Showing posts with label abortion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abortion. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 9 - Conquest In Romance

Worldbuilding From Reality
Part 9
Conquest In Romance
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 


Previous parts in this series are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

Every world you build to showcase your story has to include the basic cultural elements anthropologists have identified in human cultures from time immemorial.

That doesn't mean your Aliens have to be Human!

It means you, the writer, has to explain to your reader why your Alien culture lacks this or that element common among humans, and what that absence means.

Spock on Star Trek is the most obvious example, and was created around exactly that formula -- "Human Minus One" -- in his case Emotion.  From that Character, all of Vulcan culture and history was fleshed out.  The necessity for that became obvious when the marvelous one-liner hit the air -- where Spock identifies a Romulan visage as reminiscent of his father.

One of the elements in human cultures has always been Religion -- or some sort of notion about supernatural forces interacting with "real world" elements.

Humans imagine.  If your Aliens have any imagination, they have something that fills the niche of Religion (organized, institutionalized, or not-so-much).

But not every Alien culture has to use (or blame) Religion for sexual behavior.  Not every Alien culture has to integrate Romance and Sexuality.  Sex may be completely irrelevant to Romantic attachment for an Alien.  If so, you have to explain how that happened to a species, and illustrate what it means in relationships with humans.

Alien Romance is a gigantic field that has barely been explored, certainly not mapped, and leaves everything wide open for writers.

There is one rule of writing craftsmanship you must meet, even when exploring Alien Romance with or without sexuality -- your worldbuilding must be internally consistent enough to seem like Reality.

OK, our everyday Reality isn't very consistent, but it does keep reverting to well known norms.  If you're going to create verisimilitude enough to transport readers into an Alien culture that does not have sexual arousal during Romance, you need to keep your worldbuilding rigorously consistent.

Worldbuilding, we have established in other series of posts on this topic, is rooted in a Theme.

Just like Spock delineates the theme of Emotion Is Not Logical in Star Trek, so your Alien delineates the theme of your entire world by what that Alien Culture has that humans do not -- or what the Aliens lack that Humans have.

One variable is all you get to play with in a work of fiction where you are departing from everyday Reality.  Just add or subtract one, and only one, element from the world your readers know, then pursue the way that affects everything that happens in an ordinary, regular Romance genre novel.

Suppose you want to rip a notion from current media headlines, from the media's current narrative, and create an Alien Romance from that topic.

One prominent narrative topic in 2019 is a second wave of challenges to Roe v. Wade and a woman's sovereign control of her body.

I'm pretty sure you can find marriages ending in divorce over this massive philosophical divide.

It is entirely possible that abortion is one, perhaps the only, issue that Love can't Conquer, even though it can Conquer All Else.

I do see our everyday reality as a place where love conquers all, and can even conquer this one, horrendous, topic.  But it is easy to imagine a fictional pair, head over heels into an epic Romance, ripped apart by this one topic.

Does a man have any rights over a fetus he fathered?

Does the Law have any business trying to criminalize any actions for or against abortion?

In the USA, we have the constitutional division of Law and Religion -- we can't make laws governing religion.  But in the 21st Century, that division is becoming blurred.

Take for example, a pregnant woman who is addicted to drugs (some bad stuff - heroine etc.).  What is her legal obligation to the fetus?  To the newborn baby, born addicted, and thus suffering a life-long set of health issues which, very possibly, the State has to pay for?

Where do the mother's rights leave off and the baby's rights begin?

The answers to those questions are THEMES.  Take a stance one way or another, state the theme in one sentence, and select every element of story, plot, character, setting, conflict, etc. to illustrate, explain, or challenge that theme.

Theme is philosophy and religion distilled into a platitude, aphorism, or folk wisdom.

So when you build a world from Reality, you start (whether you know it or not) with a theme, some idea about what Reality is or is-not.

Those who start with the concept of Soul Mates are inherently starting with the concept of Soul as a reality in their built world.

