On Character Growth

There's an essay on the WRITER'S DIGEST website called "The Importance of Character Growth in Fiction," by bestselling author Annie Rains:

Importance of Character Growth

She lists and discusses vital elements in showing the transformation of a character over the course of a story: Goal and motivation; backstory and the character's weakness or fatal flaw, arising from features of the backstory; the plot and how its events force the protagonist to struggle, plus the importance of pacing so that growth doesn't "happen in clumpy phases"; the "ah-ha" moment when the character realizes the necessity of taking a different path; importance of showing through action how the character has changed to be able to do "something that they never would have been able to do at the book’s start."

As vital as all these factors are, and as much as I love character-driven fiction myself, I have slight reservations about Rains's opening thesis: "If your character is stagnant, there is no story. . . . Your character should not come out of your plot as the same person they were before their journey began." Doesn't good fiction exist to which this premise doesn't apply? Classic detective series, for example. What about Sherlock Holmes? Hercule Poirot? Miss Marple? What about action-thriller heroes such as James Bond? Through most of the series, Bond survives harrowing adventures that would kill ordinary men many times over, with no discernible change in his essential character. (In the last few books, he does begin to change.) Even in stand-alone novels, as mentioned in the WRITER'S DIGEST essay to which I linked in my blog post on July 20, static characters (as opposed to the negative term "stagnant") have their place. In A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Charles Darnay doesn't change, whereas Sidney Carton does. In THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, the Russian submarine captain has already made his life-changing decision before the story begins and never veers from his goal. In A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Scrooge transforms, while Bob Cratchit is a static character. So, arguably, is Romeo, who's still the same impulsive, emotion-driven youth at the end of the play as at the beginning, thereby possibly triggering his own tragic end.

I'd maintain that, while Rains is self-evidently correct that a character's circumstances have to change in the course of a narrative, he or she doesn't necessarily have to undergo a transformation, depending on the genre. The character must either attain the plot's stated goal or fail in an interesting, appropriate way. Without a change in his or her situation, whether external, internal, or both, there's no story. But an internal transformation isn't a necessary feature without which "there is no story."

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Mysteries of Pacing Part 11- Pacing the Character Arc

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 11

Pacing the Character Arc

Previous entries in this series are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Mysteries of Pacing Parts 9 and 10

9. Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/mysteries-of-pacing-part-9-character.html

10. Show Don't Tell Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/08/mysteries-of-pacing-part-10-show-dont.html

...discussed showing rather than telling the Character Arc.

So if you can't "tell" the Character Arc Story, but story is all about the intangible, psychological, spiritual, morphing of a Character, how do you convey the Arc, or the Change in how the Character evaluates a situation and how the Character decides to act, and what actions she chooses?

For example: How do you depict the shift in a Character from Republican to Democrat?  From Warrior to Lover? From Poet to President?  How and why do people CHANGE?

Or do they change?

What is the experience of your reader?

To convince a reader that the Character you have designed for them to identify with has changed, that change has to seem plausible to the reader.

This is the "hole" in the comic book, or graphic novel, approach. To stay away from the "slow" parts, to keep the pacing fast enough for young (teen, or younger, even twenty-somethings) you have to skip the important small steps that make it plausible this Character would do That Action.

Adults, especially over 30, know how stubborn older people can be, how "set in their ways."

You, the writer, must understand how the elders in your story got so set in their ways.  The backstory is so important, but you can't "tell" that story, or well ... back up and start the series of novels at the events that shaped those elder's beliefs?

If you show-don't-tell the shaping of a stubborn elder starting with early teens, or maybe 20 something, and progressing through another twenty years, you will have a 20 book series.

We've been looking at a few of those, most recently C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/07/reviews-32-cj-cherryh-and-gini-koch-in.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/reviews-58-divergence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

Other mentions of C. J. Cherryh are Indexed here:

How do you change his mind on issues he's sure he understands?

We've talked a lot about C. J. Cherryh.  Here is an index of some posts mentioning her work.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/index-to-posts-mentioning-c-j-cherryh.html

And we've discussed several series of novels running 20 books or more, a phenomenon you would not find in Romance Genre prior to the admixture of Vampire, Paranormal, or Science Fiction genre forms with Romance.

In an old fashioned Romance Genre novel, the couple meets, tries to cope with their attraction, overcomes obstacles to getting together, gets together (sometimes to the Wedding Day, often just to "Will You Marry Me?") and that's the end of the story.

We are to assume they live into an HEA lifetime.  And we go on to pick up another Romance novel that starts the same, and ends the same.

The addition of the near-immortal Vampire character, or the problems of relationships with Ghosts, or mythical creatures from another dimension, Aliens from Outer Space, made the "ever after" more interesting, attractive, and problematic.

Readers wanted more, writers gave more, and we have serious like Gini Koch's ALIEN series.

Falling in love is an adventure in self-discovery -- the amazement that another person could have THIS affect on how you think, what you value, what you're willing to give up to get a life together.

The Second Time Around Romance often captures much of that advanced story arc where both Characters have a complex, rich, backstory -- with pain, with lessons learned, with consequences accepted (children) and avoided.

Romance has come of age, no longer about teen crushes and infatuations, but about real relationships and how another person reshapes you.

But still, you are you.

No matter how "old" you might be, how "elder" in a family or community, you are still you.

The readers of Romance are old enough to understand that, having seen children grow up.

A parent learns the traits of their children from earliest years, what their talents are, the proclivities, and personalities.  There is a sense of each child responding differently to the same home environment.

The Romance reader's perception of the real people around her is that people grow up from childhood by growing into their Personality - not by changing it.

Old advice to youngsters just entering a new situation is, "Be yourself."

That's harder than it sounds. Thousands of experiences shape the contents of that innate framework of Personality, and along through the decades of life, mistakes are corrected, bits discarded, other bits smoothing over the cracks where a heart was broken, and what emerges is an Elder who is as solid as he will ever become.

Younger people who are still correcting their mistakes, trying to find their limits and define "self" see such mature people as stubborn, wrong, set in their ways. fossils no longer relevant to the changing world.

See? Writers know that Character is all in point of view.

The Villain is the Hero of his own Story.

So Character Arc is also in point of view more than in objective reality.

As you age, your point of view changes even though you are the same you.

So, if your Main Character is mature, that Character's "Arc" -- or change in response to the impact of Plot Events -- may be very small on an objective scale. December Romance.

But if your Main Character is a teen, the Character Arc may be gigantic.  Scared Straight.

The Character Arc of  a younger person can change the direction of their whole life, and move an entire civilization.

Think about Bill Gates leaving college to found Microsoft.

Now think about a man in his 70's deciding to run for President. How do you change his mind on issues he's sure he understands?

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels trace an all-too-young and unsure of himself (but arrogant in his confidence in his linguistic skills) through the Character Arc (22 books and counting) of mastering the Art of Maturity.

Bren Cameron, by the novel DIVERGENCE,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/reviews-58-divergence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

...has learned how inaction can speak more loudly than action.  He has learned to choose when and how to act.  He shoots someone with a gun he's not supposed to have, and saves the day, unraveling a dark plot that could have damaged the economic footing of a civilization. His only other action in the entire book is to quietly write some notes to various dignitaries, and to go talk to people who distrust each other.  Mostly, he sits still and evaluates the various moving parts of the situation.

This makes for a novel replete with intricate exposition about the events of previous novels -- but all from Bren Cameron's now mature point of view.

The shift in how Bren interprets the events he lived through, and the things he finds out from others, shows without telling that this is the same Character from Book 1 (FOREIGNER), but now way out along a Character Arc we can now see without being told.

https://www.amazon.com/Foreigner-10th-Anniversary-Book-ebook/dp/B006JHXPDW/

So if you set out to show not tell a major change in a person's character, you will need more space than a few comic books offer.  A single novel won't do it, as each "novel" in a real person's life brings one unique point into view, resolves one issue.

To chronicle a real maturation, you need a long series of novels.

So study some of the long series we've discussed, and translate them into Romance.

