how to create the illusion of exposition, not exposition itself (such as you'd read in a textbook).

So, now to today's discussion of interjections, expletives, and specifically invective. I recently put aside a review book because a huge percentage of it was cuss words (those usually acceptable in polite company, too) and that book was published by a big publisher. So I had to analyze what went wrong with it -- and here below is the result.

----------------------
Expletive Deleted & Tender Romance


On this Alien Romance blog, we've discussed the use of racey word choices in sex scenes, and many other vocabulary issues writers face. Let's take a closer look at characterization and vocabulary.

Can you write a SAVE THE CAT! moment (see Blake Snyder's books series on screenwriting titled SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT! GOES TO THE MOVIES) just using vocabulary?

I think so, but it'll take some study of vocabulary and characterization.

Most beginning books on writing emphasize vocabulary building, though it's not such a focus topic in grammar school and High School any more.

But it's still true that in Business, politics, and even war, people judge you and your character -- your abilities and deficiencies -- on your word choices.

Syntax counts, too.

Today we acknowledge more English dialects as being legitimate expressions, and so we see more novels and films made with characters who speak with an accent or in dialect.

The advice given all beginning writers is NOT to tweek your spelling to indicate a character's dialect or accent. It makes it very hard to read, and in today's express-lane lifestyle, people scan fast. I would follow that advice, far into advanced skill levels. Robert A. Heinlein did one book in heavy dialect spelled out (MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS) and did it well, but never again. Take a lesson there.

You can use word-choice to delineate character without getting into pronunciation.

Even in screenwriting, it isn't wise to put in twisted spelling to indicate a character's pronunciation. Actors will create accent as they create the character.

And you know what? Readers create accents in their minds when they want to.

So let the reader create, and thus become invested in your characters.

However, you as writer, must provide the outline for the reader to flesh out -- as a coloring book provides only B&W line drawings for kids to color in.

One way many beginning writers grab immediately to delineate a character's class, education level, strength of will, and general attitude is to pepper the character's dialogue with normal-sounding, ordinary-seeming invective.

As I noted in my post Verisimilitude-vs-Reality
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

dialogue is not REAL SPEECH.

Real people of a certain social stripe will insert the F-word before almost every noun. Or vary it only with the D-word, or H-word. (I don't want this post scrapped by the censors.)

Characters who use these insertions come off sounding (in the reader's mind) like talk show guests who say "um" and "you-know" before imparting any information. Frustrating, untrustworthy, and not comprehensible.

Of course we don't know! That's why we asked! So why say "you know" four times in every sentence?

It's a speech rhythm habit you hear all the time in normal speech. What you hear, you imitate. That's how people pick up the F, D and H word inserts and blurt them out even when the word adds no meaning and expresses no actual emotional content.

Public speakers are trained (or mostly trained) to suppress that "You know" and "um" interjection.

"You know" is not invective, but if you listen with a writer's ear to real speech you will find it fills the same void in an utterance that invective often does.

It's what you say when you don't know what you're going to say.

Even mild invective (or perhaps especially mild invective) performs the same function.

If you study Linguistics and anthropology together, you will find long discourses and detailed studies showing how those of various societies communicate the old Two-Way-Radio command "Over". It's still used in Ham Radio. It's a clear verbal signal that you're giving up your turn to talk.

In normal speech the signal can be a pause, an eyeblink, an inflection in tone, or some combination of all that plus something else. But we do have, in every social millieu, an "I'm done; it's your turn to say something" signal that is very formalized and very necessary to keep interactions from becoming combat.

With English, the usual rule is that if the other person is making a sound with their voice, then it is rude to start talking. So we learn to fill in the necessary pauses in speech (when you're making up what you say as you go) with um, uh, you-know, and other temporizing interjections or invective that don't mean anything except "it's still my turn to talk."

With cold text, however, putting those interjections or invective into dialogue tends to shut the reader out of participating in what the character is saying, and of being the character who is saying it.

The cold-text reader who is caught up in the emotions of the scene will slow down and read the dialogue at an out-loud pace, creating the tense silences, the awkward pauses, the blank moments, listening with their own inner ear.

If you fill the pauses with placeholders, you shut the reader out of entering into the character's mind and emotions.

Now, sometimes, artistically, you want to do that.

Sometimes you want to show how nervous a character is, or how uneducated. Sometimes the speech pattern is part of a disguise of a deep cover agent talking just like the people being spied on.

There are times you must do it, so you must study how it's done.

And remember dialogue is NOT real speech but the illusion of real speech. Illusion.

Also storytelling is an art. The secret of great art lies with discipline. It is what you do not put on the page that powers your art.

Consider the artistic impact of a clean-mouthed Hero -- right at the climactic moment -- using a blazing hot curse. If he's been cursing every third word all the way through the story, it has no impact. If it's the only time he uses such language, it carries searingly hot emotion to the reader.

Shock value. You get it not by ladling on tons of extra colorful expletives, but by inserting one, just one, in the exactly correct place, and choosing that exact word to mean precisely what has to be said at that point.

Most often, in real speech, when people use the D word for example, they really are not referring to the Creator of the Universe and commanding Him to do their bidding.

What they really mean is something more like, "My will has been thwarted" or "I didn't expect that and I should have" or "I dislike this thing" or "I have no respect for this thing."

Alien Romance Writers who are doing from-scratch worldbuilding have an opportunity to build into the scientific basis of their world a function or process that does not exist in our world. Such an alien process can generate unique invective.

I did that with Sime~Gen -- and the vocabulary that is never used in polite Sime company is based on the experience of a transfer interruption. Shen. Shen comes in various levels of severity, shen, shenshi, shenshay, shenshid etc. (for Sime vocabulary see:
http://www.simegen.com/jl/nivetsoundfiles/ )

"Adult" filters won't block this post for containing those Sime words -- but they would in Sime society!

What is it about invective such as the F-word that makes it be rejected by "polite society?"

The D-word, the F-word, and the Sh-word, and all their derivatives, refer to an intimate act.
Your relationship with your deity; your relationship with necessary but despised partners; your relationship with your body's demands.

These are almost as intimate and personal as what Shen refers to.

It is that dimension of personal, spiritual, individual, deep psychological relevance that gives invective its power when used out-of-context.

The deeply intimate used in public.

The deeply religious used in the profane context.

The utterly profane used in a religious context.

Take the vocabulary or jargon of one process and splatter it over a situation belonging to a different process, and you can create your own invective, alien invective, that won't be censored but will make readers memorize your byline.

So then how do you use invective to characterize if you can't copy real speech where interjections form the bulk of the utterance?

That depends on your readership or audience. People judge other people on their speech patterns, accent, rhythms, choice of words -- but most of all upon their ability (or inability) to express themselves with precision.

Characters you want the reader to respect must speak with the kind of precision used normally by the reader -- even if the word is banned-in-polite-company and the dialogue is taking place in polite company.

Characters you want the reader to understand as uneducated or uneducable may use words to express emotions even if the words are imprecise and inappropriate.

An admirable character reduced by events (such as the kind of argument Linnea Sinclair's characters get into) to a gibbering idiot might stomp out of the room spewing an inarticulate string of D-words.

As a rule of thumb, emotion wipes out the higher intellect's ability to phrase meaning, or even to think. (yeah, the S-x scene, and talking dirty on purpose -- it has a fiery effect when an articulate and erudite character chooses to talk dirty in PRIVATE with a willing partner, especially if it's been established he/she doesn't have that kind of colorful vocabulary.)

