Astrology Just For Writers - Part 13 - The Artist's Dilemma by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Astrology Just For Writers
Part 13
The Artist's Dilemma
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous posts on Astrology Just For Writers are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The two panels of this graphic are neatly displayed as two sides of the dilemma not back to back, but at an ANGLE.

In Astrology these two statements represent two Houses (everyone has all 12 Houses, so it is there inside you somewhere).

The "Get A Real Job" attitude is more Capricorn or Natural 10th House -- the Cardinal Earth sign that is ruled by Saturn and tends toward the practical.

The "Without Passion" side has the lofty incoherence of Neptune, which as I've pointed out previously represents the mental condition that we describe in Romance as being "In Love."

The Artist is passionate.  The Lover is passionate.

Sex is the Creative act -- which other people do try to constrain (Saturn) and define (Saturn) and manage for you (Capricorn).

Two people in love inspire others in ways that prove, over and over again, that Love Conquers All.

And that does, indeed, "change the world."  Romance, mellowing into Love, settling into Happily Ever After, raising children who understand Love and spread it through the world, all that changes the world.

Capricorn/Saturn is famous for resisting change -- but also then insisting on change, sometimes massive, sometimes painful change, about every seven years.

Pisces is the Mutable Water sign -- and interestingly produces many Engineers, mechanical geniuses, as well as artists.

Pisces is opposite Virgo, the detail-oriented-sign.  Pisces blurs and blends details so they are not distinct.  

In other words, Pisces is bound to its opposite, Virgo, and is 60 degrees from Capricorn -- which visually seems to be about what that image corner shows, an oblique angle.  If it were a "right angle" we couldn't read both sides so easily.

So what's opposite Capricorn?  Cancer!  The sign of Home, the basis of Life, family, parents/children.  

So Capricorn, the "Get a real job" attitude is opposed by Home-Making (Cancer), and pulled off balance by creative imagination (Pisces).

Pisces is the Natural 12th House -- the summation of the meaning of your life.  

Noel Tyl says that the reigning Need of a Natal Chart is shown by the position of the Moon -- ruler of Cancer.  The ruler of the opposite House, Saturn organizes resources to fulfill that Need using the Ideals represented by Neptune.

Ideals are generally considered "impractical" -- and Saturn is the distilled definition of the Practical.  

Note how a story must have two Conflicts -- internal to the Characters and external to the Characters -- that are resolved at the end of the story.  

That oblique angle relationship between the practical Capricorn and the impractical Idealism of Pisces depicts the perfect conflict for a Romance.  You just have to find a resolution you can convince your readers to believe.  Neptune is all about belief.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

"Fair" Use ? Exploiting Artists.

Some words, IMHO, simply should not be used as legal terms. "Fair" for one. "Fair" is too subjective; many people understand the term differently. What seems "fair" game to a student or a scholar or a person or business entity who is very happy to redistribute other people's property without permission, may not seem at all "fair" to a creative individual whose livelihood depends on the legal licensing or sale of their work.

My friend and colleague Marilynn Byerly recommends this article on Fair Use:
https://janefriedman.com/the-fair-use-doctrine/ 

Marilynn blogs about copyright here:
http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/ 

On Facebook this week, artist Jon Paul Ferrara posted about the permissionless use of his artwork on the covers of some ebooks being sold for profit on certain retail bookselling sites.
https://www.facebook.com/jonpaulstudios?fref=photo%3E

Musicians and authors receive most of the attention when copyright infringement is discussed, although there was a memorable dust up in 2012 - 2013 when some websites claimed the right to turn "user-generated content" (ie uploaded photographs) into posters and wallpaper and postcards which the sites would sell for their own profit.  I saw my own paperback book covers offered as posters etc. I wonder whether the intent was that I should purchase it?

Quoting from TheTrichordist from 2013

"When Instagram attempted to change its terms of service that would allow the company to monetize the work of the individual without the individuals permission, consumers went ballistic. It seems that permission is not such a difficult concept to grasp when people are personally effected. This is why privacy is a much more universal issue, because everyone is effected by it....."

http://thetrichordist.com/2013/05/08/permission-privacy-and-piracy-where-creators-and-consumers-meet/

"User-generated" too often means "User-Uploaded" but not generated or owned by the site member.

Here's an excellent site that studied social media sites that strip metadata and copyright information from photographs etc.
http://www.embeddedmetadata.org/social-media-test-results.php

Bouquets for Google, in this case. Brickbats for Facebook... apparently.

The sites that remove copyright information could be a potentially serious issue from copyright holders, because these sites, in effect, make copyrighted works look like orphan works or public domain works.  Why does the law allow this? If the artist's name can --and may-- be lawfully removed from a painting, why shouldn't the author's name that the title of a book be stripped from the book?

(I am not seriously suggesting that attribution and titles should be stripped from copyrighted books. My point is that it should not be stripped from artwork.)

For authors who are self-publishing, make sure you purchase your cover art from a reputable source, and make sure you have the appropriate licensing for your anticipated print-run or distribution. If there are photographers and models involved, see if you can obtain waivers from both.

My best,
Rowena Cherry

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 2: Creating The Iconic Vision by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 2
Creating The Iconic Vision
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.inspirationinpictures.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/131014-4.jpg

Last week (April 7, 2015) we examined what a writer can learn from a Lego Set:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Remember, in this Tuesday blog series, we are in hot-pursuit of the reasons why Romance Genre is not given the respect it deserves as Literature and Art. 

Two features (or Beats in SAVE THE CAT! lingo) we identified as definitions of Romance are the "Love At First Sight" moment (sometimes manifesting as Hate At First Sight) and the HEA.  At some future time we'll examine the more complex "Boy Next Door" scenario, and "Second Time Around." 

In this 4-Skills Integration series, we're looking at "where you get those crazy ideas" and abstractions (such as why bother to be a writer at all?) made concrete and visible to others -- the process generally termed Art (Icons are Art).  You can say things with Art that can not be stated or conveyed in Words.  Since Words are our medium, we are combining skills to create Art that goes beyond Words, to create Icons.  Some word-icons are one-liners such as the Deepak Chopra quote above. 

You want to learn to write in such a way that quotes like that will be excerpted and danced around the internet over your byline. 

The March 31, 2015 entry was about Binocular Vision, coining the term Trinocular Vision.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-10-binocular-vision-by.html

Binocular Vision is seeing the 3 or 4 dimensional world we live in, our concrete reality, in three dimensions with our eyes gathering data and our minds interpreting that data.

Our animal bodies evolved to use that eyeball-brain binocular data-gathering to spot food, mates, etc. and attain necessities for survival  -- as well as avoid being eaten and other concrete hazards. 

If you include time, it's 4 dimensions that we "see."  We see in YouTube videos -- movement in space over time, mostly chopped into short-sequences (look both ways before you cross the street then watch where you put your feet). 

The space-time continuum (which is actually discontinuous but our eyeballs/brain can't resolve the definition at that level) is an illusion of our binocular vision. 

Trinocular vision would then be the binocular image with the "third eye" (the spiritual eye) open and adding a "dimension" to what we see with our binocular vision. 

Trinocular vision is not squinting the two-eyes shut to see only with the Third Eye -- but seeing with all three at once while going about working, shopping, cooking, driving carpool, painting the house, unplugging a drain. 

We are binocular creatures who occasionally, sometimes only once or twice in a lifetime, "see" with trinocular vision.  We can, for a moment, look at our regular 3-D world and "see" (apperceive) the Hand of God producing that 3-D image we think of as "reality."

Such glimpses of another dimension rounding out reality generally "change" people.  The person has the same Natal Chart, the same personality, the same memories and life-experiences from which lessons and conclusions and coping behaviors are derived.  It's the same person before and after that glimpse. 

But that person, post-glimpse, now either understands the world in a different way, or merely knows that they do not have a clue what's "really going on" but that there is a Higher Power doing all this.

That pivot point in Character is where you focus your PLOT -- where you find "the story of this character's life." 

Failing to find that "moment" in a character's lifespan is what leads writers to choose the wrong Point of View character(s) for a particular novel.  That pivot point is the maelstrom of CONFLICT -- the defining point of change in a character-arc that signals the presence of "story" and "plot" explicating one, clear, "theme" which is pertinent to that one, singular World in which the characters live, the world you build around them, termed the Setting. 

The story-beat Deepak Chopra pinpointed is usually termed "epiphany" -- an AHA! moment.  Or Revelation.