Study the Netflix Original, Madame Secretary, which depicts a couple living the Happily Ever After portion of their lives, raising children, struggling to balance home, family, and work.

What lesson of Maturity makes your readers unbearably curious?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Verisimilitude VS Reality - Part 4 - Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System

Verisimilitude VS Reality

Part 4

Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System 

Previous parts in the Verisimilitude VS Reality series are:

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

Part 2 Master Theme Structure, The Camera, Nesting Plots and Stories
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

Part 3 - The Game, The Stakes, The Template
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

And now Verisimilitude used to create the dynamics of the Story Arc and what that has to do with what I term, The Fiction Delivery System (parallel to the Healthcare Delivery System).

Recently, I was a guest on a podcast by The Roddenberry Star Trek podcasts, titled The Trek Files.

Every episode features a Guest talking about one of the Archived documents in the Trek Files which they post a link to on their Facebook page so you can read, then listen to the Q&A.

https://www.facebook.com/TheTrekFiles/

You can subscribe on the Apple podcast store by searching for The Trek Files.  See Larry Nemecek's name and you know you're in the right place.

In the three short segments we recorded (audio-only), it was impossible to cover all the connecting links to how the impact of ST:ToS affected the way consumers find and obtain fictional entertainment they want.  Not just science fiction, or Romance, but all fiction and non-fiction distributed retail.

Eventually, ST:ToS eventually changed how "news" is distributed wholesale, as well -- "wholesale" being the News Services, AP, Reuters, etc. which used to be out of reach of the individual consumer, but now publish directly to individuals online.  When news wholesalers hit the individual retail consumer, they had to change the format and content of their reporting.

Same thing happened on various levels in the Fiction Publishing Industry -- and (with advent of Streaming) similar forces are disrupting video-format fiction distribution.

This disruption was one main topic I wanted to touch on during the podcast, but didn't have a chance to get it in.

Because of the change sparked by the original Star Trek and its fan-response, the current streaming TV offerings and self-published e-books, are substantially different from what they probably would have been had Star Trek not connected to Science Fiction fans.

It is difficult to see the connecting links, and we won't be able to reveal the chain of "because line" to this Event Sequence that has propagated through the decades.

Most readers of this will be able to figure it out, once convinced the links are there to find.  Researching the connections is like preparing to write a Regency Romance.

Many of the details would not interest casual listeners to The Trek Files podcast, but readers of this blog might find the view of Reality something they can use to build a Science Fiction Romance world.

As we've been discussing Verisimilitude in various series of posts because it is relevant to crafting a novel that draws readers into a world.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Now we return to Verisimilitude by looking at how our everyday world has changed from the impact of Star Trek in the 1960's.  Fictional worlds change, too.  Replicate that sense of "a changing world" for your Characters and the reader won't need expository lumps of explanation.

Worldbuilding, to have verisimilitude, has to be depicted as an Arc - like Story Arc and Character Arc and Plot Arc, the world behind the Characters you create has to change.

But change in a fictional world has to seem to be an "arc" to the reader.  The reader has to see (without being told) the connections of cause/effect between what the Protagonist does and what goes on because of her actions.

In real life, we rarely have enough information to discern those connections. Life often seems random and meaningless.  It may seem that way to your Protagonist, too, but the reader has to be able to understand what the Protagonist can't (yet), and then watch the Protagonist gain an understanding, even if it is a misunderstanding.

How your fictional world changes, and how that change also changes your Characters -- and how your Characters change their world -- depends on your Theme.

Romance has the master theme of Love Conquers All.  Science Fiction generally has a master theme of Science Conquers All.  Put them together, you've got a winner!

To have Verisimilitude, a novel has to show, not tell, how the World responds to the Characters, and how the Characters respond to their world.

Our world really does interact with us, but mostly we just don't see it.  "She's her own worst enemy," is a widely used theme.  Everyone knows someone like that.  It is especially  noticeable to those who are their own worst enemy.

The Tennis Match paradigm mentioned in Part 3 of this series, indicates how the fictional world integrates the real world's dynamics into the craft techniques.  The reader watches as the ball is volleyed back and forth between two Players or Viewpoint Characters.

"The Ball" represents "the initiative" -- or the action that advances the plot, the decision that alters the direction of events.  In the real world, no one person makes all the decisions. Everyone makes some decisions, even if to implement someone else's decisions. But some decisions change the world in a more obvious fashion once implemented.

You find the BEGINNING of your novel by finding the point in the Protagonist's life where she is making such a decision, or implementing it. The HEA ending happens when the results of implementing that decision (I'll marry you) are fully manifest.  In real life, most of us only get one such decision point to live through - survive it, (possibly a 10 year period), and it is smooth sailing ever after, either "up" or "down" or "level" in life.

Some decisions never get implemented.  The Character making such decisions is NOT the "Main Character" - not the character whose story you are telling.  You can't start Chapter One with that Character.  Such a Character re-acts instead of acting.

In our everyday world, we had one Situation before Star Trek: The Original Series, and another very different world that emerged during the 3-5 years after cancellation.

Pre-ST: nothing any viewer of any TV Series, no matter how erudite, vocal, or geekishly dedicated, could say anything in a letter (on paper) to the production's owners that would influence any decision the owners imposed on the Producer (whom they hired to package the show).  Fan opinion didn't matter.

Post-ST: Fan suggestions to enlarge content, add deeper texture, feature certain Characters, and fix plot-holes influenced the decisions of Producers staking their careers on multi-million dollar projects.

They learned (possibly from my book, Star Trek Lives!)

that being wildly enthusiastic, determined, and opinionated about a piece of fiction didn't imply inherent stupidity.

As a result, not only did Trek films incorporate items found in fanfic, but the commercials aired during ST (and other TV shows, too) became less condescending.

Producers and Traditional Publishing Editors learned to pay attention to what the end-user of their products (viewers, readers, audience) had to say about the product.

I call this change the establishing of a "feedback loop" -- it is the essence of good conversation, of increasing efficiency by successive approximations, of functioning in a chaotic reality.  Feedback, like "road feel" while driving a car, lets decisions target problems before they become problems.

We still have a real world where the business model of TV and even paper publishing requires the end-user to be "the product" not "the customer."

In TV that runs on advertising, it's obvious. In Streaming that runs on fees of subscribers, it isn't quite so obvious because you think you're paying for what you watch.  In fact, others are paying for what you watch, because these video stories are so expensive to make.  Thus what others prefer is what you have to choose from.  The mass-audience is the product -- those willing to chip in.

In book publishing, the publisher's actual customer is the distributor. That was a warehouse and trucking operation which would accept a certain number of copies of some but not all the titles a publisher put out in a month.  Then came book-chain stores which dominated, and developed their own distribution -- direct purchase from publisher.

The publishers started using computers to track sales of given titles, and editors had to guess (stab in the dark) why one title sold and another didn't.

In both TV and books, as well as in theater released movies, there was no direct feedback line from the end-user to the original commercializing producer to indicate WHY viewers or readers like this or that item.

Star Trek changed that because Gene Roddenberry took the Star Trek pilot to the Worldcon in Chicago and dropped it into the dry-tinder of Science Fiction fandom.  Typically, cons were not attended by "the general public" (as later Trek cons were).  Everyone there knew everyone else, if not directly then by a friend of a friend.  It was a tight-knit community.  Among them were connections to thousands and thousands of equally erudite, skilled, enthusiastic fans who couldn't make it that year.

Fans knew how to communicate and organize, but never before had anything much to say about a TV Series.

Before it's first air date, Star Trek was eagerly anticipated by many thousands, assiduously sharpening their critical faculties ready to tear the thing apart.  Turned out, being a TV show, it wasn't hard to rip the science to shreds, but it was FUN.

Star Trek was the first real science fiction on TV.  

Paramount, the owner-producer of the show, thought the letters (on paper) they were getting were the usual "fan" letters, from people who couldn't tell fiction from reality and didn't understand actors aren't the characters they play.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but it took years for the massive, experienced, production company nestled among yes-men of Hollywood to figure out that THESE people weren't the sort lost in a fantasy world, but rather science students, managers, professionals or professionals-to-be.  THESE people were out to make the world shown on STAR TREK into a reality.