So a given character's ability to express meaning should change with the emotional intensity of the scene. How the character's articulateness shifts with emotion characterizes him/her more than any given level of articulateness could.

And that, I think, is the key to the Alien Romance "Save The Cat!" moment -- the moment when the reader is sucked into sympathy with or into identifying with the character because the character displays a trait that bespeaks a "good soul."

The real character inside the shell shows through the coarse crust and you see the intellect, self-respect, and integrity that makes a person a candidate for a life-long relationship rather than a one-night-stand.

That is you can establish your characters' mental acuity and even morality by their speech patterns, but if a character uses the same speech pattern in every scene he/she is in -- you aren't being effective in using dialogue to characterize.

Anthropology also studies the differences in vocabulary and speech patterns in public, private and among all women, and among all men. Vocabulary is often gender-specific to the company.

A character who displays a lack of that flexibility (Star Trek's Spock for example) betrays an element of character that readers/viewers will interpret according to their own culture.

Spock was considered repressed and up-tight by many American viewers because of that inflexibility in public and private manner.

My own Star Trek alternate universe, the Kraith Universe, points out that human anthropological rules don't apply to Vulcans and Spock's speech patterns are Vulcan. His inflexibility actually implies something very alien indeed, not repression. Many readers were unable to grasp this point.

See my Kraith Universe stories here:
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

We all know what a sex object Spock became, the alure enhanced mightily by his half-alien ancestry. And we know how - um - well, you know, uh, logically - he expressed himself most of the time.

Then there's Hans Solo. Also hot stuff, but very human. Luke Skywalker was no slouch in that department either.

To acquire a facility with writing dialogue for non-human hot-stuff, do a contrast/compare between Spock, Hans Solo, and some icon of your own choosing.

Ask yourself what sort of woman would be attracted to a man she heard spouting filth (whatever she thought filth was, but the reader might not hear it that way) then turning to her and cooing tender language at her.

What would she think of another man who spoke to her the blistering way he spoke to a foul mouthed guy?

What do we tell the world by the kind of mouth we run?

But more important -- what do your readers and your editors think about foul mouthed characters as icons? (puts one in mind of some Oscar nominees, I think).

The most important thing to do to learn to handle vocabulary in dialogue is to listen to both dialogue and real speech and become sensitive to vocabulary choices.

But that's easier said than done. Here is a handy rule of thumb that works to solve most writing problems:

RULE:
Less Is More.

APPLICATION TO TEXT CRAFTING:
Delete ALL adjectives and adverbs from your text. Replace the Noun or Verb they modify with another vocabulary choice with the combined meaning.

Expletives are a "modifyer" in the same category as adjectives and adverbs -- delete the modifyer, change the word modified to mean precisely what the combination would mean.

Above all, always keep your targeted reader in mind. Use words found only in the OED when addressing a readership that would be thrilled to discover a rare but perfect word. Always aim to stretch your reader's vocabulary - being sure to explain the meaning of the word by the context.

I can imagine a really hot romance between an anthropologist and a linguist assigned to study and map the languages of Earth today. What beautiful arguments they could have over the OED - to make up after.

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

PS: if you're having a hard time finding these scattered posts by Jacqueline Lichtenberg on writing craft, you may want to "subscribe" so you get notified when and where they turn up. Here's how.
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What You Can Do In A Novel That You Can't Do In A Movie

Novels, especially long ones, can draw a reader into complexities, depths, abstractions, theory of life, the universe, and everything -- with a variegated texture impossible to duplicate in a motion picture. Novels can argue for and against several propositions at the same time. Films -- because of the nature of how the human brain assimilates information -- simply can't do that.

In addition, today's viewers are conditioned to bits that can be sandwiched between commercials. Many young people who do not read printed text at all prefer to spend their entertainment hours watching short videos on YouTube or comic/animation websites, stories broken into webisodes.

At theaters, the management offers popcorn refills you can go get in the middle of the movie.

People can't sit still for more than an hour these days. And most 20-somethings are so conditioned to the 40 minute class or TV show that they see nothing wrong with their disability. They think it's normal to be unable to sit still for three hours. They think it an unusual imposition, an irrational demand, to pay attention to one thing and one thing only for three hours. (hence many workplaces now allow texting and surfing while at the work-desk)

And the same is true of reading novels. Though some fantasy genres are able to sell very thick novels (about 600 printed pages), most books have become shorter. And if they're not shorter, they are more "thinly" plotted, structured like movies.

People live their lives and imbibe their fiction in sound-bytes and 5-minute YouTube videos. To understand, comprehend, and grok a really complex theme, the reader must be able to remember what happened on page 20 by the time they get to page 620. Modern life does not foster this ability.

Books on how to write novels don't even explain how to construct a long, long novel that isn't over-written, fat, wandering, shapeless and boring with a sag in the middle.

So I was delighted when a student writer asked me (and then reminded me) to explain the structure of very long novels, with emphasis on how to structure a novel for 3 viewpoint characters, even if they're all protagonists.

It's really very simple to do, but infernally difficult to explain.

In order to understand how to craft such a long novel that doesn't sag in the middle or peter out at the end, you have to have a firm grasp of the basics of structure that I've discussed previously.

Protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end, and THEME.

And the most important structural component in a long piece is THEME.

A short story (under 7,500 words) can have one theme, and only ONE. It must be something very clear, starkly simple, mostly concrete -- something you can say in 3 to 10 words. "Life is Just A Bowl Of Cherries" -- "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" -- a bumper sticker.

A novelette (to 17,500 words) can have a DOMINANT THEME and 1 SUB-THEME (and only one).

A novella (17,500 to 40,000) can have a DOMINANT THEME and 2 SUB-THEMES (only 2).

A NOVEL (40,000 words and up) (up to any length) can (but doesn't have to have) a DOMINANT THEME and UP TO 3 SUB-THEMES and no more than 3.

I did not make this up. I learned it in the Famous Writer's Course (a correspondence course on how to write fiction which I completed in the 1970's).

I've been a professional reviewer since the 1980's and a paid reviewer for The Monthly Aspectarian since 1993. I've read a lot of books in addition to the books I read just because I want to. I have NEVER seen this above paradigm of thematic relationships successfully violated.

If you want to see how it works in practice, read the early draft of my Sime~Gen Novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER which is titled SIME SURGEON and posted for free reading at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html Then read UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER (which had a HC edition and a paperback edition so you might find a copy somewhere).

The difference is the thematic structure paradigm strictly enforced, rigidly applied -- because my editor at Doubleday insisted or no publication. Her favorite mantra "It isn't clear" -- comes from how she searches for that thematic structure and the inner relationships between the sub-themes. But she, like most writers, does that subconsciously.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was a seat-of-the-pants writer who let her subconscious work out of conscious sight. Don't ask a centipede how it walks! If you don't naturally think in terms of THEME on first draft, don't try to "learn" how.

It is not a thing that can be learned. However, if you do work thematically naturally, but are untrained in how to do it -- you can learn to perfect your performance. (Remember: Writing Is A Performing Art).

It doesn't matter how you get to the final, finished product -- only that you do get there. So if you must write a very long novel and don't work with theme in your outline stage -- you will just have to rewrite.

A 2 hour movie uses up the material that would fit somewhere between a short story and a novelette. At the very most about 20,000 words of narrative text makes a 110 page film script.

A long running TV series like the 20 years of GUNSMOKE would be a series of novels. A miniseries like THE WHEELERS, can be a series of big fat novels shrunk to the small screen.

So if you're structuring a novel that you hope one day will become a motion picture, try to stay with one, single, monotone, theme.