Writers, especially Romance Writers, deal specifically in that epiphany or revelation moment, the "Love At First Sight" moment.

That moment is the moment in a lifetime (a once in a lifetime moment) when the Third Eye is open, and another Person is seen to exist in yet another dimension - the dimension of Soul - and that Other Soul is recognized as one's own Soul's other half. 

Conflict, in Romance, is usually a conflict between bodies, between Lifestyle, Jobs, Careers, Aspirations, Self-images, but not between Souls. 

In Romance, the Souls slam together like two pieces of magnets, forming a seamless whole, and the real-lives and bodies erupt in frantic objection.  In the vortex of that Trinocular Vision Moment, that conflict is joined.  The Trinocular glimpse may have faded away by the time the HEA is reached.  Inside that vortext, the plot hammers the characters with Events that re-shape their lives.

That moment (usually available under a Neptune Transit), is a personal experience that is a flash of spirituality penetrating the veil of religion.

You no longer "believe" in Souls.  You know. 

You become the three-eyed-woman in the land of the two-eyed.  And there's no way you can explain what you have seen.  But having experienced the flash of  Vision, you are now convinced.  Maybe you don't know what you're convinced of -- but you know that what you see is not what you get when it comes to a Significant Other. 

That three-eyed, trinocular woman, is the definition of what a Woman is -- what female-ness is -- in the Kabbalistic traditions.  The Feminine tends to hold onto the ability to apperceive the world with three-eyes-at-once more tenaciously than the Masculine.  (keep in mind that masculine and feminine exist in both human genders, one dominating the other, but both available as necessary)

This is one reason the Kabbalists insist husbands must listen to their wives.  The Feminine is endowed with the ability to apperceive their child's Potential.  A Mother's trinocular gaze upon a child can reveal whether their deeds will be famous or infamous.  The Feminine third eye sees souls struggling to inhabit the physical body.  That interface of conflict is always complex.  But such gazes are usually just glimpses, like Love at First Sight, and can fade and be replaced by binocular perceptions. 

Deepak Chopra is not a Kabbalist, but there is a Kabbalistic explanation of that Love At First Sight moment.  It's a long, complex, and powerful explanation because it also explains
a) why there is a Happily Ever After and
b) why most readers don't believe such an ending can be "real." 

The Love At First Sight leading to the Happily Ever After "ending" is the Character change from "religion" to "spirituality" that Chopra's quote nails.

Of course there are further life lessons that lead from mere spirituality to walking in the ways of the Creator of the Universe.  Those further life-lessons may (or may not) come with the birth of children, or with seeing the eventual Great Deeds of your children (or the Nefarious Deeds of your children).  Or grandchildren. 

So last week we discussed that shift in perception from binocular to trinocular.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

And that built on the previous post on Depiction Part 10, Binocular Vision.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-10-binocular-vision-by.html

In that post, I wrote:
---------quote-----------
Why does about half of the world believe the HEA is nonsense?  Even in the face of factual evidence to the contrary?  Is that "scientific thinking" or "superstition?"
----------end quote----------

Here's some factual evidence to the contrary:  If The HEA Is Implausible, How Come It Happens? 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/if-hea-is-implausible-how-come-it.html

That "It Is Implausible" contention about the HEA is what we're up against when trying to convince the world that Romance Genre is worthy of the highest possible respect -- that the HEA is real, perhaps even common.

The central question behind the HEA is, "What is Happiness?" 

Where does it come from?  How do you get it?  How do you know you've maximized your Happiness?  How do you stabilize at the peak of Happiness? 

If you can't answer these questions, how can you figure out if you, or another couple you know, are in fact living "Happily Ever After?"  How do you recognize an HEA?

We'll work on defining "ever after" some other time.  Right now, we're doing 4-skill-integration.  "Ever After" needs a few more artistic skills. 

The artist's job is to make concrete and visible (Iconic) that which the Trinocular Glimpse reveals.  Art is about telling others that you know what they know, and therefore what they know is true and real -- and realistic -- even if nobody else they know believes it. 

Concrete and Real require icons, arrays of symbols that depict the Trinocular Glimpse.

The series on Depiction is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/depiction-part-4-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-6-depicting-money-and.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-7-using-media-to-advance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-8-which-comes-first.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-9-depicting-hero-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-10-binocular-vision-by.html

And Part 10 of Depiction is about Trinocular Vision.

To get to an iconic "The Same But Different" vision, an image, a show-don't-tell, we need a theme to form the central core for integrating Plot-Character-Worldbuilding into a seamless whole.  "Happy" is the kind of abstraction that forms the cornerstone of Theme.

So how do you tell if you're HAPPY??? 

"Happy" is a character trait, however transient. 

"What is the nature of Happiness?" is a theme (big enough for a series.) 

"Happiness is Harmony between Soul and Body" is a theme which is novel size. 

Take the Theme, create the Character who lacks Harmony between Soul and Body at the beginning of the Plot, and then attains Harmony at the End, because of the impact of Events (Plot) on Character(s). 

Character Has Epiphany And Sees That Happiness Is Harmony Between Soul And Body -- is a story.  The Series of Events (connected on a Because-Line) triggering the epiphany is the plot.

EXAMPLE:

Mary Finch sets out to prove to her Mafia Dad that she's the best Hitman the Family has, gets away with Murder/Assassination several times, bids on and gets the job of Assassinating a US President, then finds she can't make herself do it.  Mary Informs on her Family, goes into Witness Protection,  applies for and gets a job as a security officer in WitSec itself, Meets her Soul-Mate, and feels Happiness for the first time.  --- that is a Plot. 

Of course there's a sequel where it is revealed to WitSec that she's a former contract killer - a minor detail that didn't come out at the trials because her father is loyal to her?

But how will the Reader/Viewer know Mary Finch is digging herself deeper and deeper into Misery with her successful Hits? 

How will the reader/viewer know that in Witness Protection she's found true Happiness?  What does a HAPPY PERSON do differently from a miserable one?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/20/signs-youre-a-happy-perso_n_4618461.html

The Huffington Post published this article for New Year's 2014/2015.

Here's the headline list:
You don’t sweat the small stuff...
...In fact, you appreciate the little things.
You’re proud of other people’s successes.
Living in the moment is very important to you.
here's a TEDTalk on happiness living in the moment: http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_killingsworth_want_to_be_happier_stay_in_the_moment.html
You’re in a healthy relationship (and not just with your significant other).
When something is stressing you out, you know how to calm down.
You’ve gotten your “affluenza” shot. (not too caught up in seeking material wealth)
You’re constantly adopting a glass-half-full mentality.
You have a sister.
Making new friends seems to come easy for you.
You’ve reached a goal (and you have more you want to accomplish).
You say cheese. (you tend to smile for a camera)
There’s nothing keeping you tossing and turning at night.

So, we started out with a THEME ELEMENT (Happiness), created whole cloth a definition of Happiness that is a theme (Happiness is Harmony between Soul and Body), used that theme statement to create a character, used the character to create a story, used the story to create a plot -- ended with the outline (remember last week, I pointed you to the items on OUTLINE at the end of the long post full of links) -- we ended with the outline for a series of novels, and maybe a TV series if we detail Mary Finch's hits while working for her Dad.  And there's all her lovers along the way -- no stable relationships, until the end.

We built her entire world with a single word in that outline -- Mafia.  (Finch?  Mafia? Interesting story about how a Finch got involved with an Italian family?)

The word "Mafia" is an Icon - it stands for a tight-knit Family which provides financial and operational Security.  It is safe to be a member in good standing, and very unsafe outside.

Mary Finch's Happiness comes when she moves outside of the Mafia, into danger, into where it's not safe.  What does that tell you about her Character?

We could create a longer, deeper and richer work of art if we challenged the Theme.

"What if there is no such thing as an Immortal Soul, and therefore there is no such thing as Happiness?" 

Well, it is unacceptable that there be no such thing as Happiness.  Even the anti-Romance faction believes in Happily For Now (HFN).

But there is another view that "happiness" is just an electro-chemical brain-stimulus to the pleasure center, which proves that humans are just a physical body. 

In fact, that article from the Huffington Post is predicated on the assumption that God does not exist, that your Happiness is up to you to craft with your own two hands, and there is only the Body that has to be Happy.  The Happiness definition lurking un-articulated behind that list of signs you are happy excludes the issue of Harmonizing body and soul.