And they did.

Students at two Universities connected two of the giant computers used in those days (with less computing power than your phone has today) to play a Star Trek game they invented.

In Europe, the idea of connecting universities and their libraries caught fire, and a way to access all that information became necessary.  Thus "the browser" was invented to read all the disparate sorts of code in use and present words you could read.

A kid dropped out of college and founded Microsoft.

There were many other such companies and computers designed around different architecture.  Microsoft and computers designed for Windows (descended from Microsoft's OS, which became Presentation Manager, which became Windows), plus Apple are all that's significantly left standing.

Unix, the university system, and its descendent Linux, now dominated by Red-hot Linux, are on the giant computer side.

A new architect, (client-server) has taken over and produced "The Cloud" while commercial applications of all this are erupting in every direction.

They wanted to play a game based on a TV show (one too few people watched).  Why should Hollywood or Manhattan Publishing giants listen to fans?

They learned.  They now listen - don't always do wise things, but they notice.

There is the beginning of the feedback loop necessary to get a society to function as a civilization.

That loop took shape decades before Star Trek -- in Science Fiction Fandom where all the writers were just fans who happened to write, and would sell to magazines and book publishers - then paperback mass market publishers.

One whole publishing house, DAW, was founded by Donald Wollheim to publish ONLY science fiction.  It still exists as an imprint under the leadership of his daughter.

Star Trek blew the lid on Science Fiction -- popularized it -- leading many into professional science fields who might not have been interested without that rocket fuel for the imagination.

We had N.A.S.A. and now we have SpaceX making orbital shuttles a commercial venture.  And there are others, and they have vision -- colonies in space, on the Moon, on Mars.  Self driving cars are the precursor to self-driving space ships.

All because of some people who were believed to be the sort who can't tell the difference between Fantasy and Reality.

Doesn't that describe the opinion some hold about Romance fans?

Give your novel's world an Arc like our real world's Arc and inspire your readers to make it so.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg

Mysteries of Pacing Part 9 - Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 9

Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Previous entries in this series are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

People make mistakes.

So, therefore, a Character in a story who makes a mistake (thus advancing the plot, NOT delaying it), is entirely plausible, sometimes lovable, easily identified with, and a true candidate for Husband of the Year -- eventually -- when that mistake arises from a foible.

See the entry on What Does She See In Him
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

It is the core of the HEA plausibility study we've been doing. How does one human assess another's Character?  How inflexible is that human in changing the criteria by which Character is to be assessed?  How important is Character in a Romance?  Does a Romance need two sterling Characters to progress to an HEA?

Does Happily Ever After ending plausibility depend entirely on two Characters having internal strength of character?

What is character, exactly? What constitutes "strength" in Character?  Can one strong Character be the Soul Mate of another Strong Character, or does a Strong Character require a Weak Character Mate?

All these questions have one valid answer.

"Probably."

Somewhere, some-when, on some fantasy timeline, each of those questions has a yes, and each has a no, and where there is a sliding scale (how important?) every single value on that whole scale, plus-to-minus, works perfectly in some alternate universe.

Your job as a writer is to take your reader on a journey across the border between here and now and there and then, and insert your reader into the head of a native of that otherwhere.

At the end of the story, the reader should return to reality with a new METHOD of assessing data about the nature and value of a person, maybe about what constitutes person-hood.

To be the tour-guide into that otherwhere, the writer has to create that otherwhere, and all its non-human Characters, if not from scratch, from a template.

The best template to use to create a fictional World is one of the many your target readership already knows.

See the following Index lists for posts on these intertwined and related topics on Worldbuilding, Theme, and integrating theme and setting ( where setting = world).

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

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

Actually, "Setting" is a tiny slice of a "World" - but to write science fiction, the writer needs a sketch of the whole world around the Characters.

To end up with a Science Fiction Romance novel, you start by envisioning (not necessarily building in detail) the World the Characters must cope with.

The one decisive element the writer needs to know to avoid endless rewriting is what-and-where the imaginary world diverges from the reader's reality (or the reader's notion of reality).

What your reader KNOWS is key to targeting a readership.  Publishing mostly regards assumptions about the reader's pre-existing knowledge base as the key to deciding the label to put on the book, Children's, Juvenile, Adult, Cozy, Chicklit, etc.

Readerships are regarded as divided by age, and thus "life-experience" -- and aspirations.  "When I grow up, I want to be  ... " or, "I want my newborn grandson to grow up to be ..."

What the reader will learn from the book depends on how old that reader is, or alternatively what their live-experience is.  For example, the children growing up in a war-torn region of the globe will be fully Adult at maybe 10 or 12, maybe having shot and killed an attacker, or an enemy who isn't attacking (yet).

Maybe that child learns hate, and grows up to un-learn it, as so very many things learned in childhood are discarded in the twenties.

Alternatively, the majority of Romance readers probably are growing up in sheltered homes, being pushed through schooling they don't want (yet), and having their lives planned by their grandparents.

These readerships have overlap points, but Publishers still prefer to divide humanity by age.

See these posts on Targeting a Readership:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So your job as a Science Fiction Romance Writer is to be the tour guide to a gaggle of tourists of mixed backgrounds all arriving in your world with different expectations.

As in the film AVATAR,
https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Sam-Worthington/dp/B00AVF8USS/
you have to give each of the tourists in your gaggle a persona, an avatar, inside which they can safely tour your world, and still bond with and empathize with the issues at hand.

The cultural rejection of the HEA as inevitable, or even possible, may reside in the scarcity of Avatars tailored for the segment of the readership that flat disbelieves.

Your job is to usher them into a world where things are different than their current reality, where the singular difference makes the HEA possible, or even very likely.

For the firmly convinced anti-HEA (maybe amenable to the HFNow ending), the transition in belief system is truly gigantic.

It is existential.

It is a transition that threatens the very foundations of conceptual reality.  Change in such fundamental beliefs can feel like being suddenly plunged into a nightmare.

In other words, for some people a realistic Romance Novel is actually Horror Genre.

To ease such a reader into your World, you need a Character to be their Avatar.

To deliver a satisfying good read, you need that Avatar to Arc from where the Reader is in their life at that time, to where the Reader can envision a world where SOMETHING is different than in her real world, and that difference makes the HEA either possible or inevitable.

The place in "life" and the parameter of reality blocking the reader's life progress, are items you glean from your view of the world (yes, rip this from the current headlines).

To build your fictional world, a simplified, stripped down, version of Reality, you target a problem in real Reality, and figure what about that target has to change (and into what it must change) to cause the HEA to be the normal life-arc of the characters in your world.

To make rabbit stew, first catch your rabbit.

In this case the rabbit is the problem making people frustrated or miserable, or maybe excited and ready to leap into adventure, never mind the danger.  The stew is your theme.

Identify the problem, hypothesize a solution, run an experiment.

The essence of science fiction is encapsulated in three question formats:  "What if ...?" " "If only ..." and "If this goes  on ..."

Focus on that, and you find it applies perfectly to Romance.  These are not two separate genres, as publishers still believe, and when you use both in a single novel or series, you aren't "mixing" genres, but rather revealing the hard-core practical reality at the center of your World.

The mystery of pacing is likewise revealed by what you choose as your hard-core, practical, inescapable attribute of reality that is so very different from what your reader thinks reality revolves around.

Consider, maybe our individual (and collective) "view of reality" is somewhat like a Galaxy -- with a black hole in the center, and our beliefs like a spiral scattering of stars being pulled down that drain just like water sucked down a drain by gravity.

It's the inexorable gravity of the black hole that gives spiral galaxies their shape.

Study your black hole.  Study your reader's black hole.  Measure the distance between them, and consider if one passes through the other at an angle, what "beliefs" (e.g. stars) will be changed in orbit, or possibly gather substance or planets?