If you can't construct a novel that will come out to about 40,000 to 80,000 words with one single dominant and clear theme -- then you really won't be able to do the longer forms.

If you attempt the longer form without the primary skills, you will end up with furious, emergency rewrites to order from an editor who has no idea what you really meant -- because you didn't make it clear.

If you write using THEME to structure your work, you will be able (with practice) to write and sell a second or at most 3rd draft of a 160,000 word novel.

If your subconscious is well trained in doing this thematic work, you may be able to do that without actually knowing that you're doing it. Then only minor rewriting will be necessary.

Whether you do it consciously or unconsciously, your finished product must fit this paradigm in order to succeed as a story. If it doesn't fit -- you might sell it; you might get it through editorial with minor hassles; you might even excite a lot of readers. But you won't find your novel still on the shelves years later, and you won't have a drawer full of respectable reviews that you are proud of.

In order for bloggers to talk about your book -- they need to have an idea of what your book says. And what your book says is your THEME.

If you can't find the themes of the novels you read, you need to practice until you can. Some people learn by example, so here's an example from my blog last week.

Michelle West's THE HIDDEN CITY -- is a tour de force of thematic clarity and complexity.

As should be the case, the title is the theme. This novel is about the hiddenness of entire communities.

The novel follows two points of view until well into the story where the universe has been clearly laid out -- then bits of other points of view are woven cleanly into the text.

There are 2 major point of view characters, protagonists both. But they have a conflict between them -- that resides HIDDEN within each. Their relationship gradually reveals what is hidden inside them as they gather other people about themselves -- each of which has something hidden inside that they must learn about. The reader learns what is hidden, and some of it is revealed to the character who is hiding it -- but not to the other character.

These are not "secrets" -- these are things that exist but the character is not aware of their own subconscious issues until events and relationships reveal them later in the book. They can then become "secrets" -- a thing which is known but deliberately withheld.

The setting is a city built over the remains of an ancient ruin -- which only the protagonists know how to enter. Below their normal reality lies a HIDDEN CITY.

So the physical setting explicates the psychological theme.

Then the antagonists as they are introduced through offstage action (hidden from view at first) turn out to be something very different from what they appear to be on the surface.

When the protags and antags finally come to a gigantic confrontation, much is revealed -- only to lead to more questions about what may yet be hidden from view.

One point of view character is a magic-user -- and the "hidden" and also "secret" nature of magical power is thematically discussed through her.

So the setting is HIDDEN, the characters have inner traits hidden from themselves, they hide things from each other, and the final action is triggered by lessons in impersonating those above or beneath your station in life and thus finding things within yourself that have been hidden from your consciousness.

Everything in the novel relates to that theme of HIDDEN.

HIDDEN is the DOMINANT THEME and it pervades everything in the novel, every description (even the various places they live).

There are 3 sub-themes. A sub-theme is another statement about the broader, more abstract or philosophical Dominant Theme.

The dominant theme DOMINATES the other 3. These are not 4 separate statements about the nature of reality. You can't find a set of 4 themes to write a novel about by randomly choosing philosophical statements from a book of quotations, your personal cardfile of story ideas, or just by picking a thought that occurs to you as "neat!"

These are an AXIOM and 3 POSTULATES derived from that axiom and proved by it. Think Boolean Algebra. Think Tetragrammaton. PROVED by it -- shown not told. Dramatized truths.

One of the sub-themes in THE HIDDEN CITY is virginity. One character is a sexual virgin and a virgin in the sense that she's never killed a human being. Another character is neither kind of virgin -- BUT is a virgin in the sense that she has never had a family that cared about her.

The process of losing virginity is the process of REVEALING the adult hidden within the child. It was there all the time; you just weren't aware of it.

Two of the characters are so traumatized that they don't speak aloud -- so they invent a secret language of gestures. That serves a vital plot point at the ending. Nothing that is established is there just to explicate the theme -- everything must figure in the plot or it gets cut. Ruthlessly cut. (save it for the website) This very long novel is actually sparsely written -- there is not one word that should be cut. There is no decoration. Nothing is there simply because it's interesting. Every word is functional.

One of the characters makes a living (and gets embroiled in all this trouble) by exhuming archaeological treasures from the city beneath the city, treasures the antagonists are after for magical reasons. Reasons of POWER.

They are all abandoned by family, bereft, orphans all in different ways. Alone, they forge bonds of family among themselves and become a community in search of safety in the shadows.

The Dominant Theme pervades, but each sub-theme illuminates or discusses the dominant theme.

So we have
1. HIDDEN COMMUNITIES
a) virginity hides the adult
b) archeology reveals the past
c) languages conceal and reveal magical power

And it's all done in show don't tell.

That's why I spent all of last week's blog entry raving about this book. I had picked up and discarded 3 huge novels and was feeling as though nothing good was being published this month -- and then I found this and couldn't put it down.

If you can't tell what a book is about by the bottom of page 1, it is not going to be a good book. I know. I've read a lot of books, turning pages and hoping.

What the story is about is the THEME. In a film, you should know within 2 minutes what the film is about -- and by the 5th minute (page 5 of the script) the theme will be stated, even if obliquely.

The first theme you introduce in a novel and lay out in dramatized detail is your DOMINANT THEME. Don't touch the sub-themes until chapter 2 or even chapter 5. Make sure your dominant theme is clear before you start discussing it.

If a reader doesn't want to read a book about your dominant theme's philosophy, you don't WANT them paying money for your book because they'll only go on amazon and write a scathing review dissing your book! Don't sucker the reader. Respect the reader. Tell them what you're talking about right on page one (but not in so many words).

Take the first line of Marion Zimmer Bradley's first version THE SWORD OF ALDONES. We were outstripping the night. The whole novel is about running away from metaphorical "darkness" -- evil, power let loose, subconscious guilts for letting power loose. The key confrontation that turns Regis Hastur's hair white is at NIGHT.

Take the opening image from her runner up for the Hugo, THE HASTUR GIFT. The riding party crests a ridge and looks down on the valley of Thendara -- the Comyn Tower across the town from the Terranan Tower at the space port. The book's main conflict is Magic vs. Technology and the THEME is the far reaching consequences of the knowledge of both (i.e. LOOKING DOWN -- seeing the pattern from above). Those who know must lead, even where none follow.

So, how do you take an idea that's been throbbing in your mind for years and turn it into a large novel that has this structure?

First you practice writing the single 75,000 word novel until you can do it in your sleep -- protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end, THEME.

The large novel with 3 protagonists is just 3 of these novels, and it's not quite 3 times as long because you don't have to repeat the background.

Each of the sub-themes is the story of ONE protagonist - antagonist pair.

And they are bound together by the dominant theme, which is the one thing you really want to say about "life, the universe, and everything" -- with this novel. Each protagonist's story explicates and illuminates that one dominant theme.

So you have a "Star" and 3 "Co-Stars" or Supporting Actors. The co-stars must have lives, backstories, personal quirks and "buttons," internal conflicts and enemies which show-don't-tell the arguments for and against the thesis that forms the Dominant Theme.

A long, complex novel is an argument about the topic -- showing all sides of the issue, from different points of view. And eventually, the writer must "end" the novel with a conclusion to the argument -- but with a long novel where all sides of the issue have been thoroughly illustrated and discussed, the ending can be equivocal from the reader's point of view -- but the characters must come to a conclusion they intend to live with. In a sequel, that conclusion can be blasted to pieces -- but for the reader to be satisfied with the novel, the main characters must find some kind of peace on the main issue.

Take Classic Star Trek. It's classic because it's structured exactly this way with a Dominant Theme "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and two prominent sub-themes "Logic demands curiosity" and "Emotional health demands security".