Take two Characters - one with a mostly-open Third Eye, and one blind in the Third Eye (reasons could be interesting details to Depict) - set them into a Soul-Mate Situation, add Setting, Theme and let the Conflict unfold.

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

Depiction Part 10 - Binocular "Vision" by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 10
Binocular "Vision"
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

The previous parts of the Depiction Series are:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/depiction-part-4-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-6-depicting-money-and.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-7-using-media-to-advance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-8-which-comes-first.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/depiction-part-9-depicting-hero-by.html



Trolling through my twitter feed, I came across this:
--------------
Scott Myers ‏@GoIntoTheStory
Character Types: Use archetypes to inform and inspire your character
development http://ow.ly/Gr6FQ  #screenwriting #scriptchat
FULL LINK http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2014/08/free-screenwriting-resource-character-types.html
-------------

I've discussed "archetype" usage at length in a wide variety of posts, always assuming writing students have absorbed things like The Hero's Journey and other such studies, perhaps from astrology.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/vampire-archetype-flashburned-into.html

And
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-6.html

And yes, the widest selling writers use this character-building technique whether they know it or not (mostly not). 

As I've mentioned before, fiction writing is largely a subconscious process which everyone does, but only a few acquire the skills to formulate a string of words that evoke their inner stories for other people.

To communicate what you "see" in your inner vision to others, you use the points of similarity and congruence with their inner vision, then lightly lace it with items unique to you.

Last week we discussed the value of unique vision -- the commercial fiction writer's personal stance against giving others what they want, and instead giving them something new, unique, different that changes the other person's view of reality.

That, in essence, is the definition of "Art."  It doesn't matter what medium is used for this Art.  It does matter that the Art portray a recognizable world -- with a twist.  An Artist is in the business of showing their patrons and clients (your editors, publishers and ultimately your readers) what the reader's world would look like from a different point of view.

The attraction of artistic views is simply the Artist reveals a dimension of reality that the consumer didn't see before.

The ability to do that -- to see and express what others do not -- is gained in childhood by refusing the instructions in that wikihow.com post on The Writing Prompt:

http://www.wikihow.com/Answer-a-Writing-Prompt

The defiance of "Authority" is the essence of Science Fiction because "Science" means an organized body of knowledge or the process of organizing knowledge.  People do the organizing, and willful blindness is an element of human nature.

Willful blindness is necessary to keep humans alive in this world.  Our brains can't process all the data we can gather, and to stay alive one must react swiftly (more swiftly than predators can attack).  So we use shortcuts to thinking.

Martial Arts leverages this shortcut tendency by training you to react before your brain had "thought" (i.e. distilled knowledge out of sensory input).

The defiance of Authority is also the hallmark of all Great Romances.

Romeo and Juliet, Helen of Troy, all the archetypes for The Romance, illustrate how when Neptune Transits set in on a matched pair, all normal, practical considerations that Authority and "Science" impose just dissipate.

In the grip of Romance, people do stupid, idiotic, insane things, apply a value system that puts The Other and The Relationship above life itself, above the high regard of kin and even The Law.  In the grip of Romance, people are "insane." 

Our Science Fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, and Supernatural Romance genres illustrate how it can be that the insane expectation of an HEA (Happily Ever After) ending to the story is perfectly reasonable (if not logical.)

Why does about half of the world believe the HEA is nonsense?  Even in the face of factual evidence to the contrary?  Is that "scientific thinking" or "superstition?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/if-hea-is-implausible-how-come-it.html

Why can't writers -- who can see the reality of Love, of the HEA, of Life -- convince this rejecting half of the world?  Maybe it's more like 3/4 of the world that disbelieves in the HEA, but that segment of the readership is able to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy a whopping good Romance combined with any other genre. 

Could it be that the Willful Blindness described last week (imposed by training or chosen freely) --

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/when-should-you-give-up-on-manuscript.html

-- can't be articulated and addressed because of the training in "writing" via Writing Prompts and a formula for how to "answer" a "Writing Prompt?"

Do writing prompts themselves limit us, or is it the just the imposition of the taste, the likes and dislikes, the rights and wrongs, by the academics who refuse good grades to people who say crazy things?

We acquire these Willful Blindness spots in our psyche from our Native Language, from parental training, from schooling, and from the school of hard knocks.  The animal spirit seeks to avoid pain while the soul seeks Love.

Maybe that's simplistic, so take it as a writing prompt and answer with something creative, not what I would expect.

So stripping back to the animal simplicity of what a human being is, think about the evolution of binocular vision.  Depth perception is often cited as a survival characteristic for humans (or Great Apes, or just all primates). 

Why don't we have three eyes, so if one gets damaged the others still provide enough information? 

Mystics hold that we do in fact have a "third eye."  It is the eye that provides not the depth-of-field of the 3-Dimensional reality around us, but the addition of another dimension to the objects viewed by our two eyes.  That third eye perception is often depicted as energy fields, color, ghosts, glimpses of the past and future (a time dimension).

Some mystics hold that the human being has this dimensional perception added to the usual binocular vision in order to be able to perceive God active in the world.

The forces, colors of an aura, shifting veils of unreality, are actually an astral plane dimension.  As when you look at a cube corner-on, you can see two "faces" and the top, and with something to compare it with, you can estimate the size of the cube, whether the unseen back of it is near something that is behind it.  You see in 3-dimensions.

Actually, your eyes don't see in 3-dimensions.  Your brain interprets the incoming data and arranges it so that you can calculate which way to dodge to avoid being hit by that hurtling cube.

Your survival depends on accurate estimations of physical distances, speed, and relative position. 

People who have an open, or squinted partially open, third eye are often thought to be "crazy."  Psychics, Artists and Lovers share that reputation among those who accept the Writing Prompt training. 

For those who have read my series on Astrology, the significant planet to study for  psychic and romantic behavior is Neptune.

Here are index posts to Astrology and Tarot

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

Because they are viewing the world through a squinted third eye, and perhaps have been trained by that Writng Prompt training to put walls around their data processing to filter out information from that squinted eye, they don't see clearly and thus do not seem to be getting correct answers.

Very often, in real life, people fall in love, get married, then get divorced amidst much vitriol.  So that proves there's no such thing as the HEA.

Or does it?

Does it just prove that binocular vision is inadequat to the task of assessing a fellow Soul and that Soul's relationship to yourself?

Does it take Trinocular Vision to guide one through social interactions into an HEA?  (Or perhaps just blind luck?)

For example, suppose trinocular vision -- incoming data from 4 or 5 or maybe 6 dimensions (3 spacial; 3 spiritual?) -- could be processed accurately?  What kind of person would that be?

How could you tell a crazy person from a sane one with a squinted or astigmatic third eye?

If a person had 20-20-20 Vision, what would he/she be?

Would you believe any of the "truths" such a person would impart?

Look back on history, read a lot of biographies and autobiographies, study the Golden Bough, and pay great attention to the history of philosophy and the history of fiction (from campfire Shaman, through nomadic Bard, to modern Journalism). 

What sort of craziness that has propagated down through history stands out in high relief?  What people are remembered for sort-of making sense even today, and are believed in even by those who do not model their lives around what those writers revealed?

The still-towering figures I see are:

1. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses

2. Ozymandias,  Hammurabi
http://youtu.be/T3dpghfRBHE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

3. Helen of Troy (long thought imaginary; Troy's remains were found!)

4. Kings and Prophets of the Old Testament ( David and Bathsheba
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043455/   Tradition says the Messiah will be of the line of David via Bathsheba!)

5. Jesus, Mohammed (and similar around the world, Confucius to Gandhi - certifiable nut jobs all?  Or those of trinocular vision?)

6. Various Popes, and Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and religious leaders like The Rebbe
http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/244372/jewish/The-Rebbe-A-Brief-Biography.htm

All of whom transformed whole religions and/or social orders or technology. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation

Months ago on a news story regarding an interfaith Event I heard a mainstream reporter casually refer to Chabad as "the largest Jewish denomination."  I'd have given that appellation to the Reform Movement if you include all its subdivisions.  I have no clue where that reporter got that information or impression, but it was not challenged anywhere I saw. 

Are all these giant figures of history whose works are still known today just good grifters, just scam artists selling us religion to extract money from us or gain political power?  Or are they our few humans gifted with Trinocular Vision, artists depicting reality in 6 dimensions instead of 3?