What is a soul?  Where does it come from?  Where does it go?  Can souls die?  Can souls be destroyed?  Or do souls learn?

Each of those questions is a brick you build into your world's edifice whether you know it or not.  We all make assumptions about our everyday Reality, but rarely do we articulate those assumptions.  So your Characters, likewise, may have many assumptions about Souls and how they slip into or out of Manifestation, and have no clue why they believe what they believe, or why they are willing to die for a cause.

There are women who will commit themselves to die trying to give birth, and others that prioritize themselves over an unborn fetus.  Both sorts of women are courageous, heroic, and completely believable to your readership.

In fact, one sort can transform before the reader's eyes into the other sort, and the transformation can be completely plausible.

Many women on one side or the other of this divisive issue hold their position because of Religion -- some from adopting a Religion later in life, others having been raised to certain strict standards of right and wrong.  But today's readerships are maybe more than half atheist, and that half divides pretty much along the same line (risk life to give birth vs. my life is more important than potential life).

So entire philosophies of "Who Am I" questions are woven into the themes you can use to feature a conflict over abortion.

Historically, abortion has been an issue that shatters the mood of romance, but today's readers and writers are gradually exploring Romance that deals directly with spouse-abuse, with rape and incest, and even abortion.

And all of these relationship issues are super-charged by Religion.

People on any side of one of these issues point to Religion to justify their position, while the people on the other side point to Religion to nullify their opponent's position.  Sometimes, they both point to the same Religion.

If you're writing Alien Romance, your aliens might have no regard whatever for an unborn fetus -- or even for an infant less than 5 years old.  Some human cultures don't name a child for a long time after birth.  So Aliens who think like that would be plausible to everyday readers.

In Paranormal Romance, you might have ghosts, demons or angels who actually know what a Soul is, and how decisions implemented during mortal life determine fates in the afterlife.  They might be allowed to tell mortals, or perhaps be prevented from telling.  Plot driving conflicts can arise over the refusal to tell -- or disbelief of what has been told.

So to craft either an Alien to love your human Character, or a Supernatural Being to love your mortal, you need to choose an answer to the questions that define Soul.

Are Souls real?  Does every human have one?  Does your Alien have one?

Are Souls necessary for Romance to happen?

The answers to those questions are THEMES.  You build the answer into your world, and that integration gives rise to your main plot conflict.

Whatever your answer is, there is a Character in your story who takes the opposite stance.  That creates your integrated Theme-Plot-Character structure.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

To lure your reader into such an explosive story context and deliver the promised Romance, you need to study up on the World's Religions.  Chances are much of what you think you know comes from news or online articles.  That is necessary information as it tells you what most of your readers think they know -- thus lays out the plot which your conflict will generate.

People act on what they think they know.

Characters can act on what they think they know, but to tell a story, that Character must "arc" -- or learn something the reader didn't know, and begin to act in a distinctly different way.

So study the solidly orthodox, strict, version of several religions, and contrast it with the vastly more popular, more relaxed and accepting version of that religion.  For example, Catholicism vs. Tent Revivalist vs. TV Evangelist.

You might also study the Law, and the history of laws on a particular topic.

It can lead you into many topics, and sorting them out can be difficult.

Themes designed to support a long series of large novels can be "nested" one inside the other, to produce what some call the "braided plot" and possibly use several viewpoint characters.

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

But to nest themes, they must all relate to a single, overall, or envelope theme.  All the questions you answer have to be about the same topic.

Take "conquest" for example.

A Master Theme might be, "My Way Or The Highway"

Sub-themes could be answers to such questions as "Who Am I?" "How Does A Human Choose A Way?" "Do Humans Get A Choice?" "Is Running Away From Home Better Than Running Toward A Goal?"

Each of those sub-theme areas could split and split again to eventually come down to something small enough to fit into a single novel.  Together, they could make a series or a life's work.