Kirk - "Follow me!" (into the unknown for the sheer fun of it)
Spock - "Unknown, Captain" (therefore something to be pursued, solved, discovered)
McCoy - "I don't want my molecules scrambled - " (exploration isn't worth the risk)

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are 3 protagonists. Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, etc are SUPPORTING characters.

Now "who" are Kirk, Spock and McCoy? I learned from Gene Roddenberry while interviewing him for Star Trek Lives! that he always saw Kirk, Spock and McCoy as 3 parts of himself.

In other words, the 3 added up to ONE PERSON -- one whole, fully dimensional person.

So how do you write a novel with 3 protagonists so that the 3 themes are all sub-themes of the same dominant theme?

You start with ONE character -- one fully dimensional, whole, complete personality. Then you factor that personality into 3 parts.

Roddenberry used to say that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were himself in different moods.

So try that. Take one character you fully understand and plunge him/her into different moods. Or give them different backgrounds, upbringing, advantages and disadvantages - the same basic person actualized and realized by different challenges. Or in different incarnations.

The trick here is to do the exact opposite of what a reader does.

The READER sees 3 different characters and plunges into the story to find out how they RELATE to each other -- how they are parts of a whole.

The WRITER does the opposite. The writer sees 1 single whole character and plunges into the story to discover how that character manifests as 2 or 3 people.

Remember the protagonist and antagonist are reflections of each other. They are bound together into conflict by a single theme.

So each of the 3 protagonists has a theme (sub-theme to the whole novel) and a personal antagonist bound in a conflict which must be resolved by the end of the novel.

The first conflict to be introduced must be the last conflict to be resolved. See Marion Zimmer Bradley's CATCH TRAP. I watched her struggle with that ending word by word, event by event. It taught me how that structure must go, and how to take an imagined story and craft it into the structure. It means changing things that to you, as a writer, are so real that you scream, "No, that's not the way it HAPPENED!" But that's what it takes to craft a great novel which is a work of art, a work of a Performing Art.

In a work of art, every single element is a "reflection" of other elements.

You take one whole thing and display it in different versions, different lighting, different moods, different circumstances. To "perform" a long novel, the one thing you take (your raw material, your clay or paint or sounds) is your Dominant Theme.

Theme works this way in music too. Study how musical chords are constructed. Long novels are constructed just exactly that way -- around a group of themes that are related philosophically like the notes in a chord played in a key.

Ever heard of "keynote" -- and by extension "keynote address?" Think of your long novel as a convention and your dominant theme as the keynote address. Or the typical ending of a speech, "On that note, let me present to you -- "

Themes get their unity by starting out as one thing -- and then being factored into a series of related things. Poetry works the same way as a long novel -- no matter how long or short the poem, all the parts are about that one single idea, concept, notion.

It is that underlying unity of theme -- the ultimate pervasiveness of the dominant theme -- that gives your built universe verisimilitude -- that makes it seem real, possible, plausible enough for people to walk into it with you.

And in a longer work, what keeps the reader picking the book up every night rather than watching TV, is the precise relationship between the Dominant Theme and the Sub-themes -- how they argue the point of whether the thematic statement is true or not -- how the sub-themes prove the point (not whether they prove the dominant theme's point, because they must prove it, but HOW it happens!).

That's where the kind of suspense comes from that lasts after the book is put down -- and a longer work has to be constructed to be put down. Everyone has to pee sometime!

The reader wants to know HOW these characters will come to understand the truth of the dominant theme, while being reassured that they will come to that understanding. If the characters don't come to understand it - the reader will be disappointed. Failing to produce that understanding is the writer's cop-out, not a surprising "twist."

Having stated your dominant theme at the opening, drawn a clear picture, then introduced the sub-themes to argue, challenge and ultimately illuminate and support the dominant theme, you must (at the resolution of the conflict; as near the climax as possible) make it clear that the characters finally understand that Grand Truth represented by the dominant theme.

And you're taking a big chance when you do this. Half the readership will disagree with your idea of Grand Truth, Transcendental Truth, Self-Evident Truth. And they won't want to read your book because it's drivel.

The trick is to make your drivel so crystal clear, your statement of the nature of reality so penetrating and powerful, that it will be fun for your detractors to read so they can argue against your point.

In order to get people arguing against your point, you must MAKE YOUR POINT -- clearly. And that means you must use this thematic structure.

Once you get them arguing, though, your name will be all over the bloggosphere and amazon won't be able to keep your novel in stock.

You have to goose people into arguing the truth which is your Dominant Theme's statement.

I've given you two examples, THE HIDDEN CITY and STAR TREK. OK, let's do an exercise because you have to practice this to get it. But as I said, it's really easy to do if you've learned all the previous techniques we've discussed and have explored enough different philosophies to have something to say.

So let's create a dominant theme and 3 sub-themes.

Try this one:

THE GAVEL FALLS

a) Deadlines
b) Decisions
c) Ceremony, Formality

Take that and create 3 or 4 characters to illustrate the arguments.

a) Deadlines -- the character is a college student whose HS teachers always gave him extensions when he missed the deadline for an assignment. Now he's editor of the college newspaper (brilliant guy - think Barak Obama with time-management issues). It doesn't come out on time. The students impeach him.

b) Decisions: The College Dean advisor to the Newspaper must decide what to do about this kid who doesn't beleive in deadlines but is a brilliant newspaper editor.

c) Graduation -- The Valedictorian who wins his/her position over the Newspaper Editor. Maybe this is the Student Body President -- or a Football Star. The Newspaper Editor doesn't get his diploma at the graduation but the character who understands formality and ceremony does - and lands a great job, too.

OK, that was a quick, off the cuff exercise. If I were really going to write this theme set, it wouldn't be a college campus story.

Here's what to do to teach yourself to do this.

1) do this much of an outline (a, b, c, above) for 5 different stories, different settings, that could be titled THE GAVEL FALLS. Extend a, b, and c to be complete thematic statements such as -- "deadlines are for dodos" -- "decisions should always be hedged, CYA" -- "Ceremony doesn't count" Use your own variants -- push your imagination to find off-the-wall statements about these subjects.

2) create 5 more theme-sets and run the same exercise for each of the 5.

You can quit as soon as it becomes so easy, it's boring.

The drill is the point here, not "learning" but "practice." The better you condition your subconscious to think in theme-sets like this, the easier it will be when you sit down to write a long novel. Your subconscious will do all this work for you before telling you that you have an idea for a long novel.

Just remember a long novel is not a movie. To make it into one, a screenwriter will choose one of the sub-themes, make it dominant, then change it to be a statement the chosen audience for the movie will either agree with or violently disagree with. This could become the inverse of your own personal philosophy of life. (note what happened to Ursula LeGuin when Earthsea was made into a TV miniseries). When the theme changes, the characters change characteristics.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com

Source of the Expository Lump

I was recently asked to evaluate the first 2 chapters of a novel which I have watched this author develop. It's main target is to become a TV Series -- and I believe the premise has the potential to draw in Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica (2) fans.

The premise is rich, deep and broad, the worldbuilding meticulous, the scope nearly infinite. It could be a huge story writ on a galactic canvas (like The Lensman Series) or more like Dallas, mostly set in one place (this solar system) but about the people and inter-related families.

The concept is dazzling, the flexibility of the material designed to allow many authors to contribute. I've seen some of the outline and "bible" material, and I'm entranced.

So I was delighted to get electronic copy of the first 2 chapters in novel style that I could read on my Palm.