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob weren't writers.  Moses was.  Ozymandias probably had his publicist write that inscription, Hammurabi (quoted in a ST:Tos episode) may have written those words but scribes cleaned up the text, Helen of Troy being a woman probably wasn't allowed to publish, etc. But the stories told about these people, and some of their written works, are still considered authoritative today, and definitely influential. 

Ozymandias expressed a materialistic philosophy - the works of his hands would establish his supremacy in your mind.  Hammurabi is perhaps the best example of an early Humanist - giving a code of law that has a chance of working despite human nature. 

All of these people are "visionaries" -- but each one saw something different from what the others saw about "reality," and chose to do different things because of of what they "saw."

Did some of them "see" trinocularly the Hand of God organizing human affairs?  Did some of them see Souls seeking Mates? 

Why do the things these people expressed still resonate (get repeated, echoed, distorted) in our internet based society? 

If, in The Blind Men And The Elephant, all the blind men decide the one-eyed man is correct and it's an elephant, do the blind men "believe" it's an elephant or "scientifically determine" it's an elephant? 

What cognitive mode depicts what we know of our Soul, and our prospects for finding a Soul Mate?

What does "Love At First Sight" mean -- sight with the eyes, or sight with the Third Eye, or Sight with all Three? 

Is that well documented phenomenon of Love At First Sight actually the one point in your life when your Third Eye opens and you See trinocularly instead of binocularly.

Do Third Eyes only open (or only focus properly) during a Neptune Transit (when "reality" gets blurry?) 

Is that trinocular glimpse of your Soul Mate the reason why you, and Romance Writers, can't articulate "What You See In Him?" and "What He Sees In You?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

Is astigmatism of the Third Eye the reason we marry the wrong person? 

Does trinocular vision reveal the 6 dimensional universe so we can "see" the Finger of God creating and sustaining, shaping and reshaping the Universe?

Is that Vision of God (both distorted and accurate) what makes the Legends of that list of Ancient Figures "resonate" in modern culture?

I love the John Denver song, The Potter's Wheel.



Get a little hint how God must feel when Soul Mates finally join, then depict that joining and make your prose into poetry, prophecy and song. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 11: Terminology in Romance by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 11
Terminology in Romance
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Last week we looked again at Marketing Fiction, and at what sells besides Sex & Violence.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

So today we're going to discuss the part terminology plays in marketing and propose a new term to replace the term "fanfic."  We need to replace the term "fanfic" because of the Changing World in the title of this series of blog posts.

Fanfic has been the driving force behind much of the change, but fanfic itself came from something and has now leaped up to something that makes it require a new label.  That label will open vistas of potential only some of you have seen coming. 

So publishing terminology has its roots inside the fiction that's being marketed, which in turn is rooted in the writer's subconscious, in choice of objectives, in motivation for writing at all.

That's very abstract stuff, but language itself tries to make it concrete.

The classic question, "Why do you write?" is based on the assumption that there is A reason (not a plethora, not a whole personality profile).

Marketing fiction is all about finding fiction that is "aimed at" a specific "audience."  That assumes that a whole bunch of people all share ONE motive for reading (i.e. buying) fiction.

That assumption of a writer and reader sharing just one motivation is the reason that the question, "Why do you writer?" stymies writers. 

There is a why in there somewhere -- but it is not composed of anything you can articulate in a single word or sentence.

Yet all fiction is about that why.

You write a story that is about something (even if you don't consciously know what at the time).  The point of the exercise is not the "something" that the story is "about" -- but rather the "about" itself.  Being ABOUT is what Art is.

As I've discussed in these blog posts on writing craft, stories are Art.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

Art depicts reality - it is not reality, itself.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

And marketing Art shifts and changes, more rapidly now than ever.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-important-book-what-makes-novel.html

Now consider that language, any language, also "depicts" -- the map is not the territory.  Language itself is symbolism.

We've discussed symbolism at some length:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

The essential ingredient in fiction is conflict.  Therefore, the writer must depict both sides of a philosophical argument (a thematic statement) in order for the fiction to be 'about.'  The two sides of an argument must conflict, and ultimately resolve (even if there are issues left over for a sequel.)

The "both sides" structure of a story conflict is artificial.  That division into just two sides is symbolism, not reality.

Sifting two clear, opposing points of view out of the pea-soup morass of human experience so that each side can be clearly depicted is Art.

The process of sifting and defining the two sides is the same as the process of paining a picture.  The graphic artist "selects" certain lines, composition, arrangement, colors, sharp/fuzzy focus, perspective, to "lead the eye" just as a story-writer "leads the mind" via composition.

Having laid out a clean, clear, two-sided conflict, the writer must aim the narrative (a narrative is a beginning, middle, end set of points that are given connection by the writer's composition of the picture extracted from reality).

The narrative must be structured to aim at a particular audience.

If that audience is large enough, the economics of "publishing" (traditional publishing) takes over.  The widely-aimed story becomes commercially viable at a certain break point.  That break point is constantly changing.  It used to be the volume of cardboard consumed by China dictated that break point by dictating the price of newsprint paper used to print paperbacks.

China at that time was just beginning to become a manufacturing powerhouse, and needed boxes made from cardboard to ship finished product.

So trade treaties with China (politically controversial because of China's Communism) governed the subject matter and narrative structure, the composition, of mass market paperbacks, and thus of hardcovers that could be re-published as paperbacks reaching a larger readership.

Then came our "changing world" that I've been writing about here since 2007.


With the advent of usable e-reading screens, the e-book market which had grown via PDF download, dedicated reading devices of dubious worth, html websites posting fanfic, just plain exploded.

It pretty much caught traditional publishers by surprise.

They hadn't followed the growth of hits on fanfic websites. 

And for various reasons, traditional publishers had always been way out of touch with what "readers want" -- and more in touch with what a reader will buy based on a cover, or cover-blurb, or based on what books are placed in a bookstore window or "dump" carton in an aisle. 

Book sales are all that matter to a publisher.  And book sales don't matter at all to a reader, as long as the reader gets satisfaction, or can find the next book in a series they're following.

Book sales matter to a writer only insofar as their income stream is satisfactory.  When income is satisfactory, the matter of sales fades from the writer's consciousness.  The writer is concerned only with ABOUT, with the urge to DEPICT the world in a revealing light that makes sense out of chaos.

To a writer, only the story matters, only the narrative matters. 

That's why writers are so hurt and bewildered when a traditional publisher turns down the next book in a series.  The writer is about finishing the story.  The reader is about finding out the ending of the story.  The publisher is about efficient use of resources to make a profit. 

So with the advent of usable reading screens, the readers who wanted to finish reading the story, and the writers who wanted to finish publishing the story, and some entrepreneurs who saw that connection, founded small publishing via e-books.

The first commercial level explosion of e-book sales for such small publishers was in the Vampire Romance.

Traditional Publishing started this trend -- some might say, Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire started the trend, but I think it appeared first in YA novels about a Vampire who turns up in a High School, either as a student, a teacher, or on the periphery.  13 year old readers become adult readers in about 5 years.

And it was about 5 years after the popularity of YA vampires that we saw the Vampire Romance emerge onto bookstore shelves, buried inside the Romance genre paperbacks.

A  couple years later, Vampire Romance got a label on the spine, different labels from different publishers.

Sales peaked, then started to fall off as other sorts of Paranormal Romance appeared sporadically.  How do I know sales peaked and fell?  Because I was marketing my own material via an agent at that time, and Manhattan lunches gleaned proprietary stats and reports on how the purchasing editors were thinking.

I found that by the time I wanted into that Vampire Romance market, the publishers were saying they were over-bought on Vampire Romance, had more than a year's worth in stock or under contract, and would not even consider another submission.

They ran out of Vampire Romances, and by then other sub-genres were selling better. 

There's a perverse logic in the publishing business model, rooted in the disconnect between the objectives of a writer and the objectives of a publisher.

So when Vampire Romance readers suddenly could not find any more paperbacks to suit them, they quickly learned on the grapevine that Vampire Romance was alive and well, thriving and growing in the e-book market.

That demand for Vampire Romance, in part, drove the demand for readers that drove the technological improvements in screens.  Improved screens increased demand for e-books, and other varieties of novels, and now even non-fiction, are all e-book.

And of course, you've all heard of the contretemps between Amazon and Hatchet and other publishers over the price of e-books.  Readers have been saying for a long time that e-book prices are about double what they should be.