The belief system of a person can be reshaped by an encounter with a black hole from another system of belief.

One won't be turned into the other, but there will be a morphing into something else.

Nothing remains unaffected by such major encounters.

Reading a novel can be a view through a telescope, or a close encounter, or an interpenetration.

The interpenetration happens when the Main Character of the story is an amenable Avatar for the reader who then experiences not just the story, but the arc of the Character.

The reader's real, personal, character will arc in response just as two galaxies passing through each other leave change in both.

The pacing the writer needs to pull off this non-destructive but morphing encounter depends on the initial distance between the core beliefs of the reader and the core beliefs of the Avatar, the main character to whom the plot happens.

A core belief is like that black hole that shapes the position and vector of each of the suns in the galaxy spiral.  A core belief shapes and determines the direction of change of all the other beliefs.  Beliefs are not static, and they have gravity of their own, and pull planetary beliefs into orbit, all forever moving through reality, each shaping space around it.

Dynamic motion.

Beliefs are not static things.  They arc.  They arc around a central gravity-point like that black hole, and they become organized through life into recognizable shapes.

An interpenetration with another character can add, subtract, and re-organize the substance of the beliefs, or rip them away sending them off into the deep.  Romance can do that to a Character - just reshape reality.

In dramatic writing, "pacing" is the rate of change of Situation.  It can also be the rate of change of the Character's understanding of what the Situation really is.

In other words, pacing can be increased or slowed by the rate at which a Character learns either information or a method of interpreting information.  Having to pause to re-interpret everything that's happened so far can slow pacing.

Pacing is a vector.  It has both direction and speed.

Once you've lured or seduced your reader into occupying the Avatar character, you can manipulate the Avatar's understanding of your World.

The best way to captivate and show-don't-tell is to start your Avatar out at a point where his/her beliefs match orbit with your reader.  Then send a challenge of current beliefs flying at your Avatar knocking him out of orbit.

Like billiards.  

It is what happens when two Soul Mates meet.  The core beliefs of each, the black hole at the center of Soul, is knocked, deformed, and rung like a bell.

The Love At First Sight Romance is a direct collision of the black holes at the centers of your pair of Characters.  It sets the whole galaxy of belief system of each of them ringing like a bell.

Each of the Characters must arc, or change their beliefs to accommodate the new gravity pattern around their central, core belief.

In a Romance, the core beliefs either don't have very far to go, or if they have far to go, they change in very tiny increments, very slowly, which takes an entire Series of novels, a long series, 20 books or more sometimes.

Pacing, in drama, is a vector quantity.  It has speed and direction.

If you have to change your Character's direction in life, by a lot, do it slowly.

Science Fiction Romance is one genre that, in a Series, allows your plot to be fast-paced while your story (Romance) is slow-paced enough to have verisimilitude.

Using the definition of Plot as the sequence of events caused by the Main Character's initial action, each event causing the next, you can start the series where the Main Character, the Avatar, makes a mistake.

However, it can't be just a random mistake.  The Avatar's action has to be an illustration of an innate foible, a character flaw, that throughout the coming series of novels, will be hammered to destruction, the source revealed, and the remedy encountered, resisted, then accepted.

The HEA, in real life, is usually the result of such a developmental arc, where events cause self-examination and reassessment, gradually (over years) revealing and eliminating a foible.

Some foibles are not worth the effort to eliminate -- they just make the person individualistic, one of a kind, charming, interesting or just a character.

Other foibles can cripple a person's life, preventing career advancement, diverting energy to unproductive channels, and just being mistakes to regret.

The foible is the key ingredient in a Character formulation, in Characterization, that allows that Character to be the Main Character and the reader's Avatar.

Look up foible (Google it) and study the word and its ever changing meaning.  Identify your own foibles, which you still have and which you've vanquished.  Think about how the vanquished ones were knocked out of you.

Identify that pattern of foible-remediation in other people you know, and then maybe on Facebook Friends postings.

Find some headlines about people undergoing remediation of their foibles.

Find the foible pattern common to humanity, and build your Aliens around a different pattern.

The Aliens will be more plausible if they have foibles, but a different pattern of them, and a different mechanism of remediation.

Your Alien will be more lovable with a recognizable foible.

Really study the word foible.  It is the black hole at the center of the Character Arc spiral.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Story Integration Part 5 - How To Change Anyone's Mind

Theme-Story Integration

Part 5

How To Change Anyone's Mind

Previous parts in the Theme-Story Integration Series:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-1-villain.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-2-villain.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-3-sexy.html

Part 4 - Rag-Tag-Band Ensemble Story
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/theme-story-integration-part-4-rag-tag.html

To sell Hollywood a script, you have to master Character Arc -- how much change can a human exhibit under the impact of how small a prompting, and after how short an interval of "processing" the new information.

Humans are elastic, to be sure, but have limits.

To sell science fiction, you have to depict scientifically plausible rates of change (and some of the scientists reading your science fiction are psychiatrists, sociologists, specialists in human behavior).

To sell Romance, you have to depict humanly plausible reasons for initial "attraction" (or "repulsion.")  You have to show-don't-tell what she sees in him, and what he sees in her.

Here is What Does She See In Him?

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

The ability to "see" something in another person develops in the Teens, usually through those endless conversations parents have little patience with.  Seeing your own world through the eyes of another is a major breakthrough in maturation.

That is your starting point, when you realize that you understand where someone else is making a mistake.  "Don't date that guy. He's a loser."  And you try to change the other person's mind, change what they see -- usually, in the teen years, you try to change the other person's opinion without changing how they see, just what they see.

The assumption is that what you see is better, or more correct, than what the other person sees.

How do you change another person?

Many marriages start with the Neptune-fantasy induced idea that you can change the other person, rescue them from themselves, get them off drugs or whatever they are addicted to, alter their behavior.

It does work sometimes, but usually not for the reasons the marriage happened in the first place.  Most often such marriages end in divorce, which gives Romance writers the chance to explore the Second Time Around - where wisdom over-rides the urge to change another.

What you can do is change yourself to match the other person.

Find that a cringe-worthy idea?  Yeah, so do they!

But the truth is people change.  If people are too immature when they marry, and change-rates haven't settled down, they might grow toward each other, or might grow apart,  Apart usually leads to divorce.

Minds can be changed -- that is, the conclusions a person reaches can be questioned and discarded.  But how they reach those conclusions usually doesn't change after a certain level of maturity (reached at different ages).

The young/old couple pairing often gels nicely because the older person functions in a reliable manner, which relieves uncertainty, and stress for the younger who is still hunting for a thinking method.

We live in a world of professional (and well paid and well funded) mind-changers.

Profit seekers have weaponized psychological tricks for changing minds.

Can you get someone to love that which they currently hate?

Maybe.  Some people study this process for a living.

It is based on the assumption that what you are leading them to accept is better than what they currently accept.

Here is a 2019 non-fiction book detailing the results of many years of such well funded studies.

The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind Kindle Edition by Jonah Berg

https://www.amazon.com/Catalyst-How-Change-Anyones-Mind-ebook/dp/B07THCZ626/

Use these techniques, combined in different ways, and you can convince most readers that your Character is a real human being (or an Alien with enough in common with humans to make an excellent mate).

Today, people are accustomed to being targeted by these mind-altering weapons, and many ordinary people use them routinely.

Using this book as a checklist for making sure your Character doesn't arc to quickly, or too easily, or too slowly, to be believed will add verisimilitude to your Romance.

Now comes the thematic question of whether the user of these techniques is pristinely ethical -- or the blackest villain.

Who should be in charge of what others believe?  Teachers?  Children?  Authorities?

In Part 4 we looked STARS BEYOND...

https://amazon.com/Stars-Beyond-Uncharted-Book-ebook/dp/B07N5QJJFG/

...with an ensemble cast striving to survive in a world built on Genetic Modification for health and/or fun/art.  The Characters didn't arc - but their world did.

There was no thematic discussion (in show don't tell) of the issue of modifying another person on a basic level.  None of the conflicts involved who gets to say what you look like.  It was just, smoothly, assumed that in every case, the one being changed was totally in control of the outcome of their changes.