Right off, I fell into Writing Teacher mode, being more "critical" than I would be if I were reading this for review. And you all know how picky I am about books I review! Can you imagine being the target of my "find something wrong" mode of reading? Ouch.

Still, because I love the premise as much as this author does, I avidly devoured the first 2 chapters. It helped that I was sitting in a) a dentist waiting room, and then b) a car repair shop waiting room. When I finished, I stared at the wall a while before I decided what exactly I was noticing in this first draft manuscript.

A final draft should read in such a way that the Writing Teacher mode never notices anything.

The story should unfold beat by beat, each beat where it belongs but the content leaping with flames of delight. The author should be invisible; the story vivid.

One doesn't expect that in first draft. First drafts are for debugging. So I read looking for bugs.

The sentence, paragraph and word-choice work in this first draft is top drawer professional. The visual descriptions will make any producer salivate. As I said before, the worldbuilding is superb. The characters are likewise, vivid and well rounded, deep and fundamentally interesting. What is presented in the first 2 chapters is intriguing.

So what's WRONG? Why is this text dragging? Why don't the characters leap off the page? Why won't it translate in my mind into a script? What rules is it violating?

OK, as I was reading, I mentally marked out paragraphs for deletion because they were EXPOSITORY LUMPS. But this is first draft material. Any writer, however experienced, passes some Lumps when drafting an opening. You just delete them, or shred them and sprinkle throughout the rest of the story, and what's left is usually a fantastic opening.

Rewriting is no big deal. You expect to do that, and it's largely a mechanical exercise when it comes to curing the lumpiness of a piece of goods. In fact, the classic cure is to move the opening scene to a later point in the story, skipping over the throat-clearing and pencil sharpening.

But this particular 2 chapter opening is "right" for the story this author is telling. Two conflicting elements smash together explosively kicking off a huge Interplanetary War Story.

But the whole thing just does not WORK. Why?

Well, when you delete ALL the Expository Lumps in this 2 chapter opening, you haven't got anything left that's 2 chapters long. Nothing happens. It's all "about to happen" -- not happened and creating consequences. There's no because-line; no plot line.

The author has told me how much FUN it is to be writing this story at last. It's exciting and fulfilling and very real. The characters are jumping up and down to get their story told.

Well. That is the problem, you see. The author has held back on writing the story while the background develops, fleshes out, becomes dimensional. The characters have lives and histories, and backstory-gallore. The politics, history, technological advances (this is set in a near future century when humans have colonized the solar system) and elaborate backstory on the colonization and its politics.

The source of the expository lump is the author's own familiarity with the material.
The author knows too much. The author started to write the story too late in the creation process. Screenwriting books warn over and over about starting to write too early in the creation process. These 2 chapters are an example of what happens when you start too late.

Both too soon and too early result in just about the same kind of unusable text, delineated with TELL rather than SHOW. Both result in a text sequence that weights every detail with the same importance, instead of prioritizing.

If the writer doesn't yet know the world, the writing process turns into worldbuilding block by block of impenetrable prose about the background instead of storytelling. If the writer knows the world too well, the writer is afraid the reader won't understand the story without all that the writer knows, so writing turns into an info-dump instead of storytelling.

And that, in essence, is what an Expository Lump is -- some rich-delicious detail that the writer wants the reader to know all about IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND the emotional, strategic, and political import of the events in the character's life.

The reason these events are important is TOLD rather than SHOWN (or dramatized).

Exposition is "about" the facts, an explanation of the facts. It is what the writer thinks the reader needs to know before starting the story or getting on with the events that form the because-line of the plot.

Exposition is the data that goes into the equation, not the equation itself (the plot and story are two variables in the equation that is a work of fiction). The equation is the problem the reader is working in his mind while the writer feeds in the data. Exposition doesn't register with a reader as data and isn't put into the equation.

Exposition is rhetoric laced with opinion, slant, and possibly the omniscient point of view. It is everything the character already knows before the reader arrives.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/exposition gives a more dictionary sort of definition. Exposition is the writer's effort to make the reader understand "things" the exact same way the writer does.

The writer wants very much to share this vision, this story, this imagined world with the reader.

The writer wants to draw the reader in to the dreamscape using photographic reality. And the writer desperately wants the reader to enter into the exact dreamscape the writer is in. It has to be THE SAME DREAMSCAPE, so therefore everything (absolutely everything) has to be described in detail and explained back to twenty years before the story starts (or twenty centuries).

But in order to gain entree into the dreamscape, the reader needs a Japanese Brush Painting of the "reality" the writer has created -- not a digital photograph with sharp detail.

New writers (and experienced, published writers just starting a new project) can't do this -- simply CAN not do brush-painting style evocation.

Why?

Because without all the relevant details, the reader MIGHT NOT GET IT.

The reader might make other assumptions, mistake the hero for the villain, or think the main character is behaving without sufficient motivation.

Motivations have to be explained -- in exposition. Because otherwise, the reader might guess wrong!

Exposition says, "This is MY story and you have to understand it MY WAY - or otherwise don't read my story."

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me to understand that expository lumps come from the writer standing in the "wrong place" to tell the story. She called this kind of overly detailed storytelling "self-indulgent." The writer is standing in a self-indulgent psychological space -- demanding the reader enter into the writer's own story, and no other.

Being jarred out of that "place" is what makes a talented amateur into a seasoned professional writer.

There is a knack, and a talent, and also a learned skill to handling expository lumps.

You can never avoid depositing them on your page. You must learn to handle them.

The skill part is learning to dissect a lump into its component parts, preferably even before you've finished inputting the entire lump in words.

Recognizing you are passing a lump is just a matter of practice. The more diligently you rewrite, the more your subconscious will learn to recognize something "wrong" before you finish entering it. But sometimes you have to finish writing the lump before you know what to do with it.

Lumps consist of "important" and even "vital" information the reader actually wants all twined around stuff the reader isn't (yet) ready for.

There can be elements of the characters' backstory -- who the father was, when the mother died and of what University they all went to -- things about the character's backstory that are characterization, motivation, color, and even worldbuilding (such as this alien species marries and raises children before going to grammar school).

There can be elements of politics, office or national level, perhaps what political party the character is registered in, or how the career was blunted because of supporting the wrong person for promotion.

There can be elements of description -- how the room is furnished, floor plan of the apartment, what's visible out the window, what people are wearing (which can also be worldbuilding), what type of computer or handheld device, how clean or dirty things are, what kind of music is playing.

There can be the reasons why things are the way they are in this scene -- and those reasons can involve other characters, other places, decisions made and executed long ago or recently. Lumps usually refer to things, issues, and situations that are "offstage" -- thus theoretical and abstract to the reader who hasn't yet been "backstage" of this story.

Those categories of expository lump material are not the only categories. And a clever writer can disguise all that in a nicely flowing narrative that is interesting and engaging. So how do you test your own words to see if you've committed a Lump?

A) identify WHY you wrote that particular information in exactly this particular place. If it is because YOU want the reader to know it; delete it.

B) identify WHY you think the reader is dying to know this information. Find where you've created suspense on this issue prior to this point.

C) consider if there is any other way to convey this information to the reader. What would it take to convert that ONE PARAGRAPH into "show" rather than "tell?" A whole chapter maybe? Another whole character with speaking part?

D) delete the Lump and reread the whole story again a few days later. If you can't retype the Lump into the story without looking at what you deleted, then it shouldn't be added back.

The first mistake new writers make is to misplace information. The expository lump in Chapter One may in fact contain vital information to make Chapter 10 work, but that doesn't mean it belongs in Chapter One. There is a "rule" for conveying information to a reader without causing the reader boredom, impatience, or pain.