Small publishers are consolidating (buying each other), and refining the business model.  Many, many publishers that started up in the nascent e-book market have closed.  And now the traditional publishers used their marketing strength (and Amazon & B&N) to yank the e-book market away from small publishers. 

http://www.booksandsuch.com/blog/amazon-hachette-battle-matters/

So writers who wanted to reach their own readers self-published.

Many self-publishing writers are New York Times Bestselling writers, taking back the rights to their NYT best sellers, re-publishing them by themselves or through small e-book publishers, and then finishing their series.  Sometimes they bring out new books in new series.

Meanwhile, a lot of writers who could not sell to traditional publishing went with self-publishing.

Some of these had honed their craft on fanfic websites, getting feedback from readers, learning to use beta-readers, and grow into a skill set that works to produce good novels that hit their readers nerves squarely.

Other self-publishing writers learned as they went. 

There's an organization for e-book publishers and writers something like SFWA or RWA, complete with genre book awards and cover art awards which I joined years ago when I had my first e-book out, Molt Brother.  Now it's in paper, e-book, and also audiobook, along with the sequel, City of a Million Legends.



http://www.epicorg.com/  is the website of the e-book professionals organization and it also has an active forum where people exchange a lot of information, writers find publishers, and so on.

These are the people generating the change in the world of publishing.

So we are seeing an increasing level of quality in self-published books.

Historically, Science Fiction Fandom invented fanfic -- fiction written by fans for fans.  For the most part, science fiction fanzines never published fiction, but rather discussed conventions and novels.  But fan fiction thrived in smaller circulation, often on carbon paper, though usually not using established characters of a professional writer. 

With the advent of Spockanalia and T-Negative, Star Trek fans discovered the joys of fanfic written to expand and expound on the TV characters.  And gradually, fan writers created original characters to interact with the established characters, revealing new depths to the shallow TV depictions.

That evolution of fan fiction is the main subject of my Bantam Paperback STAR TREK LIVES!



STAR TREK was the first TV Series to engage the fertile imagination of organized science fiction fandom.  Yes, organized.  There were (and are) clubs with constitutions, slates of officers, and annual elections, plus dues and publications.  The World Science Fiction Society holds the annual World Science Fiction Convention (worldcon) and awards the Hugo, as well as other Awards.

Science Fiction fandom was (and is) organized and connected.  Today it's connected via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.  Then it was snailmail and telephone.

From STAR TREK LIVES! and the New York Star Trek Conventions, the media picked up on the term fanfic (especially slash), and popularized the term FAN, fanzine, fan fiction, and eventually the term FANFIC. 

In that term, FANFIC, may lie the barricade between self-published Romance novels and the prestige they deserve.  It may also give us a clue as to where the resistance against Romance comes from in the general population, even though they flock to films with a tear-jerking Romance, and give awards to the RomCom (the romantic comedy) -- yet shy from Romance per se.

Terminology is key to changing people's assumptions, or prejudices.  We changed from the term "nigger" to the term Black to indicate elevating the prestige, the potential value of a person. 

The terms Liberal and Progressive, Communist and Socialist, Independent, etc etc are continuously redefined, and then changed. 

So let's examine the origin of the term "fan" to see what it is telling the world about us.

The media, and now dictionaries and major sources, keep insisting on a misconception about the origin and meaning of the term "fan."

They insist that the science fiction fan is a FANATIC (i.e. not sane but obsessed.)

That is the label that was slapped on science fiction fandom way back before it was organized, and even afterward for decades.

A fanatic is a person who is not in their "right mind."  And usually, being a mild conditiion, the fanatic "out-grows it" or "gets over it."

Can you imagine out-growing or getting over Romance?  Come on! 

But they are saying that science fiction is a "phase" that some teens go through and therefore it is negligible, and can safely be tolerated and disregarded.  There is nothing in it (they said in the 1930's) that has any bearing on reality or the future.

30 years later, that generation sent men to the Moon. 

The next generation of science fiction fanatics invented the internet and the web.

The next twenty years saw the advent of the cell phone, then the smartphone.

Fanaticism is a mental disorder suffered by teens, like measles was considered a childhood disease you just had to suffer through. 

Fanaticism is a disease.

Today they say of the same age-group that Videogaming is "addictive."  That's it's unhealthy for teens to communicate with each other via social media.

In the 1940's they said the same thing of that generation's teens who were communicating with each other via telephone.  The picture of the teen monopolizing the ONLY phone-line in a household, holding long conversations with fellow teens (often of opposite gender) was a feature of life in the 1950's, tolerated and scorned by adults.

If you're a writer intending to grab a market-share for your work, watch what teens are doing now.  It takes about 5 years to write a novel, from Idea to published, and in 5 years today's teens will be at peak entertainment consumer years. 

But they may pick up the scorn associated with terminology used when talking about Romance Genre novels, and never explore the rich, complex, and satisfying worlds Romance writers build.

Or, if they do browse mass market paperbacks, they may never discover the worlds being created by writers using small publishers or self-publishing in e-books.

I get a couple of newsletters pitching free and 0.99cent e-books, Romance genre, Mysteries, etc. 

https://www.bookbub.com/home/

I often see books pitched as having many hundreds of 5-star reviews on Amazon.

The star-review has become the self-publisher's marketing tool, and yes, there is some fraud associated with this statistic, even though Amazon tries to prevent that. 

Still, read some of those reviews.  Even if you would scorn the book because of typos or need for editing out inconsistencies and filling plot-holes, look at the comments by readers who focus entirely on the payload, the way the STORY made them feel, not the technical flaws in the writing craft.

Those 5-star reviews are typical of fanzine reader responses to fanfic based on a TV-show. 

Get that free newsletter, click through to Amazon on a title with lots of 5-star reviews and read carefully.  And while reading, think about this.

Self-publishing is hard (writing the novel is easy by comparison).  The odds are against you selling a single copy to anyone you don't know personally. 

But there are associations of self-publishing writers who can teach you how to connect with cheap promotional strategies that might work. 

There is very likely an audience hungry for what you want to sell them.  You finding them, them finding you, or "going viral" is a long-shot.  Finding and serving a market is what publishers do -- their business model is suited to that process.  Writing uses a different business model.

But because of the adequate e-reader screens now available fairly cheap, there is a readership starving for what you write.  They just won't recognize it when starting right at it. 

What do we need to get that instant recognition?

We need a label, a symbol, a TERM which describes what this kind of fiction is, where it comes from, why it deserves their attention, and most important what it actually delivers.

The term self-published has gathered scorn because of the missing editorial steps people have become used to.

The term fanfic has gathered scorn because of the old (and inaccurate) term fanatic. 

What other artform besides writing has, historically, been a source of pure satisfaction and meaningful entertainment (and information)?

Think about the music industry.

Commercially available music has its origins in the Bards taking news, information, and historical Events and gossip from town to town, presenting it all as song. 

Isolated towns had their own youngsters who sang and played music.

Think about the old West.  Whoever in town could saw on a fiddle played for the square dancing. 

Along with all this, came one of the oldest artforms, which became known as Folk Music. 

Here's a wikipedia article on 1940's folk music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_folk_music_revival

In the 1960's, people like Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Woodie Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and people you've never heard of because they only played and sang at weddings and birthday parties.  Yesteryear's Garage Bands.

You can get this old music on Amazon, iTunes, and other websites. 

http://www.last.fm/music/Peter,+Paul+&+Mary/+similar

http://tropicalglen.com/Jukebox/Genre/FolkMusic/NewChannel.html

Yes, politics grabbed the folk song and ran with it.  Theodore Bikel's concert records have patter that reveals all that. 

But folk music reflects the life and times of those who perform and those who foster it.  It's folk, not professional.

In the 1960's it became big time professional, and highly respected -- because it made money for the music industry in records and concerts (and movies).

Country Music is the professional development of old, folk music by people who farmed and lived too far away from cities to associate with city folks.  Country was isolated because transit was slow, and internet didn't exist.  Today, many places only have satellite service if that. 

A lot of money has been made from Country Music -- and don't forget Elvis Presley came from that venue.

Today the term folk music doesn't carry the opprobrium that fanfic does.

But, if you examine folk music down to the roots, you will see that folk music and self-published novels (from people who were nerve traditionally published and actively do not want to be traditionally published) share a similar kind of popularity. 

And if you juxtapose real folk music (by folks not getting paid to do it) with professional music (by people who do it for profit), you will see an artistic similarity between folk and professional music that exactly parallels the similarity between fanfic and traditionally published fic.

Trace origins and development, find the driving force behind music, and trace how that force generated the Music Industry, and then do the same for novels.