Philosophy behind novel themes can be very abstract, and start with things about the notion of a God who is the Creator of the Universe, the master architect.  Does the Divine force take a personal interest in individual humans?  Is that different from interactions with Aliens?

Would a Ghost be able to hold direct dialogue with the Creator of the Universe?  And then tell a human?  Or perhaps a fetus?

Would a Creator still have any power over the Creation?  Note how the Bible's story of the Tower of Babel shows without telling what happens when the Creation challenges the Creator.  What if the Creator hadn't been so gentle in Conquest as to just mess up the ability to communicate?

Some answers to these questions in the context of Romance Genre will inevitably lead to all the issues of human sexual relationships, and thus to how human law attempts to codify morality.

But what about Divine Law?

The Hellenistic Greek gods didn't lay down laws that they, themselves, abided by.  They operated, like the Roman gods after them, basically on whim, and under the thumb of the biggest bully god.

Humans developed Law as a concept, but only very gradually, over many generations.  What if your Aliens don't have the concept of Law, as Star Trek's Vulcans don't have emotion?'

Not all of modern Earth lives under the Judeo-Christian concept of a Creator who has told us His Laws (10 Commandments, 7 Noachide Laws, or 613 Commandments).

The 10 Commandments and the whole set of 613 Commandments given in the Old Testament are considered to apply only to Jews, while the 7 Laws given to Noah apply to all humans.

But overall, the concept is a Divine Creator explaining how Creation works to his Creatures.  And it is a contract. If humans do this, then the Divine will do that.  Our deeds don't cause the Creator to act.  The Creator's word of honor on the Contract is the cause of the consequences of our actions.

Our real world is currently built on the aspiration to make Laws that fill in the outline given to us by the Divine.

Even atheists agree that most of those boundaries around human behavior make for civilization to function to the advantage of most (if not all).  

The USA is founded on the idea that government can't infringe on personal sovereignty.  Each human is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (though there was a big argument over happiness or merely the pursuit thereof.)

Most of the Founders who framed the legal structure of the USA were Christian, and some were Christian mystics.  A lot of their subconscious assumptions became infused into that legal structure.  When they separated Church and State, they were thinking mostly of  various Christian churches, not freedom from Religion, not valuing pagan religions the same as Christian ones, and certainly not accepting the Jewish way of looking at the world.

But today, the USA is a dynamic and creative wellspring mostly because all these varieties of belief systems co-exist, interact, and even conflict.  Our differences are our greatest strength.

Yet, today's politics seem bent on conquest, not co-existence.

The political lines are being drawn as Men vs. Women, with sovereignty over the physical body at stake.

Does the father of your child have the legal right to force you to risk your life giving birth to his child?  What if your husband raped you?  In some religions that's not possible.  But civilization could stand or fall on that exact issue.

When does a woman have a right to an abortion?  When is a woman required to have an abortion?

Can human law be crafted (and enforced) to govern these decisions?  And if so, then what happens when men go to war over women?

Could the Gender War be settled by Conquest -- of either side over the other?

Are any of these questions even relevant to what is really going on with the US Supreme Court deliberations on Roe v. Wade?  I'm sure they're deliberating whether to take this or that case that would challenge the precedent.  If you're writing futuristic romance, you have to guess whether, in your built future world, Roe v. Wade still stands, and if not, what replaces it?

Here is an article that may give you some ideas of where Roe v. Wade is most vulnerable to being modified, or where the 2019 States attempt to craft anti-abortion legislation at the state level might be stopped by the Supreme Court.

Freedom of Religion is baked into our legal system, and most people think that all Religion is inherently anti-abortion.  Many Christian sub-divisions hold that no matter what (rape, incest, dire health collapse of the mother), no pregnancy may be terminated voluntarily.  So most people, even atheists, think that the only issue Religious people have with abortion is to prevent women from having abortion.

If you are pro-choice, you therefore must be anti-Religion.

That is the unconscious assumption.

However, the opposite is the case.

In Judaism, there are circumstances where a woman is required to get an abortion.