The rule in information feed is FIRST MAKE THE READER CURIOUS. Then make the reader even more curious. Ratchet up the suspense.

If there's something you, the writer, desperately need the reader to know, DON'T TELL IT.

Withhold that information until you feel the suspense in your own gut. Use characters and events, deeds and decoration, red herrings, but mostly foreshadowing to create suspense. Set up a question the answer to which lies in the information, but don't answer the question until the right moment.

Read up on writing craft techniques for creating suspense. Draw the suspense TIGHT, and then tighter, until when you break the suspense by presenting the tidbit of information, the reader is so relieved to find out that it's pleasure not pain to learn it.

Remember, people come to read fiction for pleasure. Don't make them work at it. Make it fun!

Play the game with the reader. You've read a good book or two; you know what that game is.

It's FUN!

So the process of breaking up a lump requires you to tease it apart until all the facts you've included stand separately. (some people would write down a list) Identify why you think the reader is dying to know each item on the list -- and most importantly, why you want the reader to know, and know it right now -- or maybe later will do.

Consider what the reader might imagine if you don't give the information.

Try leaving the information out. That will leave space for the reader to fill in the color, the backstory, the characterization, the details and make the world their own. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch some TV shows that have reams of fan fiction posted about them -- then go read the fan fiction that fills in the gaps from the televised show.

That's what readers pay writers for -- to unleash their own imagination, not to demonstrate the writers'imagination.

Marion Zimmer Bradley often repeated the quote, "The story the reader reads is not the story the writer wrote." I don't have the original attribution handy, but it was an important point she made often.

The grim reality is that readers don't want to read YOUR story.

Readers want to experience their own story their own way. You, as writer, are there only to provide the template for the entertainment -- you are the band playing the dance music, not the dance instructor leading everyone's moves on the dance floor. So don't provide too much detail and discipline -- open up the vision with a few brief, artistically chosen details so that the reader fills in the rest and makes your story their own.

In my Tuesday Aug. 19, 2008 post

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/wrting-as-artform-performing-art.html

I talked at length about how writing is a performing art. When you commit an Expository Lump, you are not performing, you're listening to the prompter (your own imagination) whisper your lines then repeating them in a dull monotone.

When it comes to backstory, you have many tools beyond exposition.

You have dialogue, sparse brush painting style description, actions (actors call it business) that speak louder than words, and narrative. Don't forget flashback, but that's a real tricky technique. Even though you move back in time, you must keep the story moving forward.

Marion Zimmer Bradley often described exposition as the writer popping up out of the paper to stand on the page, blow a whistle, and call TIME OUT while the writer explains the story to the reader, thus blowing the reader's suspension of disbelief, destroying the dreamy mood, peeling the readers' feet out of the characters' moccasins, and basically ruining the whole thing. The writer's "style" pre-empts the reader's imagination. So now the story is no longer fun to read.

So after deleting everything you possibly can from your Lump (keep the trimmings aside in a note file because you probably will need to put it in later; just because you're deleting it doesn't mean you're scrapping it), convert the rest of the Lump that really has to go here to Show rather than Tell.

Yes, this will take many more words and make the story longer, may require another character, or even a sub-plot and additional chapters. So you must choose with your artistic senses what to discard and what to show. Show only those things that really ADVANCE THE PLOT forward.

The key to choosing which details to expound upon and which to delete (even though in your mind's eye, you see the deleted ones -- the reader gets to choose their own details) is your THEME.

Any detail from your Lump which illustrates the theme can stay if you really need it to advance the plot. Any detail which does not illustrate or explicate the theme has to go no matter what else you have to change. Everything in the composition must explicate the theme(s) of this particular piece. Otherwise, what you've produced isn't art, nevermind performing art.

So now we see that Expository Lumps destroy the reader's enjoyment because they force the reader to see it your way while what the reader is paying you for is to stoke up their own imagination so they can see it their own way.

But the reader is also paying for a rip-roaring good story, and that means a story that moves, a plot that rocks!

How do you achieve that with all this background to stuff into the reader's head?

Keep in mind one of my simple definitions I've repeated many times here.

Action = Rate Of Change of Situation. Or PACING = Rate of Change of Situation.

Hollywood has set the standard for pacing in all genres. Novels now are hitting this standard, too. I review, remember. I read lots of books. Change has happened.

The Situation must change materially every 3 pages of script (according to several courses I've taken recently) -- or in a book every 3 pages of manuscript (or about every 750 words which is a rule I learned from A. E. Van Vogt in the 1950's and it has become the rule today.)

With a discipline like that, you won't produce any expository lumps because during a Lump the Situation can't change.

In fact, that's a good definition of Lump. It's a lump because it stops the flow of the story, the changes that generate the plot. Events don't "happen" inside a Lump. A Lump tells you about events that aren't happening right now or to these people.

And that's a good test to see if a paragraph is an Expository Lump or not. If the Situation of the plot has changed during that paragraph (not the reader's understanding of the Situation, but the actual Situation as the main character sees it) then it's not a Lump.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com/

http://www.simegen.com/jl/

9 Swords - Nightmares

Firstly: a comment on Linnea Sinclair's post of yesterday, Oct 8, 2007, which is essentially about the world of publicity, promotion, advertising.

Here is a post about what the changes in the world due to Web 2.0 look like from behind the Ad/Promo desk.

http://www.bulldogreporter.com/dailydog/issues/1_1/dailydog_barks_bites/index.html

And here's an item that flew by me earlier this week on using Web 2.0 to reach young people with 1 minute videos that teach things.

http://www.oneminuteu.com/

And as I said in comment to Linnea's post on SFR and promotion, I think Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES has the solution to this problem embedded in it. It's up to us to extract that solution.

----------------
As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students, not beginners or advanced students. It is particularly aimed at writers.

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:

The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..
---------------

And Remember: The meaning of a Tarot Minor Arcana resides in the placement on the Tree of Life (i.e. the number on the card) integrated with the "World" or Suit of the card. For the Tree of Life and the Jacob's Ladder diagrams see:
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~maggyw/treeladder.html

I don't really go with the way this page explains the Tree, but it is worth thinking about. There are many other ways. For now, ponder the diagrams on this page or google up some others.

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

We're now talking about the 4th circle UP from the bottom of the Middle Pillar of Jacob's Ladder. It is the 9 of Swords, but overlays the Da'at sepherah of Pentacles, the suit or world right below Swords, our material reality.

OK here things get really mystical.

The Tree of Life consists of 10 areas, or zones, or processes or functions called Sepheroth, plus the connecting links between them.

Jacob's Ladder is 4 repetions of the pattern of 10. One half-overlays the next repetition down the Ladder so Sepheroth appear to overlap. A better way to imagine it is to think of each of the 4 repetions as in different planes, like pieces of transparent paper stacked one on the other.

However, out of the plane where the 10 Sepheroth exist, there is another, 11th Sepherah, Daath or Da'at which is generally translated as Knowledge. You won't find any really definitive explanations of Da'at because it is so mystical and has no place in an Intermediate discussion like this.

For our (intermediate Tarot) purposes though, we should note that the 9 of Swords overlays the 11th Sepherah of Pentacles but doesn't touch it because they're in different dimensions.

Look at the top of the Jacob's Ladder diagram and you will see the shadowy 11th Sepherah of Wands pictured behind (or in some diagrams before) the spokes connecting the 10 into the Tree pattern. The 9 of Wands is over Da'at of Cups. The 9 of Cups is over Da'at of Swords. The 9 of Swords is over Da'at of Pentacles.