Go back into the 1800's and study women's Gothic novels, circulating as hand-written copies among housewives.  That was fanfic.

I expect you can do the same study with Art.  There are Great Artists who are "Great" because we've heard of them.  And we've heard of them because they had Patrons and got commissions to decorate famous places (like the Cysteine Chapel, for example).  And there are folk artists whose work is left to us only as fragmentary remains on pottery sherds dug up by archeologists.

There's commercial art -- advertisements, book covers -- and there's fine art shown in galleries.  And then there's folk art, which you find in people's homes, done for the pleasure of their families.  Think about quilting, and going out to "the Country" to buy handmade quilts to hang on the wall as art. Those quilts are folk art, and they are respected.

Today, we also have Fan Art published in fanzines. 

All of these art-forms have a folk version, and a professional version.

Why shouldn't fan fiction and self-published fan fiction be the FOLKFIC of our world?

Self-publishing is so closely parallel, and often related to, fanfic devoted to underlying works and  published on websites for free reading, that the only difference is the homage paid to the underlying work.

Fanfic writers introduce original characters, and re-interpret existing characters, sometimes take them to new worlds, tell parts of a story not treated in the professionally published novels, but it is original writing.

You all know how much fanfic my Sime~Gen Universe novels have generated.  There are millions of words posted on simegen.com alone.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/

Also, on simegen.com we have posted some classic Trek fanzine material.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

You might note on that /startrek/ index page that we have a new addition, the Scholastic Voice Magazine Star Trek Story Contest Winner from 1980.  It was written by a High School boy,  Thomas Vinciguerra, who went on to become a nationally published journalist, and who wrote many articles about Star Trek.  You can find links and the story at:

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/contestwinner/

Here's a 2014 contest on marketing on the internet.
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/seattle-public-library-internet/
-------quote---------
As part of its ongoing Seattle Writes initiative, the library has partnered with self-publishing and distribution platform Smashwords to encourage local writers to package their writing for an audience. The eyeball icing on the finger-typing cake? A contest, open until midnight on October 15, in which up to three entrants who publish via Smashwords will have their eBooks included for circulation in the SPL eBook collection.
The fine print is hardly daunting. Have an SPL library card. Be 18 or older. Publish your eBook (for free) with Smashwords on its website. Enter the contest.
Oh. And write the eBook.
....
-------end quote------


Also a new addition to the simegen.com/fandom/ section is a short novel by a Sime~Gen fanfic writer, Mary Lou Mendum, done in Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire universe, using some of Catherine's characters, and a whole cast of original characters.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/skolianempire/ 

Mary Lou is an example of a writer who specifically does not want to write professionally.  It's a hobby, and she does it to please specific people.  In the case of the Skolian Universe novel, it was done to entertain someone while ill.

She's an example of a folk-writer, writing folk-fic.

Or perhaps it should be called filkfic as akin to Filk Singing.

The term Filk to describe the original lyrics sung to popular tunes done at Science Fiction Conventions dates back to a typo in a con program book.  The term was immediately adopted as a badge of honor, though what they did with music was one of the oldest traditions in folk music (new words to old songs, variations on old tunes to adapt to new lyrics).

Folk Art is the baseline creativity of humanity singing the song of the universe.

Commercial Art (mass market paperbacks) is Folk Art leveled to the lowest common denominator, made accessible to all.

Fanfic and self-publishing are both types of folk art, folk-storytelling.

The material is popular not because an insane person created it, a fanatic, but because perfectly sane people with experiences in common resonate to it, enjoy it, and elevate the performers of it to local celebrity status.

The folk of the town admire and reward the local bard, the story-teller who teaches morality to children, the shaman who teaches history to children in rhyme, and the artist who draws pictures of local events.

Fanfic and Self-published works resemble Folk Music both in content, and appeal and business model. 

But "Folk" carries a much higher prestige than "Fanatic." 

The most powerful force in civilization is the folks, not insanity or teen phases.

You don't tolerate the folks.  You admire them.   Discount the power of the folks at your peril (or so the rulers of France discovered to their tribulation.  England had a problem with those pesky colonists and their Boston Tea Party, too.)

So I propose replacing the term fanfic with the term folkfic or Folk-fic, or some variant so it includes self-published original universe fiction.  Here you find the stories the folk (the largest market there is) really want. 

The More Things Change; The More They Stay The Same.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Plot Integration Part 9 - Use of Co-incidence in Plot

Here is a link to Part 8 of this Series and to the index to previous Theme-Plot Integration posts:


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

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

On Google+, I belong to a "Community" run by Deborah Teramis Christian for people who "write" (build) Games that people play in alternate universes, created worlds.

As you know from my long, involved discussions of worldbuilding, it is a topic that I think Romance Writers haven't approached with enough focused concentration until just recently.

As Science Fiction and Paranormal Romance blend, writers have had to pay more attention to the process of how science fiction "worlds" are created.

Until recently, only Historical Romance delved deep into the details -- such as the names of articles of clothing, the years different historical characters spent in the same city (where there might have been an illegitimate child conceived who might have affected events later).

Today, Romance writers are exploring the stars, meeting alien species, finding interesting relationships and might-have-beens.  And so the process of extrapolating our current world into the future has become of great interest to Romance writers.

I have three huge series -- huge in the size of the books, huge in the size of the sales, and huge in the importance of what they say -- to point you to as we launch into a contrast/compare and reverse-engineering exercise. 

But first, here's a beginner's work on Worldbuilding you should take a look at. 



Next we come to a 5 book series by Anne Aguirre, titled the Corine Solomon Novels:

Blue Diablo, Hell Fire, Shady Lady, Devil's Punch, and Agave Kiss are the titles.

Corine Solomon

I talked about Anne Aguirre here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/doubleblind-by-ann-aquirre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-egypt-steampunk.html

You might call the Corine Solomon novels "Urban Fantasy" -- but there is an excursion into another dimension (or two), many mysteries, and a gorgeous Love Triangle involving not-quite-human and Magically Gifted human.  The 5 novels form one long story told from a nice, tight single point of view, that of Corine Solomon.  And it is her story. 

I highly recommend all of Anne Aguirre's titles because she has a firm grip on how to structure this kind of novel, and an ability to portray the extremely "dark" without forcing you to accept a world view where there is absolutely no light. 

I particularly love Aguirre's Sirantha Jax Series.

Look over the Corine Solomon novels and if you've read them, view them as a whole, integrated "work."  Note how it is one character's "story."  Note the beginning, middle, and end "beats" of each novel -- then the overall structure of the set taken together.  Note the pacing.  Now particularly note how Aguirre replicates The Hero's Journey for Corine Solomon.  Then note how Corine has, by the end of the first quarter of each novel, four or five (sometimes 6) problems to solve.  Then note what Aguirre reveals about Corine's thinking about solving those problems. 

Note the inner dialogue Corine holds with herself about her problems.  See where she's focusing her attention, and how she defines the problems.  Each novel starts with a list of problems, and ends with those problems solved -- giving rise to more problems, true, but for the moment, a triumph.  Note how those problem-sets are constructed at the beginning to appear insoluble, and how each problem when solved brings in the tools to solve the next.

Note what Corine Solomon is thinking when she picks out a problem to tackle first.

It's always a decision made on the basis of what is RIGHT -- what's the right thing to do, or at the very least, what is the least-wrong choice.  What problem has to wait (and get worse) while this more urgent one is tackled?  And there is always the possibility that Corine will not survive to tackle the next problem on her list, but she doesn't dwell on that.  She throws all her personal resources into doing the right thing right now.  That is the essence of the Hero who goes on a Hero's Journey. 

Blake Snyder in SAVE THE CAT! has analyzed vast numbers of blockbuster films showing you how the Hero has to acquire about 6 problems as you lay pipe into the story.  Aguirre uses that structure, and it's one reason she can turn out so many novels so quickly, and all of them resonate with her readers.  She knows the structure, she knows the story she wants to tell, and she just plows on through arranging the details of her world to support that story. 

Now consider Gini Koch's Action-SF-Romance Urban Fantasy (sort of) series ALIEN.

ALIEN is much more precisely Romance, but has a lot of combat and battle scenes.  The problems that come at the Hero (Kitty-Kat) on the Hero's Journey to an HEA are more of the Enemy Aliens Attacking and Alien-Allies Need Help type.  The motivation that energizes Kitty-Kat most often is to attain and preserve a loving, peaceful and happy environment.  She takes the role of a warrior protecting her world. 