The one (intriguing) exception was when the Aliens saved a human's life by changing the eyes to a different visual spectrum, and incidentally and conveniently for them, changed linguistic center of the brain. Other humans, without objection, underwent the linguistic center modification.

Huge opportunities for conflict and resolution - for Character Arc and many other thematic discussions were overlooked, and I think it's because this gigantic story was compressed into one slender volume.

Here is the Theme-Character series, a jumping off place for constructing a Story Arc.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

Read STARS BEYOND and keep in mind the potential for applying the principles of "The Catalyst" to produce a long series of long novels which are all pure Romance.  Love Conquers All, but this novel is set after all the conquering so there is very little real conflict.  I think that's because they (the collaborators) started the story too late in the thematic arc.

Is it our genes that need modifying, or is it our minds?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mysteries of Pacing Part 5 How Fast Can A Character Arc

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 5

How Fast Can A Character Arc?

Previous parts in this series:
Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

Part 4 Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

In Part 4 we talked about Story Pacing, using the term Story to represent what is going on inside the Characters, and Plot to represent the events going on outside the Character.

The Story is the progression of the Character's attitudes toward life, their own identity, the limits of what they can or can't do, the motives of others, etc.  The Story is driven by the Character's internal conflict, and the story ends when the Conflict joined on page one finally ends in a resolution.

Likewise Plot is the progression of events outside the Character, what we have previously termed "the because line."  It is a sequence of Events caused by the Main Character's first action on page one.

The Main Character is determined by which Character acts in such a way that causes (because) external Events to happen.

The Main Character may not be "in charge" or deliberately determining what will happen, but what happens can be seen by the reader to be the result of what this Character did.

Very often, new writers produce whole manuscripts focused on the wrong character.

Editors presented with an elevator pitch will often ask, "Whose story is it?" and the facility with which the pitch presenter answers can determine whether the editor wants to see a Chapter.

So once you have an Idea for a story, a world, a situation, and something to say about that, you must explore the material to find the Character whose story is happening right in that frame.

To learn to explore a fictional world, to frame an angle on that world as a videographer frames a wedding picture, just explore your everyday world.

Art is a selective representation of reality.

Select the right bits and pieces, arrange them just so, and you can convince the audience that this impossible place is real, and that there is something to be learned about reality by studying this fantasy.

People, (humans, anyway) view their life as reality.  To reduce infinite Reality to something we can encompass, we filter out the irrelevant information.  We work with a subset of what is actually there, viewing our world from an angle, and ignoring what we deem as not pertinent.

That's how we judge a potential lover, and that's how we tend to fall in love, then awaken to the Big Shock when the Honeymoon is over.  We have misjudged what is relevant about this person, or possibly about ourselves.

So how fast can a Character Arc, or change their point of view, or reformulate their filter and still seem "realistic" to the audience?

The final step in that change of view of Reality is, in everyday life, just the snap of the fingers.  The aha!  The oho!

It seems FAST because we don't ordinarily notice or record the many tiny steps leading up to that big reveal.

In a work of fiction, though, readers do look for and notice those tiny steps.  If the Character just suddenly Arcs, or changes their filters to discover information that they've been ignoring, (he's cheating on me!) without those incremental steps, the audience may regard the Character as "cardboard" or the plot as "contrived."

That's right, readers (even experienced beta readers) may point to the plot as the problem when in fact it is the story that needs work.

The plot will seem contrived if the Main Character acts in such a way as the reader expects Event A to occur, but the writer wants Event B to occur, so the writer just writes Event B.

The reader expects Event A  because in their everyday life, that's what would happen.

How could Event B happen instead?  If the previous Events have impacted the Main Character's view of reality such that the Main Character comes to a new understanding (however fallacious) of what is really going on.  Think about optical illusions.

In other words, if the writer has shown the Main Character changing their mind as a result of the Events happening because of the Main Character's actions, it becomes plausible that the Main Character could change their entire take on the nature of Reality.

For example: being kidnapped by a UFO and becoming part of an Alien work of Art.

One of the writer's most powerful artistic tools is Cognitive Dissonance - a mismatch between what the Character assumes and the Reality of the Character's Situation.

Cognitive Dissonance is one of the Artist's tools.

Carefully airbrushed into a story, that dissonance can rivet the reader's attention, and even spur the reader to reassess their own mental filters on their everyday reality.

Think back to the books you have read that changed how you think about leading your own life.  Maybe reread some of them and look for how the writer used cognitive dissonance.

As you build your Main Character's strength of personality, creating a Character your target readership can identify with, consider how much drama (Pluto driven events of change, loss, war) will be necessary to crack that Character's defenses.

A person's "defenses" surround the opinion-structure to keep out information that could change that opinion (my husband would never cheat on me because I would never cheat on him).  What would it take to change that opinion? Walking in on him having sex with the chamber maid?

What would it take to make a human finally notice they had married a non-human in disguise, on Earth to spy us out for a takeover?

How strong is the defense of denial built into the mental filters?  That is the resistance that must be overcome by Plot Events and force the Character to Arc.

Now will the Character dissolve gently by stages, crack and disintegrate into insanity before reforming into an unrecognizable new person, or just finally accept what they've known all along, "I really didn't understand this."

How the Character changes, how fast is plausible to the reader, depends on the detailed and careful construct the writer has presented.

In Comics, Characters just learn their lesson after one lesson.  In Reality, it usually takes years and years of repetition to drive a point home.  In a Selective Recreation of Reality - it will take 400 pages, and 4 "Acts" of the drama to morph a Character to the end of their Arc.

Even in a Series, a Character must Arc definitively at the end of each novel, with something left over to wonder about.

In Part 4 of this Series, we noted how the Story starts on page one where the Main Character is presented with a Conflict and the Reader just knows this Character "has a lot to learn."

The Genre to choose for your story (Genre determines Plot), depends on which readership will "just know this Character has a lot to learn."

That's the suspense element that glues the reader to the page. The Character must learn what the Reader already knows, but clearly this Character will resist.  How hard will the Character resist, and how long will the fight last?

Who else might come along to disrupt and redirect the Plot?

Keep them guessing, and that will keep them glued to the page.

But you must deliver the satisfaction of the Character learning the expected lesson, even while learning an unexpected lesson, a lesson the reader doesn't know.

Think about what has made you change your mind as you have lived life.

Think about what has made you determined not to change your mind, no matter what.

Consider how to convince your target readership (using what you know about the group's characteristics, age, gender, etc) to think about that unexpected lesson as a question they don't know the answer to.

One thing that will make the unexpected lesson stick in the reader's memory is the emotional satisfaction of the expected lesson.  To relive that satisfaction, a reader may reread a novel years later, and notice that they first learned the unexpected lesson via that novel.

Fiction is most entertaining when it asks questions, but leaves the reader to formulate their own answers.  Usually, no two readers will come to the same answers, but all will be engrossed, and talking about that novel for years to come.

Write an Alien Romance; Start an Argument.

Think about Pon Farr and Sarek's answer to the question of why he married Amanda.  "It was the logical thing to do."

The setup for that famous one-liner, and all the arguments about it that have raged for decades, began with the first episode (not the pilot) of ST:ToS.

Set up your raging question just as carefully, and remember it is all about the theme.

Star Trek was Roddenberry's way of depicting humanity's future as having learned (species arc!)  to be wise.  He chose "the genetic wars" as the turning point, and from then on humanity became wise.

Wisdom had something (unspecified) to do with emotion ruling our actions, so the First Officer (Number One, a woman) was to be a character who acted without being driven by emotion.

Paramount would not buy the series if there was a woman giving orders to men, so Number One and Spock (who had emotions) were composited into one character, a First Officer Alien Without Emotions.

But that didn't violate the theme --- humanity can become wise.

It did, in fact, show-don't-tell huge numbers of questions about human nature, while at the same time creating one of the sexiest Characters in Television History.