As we saw with 8 Swords the solution to the problem of 8 Swords came from the underlying 3. So also the solution to the problem of 9 Swords will come from Da'at or 11-ness whatever that might be!

When the Jacob's Ladder diagram shows two circles overlaying each other, energy flowing through one sets up resonances in the other. (Think guitar strings.)

A human being drawing down creative energy from the top of the Ladder through all 4 Trees can bring the energy from one Tree to the next at those circles which overlap.

A process doesn't have to proceed from 1 to 10 in the order we've been tracing here. The path we're following is called the Lightening Flash (because it zig-zags). But you can bring energy down via any of the routes marked, and in fact use several paths at once.

That's why life is so complicated and confusing -- because it is complicated and confusing.

But there is an underlying pattern -- really, truly there is! Cling to that idea of structure because we're going to venture into a realm here that makes it very hard to find.

Each Tarot Minor Arcanum takes its primary meaning from the number on the card and from its Suit. Each suit represents one of the 4 Worlds of Kaballah depicted by the 4 repetions of the Tree of Life to form Jacob's Ladder.

I call the top one Wands, or Fire, and the second one Cups or Water, and the third which we are studying here Swords or Air. The bottom repetition of the Tree is Pentacles or Earth. Lots of other systems work just as well, but this widely used one is simple, and helps keep the focus on the overall structure which reveals the usable meanings of the cards. So what does 9 mean?

What is the essence of 9-ness?

On the Tree of Life, 9 is called Yesod -- Foundation.

Foundation of what?

The World.

The bottom Sepherah on the Middle Pillar dangling out the bottom of the Ladder is Malkuth for the Pentacles suit (10 Pentacles card).

The World (the 4-dimensional space-time continuum we live inside of -- i.e. The Universe) is (this is my own opinion) entirely contained within that 10 Pentacles card.

The rest of the Tree exists above the point where Space and Time are defined. Yet within 10 Pentacles, within our material reality, the entire pattern of the Ladder repeats and repeats -- "As Above; So Below."

Thus we can identify the processes of writing a novel from the Ace of Swords down to 10 Swords as actions we do in material reality -- even though these processes actually exist outside space-time.

"Creation" -- that which exists because G-d said "Let there be" etc -- includes everything on the Ladder above 10 Pentacles -- and more above the Ace of Wands. Our material reality is the result of all that -- and bears traces of it all. Thus the level of 9 is the Foundation of all that's under it.

Wait a minute! The "Foundation" lies ABOVE what it supports?

Well, I did warn you! This is mysticism.

It does make perfect sense if you think of FOUNDATION as that which has to go in first, before the structure is erected.

The Foundation is where things are caused and determined -- the ultimate shape of the structure, how strong and tall it can be, how long it will last, its limits, and thus what it can be used for are all determined by the FOUNDATION.

Oh, wait another minute!

If 9-ness is only the foundation, the beginning of the project, what's the One, the Ace?

Aha, well, the 1's to 8's describe the processes that must happen before a foundation is built.

There's originating, starting, commiting, developing the blueprints, modeling, re-evaluating, re-designing, submitting the plans to an architect (who like the Editor, says, "No, it'll fall down." or "It needs fire exits!") and now in 9 there's GROUND BREAKING!

9 is where the substance of reality is finally moved and reshaped, strengthened and rearranged to accomodate the project.

We know that Swords are actions, thoughts, words, opinions, even plans.

So the 9 of Swords is the act of putting your money where your mouth is.

Or in the analogy of publishing a book, the 9 of Swords is the interval between the signing of the contract and subsequent the tussle with the editor over changes in 8 of Swords, and the point where you actually hold the first printed book in your hands.

The book is at the printers where paper is cut and ink applied, thus reshaping reality to convey your Ideas.

The 9 of Swords is the point beyond which you can't yell, "STOP THE PRESSES!" You've examined the galleys and OK'd them, or put in changes missed by everyone before. The copy has been sent to the printer. The presses are rolling (action). Publicity plans are unfolding.
9 Swords is the first stage of implementing the visions, decisions and actions made in the previous 8 stages of the project.

So why does the Waite Rider deck depict it as a person sitting up at midnight with 9 swords floating above as if about to fall?

Because this is the stage of the project where the project is still amorphous. At this point, all the work done before, all that energy drawn down the stages of Jacob's Ladder shimmers in shapeless potential.

Will anyone read this book? Will the critics like it? Will the publisher send out review copies? Will anyone buy it? Will anyone like it? Will I have to do the talk show circuit (what in the world can I wear!). Will it become a movie? Will ANYONE like it???? Will it get a good cover? Will my mother accidentally read it (ohmygawd!). Above all - is it good enough?!!!

Have I risked too much? Have I exposed too much personal stuff? Not enough? Have I said something stupid I'll never live down? Will my boss read it and fire me? Will it cost me a career? I should never have written this thing! What is going to HAPPEN????

In 8 of Swords, there's worry about consequences IF you take action. Here, in 9 Swords, the action has been taken, but consequences haven't materialized yet, so the worry is still there, now accompanied by nebulous horror that you actually did a dangerous thing. Nightmares.

The 9's are Yesod, the Foundation. In many traditions, this is called the Astral Plane.

The 9's represent where you go when you fall asleep, or have an "out of body" experience.

9 Swords is what you do (actions) while there.

Remember, the 9's exist above the point in creation where Space and Time are defined. There is no up, down, east, west, north and south on the Astral. There is no before or after. All places and all times are the same place and time.

That's what is so disorienting and "nightmarish." Or "dream-like." When you are in R.E.M. sleep, whether an experience is nightmare or dream depends on how you feel about it when you wake up.

We want our dreams to come true - but not our nightmares. On Jacob's Ladder, there's no way to distinguish dreams from nightmares.

9 of Swords is where we decide what among all our visions we will make come true. The 9 of Swords is the foundation, the beginning, the definition of the edges of our reality.

In the mystical reality, wishing can and does make things come true.

Our ventures onto the astral plane at night shape and guide our real, waking lives. And so how we approach and experience 9 Swords will have a measurable and visible effect on how our project eventually turns out in concrete reality.

As I have said here before, none of the Tarot cards are "bad" -- none of them cry doom! How you experience any of these processes depends a lot on whether you live in a Zero-Sum-Game universe, or an Abundant Universe where everyone can be a winner.

In the Zero-Sum-Game model, 9 Swords is the trip onto the astral plane into nightmare.

After tumbling on through 8 Swords, you arrive at this 9 process where everything, absolutely everything, depends on you and you alone, and you feel you have no control at all over anything.
That helplessness is the essence of nightmare (just like being a newborn in a crib; you can't even get your thumb to your mouth!).

The only thoughts (Swords) you have are fears of failure, and the assessment of the stakes if you fail. In the Zero-Sum universe, failing means losing. Someone else wins, not you.

In the Abundant model, you tromp through 8 Swords with confidence, negotiating so that you pay only what you can afford and get what you need, and some of what you want.

Then you fall into bed, exhausted, and into the 9 of Swords process, where you dream bright and glowing images of success in every detail and are possessed of happiness and blessed relief that the job is DONE, and now all you have to do is lay the foundation for your future.

Your joy shapes the fluid stuff of the astral plane and eventually what you've imagined becomes real.

Brian Boytano, who won the Olympic Gold Medal for men's figure skating, told the media he had spent years visualizing that moment with himself on the highest of the 3 platforms. He could really see it. And it happened for him. But he didn't just visualize it. He worked. His whole life was skating and competing. The astral plane is the foundation -- but it isn't the building.