Remember, in my previous mentions of Gini's ALIEN SERIES I've pointed out that they need line-cutting.  That's a process of eliminating the words that don't say anything, don't advance the plot or explicate the theme.  Usually that's about 20% of the words in a semi-final draft.  Very often, at least for me when I do it on my own work, the manuscript doesn't get any shorter, but the end result is that all the words say something.  This is a stylistic thing.

You can see the style difference by comparing a chapter of one of the Aguirre novels with one of the Koch novels.  It's not that one is "superior" to the other, but that a professional writer should have mastery of all styles and techniques, and choose the one appropriate to the Art behind the work. 

The titles are Touched by an Alien, Alien Tango, Alien in the Family, Alien Proliferation, Alien Diplomacy, Alien vs Alien, and Alien in the House (May 2013). 

Alien Series

I talked a bit about Gini Koch's Alien Series in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-3.html

Both these series focus on Romance disrupted by Action, where the Action is the obstacle to be overcome and the Relationship is the goal. 

Because this is our kind of stuff, we have a hard time seeing how it's put together so we can replicate the effect.  So to find out how to do this, we should look at something that does the same thing, but in another way -- that tells a different story from a different standpoint. 

So, 5 Corine Solomon novels, 7 ALIEN novels, and 8 STEN SERIES novels, 20 novels all together, taken as a whole, contrast/compare, and extract theme, plot, and discover how the two elements become integrated. 

First, on identifying THEME. 

I can't assert "the" theme of each of these 3 series is something specific.  I'm sure each of the writers has their own idea of what they were saying (or perhaps have no idea, just wanted to say it!  Marion Zimmer Bradley worked that way - not knowing the theme until 20 years later!).

I'm pretty sure you will find your own idea of the theme as you read these series.

My overall "take" on the Corine Solomon Novels, and the Alien Series Novels is that they are essentially Romance, and so the overall theme is Love Conquers All.  Each novel individually has a specific sub-set of that overall theme brought to the fore. 

The Sten Series is not Romance, and it's a collaboration between two exemplary writers with disparate backgrounds.  The 8 novels have one Hero, and he is definitely on a Hero's Journey.  But the series taken as a whole has a much bigger theme worked out on a much larger canvass that spreads over several galaxies. 

So the Sten Series has several points of view, each carefully related to Sten's point of view.  When we visit the events other characters are involved in, we see Sten's life from outside.  We sometimes see Sten being moved about on the chessboard of inter-galactic politics.  We find out what problems other characters face - only to understand that Sten himself hasn't defined the problem he faces in a complete way. 

While the overall theme of Corine Solomon and Alien Series novels is Happily Ever After, with the caveat that such an idealic life comes only at great price, and after stringent testing of the moral fiber of the Hero, the Sten Series might be said to have the overall theme of All Is Not As It Seems. 

It's very hard to separate these 3 series though.  Sten has a Happily Ever After thread, and the other two are definitely structured on the "Great Reveal" - the "All Is Not As It Seems" theme.

What a reader sees in each of these series depends more on the reader than on the material because these 20 novels are Art. 

While Corinne Solomon and Kitty-Kat are living their own lives, Sten is living a Destiny. 

Sten's Destiny is not at all what it seems -- and with each novel, Sten progresses to what seems to be a New Destiny earned at great price.  But all he thinks he's doing is what you and I do everyday, just survive another day, survive another threat, beat off the Bad Guys, get out of a tight spot, finesse and clever yourself into a better position. 

Sten set out to survive and mind his own business.  But he got "rescued" and cast in the role of Warrior because he has a talent for surviving and minding his own business.

But what is a Talent?  That's a profound question we've discussed previously:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/talent-mystique-or-mistake.html

Maybe writing isn't a Talent, but we often write about characters who have a Talent. 

Corine Solomon is in love with a guy whose Talent is "Luck."  That has a whole backstory having to do with his parentage, but the point is that Talent and Luck (co-incidence) drives the plot of all 5 of the Corine Solomon novels. 

Kitty-Kat has a Talent for organizing other Talents, for leading a group of talented warriors while Luck sweeps her through personal combat, chase scenes and armed combat.  She remembers what's worked before and uses it to good effect again.  But her real Talent is for asking Question -- yes, capital Q questions, such as Kirk's "What does God need a spaceship for?"  Those are the obvious questions nobody else ever thinks of because people rely on assumptions they haven't tested when trying to solve a problem. 

Sten has a Talent for surviving.  He learns the Art of War, but it isn't inherent in him.  He finally grows up enough that all he wants is to stay out of combat situations.  But he's living a Destiny, so the harder he tries to avoid combat, the worse the combat gets.  His Talent doesn't help him get out of his Destiny, which he can't even see coming -- any more than you can see a tornado coming until it's too late. 

Perhaps the overall theme of the Sten Series is that forging the path to your destiny must inevitably affect, deflect, or inflect the paths of others toward their destinies. 

I classify all three series as Art. 

I've held forth here on the nature of Art and how a writer uses that essential nature here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

When you start to talk about creating Art about Destiny, you are dipping into the realm of the Supernatural, the Paranormal, the Divine, the Magical, -- or God. 

Corine Solomon deals head-on with Hell, gods, demons, angels -- and what happens when the categories get confused.  She has to sort out Good from Evil, and taken her personal choice, then stick to that choice. 

Kitty-Kat tries to ignore the whole issue of Divine Intervention, of a world Created by God.  She pretty much succeeds, as she discovers more and more about how things are just not what they seem.  She gets used to being shocked when a new aspect of Reality is revealed.  But she avoids the issue of God. 

Sten would fall down laughing or kick you out an airlock if you started prattling on about a Benevolent God.  His life provides no evidence for such an interpretation of Reality.  In other words, his life exists in the kind of world you and I live in -- where there is no evidence supporting any theory of Divine Creation. 

And yet, our whole world can be viewed -- taken as a whole -- as a Work of Art. 

Here's a little lesson from the Bible about the artisans chosen by God to create the Tent in which God revealed himself to the High Priests, the Mishkan.  The blueprint for that tent was given to Moses at Mount Sinai -- you may have seen the recent History Channel series, "The Bible" and noted the extraordinary ratings it pulled. 

By all accounts, the Tent these artisans built was a spectacular Work of Art.  I can envision it as a minature replica of the entire World that God Built.  The blueprint and the people chosen to execute that blueprint very closely resembles the process of writing a novel. 


--------QUOTE-------------

FROM CHABAD RABBI NEWSLETTER:

....

In describing the people qualified to construct the Sanctuary and its instruments, the Torah repeatedly calls them "wise-in-heart" in referring to their skill. The craftsmanship these artisans possessed was more than technical, their wisdom was a special sort -- that of the heart.

Some people are brilliant intellectually, their gifted minds master sciences, their logic and reasoning are unimpeachable. Despite these mind-gifts they may be cold, unsympathetic, unmoved by suffering. Others are kindlier, charitable, more emotional by nature, not particularly given to analysis and profound understanding. They may also be overindulgent, gullible, suspicious of or impatient with reasoning. While each sort has qualities, in extremes, or rather without tempering the initial and dominant characteristic, their deficiencies are grave.

The ideal is the wise-in-heart, proper balance between emotion and thought, feeling and reason. The qualities of learning and study, intellectual vigor, the scholar ideal, have always been glorified by our people. No matter how sincere the heart's emotions, they must be channeled, harnessed, and used. Torah inspires the heart in its search. Without Torah the most sublime emotion may degenerate into bathos or sentimental banality.

Similarly, exalted as the intellect may be, it cannot exclusively express the fullness of man. Emotional balance gives warmth and human substance to the mind's achievements. In Jewish terms it means that the true scholar, the disciple of Torah, is endowed with the emotions of love and awe of the Creator, sympathy for the lowly, affection for mankind. Such a person, the wise-in-heart, is qualified to create a Sanctuary for G-dliness wherever he goes.

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

Now think about Destiny, Fate, and the Happily Ever After.  Think about THEME and the world you are building for your characters, choosing and inspiring your artisans.

Think about the writing rule that the author must not stand up on the page, blow a whistle to get attention, and start shouting at the reader about all the wonderful things in the world that this story is not about. 

Reading a book is an intellectual exercise of emotional sensitivity.  The closer the balance between emotion and intellect in the novel, the greater the reader's enjoyment. 