Note that, series to movie to series, Spock and Vulcan "Arc" or change on impact of Events caused by their existence, presence, and actions.

Character Arc is one of the drivers of Pacing in fiction.  How fast does the target audience want to see the Character change his/her mind, emotions, opinions, politics, religion?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Reformed Villains

I love a good "redeemed villain" story, but creating a good (i.e., plausible and emotionally engaging) one isn't easy. The chief villain of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, Duke Frederick, undergoes a sudden conversion at the end of the play, repents of usurping his brother's dukedom, and enters the religious life. Not very believable in real-life terms, but since the change of heart occurs in a romantic comedy, we can suspend disbelief. Usually, redeeming a bad guy is more complicated. How can his or her character arc be made convincing?

A traumatic backstory that arouses audience sympathy can help. So can showing hints of goodness in the character, however tenuous (the "save the cat" moment Jacqueline often mentions). Regina, the Evil Queen in the TV series ONCE UPON A TIME, commits several murders, both by her own hands and by proxy. Her reign is characterized by tyranny and cruel atrocities. She magically curses not only Snow White but the entire realm. Flashback episodes, however, show Regina as a victim of her dictatorial mother, who slew Regina's true love and forced her to marry the king. Although kind to Snow White at first, Regina developed bitter hatred for her because young Snow's carelessness betrayed Regina's secret love and led to his death. As mayor of Storybrooke in our world, Regina adopts Henry, illegitimate son of Snow White's daughter (who initially doesn't know her own true identity—yes, this series is complicated). Regina's love for her adopted child, at first mostly—though not entirely—autocratic and self-serving, gradually develops into a deeper, unselfish affection, which plants the seeds of her repentance and desire for redemption. While I enjoyed seeing the Evil Queen grow into the heroine she becomes by the end of the series, I did, however, have trouble suspending disbelief in her redemption at times, because she commits some horrifically evil deeds in the flashbacks. But the series does show her growth toward goodness as she struggles with the terms of her redemption and her reconciliation with former enemies. For instance, whereas in her youth she pursued implacable, disproportionate revenge against Snow White for the results of Snow's childish mistake, in a later season Regina demonstrates maturity in forgiving a mistake by another character that also threatens to destroy her happiness.

Jaime Lannister in the "Game of Thrones" novels and TV series doesn't have a "save the cat" moment early in the saga. Instead, he's introduced with a "shoot the dog" moment. Caught in an incestuous act with his sister, Cersei, he pushes the witness, young Bran, out of a window, maiming him for life. This is one of several evil deeds Jaime recently mentions in rebuttal to the lady knight Brienne of Tarth when she calls him a "good man." His self-awareness about his dark past highlights the change in him over time. Among other changes, his relationship with Brienne has evolved. At first, he treated her with mocking scorn; now they are friends and lovers. Some details by which the series lays groundwork for Jaime's redemption: He slew the former king, gaining the title "Kingslayer," from sound motives, effectively saving the country from a mad tyrant, but as the nickname indicates, he's regarded negatively for this act. Most of his evil deeds are inspired by love and loyalty toward his twin sister and their mutual children. Yet when she crosses lines in ways too extreme for him to accept, he breaks with her, showing that he possesses a core of honor and decency. The audience also feels sympathy for him when his sword hand is cut off. By the current climactic season, he has demonstrated his reformation in action by offering his services to the heroes trying to overthrow Cersei.

Some fans may feel his past crimes are too serious for any credible redemption, though. What does it take to achieve a plausible reformation and redemption arc for a character guilty of egregious evil? Is there ever a "moral event horizon" that, once crossed, can never be re-crossed?

For fans of vampires, werewolves, witches, and demons, Brian M. Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg edited an anthology on this very theme, THE REPENTANT (DAW, 2003). I reviewed it here in my "retro-review" monthly blog post series on VampChix:

VampChix

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Story Integration Part 1 - Villain Story Arc

Theme-Story Integration

Part 1

Villain Story Arc

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

This is the opening of a new "walk and chew gum" exercise.

We have "integrated" various combinations of (artificially) separated techniques of the writing craft in a variety of long entries.  The posts titled "Integration" are advanced writing lessons - not about spelling, punctuation, grammar, paragraph structure, etc.  But about how to take the fascinating scenario in your mind and give it to other people, to people you don't know who don't know you.

Recently, on Facebook, P. N. Elrod echoed the core lesson in attitude that a beginning writer must internalize.  My first writing teacher, Alma Hill, put it thusly:

WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART. 

It takes practice to de-personalize and project a tapestry of emotions so that the recipients find within the material something of personal value to them.

Another maxim often quoted, and (writers being writers) elaborately paraphrased, is:

THE VILLAIN IS THE HERO OF HIS OWN STORY.

So how does a good person (like you) depict a bad person and make that Character interesting (and plausible) enough to grab a Science Fiction/Fantasy-Romance reader?

The core technique is called STORY ARC.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

ARC indicates change along a curve, a changing vector or direction of change.  Vector refers to a resultant (or combination) of direction and momentum (or force).

STORY indicates what is going on inside a Character as the Character becomes aware of, then conquers, an INTERNAL CONFLICT.

THEME is what you have to say, as a writer, about life-the-universe-and-everything.  Why do you want to write this story?  Who do you want to read it?  What do you want them to understand from reading it (that they didn't know before?)

A Villain is not (necessarily) a bad person (human or Alien).

A Villain is a Character whose objectives thwart the Hero from achieving the Hero's objective.  This is the main source of conflict that drives Plot.

We've discussed Theme-Plot Integration at length.

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

And in various cross-fertilizing combinations:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

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

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/index-to-theme-conflict-integration.html

And we've touched on where Story fits into both Plot and Worldbuilding.

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

So now let's look at the possibilities revealed by bringing Story to the surface (rather than Plot).

Almost all traditional science fiction has been marketed to (thus written for) teenage boys -- not girls.  Romance has been firmly excluded, and the plot related in narrative without nuances of emotion.

Today, the popularity of Fantasy written for adults has blended Paranormal-Magic-ESP possibilities in world building into the genre, Paranormal Romance.  We see it in Vampire Romance and even Zombie Romance.

Any sort of Alien can be a Romantic Interest, or the Villain thwarting the Romance from crystalizing.  The Science Fiction genre has blended into the Romance genre.

Why do these two distinct genres blend so easily?

Because Science Fiction genre specializes in Plot, while Romance specializes in Story.

Both genre categories have both plot and story -- deciding which label to put on the spine is largely a matter of whether Plot or Story artistically dominates.

Both Plot and Story arcs are driven by Conflict. Plot by External Conflict (Man against Nature or other Men), and Story by Internal Conflict (Man against himself or as his own worst enemy.)

A prominent example of how Plot and Story are separate but blend is the TV Series, NCIS.  It follows the modern cop-drama formula of presenting a full plot-arc each episode with the case to be solved, then counter-currents the plot with the story of what it all means to the investigator team, individually and collectively.

Aggregate the Characters and you have a typical Science Fiction Romance novel.

Most Romance novel conflicts are not between Hero and Villain, but between the couple in the process of uniting, which in the case of TV cop-dramas is the investigative team.

But there is a wild sub-genre dealing with the Bad Boy lover, and of course the arranged marriage to anyone but the actual lover.  And all the variations make endlessly fascinating reading.

One element that often turns people off to anything called Romance is how "Love Conquers All" in one fell swoop, a single emotional-moral-ethical SEE THE LIGHT moment.

It is true such Character "reversals" happen in real life.  If that were not so, there wouldn't be a word to refer to it.  The word exists.  It is "epiphany."

Epiphany usually refers to an encounter with God, one way or another -- a religious experience, or spiritual one.  LSD was famous in the 1960's for revealing new ways of looking at reality.

The existence of a different way of looking at things is the core of all science fiction.  And it is what happens when you fall in love -- you see the exact same world you've always lived in as something very different from what you thought it was.

So, traditionally, we have the term "Black Hearted."

How can a heart be black?

We have the term, "Good Hearted Soul."

How can a Soul have a "heart?"