Yeah, who would think it?  But an adult woman, especially one with other children to raise, is absolutely not permitted to continue a life-threatening abortion.  Beyond that, different Rabbinic authorities hold that some other circumstances (such as psychological issues), may also dictate the necessity of an abortion.  Nobody can force a woman, no matter the risk, to have an abortion -- but sometimes, to comply with the Creator's Will, she must choose to do so.  A person who commits suicide is governed by the same laws that pertain to one who is a murderer.  Suicide is considered self-murder, and continuing a truly dangerous pregnancy would be suicidal.

Some of the current State laws being tried out would prohibit the practice of this religious requirement to save one's own life.

Here are two articles - one on the legal implications of abortion, and one on suicide.  Put them together and generate a lot of themes.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/What-Jewish-law-really-says-about-abortion-590448

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4372311/jewish/Suicide-in-Judaism.htm

Another Jewish view holds that the Soul descends into the unborn fetus gradually, and over time.  That line of thought also holds that the Soul continues to descend after birth, as the body develops all the way to sexual maturity (12 or 13 years).  Does the degree of presence of a Soul have anything to do with the choice of abortion?

What about robots, A. I., will Souls descend to inhabit machine intelligence?

As a writer, consider the incredibly dramatic irony of these opposing views:
Religion requires abortion vs. Religion prohibits abortion.

Right now, this Earth is not in imminent danger of running out of humans. Other species are endangered, so it could come to us very soon.  Or colonies on other planets would place a much higher value on new children.  Artificial wombs will solve a lot of this problem, but will such children acquire souls?

Also note the birthrate in the USA has slacked off to where some official notice is being taken -- perhaps it's time to worry?

Nothing shatters the mood of a Romance novel like murder, death, blood sprayed on the walls, rape, abusive beating -- all the ugliness that goes on in our everyday reality.  Yet, writers are artists who love a challenge.

Can you build a world where one side or the other triumphs in conquest of the other side in these Religion vs. Politics debates?

Can you build an alien civilization where a refugee from the shattered Earth can find Romance and safety?

If you build your world out of unrelated bits, a hodgepodge patchwork world, it won't be a work of Art and will not communicate your theme clearly.

So try starting with your true, most deeply held, belief about Life and Souls.  Weave a powerful Romance, and drive the Characters to an accidental pregnancy.  Will Romance turn to Love and Conquer even this immense problem?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 6 - Fallacy, Misnomer and the Contradiction by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 6
Fallacy, Misnomer and the Contradiction
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1 -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html
Part 2 -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_14.html

Part 3 - index to Monthly Aspectarian Reviews
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_21.html

Part 4 - Sidewalk Superintendent
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 5 Murderer In The Mikdash
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding-part.html

These 4-skills posts are advanced material.  But that doesn't mean you can't start reading them first.

December 1, 2015, we started discussing ways to depict Wisdom, an abstraction, and we have to tackle the issue of how to depict a Wise Character.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/depiction-part-13-depicting-wisdom-by.html

That post has a link at the top to the index post for the depiction series.

A "Wise Character" -- a Yoda or a Gandalf, (note not usually a Point Of View Character) a teacher of ancient wisdom or a role model to emulate -- is a feature of most novels that live from generation to generation.

Often the character, or his/her name, will become part of a quote bandied about by future generations who have no idea where that quote came from.

Creating a character to ignite the thirst for wisdom in the other characters, perhaps even in the reader, is easy.  Getting the character you have created down in a text based story is very hard.

What seems like Wisdom to one human, seems like Folly to another.

Brain researchers may have nailed the reason for the Wisdom/Folly flip/flop in point of view.  They have found why one single person can see, hold, articulate, and advocate two incompatible points of view at the same time.

The capacity to believe six impossible things before breakfast is rooted in the linguistic faculty of the brain.  It's just science.

Philosophers have known and used this (as have poets and artists) for thousands of years.  Suddenly, it's a scientific discovery!