The THEME is the intellectual part -- the PLOT is the emotional part.  The PLOT shows the THEME -- the emotions reveal the knowledge, the lesson to be learned. 

Think about THEME and we'll discuss Co-incident in Plot. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Story Springboards Part 1: Art Heists by Patricia McLinn

Today we have a wonderful article by Patricia McLinn on the romantic aspects of the Art Theif.  We're all fans of Remington Steele, and It Takes A Thief, and now White Collar, but what is it about these television shows that are so fascinating to Romance readers?

Oh, and if you haven't read any Patricia McLinn titles, oh please do look up her novels!  See end of her post for how to find her publications. 

-----------GUEST POST BY PATRICA McLINN ------------

            Fiction, as it turns out, is way better than fact when it comes to art heists.

            But that’s starting at the end of this blog, and I should take you back to the start, which was my offhand Tweet wondering why art heists stir the imagination. That sparked a Twitter/e-mail exchange on the topic with my esteemed blog hostess.

            From what seemed to be off the top of her head, Jacqueline listed nearly a dozen angles a fiction writer could pursue while playing in the art heist sandbox

--There's the historical importance - holding a piece of 
history 

--There's profit - the black market fence has a client 
if you can get the painting or statue 

--There's stealing it to keep it just for yourself, 
very personal, very intimate. 

--There's maybe the thief is a reincarnation of the 
painter or the subject and just wants the thing and 
doesn't know why? 

--There's the simple thing like climbing a mountain
 -- break through their security because it's there 
(like hackers). 

--There's just hurting the owner because you don't 
like him/her/it. 

--There's striking back at the nose-in-the-air 
art-patron public because you don't like them. 

--There's "liberating" the art from the 
dog-in-the-manger owner so that posterity can 
have it (stealing from the Nazis). 

--There's keeping it from destruction in a 
shooting war (think recent events in Egypt). 

--There are all the things about Art that make 
it interesting -- and then there's the whole 
D&D board game fascination with STEALING (the 
Thief character with all sorts of sub-traits). 

--There's the whole "magical" dimension of how 
great art depicts or connects to the human 
Group Mind -- and all the voodoo that 
can be done that way.

            As a novelist, that list has me salivating.  However, I also have a background in journalism, including being an editor at the Washington Post for mumble-mumble years. As Lawrence Block said in the title of one of his wonderful books on writing, I love TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT – but I want to know when I’m telling lies. Mark Twain gave great advice: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

            So, I started checking into why the public finds art heists romantic and alluring, and the psychology behind art heists.

            Sorry, folks, the experts agree that to the extent that the public finds art heists romantic and alluring, it’s because we don’t know the truth behind them. (Note to anyone writing an article about art theft: Cary Grant went after jewels, not art in TO CATCH A THIEF. Saw that wrong several places.)

            Former Scotland Yard detective Charles Hill is reported to have said that stealing great works is less a daring act than a sign of an unimaginative thief [[http://www.simoleonsense.com/the-psychology-of-art-thieves]], because the thief is doomed to obtaining nothing near the true value of the art.

            Yet thieves do steal art – reportedly as many as 20,000 pieces a year in Italy. [[http://www.artcrime.info/facts.htm]]  Why?

            Motivation One: USA Today [[http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-23-Parisartheist-motivation_N.htm]] quoted Joel Silberberg, Director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Northwestern University, as saying, “If you look back historically at other pieces of stolen art, the motivation is idiosyncratic. Look at the Mona Lisa's theft — taken from The Louvre in Paris in 1911 by an Italian patriot. He resented that one of Italy's greatest pieces of art was being displayed in France. So you get individual motivation there, or a political motivation.”

            (For more on the 100th anniversary of the Mona Lisa theft earlier this year, click here. [[http://blogs.artinfo.com/secrethistoryofart/tag/kempton-bunton]].)

            Motivation Two: Said Hill: “Then there’s the trophy-hunting art thieves. They don’t make much money at all and cause themselves endless aggravation. But they enjoy doing it. It gives them a buzz.”

            Let’s call those Crackpot 1 and Crackpot 2.

            Motivation Three:  Money.  A few of the money-motivated art thieves might be stealing to fulfill an order from an unscrupulous art collector, but not many.

            Instead, according to the experts, most of the money garnered from art thefts goes to –

            And here’s where facts will forever change my view of the fiction.

             -- organized crime and terrorism.

            Yikes. Makes the crackpots look appealing by contrast. But the crackpots are in the minority when it comes to art thieves.

            According to the website of the Association for Researching into Crimes against Art (known as ARCA[[http://www.artcrime.info/facts.htm]]): “Most art crime since the 1960s is perpetrated either by, or on behalf of, international organized crime syndicates.”

            ARCA, citing information it “compiled from sources including Interpol, the FBI, Scotland Yard, Carabinieri, independent research and ARCA projects,” also says, “Art crime represents the third highest grossing criminal enterprise worldwide, behind only drugs and arms trafficking. It brings in $2-6 billion per year, most of which goes to fund international organized crime syndicates.”

            That just ground my image of the dashing art thief into dust.

            Two other areas of art theft (though not heists) that greatly concern the experts are fraud/forgeries (so the Audrey Hepburn-Peter O’Toole movie HOW TO STEAL A MILLION is practically a documentary, right?) and theft by destruction, most often perpetrated by repressive groups (think of the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamyan statues.)

            So, have the facts taken all the fun out of the fiction?

            Not, necessarily.  First, of course, there’s that whole fiction thing -- as in we make stuff up.  As fiction writers, we don’t have to adhere to the most statistically likely thing to happen.

            Also, there are some intriguing elements among the facts.

            Take ARCA.

            Among other things, it offers a blog with current art-theft news [[http://art-crime.blogspot.com/]]. (Forgive them the incorrect “it’s”.)

            There’s also the history of Noah Charney, founding director of ARCA. He says he developed an interest in art crime while researching a novel, THE ART THIEF.

            “I am most interested in the field from a practical standpoint—how the academic study can help to inform contemporary law enforcement and art protection,” he says on his website[[http://www.noahcharney.com/bio.htm]]. In June 2006 he held a conference “in Cambridge entitled ‘Art Theft: History, Prevention, Detection, Solution.’  It was attended by the heads of the FBI, Scotland Yard, and Carabinieri Art squads (Vernon Rapley, and Col. Giovanni Pastore) as well as academics and art professionals with interest, if not previous experience, in the study of art crime”  and since then, he says, he has forged alliances with the law enforcement experts.

            How about pitting a Charney-esque character against a terrorist mastermind in a clock-ticking effort to protect, oh, say, a Vermeer exhibit?

            If that doesn’t get your fiction-writing juices going, how about this:

            The should-be-world-renowned Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), in Somerville, Mass., has been the victim of two art heists. 

            First, the painting Eileen was taken in 1966. According to the museum’s Wikipedia entry [[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art]], “The museum offered a reward of $6.50 for the return of Eileen,” and donors later increasing the reward to $36.73. To no avail. A decade later, someone claiming to be the thief demanded a $5,000 ransom. MOBA refused. The painting was returned.

            Despite a sign proclaiming "Warning. This gallery is protected by fake video cameras", another criminal struck in 2004, leaving a note demanding $10 for Rebecca Harris' Self Portrait as a Drainpipe.  This time, the art was returned soon after the theft … with a $10 donation.

            If these heinous crimes don’t stir your imagination, you are far too stolid a soul to be writing fiction.

~ ~ ~  

Patricia McLinn [[http://www.PatriciaMclinn.com]] is the author of 26 novels, focusing (as much as she focuses on anything) on relationships.  Many are now available as e-books at the major outlets. She encourages you to purchase those she’s indie published (without overtly urging you not to buy those from a publisher.) Her first non-fiction book – WORD WATCH: A Writer’s Guide to the Slippery, Sneaky, and Otherwise Tricky -- draws on her mumble-mumble years as an editor at the Washington Post and a lifetime of cranky reading. Her first mystery will be released in June 2012, and at that time she will encourage you to buy from that publisher.

You can follow Patricia at Twitter [[http://twitter.com/PatriciaMcLinn]] and Facebook [[https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaMcLinn]]. WORD WATCH Tweets [[http://twitter.com/WordWatchBook]] and Facebooks [[https://www.facebook.com/WordWatchTheBook]] for itself.

 ---------- END GUEST POST BY PATRICIA MCLINN -----------

POSTED BY JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com



Part 2 of this series is at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html

Parts 3 and 4 will be:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html