We call fiction about insanity, heinous crime, and logical reasons for doing unethical things -- turning good guys into bad guys, step by step, "Dark."

We use light and dark to refer to emotions, motives, behavior, choices, religion and ritual.  We term "understanding" as "enlightening."

We use white hats for heroes and black hats for villains - just to be sure the audience knows which is which.

Where does this convention of light/dark come from and how can a Romance writer (working in rainbow hued emotions) use this notion to "arc" the Villain's Character?

We'll look at the potential of Villain's Arc in Part 2.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Trends and Counter-trends Part 1 - Character Arc

Trends and Counter-trends

Part 1

Character Arc  

Here is something to watch for and think about.  Fitting your own stories into publishing is somewhat like jumping Double-Dutch -- it is all in the timing.

Whether you like it, or hate it, or don't care, there is a trend in fiction that appears in novels, movies, TV Series, and other forms such as the graphic novel, and games.

It is a story type trend.  Story is all about what is going on inside the characters, specifically the main character.

Often you see a novel explained as "the story of an orphan who finds true love" -- or "the story of a widow who moves West to start a new life."

Novels are "the story of..."

The plot is all about what this Character does and what those deeds cause to happen, to which this Character then reacts by doing something else -- until the conflict is resolved.

The conflict embodies the theme -- the statement about the true nature of reality that this novel explains and illustrates.

The story of "an orphan who finds true love" -- involves some sort of conflict woven from a strong spirited Character in conflict with his/her  loneliness, bereavement, helplessness.  The orphan "finds" (i.e. does something) to solve the loneliness problem, and love-conquers-all resolves the conflict.

The story of the widow who moves West easily houses the conflicts built from themes of "new starts" -- of having nothing to lose, of making a bold leap of faith.  The conflict is the strong Character confronting the bereft and hopeless situation and either running away or running toward a dream.  The conflict is resolved by finding a new community, and opportunities.

To fit into Romance genre, such a story has to end naturally in a Happily Ever After situation.

So the writer has to show-don't-tell what qualities this Character has inherent in them to make it possible, natural, or even inevitable for this Character to reach such a reward.

The classic method of showing the Character deserves Happiness is to show the Character learning a hard lesson the hard way, and along the way adoptiing the habit of Charity and Good Deeds.  SAVE THE CAT! (the book about screenwriting I recommend novel writers study) points out that the most efficient way to convince an audience that a Character is worthy is to "save the cat" -- to put the Character in a situation where he risks life and limb for the helpless.

So today's trends, if you slice and dice enough TV Series and novels, are the story of a Character who starts off with strong ethical and moral principles, would indeed save a cat from the top of a telephone pole, or rescue a kitten from a storm drain, but the story is about how this worthy person is brought to a point where they violate their own ethical standards.

Some expect to "get away with it" and others expect to "pay the price."

But the one story-form I am seeing the most is the story of the moral corruption and devolution of an otherwise strong and admirable Character.  Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter is a great series, very popular, huge best seller, and except for a few books, mostly very well written.  But it is the story of Anita Blake
violating all the precepts she holds dear in Book 1, and learning to make excuses, wallow in the practical necessity of surviving, and finally embracing all she loathed at the beginning.

https://www.amazon.com/Anita-Blake-Vampire-Hunter-Book/dp/B01MDM9GTC/

Decades ago, the prevailing story was of the weak Character, vacillating, hesitate, out-classed and out-gunned who man's up, steps up, takes charge, and grows stronger for the experiences of the story -- a character who learns from the lessons life teaches, learns the basics of wisdom.

If you start with a Character that has perfected strength and wisdom ( Obi Wan Kenobe ) you have to devolve him or kill him off.

If you start with a wimp, you can build him into somebody worth knowing.

If you start with a Character in the middle, neither so wise or so weak, you can go either way.

Watch the publishing trends.  It is a pendulum swing.  Sometimes people want to read about Characters growing in strength and wisdom, and sometimes people want to watch the mighty taken down a peg or two.

And between these two swings, you will find a prevalence of stories about Characters who don't change (like TV Series Characters in an anthology series), they don't learn from their mistakes and adventures, but spiritually tread water.

Sometimes audiences just want to relax and have their lazy, static lifestyle validated.

Find the trend your story fits into and start submitting when the previous trend has hit peak.  Ride the trend waves.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Why Every Novel Needs A Love Story - Part 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Why Every Novel Needs A Love Story
Part 2
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Part 1 of this series
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html
we noted how the signature of a Strong Character is that the Character "arcs" -- or changes their emotional responses to situations because of some life-lesson learned "the hard way" in the "school of hard knocks."

Characters get pummeled by Events you create.  They learn from the Events (the plot) and they do not necessarily learn the best or most correct lesson the first time you hit them with an Event.

Characters that are strong at the beginning of the story get pummeled with Events until they break  -- think of Spock crying alone in the briefing room.  Leonard Nimoy knew Spock's strength had to be broken in order to engage viewer interest. 

Granite strength all by itself is not interesting.  So writers break their strongest characters.

Start with a weak character, someone gripped by the "I can't" or "I'm doing all I can, so how can you expect more of me?" attitude, hammer that character to pulverize them, and chronicle their path to becoming a strong character.  That's Character Arc.

So, Strong Characters can be weak at the beginning of the Arc, and the strength is revealed as you hammer them into becoming Strong.

What exactly is it that writers hammer at in either the strong or weak character that changes them, that morphs them along an Arc?

What causes people to change in real life?  What causes people to start to behave differently, and seem "out of character" for a while, until friends and family get used to the new person? 

What changes in life that re-formulates a person's behavior? 

I submit that the easiest attribute of a Character for a writer to depict as Arcing, or changing in a way that readers can see as realistic, is the ability to Love.

That is the "wall" that Events hammer at to Arc a character.

It is the ability to establish and maintain Relationships that distinguishes the Happy person from the miserable person.  We draw our strength of character from our "stance" among our people, our family, our co-workers, our buddies, our spouse, our children, our distant relatives, and just friends made via organizations.

How many times have you seen the story of the lone-gunman who shoots up a crowd and nobody expected it because "he kept to himself" and "he seemed like a nice guy" but he had no close friends (or the ones he had were likewise disconnected.)

As humans, we need to belong, to connect, to be surrounded by layers upon layers of people who know intimately, less well, distantly, and just feel general kinship with because we share a fandom, a reading taste, a craft etc.  We speak of "the Music World" and "the Golf World" -- and we say, "Welcome to my world." 

We live in "worlds" composed of layers of associates.

The entre into such a "world" is via the close, immediate, intertwined, personal Relationship.

Enemies, Adversaries, a policeman's quarry (think TV Series THE FUGITIVE), relationships can be incredibly intimate and even replace true love for a time.

Social networking has leveraged that layered-worlds structure of human life into a profitable business where you are their product which they sell to advertisers.

We are creatures of Relationship, embedded in a physical world composed of intricate layers of interlaced relationships.  Think of the way genetics has evolved -- almost all life on Earth shares basic building block genes.  (almost since there are non-carbon single-cell life near hot vents in the bottom of the ocean) 

Most all life on Earth is genetically related, which is why we can use animals to test new drugs and why we shudder at the mere thought of doing that!  We are all of one piece.

But we don't see that, at least not at the surface of our awareness.  We don't see into another person's emotional life, the internal structure of another person's decision making process, their most dearly held values, their unconscious assumptions about what is right and what is wrong.

That realm of the unconsciously held Value System is where the writer works.

Writers probe, explore, learn, and map their own unconscious minds, especially the Value System they imbibed with Mother's Milk.  We acquire our first values from our parents, but as life goes on, we acquire more layers of values around those.

Sometimes the later value acquisitions logically contradict earlier ones, but we hold onto all of them as our OWN -- we identify with the wild and incompatible mix of values we have created and call it our Identity.

Thus when a person's Values are attacked by another person (who may or may not have different values), it feels like a threat to LIFE ITSELF.  It feels like a threat to existence.  People will tolerate starvation or being shot at by hostiles better than they will having their unconscious Values contradicted.