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-language-changes-views-of-the-world-2015-8

--------Quote From that article-----------
Just as regular exercise gives your body some biological benefits, mentally controlling two or more languages gives your brain cognitive benefits. This mental flexibility pays big dividends especially later in life: The typical signs of cognitive ageing occur later in bilinguals – and the onset of age-related degenerative disorders such as dementia or Alzheimer’s are delayed in bilinguals by up to five years.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world-40721

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

The article goes on to point out the different ways German-only speakers and English-only speakers describe a short-video.  Then it describes how a bilingual German-English speaker describes that same video, first when the observer is thinking in German, and then when that same observer is thinking in English.  The article concludes:

----------QUOTE---------------
People self-report that they feel like a different person when using their different languages and that expressing certain emotions carries different emotional resonance depending on the language they are using.

When judging risk, bilinguals also tend to make more rational economic decisions in a second language. In contrast to one’s first language, it tends to lack the deep-seated, misleading affective biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived. So the language you speak in really can affect the way you think.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world-40721#ixzz3hxuczPys
-----------END QUOTE---------------


This article and the science behind it are vital to any writer of Science Fiction Romance who wants to depict a relationship between a human and an alien blossoming into love.

In this science article you find the origin of the fallacy, the misnomer, and the contradiction, all rolled into a brain function.

And once again (and again and again) this classic visual image is worth a thousand words on the subject of language.  Consider it while reading the article on German-English speakers describing a video.

The gist of it is that when thinking in German, the description of the video includes the goal of the depicted action, but when thinking in English ONLY THE ACTION BY ITSELF is considered relevant to a description of the video.

That's just one difference between two cognate languages, and a small one at that.

But the research shows what the brain is doing when parsing a moving image using different language frameworks.

It's a good article because it brings to the surface a principle that Romance novels working to convey not only the bonding love between Soul Mates but also the novel-generating, super-heated conflict that drives the plot.

In a great Romance, there has to be an obvious affinity between the individuals forming a couple, but also an even more obvious reason why "it will never work."  And then a not-at-all-obvious pathway to how to get it to work, and not only to work but to lead to the stable, renewable, and eternal Happily Ever After Ending, our prized HEA.

At least half the general public believes firmly that life can not ever deliver an HEA.

It may be that in "real" life, we are not integrating our life's Theme with the Plot of our life, with our Character, and with the world we have been thrust into willy-nilly.

Humans in such a disintegrated psychological condition can't believe that their real life has an HEA -- a sweet-spot that can be attained by hard work and the right life-partner.

If that's true of humans today, does that have to be true of your Aliens?

Or what if your human character could firmly envision the HEA she wanted, but your Alien character was speaking a different language and knew for a fact that there is no such thing as an HEA?

If you have studied anthropology, you know that there really is such a thing as women's language and men's language.  It's not just a joke.  It's a very real thing.  Nobody knows the reason for that (yet), but there are a lot of theories.

Some say it's culture that divides the genders and forces them to learn different ways of speaking.  Some say it's biology that shapes their language.

Study of how humans (and Bonobos and Dolphins etc) use language is absolutely essential for any writer, but especially a writer of Paranormal Romance, or any Romance story built around the odd or different bit of science.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33731444

That story is about Bonobos using squeaks for language.



The more we learn, the more we see that animals and humans are built on the same platform, and just have different apps installed.

Who's to say Bonobos don't have Wisdom?

As a writer, spinning a yarn about love, you need to figure out what you think Wisdom is.

Romance stories are about how just plain right life feels when you finally encounter that singular individual who lights up your world, reveals the best part of yourself to yourself, and responds to you by revealing their own best part

We experience love through another Character, see through their eyes, learn their language, and flip-flop between our own language and theirs.

The HEA comes into possibility when you meet that special someone who, when you tell them how you feel, they understand what you said.

Whether the HEA exists in your world -- or not -- depends entirely on language.

Just as with the German-English experiment, the language inside your head reveals one world, and the languages you have learned reveals other worlds.