If the project was writing a book, the writer who lives in the abundant universe spends this 9 Swords interval dreaming of the sequel, filling in details, living the character's lives and furiously outlining the next book.

In the zero-Sum model, which we all revert to because it's culturally sanctioned here, the artist or writer has nightmares of failure, and nightmares of the even worse contingency, success! How do I write the sequel to a world-wide best seller? Can I do it?

Ok, so how do you do it -- again -- on purpose?

You lay the foundation on the astral plane.

The stuff of the astral plane is amorphous, without time or shape. The force of your thoughts shapes it, whittles, hones, polishes, paints, and illuminates it. Everything in our concrete world was first shadowed on the astral, outlined like the strings surveyors put out to mark where to dig the foundation.

That shadow holds our concrete world together and gives it shape, just like a foundation holds a building and defines its shape. (Yep. Mysticism.)

Now you say, "But I've wanted and yearned for things, and imagined and dreamed, and they didn't happen!"

I told you, living is complicated because it's so exquisitely simple.

It isn't your conscious thoughts that shape the Astral to create your concrete world.

It is your subconscious mind that shapes the foundation of your life via the astral plane, via Yesod, the foundation of all reality.

How can you possibly control your subconscious mind?

You can't.

However, you can make friends with it, persuade, coax, negotiate. The subconscious is really stupid. It can't learn. But it can be trained, like a dog, with gentleness, consistency, kindness, and above all persistence.

But how do you communicate with your subconscious? How do you pet it and discipline it?

The best way I know of -- GO TO THE MOVIES! Rent some DVDs. Watch TV shows. Read books. Wallow in fiction to your eyebrows.

What is the essence of story? Conflict. Internal conflicts shown clearly in the character's external life, conflicts that are resolved by the action of the story.

What is your problem with your subconscious mind? For most of us, most of the time, the conscious mind is in CONFLICT with the subconscious, just like characters in a story.

In the 7 Swords Reversed, we began the process of resolving those internal conflicts. Here, in 9, we are rewarded with an opportunity to re-shape the foundation of our lives according to the changes made in 7 Swords (as a result of Love in 6 Swords which happened because of criticism in 5 Swords, which couldn't have happened if we hadn't finished the l first draft in 4 Swords, which couldn't have happened if we hadn't etc.). If we can pull it off here in 9 Swords, then we will get the concrete world to behave better.

The easiest way to start communicating with your subconscious is by watching for your emotional reactions to stories.

That emotional reaction (Suit of Cups) is your subconscious talking to you -- and it is especially illuminating when you burst into tears over a scene and you don't know WHY!

By thoughtfully analyzing what you react to in fiction, you can learn to see your own reflection in the fictional characters. And you can learn what nightmares you have in common with others.

Fiction has its origin on the astral plane. It can transport you back there. And when you return from walking a mile in fictional moccasins, you will not be in the same "place" you were in before, spiritually. Your subconscious will start negotiating peace with your conscious mind.

Novels are complex -- not as complex as life, but they can be very abstract and complex. The short story can be more to the point, but too simplistic.

So the medium I prefer for this purpose is film and TV. Because of the way the stories have to be structured for film, an emotional reaction can be traced very easily to its cause in a film.

Books are richer, but film is tremendously accessible for the purpose of igniting spiritual progress.

So I have two books that I hope you'll be able to find, read and study carefully. Not only are they good for teaching you to write stories, but also for learning to analyze films to find the cause of a surprising emotional response. Film uses the languages of the subconscious, and with modern techniques, can replicate the otherworldliness of the Astral.

The books: Save the Cat! and Save The Cat Goes To The Movies. See reviews:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/ in both January and April columns.

and http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/ for the sequel reviewed in January 2008.

And on Amazon, in my reviews, I talk more about the usefulness of these books for writers.

Save The Cat! and Save The Cat Goes To The Movies are both by Blake Snyder. Here's a direct amazon.com link.

http://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Goes-Movies-Screenwriters/dp/1932907351/rereadablebooksr/

In my review of Save The Cat Goes To The Movies, Jan. 2008 review column, I discussed in depth just the first page of the book, with more references to come in following columns.

On that first page, Snyder explains a genre he calls MONSTER IN THE HOUSE. You have to read his explanation of this genre and the movies it applies to, but meanwhile think about it this way.

The essence of Blake's Monster In The House genre is that the cast of the film is confined inside an enclosed space with something that wants to eat them -- and it has gotten loose because of some "sin" done by the protagonist. (inviting the Vampire in)

You are locked inside your skull with your subconscious, and you are its Monster while it is your Monster. Snyder provides a perfect description of the astral plane nightmare.

The point of the Monster In The House genre is to evoke the sensation of intimate violation by a supernatural (i.e. from outside your view of the universe) evil.

The subconscious mind houses not only your main contact with the Creator of the Universe and all the Good, but your awareness of the negative forces beyond human ken. And you are trapped in there among these vast, incomprehensible forces. That is your dream world.

Those "yes-buts" you created in 8 of Swords become Monsters you create on the Astral to avoid dealing directly with your subconscious -- big, powerful, ugly, voracious monsters that want to eat you alive. They're the monsters under the bed, in the dark basement, and in the closet when you're little -- possibly shredded memories from prior lives and maybe deaths, bits and snippets of the astral plane shaped by you in prior lives, the stuff of hauntings.

The "yes-buts" are all the reasons why you can't talk to your subconscious sensibly. Instead you roar. If that's the condition within you, then likely you will also roar at your spouse.

The yes-buts are all your fears, especially the ones you don't want to admit - but they are also your SELF. They are what you can't control, conquer, beat, or dispatch. Go up against those monsters and you lose.

Such Monsters exist only in the Zero-Sum universe where you must win the war with your subconscious -- or nightmare wins. You are locked inside your skull and inside your life with this powerful and furious beast and you must win because losing is unthinkable and you can't escape.

And that's what the image on the Waite-Rider 9 of Swords depicts.

Nightmares.

So how do you shake off a nightmare?

The old fashioned, tried and true method when waking from a nightmare is to go raid the refridgerator (food grounds you to the material world). Writing down the nightmare often does the trick. But then what? You have to go back to sleep some time.

The way out of the trap is through Da'at of the material world. Da'at is Knowledge, knowledge of the practical world and the spiritual world and how they are joined together, the Knowledge of the mechanism of the universe.

What makes the supernatural monster so scary is that we don't understand it. It is "the unknown."

The essence of Science Fiction is "encounter with the Unknown" -- the essence of Horror is "encounter with the Unknowable." Unknowable can morph into Unknown with a twitch of attitude.

By exercise of the conscious mind doing practical, everyday, things we shake off nightmare and prepare to reshape the astral plane matter into something brighter, better, more amenable, more suitable to our goals.

Often the most powerful actions for preparing your next expedition onto the astral are ritual: praying, cleansing, setting wards, confessing; or simple practical acts: giving charity, making right something you did wrong, helping the helpless, establishing and assisting a group with shared devotions -- do something special to honor your parents or teachers.

Once you have set your material world in order, brought your mind to bear on your problem and taken real, concrete action, (such as, if your publisher isn't advertising your book; you can do some advertising yourself!) you can venture onto the astral again with confidence, falling asleep imagining and then dreaming of a good outcome for your project.

If you are losing the vision of success of your project, do something that will let you dream of that success really happening.

What you shape on the astral with your imagination will materialize one way or another. But in order to do that shaping, you may have to study your nightmares until you have complete knowledge of them to turn them into dreams.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/