Yes, mere words can trigger a counter-attack as if life and existence were at stake.

Politics and Religion are two topics that are rooted in that first learned, unconscious value system that most likely has been overlaid by Values acquired in college, which have been overlaid by Values acquired on the job. 

That's why they are explosive topics for family gatherings (and wondrous sources of Conflict that can advance a Plot). 

Today, in our modern world, Politics and Religion are mixing at depths not seen since the Middle Ages when The Church basically ran the Governments of Europe.

The Crusades were a show-don't-tell manifestation of the mixing of Politics (Kings) with Religion (The Cross). 

Today, the explosive mix is Science vs. Religion.  What sane person could possibly reject Evolution or want to teach Creationism in schools?  See?  "sane" -- "If you don't share my Values, you are not a Person." 

In other words, we tend to work on the assumption that the only people whose opinions count are the people who share our Values.

But nobody shares anyone's Values.  As described above, each individual person accumulates layers upon layers of different values and morphs the disparate mess into some kind of ball of wax which they use as their Identity. 

Each of us is unique -- but we want to associate only with those who are identical to us, at least in our intimate relationships. 

As noted in Part 1, look closely at the TV Series SUITS.  Suits works via the way the senior (Harvey Specter) sees himself in the junior (Mike Ross).  When Mike doesn't do what Harvey would do, Harvey is uncomfortable and acts out.

Now back to the Romance Novel, which is what this blog is all about. 

Consider the various ideas of what Love is. 

You will find Romance depicted as about co-dependence, as about feelings only, as about bodily functions only, as about paying attention only to me.  And all of these variations are real, and all matter, and all of them are necessary ingredients in Romance.

It is very true that you can have amazing Romance without a trace of Love at all.

"Love" (with a capital L) is a spiritual thing that transcends our innate insanities.  Love with a capital L is an experience of the Soul that changes the Soul -- i.e. that causes Character to Arc.

Real change happens when channels of the Personality open to Love.

That happens under different circumstances for different people at different times of Life.  Sometimes it is religious conversion, sometimes encountering a senior mentor, sometimes the birth of your first child, sometimes it is finding your Soul Mate.

People (and Characters) change not by becoming someone else, not by losing or gaining abilities or Talents, but by re-arranging their characteristics.

Thus a Character Arc Event causes an aggressive person who is likely to solve any problem by putting out a Hit on the opposition into someone who behaves more like Harvey Specter in SUITS and leverages the other person's emotional weaknesses.

The Aggression is still there, but the channel is different.

An alcoholic might morph into someone who eats or smokes too much, but holds a job and is kind to his kids.

All the traits remain, but the emphasis and utilization changes. 

Why does that happen? 

One of the key ingredients that forms our crazy-quilt pattern of Values is our Relationships.  There is a well studied trait of human perception (see the TV Series Perception) that causes us to see ourselves in others.

When you hate someone, when someone just plain drives you crazy, and you go around with an inner dialogue counting their failings and what they should do about it, then very likely (not always, but most of the time) you are seeing yourself in that person.

Other people are the mirror in which we see our own reflection.

But like with a mirror, you see a reversal of the image, and you can see what is behind you (e.g. in your subconscious).  You see deeper into yourself, into the dark underside of yourself, because the other person is so very different from you.

You see their faults, and their faults are visible because they are different.

Writers leverage that common human perception by creating Characters who are so very different from the reader that the reader is barely aware of the similarity.  When it strikes the reader just right, that difference allows the reader to identify with the character and walk in their moccasins. 

So people react emotionally to other people according to how they love or hate themselves.  But as noted above, Identity is a pearl composed of layers of contradiction accreted around a sharp-grain of pain that caused the acquisition of a Value.

That pain might be a parental smack, a deprivation from a toy, a forced-sharing with a sibling, and rewards of kindness, love, joy, celebration. 

Right and Wrong and what is more important than what (i.e. Values) are absorbed from parents via what the parents do, not what the parents say -- so Values are non-verbal and conveyed with a Sharp Pain that forces the pain to be wrapped by a Value that will henceforth prevent that Pain. 

So when we see someone who is Wrong -- we react to that wrongness.  How we react, what we do about Wrong People, is influenced by our ability to Love our own Self -- to admire our pearls that encase our Pain and create Values.

If we Love ourselves because we know how we have just barely managed to cope with our Pain, we are able to see others struggling (and sometimes failing) to cope with their Pain.  We know that sometimes a Pain does not get encased in a Pearl of Values - a lesson is not (yet) learned and successfully applied to life.

Lessons can be rejected, maybe never learned, because of some other Belief that is in the way, that contradicts or conflicts and thus causes Truth to be rejected. 

People who do not (yet) love themselves, see nothing but their own reflection in the mirrors of the people around them, and thus are in effect isolated, alone, unloved, and frustrated.  Such people may compensate by narcissism, which others interpret as self-love. 

How does a writer depict people caught in a House of Mirrors life where all they can see in those around them are hateful traits? 

Dialogue is the answer.  How a Character speaks, what opinions so desperately need airing, what opinions (and the vocabulary to express them) burst out with loud urgency, and to whom those opinions are expressed (with what collateral damage), depicts the Character's inner conflict, inner story, and subconscious Values.

A Character's emotional life is revealed in Dialogue. 

Here is an example to study, from a piece of non-fiction analyzing our current real world situation. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/16/1371324/-Adelson-and-Kristol-attempt-the-first-Liberum-Veto-in-US-history

The author is
 arendt 

-------quote from opening line----------
As the GOP sabotage and sedition continues, the US appears to be going the way of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (P-LC) rather than the way of the Roman Empire.

If you know your history, this is not an insult; but, rather, a tragedy in progress. The P-LC was a powerful and progressive state during the early Reformation era, reaching its Golden Age in about 1575.

--------end quote------------

Note the sidling up to the chosen audience by characterizing an entire group of people "the GOP" as if they are all identical to one another.  This is a valid representation of what a person who lives a House of Mirrors existence actually sees in those around them -- no difference one to another, because they are all reflections of him/herself. 

The opening sentence here is brilliant in that it instantly and efficiently says, "Listen to me because I'm just like you." 

The rest of the historical thesis in this article is a brilliant analysis, considering the point of view. 

Take a Character who shares this writers contempt and disdain for those who see things differently and create some Events that would shatter his certainty that his view is the only laudable view.

It doesn't matter what views your Character holds, or opposes.  The writing exercise is to Depict a Conflict of Values and its Resolution. 

It will work better as a Novel if you choose some vast conflict of World Shattering importance that is utterly unrelated to the headlines of today.  Just lift out of this article the attitude of this writer -- not the content.

Your task is to create a Character who views Others with such contempt, then discovers that what he hates in them is actually inside himself, that he never perceived them at all.  As he comes to resolve his inner conflict, he begins the journey to being able to Love himself.

Where does that lead?  It will lead him to his Happily Ever After, but not in one or even a thousand steps.  Along the way, he will discover how those he held in contempt are actually struggling as he was.  He will find Love for them, and his way of speaking of them will change (his Character will Arc).

The changed attitude will not change the facts of the Situation, but it will open vistas of opportunity for different sorts of actions to change the facts.  (yes, it's a series of novels)

Once your Character understands how lovable his opposition is, even though they are flat out wrong, his actions will begin to be instructive rather than destructive, and solutions will appear that were never visible before.

The key to Character Arc is the introduction of Love which penetrates the Mirror Effect so that one Character can actually perceive what is inside another Character.  Thus begins all Relationship.

So every novel needs a love story, even if there is no Romance.  And every Romance, to create a realistic Happily Ever After needs a Love story -- the story of learning to Love yourself so that you can see through the mirror-surface and into the people around you.

That Love Story gives the fictional world the necessary verisimilitude to draw a reader into the Fantasy world.

Here are more posts on Alien Romance discussing verisimilitude, story arc, and Romance.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/plot-subtext-integration-part-2-ruining.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com