That idea -- that language shapes perception -- is a THEME element.

The idea that perception creates Wisdom is a THEME element.

What exactly Wisdom might be is a THEME element.

What exactly a Wise Character might say is a CHARACTER element (discussed also under DIALOGUE).

What exactly a Wise Character might do (or resist or refrain from doing) is a PLOT element.

The problems that such a Wise Character might encounter that would trigger such a speech and action (Theme-Plot-Dialogue Integration) are the WORLDBUILDING elements.

You can see from this German-English experiment that the Character, the Wisdom-Theme, and the Plot are absolutely integral to the WORLD element.

How you, as the writer, present the world you have built depends on Point-of-View (PoV) -- from which Character's eyes is the reader "seeing" the world you have built, and the "languages" your world features.

The research is regarding established, living languages, shared by many.  Narrowing like that is essential to Science, but not necessarily to Art.

An artist or writer can think of it all another way.  The language you invented before your parents taught you to say mama and dada, before your brain developed synapses to connect cause and effect (you drop your bottle; it falls DOWN every time!) so you could build an image of the world you had been born into, is your Native Language.  All the rest are added.

Each language you add lets you perceive the world around you with different emphasis, different value-systems, different ideas of what is real and what is not-real.

Each THEME you use as the foundation of a romance novel bespeaks one such set of values, and excludes others.

That's embedded in the fundamental definition of Art: Art is the Selective Recreation of Reality.

The operative word is "Selective."

You must select the perception embedded in the "language" of your Characters.  What is real to them will be real to your reader, no matter how alien to your reader the idea might be, if you teach your reader the language that Character is thinking within.

Most writers do this subconsciously, intuitively.  You have this fully realized world and its Characters in your imagination, and it really is good!  The difference between what you imagine and what your reader imagines can be narrowed by craft skills, but never eliminated.

The point of Art is not to argue, but to illustrate and experience.

A romance story can evoke the language of love so powerfully that a reader sees the real world differently -- at least for a while.

The suspension of disbelief can dissolve the mental barriers that prevents us from seeing the whole story of something like that German-English experiment video.  The HEA can be seen by the reader as the Goal of all the busy action in the romance.

Romance and Science are both all about Language.

Bonobos may have sex, love, even bonding -- but not Romance which is rooted in the hypothetical and extrapolates into a possible future that wasn't possible "before."

And so far as we know, Bonobos don't have Science.

When you dissect and examine the anatomy of a Romance scientifically, you get science fiction romance.

Let's explore an example - a novel to write.

THEME: Home For The Holidays

PLOT: Gretchen Wilder brings her boyfriend Mark Underwood home to meet her somewhat religious parents.  Unknown to them, she's 7 months pregnant with a child that is not Mark's and he knows that.  Can their Love Conquer All without an abortion?

CHARACTER: Gretchen has lived the life of an apostate, and firmly believes a woman has a right to make her own reproductive health decisions.  Mark, raised by Atheists, thinks he has fully internalized that value - it's her decision - but he's worked as a Medical Technician and knows it's a baby human.  He's now plowing through medical school, and can't afford a child disrupting everything.  Gretchen has just been laid off when a company went bankrupt.

WORLDBUILDING: 2016 USA. Gretchen's parents are staunch Catholics (but used birth control and see no reason women can't be ordained priests).  Gretchen's siblings run the gamut from atheist to devout, and a few cousins and in-laws may be Hindu, Jewish, Confucian, maybe Native American, even Muslim?, a nice variety.

Everyone is gathering at the Parent's house to cook, clean, decorate, and party because the father has survived his first heart attack.  They are doing all the work for the parents as a present.  They run the gamut of the political spectrum, and at least half of them feel the recent election turned out all wrong.

INTEGRATION: the writer's job is to DEPICT all these clashing points of view in such a way that the reader's emotions resonate to each one.

Get the reader believing in and agreeing with each in turn, feeling the urgency of the decision that must be made soon (to have the child, put it up for adoption?, go for an abortion, get married, not get married, in the Catholic Church?)

You have a wide variety of Characters, each of whom may speak different languages, parse situations in different ways.  Some may arrive late, others leave early in a huff.  Some are staying in the house, others in a hotel.  They all have smartphones.

Perhaps one present the children are giving the parents is a wireless speaker system throughout the house for TV, Radio, Netflix, podcasts, intercom, so there's the ongoing tech issues across generations.

There's the HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS theme manifesting in LANGUAGE - computer language, app language, Apple vs Android, etc.  What language you speak shapes your perceptions -- "home" is a perception and has its own language, the language of Nostalgia.

CONFLICT: all these tense undercurrents and roaring disputes are taking place in a household where an Elder has just had a heart attack -- medical advice is for calm, warm-friendly family interaction.  (Ever gone home for the Holidays?  You know the odds!)

Your job is to depict a Character thinking in one language, then thinking in another language, and seeing "both sides" of the problem in different ways.

This multi-language Character should be your Wise Character.

Usually, the Wise Character is not leaping into every conversation with opinions, ideas and solutions to everyone else's problems.  But Wisdom sharpens the ability to detect lies.

One signature behavior of the Wise is that they don't say much, especially not when others are yelling.  Thus the Wise Character is your source of the zinger one-liners that will be remembered.

So you take your reader on a roller coaster ride from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again with regard to the problems posed in our society today regarding abortion.

For example, some of the family may be Progressives, proud of that label and absolutely convinced that the Progressive agenda coincides with the very best values of Catholicism.  In other words, you can't be a good Catholic unless you are a Progressive.

Progressives are dedicated to kindness to animals, gentle treatment of the Earth's resources and human environment, healthcare for all, raising the minimum wage so the least among workers can live decently, and can argue persuasively that every ethical point in the Catechism is found in the Progressive Agenda.

A woman's freedom to choose is a natural and necessary extension of the highest Values ever promulgated among humans.

That's an absolute that is beyond question.  Therefore anyone who questions it must be against everything good that humanity has ever known.

That thinking is built into the English language -- just like the focus on ACTION to the exclusion of DESTINATION as illustrated by the article on German vs English.

English is an amalgam of many historic languages, very largely derived from Ancient Greek and Ancient Latin.  Modern American English has many structures and borrowings from other languages brought to the U.S.A. by immigrants.

One perception feature of English is the reliance on either/or paradigms, the zero-sum-game, or in sports the Winner vs Loser.

In English, "There Can Be Only One" (from the TV Series HIGHLANDER) is easily believed.  All the action in that Series was predicated on the assumption that you couldn't change that Rule.

The T.V. Series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST -- not the current one, but the 1987 one with Linda Hamilton and Ronald Perlman ...

http://www.amazon.com/An-Impossible-Silence/dp/B0126NA4V8/

...also used a premise that declared the couple could never be together.  That premise was not challenged.

Your current readers have been conditioned for generations not to question premises.

So when, in our example romance story, the devout Catholic parents get wind of the possibility that their pregnant daught does not plan to marry the boyfriend she's just brought home, and is wondering if she should have an abortion so that they can get married -- oy veh!

The parents in this scenario have also been conditioned not to question the premises of their very existence, their life and practice of their religion.

Gretchen knows their attitude.  She expects support from her siblings.  She assumes she has Mark's support, no matter how she decides.

Your job as a writer is to depict Gretchen gaining an understanding of her Parents' attitude that is deeper than the Parents' understanding of their own attitude.  You may need to add the local Catholic Priest character -- who might be a young replacement of the Parents decades long confidant, a young man who is not the Wise Character yet.

Your Wise Character in the family has to be able to teach the language of Souls, Eternity, Mysticism, and the non-falsifiable hypothesis of a Creator and how that hypothesis can lead to the conclusion that abortion is a very dicey choice.

For example, the Wise Character might be a High School History teacher bemoaning Common Core to anyone who will listen when he's been tippling a bit -- or maybe he's just pretending to tipple so people won't think he's pontificating.  He might refer the customs of the Ancient Greeks and Romans of "exposing" unwanted babies on "the wall" (of the city).  Some such babies were "rescued" or "adopted" for good or nefarious purposes, but their fates were never known to the parents.  In any event, the Progressives are actually Regressives in freedom from reproduction.

 He might take a dig at the Progressives by noting that the advocacy for "the woman's right to control her reproductive health" gave government another increment of control over reproduction (via who pays for the medical procedure).  Government control of the individual is tyranny - regressive.  Being fair, he'd point out that before tyranny of Kings and Oligarchs or Theocrats, there was Anarchy, a kind of freedom from government some today advocate.  In an Anarchy, you can murder people if you can get away with it.  Revenge rules.

Control of reproduction, he would pontificate as a historian, is the central ingredient in "domestication" -- breeding animals for a particular trait - which he can see government doing to today's women by skewing their values.

You can just imagine how well that would go down in this mixed family (don't forget to include at least one Gay -- maybe someone willing to adopt this baby).  The prescribed calm-happy-reunion for the Holidays honoring the parents and celebrating the father's survival would be out the window in two seconds flat.

At that point, even the most Wise of Wise Characters might be incensed enough to keep on talking.  (silence is the signature of Wisdom, remember?)

So he/she might note that, given the way psychologists have developed the mathematics of controlling the behavior of large masses of people (PR) to get them to buy a particular product (or vote for a particular person), perhaps large numbers of women were being swayed toward a particular opinion with regard to unwanted pregnancies and what to do about them.

In other words, Gretchen's opinion and decision might not actually be her own -- not a choice her Soul is making, but imposed by distant dictators trying to gain control of humanity. (of course, maybe Aliens -- at least one of the family or in-laws should instantly be thinking Aliens trying to control humanity.)

Someone would surely whisper in her ear that her parents' God was that sort of control freak, so she shouldn't listen but make her own decision.  That whisperer would couch the suggestion in the Language of Religion -- putting another perspective on the scene, just as the German-English Video experiment did.

Learning the language of Religion as a "second language" as the article on German vs. English discusses, the family will be able to discuss alternatives in a risk-assessment framework different from their usual thinking.

It's the 'second language' aspect that makes alternatives possible that were not possible with only one language to think in.

Spirituality has its own jargon which is so obtuse that it has to be regarded as a "language" by the artist if not the scientist.

As the German speakers always noted the goal of the action in the video, the Spirituality speaker will note the goal that is utterly invisible to those who do not have that language.

Do not confuse Spirituality (the awareness of a non-physical component to the human being) with Religion which defines one or another causative force and a specified creation-paradigm through which one must view reality.

Each Religion has its own "language" too.  Imagine if this Mark Character was raised Muslim. Imagine him at Midnight Mass with the family he ever so much wants to join.  Suppose he fears rejection over the decision Gretchen is making.

In the novel outline of Gretchen & Mark, you have dramatic potential all the way up to and including pure Soap Opera -- another heart attack, a near-miscarriage, the old family Priest having been a boy-molester, or Mark raised Muslim and converted to Catholicism being murdered during Midnight Mass by his righteous father.

There is plenty of material from which to spin a plot to go with the story of "must decide if abortion is an option."

Pick point of view characters according to whose story you want to tell, and imagine how this multiplex modern family might work through this issue while interacting with the Holidays.

The glue that holds plot and story together with Character and the world they live in is THEME.

That's why I write so much about THEME as a craft element.  It is the hardest of all to master because it requires being "multi-lingual" or polyglot.  The writer must be able to see why this Character can not see what that Character sees, then explain that reason to the reader in show-don't-tell.

The best way to show-don't-tell is to build the theme into the world, then turn the Characters loose to live in that world.

Here are posts on Fallacy and Misnomer:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com